Movie Review of Hitman: Agent 47

 Wow, it's been a while since I've done anything on this blog.  I won't go overboard because I still have lots of movies I'd like to say a few things about, even if I've watched them a while ago and they're not that fresh in my mind anymore.  I'll keep this review simple because I'd like to take it easy.

So in a simple sentence, Hitman: Agent 47 is one of those movies that you would watch to entertain yourself.  With that being said, I'm not about to deeply discuss about the cliches/tropes in this film but I'll mention the biggest ones.  Besides, this isn't a cheap Cinema Sins knock-off, and you, the reader, shouldn't have to read through one.

I knew when I walked into the theater to watch this film that I would be ending my summer with the movie that had the most action and explosion out of any other film (that I can think of right now) in theaters.  I walked out feeling more than satisfied with the action.  Lots of unknown and numerous bad guy grunts in full black body or grey business suits popping up to stop Agent 47 and Katia, the woman he's trying to save.  The trailers collectively did a nice job teasing the complete action sequences of this movie - they showed enough flashy parts to get people's attention as a trailer but saved the parts that were still even better for the complete film.  I enjoyed that aspect of the movie.

When it comes to the story of the film, it's quite lacking but then again, I doubt that anyone watched this movie for its writing.  If you've seen Terminator: Genysis, then you know the idea I'm trying to get at. You didn't watch the newest Terminator installment because it'd have critically acclaimed script writing - you'd have to be kidding for a film where Schwarzenegger says cleverly placed one-liners, twirls a shotgun, and is the original and best Terminator.  In that same manner, no one watched Hitman: Agent 47 for a script that would be better than Titanic.  Even if you haven't watched many movies, skimmed the Wikipedia article on the 2007 Hitman movie, or know the gist of the latest Hitman game Hitman: Absolution; you could still easily predict the ending of this movie half-way through the film when Katia asks Agent 47 a somewhat existential question about whether 47 is human or not.  It's kind of dry on creativity when the phrase "You are what you do" gets used in this film but I'll keep the spoiler-ish details low.  (I only bring some up here and there to make a point.)

There was one disappointment, though.  I mean, it there was this scene from the trailer that wasn't in the film.  The one I'm thinking of is when Katia uses her "ESP" to see that the bad guy goons are bringing in a cannon to blow up a room or building and then both Katia and 47 jump out of the farthest window.  The production crew probably had to use something to catch viewer's attention in the trailer but I guess they had to cut that scene from the movie.  The only way to confirm this would be to check the deleted scenes in the DVD, but until then, this was probably a case of the missing trailer trope.

It also as a few moments of comedy, which were kind of out of place but also were good comic relief.  Also the post credit scene is at the very beginning of the credits, so don't sit around and wait for it after watching all of the credits (even though the credits were rather short, only about 5 minutes).

All in all, Hitman: Agent 47 was a great action movie to mostly end the end of my summer before I start school again this fall.  Despite a weak plot, seeing lots of action was a great way for me to chill out and transition into the fall.  It's one of those movies that if you don't think much about it, then it's lots of fun.

Peace out till I catch up on a lot of movies I meant to write about.
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Photo credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hitman_Agent_47_poster.jpg

A World of Questions Exhibit at the Harbor Gallery

On February 5th, I went to see the current Harbor Gallery exhibit reception at UMass Boston called A World of Questions.  There were 120 posters (approximately about 12"x18") on display by Chaz Maviyane-Davies that dealt with various themes on the human condition, such as: global warming, big coporations, pollution, and Westernization.

The exhibit was pretty cool because I enjoyed how the quotes well suited with the photos or illustrations on the posters.  Also, I was surprised how Maviyane-Davies was able to utilize the question mark (by featuring illustrations or photos that had, or at least help contribute to form, the contours of a question mark) as a motif in every poster without making the repetition redundant and boring.  I don't have any pictures from the gallery, since I didn't have any camera with me and I felt taking pictures of Mayiyane-Davies' photos was copyright infringement.  (He mentioned how some of the photos he used in the posters were hard to compose, hard to obtain the right to use the photo, or wasn't able to pay to use the photo at all.)  Seeing the exhibit long after my classes were over was one of the few hours I'm glad I've spent during my school week.

Here's a link that has more details about A World of Questions exhibit that's currently at the Harbor Gallery: http://www.umb.edu/news/detail/harbor_gallery_presents_a_world_of_questions

Math question

I saw this math problem some time ago and I was never able to figure the problem out.  Here it is:
\begin{equation}
\frac{3x^2}{9^x} = 27
\end{equation}
I was able to obtain the following steps:
\begin{equation}
\frac{3x^2}{3^{2x}} = 3^3
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
3x^2 = 3^{2x+3}
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
x^2 = 3^{2(x+1)}
\end{equation}
This is where I get lost and can't solve it without a CAS or knowing that the answer is -1.  I hope someone can show and explain how to solve it the "pencil and paper" way.

