Category: Movies

This movie should not be called Who Am I? (我是誰?), but instead Who is Michelle Ferre?. This movie apparently is the only movie she ever performed in. She’s such a cutie pie! The movie itself is actually one of my favorite Jackie Chan movies, though that doesn’t say much since the only other movie that I like of his is New Police Story. My dad’s a big Jackie Chan fan since he does all his own stunts. I’m more of a Jet Li fan (or was now that he’s gotten old and slow) because his moves look so much cooler even though if they aren’t real. This movie had some rather cheesy moments and I think I’m a bit biased since this cutie’s in it.

Official Site: n/a
IMDb: 6.5/10 (3,509 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: Yahoo! Users: B
Trailer
Amazon.com

After looking up who played the cutie in Who Am I?, I went to see what other movies she was in. Apparently none. It was quite shocking. A google on her name turned out many disatisfied people who’d like to see her in another movie. I found this interesting interview (from Luke Ford) that I thought I’d share:

French-Japanese woman Michelle Laure Miho Ferre (stands 5’4″, michelle@fukuhara.cc) stars in the 1998 Jackie Chan movie Who Am I?

According to IMDB.com: “Michelle never considered acting, but on the set of “Who am I?” when she tried to interview Jackie Chan, he was struck by her, and asked her to audition for the film–which she did, and landed a co-starring role in the film.”

It’s her only movie. Her background is journalism. She’s worked in TV in Japan for gameshows and for CNN.

Born June 13, 1973, she speaks Japanese, English and some French. Her favorite sports are short ski, snorkeling, fishing and tennis. Her hobbies include Japanese ink painting, walking, watching movies and plotting scripts.

I got these questions to her through her brother.

Q1: When she was a girl, what did she want to be when she grew up?
A1: When I was a girl, I had interest in becoming just about anything. The very first “dream” I had, was in becoming a fashion designer. I loved to imagine and draw variety of clothes. But eventually, I came to realize I had a problem. I wasn’t good at drawing!

Q2: What was she expected to become?
A2: I wasn’t expected to become “something” in particular, I suppose. I always had freedom of decision, in whatever I wanted to do.

Q3: What led her into journalism?
A3: I did deliver news in the program “CNN Headline” in Japan, but I wouldn’t consider myself a hardcore journalist. It all came as a natural flow of coincidence. I majored in International Relations and Political Science at my University. Upon graduating, I had to decide which career I was to proceed in. Interest in mass media along with the educational background, and my ability to speak both English and Japanese lead me naturally to settle in the field of journalism.

Q4: What are her wishes for her life?
A4: Having experienced acting in a movie, and having experienced the joy of acting, I very much “wish” to succeed as an actress in the movie scene.

Q5: Could she describe any highlights and lowlights from her life?
A5: I think the highlights of my life are yet to come, talking from an optimistic viewpoint. But if to give something offhand, it would probably be the opportunity of having played the role in “Who am I.” Lowlights, on the other hand are undesirable events along life. Many events are simply undesirable, but most are necessary to make one grow up for what is to come. I tend to find reasoning in any mishaps. This way I can take it, chew it, and digest it, so I can get over with it. Otherwise, too much pessimism just lays you down on the track of negative events. Sorry that I don’t have an example of a lowlight event, but experience tells me: “NO FUN” is rather “JUST A WASTE OF TIME”, so I’ll just keep it to myself.

Q6: What parts of her life give her the most meaning?
A6: Family, no matter what. My family has always been on my side, both in good times and bad times. Mutual love and trust within my family has helped a lot in shaping my character. Therefore, I will be what I am, and want to be with people who like me for what I am.

[Apparently a different interview]

Q1: Where have you lived?
A1: I was born in Kobe, a port city in Japan which probably resembles Seattle in much ways. I have lived in France for a couple of years during my baby years, before enrolling into an international school here at Kobe. Since then, the long term stay in France settled to Summer vacation visits to Grandparents’ place in the Northwestern part of France, “Bretagne” or also known as “Brittany”. My University was in Tokyo, and I lived there throughout my schooling, work (mass media), and working with Jackie. Ever since, I mostly reside in Kobe with a lot of moving around, which makes it hard to say where I am, most of the time.

Q2: So which are your favorite books? Or books that have most influenced you?
A2: Naming all the books I like will be too much, so let me pick up a few that have influenced me. The books are: Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and “The Bridge Over San Luis Rey”, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Ring”. All three books have changed my outlook on life in a similar way. Whether it was the author’s intention or not, I adopted a feeling that I should live each day to its fullest, and that I should be true to myself as well as to others.

Q3: What makes you happiest?
A3: This is a hard one! I’m happy when I’m eating good food, taking warm bath, snuggling in newly spread bed sheet, listening to the sound of waves, watching clear blue sky, snowboarding in fluffy powder snow…there’s just so many little “happy” aspects in my life that nailing one down is simply too difficult. But, if I were to choose one, it would be when I’m hugged or hugging someone. It puts a big smile on my face.

