In wake of a certain friend who happened to get one very nice car, I consoled myself by spending a good 15 minutes looking for a wallpaper of a car I wanted.Of course, it only came in full screen, so I spent another 15 minutes tweaking it for widescreen monitors. Quick and dirty, but I figured I’d share it for those in search of large widescreen wallpapers; it was also theraputic in its own right.
Also check out Interfacelift.com, they feature much better quality widescreen and fullscreen large wallpapers.
I had a chance to watch what’s probably one of the best movies to come out this year – The Departed, a Scorsese film based off of the popular Asian movie Infernal Affairs. It’s a pretty high-profile remake that’s been garnering excellent reviews, and I’m happy to say it doesn’t disappoint. ()
After watching the new film on the big screen, I went back and rewatched the older one for probably the 8th or 9th time to compare. I love these kinds of films done well because of their excitement and longevity – a capable director and editor is able to keep the audience intrigued and on the edge of their seats throughout as scenes twist and turn the plot, while a lot of the nuances and subtleties displayed by the characters only make sense after the 3rd, 4th viewings with the plot completed.
Asian gambling movies are fun to watch; there’s something in the genre embedded in ninties Hong Kong cinema that makes directors come back with mediocre remakes and cheesy knockoffs, something more than nostalgic quality…Well, it certainly isn’t the plot: pretty much every movie features a gambling do-gooder, possessing ungodly natural gambling talent, getting screwed over some experienced evil older fellow who got rich off his cheating and commences in a final showdown at the end of the flick, whereby the bad guy will cheat outrageously until it is revealed that the hero knew all along and was playing him like a puppet.Not to mention the laughably bad acting, the terrible production values, the groan-inducing “parodies” of more popular movie genres, and the shameless cameos trotted onscreen for ten seconds just so they can be featured in the trailer.
Recently I’ve been watching a lot of Asian films, and I’ve been trying to pinpoint the attributes that make them so personally endearing when compared to western cinema. The results are…inconclusive.
How are they different from western pictures? I’d like to say that their smaller budgets and more local target audiences make them rely less on canned special effects and expensive actors – but there’s been more more internationalized (e.g. westernized) big-budget movies in recent years. I’d like to say that they’re willing to try newer things, but I personally can’t strike the right chord with most indie films who do try and Asian films have become formulaeic in their own right.
Maybe it’s my Asian blood? I dunno, I still don’t get a lot of the cultural references, and some of the Japanese stuff is just crazy. For every quality film that I do get a chance to see, I probably had to endure some fifteen really bad ones.
Must be the non-Matrix-bastardized kung fu.
