This week is the last week of class and I'm hoping for good grades. I know I'm getting an A for computer class because it's so frickin easy. I'm hoping an A for Aesthetics of Cinema, Script Analysis, but a B for biology. I didn't do great on Biology because I missed a huge lab.

I just listened to Jamie Cullum's version of Radiohead's "High and Dry." And there's one word I can think of it. Horrendous! He can make pretty good music sometimes but his rendition of it just sucked all over the map. He tried making it into a jazz song but you can't change genres of Radiohead songs. I only ones I can think of are the ones on the Pablo Honey album.

I forgot there was already a music video of Coldplay's "Speed of Sound" and it sounds pretty awesome. I hope to buy it on June 7th when it comes out.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (PG-13)
Director: George Lucas
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Jimmy Smits, with Christopher Lee, and Frank Oz.

Droids. Aliens. Sith lords and lightsabers. For George Lucas, the saga is finally complete after 28 years. This is the film that fans have been waiting for, the episode where Anakin Skywalker finally transforms into Darth Vader. In my opinion, I liked Episode I despite the horrible acting by Jake Lloyd and the creation of Jar-Jar Binks. But I hated Episode II for its atrocious dialogue and even worse acting. Was Episode III able to whet my appetite for that long lost equal to the Empire Strikes Back?

I do not hate Star Wars but I do admire the way that it changed film history back in 1977. It made films great pieces of entertainment and the original trilogy (A New Hope, the Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) were major accomplishments despite their flaws. The thing that I hate, and I mean really despise, is the horrible dialogue. Lucas couldn't write a decent novel if he wanted to. Or even a love letter. The vocabulary that he uses is what film critic Roger Ebert calls, "the most basic English." The words that were so memorable in the original trilogy (Empire, most of all) are nowhere to be found here. Most of the dialogue is irritating and at times unintentionally hilarious. The lines from Empire and A New Hope had a sort of eloquence that transcended the film. Another aspect I found extremely annoying is the story. The transformation of Anakin to Darth Vader is extremely quick and blunt. We never see Anakin have a sense of clarity which path he wants to follow. His character is always confused and troubled. We never see the evolution of his character, it is mostly one-dimensional.

Because of the horrible lines, the great actors here are pegged down to simply being mediocre. Academy award nominees Natalie Portman and Samuel L. Jackson are completely wasted in their roles. Hayden Christensen only glowers and screams when he turns to evil and Jimmy Smits is only there to pick up a paycheck with his monotone performance. The only two actors who completely do something with their characters are Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid. McGregor is so good, in fact, a hint of Sir Alec Guinness can be seen within the role. Ian McDiarmid plays Chancellor Palpatine to absolute perfection. His snaky nature and poisonous lines are among the best in the film and McDiarmid brings a certain bravura to them no one else can.

Lucas has said that people will weep at the end of this episode. Yeah right. Maybe if you're a Star Wars geek. While I did not cry and while most of the dialogue is completely pathetic, there are scenes of tenderness, emotion, and power. On the flip side, one scene that is started with such bombast and great music ends so cheesily I wanted to laugh out loud in the theater.

I judged this film too early when I viewed some scenes from the workprint. The scenes I mentioned during an earlier post are much better at the theater. But still, the film left me feeling incomplete and unsatisfied but there are some scenes with such great emotion and power that they still have not left my mind.

And for that I give the film a grade of B-

I don't watch CSI much. I only watch it when there's nothing else to watch. When I heard that Quentin Tarantino was directing the 2-hour season finale I had to watch it. I downloaded the season finale and it was fucking amazing. These are among one of the best two hours of the pure television bliss I've ever had. It was exciting, amazing, awesome, and most of all entertaining. I was on the edge of my seat throughout the entire thing.

Star.

Wars.

Wency downloaded a B+ quality copy from the internet. It's not those camcorder type bootlegs you find in the streets of New York City or Quiapo but a true workprint from the industry itself. My brother and I only watched a few scenes and it left a really bad taste in my mouth. One scene is so unintentionally hilarious that Wency keeps on laughing so hard everytime he watches it. We're watching the film in DLP in a couple of hours so I hope it's better in the theatre. On the subject of Star Wars, it made an astronomical $50 million on Thursday alone in the U.S. That's right, $50 million on the first day. By comparison, XXX 2 has made $28 million to date since it's late April opening.

I forgot to mention this earlier but System of a Down's latest album "Mezmerize" is just fucking brilliant. It simply has to be heard. Weezer's "Make Believe" is another gem in Weezer's catalog and the new Nine Inch Nails album (With Teeth) is amazing.

New albums coming in the next few weeks:
Audioslave: Out of Exile (May 24th)
Foo Fighters: In Your Honor (June 14th)

"Fuck you I won't do what you tell me." ~ Zack De La Rocha

Rage is the shit. I've been recently watching their past concerts and man, it would have been nice if I saw at least one of them.

Here's the shit that has been happening the past week:

Saturday:
Downloaded Jet Li's Unleashed which was fucking awesome to say the least. Easily the best English film Li has made. I find it funny that a lot of critics keep on saying that it's Jet's best American film. The funny thing is that it's not American not all but a French film. Directed by Louis Leterrier (French), written by Luc Besson (French), distributed by a French company, but starring actors from the U.K., China, and the U.S.

Sunday:
Jorge came Sunday night to help me finish my film on psoriasis. I thought it was gonna take like two hours to finish. Unfortunately, it didn't. It still wasn't finished, it was already 4am, and the film was due 9 hours later.

Monday:
Fortunately, my bro finished burning a copy of it on DVD and I brought it to school. We worked hard on it, the blood, sweat, and tears of 5 hours. I wanted to go first to present. I was tired and I wanted to get it over with. I asked my teacher but he said that I'll certainly go today. When he said the words: "Presentations are going to be in alphabetical order" I wanted to shoot somebody. I then calculated in my head the people who brought presentations (22) and the minutes per presentation (5) = 110 minutes. I thought we were going to finish early and I was going to present at the end of class. The class ends at 4:20 and it was already 4:15 with two people still before me. I hate it when my last name begins with a T. I didn't get to present. I just swallowed my pride and gave the film to my teacher. L.J. could see in my eyes then I wanted to present but he couldn't do anything about it.

I was so disappointed in my Biology class. The assignment was to create a presentation based on your major (for example, business majors should have a business presentation). Some people were film majors but they created fucking coloring books or children's books. When I saw their products, I laughed because I could see that it took them only 2 hours to create their pieces of shit. A few students actually took the time to present (one even gave out brochures and prescription bottles filled with chocolate), inevitably only the business majors gave presentations worth remembering. I was the only one that made a film, the only film major with a film. Isn't that funny?

Monday night:
Monday night saw the unveiling of the Sony Playstation 3 at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo). I'm not a huge gamer but my brother is. That must be the only night I saw him sleep late. He was having multiple gaming orgasms right in front of me, it was kinda gross. To be honest, the games that they presented were FUCKING AWESOME. I asked my brother what would he do if our cousin Pam was assigned to cover the E3 show in LA next year. He didn't answer.

Tuesday:
I went to the DMV today and get my new license plates WITH MY DAD. I don't know why I had to go. I stood there like a retard while this annoying black woman kept on screaming at me, "SIR, if you're not in line please stand on the side." I wanted to punch her right in the face.

Tuesday afternoon:
My dad and I went to this mechanic named Noel to bring my car to get fixed. You see, this used to be my aunt Perla's car. She bought a new Toyota Corolla and gave her old car to me. The problem is that it's fucking busted right now. It makes this loud noise whenever it is driven. A few weeks ago, my aunt Perla hesitantly let my aunt Helen borrow it. It was a big mistake. She returned it with the engine making a huge fucking noise. I was so pissed. This was the same car I was gonna use to go to watch Star Wars on Friday. Now we have to be driven to the theater like the Star Wars nerds.

Tuesday night:
Wency still gushing over the PS3. I went to take a nap and woke up at 10:30. Went over to Pam's blog and read about her adventures in Phoenix and L.A. I tell you, if that wasn't one of the best posts I've ever read on a blog. I just wished I still could have saw her over here in Chicago but she has a lot of time left in life. My mom was pissed that she wasn't able to come here as if the next day were the apocalypse and she wouldn't see her again.

I'm now trying to watch the copy of Donnie Darko Jorge burned for me.

But.

I just can't.

I'm more interested in watching Simpsons or Family Guy right now.

On other notes, Seth McFarlane's American Dad is gradually getting on the same level as Family Guy. My favorite scene has got to be Roger (an alien), smacking this butt ugly girl and her amazingly hot girlfriend on the head because they found out that he was an alien. Earlier, he was dressed in Jamaican and trying to be a rasta. After hitting the girls on the head, he goes on to say the best quote of the year:

Roger: "Did you see them leave?"
Steve: "Who?"
Roger: "The black guys who did this."