It’s funny how these questions give me chance to think about things I take for granted!

[Apparently yet another different interview]

Q1: How did that Jackie Chan movie affect your life?
A1: The Jackie Chan movie affected my life in many ways. It opened a new door leading to a profession as an actress. My lifestyle also changed from day to day routine to something more “unexpected”. It’s like having either a long break or a long working period. But most of all, I enjoy the new encounters I make through this profession.

Q2: What type of men are you attracted to?
A2: I’m attracted to men with cute and adorable smiles. I’m not picky about looks. It’s important that I can feel relaxed and at ease when sharing time and space with someone.

Q3: Who are your heroes?
A3: My one and only hero would be my Brother. I’d define “hero” as someone you would respect, admire, and trust. There are people whom I respect and admire, but trust is a hard aspect because it is something you gain not for granted.

Q4: Favorite novels/songs/poems?
A4: My favorite novels are:
“The Neverending Story”—Michael Ende
“Flowers for Algernon”—Daniel Keyes
“Peter Pan”—J. M. Barrie

The songs I like are:
“Time To Say Goodbye (Con Te Partiro)” —Andrea Bocelli
“La Vie En Rose” —Louis Armstrong
“The Logical Song”—Supertramp

The poem I like is:
“The Road Not Taken”—Robert Frost

My favorite phrase/ proverbs/ etc.:
“If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones” —1984, George Orwell
“Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must.” —Charles F. Kettering

I’m working on writing scripts. Elaborating ideas within imaginative scopes are fun, but putting them down in words…writing is simply a challenging job!

I guess if you asked me what I like about her, I’d have to say her smile. She has this really awesome and cute smile! You can check all the screen captures in my gallery: Michelle Ferre (88 pictures in all). I’ve selected a few pictures which I thought were really nice:

I “skimmed” through Prime a few days ago. Movie was so horribly bad. You can watch the trailer here. IMDb users gave it a 6.1 rating. You can get the DVD at Amazon.com. Anyway, I think it took me less than 10 minutes and I was pretty much done skimming through the movie. I guess if you’re an Uma Thurman fan, then you might like to see this movie. There are some hot scenes, I’ll give it that.

Spoilers: (Show)

Movie starts off with a 23 year old guy falling in love with a 37 year old female. The woman had just had a divorce and her therapist turns out to be the mother of the 23 year old guy. The guy is from a Jewish family and his parents want him to marry a Jewish girl and someone younger than him. But when the therapist finds out about this, she’s in a dilemma. Can she still go through with this? What if it was just a fling? She wouldn’t want to break up her relationship with her patient just because of this. So she continues treating her and as her patient describes her sex fantasies with the mom, she scringes in pain. The best moment of the movie was when she described his penis and how she made a hat for it.

Later when the secret was revealed and she could no longer take this, the mom admitted that before that day, she didn’t even know her son had a penis. Which brings up an interesting point. We tend to not think sexually about our families or close friends, unless provoked.

So the movie continues and some stuff happened and then I got really bored.

Watched Jarhead a few days ago. You can watch that trailer here. IMDb users give it a rating of 7.3. You can purchase the DVD from Amazon.com. The movie is actually based on the book written by Anthony Swofford – Jarhead : A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles. Actually, I entered this movie pretty much uninterested. However, the movie turned out a lot better than I expected. I wouldn’t say the movie was touching, but it felt really real, though I’m not sure how real it is.

Spoilers: (Show)

The movie starts off with a guy that didn’t really see a purpose in life and joined the marines because his father served in the Vietnam war.

It then goes through a series of training and suffering they get at boot camp, where it was so tough when they say if you stick your head above the line, you WILL get shot. Apparently that’s what happened to an unfortunate guy when bullets were fired above the training area to simulate a real battle.

As the movie goes on, this guy Swofford was selected to be a sniper. I wasn’t too sure how he got chosen, but because it took 6 marines to pin him down, the staff seargant chose him to try out.

Movie goes on when Kuwait is being attacked by Iraq. Operation Desert Sheild starts where their goal is to protect the oil fields. During the movie, there were scenes where oil was shooting out and it was lit on fire. There were several of these oil geysers, and I was wondering if that was what it looked like in real life.

As the movie goes on, we finally declare war on Iraq and enter Operation Desert Storm.

As the war drags on, what was believed to be a several week mission dragged on to half a year. There is this person known as Jody that apparently is the guy that steals your girlfriend and wife. And as the movie shows, they actually had a bulletin for you to pin up your pictures of your now ex-wife or ex-girlfriend on the board where Jody stole her. From wikipedia: In the United States, these songs get the name jody call or jody (also jodie) from a recurring character, a civilian named “Jody” whose luxurious lifestyle is contrasted with military deprivations in a number of traditional calls. Jody is the person who stays at home, drives the soldier’s car, and gets the soldier’s sweetheart while the soldier is in recruit training or in country. (Serendipitously, the name works just as well for female soldiers.)

