UP by Pixar Himani — June 10, 2009 at 1:31 pm   {No Comments} Category: Reviews Tags: Tags: Disney, movie review

I forgot to post this earlier in the week. I went to see UP, the new Pixar movie, with John on Sunday. I highly recommend it. However, the story was surprisingly complex and deep, probably something that would be lost on younger children. I’m not saying that younger children wouldn’t like it–I mean, it has talking dogs and colorful, huge birds –but the story was definitely enjoyable for the out-of-elementary-school crowd (something that I felt Aliens vs. Monsters lacked). There were a few times that it tugged at the heart-strings and I got all teary-eyed.

Pixar’s on a roll. There was also an interesting trailer from Disney, where it looks like they’re trying to recapture that “old Disney feel” with princess tales or whatever. It’s basically the Frog Prince, but set in Louisiana. It looked interesting, but I kept thinking, They could do that really well…or it could be considered really bad. Dumbo crows, anyone?

Star Trek 2009 Himani — May 8, 2009 at 8:19 pm   {No Comments} Category: Journal, Reviews Tags: Tags: movie review, sci-fi, Star Trek, time travel

I went to see the new Star Trek movie with John and a friend of his today. I only saw one guy in a Kirk T-shirt (didn’t even have the pants or the boots!), which was disappointing. Where’s the people with Spock ears and Klingon heads? There was more dress-up when the Star Wars movies were being re-released in theaters. Tucson, you have let me down.

Anyway, I’ll keep this post plot-spoiler-free, even though I’d REALLY like to mention some stuff. *sigh* The things I do to avoid being pelted by rocks. Anyway, I will warn people: this movie is an action flick with great special effects and really loud noise (at times to the point where I winced), so there’s something to be said about watching it in theaters. However, don’t go in there expecting much more than action flickness with the usual action flickesque plot (yes, I just added two different suffixes to “flick”).

STAR TREK, the Old Crew vs. New Crew:

(Huh, New Spock looks really hot in that picture)

The first 20 minutes sucked butt. Personally, I think all the back story at the beginning could have been cut in half, or maybe even explained in flashbacks or Vulcan mind meld (hey, they do it later on for exposition). Basically, until Kirk decides to join Starfleet, it’s just one cliche after another. Kirk’s rebellious, we get it! Yeesh! By the time he finally did get onto the Enterprise, all I wanted to do was sing him the “Daddy Wasn’t There” song:

But the cool factor went up significantly once everyone was aboard the Enterprise. There were a few good fight scenes and a really funny moment involving Kirk and McCoy (although there wasn’t enough McCoy for my liking ).

The bad guy is pathetic and a complete write-off. His motivations have been done time and again (think Khan but not half as good) and they never explained how a guy who was a miner on a mining ship somehow got the ability to travel through time — or even had the scientific knowledge to do that, since he said he was “just a hard worker making an honest living” before he went all evil and shit.

Yes, the plot involves time travel, but it actually is done in a very interesting way without MOST of the usual paradoxes that hurt people’s brains. (There is one, but in the interest of non-spoiler, I won’t mention it, although I could SO make a masturbation joke) They use what I call the “Back to the Future Time Travel” where basically every time someone goes back in time and fudges with stuff, it creates an alternate dimension. So, while this is a restart of the Trek mythology…it isn’t really. Somewhere in another dimension, Kirk is still the guy portrayed by William Shatner with an alternate history because the baddies didn’t time travel and change things. As a result, some stuff in this new timeline is really interesting, especially if you’ve watched the Star Trek series.

This first Star Trek basically is a prologue to the new series (if they make more, but I think they will). It gets everyone aboard the Enterprise and it gets Kirk into the position of captain. There’s a lot of winks for fans who have seen the original series. Kirk and Spock start off as enemies but end as friends (almost like a romance novel. Do I sense a Totally Heterosexual Guy Love moment? Yes, yes I do). Vulcans are even more like space elves, so be warned. If I had to choose who got the most screen and story time, though, I’d say Spock. We really get to see his struggle with his human self versus his Vulcan self and some really interesting things that pound home the fact that, yes, this ain’t the Star Trek of our moms and dads. Some other things that happened in the movie:

• The laser beams (er, I mean photon torpedoes) still make a pew pew sound.
• Spock gets more action that Kirk!*
• Red shirts still die first, and in really stupid ways
• Kirk is still a horn dog. WE GET IT ALREADY.
• New Scotty may be the best actor out of all of them, but then it is the Hot Fuzz guy
• Chekov still can’t say his “V’s” (if anything, they’ve made his Russian accent even more pronounced)
• And the federation council’s police force are scary, faceless people that refer to everyone as “citizen”
• The aliens (and space) look much more believable. Amazing what 40 years will do to a special effects department.

