When the songbird sings

• It Was “Like A Huge Asshole Nest”
  This story offers a good lesson on how to deal with assholes and problem clients (not often one and the same), and how to wade through office politics. Project managers, rank and file, and consultants of all stripes should learn from the story.
  (tags: assholes consulting officepolitics books)
• Microsoft Excel Fails Math Test
  According to the NY Times report, MS Excel 2007 incorrectly multiplies “…six numbers from 65,534.99999999995 to 65,535, and six numbers from 65,535.99999999995 to 65,536.” Better get your good ol’ calculator handy.
  (tags: excel math bugs)
• A Visual Guide to Version Control
  Getting acquainted with version control applications probably was one of the toughest parts of my technical writing training simply because it was easy to foul up versions or copies. But the drill got easier eventually. The open-source version control application, Subversion, is still a favorite.
• Microsoft extends Windows XP’s stay
  I’m sooo installing XP on my laptop. Vista sux, as far as I’m concerned, as it eats up too much resources and asks too many questions even for the minorest operations. And yeah, XP is more user-friendly. Like, totally.
  (tags: WindowsXP vista)
• Say ‘Whaaaat?!?!’ North enforces DRM by executing K-drama fans
  “There have been two or three reports of public executions of North Koreans…as punishment for having illegally copied and distributed South Korean visual material,” said Kang Chul Hwan of Committee for the Democratization of North Korea. Good grief, to think that I enjoyed Lovers in Paris in a friend’s 21-disk bootleg VCD…
  (tags: kdrama northkorea entertainment)

There are times when I can’t thank the dibidi vendors enough for their collections of film gems that I would not get a hold of if I opted for the mall video shops or waited for them to be shown in cinemas. A short trip to MCS two weekends ago produced a well of hard-to-find titles all saved in just.one.disc at the measly sum of PHP70.

One of the titles I found was Starter for 10.

“…you can’t hide in your room forever, feeling sorry for your self. It’s not practical. At some point, you’ve got to get back out there, face yourself, and confront your demons.

“And yes, i’ve made some bad choices, lost my head, let people down–people I cared for. But there still might be time to get something right.

“Ever since I can remember, I want to be clever. Some people are born clever in the same way some people are born beautiful. I’m not one of those people. I’m gonna have to work it, put in the effort, and if I mess it up, I learn from it. Besides, sometimes it’s not about knowing the right answers. Sometimes, it’s about asking the right question.”

Starter for 10 stars one of my new favorite British actors, James McAvoy. It’s another coming-of-age story about a young small-town but very clever teenager who pursues his passion for learning by taking a course in English Literature at Bristol University. Inspired by his father, he cultivates interest in quiz shows and gathers bits and pieces of trivia, sometimes thinking if all the knowledge he collects are useless.

“As Francis Bacon once said, “Knowledge is power.” Which is why I want to know everything. I want to know about Plato and Newton, Tolstoy and Bob Dylan; what the words eclectic and peripatetic mean. I want to know why people actually like jazz. If I want to know the answers, I have to be in a place where people have a passion for knowledge. I think it’s important; sacred, even.”

While at the university, he meets a couple of eccentric flat-mates, a domineering quiz team captain, an activist Jewish student named Rebecca, and the blond bombshell of his dreams, Alice, who is also a member of his team.

As he attempts to help his friends to win the championship of University Challenge, one of Britain’s longest-running quiz shows, he also falls for the beautiful Alice. On the other hand, Rebecca keeps by his side throughout the turmoil that he goes through with the team, his friends, his mother, and his romantic disappointment, believing that he can actually make a difference. He and Rebecca’s faith are put to the test on the day of the championships. So close to winning the title, he disappoints his team by giving a correct answer even when the question has not yet been asked. The judges decide to kick him out immediately.

Embarrassed, he goes home to stew in his disappointment and eventually discovers that those who seem to have moved on still care for him: his widowed mother who has found a new partner and his best friend who still believes in him and the value of his education. When he returns to the university, he also realizes that his adviser has been waiting for him to turn up and, best of all, Rebecca is waiting for him to ask “the right question”.

