War of the Worlds
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, and Tim Robbins

Rating: **1/2

At its best, War of the Worlds is go for broke, all or nothing cinema. It's fascinating and remarkable at the same time. Unfortunately, at its worst, it's dull, stupid, and overly sentimental. And because of its negative aspects, namely only the horrible and horrendous ending, the film falters greatly because of it. For the first 105 minutes, the film is thrilling, exciting, and so engrossing until the ending comes. When the credits rolled up, I felt so cheated by the ending. It's just so stupid describing it is pointless.

As for the acting, Cruise is pretty good. He made me forget he was an asshole to Matt Lauer the other day with this performance. Fanning was okay but all she did was scream, run, and call for her dad or brother. Justin Chatwin, who plays the brother, was also okay. An admirable performance but instantly forgettable. Tim Robbins is totally wasted in this film. It's like his dead character from Mystic River came back and starred in this film. He even has the same goddamn accent.

I think the best thing to come out of this film is the jaw-dropping (and I mean jaw-dropping) visual effects. They are some of the best ever on film, bar none. I still don't know why George Lucas can't make effects look this real while in almost every Spielberg movie they are always amazing.

Overall, the film was excellent with admirable performances until the hokey cop out of an ending that totally fucked up the scenes before it.

For the past few weeks, Tom Cruise has been very irritating. First, it was the lambasting of Brooke Shields, the infamous Oprah-gasm, the lectures of Scientology in live interviews, his engagement to Katie Holmes, and now he's on television with one of America's biggest news anchors, Matt Lauer, trying to get almost anyone into his fucked up religion (I call it more of a cult). His interview with Matt Lauer was completely disrespectful and embarrassing not to Lauer but also Cruise himself (and Cruise doesn't even realize it). The fact was that he was supposed to talk about "War of the Worlds" and he did not even talk about the film at all.

For the transcript of Matt Lauer vs. Tom Cruise you can get it HERE.

In my opinion, Tom Cruise is getting more fucked up by the second. I hate people who say that their religion is the best of all because of this or because of that. Remember people, Scientology is a cult where its followers believe that aliens took over their bodies millions of years ago and they're trying to purge out the alien. That's right people, they're trying to fucking purge out an alien that doesn't exist. And oh yeah, the cult (it's not a FUCKING RELIGION, Mr. Cruise) was created by the dude who wrote Battlefield Earth.

The shit's been going down the past few couple of days. I heard that Mozzie rocked the shit at Fete. Great job guys, I wish I was there to cheer you guys on and make a moshpit for you guys. Saw Batman Begins again on Saturday but this time on IMAX. I saw BB last Tuesday and the picture was off center, the sound was a few pitches too high, and the focus of the projector sucked ass. Well, the IMAX experience (as they call it here) was absolutely fantastic. Just imagine watching a film 5 times larger, 10 times clearer, and 20 times louder than in any regular theatre. That is the IMAX experience. It certainly made BB even better. Batman Begins is now one of my favorite films EVER. The ending absolutely drives me nuts because its so pitch perfect.

Sunday was father's day and he brought us to McDonald's. Not just any McDonald's but the McDonald's of the future in Oakbrook. This new McDonald's was just insane. New sandwiches, plasma screens, wi-fi internet, employees who pick up after you, and other stuff. All I can say about the food is that it really tasted clean, too clean. It felt like eating in a restaurant than a regular McDonalds.

I recently got tagged by Pam's boy toy, Arvino:

Total volume of music files on my computer:
3.85 GB of music

The last CD(s) I bought:
Batman Begins [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack] ~ James Newton Howard & Hans Zimmer
In Your Honor (2LP) ~ Foo Fighters

Songs playing right now:
"Grace" ~ Jeff Buckley

Five (how about six?) songs that I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

1. "The Last Goodbye" ~ Jeff Buckley (My ex-gf Leah gave me this song before she broke up with me. A truly beautiful song from one of the world's finest musicians who died too young).

2. "Tears in Heaven" ~ Eric Clapton (Had great times with this song. Sang this at Rico Puno's bar while in the Philippines in 2002/2003).