Testing LATEX

I'm just trying to test out LaTeX on Blogger.
\begin{equation}
\int x dx = \frac{1}{2}x^2 + C
\end{equation}
Hooray, it works!

The Maze Runner - Movie Review

 
I watched The Maze Runner movie about five weeks ago.  Although I was planning on writing this movie review a week or two after watching it, I ended up really busy.  Right now I'm catching up.  Well, that's enough about roadblocks.  Honestly I did not know what to expect from this movie because, in my experience, movies made from books are never that great.  If the book is mediocre, then the movie is usually worse.  I will not dwell too much on the book since the book is not that popular, such as The Hunger Games or Divergent.

As a book, The Maze Runner was a promising start to a trilogy but is not so great by itself.  There were extremely gritty parts in the book that would definitely not make the cut into a PG-13 movie adaptation.  The movie definitely took out those gritty and also rather monotonous parts of the book out.  Surprisingly, the movie ended up better than the book it was based on.  Before sat in the theater, I could already tell that this movie was going to be better than the book from its trailer.  Although this was unexpected, I was glad to discover an exception to the "the books are better than the movies" media trend.

The Maze Runner movie takes out all the (not untasteful but) uneasy parts of the book that take over periods of days or even weeks and condenses them into an action-packed and suspense-filled (almost) 2 hours.  Sure, there are parts that do not make sense because of that.  For instance, there's the part where Teresa throws a Molotov at a Griever when the mechanical monsters first attack the Glade.  One of my friends commented that perhaps the Gladers could have used fire to fend off the Grievers.  There was no alcohol in the settlement in the books, so I guess this was "canon-conflict" if you ask the fanatics of the Maze Runner Series.  Yet this was a viewable reworking of the actual  Griever attack on the Glade that took place for about two weeks (I think, I read the book about two years ago), where 1 boy would be taken every night the Gladers did not get out of the Maze.  The canonical scenes are barely palatable with mainstream audiences - the movie makers were not selling out but I felt that their artistic license actually improved scenes that made me callous to the Gladers' suffering.  Other than that, those little "movie only" errors are something that nitpickers like Cinema Sins do.

I loved the visual effects.  The CGI was just right, it was not over the top or looked like the production hit the bottom of the budget.  The Maze effects were realistic, such as when the Maze moved its walls (which only happened when the Runners were in the locked Glade in the book).  The actors were extremely good and well suited for their parts.  I am not an expert with who in the Hollywood scene would be great for parts (there are not too many teen actors compared to well their established adult stars) but they carried out pretty darn good adaptations of the book characters.  Dylan O'Brien made a great Thomas.  He luckily did not carry over the occasional corniness of the book's Thomas.  Also Ki Hong Lee portrayed Minho very well.  I feel that the movie somehow focused more on Thomas and Minho a lot more than the other characters.  (This interaction between Thomas and Minho really comes out only in The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure.  Teresa had much more prevalent in the book but not a in the movie.)  The innocence of Chuck was perfect in the movie.  The same quality goes to Newt.

There were only two things that bothered me about the movie.  The first was how many times Thomas looked backwards every time Minho screamed, "Don't look back!"  I guess that's something Cinema Sins would catch if that only happened once.  However it happened at least five times, not to mention that Thomas somehow manages to look back at least 3 times yet still escapes peril.  The second thing that bothered me was the ending basically outlined plot elements that are extremely vital to the plots of the next 2 installments, The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure.  At the end, the head scientist Eva Paige mentions how there's a virus, the Flare, that ravages the Earth and that the Gladers are in an experiment that will help them find a cure for the Flare.  This seemed like just a scene that was put in just in case the sequel did not make the cut, which reminds me of movies that failed to produced sequels such as The Golden Compass and A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Ironically, The Scorch Trials is being made.  At this point I am cannot be sure if this scene was the result of the production's artistic license to put that "not so great secret" out there that kept the plots of Books 2 and 3 of the Maze Runner series fresh.  This might not be that much of a deal to the movies, however, because this movie creates quick, excellent, and concise versions of what actually happens in the books.

All in all, The Maze Runner is a great movie.  A major note: It is not a huge deal if a movie watcher has not read The Maze Runner series before watching the movie.  However the book series is probably a more realistic version of what would have happened compared to the movies.  The movie was always exciting and had just the right amount of suspense.  Good actors and actresses are also a plus, especially when the movie characters are extremely true to the book's characters.  I look forward to watching the sequel, The Scorch Trials, when the movie comes out.
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Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Maze_Runner_poster.jpg

Lucy - Movie Review

Last Saturday I watched Lucy with some friends, since we were impressed by the trailer that we saw a trailer for it a few months ago before we watched Transcendence.

