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

_

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.
___

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).
_

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.
___

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.
_____

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.
_____
(Picture source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Color_icon_blue.svg)