Pukman @ WinK: the community that time didn't forget

It occurs to me that those of you who are younger than me may not know Robert Carlyle and Jon Voight. You might want to check out Robert Carlyle's page on the IMDB. Well-known movies in which he appears include The World is Not Enough (a 007 movie), Trainspotting, Angela's Ashes, and Eragon.

The Magic Tree House series is very well-known and respected in the US. We don’t yet have any of these books in the PUK Library. How about at KGU?

I went to the Hakua Festival today with my family. We had lots of good food and we enjoyed the walk rally. The most impressive thing was the wooden play objects made by students of the Department of Human Habitat.

Please visit the Hakua Festival page.

Do you know the famous story The Gingerbread Man? If you liked it, you should try

The Gingerbread Girl. She is the Gingerbread Man's sister and she has learned from his mistakes!

I recently read

Yeh-Shen, which is the Chinese version of Cinderella (or it may be more accurate to say the Cinderella is an adaptation of Yeh-Shen). The differences with the Cinderella that I knew were very interesting. I recommend this book and also any of the other Cinderella books that you can find on this site.

• Blackberries
• Raspberries
• Gooseberries (not really!)
• Bilberries
• 黄蓮寺

I found Listen to English. This has colloquial listening practice at several different levels. Another useful site is allcinema. Here, you can find out the correct English title of a movie if you only know the Japanese title (and of course vice versa). This is very useful if, for example, you want to write a movie review in English on your blog but you don't know the English title. Another interesting movie site is the interactive tour of the American Film Institute's top 100 movies.

The Premier League started towards the end of August and most teams have already played about four games. Arsenal and Chelsea are at the top of the table now, and Manchester United near the bottom, though Manchester are expected to do better now that Christiano Ronaldo is back from injury. The other Manchester team, Manchester City, is doing pretty well, and is under new ownership and also with a new manager. Most people think that the Big 4 (Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool) will take the top 4 spots as usual, though there is speculation that the money the new Manchester City owners have brought in might help them move into the top 4 next year.

Already, two managers have left their posts, Kevin Keegan (see picture) from Newcastle, and Alan Curbishley from West Ham. Many people wonder who's next.

• Raspberries
• Blueberries
• Blackberries
• Black cherries

I finally got to see Kung Fu Panda. It was very funny, with great action scenes. One of my favorite pieces of dialogue:

Yesterday is history

Tomorrow's a mystery

That's why they call it the present.

It's been a long time since I was so excited about movies. As I mentioned before, Forbidden Kingdom was great, and apparently the Terminator series isn't dead. And I'm still waiting for the chance to see Kung Fu Panda. And in just a few days, the Dark Knight, the latest Batman movie will start playing. By many accounts, it's the best of all the Batman movies. It's noted especially for the performance as the Joker of Heath Ledger, who sadly died not long after filming was over. As usual, I recommend watching the trailer at the Apple movies site, but I recommend that you also explore the official movie site, which has downloads, games, and a photo gallery.

Do you like martial arts? If so, I think you'll enjoy Forbidden Kingdom. It stars both Jackie Chan and Jet Li, as well as Collin Chou, another kung fu star. Jackie Chan's movies usually include a lot of slapstick humour, and it's a long time since I saw him fighting in a conventional way. But in this movie he fights a lot, including a duel with Jet Li. For a preview, I recommend trailer 2 at Apple's movie trailers site. I also recommend exploring the movie site, which has a timeline and free downloads.

Have you heard of Kung Fu Panda? It's an animated movie from Dreamworks. I saw the trailer recently and it looks very exciting. I like kung fu movies and I like animation, too, so this is doubly interesting for me. Still not interested? Well, the voices of Jackie Chan and Angelina Jolie feature. Yeah!

Most of you have the "Orange Book", the 読書記録手帳. The back of the book has a list of books, organized by series and level, with details of the difficulty and number of words. When you note the books you are reading, you should write two figures in the words column, the number of words of the present book and your total number of words so far.

The Orange Book doesn't have details on all books. A book with lots more data is the 英語多読完全ブックガイド. The PUK Library has three copies of this book. How about the KGU Library?

This is the Writing 3 (2a) class. Yeah!

The third and last of the movies starting next week that I'm interested in is The Curse of the Golden Flower, directed by Zhang Yimou, of Hero and Lovers fame. The story is often rather thin in Zhang's movies, but the action scenes are spectacular. Although Michael Clayton is the move I'm most interested in of the three, the Curse of the Golden Flower is the one that will benefit most from the big screen.

Another movie starting next week is Michael Clayton. It stars George Clooney (whom you may know from ER or Ocean's 11), and it looks like it's a legal drama. I really want to watch this one, but I doubt whether I'll have time while it's at the cinema. Perhaps I'll have to wait until it comes out on DVD.

A lot of new movies are starting next week (April 12th). One of them is Hitman. It looks like it might be quite exciting.

I went to see Enchanted with my family today. My children thought it was a bit too long, but I had a very good time. I recommend that you go and see it if you have time.

Have you seen the movie Vantage Point? It's playing in Kumamoto now. It stars Dennis Quaid, and it's a thriller about the assassination of the President of the USA. But what makes it so interesting is its structure: it shows the action from one person's point of view, and then goes back in time and switches to another point of view. In that respect, it's a little similar to Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. The movie hasn't been publicized very well, so I think it will disappear quite soon. I recommend that you try to see it at the cinema, if you can spare the time and money.