Quick Reviews - Milk, Doubt

Milk
Good movie. Although, it did take about a third of the movie until I really got into it. I'm also not a huge Sean Penn fan - something about him just annoys me. However, he did a good job stepping into the role of Harvey Milk, such that I no longer thought I was watching Sean Penn on screen blabbing, but rather witnessing an important civil rights movement. It's really quite amazing what occurred in San Francisco, just across the bridge, thirty years ago. I'll even see the Moscone Center in a new light.

Er... (minor) spoilers ahead I guess.

It's sad that thirty years later, there's still a struggle to preserve gay rights. In 1978 Harvey Milk fought against Proposition 6, which would make the firing of gay schoolteachers mandatory, and won, and yet Proposition 8 passed in California last year. Okay, sure, Proposition 6 was probably much more egregious. On the other hand, Proposition 8, whether it passed or not, wouldn't affect non gays at all, so why did over 50% of the population seek to pass it?

End spoilers.

Makes me wonder, if Milk (the movie) would have had any impact on the election, had it been released before it. Would it have helped or hurt the cause? Why wasn't it released before the election? Not close enough to Oscar season? Or were the filmmakers afraid it would have a negative impact on the fight to preserve gay marriage? Anyway, it was interesting watching this movie in light of Proposition 8 have just been passed a few months ago.

Doubt
Didn't feel like making a separate post. Liked the movie. Like Amy Adams. Possibly my favorite actress ever since I watched Junebug.

Fillings - A Guided Tour

After not having gone to the dentist for two and a half years, I had discovered that I needed to get a few fillings. Today I got two of them in the area between my upper right bicuspids (premolars). And I'm going to need fillings for the same teeth on the left side. Darn. I hadn't had any dental problems since I got in my adult teeth. At least this allowed me to get a guided tour of dental restoration. Yay. I held a mirror to see what he was doing as he explained why he was doing it.

First I got a shot of anesthesia. You might say, no pain, no gain. I say no pain, shut up. Using a couple drills made of different alloys, the dentist drilled into my teeth to remove areas of decay/demineralization, which look white and porous. This left my teeth with gaps *sad face* and it was time for some dental reconstruction. But before adding the resin, my dentist added a layer of fluoride, which is good for slowing down decay (it's in our drinking water and helps strengthen enamel). He claimed that not all dentist applies it because it takes extra time (albeit small) and that it costs them more to do it because they can't charge for it.

To create a proper toothlike shape, a metal band was placed around my tooth to serve as a "mold" for applying the filling. Then this bluish acid was used to etch the surface of tooth to allow for micromechanical bonding with the resin. This is different from chemical bonding.

The composite resin was then applied in little dabs and shaped. The resin has a built in catalyst that apparently is activate by light of low wavelength, so after each dab, a blue light was shined on it to harden the resin. Once all the resin was applied, further shaping and smoothing was done. The smoother the surface is, the better it does to prevent bacteria from settling on it.

So that's pretty much the entire procedure. The dentist actually modified my biting surface. My teeth are more triangular than they should be, such that my upper bicuspids come into a tiny point of contact with each other on their outer edges. Unfortunately, this leads to food being more easily pushed into the space between the two teeth. The resin was used to create a little more contact surface to reduce the amount of food that gets trapped.

Regular flossing would've removed stuck food particles and help prevent tooth decay, so it's made me a little bit more gung ho about flossing. But anyway, the procedure was relatively painless. The filling I got is composite resin, which is a mixture of powdered glass and plastic resin, so it is tooth colored and unnoticeable. The only nuisance is that the resin doesn't last forever, about 10-15 years, so I'll have to go back and restore the fillings in the future.

Nian Gao

My favorite part of the Lunar New Year, aside from the obvious red envelope, which I don't get anymore 'cause im an old fogey, is eating nian gao. I freakin' love that stuff. My grandma used to make it for me all the time. Sure everyone else would eat some, but I knew she really made them for me.

