One thing that kept me from truly enjoying the movie was one of my seat partners, an acquaintance of mine.  She’s not a bad person, just a terrible person to sit next to in a movie theater.   She’s one of those people that talks during a movie, which isn’t that bad by itself.  In addition to this, she was talking to the screen, laughing extremely loud when no one else in the theater was, throwing her hands up and gesturing when something frustrating or exciting happened, and felt the need to inform me about what was happening in the movie.  [Stage whisper] “Oh my god, did you see that?  He took all the ballerinas on his boat!  Hahaha!  That’s too funny…”  Ummm, of course I saw it.  Are we not sitting next to each other, staring at the same 60 foot screen?

In other news, I’m going to take the plunge and invest in a new lens.  I’ve been putting it off, saying, “Later.”  Well, later is now.  A friend casually hinted at me photographing his wedding in September, which kind of put me in a bit of a panic.  I don’t even have the correct lenses for a wedding, on top of it being a little stressful!  Even if I don’t end up shooting this wedding it’s about time I go big, or go home.  So, Michael said he’d go with me for some lens shopping, so that makes me feel better.  The lens quality I want will be in the $1000~$1300 range.  That’s a bit more than the cost of my Canon 400D itself, but I don’t see this photography thing being one of my phases.

Speaking of cameras, I loaded film for the first time in… at least 5 years!  I want to experiment with film again and bought a Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim from eBay to play with.  It’s a toy camera, so I’m just trying to have fun with it.  Here are example of shots people have taken with this unassuming camera.  The ones that are really saturated are cross-processed.  That’s something I also want to try, but first, I want to see how this regular roll of film will turn out.  I’m hoping to get lots of lens flare!  I’ll have lots of opportunities to practice, since next week looks to be sunny, sunny, sunny!

When we arrived at the Yongsan CGV to take our seats, everyone had to check in their cell phones and cameras to men and women in suit who were trying hard to look important.  The theater was mostly full and I think we were the only foreigners there.  Throughout the movie, there was another secret agent wannabe stationed at the exit, making sure nobody was recording the movie.

Below is the only picture I was able to take tonight – the staff as they were handing back people’s belongings at the exit.

As for the movie?  Eh.  That being said, Will Smith is Will Smith.  The movie will gross millions just because he’s in it.  Jason Bateman and Charlize Theron were also great.  The story itself had a lot of potential (just like “Jumper”), but the storyline was a little lean.  I wasn’t really compelled by the character of Hancock, and felt more could have been done to give the audience something to chew on.

Overall, it was an ok movie.  I wouldn’t pay full price on a Saturday night to see it, but it’s worth a watch.  Honestly… for the entertainment value, Angelina Jolie’s “Wanted” would be a better choice.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AjcDW7zIY8[/youtube]

New pictures from the movie were leaked about a month ago, but I just got a chance to look at them today. Many fans say the casting is good, but the costumes look cheezy. You be the judge. (In true cartoon fashion, why couldn’t they make Duke blonde?)

General Hawk

Duke

Baroness

Breaker

Destro

Ripcord

Storm Shadow

Scarlett

(Personally, I think she looks too young for this role.)

Heavyduty

Covergirl

As a side note, Korean actor, Lee Byung-hun plays Storm Shadow, whose face will be covered most of the time. Ray Park plays Snake Eyes, who I initially though was a Korean-American actor. In fact, he’s from Glasgow and played the characters Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace, and Toad in X-Men.

Storm Shadow also has a leisure suit. Look at those shoes! He’s rockin’ the 2001 Korean men’s shoe fashion.

The best part of the article are all the comments at the bottom.  Comic book fans have some pretty strong feelings about who plays the characters they’ve grown up with.  The following made me laugh.  So, what are your thoughts?  Who’s your favorite X-Men character?

Posted by: jake on February 19, 2008 at 08:04:45

I’m sick of all the complaining where Gambit is going to fit in to this story. First, you all complain that Gambit isn’t in any of the movies. And now, he is in this movie, and you’re still complaining! You should be thankful he’s even in this film. You ever think the writer and director did this for you guys? It’s either this or no Gambit. So stop complaining and be thankful for this. 

