lightning strikes twice

with Jet Li

As with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “House of Flying Daggers”, the storytelling and aesthetic qualities of this movie are superb. It has the same epic, fantasy tone to it, with impeccable styling.

Briefly, it tells the story of an assassin (Jet Li) and the lengths he goes to assasinate the king of a rival Chinese province. The fight scenes are spectacular. Highly recommended.

Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughan

Hey, I like silly and slap stick, but this is just so incredibly stupid. Vince Vaughan looks like he is asleep in this film.

Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar

Short summary: when someone dies in anger or fear, a curse is born. A house remains dormant for three years, because it is cursed. An expatriot family move in, and the curse rears its head, killing a carer, and tormenting the haunted mother of the main tenant. Sarah Michelle Gellar is sent as a replacement nanny, and must also face the curse. Blah blah, quite bland, not particularly scary.

I haven’t seen the original, but I suspect it is much better. The end contains an obligatory “sequel opening” which is enough to annoy me for a week. Why do they do this? arghghgh

The director of this film also directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as well as Hero (must see this film).

As with Crouching Tiger, this film is action packed, yet sincere and romantic at the same time.

The government is being challenged by a group called the “House Of Flying Daggers”. Their leader has been killed, but the group is still hidden and strong. The local police are enlisted to capture the new leader within ten days. So begins an epic storyline, involving betrayal, love, violence and resolution.

A very worthwhile film.

A thoroughly enjoyable movie. Leonardo di Caprio is compelling as Howard Hughes, as are Cate Blanchett and Kate Beckinsale as his love interests. Roughly, the plot covers Hughes’ first epic foray into the film industry, and then delves into his literally high-flying lifestyle, as he becomes an aviation industry mogul, while maintaining a Hollywood presence and sensibilities. His overwhelming obsessions cripple him, yet he still manages to be groundbreaking and important, even while he hurts those closest to him.

What really grabbed me was the immaculate styling. I know nothing on the periods portrayed by this film, but everything seemed just perfect. And even if it wasn’t 100% accurate (though I suspect it was), it was just so aesthetically pleasing. I loved the way the suits were cut and worn in that time, and the overall sophistication of the clothing and social interactions.

I’ve used a couple of internet cafes in the last few weeks, and neither had Firefox as a browsing option. I would of thought it would have made sense to have this as at least a browsing option, given the reduced likelihood of picking up spyware etc., but sadly it doesn’t seem to be the case. I guess if a cafe has 30 terminals, perhaps the time taken to install seems to much (even though I reckon all 30 could be done in an hour). A shame really.

The Art Of Travel – Alain de Botton

This book examines why people travel, why travel can be a disappointment and how one can get more out of travelling (or indeed, not travelling).

<insert chapter titles here>

The most memorable parts of this work were when de Botton describes how we can train ourselves to really be observant of our surroundings (whether it is something we see every day, or a view never seen before), how sublime landscapes can affect us, and how even travelling around one’s bedroom, or local area can be a cause of fascination.

Definitely requires rereading before ANY form of travelling I undertake in the future.

More sushi wierdness:
Sushi Adhesive Bandages

Shortly after September 11, my office block decided they needed to take some action to make our premises more secure. Not a bad idea really, as there was no checking of IDs upon entry, unlike in the IAG building across the road.

So they decided to restrict access by permanently locking one of the doors on each entrance (there are two entrances), such that noone can go in via the locked doors, and there is no way of unlocking them. The crazy thing is, there are not one but two unlocked doors RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OF THE LOCKED DOORS.

What do they think a terrorist is going to do? “Hey, that door thats next to TWO UNLOCKED DOORS is locked. Damn… well we gave it a good shot, best go home now”.

Gradually this stupidity (which has been going for three years now) will just become one of those things that noone can explain. In twenty years, people will be asking each other why those doors are locked, and they’ll just look at each other, shrug, and say: “Well, its just always been that way”. Wierd.

Update: sometime in mid-july, the doors were reopened.

When creating a CASE expression for use with SQL Server (Transact-SQL), it must close with END. Not all literature on CASE expressions mentions this.

e.g.

SELECT act_no, prd_no, code, desc
FROM TmpClauses
WHERE product.prd_id = CASE WHEN prodType = 'HHH' THEN 'XX'
ELSE 'TT'
END