Traditionally, nian gao is eaten on the Lunar New Year, at least if you're Chinese. Usually I'm too lazy to make them myself, but my mom will at least make them as part of the festivities. It's actually quite easy to make. Buy a cake of nian gao from an Asian supermarket and slice it up. (Hmm, I still have a whole cake of it in my freezer.) Mix some flour and eggs and dip the slices of nian gao into the batter. Heat up a good amount of oil in a pan and lightly fry the nian gao. You don't want to leave it in too long or the whole thing will turn too gooey/soggy. It should still be firm when you remove it from the oil, because the residual heat will still melt it through. Yum!

Well, happy new year. We should get the day off. I think we deserve to observe at least one Asian holiday.

EVERY YEAR HIGHER AND HIGHER

Academy Award Nominations

Nominations are out. I'm rooting for Slumdog Millionaire, with Frost/Nixon second for Best Picture. Unfortunately there is no second place. Just first place and four losers. Some of you might say Slumdog is overhyped. I'm going to say, I don't care. If that's what it took to get people to see it, let it be "overhyped." What I like about Slumdog is that it appeals to everyone. Sure, it's not a "family film" but I think there's something in it that most everyone can enjoy. It whisks the audience away to this magical place called "India" where lies hope and despair, love and loss, and at the end of it you feel happy to have experienced it.

What is all this love for Benjamin Button? I can understand its noms for more technical awards, but it wasn't THAT GOOD of a movie. At least its 13 nominations give me an excuse to post this:

The Curious Case of Forrest Gump - watch more funny videos

Still need to see Milk so I can't really say anything about that. However, I don't usually care for biopics: The Aviator, Ray, etc. How did The Reader get a Best Picture nom? I haven't seen it, but geez, it's only 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. I previously had zero interest, but I feel like I should watch it now. Eh, still don't wanna. The Wrestler is 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, maybe that should've taken it's place? Not to mention... Wall-E.

It would've been pretty awesome if Wall-E had been nominated for Best Picture. I'd imagine it'd be a shoo-in to win Best Animated Film, but really, who cares? Who cares if it beats Bolt and Kung Fu Panda (though both are entertaining films)? Who. Cares. It would say a lot more if it had gotten nominated for Best Picture even if it eventually loses. Beauty and the Beast was the last and only animated film to have the honor of being nominated for the Best Picture category.

Yin and Yang Part 2 - Gingerbread and Hamburgers

Keeping this one short. Made a gingerbread car instead of a gingerbread house over the holidays. We made the gingerbread from scratch so it took a while, but it was fun. I was going for a Batmobile, but it actually looks more like the Ecto-1. If you're wondering, I didn't eat it.


For Jon's bbq we made hamburgers from scratch. It's a lot like baking I imagine. Put all the right ingredients into a mixing bowl and... mix. Apparently the meat should be handled sparingly, because the warmth from your hands can melt the fat. Anyway, after making equal-sized portions in a roughly patty-like shape you put it on the grill.

Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is one of the funnest games I've ever played. It's an action adventure game where you can perform a lot of parkour type moves such as running on walls, climbing up beams and ledges to get from point A to point B, while killing monsters that get in your way. An added dimension to the game is the Dagger of Time that allows you to control time. For example if you miss a jump, you can reverse time up to a degree so that you can redo it. Additionally, you can speed up time, slow time down, etc.

This week I went to a talk by Jordan Mechner, the creator of the Prince of Persia series. He created the original Prince of Persia for the Apple II back in 1989. He only had a small amount of disk space at his disposal, the size of a small jpeg (can't remember the exact number of kbytes), to write this program. Aside from the feat of putting a game into such a small amount of disk space, what was also impressive about the game was the animation. He rotoscoped the prince's movements, which gave the animation a more realistic and fluid look. Rotoscoping is the tracing of live action footage to create 2D animation. He used an old Errol Flynn Robin Hood fight scene to create the swordfighting movements.

In 2010, a Prince of Persia movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer will be released. The story will be different from the game, but Mechner did write the screenplay. What I found most interesting about the talk was when Mechner described some of the challenges of adapting the story from a video game to a movie.