A funny thing happened before I went to see Lucy.  I thought about how there was Morgan Freeman playing the role of a scientist in Transcendence how he gets tangled up in the affairs of a science experiment gone wrong (in that case Will Caster, the scientist, uploading himself into a computer).  In Lucy, Freeman seems to have a repeat of the same role of a lead scientist - except this time the "experiment gone wrong" is Lucy, a woman who develops superpowers after the bag of drugs in her body leaks as a forced drug mule.  So there how the basic structure of Lucy didn't surprise me at all - I kind of saw what was coming my way already because Lucy turned out to be kind of similar to Transcendence (in some ways).

So anyways, more about what I thought about the movie.  The movie was fun to watch but I tried to ignore what the movie reviews had to say.  I mean, the critics always hate on the Resident Evil movies but I love all of those movies (almost as much as childhood favorites, but not quite there).

There was plenty of action.  Yes, lots of action.  This made the story very fast paced.  It's not impossible to get the story down but if you weren't paying attention, then you could easily miss some minor parts of the movie that will make the movie very strange, such as Lucy is studying in Taipei isn't explicitly stated at the very beginning - it's mentioned very quickly once the story gets going.

The ending was kind of surprising to my friends but I wasn't really surprised - I mean if you see what happened during the whole movie, there's not that many ways that this movie could end.  I thought the ending was appropriate.  It's not quite a cliff hanger but it is certainly a fast paced ending - fitting like how the whole movie was.

After I watched Lucy, I just felt that more could've been done with the movie.  I really thought there would be more instances where Lucy would display and utilize a vast variety powers.  Also the shady drug ring isn't really featured in the movie besides the scenes where they try to retrieve the drug.  The gang could've been something more in the movie - especially with its history or just more information about it.  I don't think it even had a name.

There seems to be some criticism about Lucy as a movie about the brain.  First off, if you knew that "the average human uses less than 10% of his/her brain" was a myth and Lucy is a big budget Hollywood movie, you wouldn't expect much meaningful artistic license concerning the human brain.  So don't expect this movie to be more than what is really is, because otherwise you have an unhealthy outlook on movies in general (especially sci-fi ones) and the only thing you'll achieve at most is hurting your own brain.

As a side note, the best way to watch this movie is to not see many trailers for it beside the brief ones they showed on TV or a while back in theaters before the feature presentations.  If you watch too many trailers on YouTube, you might end up disappointed because collectively all the unique trailers kind of use a scene from every major part of the movie (beginning, middle, and end... without spoiling what's really going on).

Essentially Lucy is a great movie to keep yourself entertained in the summer.  Just don't think too hard about the "real facts" in Lucy, especially about the brain, or else you'll definitely won't be developing amazing with your own brain.

Thinking about: Nice Guys Finish Last?

I'm pretty sure that this topic will come up on my blog in a more coherent and articulate form.  However I've got to get myself started on something - I read that the only way to get better at writing is to write a lot.  The improvement will be an eventual effect of writing frequently and with the right effort.

I've been pondering about how people treat other people and their popularity.  I've noticed that the trashy, "bad" people are the more popular people and how the "good" kids are unpopular and don't get the praise ant attention they deserve.  This is kind of getting trite and corny but I'm thinking of the song "Nice Guys" when I think about this stuff.

Let me explain what I mean.  The "popular" people are the ones that get wasted, party hard, and even brag about those experiences in school during the week.  Those are all the people that get invited to parties and do "interesting," kind of lurid things that are worthy of likes, favorites, retweets, and Snapchat screenshots.  They're out doing all those "bad" and unreputable things yet they don't suffer social consequences - they might even be seen as "cool people."

The "good" kids are the ones that don't do anything that would get them in trouble.  However as a "good" kid, I've always faced a stigma of social isolation.  It's hard to describe but when people look at me, I feel that they don't see a person but something that is worse than empty space - it's like I'm a doppelgänger or made of antimatter.  Somehow I have this general feeling that the majority of people look at me and tell themselves that I'm not capable of having fun or even having small talk.  The truth is that I'd rather do things that have more significance, such as discussing current events, than something grossly mundane, like getting wasted.

It's not like I'm incapable of having fun.  I just can't have fun with just anyone, especially when it's something that's only fun for them and not for me, such as gushing over Hollywood stars after watching movies.  It's just really depressing when you can't be with anyone that thinks like you.  I don't mean clones of myself but people who at least value similar things that I also value.

Although people I'm close with advise me to just really mind my own business and live the life I want, it's hard to stay that focused when you're just with other people.  I don't want to sound like I'm complaining about being a loner but it's rather lonely to maintain higher standards for yourself when everyone else isn't doing the same.  It's not like having higher standards for yourself is a bad thing - it's just that so few people do this (let alone are capable of it) that it's hard to turn to anyone for support when the going gets tough.

I didn't start with a good purpose, didn't have good organization, and wasn't really sure what I wanted to convey to my readers but all I know is that I had some things that were pent up inside of me and I had to get them out of the confines of my mind.