The university does not disappoint in nurturing his passion for learning as it supports his quiz team, stirs his zeal for poetry, as well as introduces him to student activism through Rebecca. However, sometimes the best kind of knowledge is not that which is learned within the hallowed walls of the university, but through other people. Those he meets in college teach him the value of loyalty, respect, and forgiveness, and the dangers of falling in love.

“Starter for 10″ is pretty much your typical, cookie-cutter coming-of-age movie. However, it successfuly delivered a quirky cast of characters set in the backdrop of 1985’s social discord and identity discovery.

Rotten Tomatoes has published its mid-year report, which features a list of the best and worst reviewed movies of the first six months of 2007. The best reviewed movies include Ratatouille, Once, Knocked Up, Hot Fuzz, and Waitress, among others.

read more | digg story

The filmmakers wasted so much effort in their attempt to reinterpret the the fifth installment of the the Harry Potter saga. The narrative suffered from trying to put together a mish-mash of sub-plots (Dolores Umbridge, The Order, Dumbledore’s Army, Cho-Harry romance, Harry’s visions) which only proved that what worked in the book does not necessarily translate well into film. In fact, if you have read the book, you could afford to sleep through much of the film until the battle among Death Eaters, DA and the Order. You could at least appreciate the effort that the CGI team had put into the movie’s visual composition. Maybe that’s another reason why the film suffered: it stayed too true to the book’s content, not to its spirit.

The story could have worked better if the writers had not given too much face time to Dolores Umbridge and focused instead on what was going on inside Harry’s mind. His battle-of-wills against the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher only served to divert attention from the real subject of the story, which was that Voldermort was working through Harry. And what’s with stupid Kreacher, anyway? Or Ginny Weasley being all-powerful than practically all her wizarding peers? Come on!

HP5 featured few of Britain’s most talented actors, but acting could only save it so much from sloppy, erratic storytelling. Daniel Radcliffe and Co. did well with each installment as they pitted talents with the likes of Gary Oldman, Michael Gambon, Jason Isaacs, Julie Walters, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, David Thewlis, Imelda Staunton (with whom Radcliffe also worked in the BBC Drama adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic, David Copperfield) and Helena Bonham Carter as an emo-inspired and slightly deranged Bellatrix Lestrange. (Girl on my right: Wow, she’s goth. Girl’s boyfriend: No, that’s emo.)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix doesn’t feel like a movie that could stand on its own but a transitional episode that, hopefully, sets the stage for the last two films of the 7-part saga.

Side note: I realized that JK Rowling has been so unforgiving with Sirius Black. Harry’s godfather was wrongly accused of mass murdering muggles, and then sent to Azkaban surrounded by soul-sucking dementors for 13 years. Then, he escapes the Alcatraz-like prison and goes into hiding at his family’s grimy old place for two years with nothing but a crazy elf who kept muttering hatred for half-breeds to himself and a half-bird-half-horse beast for company. And the next time he leaves the house, he just gets himself avada kedavra’d by no other than his least favorite cousin. Quite a life.

In spite of the product placements that looked like movie adverts for GMC, Nokia, HP and eBay, Transformers the Movie is entertaining, explosive and exciting. It is so far the best film I’ve seen this “big movies” season; more entertaining than Spiderman 3 and definitely leaves Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer in the dust.

Executive Produced by Steven Spielberg and with George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic taking care of the CGI work, what would have been an impossible feat in digital animation was rendered and meshed well with real-world scenes. Say, gigantic robots fighting in downtown L.A. looked as real as possible. The action sequences sustained the over-all excitement of the story. In between are humorous bits that often took gander at the young set’s oft foolish, if not hilarious, pursuit of the “cool” and the idiosyncrasies of raising teens whose penchant for the highly commercialized pop culture seem inexhaustible. With Mikaela (Megan Fox) in tow, one autobot’s remark about Sam Witwicky’s (Shia Lebouf) pheromone levels could just as well refer to those of the male audience’s.