I saw Crash the other day. It's directed by Paul Haggis, the dude who wrote the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby. If only Crash was as good as Million Dollar Baby it would be one of the best films of the year. For a first time director, his work here is nothing short of great. The film is well shot, well scripted, and well directed. There's a problem though, I couldn't get engaged with the characters. With a film of this magnitude, the length of the film has to be longer, much longer. Ensemble pictures like Short Cuts and Magnolia ran over 3 hours long and were masterpieces because of this. You got you know each and every character, what their weaknesses and strengths were, you got to hate them and love them at the same time. Crash needs to be longer so the audience member would be more in tune with the characters.

Another difference with this film and Magnolia is that some of the characters are one-dimensional, we don't see their bad side but just their good side. Magnolia presented each character as multi-faceted, we got to see their bad sides and good sides, and most of all, everyone had a sense of redemption. Crash doesn't have a redemption at all for not even for one of its characters, the movie just ends and that's it. I didn't hate the movie, the problem is that the film could have been so much better.

At the end of Million Dollar Baby, I felt so sad because of its power. With Crash, I never like that. I never felt sad or happy. I just felt unsatisfied.

I give Crash a C+.

Kingdom of Heaven (R)
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Marton Csokas, Ghassan Massoud, and Liam Neeson.

Motion pictures are never considered entertainment no longer. Film critics were created to criticize every flaw in films. Kingdom of Heaven is a prime example in film criticism. Almost every film critic hated the film but I loved every minute of it. I felt for the characters, I cheered for the characters, I hated the villains, and was deeply saddened everytime a major character was killed. Most of the film reviews I have read criticize the historical inaccuracies, the script, some of the performances, and they complain how boring the film is. I am going to break my review into five pieces: Performances, Script, Music, Direction, and Negatives.

Performances:
Many critics have criticized Orlando Bloom for being such a bad actor on this film. I didn't see Bloom have a poor performance in this film. He absolutely did a great job. Sure, it will not win him any Academy Awards and it was not as commanding as the Russell Crowe performance from Gladiator, but his acting here is admirable and commendable. Bloom is surrounded by a wide array of fascinating performances from the stoic Liam Neeson to a gruff but honorable Jeremy Irons. There are two performances here I want to mention: Ghassan Massoud as the lead of the Muslims and Edward Norton as King Baldwin IV. Massoud has such a great intensity and power to his role that you actually believe he is the most well respected king in the word at that time. Everytime Massoud is onscreen with Orlando, not only does he tower over him he demolishes him. But there's an even better performance and it's from one of the world's greatest actors of our generation, Edward Norton. Norton has had an incredible list of roles in the past but this one towers them all. I truly cared for his character in this film and his performance is truly special. It is hard to be emotional while wearing a silver mask (which he does when he's onscreen) but somehow Norton pulls it off. During a crucial scene between Baldwin and Sybilla (Eva Green), it is truly heart-wrenching. At the end of the film, I still couldn't believe it was Edward Norton onscreen, he truly was that good.

Script:
Again, the critics are saying the script is bad. Well, there are some memorable lines in the film, especially the scene where Sybilla speaks to her dying brother. While not the best script in the world, it is definitely better than past epics such as Alexander and Troy.

Music:
The music in this film is absolutely mind-blowing. My brain was going nuts from all the wonderful music blasting through the speakers. When King Baldwin dies, there's a piece that almost brought tears to my eyes because it was so beautiful.

Direction:
Ridley Scott was born to direct films like this. Every shot in the film is magnificent and the production design from Arthur Max is absolutely detailed and beautiful.

The Negatives:
There are some bad points to the film and it's mainly from an editing standpoint. The original cut of the film runs about 220 minutes (this cut runs 145) and some scenes felt cut and paste. A lot of the character development was also left on the cutting room floor (maybe this is why critics hated the film), also left on the cutting room floor were subplots involving Sybilla and her young son, added scenes such as Balian and Sybilla making love, Saladin decapitating Reynald himself, Hospitalier giving a speech about praying for the things he must endure, and possibly other missing scenes.

Conclusion:
This is one of the best films of the year; filmmaking at its truest, absolute best. Don't trust the critics and watch the film.

