Coredump

The Other Boleyn Girl. Two sisters become rivals over a king. Natalie Portman portrays Anne Boleyn, an ambitious, intelligent woman who had set her eyes on the king of England. Scarlett Johannsen is Anne’s sister, Mary, who eventually becomes the king’s mistress, earning Anne’s wrath. Well, we all know what happened to Anne, but the film chose to gloss over those historical details and focussed instead on the sibling rivalry, brought about by their parents’ (actually, just the father’s) ambition that eventually led to their doom. Historically inaccurate, but very attractive film nevertheless. [5/5]

Memoirs of a Geisha. A film adaptation of the novel with the same title, the story revolves around the life of Sayuri (Zhang Ziyi), her being sold to a geisha house, and her ambition of becoming a geisha. Now, I’m also guilty of this ignorance, but geisha are not prostitutes or courtesans, but actually artists — well-schooled in music and dance, and following a stringent set of rules and protocol. Rivetting performances from Ziyi, Gong Li, and Michelle Yeoh — all Chinese actresses portraying Japanese roles (interesting, but I’m not interested in the politics). Must read the book. [5/5]

Midnight Meat Train. Based on Clive Barker’s short story. I thought it would be great, having read some of Barker’s work, but I was sorely disappointed. I was expecting the usual hack-and-slash, blood-all-over scenes, but the actors came across as anemic. The photographer (protagonist?) wasn’t very convincing; and even Vinny Jones (Juggernaut in the X-Men: The Last Stand) as the butcher was not that menacing. Or perhaps that’s the intended effect? [2/5]

(… And a partridge in a pear tree. Heh.)

Not much updates from me, except:

• Got three more great finds from Booksale: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, The Confusion (Vol. 2 of the Baroque Cycle) by Neal Stephenson, and Something Wicked this Way Comes by Ray Bradbury — all for under a hundred pesos.
• I had the pleasure of trying out two sleek notebooks: an Acer Aspire Gemstone and a Gateway T-6311. Both were from balikbayan kamag-anaks who asked me to, er, stress-test their new toys. More on this when I’m done playing with them. Suddenly, I’m craving for a replacement to Mathilda (my Dell Inspiron) — not!
• My bro gave me a Seagate FreeAgent Desktop external hard drive. Yay! It’s 500 GB in a cool black finish, with a footprint of an office stapler. It now rests next to the 19″ LCD monitor. All I need now are a cheap NAS solution and a UPS, and my home computing setup is complete.
• Due to several NDAs I signed, I couldn’t blog much about what I do at work. Let’s just say it’s been a very interesting engagement. I’ll be in between team deployments (but with the same client) next quarter, so that gives me some breathing space to take on vendor and in-house training. My blogging will more or less be the same — I’m actually thinking of changing my tagline to “Posts of a weekend blogger”.

Got these yesterday from a second-hand book shop here in Cabanatuan City: (from top) Neil Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon; Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead; William Gibson’s Virtual Light; and Programming Perl, second edition, from O’Reilly. All for Php99 each.

Not bad at all.

It was another movie night for all company employees. I missed the previous movie nights (Beowulf, for one), so I wasn’t about to miss out on the last one for the year.

Based on Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (part of his Dark Materials trilogy — ohnoes, not another one!), the film portrays the quest of an orphan destined to lead the fight against evil, for — among others — free will and self-determination. The antagonist is the evil authoritarian Magisterium, a finicky antagonist, and a bit O.C., too, what with its obsession against “dust”.

The visuals are stunning, as one would expect from any multimillion-dollar fantasy flick, and the actors are quite engaging. Nicole Kidman’s character, the Coulter “woman”, is a cunning villain who plots and does the Magisterium’s bidding. James Bond’s Daniel Craig is also cast in an almost cameo role — heck, we only see him for about 15 minutes, tops.

What is embedded in my mind, though, are the armoured ice bears, a warrior race in the north, where war is “breathe like air, drank like water”. They remind me of the polar bears in the Coca Cola ads:

Nice.

Despite the supposed bad press it’s getting — that it’s a diatribe against organized religion and authority — the film somehow dilutes it. There wasn’t enough tension, not enough build up of conflict that would have made the story richer and more engaging. But, heck, it was fun, and it’s just a movie! I give it four snow flakes.

Credit: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times