Here’s one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies, Before Sunrise. As everyone knows by now, the film, directed by Richard Linklater, is about a day in the life of the American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and the French student, Celine (Julie Delphy), who met on a train in Europe. When they reached Vienna, Jesse convinces the Paris-bound Celine to join him in looking around the city while waiting for his flight back to the States. While in Vienna, they visited various tourist spots, cafes, bars, monuments, a cemetery, a carnival and a music booth where they listened to a Kath Bloom vinyl record. The next morning finds them at the train station where they promised to meet again after six months. Celine takes the train to Paris and Jesse heads back to the US.

Memorable Quotes:

Celine:

If there’s any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed but who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt.

Jesse:

Alright, alright, think of it like this: jump ahead ten, twenty years, okay? And you’re married. Only your marriage doesn’t have that same energy that it used to have, you know? You start to blame your husband. You start to think of all those guys you met in your life and what might have happened if you’d picked up with one of them, right? Well I’m one of those guys, that’s me! So think of this as time travel. From then to now to find out what you’re missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you’re not missing out on anything; I’m just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and you made the right choice and you’re really happy.

The third installment still delivered an entertaining adventure in the Spiderman saga. The heart of the story revolves around choice–specifically, the choices that people make that tag them as either good or bad. Even Spiderman/Peter Parker, has to make the same mistakes and eventually choose to seek what’s fair; this is true for two of the three baddies in the latest, and probably the last, sequel.

The film’s writers firmly established the humanness of Spiderman due mainly to the aspects of his life that he has to fulfill or most of the time complicate his quest to send small-time criminals and souped up bad guys to the gallows–love, academics, work, family, and friendship. Unfortunately, there have been fight scenes that the CGI failed to capture as certain parts of the film looked terribly cartoonish.

You would enjoy Spiderman-3 mainly for the humanity of its three central characters–Peter, Mary Jane and Harry–and the intricacies of human relationships that they have tangled themselves with, not for the action scenes.

I just fell in love with Harry in this one. *sigh*

Jonas Diego YM’d the link to one of his projects, called Challenge of the Super Duper Friends. It looks like the guys from IAS, Inc. and its Philippine office which Jonas manages and which produced about 80% of the material had a blast working on the animated cartoon. It shows Democratic Party’s presidential hopefuls, such as Hilary Clinton, Barak Obama and John Edwards, with their “super duper” powers. The villains are 9-lives, Doctor Spin, $ and Petro Man.

Jonas wrote the copy for the characters’ profiles and had this to say about Hilary Clinton’s weakness:

“…experiences unexplained rage-attacks in the presence of fine tobaccos and cigars as well as displaying severe aversion to interns.”

It has been a long, hot, and boring five-day Easter break. Even when I was a kid, I dreaded the Holy Week all because it spelled b-o-r-i-n-g. No TV, no radio, and worst of all, we were not allowed to play. All that boredom plus the weird beliefs, such as no one should take shower after 3:00 PM on Good Friday, eating pork was prohibited, and no one should climb any tree lest they wanted to be attached to it until after Easter made everything simply unbearable. I am glad I’ve finally outgrown these superstitions and the inexplicable requirement that we had to attend the “Seven Last Words” sermon on sleepy Good Friday afternoon at a nearby stuffy chapel. There wasn’t anything much to do but contemplate the sacrifice of Christ as if we children actually understood what it meant. I still don’t understand everything about the crucifixion, but I guess that part should be covered by faith, right?

Holy Week is still boring, but I’m glad that there are streams of DVDs and reading materials to keep me sane. Life was back to semi-normal by Saturday so there were malls and moviehouses to go to, my mom went to Baguio with the rest of the extended family, and I finished watching 17 episodes of season 3 of Grey’s Anatomy yesterday. Speaking of Grey, perhaps due to the audience’s clamor for Denny Duquette, the pre-season break episode where Meredith fell into a coma, showed another touching Izzie/Denny scene:

The song is “Swans” by the Glaswegian band, Unkle Bob. Performing here is the lead singer, Rick Webster: