Why so serious?

Kuya, Andrew, Brittany and I went and saw The Dark Knight last night. Wow...what a great movie! I won't go a lot into it because you should just go see the movie and enjoy it for yourself. Although, it was kind of sad for the obvious reason - Heath Ledger's last role before he died.

In fact, it was the role that brought about his death, and that raises some serious questions. How far do you really take your job? For Heath Ledger and the techniques he used in order to play his role effectively, he took it to his grave. It was a strong performance, though. I haven't seen a character so animated and convincing since Jack Sparrow's debut in Pirates of the Caribbean. But is it praise worthy? When people watch this movie, they are literally watching Heath Ledger lose his mind and - safe to say? - his humanity! I guess there are a lot of people who have lost their lives from doing their jobs (soldiers, police, athletes, missionaries, etc.), so maybe it's all conditional. I'm not sure what kind of answer I have for it, but it has come up in my mind lately because of this movie and Eric's mention of this issue.

Phoenix, Afterwords

I finally sold my social life out (or what was left of it) and went out to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by myself. Oh, well. It was still quite enjoyable being in an almost empty theater since it's been out for months now. Anyway, the movie was pretty good. I heard a lot of flaws about it that I came in with low expectations, and that only leaves room for satisfaction and none for disappointment. I can see why people wouldn't enjoy this movie as much. It was all over the place, and there were definite references with no explanations. "Yup, you know this makes sense in the book."

Overall, though, I enjoyed it. Considering the heavy amount of content that was in the book, there's gotta be room for forgiveness. Movie adaptations are very difficult, especially for progressing stories like Harry Potter. However, this movie may have pushed me over the edge to start reading the books because there's just too much that doesn't make sense now without proper explanation. And asking people who've read the books to explain it to me just doesn't cut it for me. But anyway, I enjoyed the last part of the movie with all the cool special effects and seeing some real magic users. Not enough romance and drama, though. More Dawson's Creek-esque stories, please.

Collective Soul's new album Afterwords is also pretty enjoyable. It doesn't compete in energy with their previous Youth, except maybe their first track. It's quite mellow with more soft/pop rock, but like all CS music it grows on you. I already loved it by the second listen, which I can't say with a lot of other artist's new albums (ahem...Coldplay...Switchfoot...). If there is something you can count on, it's Collective Soul progressively making good music with unique sound and compelling lyrics. As Luke said, "There is a lot of variety on the album and it is easy to sense how they sort-of sampled different popular (current) styles of music and incorporated that into this album."

One more thing: Harry Potter is the man!

Valuable routine | Not X-men | Matchbox return

Now that all my traveling has sort of settled down, I've been trying to get back into routine. A couple of those things is going to church and Bible study. Not that I didn't go to church at all the past two months, but going to one church to another in different cities (and countries), it's just not the same. No connection with the community. I've been able to get back into the young adult Friday night Bible study at one church, and even though I've still have yet to pick a church around here in San Jose, it's nice to go to church closer to home.

And it's paying off. Being around other Christians discussing passages from the Bible is putting me back in a place where I'm more..."spiritually aware," I guess you can say. Even praying with others feels great and not socially awkward. Thinking on the Word and knowing it excites you is an encouraging thing.

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I finished "Heroes" today, the hit new series of last season. It was thoroughly enjoyable, and probably a better take on the story of "mutants rising" that the first "X-men" movie tried to do. But that's not being fair because "X-men" had only three 2-2.5 hour movies to tell the story, and "Heroes" had 23 forty-minute episodes to tell theirs. Even if the battles weren't as fantastical as "X-men," all the government conspiracy, character conflicts, and plot twists made "Heroes" much more complex.

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Matchbox Twenty is coming out with a new album about a month and a half. It's about freakin' time. Their new released single is kind of weird sounding, and I mean that in a "it doesn't sound like Matchbox Twenty" sense. Maybe it's because we've been hearing so much Rob Thomas on the radio lately that it just suffers from that. Pretty poppy, if you ask me. Great drum-work, though.

I'm inspired.

"Supermodels are beautiful girls, Will. A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you've been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise.

Promise of a better day.

Promise of a greater hope.

Promise of a new tomorrow.

This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it's going to be okay. The supermodels, Willy? That's all they are - bottled promise. Scenes from a brand new day. Hope dancing in stiletto heels."

-Paul Kirkwood (Beautiful Girls)


Beautiful Girls is one of the best movies of the later 90's, and this quote alone is proof of that.

Sharks and spiders and sand? Oh my!

Aw...poor Sharks. I am truly saddened about their elimination, but I also feel like they deserved to lose against the Red Wings when giving up games two and four with nothing but carelessness. That and the Red Wings solid team and determination. So now we will just have to watch the Western Conference Finals with the Ducks and the Red Wings. All I have to say is...GO RED WINGS!!! (Freakin' Ducks!)

