cat /proc/claus | java

This weekend, I have been to Takao-san, a 600m high mount near Tokyo (actually, quite near Marilia’s school). It was a nice trip, and I took some fine pictures there (check my PICASA page by clicking the picture in the side bar). I was intending to write about it today, but it just happens that I spend the night reading that book I’m reviewing for my professor (50 of 300 pages done :-(), so I’m a bit tired to write about Mt. Takao in details.

Instead, I’ll speak a little about recent movies that I have seen:

* Red Cliff: Red Cliff is a recent movie by John Woo about one of the biggest battles in the Romance of Three Kingdoms - one of the most important stories in eastern culture - about the fall of the han dinasty in ancient (3rd century) China. I’m a big RoTK fan, and I was curious about how the events and heroes in that book were going to be portrayed in the big screen.

I was not very happy about it actually. First, the film is kinda confusing - the events were being all being presented quite quickly - and the scenes would shift focus from the different armies without any warning, so that it was hard to tell who was doing what, and what army we were actually following at the time. It was hard to follow by people who know the story - should be completely inscrutable for those who never seen it.

Then I was a bit bothered by the portrayal of Cao Cao, the prime minister, who is the bad guy in the movie. He is portrayed as an overconfident buffoon, who never listens to good advice and revels in bad advice, and generally takes all sorts of stupid decisions and harsh actions - in other words, a bumbling fool - which is in complete contrast with the fact that he was the most powerful person in the period, and achieved such by self merit. Cao Cao was a corrupt bastard? Yes he was, but he was no fool, and I think this movie does not do him justice.

On the up side, the film is beautiful, and does bring some of the magic of the RoTK to the big screen, with heroes larger than life defeating hordes of soldiers while playing music and discussing philosophy in their downtime, beautiful courts, and a lot of eastern charm. And I’m pretty sure it will be made easier to follow when it is converted to the 2.5 hour feature for western audiences (when compared to the 4 hour 2-part movie for eastern markets).

* Mamma Mia! - This was a very very cute adaptation of the musical (which I had never seen, just heard some of its musics). For a musical, the song performances of the movie were actually quite uninspiring (when compared to other musical movies like Moulin Rouge or Chicago), but that gets easily forgiven, because the movie itself is so cute. It was for me one of those movies that make you a little happier with life after you’ve seen it.

* Heroes Season 3 - It is not a movie, but I cannot end a discussion about things I’ve seen recently without stopping to mention how utterly BAD and HORRENDOUS is the third season of heroes. Just wanted to get that out of my chest.

Good night! And a more interesting post tomorrow.