Grindhouse

Grindhouse is a mixed bag. Death Proof, the Tarantino half of the movie is one of the most boring movies I've ever seen. You can literally fall asleep watching the movie. The dialog is filled so much with "inside" reference, if you're not into the "Tarantino" state of mind, you wouldn't give a shit about what they're talking about. By "Tarantino" state of mind, I mean you're into old vintage cars, and 70s pop culture, and stunts and stuff. I'm not into that stuff, so the only good part of the movie was the lap dance scene by Vanessa Ferlito. Other than that, it just stretches itself with pointless rambling about car stunts. Even the violence isn't that heavy compared to the other half. I'll save you the hassle of watching the whole movie by embedding the only good part of the movie, the lap dance scene, here. Enjoy.




The other half of Grindhouse, Planet Terror by Robert Rodriguez, on the other hand, is one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's one of those over-the-top ultra violent zombie movies that is fun to watch, and at the same time, it doesn't feel old. They've put new ideas into it to make it feel different from the other similar movies that have been made. I can't even begin to tell how much I enjoyed this movie. A must watch.

If you're going to catch this one on DVD or download it, I recommend Planet Terror and give Death Proof a pass.

New Season

Well, it's time again where good tv shows start their new season. And there're a few new ones too. The new shows that people are saying is good is Pushing Daisies, Journeyman, and Chuck. Of the three, I've only watched the first episode of Journeyman. I'm not sure about Journeyman after reading that the creators are going to focus more on the weekly time travel escapades rather than unraveling the mystery of why he's traveling through time. What got me interested is the mystery, not the lame weekly outings. I just haven't got around to watching the other two shows.

What I'm actually downloading and watching is House, Heroes and Smallville. I know, Smallville is kinda lame, but I'll watch it until 24 or Lost returns, or until one of the new shows really makes a breakthrough. Kristin Kreuk makes it worth the download. If you don't know how hot she is, then you're really missing something. And there's a new set of pictures that show that she is one of those girls who get more beautiful when they're upset. These pics prove it. There hasn't really been any "breakthrough" shows yet this season. Last season's "breakthrough" was Heroes. I don't think there'll be one this season.

Of the three shows I'm currently following, House is easily the best. This season's House is hilarious. I find the chemistry between House and James (James is the friend, not one of those docs who works for him) just perfect this season. The banter between them just hits the right spot for me. And Heroes, the first season wasn't great, it was just good. And this season looks like its going to continue being good, not great. I've figured out a way to heighten my enjoyment of Heroes. The trick is not to take the show as seriously as 24 or Lost. If you do that, you'll just get disappointed. You need to see it as a show like Smallville with a slight touch of mystery like Lost, but not as deep. If you can manage that, you will surely increase your enjoyment of the series.

What I'm really looking forward to is Lost, but it ain't coming until next year. Other shows to look forward to 24 where rumors say there'll be no CTU, and Battlestar Galactica. And the fact that the coming season being the last season of Battlestar, it is surely going to be EPIC. But there are rumors that say that the final episode of the season will be pushed to 2009. It'll really suck if it's true.

New Rambo Clip

Stallone released new footage the latest Rambo film. From the look of it, it's going to be as violent as it can be. I wonder how anyone can enjoy this film when it hit theaters after the censors have had their hands on it. I'm starting to believe it's going to be good. The earlier footage that they released wasn't convincing, but this one did it for me. They totally set up what the movie is going to be about-- it's about Rambo killing South East Asians in creative ways. The previous clip tried to present it as an emotional film with Rambo having to make moral decisions or something. But this one hit the mark. Can't wait to download it, then watch it.

http://view.break.com/362761 - Watch more free videos

Journeyman

There's a new tv show called Journeyman that's going to be shown soon on NBC, but as usual they leaked the first episode on to the internets to get the buzz going. There has been a lot of leaked first episode new series that has come out, but the only one that piqued my interest was Journeyman. I gave it a go, and it was somewhat entertaining.

Basically, Journeyman is Quantum Leap recreated for the 21st century. There's this guy who goes back in time to help certain people. But unlike Quantum Leap, he's not stuck in the past, but goes in and out of it throughout the episode. And to give it the 21st century touch, they added some mystery and drama. First, why he time travels is made a mystery. He has no control over when he leaps into the past and back, so his life is turned upside down, sometimes disappearing from the present for days. And for the drama part, he meets his ex-fiancee who died in a plane crash during his escapades into the past, but he's already married in the present. And to top things off, plus spoiler warning, the ex-fiancee is actually not dead, but is alive and well, and she has something to do with the guy time traveling. He actually met the future version of his ex-fiancee in the past.

But the show has its flaws too. First of all, the dialog/script needs a bit of work. There were too many cliches. I know it's the first episode, you need to introduce the characters, so it's hard not to fill a few cliches in, but there was just a bit too much of it. The acting ain't that good either, but I don't know if it's the actors' lack ability, or the script that made the acting look not so good. The only good acting came from the journeyman himself and his ex-fiancee. The others just weren't into it.