There are different schools of thought on the purpose of the story for video games. For Mechner, the story is largely unimportant. It's just a wrapper to service gameplay. At it's core, the story for Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time is pretty basic: a princess gets captured and you must save her. The gameplay is the driving force and the goal was to create a game where you could free run to avoid traps and kill bad guys. The gameplay creates a unique story for the player. When you tell your buddies that you played Prince of Persia, you don't talk about how utterly romantic and heroic it was that the prince saved the princess and righted all wrongs. You talk about how your health meter was down to its final blow but you managed to withstand the last minute of the boss fight without a scratch, thus ensuring victory. To keep the focus on gameplay, you don't want to have endless cut scenes or have the character constantly meeting people and chatting with them. To avoid this, in the beginning of the game a curse is unleashed so that all the people are turned into essentially sand monsters that you can kill and not have to talk and have tea and crumpets with. Prince of Persia:Sand Monsters::Resident Evil:Zombies. However, if you make a movie based on this plot, the main character would spend the whole movie running around and killing monsters never uttering a word. Something has to change. Developing a strong cast of characters to populate the world might be one.

Also, the game device that allows you to control time is the dagger. This Dagger of Time was introduced to service the gameplay so that players can reverse a portion of time to retry a dangerous jump or attack without having to restart the level. If the dagger in the movie had the same abilities as in the game, then there would be little danger to the prince. He could reverse time on a whim and get out of any situation. The audience would not be as invested in the character and his fight for victory if there was no threat of failure. Therefore in the movie, the power of the dagger must be reduced somehow. Point is, the story of the game cannot be adapted exactly.

If you think about bad video game movies, which there are a lot of, maybe this helps to explain why it's so difficult to make a good movie based on a game. Film is a very different medium. A movie tells us a story and lets it unfold. We listen. The characters in the story interact and overcome challenges. We become invested. For games, where having a strong plot or characters is not as important, it makes it much more difficult to derive a movie out of (ie Doom and Resident Evil - although I admit I kinda liked the Resident Evil movies, but you can see how they're quite different from the games). This is not an excuse for bad video game movies, but it provides insight as to why a video game movie may not be completely faithful to the source and if not handled well, could result in a very poor movie. I hope the Prince of Persia movie doesn't fall victim to the bad video game trend. Mechner was inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark, so hopefully the movie will be good adventure movie. And since it's being produced by Bruckheimer, it's certainly aimed to be a Pirates of the Carribbean type movie.

On a side note, regardless of the dangers of making a video game movie, I would very much like a movie based on The Legend of Zelda to be made. The Zelda series has a rich mythology and unlike Prince of Persia has a much larger focus on telling a story, which may or may not make it easier to adapt.

Game trailer for Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time


Game trailer for the latest Prince of Persia, which looks quite beautiful


Tried out bolding key words. Let me know if it's annoying.

Web Comic

I've been contemplating starting a web comic back since my undergrad days. I could never quite get myself started. It was a combination of a lack of ideas, lack of time, and I guess a lack of determination. It was very lacking. Even when I had an idea in mind, I would get stuck, because I could never settle on a style and it was difficult to ever complete anything. I would get really nitpicky with my work and then eventually just abandon it.

Just to keep the bar low, this probably won't amount to anything. I sketched out a strip that I had meant to do like four/five years ago. It's not clever at all, but whatever. Maybe this will get me started, maybe I'll just forget about it. It's nice just to have something "done." I purposely kept it sketchy, because if I ever tried to polish it, I would never be able to finish.

Super Quick Reviews - Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Happy-Go-Lucky

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Not as good as I expected. It was a pretty movie and the one war scene in the movie that was as exhilarating as any, but the movie was just too long. It was certainly no Forrest Gump. I don't really see what Brad Pitt's character saw in Cate Blanchett's character either and the timeline seemed wonky. On another note, and hopefully this doesn't ruin the movie for you, I couldn't help but pay close attention to how the actors' faces were digitally altered so that they would appear younger. Don't get me wrong, it was still enjoyable, but I didn't think it was particularly remarkable.

