Yesterday, I helped my new roommate move in! We’ll be living together for a year, so hopefully we’ll get along really well. To answer the two most common questions I get about her, she is in the physical therapy doctorate program at NYU, and I met her after she replied to my ad on craigslist.

The movie “Hero” stars Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, and Zhang Ziyi. It was directed by Zhang Yimou, who probably one of China’s greatest directors. This movie was beautifully shot and had an interesting plot behind it. The movie is broken up into scenes which represent one character’s telling of a story and others which are the actual story. It is especially interesting to note the differences in each character’s version of the story that they tell, and Zhang Yimou takes the opportunity to orchestrate some really beautiful scenes which use a color theme to separate each story.

Jet Li is no stranger to wire-work and this movie makes use of it in all of its action scenes, which are very impressive. The action scenes are really not the meat of this movie, however. They serve as punctuation and a plot device, and they are very cool, but this is not really an action movie, it’s more of an artsy movie posing as an action movie. Unfortunately, this movie was marketed as a Jet Li action/adventure movie and I think many people were deceived. I think most people were expecting the Jet Li they saw in “Romeo Must Die” and “Cradle 2 The Grave”. First of all, I don’t think most people knew that the movie was entirely in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles. Second of all, this is not anything like a typical American film. It’s almost the antithesis of the typical American film. I was very disappointed that at many times during the movie people were laughing (hard!) at the Chinese dialog, which in my opinion was delivered beautifully by some of the actors (especially the King of Qin). At about 3/4 of the way through the movie, one family actually walked out of the theater murmuring disappointment! One of them even walked back into the theater a minute later to shout mock-Chinese for a couple of seconds! These people are a great example of the kind of closed-minded ignorant moviegoers to whom producers cater and as a result are constantly dumbing down movies. Without Tarantino’s backing, this movie would never have been released here because it’s not “accessible” enough for the general audience. Thank you Quentin!

If I can be critical, I think the movie’s greatest flaw was that the heavenly Zhang Ziyi seemed very out of place. She plays a supporting role which seemed better suited for someone not quite as attractive.

As an aside, I just want to say that having studied Mandarin for two years, I was actually able to understand at least a few words in most sentences! It was very cool to see a Mandarin movie because most of the Chinese stuff we see here is from Hong Kong and is in Cantonese. For those who don’t know, which is most people, the director’s name is pronounced “jong ee moe” and the actress’ name is pronounced “jong zih yee” (more or less).

Anyway, I thought this movie was excellent! Beautiful and meaningful, with great action scenes to boot. 5/5 stars! If you don’t want to see it in the theaters, this movie is available for rental already, since it was released in 2002 originally. For more great Zhang Yimou, I highly recommend “Raise the Red Lantern“.

I gave my computer a heart transplant last night, replacing my original 320W power supply with a really nice 400W one. I probably didn’t need to do that, but since I recently just got a video card and I’m planning future upgrades, I figured it would be a good idea. Anyway, it made me think about how there are 13 year old kids that build their own computers from scratch, and that this is really incredible. I didn’t know much about motherboards until recently, when I decided to consider upgrading mine, but there are so many compatibility concerns it’s really easy to accidentally buy something that doesn’t work with the rest of the things you bought.

Anyway, after installing the new power supply, I crossed my fingers, plugged it in, and turned on the standby switch. There was a nice big blue spark inside the PSU and a small ‘pop’ sound. That couldn’t have been good! Shit! I figured I should turn it on and see if I had fried my motherboard… I turned on the computer and it beeped sporadically about 5 or 6 times, which has never happened before. I got to the login screen and my keyboard wasn’t working! The power light was off on my keyboard! Had I fried the keyboard? Had I fried the keyboard connector on the motherboard? If so I might need a new motherboard, and if I’m getting a new motherboard, I may as well buy a nice new one with a new CPU and new RAM! I was not looking forward to spending the money that would cost. So I shut down and restarted. The keyboard worked! So far so good…

When I had opened the computer to install the power supply, I noticed that my video card had about half a centimeter between its heat-sink fan and the network card underneath it, so I moved the network card down to a lower slot so the video card could cool itself more effectively. I think doing this confused my computer and was probably responsible for at least one of the beeps on startup. Also, my soundblaster card tends to need its driver reinstalled sometimes after you unplug the speakers from the computer, which makes no sense whatsoever, so I needed to do that as well.

The point of me saying all this is that these nerdy whiz-kids are amazing! I feel completely non-nerdy just thinking about it! I try to be a practical nerd and I think it’s a good middle ground.

I first heard of Dorian Gray when I saw “The League of Extraordinary Gentleman” which depicted Dorian as an invincible, suave, smirking pretty-boy action hero. I was glad to learn, upon beginning to read the book, that this was a pretty gross distortion of the actual character in the book. The novel is set in the 19th century in London and focusses on a trio of aristocratic men. This is my second taste of Oscar Wilde (I had read “The Importance of Being Earnest”) and I felt it was a real pleasure to read his style. Every sentence is carefully crafted to be beautiful, or so it seems. It didn’t require as much patience as I had thought, because the characters were constantly being fleshed out and the plot kept on moving on. The pace of this book seems to be perfectly measured. I will not reveal its details, but this plot is extremely original and very thought-provoking. The rich themes in this story include art, values, sin, and age. If this book doesn’t get you thinking about any of these things, I don’t know what would.

I am happy to say that I loved this book, from cover to cover! It’s my new all-time favorite, so obviously I’m giving it 5 out of 5 stars. A must-read!