Posted by: raybia on February 19, 2008 at 09:14:51

Oh my god, taylor kitsch is Gambit?! TAYLOR KITSCH IS GAMBIT!!
Who in the hell is Taylor Kitsch? 

1. Atonement *
2. Juno *
3. National Treasure: Book of Secrets
4. The Nines
5. Pride and Prejudice (2005)
6. Pride and Prejudice (1995)
7. Beowulf (2007)
8. Footloose
9. Fame  The DVD file was corrupt, I only watched part of the movie
10. Bee Movie
11. Blade Runner
12. Rocky Horror Picture Show  The DVD file was corrupt, I only watched part of the movie
13. There Will Be Blood *

* = Oscar nominations

I’m also trying to watch all five Oscar nominations for “Best Picture of the Year.”  I’ll finish off the list by watching Michael Clayton and No Country for Old Men by the end of this week.  What’s the best movie you’ve seen lately?

Today at work, we were all talking about the new E-2 visa regulations.  In addition, it looks like we’ve hired a new teacher – a friend of Bart’s.  He’s from Kentucky and has a banjo!  During my children’s class today, I took the kids out to collect leaves.  It was nice to go for a walk in the fall weather and play with the kids as we threw dried leaves on each other and had a contest to find the biggest leaf.  We’ll be making these leaf wreaths this week.  It’s very easy and instructions can be found here.

The movies I watched this weekend:

• American Gangster – Good!  Can you believe Frank Lucas was clearing $1 million a day from selling heroin in the late 60s?  Very interesting story.
•  Hot Rod – Terrible.  I fell asleep for most of the movie.  When I did manage to wake up, I fell back asleep because it was so dumb.
• Shoot ‘Em Up – Good.  It was action packed and held my interest, but most of the scenes were just down right ridiculous.  Logic and laws of gravity were completely ignored.  Still, I think that was part of its appeal.

From festivals to your laptop

If you’re interested in foreign and/or indie films, you may want to take a look at Jaman, a site that offers more than 500 movie downloads from around the world for rental or purchase.

Many of these titles aren’t available on Netflix or in stores, so the site provides quite a cool service — users can browse the usual categories in addition to Bollywood, Latino, kung-fu, shorts and Spanish-language flicks. (You can search by world region, too.)

Register now, and you automatically get three free downloads. The site makes recommendations based on your interests, and you can preview movies before you rent them. Sounds good to me!

]]> http://lao-ocean.com/2007/09/13/jaman/feed/ 1 http://lao-ocean.com/2007/07/19/the-future-of-facebook/ http://lao-ocean.com/2007/07/19/the-future-of-facebook/#comments Fri, 20 Jul 2007 01:17:23 +0000 lao-ocean-girl http://lao-ocean.com/2007/07/19/the-future-of-facebook/ Here are some things I found interesting from this interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

TIME: Is Facebook’s popularity connected to its focus on authenticity? On your site, misrepresentation of your real self is a violation of company policy.

Zuckerberg: That’s the critical part of it. Our whole theory is that people have real connections in the world. People communicate most naturally and effectively with their friends and the people around them. What we figured is that if we could model what those connections were, [we could] provide that information to a set of applications through which people want to share information, photos or videos or events. But that only works if those relationships are real.

TIME: With more than 40 billion page views every month, Facebook is the sixth most trafficked site in the U.S., and the top photo-sharing site. What are your international expansion plans?

Zuckerberg: Right now a lot of our growth is happening internationally. We have more than 10% or 15% of the population of Canada on the site. The U.K. has a huge user base.

This month, I’ve been watching a lot of movies.  Two weeks ago, I added the “Flixster” application on Facebook, and am going to list and review all the movies I see from this year on.  So far, all 16 movies listed have been everything I’ve watched since arriving in Oregon for the summer.  The best so far were: Born into Brothels, Transformers, and Hard Candy.  The list of movies to see in the next two days include: Ghost World, Grave of the Fireflies, and The Devil Wears Prada.  At the end of the year, it’ll be interesting to see how many movies I’ve seen from the second half of 2007.  Yesterday, brother rented a Japanese movie that came out this week called, “Yo-Yo Girl Cop.”  Besides the funny title, I can’t decide whether I want to watch it or not.