Category: Personal

I have time off from Thursday 3rd of November till Sunday 6th of November due to Eid Al-Fitr. Our office in Saudi Arabia though will be out from tomorrow Wednesday 2nd till the 8th!!

I watched a movie yesterday called Simple Lies. From the minute it started I hated the movie. The first scene involved 2 guys and a girl near a cliff during sunset dancing as if they were listening to rave. For me thats trying too hard to be cool. The whole movie was like that, trying too hard to be cool or trying too hard to be weird or even trying too hard to be cult. The acting was bad, the lines were terrible, the story uninteresting and the ending was stupid. I do not recommend this movie. Simple Lies is Simply Crap.

1. Sony PSP
2. Apple iPod (60GB, video, black)
3. Sling Media Slingbox
4. Sony Ericsson W800i
5. Toshiba Qosmio G25-AV513
6. Archos Gmini 402 (20GB)
7. Nokia N90
8. PalmOne Treo 650
9. Motorola Razr V3
10. Logitech Harmony 880

This top 10 list is crap and was taken from Cnet. I don’t understand them, the Top 10 list includes four phones! Who must have all these 4 phones?? They should decide on 1 phone and have that on the must-have list. Anyway, here is my Top 10 must-have list:

1- Tivo (Philips Series 1)
2- Sony PSP
3- Apple iPod (60GB, video, black)
4- Sony Ericsson K750i
5- Nikon D2x
6- Apple PowerMac Quad 2.5GHZ G5
7- Audemars Piguet Juan Pablo Montoya Chronograph
8- Lamborghini Murcielago
9- Barco Computer Display
10- Shure E4 Earphones

When I first saw the trailer for Dark Water a few months back I joked around saying it looked like a movie about bad plumbing. Well yesterday I watched the movie and believe it or not it IS a movie about bad plumbing! It was a terrible movie on many levels including the fact that it stared Jennifer Connelly who I can’t stand anymore after watching her “ass to ass” in Requiem for a Dream. The movie was very slow with very little happening and the ending was very disappointing. Half way through the movie I got bored and started to play Colin McRae on my PSP.. it was that bad. Even Nataly who loves scary movies found this one lame. The movie is bad and a waste of time, don’t watch it.

I watched a few movies this weekend, this is what I thought of them:

Constantine
Production quality was amazing. Story was boring. I still prefer The Prophecy over it.

Elf
Will Ferrel is very funny but I should have watched this during Christmas. The movie was cute, Nataly didn’t like it, thought it was to kiddish.

Creep
This movie started off great, really freaky and scary. Then 30 minutes before the end it turns into a crappy B movie. I don’t know how they managed to fuck up the movie like that, its very sad. The story took a weird turn and became very stupid.. really pissed me off.

Heights
A very nice movie, no action, no comedy, just a straight forward drama based in New York. The movie ended nicely also.

Kill Bill 2
After watching Kill Bill 2 I don’t understand why they divided the movie into two parts. Part two was pretty uneventful and I am sure they could have easily merged the two movies without losing any key parts. In any case, part 2 was boring, 2 fight scenes against 2 people with maybe 1 liter of blood and thats all.

Mysterious Skin
For some reason I thought this movie was going to be about aliens. It did start off like that but then somehow it turned into a very gay movie. By that I mean it literarily, the movie contained a lot of homosexuality and by the end of the movie you realize you just watched a lot of guy on guy blow jobs. The movie was good though, just be prepared for the gay stuff.

Hot Shots
I remember this movie being really funny when I first watched it in the early 90’s. Its either not as funny now or maybe I lost my sense of humor.

Starting today I am on a new healthy diet.

– No McDonalds
– No Hardees, KFC, Texas Chicken, Burger King etc..
– No Softdrinks even the diet ones
– Subway is allowed (although after my last visit I won’t be going back)
– Gulf Royal Chinese is allowed but not 2 days in a row
– Will start eating more fruits. (I like melon, grapes (with no seeds), bananas and apples)
– Will start drinking chocolate milk every morning
– Anything from Kababji, Sajj House, Mughal Mahal, Great Steak & Potato is allowed
– No chocolate bars for breakfast or when bored at work. Chocolate bars will now be replaced with a handful of natural nuts (not fried)

I was going to try and be a vegeterian but I would end up starving to death since I don’t eat vegetables.

