Gizmos | Flare Red Nintendo 3DS

Announced sometime last June, the Flare Red version of the Nintendo 3DS went on sale in Japan last July 14, 2011. It's the third color available for the 3DS, after the two launch colors, Aqua Blue and Cosmo Black.


The Flare Red 3DS arrived at such a terrible time for Nintendo, whose 3DS sales did not turn out to be better than expected, with many scheduled games delayed or cancelled. Just several days ago, a shocking price drop from US $250 to $170 was announced, which clearly points to a console in trouble.

I have more issues with the 3DS than any of Nintendo's handhelds, which includes bad design, tiny touchscreen, poor battery life, and unappealing games, all of which have prevented me from getting one at this time--a far cry from my initial excitement when it was unveiled at E3 last year.

While Nintendo's roster of proprietary characters like Mario and Pokemon will always be best-sellers, how long can you keep churning out the same old thing? Do something new for a change, Nintendo--surprise us!

TV | Top Chef

I wasn't really that interested in Top Chef when it premiered back in 2006, and would just watch some episodes occasionally. Five years later, I've learned to appreciate food more, along with the people who cook them, and thanks to reruns being aired on several cable channels here, I've managed to catch up and now realize what a superbly crafted show this is.

Top Chef pits more than a dozen professional chefs in a series of challenges that take into account all their culinary training and more. There's a short "Quickfire" challenge, which takes about an hour or less, and where they're made to do anything from displaying skills like chopping onions and filling up a small container to cooking a dish without using utensils. The winner in this challenge usually receives some prize or is granted immunity.

A longer, more complex challenge is the Elimination round, which usually involves preparing bigger meals and entire courses, with the one having the least liked dish sent packing and leaving the competition. As the number of contestants grow smaller, the challenges become increasingly difficult, and range from hosting a small pop-out restaurant to cooking for guest celebrities.

As always with these reality competition shows, there's a lot of drama, particularly when a lot of strong personalities are involved. And yet, there's something about Top Chef that makes these people seem more real and likable than the ones seen in other shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race. Maybe it's because they all show their passion for food no matter what, and devote more to their individual creative output, rather than spending time scheming against the others.

It's really no joke working constantly in a hot, steamy and stressful environment like a commercial kitchen, and for these people to choose that kind of profession and able to create dishes that others will enjoy is remarkable, even more so when they're racing against the clock. For that alone, I truly salute the Top Chef contestants, and the glorious food that they manage to come up with makes me want to eat everything, even the dishes deemed unsavory by the judges.

The latest season of Top Chef, titled Top Chef All-Stars, brings together 18 former contestants and runners-up from the past 7 seasons. It's an awesome cast that features a great mix of notable chefs, including my favorites Carla Hall, Antonia Lofaso, Casey Thompson, Richard Blais, Fabio Viviani, and Filipino-American chef Dale Talde.

In terms of challenges, I think Top Chef All-Stars had the most grueling challenges, which ranged from recreating the dishes that made them lose the first time around to cooking in a huge Target store. The caliber of these chefs was made apparent during the exceptional 12th episode, where everyone's food was so excellent that the judges couldn't decide which one to eliminate.

And speaking of judges, the roster of judges that have appeared in Top Chef through the years reads like a who's who of the culinary world, from renowned chefs like Wolfgang Puck, Anthony Bourdain, and Eric Ripert, to well-known food personalities like Nigella Lawson and even celebrities like Natalie Portman and Jimmy Fallon.

It also helps a lot that this show is helmed by people who know a great deal about food. Acclaimed chef Tom Colicchio is the head judge and also co-Executive Producer, main host Padma Lakshmi is a cookbook author, and fellow judge Gail Simmons is a food critic and affiliated with Food & Wine magazine.

By far, Top Chef All-Stars is the best season of Top Chef for me; everything just gelled this season, combined with the great cast and incredible array of challenges. This awesome season is up for four Emmy awards, garnering nominations for that memorable 12th episode including Outstanding Reality - Competition Program, a category which it won last year--I'm really hoping it wins again this year, as it deserves no less.

Film | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: part 2

So here it is, the 8th and final Harry Potter movie. When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: part 2 starts, it picks up right off where part 1 ended, and from there it's a hell of a ride.

There are some brief quiet moments as Harry and friends contemplate on what to do next, and it's so quiet you can hear a pin drop, as there's even no background music. Once Harry, Hermione, and Ron make their move, however, everything proceeds in rapid-fire mode, from finding the last of Voldemort's Horcruxes to their reunion with classmates at Hogwarts.

The rallying of the Hogwarts professors and students as they prepare for the invasion of Voldemort's forces was a sight to behold. As superbly played by Dame Maggie Smith, Professor Minerva McGonagall was ever the passive head of Gryffindor House, and here she shows what she's made of at last by taking charge of securing the school.