10 Apps That Kill Smartphone Batteries (all running in the background)

My friend and I were talking to each other about apps that would kill smartphone batteries in less than six hours if left running in the background.  We were thinking up of just apps on any platform, not iOS or Android exclusive ones.  All of this was just mere speculation - I don't know how badly these apps actually drain smart devices' batteries in general.  (I mean, I didn't have performance tests and that whatnot.)  Also not every person with a smartphone would likely have all the all apps mentioned below or even use them at the same time.

(*If you really want to be technical, you'd have to let the smartphone get updates while the phone is asleep for the battery drainage to be dramatic, such as pinging for e-mail updates every 10 minutes.)

Without further ado, I present to you: 10 Smartphone Apps That Kill Battery Life

1)  Facebook

2)  Twitter

3)  Tumblr

4)  Pinterest

5)  Vine

6)  Snapchat

7)  Instagram

8)  YouTube

9)  E-mail (any type)

10)  Camera

Honorable mentions:  Weather (any), such as The Weather Channel

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Image credits:
Facebook - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Facebook.svg
Twitter - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9f/Twitter_bird_logo_2012.svg
Tumblr - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Tumblr_Logo.svg
Pinterest - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Pinterest_Logo.svg
Vine - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Vine_logo_green.png
Snapchat - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Snapchat_logo.png
Instagram - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/28/Instagram_logo.png
YouTube - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/YouTube_logo_2013.svg
iOS Mail icon - http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/10/tips-mail-iphone-ipad.html
iOS Camera icon - http://tripletsisters.wordpress.com/2014/03/02/ios-7-icons-in-pixelmator/
The Weather Channel icon - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.weather.Weather

Edge of Tomorrow - Movie Review

Right now I'm not really in that groove to make a very detailed Edge of Tomorrow.  I saw Edge of Tomorrow with a friend two weeks ago on Wednesday.  It was closer to 2 hours but the content of the movie justified its rather long length.
movie review... However I want to say a few things to say about

(Assuming you know the gist of the trailer...) Despite the repeated "resetting" in the movie, when Cage is thrown to the start of the time loop, the "resets" weren't at all tedious to watch through.  I really enjoyed and appreciated how the movie makers made an aspect of the movie that could've been tedious and redundant to watch the exact opposite.

Also the aliens in the movie weren't that bad.  There's a reason why they don't show what the aliens look like - they're also not all that mind-blowing either.  (Without blowing away the plot aspect that the movie depends on...)  However the aliens also don't appear in the trailers and all because their abilities - let's settle for that - would half spoil the movie.  It's kind of like Kite Runner, where what happens 70 pages and beyond into the book needs to be kept out of the book store's summary or else the whole plot is ruined and no one would bother to read the whole book.

Also the ending kind of felt like a stretch... (If you've watched the movie, then you know what I mean.)  Let's just say that the way the ending was going at first made me thought that the movie was going to start at square one again and that Cage wouldn't have escaped the time looping.

So in short I enjoyed Edge of Tomorrow.  It was a pretty good movie to me.
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Image credit:  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f9/Edge_of_Tomorrow_Poster.jpg

X-Men: Days of Future Past - Movie Review

About two weeks ago I went with a friend to see X-Men: Days of Future Past.  It was a pretty good movie.  The story was intriguing, the plot was well written, and the effects were of excellent quality.  (It sounds like a no-brainer but the effects were also believable - not just some insanely impossible CGI mess.)

The one thing that piqued my interest of faulty was the time travelling.  I mean even after the time paradoxes, I'm not quite sure that the turn of events would turn out just like how things did in the movie... but I'll let the X-Men fanatics figure out any discrepancies in that time sequence shebang.  My friend also had similar thoughts on that aspect of this film, though the thing that bothered him was that the mutants that died would stay dead.  I didn't share those sentiments, though.

Also making Kitty having time traveling related abilities seemed like a bit of a stretch, deus ex machina, or eucatastrophe (whichever you prefer).  I had vaguely remembered that Kitty could phase through objects but my unfamiliarity threw me off when the movie threw that non-canon curveball for this movie's plot.  This brings up how this X-Men film (since it's only the second X-Men movie I've seen for far) took it easy on viewers who don't necessarily have strong X-Men knowledge.

Besides X2: X-Men United that I watched in 2nd grade (back when I couldn't piece together movie plots even after watching movies several times) and the sparse X-Men cartoons from my childhood on Kids' WB TV, I went to watch this movie without all that much retained background knowledge on the mutants.  Despite this I still made the plot of the film pretty well, since apparently Days of Future Past didn't rely that much on the previous movies.

