My Rating:

Finally, a film that lives up to expectation. Not only it has the action and thrill factors but it also sends a very strong and controversial message. Gary Gray has done it beautifully. Law Abiding Citizen is not violent but merciless with the exception of Darby.

In the movie, after witnessing the corrupted nature of justice in the country's law system which ended up setting the murderer of his wife and daughter free, Clyde Shelton, played by Gerard Butler, set out to one take revenge on that man who murdered his family, two to make his point and teach a man a lesson. As violent as it is, I would have to admit that this has to be the best revenge I've seen in movies. The best part is that he does it so calmly and filled with excitement.

On top of that, Law Abiding Citizen puts across some questionable messages and values to us. If we look from Clyde's perspective, which represents the normal citizen, we see this corrupted and rotten nature of justice that's created and defined by state law. However if we see from Nick's perspective, we see that justice is subjective. Everybody wants their own justice, each of them has the right to have it. Hence there's a need to have a system to calibrate and balance the level of justice that each citizen can get depend on the amount of input -- evidence. And like any other system in the world, it's not perfect. That's why there are people like Nick exists to study and understand the system and use it with care. But nobody is perfect thus there bound to be people who take advantage of it. From there, we can comprehend the amount of responsibility that the practitioners carry. It's all about how you look at it.

It's awesome to see a movie that makes me wanna babble so much about. My two most favorite scenes in the movie would be when Clyde had his revenge and when Nick and the other guy was asking the spy about Clyde. One is the art of killing at its best and the other is the effect when someone else speak highly of you rather than yourself. The best is the most humble and only the pro can truly understand and appreciate his worth.

My rating:

I don't get it. Really. I don't know if it's because I watched it while I was half-asleep or because it is just not my type of movie. But yeah, I really don't get the whole thing. I was even wondering why did it last 2hr and 20 mins.

First of all, it wasn't fearful or thrilling. Why do I say so? Everything just went smoothly and everybody just cooperatively play along. 3 guys walked into bank, armed, point their guns and get the the money. Once done, on their way out, they had a crazy gun fight with the police but strangely nobody gets hurt and they got away. Everything happens in about 1 or 2 mins. I didn't know robbing a bank in those days was that easy. And Melvin Purvis, who according to the movie, was supposed to be a really talented agent but other than his cool and accurate sharp shooting on Pretty Boy Floyd at the beginning of film, he seems to be nothing but a failure. Then there is the prison break. They walked in, and somehow smuggle guns in and take the police hostage and they got out. Just like that. Then when John Dillinger got imprisoned, it was even better. He used a fake gun to take hostage of prison guard after prison guard. Everybody obeyed and unlocked all the door. And again, just like that he was prison free.

Other than the unthrilling actions, there was the unconvincing romance. The initial start up was good. It was reasonable to see how Billie fell for John's frank and honestly aggressive approach. But there wasn't any believable built up. If you look at John, you can see why he loves her. He's spontaneous, unruly, simple, and plain. He does whatever he feels like whenever he feels like, no plan for future, no reflection on the past. And she's beautiful, dark, and sophisticated - the "black bird" of his heart. However, if you look at Billie, there wasn't really any built-up to her commitment. The next  thing we know is she was all over John and resting her life in his hand with faith and trust. Personally, I find it to be a rather awkward romance.

I recalled reading a review on IMDB describing Public Enemies as "a profoundly great piece of film art, and it will be sorely under-appreciated." So I guess I'm one of them. I will not deny it because I really cannot comprehend the art of this movie. It's just too abstract.

Now that Chrome's extension is out, it's about time I blog about it my opinions about them. What about the other browsers? No, they're out of the equation for me. These are the only 2 browsers of choice for me. I like Opera too but I don't think they're as fast and as customizable as Chrome or FireFox. IE is not even the picture. As for Safari, again it's because of the lack of customizability and I don't really like how the browser render html document.

Firefox

What I love: Almost everything. I like how modifiable Firefox. For a browser geek, Firefox empower users with the ability to edit, tweak, and play with however they want. I think this is probably the result of the open source nature of Firefox. Next would be the theme, it gives user a change the look of Firefox completely to look like however they want it or to look like any other browser I want. I can easily turn Firefox to look like Chrome, Safari and even Opera. If u like personalisation and customization like I do, then you'd understand why having the ability to fully personalize is a strong point of a browser. Then we have the Firefox plug-ins which is very very handy since internet nowadays is no longer just a static hmtl page document any more but a fully integrated and dynamic interface with different add-on applications like flash embed, Javascript, video embed...etc. In order to view all these in the browser, it has be equipped with the capabilities to run them, and that is what the plug-ins do. Finally, the one thing I love the most about Firefox. Extensions. It unlocks so many abilities in the browser. It redefines the definition of browser completely. That was also part of the reason why I ignore other browser from my choice. Having browser without extensions is like being handicapped online... nah I'm just kidding. It's not that dramatic. I have to admit that after being given the power to do almost whatever you want, I'm addicted and like any other unholy mortal, I'm not willing to give up that power especially when I have a choice of keeping it.

