Young Jacky Cheung

When Jacky Cheung, my favorite singer, was still young...

An unsuccessful trial of singing contest, EYTI (1983):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBi8RhqqSKg

The song won him the first important award, Champion of Hong Kong's 18 Districts Amateur Singing Contest (1984):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRPJikkQaKo

Earthquake in China

You may have seen this photo elsewhere, but I got really shocked when I first saw it. Can we do anything for those suffered?

Loser to be Babysitter -- Drillbit Taylor

I would never go to the cinema for such a movie, if there is no one treats.

Owen Wilson always shows tired after the suicide thing. Don't know whether this movie was shot before or after that, but his outlooking is just like a loser wandering in the streets.

Dropped out from the army, begging, cheating, and even stealling all the time, just to make a living. For a dream of starting a new life in Canada, he was recruited as the bodyguard of three high school freshmen, to protect them from the bully of the school's "big brother". Now you can understand that this movie HAS TO be crazily funny to get people to buy the tickets. Maybe that's the reason that it goes to Owen, who never cares about his own image when he is doing a film. Ironically, the most funny part is how the three newbies fit into the new school, and the new roles. They are definitely under aged compared to "American Pie", but they can still do som star mimic shows, date (or at least try to) some lovely girl in the school, and to kick someone's a** (or, to be kicked?).

Owen has many footages, or maybe just too many, just makes me feel boring, instead of interesting. And basically you can ignore any other adult roles in this film.

It is fun to watch such a movie when you really got time and money. And the best thing is, when you walk out of the cinema, you cannot even recall any single scene of it. So you don't waste any brain cell on it. Now go ahead with what you should do in the rest of this day.

Playboy Hero -- Iron Man

Every woman loves bad boy. Actually every ONE loves bad boy.

Nowadays people are so bored of super heros like Superman that has "zero defect", or the "next-door-boy" Spiderman. Now they are all after darker ones, like Batman, like Iron Man.

Actually I've never heard of this comic before the first trailer of this movies released. So I google some background materials, but basically you don't really need them if you have already made your mind to go for the movie itself.

There's one more thing in common between Iron Man and Batman, that they are "built", instead of "born". To be more specific, you can call them "DIY heros", cuz all their equipments are self-developed, and they use such equipments to complete those "mission impossible", such as, flying. So you can imagine that they must be very, very, very rich to afford the equipments. Well, the Iron Man movie is just like "Batman Begins", to tell the story of how a man starting to turn himself into a super hero.

To be exact, this man is better to be called a playboy. Dated 12 cover girls of FHM within one year, an "achievement" that makes every guy envy. And why every woman thinks that she could be the 13th and last one?

The script, unfortunately, is too supportive for Uncle Sam, but the footage of Iron Man is wise and full of humor, so we just pretend that we did not see the Afganist war.

It's really a waste of Gwyneth's talent to let her play such a role that with so little to present. But you just cannot get any blonde to do this, too risky. Dilemma.

The best supporting role is the black "buddy", while the "white bad olddy" is soooo obvious and sooooooo stupid! (Imagine you see your opponent playing around with YOUR computer, and you continue flirting with her?!)

The special effect of the Iron armour shows great power in the scene of fighter fighting, but the final dual between the two "big guys" is relatively dissappointing. You have all the missles, machine guns, etc., yet you fight like a football player?

My favorite scene is when Robert demo the super missle at the beginning, the whole moutain seems to be flattened, and don't forget the hats... If Robert fastened his hat before that, will be even more funny.

I bet that Marvel will never let go such a money-making topic, so we can expect the sequel quite soon. What I expect more is what kind of chemistry will happen between Robert and Gwyneth next time.

Just cannot understand Microsoft

Microsoft just released the 2008 version of Visual Studio Express, which requires installation of .NET Framework 3.5. Since the Express series is free of charge, many ppl fancy to use it as a costless code editor (esp. in embedded area, even the expensive full version could not do the compiling or debugging job, which have to be done with some specific tools, most likely to be linked to some HW). So I tried to install it on company PC for evaluation, and guess what? It triggered a 87MB downloading from Microsoft website and was blocked by the company's firewall! Thanks to Microsoft, now I have to take the laptop back home, and use my own cable, AND MY OWN TIME, to finish the installation so that I could submit an evaluation report to my boss.

One very simple question to Microsoft: Since you have already released the whole thing FOC, why you just put the full set of installation files on website for downloading? You always assume that users will have high speed and fully "open" Internet connection when they do any SW installation. Is it because that you guys back there in the cubicles took it for granted, or you actually wanna utilize this chance to do some "back-door" things, like you always do?

I sincerely call for some masters to hack this problem and share a full-size installation file with the whole world!

When a dude ages -- Street Kings

To be honest, I was heading to the cinema for Keanu Reeves.

After 30 sec, I realized that some dude could age in a not that elegant way, especially compared to George Clooney.

There's a pretty good story in "Street Kings", not like most recent Hollywood movies, which focus too much in the CG. A Hong Kong movie fan could easily see some plot that looks familiar -- the writers around the world are learning something from the East now.

The footage of the first half is brilliant. Those metaphors, tones, could be used in textbooks of any acting course. While in the second half, the script itself slips into the old fashion of "set-up hero single-handly save world", so the footage is getting boring too.

OK, back to the dude. Although Keanu looks quite old and tired in this movie, his acting does make some progress. I hardly see him moving his neck forward and backward when he is saying the footage in a exciting mood (he always did so before, "Speed", "Matrix", etc.). Seems he has learned how to control himself. Several scenes even reminds me Paul Newman in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". Maybe now it's the time to care more about what he is acting, instead of how his pretty face looks like.

There are so many talented actors/actresses in this movie, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, etc. And poor Chris Evans, was sacrificed to fulfill a Hollywood law -- Whoever talking about his/her spouse/partner/fiance/fiancee/boyfriend/girlfriend before a big fight, will not survive it.

So basically you cannot find those "eye ice-cream" in this movie, and you cannot find those "magic effect" in this movie, and can you believe that some idiot invest money to shoot such a Hollywood movie nowadays? Isn't it a miracle by itself?

I sincerely thank Fox Searchlight for this miracle.

Missing Love -- "Definitely, Maybe"

Thirty-something old man, newly divorced, and trying to explain to his daughter why she was born, and finally it turned out to be a look-back to his own relationships with three girl friends.
Not new right? But really rare, especially in nowadays, when everyone is fancy about monsters, robots, wars, and political scandals.
The script is awesome. The writer delicately put the whole story into several election years, and given this year is another election year, it makes the story much more real-life. The Clinton's sexual scandal gave a whole bunch of laughter-triggers, but that's just a small part of it. Actually the whole cinema was laughing every 5 min during this 2-hour-long show. It's so nice to have these funny but never cheap words back to the movie world again, we really miss them.
The cast is not that famous, but definitely good enough. Ryan Reynolds' shining eyes make every female audience have the mercy on him, while Abigail Breslin's "I am oooold enough" acting always makes you say the word "cute". Out of the three girl friends, Isla Fisher (I only know she acted in "Scooby-Doo" before) is the most impressive one, who brings a fresh breeze to the movie every time she shows up; Rachel Weisz is weird enough, also old enough (We miss the little princess in "Mummy" and "Mummy Returns"...); the first-love-girl is just normal enough.
Although this is the best movie I've ever seen this year, be warned that you'd better be beyond 25 to enjoy the real thing of it.