What was clearly shown and how painful it was, was the decision between killing or not killing. He did not kill a single thing, much less a person, during the entire war. They had a chance once, and was seconds away from sniping out two tower guards, but were called back because the Army was going to be dropping bombs. (President David Palmer from 24) led the Army in this operation. It was pretty cool seeing him. Troy (Swofford’s partner) begged Palmer to let them just snipe the guard. It wouldn’t make much difference, since the jets will be laying bombs throughout the entire camp.

At the end of the movie when the war is over, all the armies celebrated by firing all the ammunition into the air. I was thinking what would happen if the bullets started raining down on them. But Swofford returns home and his girlfriend was taken away by her colleague who started out as a “good listener”.

At the end of the movie, Troy’s death signifies a very important message. Troy was the only marine that wanted to stay a marine and serve his country. The marines was his home and if he was forced back into Civilian life, he would end up being a criminal selling drugs or something. But because he did indeed have criminal records and lied about on his application, he was kicked out of the marines.

Funny thing was as I was driving home today, the radio was talking about the origin of Hoo-Ah (or Hoorah). If you watch the movie you’ll notice they say it at least a few hundred times in the movie. I dont recall if it was a Marines term only, or if it was any soldier term, but the best origin of this term supposed comes from the acronym HUA which which stands for Heard, Understood, and Acknowledged. Hoo-Ah in can mean anything from okay to a scream of joy. I originally thought it originated from the word Hooray (which apparently originated from the word Huzzah which sailors used). But it appears there are many theories on how this utterance originated.

Here’s an interesting article from Marine Corps Times: “Hooah”: A singularly odd word goes everywhere soldiers do

By Nick Wadhams
Associated Press

BAGHDAD — In the Army, which has so many acronyms, expressions and opaque phrases that it seems to deserve its own language, there is one word that is quite possibly uttered more than any other.

That word is “hooah.” Pronounced HOO-ah. Alternatively spelled hua and huah.

Attend a company command meeting and you’ll hear hooah uttered as often as a 15-year-old says “like” or “you know.” Head to the post exchange and buy a Hooah Energy Bar or Hoo-Ahhs wet wipes or HOOAH2O water.

It’s not just in Iraq. At U.S. bases around the world, hooah seems an inseparable element of Army life.

Just don’t try to define it. And definitely don’t try to figure out where it comes from.

“I believe it came from hurrah. It basically means everything from ‘yes’ and ‘yes, sir,’ to ‘that’s great,”’ said Capt. James Lowe, public affairs officer for the 506th Regimental Combat Team. “You could use it as a generalized cheer. It’s one of those multipurpose phrases — when in doubt, say hooah.”

That doesn’t even begin to cover it.

They shout hooah to get motivated, and they whisper it when they concur with something someone just said. Hooah means you understood something, or is the proper reply when someone says “thank you.” On the other hand, it may also be used to say “thank you.”

Hooah is a catchall phrase that will get you out of any situation, particularly when receiving a scolding from a higher-ranking officer.

“You use it when you’ve got a flame on your butt and you’re just trying to extinguish it,” said Capt. Brian Buckner, 30, of Sumter, S.C.

Take this conversation, overheard recently outside the mess hall at Camp Rustamiyah, on Baghdad’s eastern outskirts:

Soldier 1: How you doing?

Soldier 2: Fine. How you doing?

Soldier 1: Hooah.

For the different branches of the military, each vastly competitive with and jealous of its distinctions from one another, hooah has become something of a sore point. Marines and sailors have their own saying, more of a “hoo-RAH” or a “hoo-yah,” which they claim is entirely separate in origin.

The Air Force brass once reportedly got so irked about sharing “hooah” with the Army that it tried to get airmen to shout “Air power!” instead. But “Air power!” did not have the same potency as “hooah,” and has been largely abandoned.

Sgt. Joe Carter, a 23-year-old from Kennett, Mo., recalls how, after arriving at basic training, he and other young Army recruits attended a motivational talk from their commander.

“When we first got there, the commander gave a speech, and at the end he told us, ‘I want to hear a loud and thunderous hooah!”’ Carter said. “We were real pumped and amped up.”

Yet the use of hooah by the uninitiated is generally frowned on. Carter recounted that a drill sergeant barred him and his fellow recruits from saying hooah until they had finished the basic course and earned the right.

And civilians uttering hooah are generally looked upon with either disdain or the astonishment of a person who has just heard a koala bear recite lines from e.e. cummings.

As with any good word, the origins of hooah are highly disputed.

Some claim it derives from the military acronym HUA — Heard, Understood, Acknowledged.

Another tale: When Army Rangers landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944, a sergeant ordered them to scale the cliffs looming above them and neutralize the German pillboxes perched on top. One soldier, aghast at the idea, responded, “Who, us?” Soldiers ended up following the order, in what became one of the most celebrated acts of World War II.

Then there’s the theory that hooah comes from hurrah and hooray, themselves believed to be bastardizations of the sailor’s cry “huzzah,” which dates back to the 16th century.

