Keira Knightley movies

I just finished watching the director's cut of King Arthur and The Hole, both of which features Keira Knightley.

King Arthur claims to be "the untold true story that inspired the legend"--a claim which I doubt any well-educated person would have believed in the first place. Historical accuracies aside, they have very little evidence to make the definitive claim that the King Arthur of legends was a Roman centurion.

In the director's cut, they show the young Lancelot arrive to meet the young Arthur, with the both of them looking to be pre-teens, and then we skip to 15 years later, where we see Arthur as a... 40-year-old man...? Meanwhile, Lancelot is in his early 30's. They should have just made the thing 20 years later, instead of 15, if they were going to use actors who are so much older. I guess that might be why the scene didn't make theatrical cut... though I doubt it.

Overall, the movie itself was not too bad. The early battle scenes didn't need to be as long as they were, I thought; it was also shorter in the theatrical cut, but not for the reason of pacing.

I thought The Hole was a much better film than King Arthur... although I guess it's a bit unfair to compare two completely different types of film.

View From the Top

I had wanted to watch View From the Top in theaters when it was first released, but never got around to it. It flopped in the theaters, but I caught most of it on cable last night.

I thought it was pretty funny, with a good, if somewhat predictable, storyline. I mean, how many people didn't think about what would happen when instructor Witney (Mike Myers' character) asked for the tests to be passed to the front?

That didn't detract me too much, though, as the movie overall was still fun to watch, and Gwyneth Paltrow looked good, as always.

The Legend of Earthsea

I had missed this mini-series on SciFi, and saw it available for download on some torrent sites, so I downloade them and watched them over the weekend.

I must admit that my main reason of watching was for Kristin Kreuk (of Smallville fame). But of course I was also hoping to see a good story. Unfortunately, I was first distracted by the bad acting, and then by the bland story.

After I finished watching it, I found out that it was based on a series of novels. And apparently (as one would expect based on how bad the film version is) quite different from the source material. I think I might pick up these books to read the real story.

Awaiting Your Return

Helplessness, is ten thousand times reluctance to wait
Helplessness, is to be deeply in love with you but be apart
Though the road be long, you should also know
In my heart, I'm awaiting your return
Expectancy, like looking off into the wide seas

Due to separation, now the endurance of love is known
Due to separation, sadness was inevitable
Perhaps not used to having storms
But there are always chance meetings in life
With you, understand that love will not change for life

Accompany you to search for the courage to be alone
Accompany you to take on the pain and sorrow of being apart
The world inside of our hearts
Is a true love that will never be forsaken
Hope tomorrow we can lean on one another closely again

Due to separation, the love in the heart has deepened
Due to separation, begins the realization of how spectacular love is
Wish that we both will love each other forever
Being true to our hearts, we shall reach the future
With you, understand that love will not change for life


等你回來

無奈是萬分不得意的等待
無奈是共你深愛卻分開
路縱遠你也應知道
我心中在等你回來
期待如望向飄飄那滄海

原來離別方可知愛的忍耐
原來離別了不免有悲哀
或許不慣有風風雨
卻知生命總有際遇
和你明白愛一生也不改

陪你來尋覓孤單的勇氣
陪你來承受分開的痛悲
在心中你我的天地
是永遠摯愛不拋棄
期待明日再緊緊靠一起

原來離別了加深愛於心內
原來離別了始覺愛精采
願彼此永遠的相愛
靠真心定可到未來
和你明白愛一生也不改

New DVDs

Picked up I, Robot, Collateral, and the Collector's Gift Set of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on Tuesday at Target. DigitalEyes was supposed to ship me the LOTR gift set last week, but somehow the credit card didn't go through, even though I just sent them another payment. Which is too bad, since they're selling it for $59.95, while Target has it for $69.95. But I guess it evened out, since they're selling I, Robot and Collateral for $21.99 and $22.95, respectively, while Target has them for $15.99 each.

So I watched I, Robot on Tuesday night, and just finished watching Collateral. Both were good, in my opinion. I didnt think I, Robot was a bad as some of the reviews I've heard led me to believe, but I guess the more negative reviews were mostly based on the fact that the story had little, if nothing, to do with any of Isaac Asimov's stories from the book of the same title, with the exception of the famous "three rules," and Dr. Calvin. But obviously no one expected to walk into the theater to watch a series of short stories.

