Movie - Journey to the Center of the Earth

The center of the Earth was....shiny

First of all, I did not enjoy Journey to the Center of the Earth. It was cliche, corny and the romance sub-plot was downright cringe-worthy. It is basically a re-telling of Jules Verne's adventure epic with a modern twist and fancy CGI, but lacking any originality and imagination. According to the plot, Verne's literature turns out to be every bit the truth, which was the perfect excuse to lift the settings straight off the book and apply it in the film without having to come out with anything new.

I was never eager to watch it, having viewed the trailer which did very little to hide the fact that it is just another Brendan Fraser action-adventure comedy drama (what a mouthful). The only reason I watched it at the cinema anyway was because it was the cheapest 3D movie in town.

This being my first 3D movie experience, I was hoping that the visuals would help me ignore the awful storyline. Unfortunately, the 3D glasses provided by the cinema was not ergonomic to say the least. What made it worse was that I was wearing glasses, so the 3D glasses was actually hanging precariously on the tip of my nose all the time. I ended up using my finger to hold the 3D glasses up throughout the whole movie just so it won't slip off.

Wearing the 3D glasses also darken the visuals somewhat. Considering the story spent a significant amount of time in relative darkness, I found it at times difficult to discern anyting on screen at times. The problem was compounded whenever there were fast moving scenes which made it even more difficult to follow.

I was expecting a fresh cinema experience with literally popping visuals, which is what 3D cinema is all about. What I got in the end was an strained finger and a mild urge to throw up.

Signs of overworked

I had a dream last night.

I was in a snow covered mountain, wielding my l33t Kung Fu skills against Polar bears (!) and Pandas (!!).

Then I glanced towards the top of the mountain, and realize that I forgot to paint the proper transparency mattes for the Fir trees in the distance.

sigh.

Do you know a psycopath

We read and hear about it, we knew it was a derogative way to call some one. Chances are you'd probably have a very different intepretation of what a psychopath is. This is an interesting article about what they really are, a clinically classified behavioural disorder.

"...The concept of the psychopath is only the latest and most refined in a long string of attempts to account for a certain pattern of conduct. In the 19th century, psychiatric clinicians began to notice patients in their care who fit no known diagnosis, but who nevertheless displayed strange and disturbing behaviors. They were impulsive and self-destructive. They had no regard for the feelings and welfare of others. They lied pathologically, and when caught, they shrugged it off with a smirk and moved on to the next lie..."

Scary?

"...The psychopath does not merely repress feelings of anxiety and guilt or fail to experience them appropriately; instead, he or she lacks a fundamental understanding of what these things are...."

Remember, the article has based on actual research and not just any casual observation.

"...roughly one man in every 100 is born a clinical psychopath, as well as one woman in every 300. They are so common that every person reading this sentence almost certainly knows one personally; indeed, a significant number of readers are likely psychopaths themselves..."

Now that explains some of the clients we encounter.

Fountain thingy

An abandoned fountain that is no longer working.

Diablo III announced

PC RPG fans worldwide cheered and chanted in unison yesterday like a Red Indians on Red Bull(or so I imagined), as Blizzard entertainment announces the third installment of their RPG hit Diablo.

Blizzard has been teasing their fans for days with different illustrations everyday on the splash page of their website, fueling wild speculations and unprecedented anticipation as to what is the new game that they are going to announce.

Me, I've never really been a big fan of Diablo or it's sequel Diablo II. Having my Amazon killed on the first quest of the first act really didn't do it for me. Nonetheless I would be eagerly looking forward to the awesome game visuals and cinematics that has always been the cornerstone of Blizzard games. Oh, the same goes for Starcraft II.

The announcement comes with a cinematic trailer available at this youtube page, as well as gameplay videos here and here. Of course, real fans go to Blizzard's Diablo III page to get the high res videos.

Short Film - E.T.A

A nifty little short by Junkworks, titled E.T.A.

Include major tributes to the Alien and Robocop Films. Get the high res version from here.

Movie - Kung Fu Panda

Bought this from McDonalds. I was tempted to get the whole set (eight characters in all, if I remember correctly), but I decided I need petrol more than toys. Note Michaelangelo and Leornado flanking our ass-kicking Panda.

I was half expecting the panda to wake up and say

"I know Kung Fu..."

and Shifu replying

"Show me..."

Of course, there wasn't a scene like that. That's what set it apart from all other Dreamworks Animation films: it did not rely on contemporary celebrity and pop references to make it's laughs, something that sourly plague their other animated features such as Shrek and Shark Tale. It managed to stand on it's on feet with it's own brand of humour

Jack Black was fantastic as the voice of Po, the titular character, so was Dustin Hoffman as his master. The animation was great as expected, but the visuals was simply stunning, emulating the epic vistas and vivid colors seen in the 2002 Chinese movie Hero.

It has been receiving raving reviews so far, some of them going as far as hailing it to be the best Dreamworks animated feature to date. I've seen it, and I like it, so there.

New laptop

Got it last weekend, yay!

Lesson learnt: Avoid buying FreeDOS laptops (Laptops that come with the FreeDOS operating system than the usual bundled OS eg. Windows).

I didn't want to install Windows Vista either, so I opted to install XP myself. Sounds straightforward enough: pop in installer, format HDD and run installation. Except for the fact that even fresh off-the-shelf XP installers does not come with a SATA driver and hence failed to recognize the HDD. Vista installers wouldn't have this problem, but like I said, I didn't want Vista.

After a bit of research, I disabled the native SATA mode in the BIOS settings so that the HDD will run as an IDE. Windows installed, no problem. Then I read in a few forums that Compaq / HP computers were notorious for their lack of XP support. They have a full collection of hardware drivers for Vista on their website, but most were missing for XP.

What's more perplexing is that the XP drivers were available elsewhere on the net. After a fair bit (4-5 hours) of scouring, Phoebe and I manage to get all the neccesary drivers from various websites. What's that about, HP?

Anyway, after much trial and error, I have finally managed to install all the drivers and got all the hardware to work properly. There were a few nail-biting moments especially when I was attempting to install the controllers for the SATA HDD and reboot in with SATA mode enabled.

At the end, I finally got a fully working laptop in 6-7 hours, with no less than 4-5 re-installations. Needless to say, I do not want to do that again...

See-Saw - Anna Ni Issho Datta No Ni

Here I am working alone overnight, when I decided to drop by youtube and look up some songs to break the silence.

This is one of my all-time favourite anime theme; I still remember having goosebumps whenever the opening of the song plays at the end of each episode of Gundam Seed. What I didn't know was that the band See-Saw is actually two ladies well into their 30's - 40's, which I just found out.

The music video is a bit wierd: it's like watching two aunties, dancing like aunties, while singing my favorite J-pop song. hmmm...

Anyway, if you still don't know, the name of the song means "We were so close together..." (lyrics and translation here.)

Go Speed Racer Go!

There are so many ways a live action adaptation of the cartoon can go wrong, in fact there are already many reasons to hate it from what we can see from the trailers.

But if you're a 80s baby like me who woke up early on weekends to catch the cartoons, there is some sort of guilty pleasure to be had. Especially when I found that many elements from the cartoon was faithfully recreated eg. the car, the campy uniforms and if you watch the music video below, you would recognize the pose from the picture above.

Of course, all that in addition to the over the top automobile action and fancy CGI.




I think one can only love or hate the bright colors and stylized action. But hey, what do you expect from a movie where the protagonist's name is, of all things, Speed Racer.