Looking Good?

Redesigning is fun! Unless you spend days working on something and then when you show it to a few people, the majority says, "I like the old one better." Back to the drawing board and another few days later, I decided to just commit to the simplest look possible, without being too plain. I wanted something a little fancier than this look but it's the most efficient and cleanest. Plus I like the colors.The reasons for redesigning? I needed to...

Nana (2005)

Listening to: Mika Nakashima, "Glamorous Sky" (lyrics) and Yuna Ito, "Endless Story."Ameer preceded this movie with the words, "I don't know if you'll like this." Then the titles came up. Big pink comic book letters intro, a movie about two girls looking for love and finding friendship, all encased in a J-Pop/Rock setting. How could I not like this movie? Apparently "Nana" is a top selling manga and this live action movie introduces the first...

Everyone Else and You

I've been buzzing about this thing for about a week now. Touch Graph is an application for Facebook that shows you how your friends are connected and interconnected visually. I know, I know, another Facebook app, blah blah blah. But this one is seriously cool and kind of useful. At least for me.Awhile back, Lilly and I had this idea to create a Friend Web that you could carry around with you. It shows who your friends are, how they're connected,...

The Fempires

"It sounds like fun and games -- the boozy, all-woman answer to those close-knit gangs of Hollywood boy-men captured on screen in 'Entourage' and embodied by the real-life Apatown, the industry moniker for filmmaker Judd Apatow's coterie of actors and screenwriters including Paul Rudd, Jason Segel and Seth Rogen. But these women also work hard: Ms. [Diablo] Cody, Ms. [Dana] Fox and Ms. [Lorene] Scafaria can command seven figures to write a movie...

I Love You, Man (2009)

Not normally a movie I'd pay to watch, since I don't like 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and other Apatow-esque guy movies. If you want to read a positive review of this movie, click here."But what I appreciated most was the way that the film captured the modern American male condition with thought and humor. On the whole, when men get married, study after study has demonstrated that they are more likely to depend more on their spouses for emotional...

I seen, I saw

During the past week, I saw six movies in six days. It was the Asian American Film Festival and there's nothing better I like to do than watch a ton of movies. They were offering six movies for the price of five, a deal I couldn't resist. The problem was, what to watch? I couldn't make heads or heels of most of the films so relied on the handy dandy guide that highlighted the feature films. I wish I could have seen some of the shorts or picked...

The Golden Apple

If you dream it, it can happen. I dreamed of a new laptop and it arrived in a beautifully wrapped brown package the other day. Shiny, aluminum, expensive. Dreams cost money nowadays don't you know? In this case, dreams cost me close to a grand and a half and was probably fiscally irresponsible. The decision came down to: rent, laptop, travel money. The safe answer was rent. The responsible answer was travel money (2009 is shaping up to be...

On Rainbows

My obsession with Wizard of Oz, and by extension, Judy Garland, is well documented. I don't know exactly why I have this love of everything Wizard-related. I could probably give a dozen reasons, all of them truer than the last. I liked the movie because of the songs. I like exploring the history and trivia surrounding the movie. I like thinking about how long ago 1939 was.I liked reading L.Frank Baum's thirteen sequels. I like the Wizard of...

Watchmen (2009)

This movie is polarizing reviewers. Artistic masterpiece versus incredible waste of time. I've been waiting for the movie for months, maybe a year even. And now, having sat through two and a half hours of it? I think it's better to invest a few hours into reading the graphic novel before watching the movie.The translation from page to film is pretty accurate but there's too much context and subtext missing. I'd even suggest that having a good...

Revolutionary Road (2008)

Geezes, what a movie. It's intense, it's serious, it's goddam a super scary story. A young couple stuck in suburbia and trapped in their lives, together but totally separate. The intensity of the fights between Leo and Kate are enough to make any veteran of relationship battles cringe and wince. If you've ever wondered what you might look like when you are yelling at your significant other, this movie pretty much shows you. It's ugly. And Leo...

Examined Life (2009)

The movie opens with a quote from Socrates, "The unexamined life is not worth living." That sets the stage for an hour and a half of watching/listening to big thinkers talk about big things. The film is technically about philosophy and could serve as that but it struck me more as an experiment in movie making. Similar to Richard Linklater's "Waking Life," the entire running time is taken up by various people walking/sitting and talking to the...