With the Internet widening the forum for debate, blog entries suggesting definitions of hooah have been met with dozens upon dozens of comments from those who think they know better.

With all the derivations that exist, a few souls have tried to come up with an official meaning. One such half-serious, half-humorous definition, listed by the Urban Dictionary, reads in part: “U.S. Army slang. Referring to or meaning anything and everything except ‘no.’ Generally used when at a loss for words.”

Lt. Col. Brian Winski, commander of the Army’s 1st Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, who sometimes says “hooah” so often it seems to have entered into his subconscious, isn’t entirely satisfied with that definition, but says it will have to suffice.

“That’s about right if you have to really box it in,” he said. “I guess that’s about as close as you could get.”

Another interesting phrase they used was pink mist. This was the phrase to mean head shot. It took me awhile to figure out what the heck pink mist was, but as it turns out, it’s the blood that splatters out behind the head, creating a pink mist.

Watched Match Point with CDMCC and Elizabeth today. You can watch the trailer here. IMDb users gave it a rating of 8.0. At first I didn’t really know what this movie was about. Yahoo! Movie critics gave it an A- and users gave it a B. I briefly read the description and thought it was a movie about tennis. Don’t get me wrong. There is some tennis in there. You can read more about it in the spoilers. Actually partway through the movie, I finally remember I’ve watched this trailer before. I really liked this movie. There was a lot of story planning and the plot flowed well.

Spoilers: (Show)

The story starts with a boy named Chris from Ireland starting a living in London as a tennis coach. He grew up in a simple town and strived to make his way up the social ladder. Anyway, he’s apparently a really good tennis player, and have played with even the pros. During a break with one of his trainees Tom, apparently from a wealthy family, Chris asks if Tom knew of any music store around, and asked where he could get opera music. Tom was surprised he was into opera and invited him to come see the opera with his family tomorrow. Chris accepted the offer. This basically set off a chain of events which I would soon revealed.

Chris meets Chloe, Tom’s sister for the 1st time at the opera. Chloe seemed to have fell in love with him at first sight, because she kept taking peeks at Chris. Chris said he wanted to see more of London since he’s just got here and Chloe offers to take him around. Chris agreed only on the condition that he pays for the tickets.

Chris starts getting very well with the family and get invited to family gatherings and parties. During one of the family gatherings, he meets Nola, Tom’s fiance, failed actor. Well, not failed, but failing. Immediatly Chris becomes very agressive with Nola. Not physically, but by the way he talks. It was clear he was interested in this sexy female, even after he learns it was Tom’s fiance and he’s sort of developing a relationship with Chloe.

Tom’s mom Eleanor never really liked Nola. She wasn’t doing anything with her life and she gets moody, which she doesn’t think is good for him. On the other hand, she wants Tom to marry his cousin Olivia. Don’t worry, Olivia never comes into the picture. One rainy day, Eleanor was pushing this issue that everyone knew was her Achilles heel, so she got pissed and went off into the garden and started walking in the field. Chris followed her and they ended up making passionate love (which you don’t see, but can only imagine).

However, after that little event, Nola begins to avoid Chris, no matter how hard Chris tries to get closer. Chris somehow ends up giving up after he saw Tom having sex with her ni the basement. He proposes to Chloe and they get married. Oh yeah, awhile ago, Tom stopped working as a tennis coach and began working under Chloe’s father as a businessman. He likes Chris a lot and since he’s now his son in law, he has a safety net, even he does something wrong. He gets promoted really fast as you can imagine. Reasoning was if Chris can make Chloe happy, that’s making him happy.

Later on, you learnt that Tom dumps Nola and Chris gets his hopes up again. He tries to find Nola, but she seemed to have disappeared. Several months later, she returns to London and he meets her at a gallery. He pushes her to give him her phone number and she finally relents. So the next few months, he’s been secretly meeting with her and having an affair and cheating on Chloe (I know that’s implied). On the other hand, Chloe and Chris are madly trying to get Chloe pregnant. Well Chloe really wants to be a mom, but Chris isn’t that mad about it. They’ve seen a dozen fertility doctors and both are healthy and they’ve tried many many ways, but nothing seemed to work.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT THE MOVIE TO BE COMPLETELY RUINED!

Ironically, Nola gets pregnant. They’ve always used protection, besides that one time when it was that time of the month for Nola and they couldn’t find any condoms around. Chris tries to get Nola to abort the baby, but Nola refuses. She begs Chris to leave Chloe. Now Chris has a decision to make. Can he give up his current lifestyle? He can work for a different company, but that’s really different than working under your father-in-law. I did forget about the benefits. He’s one of the top managers in his father-in-law’s businesses, he has his own personal chauffeur provided by the company. His father is paying most of the lease on a 2 bed room loft that is sitting right in front of Thames river.

One thing led to another and Nola begins to push really hard and says if he’s too scared to tell her, she’d go tell Chloe herself.