It doesn't look like the extended version of The Return of the King has any of the scenes I'm looking forward to, but I may be surprised yet. The whole extended scene of how Smeagol became Gollum was kind of useless, though. If you're gonna extend the movie, you should be extending on the stuff you didn't include from the novel, not from a short blurb mentioned in an earlier book... that's my opinion.

Global warming??

It's a cool place, and they say it gets colder
You're bundled up now, wait till you get older
But the media men beg to differ
Judging by the hole in the satellite picture

So where's this global warming thing they've been talking about? Only thing I know is that here in Southern California, it's not often that we get to near freezing temperatures, unless you're talking about up in the mountains, like the San Bernadino mountains.

Winter hasn't even begun yet, and already we're seeing temperatures at below normal for this time period? Wonder how proponents of global warming explain that... Or I guess I should take some more time to read that Wikipedia entry later.

Unexpected rain

I was watching Iron Chef when I heard over the noise of my computer fan what sounded like heavy rain... so I looked through the blinds, and sure enough, it was pouring. It's subsided to barely a drizzle now, but still, it was quite unexpected as I was out earlier and it didn't look like it was going to rain, and there was no mention of even being overcast in the weather forecasts.

Guess it's a good thing I decided not to get a car wash today.

Security check

I was stopped by the police while driving on Azusa today. Apparently they were doing some random spot checks. I wonder if anything was going on... I checked the national threat alert, and we're on the same level we've been on for months, so that's probably not the factor.

Did see a lot more police cars on the road today than normal, though.

Redline

Redline Water Wetter seems to be working pretty well so far... I got a new bottle last Saturday (since I got the new radiator, the contents of the previous bottle was no longer in my car), but the temperature gauge showed an abnormally high temperature while I was driving down Azusa Ave. on Saturday.

I guess maybe it just took some time before it got mixed with the rest of the coolant, because the temperature seems to have held down well on Monday.. but I didn't drive too much on the surface street, so some stuff remains to be seen.


As a side note, I was not able to tell if it was doing its job properly last time, as the old radiator was already doing pretty badly by the time I added Redline to it last time.

Dumplings

Went to the Chinese supermarket (99 Ranch) yesterday and got myself ingredients for dumplings, but didn't get enough dumpling skins... so I was only able to use up about half of the meat paste. So today I went to the closer Chinese supermarket (HK) and got some more. Looks like the Korean brand of dumpling skins are actually better, although they seem abit smaller.

Web Browsers

FireFox is my Favorite

Firefox 1.0

Shortly after I downloaded the official release of Firefox 1.0 last night/morning, I tried to update my extensions... much to my chagrin, it took forever for the update to try to connect to the update site, and I couldn't connect to extensions mirror at all.

I was finally able to get to homepage of all of the extensions I've installed, and repack them to work with the new version. The only extension I didn't repack is Firesomething... I'm not too sure if it will cause any conflict with the new version.

Watched "The Grudge"

It was okay. Wasn't really very scary, but maybe I've just become numb to all these horror movies.

The movie doesn't show thing chronologically, which, while wasn't confusing, does leave one wondering on the timeframe of when everything occurred. The only thing we know for sure is that the original incident at the house happened three years prior to the main story of the movie, and that the professor hurled himself off his balcony the day after the original incident.

When did the Williams family move in to the house? The hauntings had obviously been happening since the day of the original incident, and it seems like the Williams must have moved in and lived there for a while...

Who taped the cabinet shut, and for what purpose? Whoever did it must have seen something, and felt compelled to do so... but it seems like no one in the Williams household would have had the time to do so.

Yup

After closer examination of the damage on the bumper, it seems most likely that the damage was caused the the debris on the freeway, since there was also a cut into the center opening of the bumper, which could not have been caused by scraping on any curb.

I'll have to take my car in to the shop Johnny recommended, and hope they do a better job of painting it than the previous shops did.

Scraped bumper... again

The frustrating part is that I have no idea when or how this happened. I've been careful to avoid hitting anything all the time, and this still happened.

Whatever it was, must have taken place either when I was going home from work last night, or coming to work this morning, since I didn't notice it at all yesterday.

It could have been the piece of debris on the freeway this morning, that went under my passenger-side wheels. There was no way to avoid that thing except through sheer dumb luck.