3. "Walking After You (Remix)" ~ Foo Fighters (If the Foo Fighters rocked harder than anyone, they also played the best love songs).

4. "Hallelujah" ~ Jeff Buckley (Sure, this was first Leonard Cohen's song but Buckley refined it, made it stronger and more resonant, and whereas the Cohen version was flawed, Buckley perfected it).

5. "Freedom" ~ Rage Against the Machine (I still believe that the best Rage album is their first. This is Rage at their most potent, pure, and amazing).

6. "The Scientist" ~ Coldplay (By far, Coldplay's best song. Fusing Chris Martin's somber lyrics with the delicate sounds of the piano, guitar, bass, and synth to make this one of the best songs of the 21st century).

On the subject of Coldplay, I still can't get into their new album. None of the songs never really pull me in or ever take flight. It's their most disappointing album to date.

On another note, Radiohead's OK COMPUTER album made the Spin magazine list of the 100 best albums at #1. It really deserves that spot. The album is epic and flawless and is better as a whole.

Batman Begins (PG-13)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Rutger Hauer, Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson, and Linus Roache.

My brother and I bought tickets to the midnight showing of Batman Begins. When we entered the theater no one checked our ticket stubs. Anyone could have gone into Batman without paying. The auditorium was packed to the gills with teens and when I mean packed I mean Star Wars packed. There wasn't an empty seat in the house. Now onto the film. I have never felt anything for a film like this before and this is just the first viewing. I had overly high expectations about the film. I watched all the trailers, all the television commercials, and even the 10 minute preview on television. It wasn't helping either that the soundtrack sounded amazing. While I had my expectations, I never thought that they would ever be surpassed. Well folks, not only were my expectations surpassed, they were absolutely obliterated. I've never felt a film end in such a high note as this. Be it Million Dollar Baby, Return of the King, Oldboy, or any other film I've loved, their endings were stupendous and some even perfect but I never felt this sense of satisfaction before. In other words, this movie is the shit. This movie is fucking awesome and balls to the wall great.

Giving a summary and proper review would diminish its greatness. This is the best film of 2005 yet.

Grade: A+

I hate copy protected CDs.

I bought the new Foo Fighters In Your Honor CD and to my dismay it had a sticker on it saying that it was copy protected. When I inserted the CD to my computer it downloaded all this shit onto it. When I tried ripping the songs into my hard drive, I couldn't. The error correction function on Exact Audio Copy (the program I use to rip music) was going nuts. When I canceled the extraction I played the stuff that I ripped. It was just garbled garbage.

Thank god for search engines.

I typed the words "Foo Fighters Copy Protection" into the space and I got a shitload of entries. Dozens of people were complaining about the CD and how they can't rip the songs onto their hard drives. Well, there is something to remove the fucking copy protection. Before you insert the CD, hold down the SHIFT key. When the CD is inserted, keep holding down the SHIFT key. And you know what? It works like a fucking charm.

This is what I hate about the music industry. They keep on saying that piracy is rampant and all these people are fucking stealing and downloading. Well, you know what? That's bullshit. I bought the fucking CD so I can fucking do whatever the fuck I want. FUCK YOU RIAA.

As for the album, it's fucking awesome.

Radiohead - Kid A = FUCKING AMAZING.

Just saw Ghost World and thought it was just okay. Didn't think it was the best film in the whole entire world. IMO the script is much much better. But you'll have to read it to know it. This post is for Mozzie and I wish them good luck on Saturday's Fete De La Musique (did i spell that right?). Rock on!

Have been downloading songs like crazy the past few days. Here's some recommended by me:

Acceptance - "Different"
Ben Folds - "Landed"
Fall Out Boy - "Sugar, We're Goin' Down"
Iron and Wine - "The Trapeze Swinger"
M83 - "Unrecorded"
Metallica - "One"*
Metallica - "Turn the Page"
New Order - "True Faith"
Orbital - "Halcyon Plus On Plus On"
Rachael Yamagata - "Worn Me Down"
Stereo MC's - "Connected"
Tool - "Prison Sex"

*While I recommended all these songs, the one that everyone should get is Metallica's "One." A masterpiece of musical poetry. After I heard this song, it made me download Metallica's other songs.