In the end, Chris decided that his relationship with Nola was lust. He found having sex with Chloe boring, but he had passion for Nola. But that brings up a good question, are lust and love different. I know it’s not totally mutually exclusive, but can you love someone if all the lust is gone? There’s no doubt that Chris doesn’t really have much love nor lust for Chloe, but it was an interesting thing Chris brought up when he was asking a friend for advice.

He decides, the only thing he could do to resolve this mess was to get rid of Nola. He borrows his father in law’s shot gun and schemes up a murder plan. He first kills one of the neighbors and makes the house look like a robbery, taking jewelry and medicine. When Nola got home that night, he kills her. When the police came, their 1st assessment was as Chris planned. They thought a drug addict had gotten in and killed the lady and when he was trying to escape, Nola just home and he shot her too.

You learn almost immediately after Nola’s death, Chloe got pregnant. Not sure what the symbolism was there, but maybe because Chris wasn’t thinking about her when they were trying to conceive, she wasn’t able to get pregnant. However, Chris receives a call from his secretary the next day that Detective something was looking for him. He visits the detective at the station and he questions him about Nola. He lies of course, saying he hasn’t seen her recently. The detective asked if Chris knew Nola kept a diary. Chris then tells them he was indeed having an affair, but doesn’t want to ruin his marriage. He begs the detectives to be discreet during their investigation.

Chris was obviously having guilt problems. He was seeing the ghost of Nola and the neighbor and Nola says justice will be served and the 3 lives he claimed (including his unborn child) will haunt him forever.

The detective wakes up in the middle of the night and he figures out how Chris does it. Earlier that day, you see Chris returning the shotgun, dumping the medicine and jewelry into the river. As he discarded the last jewelry, her wedding ring it appears, it hits the rail and bounces back like the 1st shot in the beginning of the movie as a tennis ball hits the net. Depending on luck, the ball will either go over or drop back. It was quite obvious what was going to happen next too because he wasn’t wearing any gloves.

The next day the detective runs into the police department, but the other detective says the case is already closed. He goes why, Chris has a motive and now he’s figured out how he did it. The other detective replies and says there was another drug addict robber yesterday, however during his capture, he was shot dead. Inside his pocket, they found the neighbor’s ring.

The story ended with Chris and the entire family celebrating the birth of Chloe and his child. The story’s lesson was basically, besides hard work, luck is a major factor in life.

With the story out of the way, there brings up several questions. How much of what Chris said is true? Was he really from a poor family in Ireland. How did he get into a good tennis school then? Did he really like opera? He looked like he was almost falling asleep. Was his goal to get closer to the family?

The next big question is if Nola was really pregnant. First of all, chances were rather small to begin with, but I started to question her when the detective didn’t bring it up. Having an affair gives Chris a motive, but the motive would be much stronger if they knew she was pregnant. She was at least 2-3 months pregnant when she got killed, but the detectives didn’t mention anything about it. Even assuming there wasn’t an autopsy, you’d think she would’ve written something important like this in her diary. It was obvious Chris believed her even after her death because his dreamt Nola saying 3 lives were taken that day. She also has a perfectly good reason to do this. She wants to get back al the family for Tom dumping her and wants to ruin Chloe and make the family unhappy by getting them through Chris, because she knew Chris was still infatuated with her.

That’s the thought I’ll be leaving you to think about. You can feel free to comment about it.

From Texting blamed for summer movie flops (purchase article):

Texting blamed for summer movie flops
By Andrew Gumbel

18 August 2003

In Hollywood, 2003 is rapidly becoming known as the year of the failed blockbuster, and the industry now thinks it knows why.

No, the executives are not blaming such bombs as The Hulk, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle or Gigli on poor quality, lack of originality, or general failure to entertain. There’s absolutely nothing new about that.

The problem, they say, is teenagers who instant message their friends with their verdict on new films – sometimes while they are still in the cinema watching – and so scuppering carefully crafted marketing campaigns designed to lure audiences out to a big movie on its opening weekend.

“In the old days, there used to be a term, ‘buying your gross,’ ” Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, told the Los Angeles Times. “You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth, because it took time to filter out into the general audience.”

But those days are over, because the technology of hand-held text-message devices has drastically cut down the time it takes for movie-goers to tell their friends that a heavily promoted summer action movie is a waste of time and money.

Five years ago, when summer movies were arguably just as bad as they are now, the average audience drop-off between a film’s opening weekend and its second weekend was 40 per cent. This summer, it has been 51 per cent. In some cases, the drop-off has started between the film’s opening on a Friday night and the main screenings on Saturday. The upshot: unsuccessful films disappearing from cinemas so fast that there is no time for second opinions.

A 56 per cent drop over the first week of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was not what the studio moguls had expected. As Arnold Schwarzenegger himself might say, hasta la vista, baby.

A rather old article and took me awhile to dig it up, but it’s funny how the movie industry, instead of blaming movies for being bad, are blaming technology for being able to stop people from watching bad movies, even when it’s heavily advertised.

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Random Crap:

Real Transformer (from /.) – really neat video. The robot after transformation actually does a cool little pose.