Last but not least, (this isn't really a spoiler, since this scene isn't that essential to the plot) I want to mention the Pentagon kitchen scene with the teenage Quicksilver.  The scene in a sentence is how Quicksilver hilariously disarms a group of Pentagon guards when the mutants are cornered in less than a fraction of a second (thanks to Quicksilver's speed).  That scene was so funny and so well done.  At first the comic scene seems a bit out of place in the overall serious movie plot... although after some reconsideration, it turns out to be much needed comic relief for a ominous plot that doesn't let up until the very last scene.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is a movie that doesn't disappoint.  I'm definitely going to see the next X-Men movie.  Oh, by the way, if you haven't watched the new X-Men film yet, you should be aware that there's some post-credits scene that hints at the next movie.  So don't walk out on the credits - I only did that because my friend wanted to leave right away after the movie.
Moral of my story:  When watching movies from a successful big-budget franchise, watch the credits.  There's a good chance that a post-credits scene will be there to award the tenacious after the credits.  Most likely that scene will hint at the sequel (like this movie or The Avengers) or just be plain funny (such as in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets).
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Image credit:  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/X-Men_Days_of_Future_Past_poster.jpg

I like Fancy Pants Adventure World 1 Remix

After I graduated from high school (I'm not feeling the nostalgia at all), I have a lot more free time now.  However I don't plan to waste it all on the Internet... I've been planning to really make more online content this summer (whatever that means) than just looking at other's work.

I've really enjoyed the Fancy Pants Adventures flash games.  I've played Worlds 1-3.  Yep, I've been one of those players from the beginning.

Not too long ago, when I logged onto BourneGames.com, I noticed that FPA: World 1 Remix was up.  I decided to play it, since I was wondering if World 1 Remix was going to be a World 3 stylized version of the original World 1.

To my surprise, World 1 Remix was more like a rethinking of World 1 rather than a refurbishing of the original.  I finished the game in about less than 1 hour.  (Hopefully) I did find almost all the extras (pants colors, patterns, and hats) except for the aviator goggles and hat.  I did get those after a second play-through to make sure I didn't miss anything.

The only things that disappointed me were that you couldn't do wall runs, Fancy Pants Man could only do forward slashes and couldn't kill enemies, and the Angry Penguin didn't make a return.  After thinking for a bit, these choices made sense because wall running was only introduced into World 3.  The pencil sword was kind of a surprise bonus and wouldn't be required in World 1, so the limited ability it has actually makes sense.  Finally the Angry Penguin would have been way too easy to beat if the World 1 Remix stayed true to the original.  The Pencil Boss was really challenging at first.  This was mostly because in World 3 the pencil was required to beat the boss, Captain Rainbow Beard.  The Remix boss was more like a challenging Rabbit boss of World 2... which is kind of a throwback to the original FPA games before World 3.

I also realized that cliff hanging wasn't available... this caused me to fall off into bottomless pits many times (and unnecessarily) lose bits of health.  It wouldn't be so bad if the power slide (which was another bonus goodie) wasn't brought into World 1 Remix in places where you could fall off easily.  (You know the areas I'm talking about if you've played the Remix.)  In World 2, I could slide away on any flat surface and not worry about falling off any cliffs because of the cliff hangs... then again the cliff hang wasn't in the original World 1, either.

Anyways, those things were actually super minor and I could care less because it seems like the game mechanics of every iteration of FPA is slightly different ant unique (kind of like snowflakes).

So in the end I'm glad I played World 1 Remix.  I didn't miss out on any new story but I've got an idea of how World 4 could be like, since the animations of Fancy Pants Man were so detailed and so much better than in World 3.  By the way, I would love to do some videos or screencasts of FPA but I just don't know how I would sync the audio with it.  I'm excited for World 4... although that might take a while.

And, oh, some screenshots of the World 1 Remix after I beat it.  Fancy Pants Man briefly holds the pencil sword in the World 1 Remix menu.

And this is the glorious moment Fancy Pants Man obtains the pencil sword after beating the Pencil Boss.  (I think this was the fifth or sixth time I beat the boss.)  I thought it was funny how the Pencil Boss and the pencil were just photos instead of drawn out ones like in World 3.  I guess it makes World 1 Remix unique.

An interesting Tumblr picture I found...

So I was thinking about this Tumblr picture that I reblogged some time ago.  It shows famous people (mostly famous philosophers before Lil Jon) and how they have reduced the first iteration of Aristotle's "What does it mean to be a good person?" to Lil Jon's "What?"

I gathered that this a pretty popular meme-eque picture.  You'll find it if you search "philosophy losing its essence" on Google.

I suppose this is an argument that as time passes on, people become less intellectual.  I think that's pretty invalid until Lil Jon.  However I think whoever made this was pretty funny and clever about it.
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Image credit: http://favoritesoftheartistasian.tumblr.com/post/67707341628/the-degeneration-of-human-thinking-during

Transcendence - Movie Review

I know it's been a long time since I wrote on my blog.  A whole three months worth of inactivity.  I guess I was busy because I procrastinated and had to finish work.  Plus I was studying for some AP Exams.  So I guess that's a lesson to not procrastinate and such.  I do have a lot more time now that I'm not in high school.

