Archive for July, 2007

Mr. Bean’s Holiday

It’s hard to believe he’s been doing this for so long, but Rowan Atkinson’s supposedly final Mr. Bean film gives a rather weak performance, but nonetheless an entertaining one at that. Still making his trademark moans and groans, Mr. Beans traverses the south of France in search of his one goal: to go to the beach!

With minimal verbage, he manages to get from point A to point B while leaving havoc behind every step he takes. The always comical Bean has a slapstick humour to it, and one where you will have to be in the mood to accept it and enjoy it.

One stupid move after another, you almost feel sorry for Bean as he tries his best in re-uniting a son with his father. He records his journey with a prominently displayed Sony handycam, and takes us through some interesting scenes making this 90 minute movie an easy watch.

It does have its moments, but I have to say, I remember laughing harder and more often with his original antics on television. It is a fun movie to watch so if you’ve always been a Mr. Bean fan, then you may as well enjoy what very well may be his final appearance as this lovable and silly British guy.

Summitimage a bust

I received an email today from Summitimage, a store in the U.S. selling electronic gadgets. The email told me that my shipment had been shipped via DHL and that since I am an international customer, I should expect another 10-15 business days before its arrival at my doorstep.

Well, that’s all fine and dandy, except for the fact that I had ordered my product on July 2! It’s been 2 weeks since I placed my order and they finally ship it to me? This is utterly rediculous and my being dissatisfied with their service is an understatement. I had emailed them several times beforehand questioning the status of my ebay purchase and while I received a response back each time (two days later mind you), the emails merely said that my product had been shipped and that I should expect it to arrive in due time.

I haven’t received the package so I don’t know if the product is any good or if it will come damaged or what. Nonetheless it’s safe to say that I will never order from them again off of ebay. At the same time I placed this order, I placed another order from Hong Kong. The latter order came in 9 days with no problems what-so-ever.

All this trouble just so I can get mp3 ringtones for my new chocolate flip? heh… even that’s not guaranteed as I’ve read that Telus blocks access to their phones via certain software.

Just my luck.

Oh yeah, that’s right. I don’t seem to have much of that in the first place.

Inspiration from abroad

Every now and then I encounter a brief moment of inspiration that makes me want to better myself. It is these moments when I’m happy to have my own little world to express what it is I’m thinking at that moment.

Tonight I came across a blog of a virtual friend of mine. Virtual in the sense that I’ve never met her in real life, but only conversed with her via email. I read through her blog entries and soon found that I was engrossed in her writings. It wasn’t just about what she was writing, but was more in how she was writing. Her writing style was very succinct, coherent, and at the same time very personable. I enjoyed it. And it was then that I realized that this is why I started a blog of my own to begin with.

Wanting/needing to better my writing ability, I thought public expression would do me wonders in preparing me to write like her and the many others that have inspired me in the past.

Admittedly none of this works if I only manage to write an entry or two every month, which is what it has become these past few months. But I have my reasons for that. And as I move away from that, I hope to again re-establish my presence here online at smaku’s world.

And more often than not, when I do have that burst of inspiration, my thoughts are often jumbled up in my head. And because of that, what actually comes out in writing tends to be incoherent, disorganized, and a wonder as to why I even started writing it in the first place.

— An aside —

It was about a month or so ago when I finally realized something.

MACs are indeed far more superior than Windows.

Being a photographer and graphic designer, as one of my coworkers told me this morning, “it makes no sense why you use a PC at home.” And while I can still make some sense out of this fact, I have officially changed my perception of the Macintosh operating system. With the new release of Leopard coming in October, I am all set to purchase a new Macintosh computer.

Right out of the box it does so much more than Windows Vista would ever want to do. Being far more stable, loads of widgets to play with, and with CS3 being optimized for it, I really had no other reason to want to buy a PC anymore.

My current computer will remain with me of course, and will be my primary computer for entertainment purposes. My Macintosh will be used for work and play in a safer environment without any worries of viruses.

I digress, which is something that I do quite often.

Going back to inspiration, which was why I started this entry in the first place. I have to thank all the blogs, friends, and virtual friends that I visit every so often so I can get some sort of inspiration to keep me going in this world.

So while I may not have achieved my goal with this single post, I am happy that I have another start after an absence and lack of inspiration.

Be prepared as I will soon revamp my website once again. This time with an Apple influence. Yes, because it’s that darned good!

Transformers vs. Ratatouille

While I am a self-proclaimed non-movie addict, it wouldn’t seem so this past weekend as in the past 4 days, I’ve seen two movies in the theatre. That’s a lot for me.

First we have Ratatouille. The wonderful rat animation by Disney and Pixar about a rat in Paris who becomes a chef of a 3 star restaurant. While the premise seems a little odd, the story is actually quite smooth and well told. With just enough character development to understand where everybody was coming from, it was a quite the satisfying movie.

This is quite the feat as I tend to shy away from Disney films. As a matter of fact, I believe this is the first Disney animation that I’ve seen in theaters. Who knew a story about a rat in love with cooking, and a linguine boy in love with a sous-chef would win my vote?

Next comes Transformers, the highly touted movie event of the year by Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg. Ask any guy and they would normally say 2 hours and 30 minutes of full robot glory and special effects would be no problem for them, however, I found this story to be slightly different.

The first half hour of the film was well played, as characters were developed and we began to understand exactly where the Transformers belonged on Earth. Further on in the movie, however, they decided to play into the humour of the film by introducing the parents of the main character. I can almost say, that scene may have killed the entire movie as it was out of place and just stretched far too long than it should have. Should he have his little “fun time”? Who cares?! We’re dealing with a film about Transformers, not an adolescent teenager coming of age.

I have to admit, the computer generated Transformers were really well done, and its fluidity in interaction within real life was remarkable. As for the transforming sound effects? Well, they did without the traditional sounds of the 5 tones and instead opted for a more modernized mechanical noise which I suppose I can’t complain about.

Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots got a new facelift as it was no longer the hoodless truck that it once used to be. And Megatron? Well, who could blame them for changing him from a gun to a flying beast. Not a bad change.

There were several other changes from the original toys although I can’t complain about most of them. The changes were made appropriately and made it exciting to watch.

- teaser alert -

One odd part about the ending is the fact that Sam knew not to put the cube inside Optimus Prime, but into Megatron’s chest instead. Nobody explained this to him, and he basically took it upon himself to see what would happen if he did it. If you had the fate of the world in your hands, would you go ahead and experiment to see what would happen if…? Way to go Sam!

It was an enjoyable movie nonetheless, and seeing as I did grow up with the likes of Optimus, Soundwave, and all the other folks, it was great to see them on screen for once.

Two movies worth watching: one, if you’re into animation, and the other, if you’re into Transformers. If not, then you may just find it a little boring… like one of my coworkers, who fell asleep during the film!