General

Beowulf

By on Sunday, November 18, 2007

I was already planning to watch Beowulf but on regular cinema when Val clued me in to the fact that it will be available in full-length 3D on IMAX. Who would pass up seeing Angelina Jolie in 3Delectable goodieness, right? So tonight, I watched it at SM Mall of Asia’s IMAX Cinema.

Beowulf, as you all probably know, is an old English poem. And I do mean old. Unless you’ve been living under a rock… for centuries… then you probably would have heard of it. If you haven’t, suffice to say it is all those stories that you love to hear before bedtime rolled into one: kings, queens, warriors, monsters, and treasures.

But what can I say about the movie? “AWESOME!” would be a good start. Beowulf is already a great tale in itself. But the retelling by Neil Gaiman, Angelina Jolie, the great acting as usual by Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovich, seeing it on the BIG screen, on IMAX, in 3D, and did I say Angelina Jolie? All these makes it even bigger and better.

Shell out those hard-earned bucks and watch it on IMAX. It’s worth it.

Rating: 6/5 (extra point for the extra dimension)

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LinkSys WRT54G Version 7

By on Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The LinkSys WRT54G is a ubiquitous router. In fact, I have one at home and two at the office. The one at home works fine but the same can’t be said for the two at the office. Every once in a while, you can’t connect to the WiFi network and you have to reboot. And often, you can’t access the web based administration console at all. Normally, the solution would be to upgrade the firmware. But if you have a WRT54G version 7, which is the case, you’re out of luck: LinkSys also does not provide firmware updates for this version. Or so I thought. So it was pretty hopeless for a while. But this morning, I learned that apparently LinkSys provides firmware upgrades for Europe. You can get it here. We’ve upgraded the routers at the office and everything is going smoothly so far.

UPDATE: It didn’t change anything. Darn!

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House Of Representatives Blast

By on Wednesday, November 14, 2007

I just arrived home last night when I learned from Izza about a blast at the House of Representatives. I immediately checked The Inquirer and realized something is really up because but it was not responding, probably overloaded with requests. Fortunately, ABS-CBN was and I was able to confirm that there was indeed a blast. The report said that the vehicle of Wahab Akbar, a representative, was on fire and that he was among the injured and later died. Although some grandstanding politican (coughdeveneciacough) immediately claimed it was a terrorist attack, I wouldn’t be surprised if Akbar was the specific target. He has too way many enemies from political rivals to the Abu Sayyaf who has been using bombs more and more. Supposedly he used to be a member of the Abu Sayaff but later left and turned on them. Heck, even the Philippine Marines could be counted among those. There was this rumor before that his men were involved in an ambush a few months back where 14 marines were killed, some of whom were mutilated, and beheaded. Knowing the loyalty of the marines to their comrades, this possibility wouldn’t be far off.

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General

Lust, Caution

By on Saturday, November 3, 2007

You probably heard about Lust, Caution because of its R rating and its supposedly hot sex scenes. Indeed the scenes are hot. Really hot, in fact. But that’s not all there is to it. Really. Behind it all is a well-crafted wartime espionage thriller.

Set during World War II in Hong Kong and later Shanghai, Wang Jiazhi (Wei Tang) is a resistance agent tasked with seducing and then eliminating Mr. Yee, a high-level Japanese collaborator. Tony Leung as Mr. Yee is, as usual, impressive as the initially suspicious and impassive target.

The act of seduction, pulled off wonderfully by Wei Tang, unfolds slowly and subtly creating palpable sexual tension between the two. This gradually gains speed and culminates in intense physical contacts that illustrate the feelings that developed between them. This feelings clouds their judgments and eventually lead each to take actions they didn’t intend.

Definitely, a must watch.

Rating: 5/5

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