During April vacation, I watched Transcendence at the movies with three friends.  I guess we all liked it.  I also watched this a while ago so I don't remember all the details that well.  Also don't expect this to be spoiler free because this is a movie review done by someone who already watched it.  I also wanted to complete this a long time ago but I didn't get to until now.

Although I've never done a movie review before, I don't be giving those numerical scores to movies because it's kind of silly to me.  I mean, if you have a number scale it should be universal but this kind of material is subjective - so scores are also out of the question here.

What I really liked about Transcendence was that it was very though provoking.  It wasn't like a I am Robot, saying that technology will be the bane of human existence.  Its message was more like, "If you get too focused on fixing the world with technology, you miss out on a lot in life."  This was evident because technology was very prevalent and was used throughout the beginning of the movie.  When Dr.Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is uploaded into the computer, he eventually makes amazing advances in technology.  It seems like Caster is altruistic and things should be fine until the other characters realize that the healed people basically have Caster uploaded into their brains.  Apparently others cannot think for themselves or it is inefficient to do something like that if "advances" are to be made.  However these "advances" were in name only because the healed people, who controlled by Caster, were not conscious that they were healed.  In the somewhat tragic downfall of the uploaded Caster, Caster makes himself a body so he could be with Evelyn, his wife but he is finally shut off by the virus nanobots that Evelyn has.  All of the movie events Caster was in seemed like a waste when he was trying to make Evelyn happy but in almost all the wrong ways possible ways.

There was one thing I didn't get: why Dr. Will Caster had to look like a hipster.  Well, that was when Caster had his glasses on.  That probably bugged the frick out of my friend (since he made an incensed comment about how horrible Peter Parker looked in The Amazing Spider Man 2 with a hipster hairdo).  If they think that the hipster look made Caster smart, the movie people were wrong.  Hipsters are known to have vanity issues or identity complexes ... now that I'm thinking about it, the hipster look does fit Caster because of that.

I just looked at the ratings for Transcendence and there were pretty low... 3/5 star rating low.  I could see why - it did have a lot of logical problems.  For instance, Caster at one point in the movie knew that the anti-tech people were trying to implant a computer virus.  Yet at the end, Caster lets Evelyn into the super computer place and heals her, which lets the virus inside Evelyn into Caster and end him.  (I just realized that angry critics could use this as a STD joke.)  There was that kind of little things that would make this movie perfect for counting "movie sins" in another YouTube episode of "Everything Wrong with Transcendence."

An interesting not is that this movie is difficult for those religiously conservative people, especially of a monotheistic religion, to get very upset about the movie's content.  The movie, in my perspective, didn't encourage people to value technology over personal worth or anything like that.  I thought the movie had more of an attitude of: "You can have as much technology as you want but feel very empty inside of yourself."

Despite all of this, this was a good movie that would have lots of good discussion topics dealing with advances in technology vs. human nature and things like that.
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Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Transcendence2014Poster.jpg

That #Selfie song...

Last night I heard "#Selfie" and today I finally got to watching it.  Not that I really liked it - I just wanted to see if there was really anything great about it.

A YouTube video of it is here:

I think it was only popular because it featured a pop culture phenomenon that catered to the viral video attention span of a lot of Internet or smart device users.  Other than that the song had standard dance music fanfare.  I didn't appreciate the snobby, Mean Girls-esque gossip girl speaking in a bratty voice in the song.

I usually don't do music reviews and I know I'm talking about "old" stuff here.

Oh, and by the way, that'll only be the few times I actually use a hashtag... unless I make a joke about hashtags.

Social Interactions, Social Networks, and the Color Blue

There was this joke that a friend told me in 11th grade music class.  It went among the lines like this:
Q: Why are social networks blue?
A: Because it's the same color as the sky, since people don't go outside anymore.

Although I saw the situational irony and sarcasm in that joke (along with confronting a question I've asked myself before), I also noticed the sharp social observation in the joke.

I noticed that not that many people actually walk outside now.  Yeah, high school students who are very active in extracurricular such as sports and drama can't be successful when they're glued to their phone.  However I noticed that even if teens my age are outside, they're always on their smartphone or similar device.

Well, I guess I'm going to be self-conscious about my lack of a smartphone until I get one.

Nah, I won't because I won't let the NSA wrangle out more personal data about myself than it already can right now.
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(Picture source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Color_icon_blue.svg)

Stereotypes in American Born Chinese and Wuthering Heights

I can't believe that it would be this possible to hate an archaic book character (in the context of both the novel and today's world) until I met Joseph from Wuthering Heights.  I don't think this'll ever be a full literary and critical thesis of why I hate Joseph but it definitely has the potential to be so.  However if Emily Brontë crafted Joseph to be a despicable character, then she has certainly accomplished that.