Official wants coca fed to school children – Bolivia’s foreign minister says coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine, are so nutritious they should be included on school breakfast menus.

The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed (from /.) – Quite an interesting read if you have time. Here’s an interesting comment: I have a theory. There are two eras for the Hacker Movie genre. Pre-Matrix, hacker movies were always horrible and always box office poison (see Hackers and Johnny Mnemonic) that only appealed to a tiny segment of geeks. After The Matrix in 1999, every hacker movie was unfairly compared to The Matrix (incuding that film’s own sequels, but we’ll get to that in a moment). He talks about Snow Crash, the movies following Matrix should be prequels and not sequels and several other interesting movies that never existed.

Students embracing virtual sex – Call it a sexual revolution of the virtual kind — young Canadians are practicing a new style of safe sex and the only touching required involves a keyboard. Of more than 2,500 university and college students polled across Canada, 87 percent of them are having sex over instant messenger, webcams or the telephone, according to results of a national survey released on Monday. I wonder if the AIDS prevention foundation would support this or not.

Inside Newegg: They give us a Tour and you a Prize (from /.) – On a recent trip to Los Angeles we were given the opportunity to take a tour of one of Newegg’s warehouses. While we’ve been able to tour Newegg’s facilities in the past, this time they let us publish pictures and take you on a virtual tour of their facilities – effectively letting us follow the path of an order after it is placed online. Newegg sweetened the deal even more by working with us to give away some of their product to you all, but more on that later. I’m pretty amazed at what the inside of Newegg’s warehouse looks like with its tracks and tubes and peanut gun and inventory system. It’s all really neat.

Q&A: A lost interview with ENIAC co-inventor J. Presper Eckert (from /.) – There are two epochs in computer history: Before ENIAC and After ENIAC. The first practical, all-electronic computer was unveiled on Feb. 14, 1946, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electronics. While there are controversies about who invented what, there is universal agreement that the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the watershed project that showed electronic computing was possible. It was a masterpiece of electrical engineering, with unprecedented reliability and speed. The two men most responsible for its success were J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly. I recorded two days of interviews with “Pres” Eckert in 1989. He was 70 years old. My father was Pres’ best friend from childhood and I’d spent my childhood playing with his children. I visited him regularly as an adult. On that day, we spoke in his living room in Gladwyne, Pa. — most of the time sitting on the floor. We stopped talking about computers only to fiddle with his Nova Chord electronic organ, which predated ENIAC, and we fiddled with stereo speakers. On a second occasion I recorded a conversation at his daughter’s home in western Massachusetts. Eckert died in 1995. I’ve had the interview tapes for many years, but decided to transcribe them for ENIAC’s 60th anniversary. My favorite part of the interview: What’s the zaniest thing you did while developing ENIAC? The mouse cage was pretty funny. We knew mice would eat the insulation off the wires, so we got samples of all the wires that were available and put them in a cage with a bunch of mice to see which insulation they did not like. We only used wire that passed the mouse test.

Well, it’s easy to get them to hold still… – Japan’s obsession with camera-equipped mobile phones has taken a bizarre twist, with mourners at funerals now using the devices to capture a final picture of the deceased. What happen to being unlucky with anything that’s “dead” around you?

Australia trials tiger poo in fight against pests – Researchers at the University of Queensland said on Friday they had successfully trialled a tiger poo repellent, warding off wild goats for at least three days.

Drunk Drivers’ Penalty: Fine or Mahjong – Drunk drivers in Taiwan can now choose their penalty: Pay a fine or play mahjong with the elderly. That’s an absurbly light penalty for drunken driving. Imagine people convicted of drunken driving here in the states were penalized to play bingo with the elderly.

Ctrl+Alt+Del – Top Score – was browsing through their recent comic strips and thought this one was awfully sweet!

Nintendo to launch Pokemon amusement park (from Cari) – Japan’s Nintendo will launch a travelling amusement park later this year with rides based on Pokemon characters, starting in Taiwan. Reminds me of barnes park amusement parks. Anything amusment park that is portable can’t be that great. Must be trying to attract little kits. But I wouldn’t mind winning a few more Pikachu plushies.

You’ve probably read about Dick Cheney accidentally shooting the face of his 78 year old friend while he was hunting quails grown on a ranch by driving up to them and firing his gun: White House under gun for Cheney shooting mishap. Someone made a parody out of this by rewording the famous song Janie’s Got a Gun song by Aerosmith: Cheney’s Got A Gun (from FuzzyWuzzy)

Watch Nanny McPhee a few days ago. It turned out better than what I had expected. You can watch the trailer here. IMDb users gave it a rating of 6.9. In sort, it’s a magical story about brats and how a nanny took care of them. Fairy tale elements are added in, but you can read about that in the spoilers.

Spoilers: (Show)

The story starts off with a nanny running away screaming they’ve eaten the baby!