Update: Day 1 and I already broke rule #3, I had a pepsi for lunch. But I decided anyway that a bit of Pepsi is ok, it helps me digest…

The Fog, Elf, RX (Simple Lies), Yes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Constantine, Creep, Dark Water, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Heights, Layer Cake, Me & You and Everyone We Know, Mysterious Skin, Saving Face, Shutter and Straight Into Darkness.

This is going to be one busy weekend.

I hate people in the office who listen to crappy music loud

I hate people in the office who spend all their time downloading movies and MP3’s and hogging up all the bandwidth

Yesterday I watched Hostage starring Bruce Willis. I hadn’t heard allot of decent reviews on it so I didn’t have my hopes up. In the movie, Bruce Willis is a failed police negotiator turned small town cop. A hostage situation takes place in his town and he is forced back as a negotiator to save the lives of the family taken hostage. Things turn out to be allot more complicated and he gets drawn into a much more dangerous situation.

The intro credits to the movie were really cool. It looked like something out of a Frank Miller comic and the style didn’t match the movie at all. The intro credits were basically too funky and stylish for the actual movie.

The movie itself was good though, it never got boring and something was always happening. Some reviews said that they were tired of Bruce Willis playing a cop and the movie reminded them too much of the Die Hard trilogy, I personally would rather see Bruce Willis play a cop then anything else. If you’ve watched Hudson Hawk or the disastrous The Whole Ten Yards you would know what I am talking about.

Ultimately, if you are looking for a fun movie to watch that doesn’t require you to think, this is the movie to watch.

DA (1988)
A New York playwright is summoned to Ireland to bury his father (his “Da”). While at his boyhood home, he encounters his father’s spirit and relives memories both pleasant and not.

I Am Dina (2002)
In Northern Norway during the 1860s, a little girl named Dina accidentally causes her mother’s death. Overcome with grief, her father refuses to raise her, leaving her in the care of the household servants. Dina grows up wild and unmanageable, with her only friend being the stable boy, Tomas. She summons her mother’s ghost and develops a strange fascination with death as well as a passion for living. Family friend Jacob encourages Dina’s father to hire Lorch, a tutor who introduces her to the cello. When Dina is old enough, she marries Jacob and moves to Reinsnes, a port he runs with his mother, Karen, and his stepsons Niels and Anders . Niels doesn’t like Dina’s wild ways, or the fact that she has taken over accounting duties at Reinsnes. Dina’s eccentric tendencies become even stronger, eventually leading Jacob into an accident of his own and bringing Tomas back into her life.

Dogville (2003)
Set in an American Town in the Rocky Mountains in the 1930s. Lars von Trier re-explores the concept of goodness, but this in an idiom very different from that of his Gold Heart Trilogy (Breaking the Waves, The idiots and Dancer in the Dark). DOGVILLE is shot exclusively in studio with a minimum of props once again allowing the actors’ maximum freedom and full exposure inspired by televised theatre of the 70s. In DOGVILLE Trier works extensively with light, sound, score and music to obtain and heighten dramatic atmosphere.

Angel Heart (1987)
Harry Angel has a new case, to find a man called Johnny Favourite. Except things aren’t quite that simple, and Johnny doesn’t want to be found. Let’s just say that, amongst the period detail and beautiful scenery, it all gets really, really nasty.

I watched three movies this weekend, here are some quick reviews.

Ocean’s Twelve
First one I watched was Ocean’s Twelve. I wasn’t expecting allot of this movie but it turned out pretty cool. I like George Clooney so thats why I probably enjoyed the movie. Catherine Zeta-Jones did a pretty good job in this movie although I really dislike her. The movie wasn’t action packed but since there were allot of characters and most of them celebrities, it was pretty entertaining to watch.

Hellboy
The second movie I watched was Hellboy. I thought this movie was pretty silly. Its watchable.. if there was nothing else on TV.

Kingdom of Heaven
Finally, the third movie I watched and the best of the bunch was Kingdom of Heaven. I was for some reason expecting it to be a romance and thats why I held back on watching it till now. Well it turned out it’s not a romance. The movie was exciting to watch but I was expecting more battle scenes. Other then the last large one you don’t see that much fighting. There was one battle I was excited to watch but they didn’t show it to us. They showed the army arriving in one scene, and then the next scene the battle is over. I thought that was pretty lame. After the couple of mediocre movies I watched recently, this movie faired better at keeping me interested.

Yesterday I watched The Big White and it was disappointing. Maybe I was too tired when I watched it or maybe I was expecting something else, whatever the case was, I didn’t enjoy it. Robin Williams, Woody Harrelson, Holly Hunter (from Cronenbergs CRASH), and Giovanni Ribisi star in the movie so the cast was pretty cool. The story on the other hand I think was the main problem. Here is the plot summary from IMDB:

To remedy his financial problems, a travel agent has his eye on a frozen corpse, which just happens to be sought after by two hitmen.

