Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Duy is a four-eyed Cyclops
It's 12:26 now. I think I should watch TV. But nah. Not 10 minutes ago, I finished watching "Paycheck", directed by John Woo, starring Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman, just came out on dvd within the past... umm, month or so. I'll review it in a few paragraphs.
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Vinh-Khang started acting like me in terms of schoolwork - yes, that's right. He procrastinated. Well, that's not true, he didn't *just* start - but it's more apparent now. Duy is asked to help him with his homework, which was assigned 10 days ago. So it was Sunday, and it was due the next day, and so far all he had was a couple lines of notes. ANd he didn't bring home his textbook either. Anyway, so they worked on the internet for a bit, and then Vinh continued on his own.
His assignment was to create a newspaper kinda thing that might've existed many years ago, and Vinh did the minimum. Wrote a sentence for each requirement. "Write something about Christopher Columbus, Magellan, Henry Hudson, etc." = one sentence for each character. "Write about the agriculture in Canada at the time." = one sentence about agriculture in Canada at the time. "Don't forget to mention Canada's fishing industry." = one sentence about that.
Well, so that's the end of that story. Also, Vinh and I played settlers today, twice, he won once, I won once. We took pictures.
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Not enough blogging going on! I'm getting a bit upset/annoyed/tired of not being able to read new blogging material. I update once every 1-3 days, Christa and Brose update maybe every 3-5 days, which is okay. Then everyone else... well, everyone else seems to have an average of >5 days between posts. Yeah, I know, your blog is your blog, and you don't need to cater to an audience... but still... post more!!
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A few days ago, my msn name was "x4 + 15 = 1019". So people stop asking me about it (actually I changed it), well, it's about the gamecube memory card. At first, it was 59 blocks. Then a great new official memory card came out, with 251 blocks - which is 59 x 4 + 15.
A few days ago, I look in the futureshop flyer, and lo and behold, Nintendo has produced an official memory card 1019 - which is 251 x 4 + 15. Sweet. And still the price of $40. Maybe I should get one of these now... or maybe I should wait till they get memory card 4091s... and I wonder how crappy it was when they had memory card 11's... holds a SSBM data file... I guess that's all someone really needs...
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Okay, now time to review John Woo's "Paycheck". In no particular order... the action isn't very great. Well, the last action sequence wasn't bad. The last action sequence took a lot of aspects from Face/off's jail sequence, with a bit of the hangar sequence as well.
The DR from Face/off is now a bad guy in Paycheck. It's nice to see him again, in a different role. I think that's the guy.. Ben Affleck seems alright. I'm falling in love with Uma :) She's a sweet girl in this movie too, as she was in KB and KB2. Didn't pay much attention to her before KB1 - the avengers, batman, meh..
Plot, story, execution - now these are the strong points. The basis of the story isn't bad. If you haven't read the back of the dvd box yet, in short - Affleck is an engineer person, and he does special jobs, but after the job is done, they erase his memory, back to the point where he started the job. So he doesn't know what he did, but he did something, and he gets paid for it.
Anyway, then comes a job offer from his friend, but a bit different - pay is 8-figures, but the job will take 3 years, rather than the usual 8 weeks or less. Being a bit skeptical, he takes the job. However, the job apparently was secret and dangerous or something, because things have changed, maybe he has committed a crime or something, etc. However, being smart, he left himself clues to figure out what to do and solve the mystery.
So that's actually well done. Then it gets a bit weird when the mystery involves *the future*, so part of the story becomes 'minority report'-like. It would've been nice if they left the 'future' thing out of it, but it still worked well. And the clues-thing... that was pretty nice. It wasn't really predictable, so that's good.
As for the setting... well, it's in the future, but it sure doesn't look like the future. Some buildings look futuristic, but roads are still roads, cars are still cars. So it wasn't like minority report - it looked like modern day, with a few high-tech looking buildings.
One thing I like in movies, are "allies". That is, when the hero is confused or scared or lost, he/she has someone to come 'home' to. It's a nice comfortable feeling, and it's present in Paycheck. I don't really like the idea of 'everyone is against you', it feels pretty bleak and scary. It's always nice to have some allies.