As the story moves on, it turns out there’s this bunch of children who just lost their mother after she gave birth to her latest daughter. I think there’s like 8 children, 4 boys and 4 girls. However, these are a bunch of brats and disobedient children. Their mission in life is to ruin any nanny their father sends in. They even have a chart showing how long it took to get rid of a nanny and the 17th nanny only took several hours?

Anyway, the nanny depot or whatever they called it started to hide from the father and said there were no more nannies. Suddenly a magical voice out of nowhere tells him the nanny he needs is Nanny McPhee.

The rest of the story is just a fun mix and mingle between Nanny McPhee and the kids. Most of the plot is derived from the fact that this family is dependent on the support of the wife’s aunt, who said she’d stop supporting him if he doesn’t find a wife to take care of the children by the end of the month. Then there’s the colorful lady which looks like a man. She is like the last person in the world you’d want to marry, but in other to keep the family together, the father decided to take the sacrifice.

Early on in the story, one of the housekeepers, talked about a book how another housekeeper feel in love with the widow man she served, but she knew he’d never see her in his eyes because she was uneducated and etc. Hmmmm, lets see! Just like the housekeeper reading the book. It was pretty obvious from the start that she was going to marry the father at the end. I hope I didn’t spoil the movie for you.

Anyway, the story was a wacky thing after another. I was somewhat disappointed with the ending. Everytime the childrens learn a new lesson, one of Nanny McPhee’s disfigurments would disappear. Since the beginning of the movie, I’ve assumed Nanny McPhee was the mom in disguise, but that never got revealed.

Another thing lacking was the fact that Nanny McPhee just disappeared at the end of the movie. In the beginning of the movie, she says, “When you don’t want me, but need me, I’ll be here. But when you want me, but don’t need me, I’ll be gone.” It was building toward that point, but in the end, she just disappears. The kids don’t bother begging her to stay or even watch her leave. I thought that was a bit sad for Nanny McPhee and the ending wasn’t as powerful as it could be.

So I was driving home today and on my way back, I noticed a bunch of duck crossing and deer crossing signs. Nothing out of the ordinary here in Washington. Suddenly, I noticed a dead pigeon lying on the road. By the time I realized it, I had about a second to process that information before I drove over it. I don’t know my wheels actually rolled over it, but my mind immediately started playing tricks and assumed I did. I didn’t feel any bump or anything, but the moment my wheels would’ve rolled over it, there was a bright flash in my mind and I cringed and almost swerved. For some reason, I just couldn’t focus for that few seconds. It also took some time for me to recover my composure.

Now I’m trying to remember the recent movie that had a similar line. I’m thinking it’s Oldboy when the prison owner was about to take his revenge and pretends to pluck Daesu’s teeth out with a hammer and Daesu screams. The prison owner goes, “Imagination can be such a powerful thing.”

While looking up character names in Oldboy on IMDb, I noticed there was going to be a new Oldboy movie to be released in 2006. Clicking on it revealed that it’s a remake of a Korean film of the same name, a recently paroled middle-aged man, who spent 15 years in prison without any explanation as to why he was jailed, seeks revenge on those who conspired against him. In the trivia section, it states: The original version was a Korean language film based on a Japanese comic book, will be remade by Taiwanese director from Orange County, California. I wonder if they’re going to screw this up like many of the other remakes they borrowed from Asia.

I watched The Weather Man a few days ago. Movie was pretty boring to be honest. IMDb users did give it a 7.3 rating though. You can watch the trailer here. Movie moved rather slow and it was basically some guy trying to revive a broken family. The guy himself has a lot of problems too.

Spoilers: (Show)

The movie stars Nicolas Cage as the weather man making over $200,000 a year. He probably spends 2 hrs a day working (including preping and airing). Pretty darn good salary. However, his wife and him are divorced and they have 2 kids, a son that just came out of drug rehabilitation and a daughter who’s overweight and wears skin-tight pants. You later learn that kids call the daughter names like camel toe. When the dad confronted the daughter about this, he asked her if she knew what the phrase meant, and she replied that it means she’s tough because camel toes have to walk all over the burning hot dessert. That line was probably the best line of the entire movie.

Nick’s father was a very renowned man, written several famous books and was even friends with President Jimmy Carter. However, in this movie, you find out he is diagnose with something (I forget) and that he only has a few months to live. Nick wants to prove to his father that he is something before he dies and attempts to revive the family.

You later learn that Nick and his wife broke up because of tartar sauce. Or maybe their marriage was already hanging by a thread and the tartar sauce was what pushed it over. Anyway, the short version of the story is they order take out, the wife repeated reminds him to get tartar sauce. Nick tells her to back off and stop busting his balls. So as he’s walking toward the restaurant in the freezing cold, he’s repeating tartar sauce in his head time after time and tries to stay warm. Suddenly at an intersection, a girl with a nice butt stands in front of him waiting for the light to turn green. His mind leaves the tartar sauce and starts thinking about the girl’s nice butt. When he gets to the restaurant, he’s totally forgotten about the tartar sauce. When he gets home, the wife asks where the tartar sauce was and Nick makes up a lie and says they ran out. The wife doesn’t believe him and calls the restaurant. So that was how they ended up getting a divorce.