Frost/Nixon
I really liked this movie a lot. At first I thought this movie would be really dull, because the first ten minutes was the splicing of interviews and historical footage and I'm not usually a fan of movies that are historical accounts of events, but once the movie really started, it was like a political thriller. Frost and Nixon had a good ol' boxing match but with words. Word, dawg.

Happy-Go-Lucky
The movie was pleasant enough. It's not really about anything. The main character, Poppy, is this perpetually cheerful woman who is both endearing and annoying. She's not oblivious to things around her in her cheerfulness, as we discover in her interactions with other people. She's actually quite perceptive. Eventually, the events of the movie and her behavior towards others all lead to a gripping confrontation, which was about the only thing that really got my attention. I can't help but mention this: I found her fashion sense horrendous. It was like a candy store barfed on her or a five-year-old picked out her wardrobe.

Shooting Range

BLAM BLAM BLAM! I went to the shooting range for the first time a couple weeks ago. It was quite fun. Five of us went and we rented two USP 9mm handguns. Each magazine holds 10 rounds. What surprised me the most about shooting a gun is how incredibly loud it is, even with acoustic earmuffs on. Actually it's not too bad when you're the one firing a gun, because you know when the gun is going to go off. The recoil isn't too bad either. The recoil looks stronger when you watch someone else shoot, but again it's not too bad when you're the one firing.

I admit I was pretty nervous going in. Would I make it back out alive? Would I receive multiple gunshot wounds? But actually I found the whole event to be pretty safe. Load the gun only just before you fire it and make sure the safety is on when you're not shooting. Use common sense and don't be stupid and you'll be fine. Each of us shot four clips of ten rounds. Naturally, I found shooting the first clip to be the most exhilarating, because I was thinking, "Wow, this is awesome!!!! TO THE MAX!!!" And interestingly, I did the best on my first clip. Hit the bullseye once and my shots were decently clustered around the middle. However, as I went through more clips, my shots seemed to hit lower and lower. My shots were still fairly clustered together, so I was fairly precise, but my accuracy seemed to get worse. Maybe it was a case of overthinking that led my shots being more off. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and overall it cost each of us 20 bucks for renting two guns, using two lanes, and using 40 rounds of bullets each.

Digital Painting

I haven't done this in a long time. Didn't have much to do today so I thought I'd draw something. I'm always surprised by how I lose track of time and get completely absorbed when I do a digital drawing/painting. The drawing part I always find fun, but I don't particularly like the coloring/painting part. Yet, somehow I feel compelled to do color it, as if it's unfinished if I don't. Anyway, here are the line drawing and color versions.


I should try to do something more creative than just drawing from photographs. Drawing from photographs/life is easy and relaxing, but somehow not as gratifying. Oh well.

Drawn with a Wacom Intuos 2 in Photoshop and colored in Painter and Photoshop.

JAAIIHOOOOOOO

Man, I've been listening to the song Jaiho from Slumdog Millionaire all day. I find it so catchy. JAAIIHOO! BAILABAILA!

I hope this song gets nominated for an Oscar so there will be a crazy Bollywood dance performance. Slumdog Millionaire was also a very good movie. I would describe it as, half City of God half love story. Actually half __________ is a better description, but I don't want to imply anything.

Memories - Photos are Forever

I know I titled this post "Memories," but it's nothing sappy like that, so quit making that gagging sound. Over winter break I was going through my old elementary school backpack. In it I found a stack of old photos (probably used for some class project) and a few random sketches I had done as a kid. I had been planning to scan old family albums for a while now, and looking at my old stuff and wanting to preserve them for eternity gave me the kick in the pants to do so.

To be honest I didn't get too far. I only scanned up to like 70 photos. The scanner I'm using takes a while to make high quality scans. Afterward I take them and crop each photo, and adjust the brightness/contrast and color levels in Photoshop, so the whole process is slow. Also, there are some streaks under the glass of the scanner that show up on some scans, so I'm debating whether to wait until I get a newer scanner to resume. Anyway I've gotten halfway through a smaller album, and it's been interesting to see my parents when they were younger.