Over the weekend Kuya and I went and saw Spider-man 3. Overall, I enjoyed the movie. It definitely is NOT better than Spider-man 2...or even Spider-man 1. However, that does not mean that I find it a terrible movie, but it does mean it was not a great movie. It was...alright.

(Warning: Contains major spoilers!)

There has been a lot of complaints about the movie, though, and all the complaints are understandable. For one thing, the emo characteristics to portray Peter's "evil" personality was totally stupid, which ended in a peak of stupidity at a jazz bar scene. I can see why they had this sequence in its total goofiness with him walking down the street (I did like the close up shots of his hands pointing at everyone). It worked really well in Spider-man 2 when they did the sequence of him enjoying life without his powers and super hero responsibility. Nevertheless, it didn't flow as well in this movie, and the emo style (especially the hair) was so out of place even for an evil Peter.

Like X-men 3, Spider-man 3 suffered from too many plotlines and the introduction of too many characters. Hence not enough screen time for either the Sandman or Venom to develop into characters worth caring about. Even Gwen Stacy's character created a lot of problems for the Peter/MJ/Harry love triangle to make it more like a love square, which was sort of dumb in any sense that's not Dawson's Creek-like. Gwen was really nice to look at, though.

In the end, we got a butler confessing to Harry about his observations of Norman's wounds and the Sandman confessing his unintentional yet tormenting killing. That's two too many confessions I think. It just seemed to wrap up two complex plotlines way too conveniently, not to mention that it doesn't make much sense at all. Why would the butler hold such information from Harry for so long and watch his hatred for Spider-man slowly destroy him from the inside? How come Spider-man let Sandman go, even with his heartfelt confession, when he was 1) a giant hammer-fall away from killing Spider-man, 2) was responsible for several bank robberies, and 3) put a lot of lives in danger in the process? Sandman may have had bad luck in the past, but the choices he made by breaking the law are irresponsible. Spider-man, of all super heroes, would understand that this can't be tolerated.

Harry's death didn't bug me at all. I liked Harry's story in this movie a lot (minus the butler confession), especially the conflict between his hatred for Spider-man and his love for Peter Parker. Him sacrificing his life to save Peter's wasn't extraordinary in any way, and probably more predictable than I think, but overcoming his hatred to redeem himself stayed true to the comics. Of course, his death was not conducted in the same way, but character was not compromised in any way.

The Dawson's Creek-esque drama was totally awesome, and they need more senseless love triangles (or squares) in these types of movies. That girly fight between Peter and Harry over MJ at the mansion made me smile. It was like a soap opera episode in a super hero setting. Brilliant!

With the negatives aside, the action sequences were spectacular. From the Goblin's return to the subway fight to the two-on-two showdown, I thought it was all pretty impressive. Although the repetitiveness of MJ falling from the sky was used twice (I count the one with Gwen Stacy) in this movie, it was still cool to watch the different ways she was saved. Goblin and Spidey working together like that was super cool.

With cool action sequences and the key characters not straying from their personalities or roles from the comics, I feel like the movie was fine. The biggest problem I had with X-men 3 was that most of the characters strayed from their personalities found in comics. Wolverine as the main leader? Ha! Magneto feeling guilty once he lost his powers? Ridiculous! Storm being way annoying? Well, I guess that's pretty accurate, but didn't help the other stuff. Even using the serum to disable Magneto was against the X-mens' beliefs they strongly established earlier in the movie.

(End spoilers.)

But I digress. Spider-man 3 was fun and enjoyable and still had a heart for the comics. Most of the problems that were created in the making of this film were from the producers, as I found in this website's comments. It's a shame, really. The movie would have probably been a lot better with just the Goblin and one other villain - either Venom or the Sandman, but not both.

Anyways, I probably won't go seeing it a second time in the theatres. It just wasn't THAT good. I will just go on to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which shows promise. And The Dark Knight looks more and more cool as the months go by. If anyone had doubts about Heath Ledger as The Joker, take a look at this! I got so giddy when I first saw this yesterday. Looks like the Batman franchise has potential to be better than the Spider-man series. Very cool.

The year of opportunity!

Okay, guys! The other day, I came up with the ultimate birthday celebration. A once-in-a-lifetime deal that I can only do this year. I will be turning 24 years-old in May, so to keep the number in theme we will be having a 24 marathon. It will be a whole week long, and we will watch 24 non-stop from the beginning of Season One to the end of Season Six. It's so brilliant I could cry!

Of course, we can't go six days straight with no sleep. We will start each season according to what time that specific season starts, and sleep in between seasons depending on what time the next season starts.

Also, I decided to start this party the week before my actual birthday. The first day will start at 12 am on Saturday, April 28, 2007, and it will end at 6 am on May 4. At the end of Season Six we will take a power nap, and then head over to a movie theatre. Why? For the opening day of Spider-man 3!

So free up your calendar from April 28 to May 4 because it's gonna be one AWESOME week! This is planned out better than a terrorist attack on 24!