Rachel Getting Married

What a terrible movie. I don’t care what Rotten Tomatoes says; I’ve disagreed with critics on many occasions, such as the Godfather series.

The movie was part of a psychology club dinner+movie+discussion night. Admittedly,  the acting is powerful, and all the relevant players deliver convincing and human roles. However, the scriptwriting and camera work is downright shoddy.  I understand that the handheld feel is possibly there to make the film more human, but when it gets to the point that it stands out rather than adds to the work, it’s become disruptive. The storyline is utterly unrealistic. Kym’s relationship with her family is never resolved, nor is the major theme of Ethan’s death. Everyone just suddenly seems to forget their hostilities at the end even though no convincing catalytic event causes that transformation. Maybe they’re all tired of each other and want to put up facades. Scene to scene transitions are also terribly done. Various scenes just seemed to have no purpose other than to show us how the family normally behaves or how a wedding goes. Belly dancers? How do they add to the plot? Characters can be hateful at one moment, crying the next, and happy again, all in the span of a weekend. Golly gee. If the dad is suddenly reminded of his dead son and has to leave the room, quieting everyone, we shouldn’t expect to see him acting all normal again just 10 minutes later!

The one film I will compare this to is Revolutionary Road, which I found to be much tighter in terms of plot and generally more moving. “Rachel” bandies emotions like drunks at a bar fight. Revolutionary Road deals with the transformation of genuine feelings and is smooth and slick like a duel in a ballroom. Or perhaps I should use the comparison of cheap beer to fine wine.

News Roundup

The best of the last week:

Sci-fi tearjerkers

My personal #1 would be Buffy’s “The Gift”, which makes the list at #5. Many of the other choices should be recognizable by avid sci-fi fans, and if not, should serve notice for you to start watching those. Revisiting this list at times brings back tragic memories of tears shed.

Reality district

On the same vein, District 9 is not just a successful indie sci-fi flick; it’s an allegory for the violence against immigrants in South Africa. It’s somewhat tragic as South Africa has had opportunities to reinvent itself as the Costa Rica of Africa, becoming a beacon of hope and example of successful governance in a continent of poverty and suffering. Corruption and tribal politics have ended Thabo Mbeki’s vision of an African Renaissance.

Dollhouse becomes reality

Sometimes, I don’t what is more strange, sci-fi or Japan. This post sheds light on what has been happening in Japan for some time, and it is not unexpected for what Wayne has termed a “repressed society”. Still, paying for companionship may soon become more popular throughout the world, starting with the US.

Karlovic outdoes himself

Moving on to sports now, Ivo Karlovic serves 78 aces in a 5 set match against Radek Stepanek in the Davis Cup, and loses. He served 55 against Lleyton Hewitt (my fav. tennis player) and lost. Sometimes, you just don’t get into a rhythm when you aren’t involved in sustained rallies. Regardless, serving 78 aces is an incredible accomplishment, almost ensuring that you never lose serve.

What’s in Intel’s closet?

I feel conflicted about this. On one hand, Intel is a leader in technology and is on the forefront of innovation in many areas (compilers, CPUs, GPUs, chipset, IEEE standards, and many others). The company is a heavy contributor to open-source initiatives and has one of the finest Linux graphics drivers excluding Poulsbo. However, I’ve always had this nagging suspicion in the back of my calvarium that they’ve been artificially excluding competition with AMD by paying off OEMs (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.) to not build AMD-based computers. Check out what the EU dug up on Intel and the phrases executives used when discussing their payoff.

RMS vs MDI

In the open-source world, Miguel de Icaza has often been castigated, but none more harshly than this remark by Richard Stallman, calling him a traitor to the movement. Most reactions have been critical of Stallman for his harsh language and attempts to purify the community with an absurd witch-hunt. I’ve met de Icaza in person in 2006 at Microsoft’s .NET conference when I worked as an intern there (the same summer that I met Bill Gates, Anders Heljsberg, and Jim Hugunin). He was amazingly focused, energetic, and passionate about certain technologies, not all of which I found to be technically sound. His actions and words were certainly colourful, and often talked trash about competing technologies (XGL vs AIGLX: “How do you pronounce AIGLX?”, .NET vs Java: “No one uses Java anymore.”). Some of that is certainly due to his involvement in a commercial company (Novell) that is carving out a niche marketplace by collaborating with and being friendly to proprietary companies. Despite those issues, I saw nothing disingenuous about his dedication to the open-source community. His brainchild, Mono, is an amazing technical piece of work that should be embraced by the community as bringing more languages and software to our existing pool.

Deficit doomsday prophet

Previously, I’ve expressed disappointment at Obama’s deficit-happy policies. I’m not alone in that worry. This article describes the activities of David Walker in educating the public about the dangers of high and sustained deficits. He wages a lonely crusade against politicians who kick problems down to future generations and against naive voters who demand more benefits and less taxes at the same time.

Banana republic watch

It’s quite the season for doom-and-gloom prophets to emerge from the woodworks. In terms of wealth, Europe has just surpassed North America in terms of assets under wealth management. Sure, it’s not a precise measurement, but it’s worrisome for some seeing that Europe already leads in other categories, such as leisure time, happiness, and HDI.

Speaking of measurements of development, Joseph Stiglitz takes issue with GDP as the preferred measurement of progress. This comes in the wake of (or maybe inspired) Sarkozy’s determined effort to find a new indicator of growth.

Health care addendum (and here)

Here are some articles following up on my earlier post on health care in the US. Greg Mankiw shares the economic basis behind rationing care with a realistic example of what might happen. He lays out rather clearly why we can’t have equal health care for everyone. The other article is by John Tierney and dispels myths of US health care being behind that of other nations in terms of outcomes.

Dollhouse Update

Well, a lot has happened over the past few years with respect to television. Ratings in general are on a perpetual spiral downward, but Dollhouse blew them all out of the water in comparison by scoring abysmal ratings (finale was 1.0 share), even lower than Firefly, which you remember was promptly canceled. Thus, everyone was expecting the worst for Dollhouse. Much to everyone’s surprise, the show was retained for another season. It turns out that angus63’s dire predictions of generals fighting the last war are not coming to pass for a few reasons:

1. Joss Whedon. Whedonesque is ecstatic about Joss’s ability to deliver in a second season, citing Buffy and Angel as the prime examples.  It seems that Fox is aware of this as well and is hoping for a more solid and coherent show.

2. Kevin Reilly. The president of Fox Broadcasting has a reputation for nurturing promising shows (see: The Office). Whedon has stated that the whole team at Fox has changed from the ones that destroyed Firefly, and it seems to be true: Whedon’s posts state that Fox is behind the show and gets the premise.

3. The importance of new media.  Perhaps due to being placed on the Friday night slot, Dolhouse didn’t perform as well by the Neilson ratings as indicative of its popularity. DVR, Hulu, and iTunes views undoubtedly influenced the decision, convincing the execs that the show has avant-garde viewers watching in nontraditional fashions. Now it’s up to broadcasters to monetize that population.

4. All in the family (acknowledgements to NickC).  Since Whedon (in the form of Mutant Enemy) and 20th Century Fox are also producers, Fox Broadcasting could ask them internally to reduce the show’s price tag and shoulder a larger share of production costs.

Despite the hope injected by the renewal, I feel that Whedon still has to tighten up the plot to attract viewers. Whedonesque speculates on why the show is not succeeding. If you ask me, it’s due to a lack of relatable characters. There is no sense of family or any romance, as was in all of Whedon’s previous forays into TV. Instead, all the characters put up barriers, making it difficult to become emotionally attached to anyone. Also, the fact that the show focuses on the gray areas between solid moral boundaries of technology, regular viewers lack a “hero” or a “villain” to identify with and root against. Each character on the show is complex and motivated by different priorities, which makes for an intriguing novel but a dense show (see Ice and Fire).

Anyone Noticed Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” Ads?

And here I was wondering how MS would react to the Mac vs PC ads. Well, apparently there’s a $300 million ad campaign entitled “I’m a PC,” which showcases different “normal” people who use PCs. They were featured a while back on atdhe’s feeds, but I don’t know of any major networks that carried them. One particularly notable one was the hilariously stupid ad entitled “Food,” which is the second video on the main ad site. The BBQ and pancake guys were particularly… dull.

Though I have to say, the latest attempt is quite charming and cute.

Public Service Announcement – Watch Dollhouse!

I’ve been a Joss Whedon fan for about a year, starting from when I picked up Firefly after being prompted to by an interesting quote on Amelia’s AIM profile. Though, I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t watched Buffy yet. Hopefully, I can make up for that with the amount of effort I’ve been doing to promote his ‘verse and exciting next show – Dollhouse.

The basic premise of the dollhouse is a place where anyone with money can hire “Actives” with programmable personalities. Rich businessmen can request the perfect escort, assassin, spy, or companion. My understanding is that the main character – Echo, played by Eliza Dushku – is beginning to remembers experiences from each programming. Ah, so much promise! There is just endless possibility in what the show can be and where it can go. Go and watch it and Sarah Connor (a good combo!) on Friday nights at 8 on Fox. I know I will be.

Unfortunately, when the schedule was first released, many derided Fox’s decision as creating a graveyard for its two most “cerebral” shows.  After all, Friday nights are not the prime time for television. To allay those fears, Whedon and Fox executives later confirmed that by airing on Friday, Dollhouse won’t have to score consistently high ratings for Fox to continue investing in the show. To that I say, “anything to avoid being cancelled.”