What I don't love: Hmmm... that's would be firefox 3.5! I really hate FF 3.5. It's supposed to be major update but it's anything but stable. First of all, it fails to run all my favorite extensions regularly. That means sometime I find some extensions is not enabled and it say "not compatible" but after I restarted the browser, it became back ok but the ones that were ok have problem. Argh... it's frustrating. Another more frustrating thing would be the constant crashing. Image having like 20 tabs on and it crashes. *pissed off* Without with ado, I immediately converted back to 3.0. And I'm in love again. Another thing would be the large system resource consumption. But I don't really have much complain about that because I think maybe it's due to the fact that I installed too many plug-ins and extensions. Lastly, it would be the browser restart requirement. It does get on my nerves sometime when I have to always restart the browser after installation of extension or theme. Just imagine when you wanna go around and try out new extensions and new themes, the thought of having to restart every installation and removal may kill your mood. I really hope they'll find a way to work that out.

Chrome

What I love: The speed! and the smooth loading! I'm blown away. When I tried Chrome 4.0 for the first time, I was literally wow! And the broader viewing space with fewer things eat up the the space. Also, I love the smooth tab transition. To put it simply, everything is just smooth, from starting browser, adding tabs, closing tabs, and closing the browser. Next would be theme, I've already mentioned that I love personalisation. So yes theme is always a plus. And yes! the recently released extensions. Nothing much to say, it's very similar to the Firefox extension. What I want to highlight is that extensions and theme installation and removal in Chrome do NOT require any browser restart!!! A very strong point indeed. I find it very convenient and time saving.

What I don't love: If you try ctrl+alt+Del and look at the task manager when you have Chrome running, you'd see that even if you only have 1 window of Chrome but have like 4 or 5 Chrome precesses running, which I have no idea why is it so as well. Since each of them consumes quite a small amount of resource, I didn't bother to look them up. But still, I'd prefer having 1 process for 1 application. Another issue for me would be the apparent lack of customization power. If you look at Chrome interface, it seems that all it wants you to do is surf net and not bothered with anything else. This is very good for none IT-savvy user or a non geek person. But from a geek's perspective like me, I feel that it takes away too many things out of sight - one of the very main one would be the menu bar. Seeing less things giving you the impression that there isn't much there thus there isn't much you can do.

FireFox vs Chrome

For net surfing experience, I have to give it up to Chrome, no doubt about that. For features, customization power, and user's empowerment, I would stand for FireFox still because I still believe that FireFox is still far ahead of Chrome for that. Another thing would be the download speed and download management. Somehow, the download speed I get from FireFox is considerably faster than in Chrome. On top of that, DownThemAll! is one the best thing that ever happened to me on FireFox. It liberates me completely from my reliance on download manager software. And being a browser add-on, it integrates more seamlessly with the browser than external download manager. DownloadHelper and ColorZilla are another 2 I can't live without. So far I don't think Chrome has them yet. In fact, there are a lot of add-ons that I rely on that aren't there yet in Chrome extensions archive. I can go on endlessly on extensions so to keep it simple, I have greater browser experience with FF than Chrome.

Conclusion

If we look at browser for its traditional definition, Chrome wins. However, if you look at it as a complete software package, Firefox wins. In conclusion, if you are just looking to surf net, go for Chrome but if you like doing and trying out a lot of nonsense like me, then go for FireFox, at least for the moment (because Chrome extensions archive is still at a very early phase, so we will not know what happen next when their extensions library grow substantially.) For me, my final choice is that I choose to stick with both - Chrome for surfing web, FireFox for every other things.

Lately, Google has been aggressively smashing it down with one release after another. It renders many shocked and stunned with the rate Google continuously bombarding us with revolutionary ideas. But I love it!

Apple was undoubtedly the one company in my opinion that has truly shaped the way we perceive elegance and beauty in design and interface. No one in this industry has ever made white and grey so intricate, elegant yet beautifully simple like Apple does. Google, on the hand, is at the moment the one company in my opinion that is changing the way we think, the way we see and the way we do things. They're the ones who're aggressively shaping the future outlook of the web by presenting us with creatively revolutionary ideas and let us be apart of their quest to a very seamlessly dynamic and collaborative future of the web.

Let me go through some of their releases that I came across recently. And I hope you're aware of some of them by now because they're really really cool and helpful tools that will help shape the way you do things.