So Nick wants to resurrect their marriage and takes his ex-wife to a marriage counseling/training thing which attempts to help the couples bond and develop trust. At first, things were going well, but things started to change when the counselor asked them to think about one thing they did that affected their partner but he/she was not proud of. Nick goes and raises his hand and speaks out that he watched porn and masterbated to it. Everyone is giving him funny looks and the counselors tells him that she wants them to write it on a piece of paper, fold it up, give it to your partner, and your partner will never open it. That is trust. Of course Nick opens it and finds out that his ex-wife found the book he’s been writing for the past 4 years boring. He later confronts her about this at the restaurant, and she calls him a champion fuck. Haha. So she in turn decides to open Nick’s message and he apparently wrote that her BJs lacked enthusiasm. Does that even qualify to the original topic? Anyway, Noreen, his ex-wife, says her BJs lacked enthusiasm was because she hated Nick and that was why she lacked enthusiasm when his cock was in her mouth.

Anyway, the story goes on. Nick’s father has a living funeral and there’s a black out in the middle of Nick’s speach which he never got to finish.

Noreen decides she’s going to marry some guy who I don’t really know how he plays into the story besides that he was there when she was down.

His son gets involved with a pedophile, and things actually start turning good for Nick at this point. He believes in his son and goes there punches the shit out of the guy, who claims Nick’s son damaged his property. Do remember, his son has a history of drug usage (not sure if it was pot or cigarettes), but his word doesn’t hold much credit.

He got into shooting arrows. It started with his daughter wanting to learn how to shoot arrows, but all she really wanted to do was shoot at moving animals, which he didn’t approve. She gave up, but he continued to train.

He got the job at Hello America and his annual salary increased to over $1million. However, the story wasn’t that much of a happy ending. He and his wife never got back together. He did get along better with his children.

Watched Bubble sometime last week with CDMcc and Elizabeth. You can watch the trailer here. IMDb users gave it a rating of 6.8. The movie was interesting and beautifully shot, but it was an independent film and pretty low budget, so it might not appeal to everyone. But the story was moving and once again, real human connections.

The release of bubble was also quite interesting.

‘Bubble’ buzz
Bubble: Sold Out!
‘Bubble’ DVD upends distribution channels

The basic jist of it was simultaneous release of the movie in theaters, on TV, and on DVD. They offered the incentive of 10% of all DVD profits will be split among the theaters that decide to air the movie. Landmark I believe was the only chain that decided to air the movie, because all the other major chains believe that by releasing the DVD at the same time will create competition which they wouldn’t want to waste a screen for. According to the reports, the movie made $70,000 on opening weekend, a little short from what they had estimated, but their DVD sales were overblown from their original calculations. You can actually purchase the DVD from Amazon.com.

Spoilers: (Show)

Most of the movie didn’t have a soundtrack and there were points in the movie where it was completely silent. It added to the dreary effect the movie was suppose to have.

The movie starts out in a little town somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It starts off with a middle age woman named Martha and a young boy named Kyle who are friends and colleagues that work together in a doll factory. It was interesting that dolls were still made in such a way. I’d imagine either their wages would be super low, or else how’d they compete against factories that use machines to replace the human work. The dolls themselves weren’t that impressive.

Anyway the story takes off when the factory gets a large order and they hired a new girl named Rose to help out with the rush. Rose and Kyle seemed to get along immediately, but that was expected since everyone else that worked there was pretty old.

As things move on, Rose starts to steal Kyle from Martha and you could see Martha starting to hold a grudge against Rose. I’m not sure if Martha had any feelings for Kyle, but that wasn’t explicitly shown, but it seemed like there was. As more and more of Rose is revealed, Martha warns Kyle about her. One week, Rose asked if Martha would babysit her 2-year old daughter (who when you see seemed quite older than 2 years old, but the child’s acting was amazing). Martha agreed. On the night, she finds out that Rose was actually going out with Kyle, and the grudge gets bigger. It seemed like they were trying to keep it a secret from Martha, who had been friends with Kyle for what seemed lik many years.

That night, Kyle and Rose go out for some beer, head back to Kyle’s place and you can see Rose’s evil side. When Kyle leaves the room, Rose starts searching his drawers and found some cash and stuffed it into her purse. Immediately upon Kyle’s return, Rose says it’s getting late and she should go home since Martha is waiting.

When Rose is dropped off, you see her ex-boyfriend barge in demanding Rose give back what she stole from his apartment. Rose denies it, but obviously from the previous action, you know she’s guilty. Martha is just sitting here and watching the entire drama. The ex-boyfriend leaves and Martha asks about it and Rose tells her to mind her own business.

The scene cuts from there and the next scene you see is an investigation. Rose apparently was murdered, choked to death to be specific and the rest of the movie is about the investigation of who killed Rose? It’s pretty obvious at this point who killed her, but you should watch the movie to find out!

Elizabeth later mentioned that when they regard magazines as books. That was quite interesting.