And what a good thing that will be – to see a Joss Whedon show air for multiple seasons. Joss has the rare touch that few writers and directors have in today’s TV scene. His characters are memorable, human, and motivated by complex reasons. No one is truly straightforward; rather, there is layer upon layer of character development that is lovingly crafted over a season. The dialogue is tight and crisp. The plot is never contrived. What more can you ask for? His shows rank up there with Veronica Mars, Desperate Housewives, Night Stalker, and to a lesser extent – The West Wing as my favourite shows (Editor: Notice a trend? Richard seems to have a thing for cancelled shows).

Intel Atom Performance Comparison

Even since Intel released its Silverthorne project as the Atom, I have been salivating at finally picking up a small, cool, light desktop that is a cheap and versatile performer. Why do I need a power-guzzling Core 2 Duo when everyday tasks don’t need something more powerful than a Pentium III? I know because I have run XP on a 866 MHz P3 and thought the experience sufficient for the internet, music, office, and basic 4+ year old games(AOE2, Starcraft, Rise of Nations, Rome Total War). Since we passed the gigahertz threshold, I’ve been asking why the regular PC user needs anything more powerful? Sure, if you’re a gamer or a video ripping fanatic, you’ll need all the power you can get, but really for basic office tasks, is the Atom up to the task?

Since I do not own an Atom, I thought that the best way to do a comparison is to find which old CPU is the most comparable to the Atom. In terms of transistor count, the Athlon XP at 37.5 million and Willamette P4 at 42 million were good initial guesses for appropriate counterparts to the Atom, standing at 47 million. Benchmarks were few and far between, but I did dig up the following:

Tomshardware says that the Atom with HT passes PCMark05 with a score of 1478. Not bad. How does the Athlon XP compare? Well, the Athlon XP 1800+ with a score of 1497 came close. On the Intel side, the Celeron (Willamette edition) 2 GHz scoring 1449 was the closest comparison.

The verdict? Having owned an Athlon XP 1800+ and having played with a friend’s P4 @ 2 GHz, I can confidently say that all users with basic requirements (office, internet, email, music, basic video playback, and light gaming) can get by fine with an Atom CPU. Watch out, Intel. Don’t be caught cannibalizing your own products!

Now I am interested in whether the Atom is capable of playing 1080p x264 video, which is typical of most anime fansub encodes these days. If it can handle that, I’m sold on selling off my existing desktops and replacing them with Atom-based machines.

Shows That Made Me Cry

Full Moon wo Sagashite
Kimi ga Nozomu Eien
Now and Then, Here and There
Hoshi no Koe

and now, Desperate Housewives, whose last episode of the first season has the dubious distinction of having made me laugh and cry at the same time. Oh the pain!

I’m In Love With Kristen Bell

I’m definitely not as eloquent as Joss Whedon in either his euphoria or his later sobriety. What I do know is that when the creator of Firefly, one of the better shows ever to grace the screen, has such high praise for a show, I have to check it out. So yesterday, I picked up the first season and started on my Marsathon.

Veronica Mars is what’s been missing from TV ever since reality TV took off. Every aspect of the show shines. It has such witty dialogue but never feels trite, fake, or overdone. The actors are smooth in their portrayals, and all seem to really understand their characters. Though many of them are years removed from high school, they pull off the stereotypes and depict the cliques in a perfect way. There are the jocks, preps, nerds, wannabes, gangsters, and popular kids, just like at any other high school, and we get to see their complex interactions. The cool kids aren’t that way all the time. We see their weaknesses and travails. We feel for them in a way that even if we didn’t belong to that group in high school, we can still sympathize. Likewise, the gangsters aren’t one-dimensional. They band together only because others have shunned them. Indeed, when someone from the popular clique opens up and helps one of them, she is rewarded with their undying loyalty.

The majority of the action focuses on Veronica, artfully portrayed by Kristen Bell. We see the world through her eyes, and see a girl who’s been forced to mature in the face of tragic life events, someone who has endured the pain of loss. Bell is sassy, witty, jaded, and defensive on the outside (perhaps to avoid being hurt) but has a genuinely caring heart and a strong belief in justice. She’s stunningly beautiful to boot and champions “geek chic.” We feel for her – and all the males wish they could feel her – and love her like a long-lost sister.

VM also mixes relationship drama, Nancy Drew-esque sleuthing, and school life into a juicy cocktail. The show has definitely made me laugh, cry, and want to go to school all at the same time. Perhaps the best evidence of the its appeal is the piles of uncompleted undergraduate homework languishing on my desk.

Wit and Spit

Brother was pretty amusing today. Some highlights:

When a package arrived from Amazon.com, he exclaimed that it must have been a bomb inside and that the delivery man was a terrorist.

Later, when we were watching Serenity, he cried out in the last fight scene with phrases from our UT2004 days. Memorable ones such as “Jayne is on a killing spree!”, “Doctor is out!”, and “Rampage!” made me laugh incessantly, clearly loving him in that sliver of a moment.

The next day, he wasn’t done yet, as in the course of the Orange Bowl game, I told him that the Kansas team name was “Jayhawks” and asked him if he knew what the name of the VT football team was. In his impertinence, he said in the same tone, “massacre, guns, Koreans!”