1. Google Wave
   I don't know a better way to describe it better than the Google people do. So yeah I've linked them up instead. Just click the link and see what they for yourself. I found out about 2 months back before they started giving invites to users other than developers. Currently this is my most favorite release from Google. It completely blow me away... completely. I was utterly speechless and amazed by what they've done. I can't wait for this to be fully released and for it to become contagious and spread among people because the more people using it, the more we'll find Google Wave to be a genius invention. I think that's probably why they name it, Google Wave.


2. Google Real-Time Search
   Again I've linked it up. Click the link and find out more about Google Real-Time Search. I find this really cool but at the moment, I don't find very useful to me yet. And probably not in the near future as well. Frankly, I think it's a bit distracting and annoying. Nevertheless, I can see the benefits that it could give to people who needs it.


3. Google Goggles
   I'm very excited about this. This release totally makes me want to get an iPhone or an android. Although, as Google mentioned, they still at a very premature stage and the search is not that powerful yet. But the fact they have managed to lay the foundation, if there anything we've observed from the history of technology and IT, it would be that it's just gonna get better.


4. Google Search Side Bar
   I've been playing with it for sometime now. I'm not that crazy over this but I do find it very handy at times especially when doing my project which requires searching on certain specific categories. It helps speed up things. Well, that's precisely why Google make it so it serves its purpose.


5. Google Chrome Extensions
   This is probably the release that I've been waiting for longest time. And finally... it's here! I'm obviously very very excited about it. When Chrome was initially released, I downloaded, installed, tried, and uninstalled it. Didn't care about it till Chrome 3.0 beta was out when I found I could change browser theme. I installed it back and played around with all the cool theme. Then got bored and left it alone. Then when Chrome 4.0 was here, I found myself half converted to Chrome. As far as net surfing concerned, Chrome will be my browser of choice. The loading speed and smoothness of page transition is addictive. Until Chrome 3.0, I was still yet to find any noticeable difference from FireFox, and that was why I was not persuaded. But with 4.0, it was obvious.
   
   Now that the long-awaited extension, it gives me a lot of reason to debate on the full convert from FireFox. But at the moment it's not yet convincing because there are a bunch of the extensions that I use heavily on FireFox yet to be available in Chrome. So when they do, I'm gonna have to ask myself really serious questions because I've been a really huge fan of FireFox.


6. Liquid Galaxy
   At the moment, this is a just-for-fun thing. But it has potential to pose a serious implication to the future of GPS viewing.


7. Chrome on Mac
   Now peeps on Mac have another tempting option. It's time for them to start scratching their heads too. Welcome to the club.


8. SPDY
   I keep my fingers cross and pray that this one will come through. Please let it do. I hope many peeps out there are aware of this project and start pressurizing Google for it. XD I know it will.


9. Google Speed Tracer
   This is a suitable item to end it since it's the least useful and least attractive to normal users. This is more for geeks like me. We'll find it very handy.

So how's that for release? I hope you're as excited about it as I do because you have no idea how useful and powerful they are until you are able to use them effectively and efficiently. Then you'll most likely find yourself in the same situation as you are now with Google Search, gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Map.

Wow before I know it, it has already been two weeks after exams are over. And more importantly, I just realize that I haven't even had time to post a post to celebrate the liberty from this stressful hurdle. After my paper was over on 1st Dec, I had so many things that I want to and need to catch up on. First was to catch up on some friends and going out for dinner. Then catch up on my preparation for my internship, which is going start 1 month earlier then scheduled and thus instead of having 6 weeks holiday, I will only have 2. After that need to go around here and there buy some stuffs for some people, sending things for repair, repairing things.

On top of that, I had so so many movies to catch up on... the list has been built up since the semester started. Apparently, I was so preoccupied that I didn't get a chance to see any. Let's see what I have seen since after exam, 2012, Ninja Assassin, A Christmas Carol, Ice Age 3, Monsters vs Aliens, Four Christmases, American Pie Presents Book of Love, Watchmen, and Aliens in the Attic. Not bad quite a number, but still so many more to go.. Law Abiding Citizen, Public Enemies and The Hangover, just to name a few. Besides that, I'm also resuming The Lost Symbol, which I started reading during school term due to inability to control the temptation and put on hold when exam coming due to panic, desperation, and fear of not being able catch up on time for exam. Then the past few days, I've spent catching up on South Park season 13, Family Guy season 8 and my most favorite TV show, So You Think You Can Dance season 6. Then finally, it's time to resume jogging and badminton after a month break without exercise.

Wow~! seems like I really have a lot of catching up to do especially when the time frame is so short. I really need to clear them before internship start. Otherwise, I'll be really distracted. With that, I'll sign off and chiong to do some more catching up. TEE HEE!