Grade: A-

BULLS FALL APART

The Bulls just completely sucked at the end of Game 6 Friday night. Kirk Hinrich was on the baseline trying to pass it to one of his teammates. He chose Chris Duhon to pass it to. Duhon thought Hinrich was passing it to someone else. What an idiot. The game was tied 91-91 with 34 seconds left. That play will be burned into Duhon's mind the rest of his life. Hinrich passed the ball.....to Duhon's back. The ball bounced off and into the hands of Wizards player Jared Jeffries who inevitably slammed the fucker home. After a free throw from one of the Wizards, it's Wizards 94-91 with 13 seconds left. Andres Nocioni shoots the 3 but misses, Chandler grabs the rebound, giving some hope to the Bulls until.......Chandler tries to shoot a jumper. A jumper is what, two points? YOU GUYS ARE FUCKING DOWN BY 3! WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SHOOTING A JUMPER YOU IDIOT! The Wizards win the game, the first round, and a meeting with the Miami Heat on Sunday. The "you-would-never-believe" Bulls suddenly became the Bulls of old during those last 34 seconds. The Bulls that started the season 0-9. The hated Bulls. The Bulls that sucked. Most of all, the Bulls that no one even cared about.

WHEN THE SHIT HITS THE FAN

My mom completely despises my grandmother right now. My grandmother did something so completely ruthless and stupid that if my father knew, he would buy a shotgun and kill my grandmother.

GIRLS

My brother has posted numerous times on his blog that he likes girls but he can't seem to speak to them. My situation is different, I have no problem speaking to girls but to ask them out is a different thing. For example, this girl I always speak to in Computer Applications class, Lindsey, is incredibly hot and wears this intoxicating perfume every time she comes to class. She's really nice and sweet and always gave me a perfect grade on my assignments even though there were mistakes. The problem is that I'm afraid to ask her if she wanted to watch a movie or something. I'm always asking myself, "Maybe I shouldn't ask. She might have a boyfriend" or "She's not interested in me, I'm an obese Asian. Why would she be interested in that?" Or maybe I shouldn't even go for it because it's just going to be a lost cause.

There are some days I miss the touch of a girl. Just to have someone hug you after you had a long day would simply just make my day. I sometimes miss Leah, my ex. She never e-mails me anymore or calls me on my cell phone. It's like she cut me off after she went 100% lesbian because the guy who dated her after me was a dick and a half.

And then, there's the "I think she still hates me" girl, Michelle. I see her every week working at the Pottery Bar on Marion avenue. I wonder if she still has the same hatred for me as the day she called me a stalker. The day she called me a stalker, I was completely hurt. My heart sunk and my head stooped down. She believes I'm a stalker because I know where her house is. The thing is, I know where her house is because it was awfully close to the middle school we both went to. There's a part of me that wants to say to her "I'm sorry for the shit I did. Forgive me." But there's also a part of me who wants to leave all that shit behind in the past. The thing is, I can't forget her, the words that she typed to me on AIM were harsh. The whole experience was just so draining and so rattling that I can't forget it.

There was a joke on Conan last week that made me laugh so hard.
"The company that makes Oreos finally knew how to make them less fattening. They slapped on a label that says 'Hey fatty, don't eat the entire bag!'"

How I love the Kingdom of Heaven soundtrack, hate Limp Bizkit, and start worrying about the film called Star Wars

My brother gave me two albums, the Kingdom of Heaven motion picture soundtrack and the new Limp Bizkit album "The Unquestionable Truth Part I." The Kingdom of Heaven soundtrack is beyond words. It is absolutely amazing to say the least. The composer, Harry Gregson-Williams, has definitely topped himself here.

Now on to a piece of shit album created by Limp Bizkit. I don't care if Wes Borland has come back to the band, the album still sounds like shit. Fred Durst has said that this album continues where Rage Against the Machine left off. Well, he's right. It sounds like Rage Against the Machine but a RATM cover band who couldn't get in at a Battle of the Bands show because they sucked horribly. What made RATM are: the blistering lyrics and lyric delivery of Zack De La Rocha, the remarkably unique sounds of Tom Morello's guitar, the smashing bass lines from Tim Commerford, and the pulse pounding drums from Brad Wilk. Every song on "The Unquestionable Truth" sounds exactly the same. No really, I'm serious. Durst tries to be Zack on all of the songs but misses by miles. I didn't like Limp Bizkit and I hate them even more now.

Star Wars Episode III is coming upon us. I liked Episode I, I hated Episode II, but will I like Episode III. I don't know. But my brother and I already bought tickets to a DLP show. You see, the difference with DLP is the color, clarity, and brightness. A film shot digitally (like Star Wars) has to be seen in a DLP theatre to truly see how good the image really is. We were going to borrow my aunt's car to get to Woodfield to watch the showing but now we're in the shit. The car is on the verge of death because another aunt who borrowed the car likes to drive like a shithead. She possibly hit a pothole and the frame of the car is totally fucked. My mom told me that I should just borrow Sonny's car for that day. I hope we can do that.

When we bought the tickets, I told my brother, "Man, we're such nerds."