Alan Rickman as Professor Severus Snape also turns in an outstanding performance, effectively portraying Snape as a complex character who's endured and sacrificed a lot. Though generally perceived as a villain, Snape finally gets his much-deserved redemption through his memories seen by Harry in Dumbledore's pensieve.

The battle at Hogwarts was quite spectacular, with everyone doing their share. Sequences flit back and forth to the main and minor characters, and seeing Hogwarts in ruins and some well-known characters dead was heartbreaking. Some crucial battle scenes were sorely lacking though, and I really didn't like the overlong scene with Harry and the ghost of Helena Ravenclaw, which seemed unnecessary and out of place.

While Harry's final battle with Voldemort seemed epic in its sheer viciousness and ferocity, I still prefer the battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort in the last part of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix--now that was a wizard battle!

The epilogue was somewhat bittersweet, as it was both great and sad to see these kids grow up in the space of 8 movies; great to see them fulfill their potential and sad to see them in those roles for the last time. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: part 2 is a fitting end to the movie series, and is one of the best films of the year. Highly recommended.

Music | Sheryl Crow - Everyday Is A Winding Road

Singer and songwriter Sheryl Crow has written a lot of memorable songs in her remarkable career, and this is one of them. Everyday Is A Winding Road stands out due to its happy, almost sunny disposition, but the one thing that made it a favorite of mine was the superb use of rhythmic beats.


I'm a sucker for songs with awesome beats, and this one is loaded with them; from the unforgettable bongo drums to the twanging electric guitars and layers of percussion, Everyday Is A Winding Road is an aural feast when it comes to rhythm and instrumentation. It's also probably the only song that effectively uses the word "intellectualism" in the lyrics, LOL.

The music video was done by photographer/director Peggy Sirota, who infused it with a warm sepia-like tone that made it look retro and feel even more summery. It also features a toy airplane that flits from place to place in New York City before ending up back to its original owner--it's a really cool video that works without the need for unnecessary stuff like fashion or choreography.

Film | Transformers: Dark of the Moon

After the brain-melting, excruciating mess that was the second Transformers movie, I wasn't really looking forward at all to watch Transformers: Dark of the Moon. But since I already wasted about 6 hours of my life watching the previous two films, might as well go all the way and finish the damn trilogy.

First, the good news: with this third installment, Michael Bay has finally done something right, and it's the way 3D was implemented in this movie. Everything just pops out in 3D, particularly during the movie's final 30 minutes. Now if only those last 30 minutes were the entire movie, LOL. As it is, this movie's too long, clocking in at almost 3 hours.

Now the bad news: everything else is crap. Ah, but it's a much better quality of crap than the second movie. For one thing, most of the annoying stuff has been toned down, except for Shia LaBeouf, who is still annoying as ever. He'll always be remembered in this movie for that one scene where he screams like a girl over and over.

Megan Fox's replacement, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, is somewhat more tolerable. She's sexy as hell, but she looks like a Cameron Diaz that was punched in the face. Her character also seems to possess mutant powers of magnetism, as she's able to repel dirt and shards of broken glass while tumbling repeatedly through floors of a collapsing building--she comes out of that with her clothes and face immaculately clean, while everyone else looks like shit. How's that for realism?

Speaking of realism, this movie's full of it. The Decepticons' main objective is to pull their home planet Cybertron to Earth, and when that happens, nothing cataclysmic occurs. Any kid who's studied science in Grade School knows that two planetary bodies that close to one another will wreak untold havoc caused by their gravitational pull, but apparently real science doesn't exist in this movie.

Most of the male characters in Transformers: Dark of the Moon are douchebags, particularly Patrick Dempsey's, who seems to have come from nowhere. If he was working with the bad guys ever since and that was their intended main goal all along, shouldn't they have done it during the first two movies? I'm feeling my I.Q. slowly drain away now...

As for the Transformers themselves, Megatron appears to have taken an interest in fashion, deciding to wear a tattered cape and all, while two annoying midget Autobots accompany Shia everywhere and say lines that are supposed to be funny but I never laughed. Soundwave has been demoted into a Mercedes, while Bumblebee remains mute--it's either they couldn't get any spare parts during the past several years to fix him up, or the Autobots just suck at repairing themselves.

I was particuarly saddened at what they did to Shockwave, one of my favorite Decepticons. A twirling robotic snake-like thing now accompanied him wherever he went--was it coming out of his ass? I have no idea, and strangely, I don't really care. Laserbeak was okay until it talked, then it became creepy. The other Autobots and Decepticons, I couldn't really identify them just like in the second movie, as they all look like scrap metal to me. It also bothered me why these robots appear to spit and drool while they were talking--where is the drool coming from?

The final battle in 3D was the only thing that made watching this movie worthwhile, and I actually liked the way Optimus Prime decided to cast aside all that bullshit moral conscience and just decided to kill them all in the end--now that's character development! Hopefully, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is the final movie in this already wrecked-beyond-repair franchise...no more, please.