I know that some people won't mind him or even skip what he's saying in the novel.  I like to read every word, even if there's no translator for Yorkshire accents.  (This is starting to bring up my inablility of deciphering Liverpool accents in my mind as well.)  Despite being accepting of differences in people, I feel that Joseph's accent is kind of disparagingly stereotypical.  I don't know why but it seems like Joseph is portrayed in the same streotypical way as Chin-Kee is portrayed in American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.

Though out American Born Chinese, Chin-Kee (shown below) is the manifestation of Asian stereotypes.  He is portrayed as very annoying and insulting in Danny's story.  The unfitting sitcom laughter placed in the racist situations Chin-Kee brings about would be absolutely biting dark comedy if it wasn't for the book's extremely bright color palette.

 I feel like Brontë is doing the same with Joseph.  For example in Chapter XVII, Hindley ends up hurting himself when trying to shoot Heathcliff through the window.  When Hindley starts bleeding everywhere, Joseph gets pushed onto the ground by Heathcliff to clean up the blood.  Ironically Joseph starts praying instead of being like every other normal servant (let alone human being) who would clean just up the blood.

After some consideration, I think that Brontë is trying to put down older people of her time who are conservative and traditional in their religious views.  Joseph's portrayal of ridiculous and impractical zeal really puts shame onto the character.  Joseph is pretty much a scumbag as far as I can tell.  Plus his actions in Chapter XVII provides situational irony when put side by side with his religious zeal.  Also despite his religiousness, Joseph is a pretty useless human being.  I don't mean to jump to such broad conclusions but how can I stop myself from saying that when Joseph cannot even interact normally with other people?  I'm not even going to go into the instances where Joseph is useless.

I guess connecting to other novels isn't a bad choice when trying to understand other pieces of literature...
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Picture source:
http://mickkrongchon.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/american-born-chinese-chin-kee/

Wuthering Heights, Nice Guys, and Bad Boys

Representing books with songs seems like a garish fad.  It just reminds me how teens with lots of angst try to identify themselves with songs or bands because the song just reminds them of how they feel and not what they really are. Anyways, all of this reminded me of an 9th grade activity that I did, where a song had to picked that described some significant aspect of a book.  In that activity I had picked "Every Breath You Take" to describe Pip's relationship with Estella in Great Expectations.

I remembered this when in class Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" was played to go along with the current book.  This was probably one of the weirdest music videos I've ever seen.  Surprisingly Kate Bush hasn't taken drugs as far as Wikipedia knows, contrary to possible first reactions.  (I was told that the music video was weird because it was released when music videos were being made for the first time.)  Her video is here:

 

Using the same thinking from song and book activity, I thought that "Nice Guys" is very fitting for Wuthering Heights.  The song is sung by Kevin Wu, Ryan Higa, and Chester See.  It's about how the "bad boys" is cooler than the "nice" ones when it comes to dating.  Not that I think being a bad boy is the way to go when dating.  "Nice Giys" is here:

 

I thought it was appropriate for Wuthering Heights because Heathcliff is the "bad boy" of the novel and has the true emotional love for Catherine Earnshaw.  Heathcliff could be viewed as someone who was influenced to become a "bad boy."  Firstly Hindley abused Heathcliff as a child and as an adult. Secondly the Lintons were repulsed by Heathcliff, especially Edgar. On the other hand, On the contrast, Edgar Linton is the “nice guy” who has everything else right but the emotional passion for Catherine. Although I'm not promoting revenge or treating women badly on dates, Heathcliff does "finish" before Edgar, since Heathcliff took away Edgar's family legacy of Thrushcross Grange and the life of his love Catherine Earnshaw.  However all of this ends up as a double-edge sword unto Heathcliff, since he dies in a deprived emotional state.

Somehow this  mentality of "'bad boys' or 'alpha males' are the best" when dating is really silly because usually those most of those types of guys are really douchebags and worthless human beings.  Then again I don't count this against people who get caught up in this kind of stuff because they usually don't know better.

Thoughts on Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie

I'm going to be honest about how I'm going to be doing book reviews.  I'm not going to be a prospective book critic and I don't ever plan on being one.  Despite this, I'll try to convey my thoughts as an average reader to you.

I had to read Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie over the summer for my English class.  I thought it wasn't so bad because the mystery novel seemed to have a very different style of plot than most detective stories seem to have.  (Then again I'm comparing this book to those pulp mystery novels that I used to thumb through while at Stop & Shop back in middle school.)

For me the story itself was hard to get into, especially if this is your first Hercule Poirot book.  This makes it hard to understand some (but certainly not critical) references to a previous book in the Poirot series.  The beginning is very captivating, since that's when the pivotal murder happens.  Then the story gets stagnant for about 50 pages, from what I can recall.  This is because this is when Poirot is being brought into town and he's just settling himself in.  Also this part would only be appreciated by those who've read all the other Poirot books, since they bring Spence who's a character from the series.

Besides that, the story was pretty compelling.  I don't mean it was really action-packed but it made me want to read it to the end.  I read the whole book in 1 summer day just because of this.  Not many books compel me to read the whole book in one day.