The movie was funny in some parts but overall the story was just lame. It wasn’t exciting at all, throughout the movie I didn’t care much on what was going to happen next or what would happen at the end. I just didn’t care and I don’t know why. Maybe because Robin Williams character annoyed me, maybe his brother was a dickhead or maybe because this was Giovannis lamest acting, whatever the reason, I didn’t like the movie.

One thing I did like about the movie was the intro. I love the typography and the minimalism in the intro credits. I also loved the first scene of the movie in which Robbin William’s wife Holly Hunter is running in her PJ’s in the snow. It was very beautifully filmed and gave me the impression it was going to be a very beautiful movie visually to watch. Sadly, the beauty ended right there after the first scene.

A friend of mine called me earlier, he is in the Mac business and I had asked him before if he ever came across someone who wanted to sell their old iBook to give me a call. So he calls me up awhile ago tells me there is a 300mhz Tangerine iBook, excellent condition with box and all its CDs for and owner is selling it for only KD25. It comes with 32MB RAM but it would cost me only $29 to add another 128. I should be able to run OS9 easily on the system and if I need to I could even install OS10. I am thinking of getting it since when they first came out I really wanted one but couldn’t afford it. I remember I had just started going out with Nataly back then and I went with her to the Apple Store to show her how funky the ibooks were. I also wouldn’t mind having a laptop to surf the web while watching TV or lying in bed. I won’t be using it for anything else just web browsing. I might even just run VNC on it and connect it to my main mac and use it like that. Lots of possibilities for a really good price, KD25 only. Very tempting.

Yesterday I watched Audition (Ôdishon) which was recommended to me by my brother. What a fucked up movie that was. The movie starts off extremely slow, boring and uneventful. I wanted to turn it off soo many times but I remembered my brother telling me wait till the end so I did. What a fucking end! No way on earth would I have expected anything like that. I wish I could explain what happens but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. The end of the movie has one of the most graphic scenes I have ever watched, Nataly even covered her eyes and wanted me to mute it because she couldn’t handle it. The movie in short is about this guy who is a widow and is looking for a wife. His best friend suggests they set up a fake movie audition in which he could use it to find a girl he is interested in. The guy finds a girl and falls in love. Other then that I will not say any more.

This is the second movie I’ve watched for Takashi Miike. The first one was Visitor Q (Bizita Q) which was also really weird but not as enjoyable as Audition. Overall I really liked yesterdays movie, I realize now why the intro was so normal and dull, its just to create a huge contrast with the end of the movie.

Yesterday I had time to watch only one movie, but it was a good one. Yesterday I watched Inside Deep Throat which is a documentary on the super famous porn movie, Deep Throat. I watched Deep Throat back in 1992 and I liked it, not because it meant anything deep to me or that it was the best porn movie I had ever watched, back in 1992 I think Deep Throat was the ONLY porn movie I had watched. I didn’t find out about the importance of Deep Throat until much much later and after watching the documentary yesterday I can’t wait to rewatch the original movie again. Here is the plot summary of the documentary from IMDB:

It was filmed in 6 days for 25 thousand dollars. The government didn’t want you to see it. It was banned in 23 states. It has grossed over 600 million dollars. And it is the most profitable film in motion picture history. More than 30 years after Deep Throat’s provocative debut, this documentary examines the legacy that the most profitable film of all-time left on society.

Unlike Born Into Brothels, this was not some average boring documentary. Inside Deep Throat is a really well produced movie and its visually very funky. It was also hilarious to watch. I never imagined the people behind the movie had such a great of sense of humor, everyone from the producer to the actors to the production guys. I also never knew how great the impact of Deep Throat was on society until I watched this movie. It really shook up allot of things back then. And then they also talk about how the mobsters were involved with the movie and how they were profiting from it and burning down theaters that weren’t paying them half of the profits. The movie is just loaded with so much information and its all presented in such a cool way. I also wouldn’t call this documentary a porn. Yes there are a couple of quick shots from the movie but they are not trying to turn you on or anything. The quick scenes are just to give you a glimpse of what Deep Throat was.

For those of you living abroad definitely watch this documentary, even if you haven’t watched the original Deep Throat before. For those of you living in Kuwait you can download the documentary from any torrent site like TorrentSpy and ThePirateBay.