My Rating:

Aliens in the Attic is boring. It's a redundant cliché of all the kids-fight-aliens/monsters movies that have been made so far. I have long lost the the joy of seeing such movie. If you are the type who's particular about logic in a movie, you'd probably hate this more than I do.  You have to get over a lot of logical facts to accept this. Like how supposedly highly advanced and super intelligent aliens, who is coming to invade the earth, were stupid enough to not have anything to fight against children. Not recommended... unless you're really bored.

My Rating:

I'd say this is a pretty good Christmas movie. It probably makes you want to change your mind and go visit your family members you decided not to for whatever reason. I've never really celebrate Christmas but I always find Christmas to be a very fascinating holiday period. Whether you celebrate or not, you'd feel the the spirit from the environment. And that makes you smile and happy.

Call me emo, but from the things that have been happening around me lately, I was actually able to identify with a lot of things in there like how being so sure of what you want, what you need and what you're doing can be a your disadvantage. Sometime, you really need to let yourself loose and go with the flow. Always having clear sense of direction doesn't do you good all the time. Another thing is about opening up yourself and share with people around you. Sometime, there are certain truth about yourself that you should let your partner before or he/she finds out and realize that he/she knows nothing about you. And quite certainly, you and your partner should never set a boundary to what can be discussed and what's not. Otherwise, you both will be nothing but acquaintance.

My Rating:

Another 3D movie crossed from the list. This is strictly for 3D animation lovers. I gotta say, there is really nothing much there. Just monsters vs aliens and that's it.

So to keep the writing a bit longer, I'll babble a bit about the morale of the story. One is embrace your friends for who they are and how they look like for then they would do the same back to you. What counts is their heart for you. It doesn't matter what people say, it's your friends not theirs. Next would be, it's true that sometimes we ignore our instinct for being so accurate about the truth that we fear.

My Rating:

I like it but somehow, I just don't find it that funny any more. I kinda felt that it's getting redundant and thus the feeling that made me felt in love with Ice Age 1 is no longer there. I've grown out of it. Well obviously the animation, details and the actions are much better than the 1st two of the trilogy, but that's kinda a given and what's expected of it. In the end, it's still Ice Age.

Ice Age is one of the examples of the movies that I wanna keep seeing it despite the fact that I no longer find it impressive any more. And probably, there a lot of viewers out there do feel the same I do, which was why the two sequels were made. So yes, check this out.

My Rating:

hmmm... The animation was good. I mean really good. The details were superb. The rest was just hmmm... ordinary. Let just say that this isn't exactly what I want to see for Christmas. However, there were actually some moments that I was able to identify with and share the sentiment with. Anyway, I wouldn't recommend this movie.

My Rating:

I got to know this movie through YouTube by accident. I was watching random youtube video and came across this interview with the guy who did the visual effect for Matrix and he wast mentioning that he'd be involved in Ninja Assassin. So then I was tempted to check this out. Then I checked release date and realize that it's cinema. I went to GV site and just nice it's still showing in GVMax one more day. So yeah went to see it.

Ninja Assassin is of those movies that I don't really know if I hate it or like it. Simply put, it's not bad but forgettable. What I like about it is the mixture of new school and old school effect in the movie. They don't just focus solely on the cool move and matrix-like slow motion but also the abrupt and swift stealth and mercilessness of a ninja. And I'd say they've done a good job in portraying elements of ninja. Ninja is not cruel. They don't torture you, what they do is make sure you're dead as fast and painless as possible unless you put up resistance.

Another thing that I have to give props to Ninja Assassin is that they actually include the traditional elements of true ninja - jutsu hand seal, shukuchi and the moving from shadow to shadow (don't know what's that called). These magical elements of ninja is often not presence in the modern ninja movies.

Lastly, I think you might not wanna check this out unless you wanna see Rain killing people mercilessly. :P

My rating:

Finally, I managed to catch this after exam. I was lucky to get to see it in Digital on last day of showing. First, let's go through the good part. Quite obviously, the CG was awesome! I went there for that, if it's not awesome, I'd be utterly disappointed. Probably the most elaborated catastrophe I've seen on screen. I know I shouldn't be excited about witnessing the visualization of such tragedy but I couldn't help it. I gotta be ignorant here and say "it's just a movie. come on!"

Now on to the not so good part. Before going for this movie, I asked a friend of mine for the her critique. And she said the movie was too American for her. So I was like I can tolerate that. But after the movie, I have to agree that it's a bit over the top. There are just too many coincidences in the movie to be believable.  Well, then again it's not meant to be believable anyway. Well, if you can overlook all the little details about the logic and reality of the movie, you'd probably will find it exciting.