This leads me to the main point of this post. We take a lot of pictures now. We take them in a digital format so they'll never degrade and can be easily reproduced in exact quality. Once we've bought a digital camera, taking pictures is essentially free. I'm a proponent of candid photos and for the past decade we have been easily able to take photos in abundance and without hesitation. Almost all the photos I had seen of my parents were staged, everyone looking proper and prim. However, the ones I find most interesting and entertaining to look at are the ones of my parents engaging in day to day activities or even when my dad was making a funny face at the camera while standing behind my grandparents.

Now, our kids will have that luxury. We can take thousands of photos on a single memory stick and we plaster our photos all over Flikr and Facebook. Even Fuzzyshot allows you to do photoblogging of the most banal of activities. No event is too small for a snap of the camera. Our kids will be able to look at these mountainous digital records and see us when we were their age - whether we looked particularly dashing one day, a complete ass on another, or just largely boring. But even photos of boring activities are interesting when they're not staged in my opinion. There will be the fair share of staged photos, but it's the candid ones that will say something to viewers.

I'm not trying to make some grandiose message here. This is just an observation. One day, your kids will have the opportunity to see you when you were young, and see you at your best (and worst), if you let them. So what does this mean? Maybe you should take even more photos, or maybe you should be careful of what you take and what you put online. Take care in storing your photos 'cause a hard drive crash may spell the end to your beloved memories. In any case, the next generation will have a more complete and interesting view of their parents' lives and I think that is a good thing.

Here are some scans of my awesome drawings at grade five:

When I was a kid, I thought Wolverine was da bomb. I mean, he had GIANT METAL CLAWS and was virtually unkillable! Who wouldn't want giant claws that would SNIKT! out of his hands and could slice through anything!!? A dumb kid, that's who.

In elementary school, my good friend Yusuke and I worked on our own little comic/manga for the creative writing portion of class. We were awesome little guys shaped like spheres with awesome powers and awesome caps with the first letter of our first names on them. Then Yusuke moved to Japan and I was sad. Very sad. YUSUKE, WHERE ARE YOU!??!

I had great interest in contemporary art at the age of ten. Andy Warhol was my hero and I was eventually able to replicate his silk screening process so that I could make cheap art for the masses. Actually, I probably had no idea who Andy Warhol was, nor did I drink any Campbell soup or ogle Marilyn Monroe.

Mochi

I like mochi. It's so yamy.

Super Quick Reviews - Valkyrie, Gran Torino, The Wrestler

Valkyrie
Interesting movie, but not a must see unless you're already interested in the events it depicts. It stars Tom Cruise as a German officer who leads one of many failed assassination attempt on Hitler. Fairly straightforward thriller, but like the Titanic, you know it can't end well.

Gran Torino
Clint Eastwood being Clint Eastwood, but old. Clint takes a Hmong kid under his wing and must deal with the local gang. Hilarious in his blatant racism. I learned many derogatory terms for Asians and how to be badass, such as pointing your finger like a gun at someone. I found the ending to be very satisfying. The title refers to Clint's car, a Gran Torino that the kid tries to steal.

The Wrestler
98% on Rotten Tomatoes. If that isn't enough to get you interested, then you might as well not watch it. That said, it was a good movie, with a strong performance by Mickey Rourke that makes you really care for the main character. The movie is a character study of a pro wrestler who is long past his prime and has alienated his friends and family, but must continue to abuse his body to make ends meet. Takes a harsh look at the realities (if the movie is an accurate portrayal) of pro wrestling and the dedication it takes to entertain a crowd. Did I mention that Marisa Tomei is topless in the movie? I didn't? Hmm, that seems like an important piece of information.

Pearl Tea Count

Over the holidays:

Fantasia - 4 (I think I'm getting tired of Fantasia. I want the old Ten Ren back.)
Q-Cup - 3 (Can't beat a large for $2.50 - lasts me the entire day.)
Quicklys - 1 (I know, I'm ashamed. But I tried the Earl Grey Milk Tea and it wasn't bad.)