So anyway, if you can get past the mediocre action sequences and a couple plotholes or weirdness, there seems to be a good story/plot. It's not the best, but it worked nicely and I enjoyed it.
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That's the end of the update.
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Vinh-Khang started acting like me in terms of schoolwork - yes, that's right. He procrastinated. Well, that's not true, he didn't *just* start - but it's more apparent now. Duy is asked to help him with his homework, which was assigned 10 days ago. So it was Sunday, and it was due the next day, and so far all he had was a couple lines of notes. ANd he didn't bring home his textbook either. Anyway, so they worked on the internet for a bit, and then Vinh continued on his own.
His assignment was to create a newspaper kinda thing that might've existed many years ago, and Vinh did the minimum. Wrote a sentence for each requirement. "Write something about Christopher Columbus, Magellan, Henry Hudson, etc." = one sentence for each character. "Write about the agriculture in Canada at the time." = one sentence about agriculture in Canada at the time. "Don't forget to mention Canada's fishing industry." = one sentence about that.
Well, so that's the end of that story. Also, Vinh and I played settlers today, twice, he won once, I won once. We took pictures.
-------------
Not enough blogging going on! I'm getting a bit upset/annoyed/tired of not being able to read new blogging material. I update once every 1-3 days, Christa and Brose update maybe every 3-5 days, which is okay. Then everyone else... well, everyone else seems to have an average of >5 days between posts. Yeah, I know, your blog is your blog, and you don't need to cater to an audience... but still... post more!!
------------
A few days ago, my msn name was "x4 + 15 = 1019". So people stop asking me about it (actually I changed it), well, it's about the gamecube memory card. At first, it was 59 blocks. Then a great new official memory card came out, with 251 blocks - which is 59 x 4 + 15.
A few days ago, I look in the futureshop flyer, and lo and behold, Nintendo has produced an official memory card 1019 - which is 251 x 4 + 15. Sweet. And still the price of $40. Maybe I should get one of these now... or maybe I should wait till they get memory card 4091s... and I wonder how crappy it was when they had memory card 11's... holds a SSBM data file... I guess that's all someone really needs...
------------
Okay, now time to review John Woo's "Paycheck". In no particular order... the action isn't very great. Well, the last action sequence wasn't bad. The last action sequence took a lot of aspects from Face/off's jail sequence, with a bit of the hangar sequence as well.
The DR from Face/off is now a bad guy in Paycheck. It's nice to see him again, in a different role. I think that's the guy.. Ben Affleck seems alright. I'm falling in love with Uma :) She's a sweet girl in this movie too, as she was in KB and KB2. Didn't pay much attention to her before KB1 - the avengers, batman, meh..
Plot, story, execution - now these are the strong points. The basis of the story isn't bad. If you haven't read the back of the dvd box yet, in short - Affleck is an engineer person, and he does special jobs, but after the job is done, they erase his memory, back to the point where he started the job. So he doesn't know what he did, but he did something, and he gets paid for it.
Anyway, then comes a job offer from his friend, but a bit different - pay is 8-figures, but the job will take 3 years, rather than the usual 8 weeks or less. Being a bit skeptical, he takes the job. However, the job apparently was secret and dangerous or something, because things have changed, maybe he has committed a crime or something, etc. However, being smart, he left himself clues to figure out what to do and solve the mystery.
So that's actually well done. Then it gets a bit weird when the mystery involves *the future*, so part of the story becomes 'minority report'-like. It would've been nice if they left the 'future' thing out of it, but it still worked well. And the clues-thing... that was pretty nice. It wasn't really predictable, so that's good.
As for the setting... well, it's in the future, but it sure doesn't look like the future. Some buildings look futuristic, but roads are still roads, cars are still cars. So it wasn't like minority report - it looked like modern day, with a few high-tech looking buildings.
One thing I like in movies, are "allies". That is, when the hero is confused or scared or lost, he/she has someone to come 'home' to. It's a nice comfortable feeling, and it's present in Paycheck. I don't really like the idea of 'everyone is against you', it feels pretty bleak and scary. It's always nice to have some allies.
So anyway, if you can get past the mediocre action sequences and a couple plotholes or weirdness, there seems to be a good story/plot. It's not the best, but it worked nicely and I enjoyed it.
----------
That's the end of the update.