"Criticizing the media is like booing the Special Olympics." ~ Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

I bought the new Coldplay album. I've already listened to it about five times and it's not even close to A Rush of Blood to the Head. I mean, not even half of Rush's beauty and grace. Shit, it's not even close to Parachutes. Rush was a fucking masterpiece but it seems here with their X&Y album that they're trying too hard to become the new U2 instead of being just Coldplay. I can't get into any of the songs with the exception of "Speed of Sound." There's no song like "The Scientist" or "Clocks." There are only a couple of memorable hooks in some songs but something is truly missing here. "The Scientist" gave me goosebumps the first time I heard it and I couldn't stop listening to it. But here none of the tracks have that feeling. Maybe it's because the first two albums were based on sadness, loss, and somber shit. Coldplay is still trying to be sad with their songs but how can they be if their lead singer is no longer feeling like shit?

It's just like the new Audioslave album. While sounding more like a band than individuals, Audioslave seems to have lost their edge.

As of right now here are the grades:
Coldplay - X&Y: C
Audioslave - Out of Exile: C-

Here's hoping that the new Foo Fighters double album will be at least pretty good. Maybe I just need to listen to this Coldplay album a little bit more.

It's all shits and giggles on fucking hell week boys and girls.

This past week must have been the worst week ever. On Monday I had diarrhea. It was very fucking severe. And I mean so severe, I was shitting every 2 minutes. LITERALLY! On Monday, I shit so much that when I tried to wipe blood would transfer onto the piece of toilet paper. And it wasn't shit I was shitting but water and salad. Salad you ask? Yes, fucking salad. I was told that it may have been the spinach in the salad that fucking did me in. I now hate spinach. I never liked it anyway. My brother kept on laughing at me throughout the entire thing. That Monday night, I ran to the bathroom to find my brother blocking the door (unintentionally) with his huge fucking 6-foot frame. I was already fucking shitting in my pants. And it was water shit. Not just watery shit but water shit PERIOD. As I slammed my huge fucking ass on the toilet seat, there was already water shit on the floor. And all my brother did was laugh. What an asshole he was the entire time.

On Tuesday, my brother would taunt me by eating a Big Mac and huge fries in front of me while I sat there drinking Gatorade. And on this Tuesday, I wasn't allowed to eat anything. No solids, no soft shit, NOTHING! Just fluids, fluids, and more fucking fluids. By the end of Tuesday, my ass was raw, bloody, and stinging from all the shitting I did the entire day. That night, I prayed to God and cried. I cried hard, REAL HARD. I've never felt like this before. I felt so weak from not eating and all night I was shitting every 15 minutes. I slept only a good 3 hours before shitting water again. And through all this, the next day was a day of a final exam.

Wednesday came around and things started looking up. I wasn't shitting as much and I could eat again. I could only eat plain toast, clear broth, and crackers. Again, Wency taunted me while he ate Chocolate Overload ice cream. Because I couldn't take my final, I had to e-mail my teacher. Fortunately, he understood my problem and told me to take it on Friday if I was better. I called my Script Analysis and told her I couldn't go to class because I had the severe shits. She told me that I still had to go. I prayed to God that night that my diarrhea would be cured the next day.

You know what. God listens.

Thursday I woke up to take a shit and it wasn't water anymore. It was overly soft but not water shit anymore. I packed up my backpack and took some extra underwear with me in case I have an accident. I took the exam and went home. I was happy. I didn't have an accident at all. It was like I climbed my own Everest for this past week.

Friday came up and I took my last final. I finished it in two minutes and celebrated it with a trip to McDonalds and bought two McChickens. I was elated to find my shit actually hard and no longer just water.

I thank God for my Mom. She called the nurse to find out what I can do to make my body better. She didn't even sleep Monday night because she was so worried about me. If only I can say the same about my brother.

The hell week has past. And now I'm just happy. I gotta go now, I'm feel like I'm gonna take a shit.