* Yes, Spock gets more action. In fact, that whole subplot was really sweet. But, it’s definitely a change. Spock? Liking vagina? REALLY? In the original series, the most interest he ever showed was to Kirk.

Final Verdict: I liked it. It was a good action flick, even if the first 20-or-so minutes sucked. While it didn’t bring anything new to the genre, it was entertaining. I think I even liked seeing it in theaters, because it had that “big action flick production budget,” so seeing it on a big screen was fun.

Book List: April & May Himani — June 3, 2008 at 12:09 am   {No Comments} Category: Books, Reviews Tags:

I really should do this when the month ends, it’s so much easier to keep track that way. I didn’t read much during these two months, unfortunately, mostly because of finals but also because I just wasn’t finding anything very good and so I have a lot of half-read things I gave up on. There seems to be a particularly huge influx of very bad speculative fiction and I picked up a good fair share of it. Luckily most of it was from the library so I don’t feel like I wasted my book budget too badly. If you’ve read something you’d recommend, tell me! I’ll add it to my list!

(more…)

I was inspired to write about my own quest to find a note taking tool because of Amelia June’s recent posts on her experimentations with Microsoft OneNote. Since I’m a poor student, I don’t have OneNote and so I’m trying a cheap-o way to manage my notes. Maybe some of these softwares will come in handy for someone else.

I realized a while back that I needed a way to write down notes as I worked on Morgan. Things would pop into my head — usually along the lines of, Crud, I’m going to have to go back and change that, but I don’t want to right now while I’m flowing along. I better write a note or remember the change for later — and I would try and make a note to myself.

I first tried keeping a notebook handy, but unfortunately I’m not organized enough to always have that same notebook within arm’s reach and notebooks lack a very important tool: copy & paste.

So, I tried to write in RoughDraft, which has a notepad right next to the wordprocessing screen. I loved the program…except for the fact that it was Rich Text Format and thus did not support more advanced formatting options. Could I live without my precious em dashes? I wondered. The answer was “no,” which may seem crazy to some of you, but whenever I saw two normal dashes instead of my usual em dash, it just looked wrong on the screen and it would distract me.

Then I began playing around with almost every free software I could find, which isn’t a lot. I found things I liked, such as LivePad, which is comparable to OneNote in a lot of ways, but it still costs money (granted, not as much as OneNote, but…). I also tried ZuluPad, but it lacked a lot of features I’d've liked (which, ironically, were available on ZuluPad Pro) but I really did like it’s wiki-style linking. Maybe I’ll experiment a little more with ZuluPad later.

I’ve mentioned KeyNote before, and I do like many of its features, as well, but there were a few aspects of it that frustrated me (many of the same ones that frustrated me on ZuluPad). Basically the fact that the files are not .txt or .rtf, so if you want to open the documents on another computer, you’ve got to have the program installed. Since I often nip into the computer lab when I find myself with a few free minutes, I would much rather have something that I could access from any computer — be it Mac or otherwise. Although, KeyNote does offer a lot of the stuff ZuluPad Pro offers (like rich text formatting) and for free.

However, I suppose I can experiment with putting the whole software on my USB key (now that I have 2 megs, its much more easier to put extra stuff on it). But, for right now, I’m trying out NotePad Pro+. It is as the name suggests: it’s a more advanced version of NotePad. What I really like about it is: tabbed documents (very handy when I have multiple files of notes!), everything is saved as .txt, I can set the font, in-document links, syntax highlighting, word count and character count, and an unlimited undo. In the end, I simply copy & pasted the .exe file into my USB key, and now I can have the program wherever I go. Or, if I don’t have my USB key with me, I can open a .txt file and email it to myself or put it on Google Docs and I’ll be able to open it with Notepad Pro+ later.