The only downside to the book was that there was this anti-climatic point of the story.  You know what it is when you read this passage, somewhere three-fourths of the book in.  It goes like this:
"[Poirot:] '... I have the idea, you see, that a lot of separated incidents might tie up more closely than anyone has thought.  Not all of them.  Probably not all of them, but several of them.'
'It sounds interesting,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'but I can't see-'..."  (p. 170) [in my edition, which I don't know and I don't have anymore.]

 In the end, Hallowe'en Party was a pretty good book.  I just don't see the historical importance or controversy about it.  Maybe it's because there are close to no accessible sources online that talk about it.

Not the Death but The Decline of Camcorders

Technology has always been changing often replacing the old with the new.  One doesn't have to look far back into recent history to see this way of the technology industry.  An excellent example of this is the smartphone, which has not only changed the way people see and use their cellphones but also even changed other technology markets.  Some technology have declined with the rise of smartphones.  Devices that have declined due to mobile technology are cameras, especially the DSLRs, voice recorders; and camcorders.  Certainly the average person doesn't go out and buy these "declining" devices.  Only people who really need them would get these less popular devices.  However just because the demand for a device is declining doesn't necessarily mean that it is or will be obsolete.  The persistence of camcorders is the most pertinent here.

Camcorders have been around since I could remember.  I remember watching America's Funniest Home Videos in the afternoon when I was in third grade (around 2004).  I always remembered that I always wanted one because I could see that other people could record cool content with camcorders.  Although I've never had a camcorder, I know they have their pros.  Camcorders are good for what they were made for: recording videos.  So there's no fear that a recorded video can only be 20 or so minutes long.  Also, camcorders are not really limited by their video quality, memory space, or battery life on one charge compared to more convenient video recording on devices like the iPhone.

For those who think that everyday video recording can be replaced by all-in-one machines (a.k.a. smartphones), think again because this case, multipurpose devices with video in them almost always have compromises to make everything fit into one convenient package, such as the iPhone.  Despite what is stated on the gung-ho info page on the iSight Camera on the iPhone 5S, the iPhone is nothing compared to dedicated camera - even a point and shoot one.  Remember that what you see on that iSight website was the iPhone only its best, which means that the pictures could only get worse than that marketing bullcrap.  Besides I've only seen my vulgar classmates use iPhone cameras to post selfies with as many people for Snapchat and those pictures are really horrible in everything technical about a digital photo, from quality to lighting.  Besides, how much can the iPhone camera improve since it still has an 8MP camera since the iPhone 4S.  Other than some very fine details, software has made the iPhone camera better compared to the hardware itself.

The decreasing popularity of a device doesn't mean that the device is useless.  For example, radio isn't the first form of media most people go to when given the choice.  There's the TV and Internet, which are more appealing than the radio because the TV and web are very visual.  Yet that doesn't take the usefulness of the radio, especially in the car or when the TV and the Internet are unavailable.  Similarly, the recent audience for camcorders have dwindled down to the ones who really are looking for a camcorder and not those who get one just because "everyone else has one."  It all goes down to functionality and specifications - just how many purposes a device can have and how well does the device do each function.  Despite smartphones winning over in functionality with their multitude of uses, the camcorder is victorious in video recording by a lot.

Camcorders are not so popular as they used to be.  Since smartphones are becoming more widespread now the use of camcorders have fallen significantly, along with many related and similar technology.  However camcorders still survive because of the niche audience who really wants or needs the functionality of a camcorder over, say, an iPhone camera.  Devices in technology should always be looked at both their aspects in function as well as specifications before deciding how popular or disused they are.

The (Silly) Reason Why Mitt Romney Lost the 2012 Presidential Election

After some thinking, I've figured out why Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election.  Actually it's rather silly but I'm still convinced that the reason I'm thinking of may have had a tangible effect during the election.

Mitt Romney lost the election because of the YouTube video, Mitt Romney Style.  I must've watched that video about 20 times since I've heard of the video, which is right here:

The corollary to Mitt Romney Style is the Hot Problems parody (featuring Mitt Romney, of course).

I know it's kind of stupid to say that a (/two) YouTube video(s) could've made a presidential candidate lose an election like that.  However it's difficult to recall any other parody video of either Mitt or Obama that got about 50 million views.  (Also it is one of the few College Humor videos I enjoy.)  I mean, this video of Obama doing Gangdam style only got a few measly 1 million views:

I'd also not like to go into the factual and truly political details of why Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election.  That task would be for political experts such as those working for CNN.  I already explained to my Spanish class last year why Romney lost in a paragraph I read aloud based on an article from El País completamente en español.

All in all, my "reason" is pretty silly and is absolutely in no way an reliable resource to why Mitt Romney didn't become president in 2012.  However it is interesting to see that all of this suggests that social media (such as YouTube) has the potential power to influence current events.