Month: March 2006

General

V for Vendetta

By on Monday, March 27, 2006

Remember, remember, the fifth of November.

I don’t know about the fifth of November but I sure will remember this movie.

Coming from the Wachowski brothers of the awesome The Matrix and the not-so-awesome Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions, you would expect V for Vendetta to be a great action-packed movie. But that is not really the case. There was not a really spectacular action scene except towards the end when the protagonist eviscerates a bunch of the British Gestapo in a few seconds. Okay so it was slowed down, but that’s for the benefit of the viewers :P

This is not to say the movie is not good. in fact it is very good. But for other reasons. Aside from a being a bit of an action movie and a not-so-quite-love story, it is also an almost political movie. An oppressive regime, a diabolic scheme to gain and maintain power, a vengeance seeking freedom fighter (or terrorist depending on who you talk to), the use of the media for political purposes, inspiring the reluctant into taking action against oppression, … It was actually this side of the movie that I liked best. Parallels to the current situation in this country? You be the judge. For that you need to watch this movie. So go!

Rating: 5/5

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Look Before You Leap

By on Thursday, March 23, 2006

These days people want to just act. To get it on. To just do it. To take the plunge. They say that if you don’t do it then you’ll never stop wondering what could have been. But on the other hand, if you indeed do it and fail then you end up wondering what could have been had you done it some other way. And you wish you could have done it this other way. But it’s already done and, worse, probably it’s irreversible. So I say, before you do it, say something, send that email, send that SMS, think hard and think twice. Take a look before you take that leap.

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General

Lord of War

By on Thursday, March 16, 2006

Scarcely a few weeks have passed from seeing Syriana when I get to watch another movie on evil corporations. In Lord of War it’s the military and the arms industry, the so-called military-industrial complex. Nicholas Cage is Yuri Orlov, a big if not the biggest player in the arms trade industry. As usual, Cage is great though at times I forget that this is a rather serious movie. I think he has played one too many comedies :P

In the movie, Orlov narrates how he got started on the industry, starting with a few Israeli Uzi to truckloads of Russian AK-47s and even to tanks and helicopters. He tells how work has affected him: how he lost his wife, son, brother, his humanity… But this is not just about the story of a lost soul, it is also an expose on the industry. Throughout his story, the movie shows the ugly side of the industry (is there a pretty side?): people killing, people dying. And not just ordinary people but children. The movie also showed the drugs and the conflict diamonds which are frequently used as payments for arms are shown to complete the picture of how evil the trade is.

Unexpectedly a pretty interesting movie.

Rating: 4/5

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Lefty Logitech Mouse

By on Saturday, March 11, 2006

Lefties of the world rejoice! Logitech will soon release a left-handed version of their leading-edge MX610 laser mouse. It seems Logitech’s CEO is a southpaw and he may have pushed for the design and development of a left-handed version. He would know that lefties would be bleeding-edge early adopter kind of people ;) Now if only they have it in Thinkpad Black.

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Trigger Happy Cops

By on Friday, March 10, 2006

There seems to be something fundamentally wrong with the training of cops (or lack of it) in the Philippines. A few months ago, anti-carnap cops of the Traffic Management Group (TMG) gunned down three alleged carnappers. Now they’re at it again. They shot at the car of a pharmaceutical executive.

Luckily, the guy was able to continue driving and the cops weren’t able to give chase. Had things been different, we probably would be reading in the news about a drug crazed executive (it would be hard to frame him as a carnapper) killed after firing at the cops. Of course, the scene will be complete with a sachet of shabu and a Jericho pistol. Maybe even a wounded cop.

But back to training. There’s the matter of proper flag down procedure. There’s the matter of car recognition. And finally, there’s the matter of the objective of anti-carnap cops being not to just stop carnappers, but also to recover stolen cars. Unless there is a clear and present danger to other people, they should just let the carnappers go if there really is no way of stopping the stolen car but to start shooting. After all, what good is recovering a bullet riddled car?

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