I thought you should know that I revised my meatsauce recipe that I posted a little while back. The chief revision is the manner in which the meat is introduced into the sauce. Previously, I had said to add it after the tomatoes. I checked a bunch of recipes and they all say to brown the meat right after the garlic and onion (I had always done it that way, but for this recipe I tried it differently), so I moved the meat step before the tomatoes. I also adjusted some timing instructions. The primary concern was that unless the meat was browned without the tomato water it might be dangerous if the meat did not cook through all the way.

Eric trivia: did you know that when Eric was a young kid he would eat raw hamburger meat? I used to love cooking hamburgers. Partly because I got to eat some of it raw! I would usually take about 1/8 of a pound off of the hunk and stuff it into my mouth! This was not a “rare” occurance either (pun intended). Who knows what horrors this did to my digestive system?

Barry Lyndon is one of the few Kubrick movies which I had never seen up until recently, probably because I simply didn’t really hear anything about it. For the record, I’ve seen Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, 2001, Dr. Strangelove, and Paths of Glory. I consider every one of them a masterpiece in their own way. Paths of glory was not quite up to par with the newer ones, but the newer ones set the bar extraordinarily high. Anyway, I asked to borrow the movie from my coworker who highly recommended it. I knew nothing about the movie, so I got to see it with no preconceptions (except knowing it would be excellent).

I can honestly say Barry Lyndon is one of the most incredible movies I have ever seen. It is a 3-hour epic of one man’s fascinating life, and of course I am not going to say anything more about the plot. Kubrick has made every single shot picture-perfect and the music is incredibly powerful and effective. This movie contains the saddest scene I have ever witnessed on film. After the movie was over I felt completely overwhelmed. I didn’t know how to describe the feeling and I still don’t. It was not a happy feeling, that’s for sure

Like most Kubrick movies, the acting is excellent, but the scenery and the costumes and the dialog is so impressive that you can’t help but forget about the actors. I never said to myself “wow, what great acting”. Rather, I was completely absorbed into the movie and I wasn’t thinking about actors and actresses. Furthermore, I think even someone who could not understand English would be completely captivated by this film, given the beauty of each set and costume.

Need I say more? This is one of the greatest films ever made. 5 out of 5 stars.

I don’t know how to write about this without sounding like I’m bragging, but I just got a new computer and monitor at work… an Apple Dual 1.8Ghz G5 Mac plus the new 20″ cinema display! I had asked for the G5, but I didn’t expect that monitor! Oh my god it is just awesome to look at. Here are some glamour shots I took:

The glorious G5

The G5 from above

My desk!

The Village is M. Night Shyamalan’s latest flick, and it got mixed reviews, from what I heard. I went into it expecting some effective horror and interesting storytelling, and I basically got it! I am going to try to ruin as little as possible, but I assure you that this is a very interesting movie. MNS’s movies really shine not necessarily in the story itself, but rather how well he tells the story. I feel this movie was not only well-told, but it had an interesting story too. Don’t let the ads fool you, this is not really a horror movie. There are some frightening scenes, but you won’t pee in your pants (unless you are generally incontinent already).

This movie gets bonus points for some daring and original plot twists, and for starring Bryce Howard, who turns out to be Ron Howard’s daughter! I had never seen her before, but she pulled off a compelling performance. I may be biased, however… she is, in my humble opinion, probably one of the most beatiful women I’ve ever seen! See for yourself: IMDB Photo.

Anyway… See this movie! I give it 4 out of 5 scary stars. I would have been more enthusiastic about the movie, but the awkward old-fashioned dialog was hard for the actors to deliver convincingly and equally hard for me to listen to

Brazil is a wild, wild ride. Terry Gilliam was one of the lesser members of Monty Python, who mostly did the animations for them. I was a huge Python fan growing up, so when I first heard about Terry Gilliam doing “real” movies I wondered how they could be serious. The animations he did were very funny and well-done, but they were kind of senseless and really had no meaning. Kind of like doodles. Anyway… fast forward to whenever it was when I saw Twelve Monkeys (a more recent Gilliam movie). I was really impressed! I don’t know why I didn’t see Brazil sooner. Brazil is an artistic masterpiece by any reasonable person’s standards! It is kind of a mini-epic set in an utterly bizarre world which is stylized down to the most minute detail to Gilliam’s liking. You can see a lot of the nonsensical brilliance from the Python animations coming through in the wacky settings and devices that are in this film. I love it when films are shot on sets that have been exhaustively designed and put together just for the movie and it seems like most of the sets are like that here. The constant mockery of technology is hilarious and brilliantly thought out. It’s not really futuristic so much as it is an overgrown version of “old-tech” that has been pushed to absurd limits. Gilliam is probably insane, but aren’t all the best artists?

Overall, the movie does not have a happy feel at all, however, it is not depressing. It is fun, through and through. At many times during the film I was laughing out loud. Some parts were histerical. Film buffs (okay, anyone who’s taken film 101) should recognize the funniest spoof of Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” ever created! The main reason this movie shines is because it is strikingly original and it succeeds in holding your attention throughout the ride. Jonathan Pryce is fantastic and I don’t know how the Academy Awards didn’t give this movie anything. Robert DeNiro is great, too. I wanted to write this review before watching the commentary so I could get my original reaction down. I’m sure after hearing Gilliam’s commentary I will appreciate this movie even more! I give Brazil 5 out of 5 stars!

It took forever, but I finally put my first real paintings on the wall this Saturday! They are a triptych of sorts, as they belong together in a certain order. The frames were purchased unfinished and I really messed them up trying to finish them myself. The finishing stuff was old and gloppy, so it came out extremely uneven. Next time I will use fresh stuff! I shot them with my digital camera Sunday and they are a bit blurry because I didn’t use a flash, but you get the best sense of their color and feel this way.

Check them out here: http://www.ericmattes.com/gallery/rgb/