Aside from that, overall, I enjoyed the show and will keep watching it to see how it develops. There needs to be a deeper plot than going into the past saving another person each week. The unraveling of why he time travels should be a good tactic to keep audience wanting more, but it better be a good reason and reasonably paced.

Sucks x 3

Left Leg Shorter Than The Right

I've started jogging again after stopping for several months due to a knee injury. I think the injury occurred because I tried too much too fast. This time around, I'm taking it slow. Not pushing too hard, building my distance gradually. But one thing I've noticed this time around is that my left leg is getting or at least has gotten shorter since I started. I'm not sure why, but it may have something to do with my previous injury. It kinda sucks to have a leg shorter than the other, but I like running. I'll continue running, but if my leg gets any shorter than it already is, I'm afraid I'll have to stop. You can't visually see that the left leg is shorter, but I can very well feel it. My whole walking mechanics needs to be change to adapt to the new imbalance. And I even have to change the way I run. It really sucks.

YouTube Account Permanently Deleted

And few days ago, my YouTube account got permanently deleted. I've uploaded excerpts of movies that I've downloaded, and after a second warning, they directly deleted my account without telling me that they'll delete my account. At least give me a warning that my account will be deleted. The warning they sent only said that I'm not allowed to upload copyrighted material. I've put a lot of effort in creating some of the videos, and I don't have backups some of them, so they're gone permanently, and it will take a lot of time to make them again.

I created a new account, with a different username, but I found out that they not only blacklisted my old username, they also blacklisted the email address that I used in the previous account. So I registered with another email address, but in the account options, there's an option to change my email address. I figured that I've already succeeded in registering, so changing the email to the previous one wouldn't have any effect, but alas, changing the email to blacklisted one deleted my newly created account. So I had to register for an account for a third time and this time not changing my email settings. Losing all my videos really sucks.

Bourne Ultimatum Nuked

Then there's Bourne Ultimatum. I prefer to watch in the cinema but a good copy surfaced already, plus I don't want to wait until October to see it, so I downloaded the R5 version. As it turns out, the version I downloaded is missing about 15 minutes of the movie. The moment I realized something is wrong I stopped watching. I checked the forums and everybody was saying that the R5 version was nuked. Now, do I download the whole movie again in lower quality, or do I wait for a better version to come along, or do I wait for it to be released in the cinemas? I've already watched a third of the movie, and I need to know how the story ends. This sucks.

Mmmmmmmore... Natali Del Conte

Natali Del Conte

She keeps getting hotter. The green outfit from episode 68 has a lower neckline, but was loose and doesn't show the contours much. The outfit in this episode is tighter, but doesn't show as much cleavage. I can't decide which one I like better. But this time I know how to optimize YouTube videos, so you can see her in all her glory in better quality.

Yann Tiersen Makes Good Music

I was searching for mp3s on Google one day, and stumbled upon a song from the soundtrack of the movie Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain which I've just watched days before. It all started when I was listening to the radio and heard a remix of the 80s song, Africa by Toto. I wanted to listen to the original, but I didn't have it in my collection. So I searched Google for it using this magic string:
-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3 "toto africa" - Google Search

You can modify the search string to fit your needs by replacing the "toto africa" term to any song you want. However, back to that Amelie soundtrack, I downloaded the song I found, and kind of liked it. I searched around for the whole soundtrack album, downloaded it, listened to it, and it is a good album. All the songs are from Yann Tiersen.

I personally think this Yann Tiersen guy is a musical genius. Most of his songs are instrumental where he mixes sounds of the violin, piano and accordion to make exquisite music. I downloaded a few other of his albums and I like his work. It's a good alternative if you want to listen to music that has no or minimal singing apart from classical or techno. It sits in the middle between the two, not as slow classical, but not as fast as techno.

Here's a sample of what he's all about:

And about the music player above, I searched around on how to present multiple mp3 files so that the user can easily play them across platforms, and I found a Flash-based solution called XSPF by a guy called Fabricio Zuardi. This page tells you how to set it up, but the code on that page didn't work perfectly for me. It worked okay in Firefox, but in IE it loaded a different playlist. The syntax on how to create the xspf playlist showed on the site is okay, but I had to tweak the object embed code to make it work on both Firefox and IE. Here's my modified code:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0" width="400" height="170" id="xspf_player" align="middle">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
<param name="movie" value="http://www.yourwebsite.com/xspf_player/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://www.yourwebsite.com/music/playlist.xspf?xn_auth=no" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />

<param name="bgcolor" value="#e6e6e6" />
<embed src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/xspf_player/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://www.yourwebsite.com/music/playlist.xspf?xn_auth=no&autoload=true" quality="high" bgcolor="#e6e6e6" width="400" height="170" name="xspf_player" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /></embed>
</object>

And about the code above, I found out in that you can't just paste code to show it or it will run the code rather than display it. You need to "escape" it or something. Here's a website that con do it for you.