So it only took two weeks to get my domain name shifted over to Dreamhost.  Why so long, guys?  Lame.

Well, at least there's nothing stopping me anymore from working on getting everything updated and ready to go.  Dreamhost gives me some better tools for building image galleries, blogging, and updating in general.  Look for updates to the actual site next weekend.

This is the first time I've looked into using third-party tools for the main website.  Up until now, I've been coding everything myself.  It will be interesting to play around with those tools.  If all goes well, I'll probably move the blog from Bravenet onto my own server.  We'll see how it goes. 

Maybe Flickr was not the best of ideas since I have so many, many pictures.  I think I'll keep it for camera phone stuff but I'll seriously sit down and work on my photo page on my own web server.

Let's put it on the list for next weekend.

Saturday:  Update the Futurama page.  Work on a photo page for Yellopants.com
Sunday:  Work some more on a photo page.

Maybe I'll cobble together a clean and easy layout while at work this week.  Maybe not.

Edit:  Umm...  So maybe I should put "Move everything from Crosswinds to Dreamhost" at the top of my list before updating the Futurama page.  I don't want to put any more work into the site before I move it and Dreamhost gives me better tools to use for photo galleries, blogs, and so forth.

That's right.  So forth.

Wow.  It's been nearly a year since I last posted here.  Let's see, what's happened in the last year?

I quit the Bookstore.  I started looking for real jobs.  I finished my thesis. I passed all of my classes.  I graduated Stanford.  I moved back to Texas.  I took the Foreign Service Officer Test.  I took a temporary position at Gemmy.  I saw a bunch of movies.  I got a Flickr account.  I signed up for some more tests.  I started interviewing for real jobs.

It's been a kind of hectic few months.  Life is kicking me in the gut and calling me a lazy bum and I can't do anything but take it.  I'm a little depressed but not overly so.  Right now I'm just applying for jobs and waiting for people to call me for interviews and such.

Check out my new Flickr.  I finally signed up for it.  Maybe all of my China pictures from 2004 will finally get uploaded.  One can only hope.

I really need to update my Futurama page, but my webhost seems to be dead at the moment.  I'm definately going to move everything over to another host as soon as my contract with Crosswinds expires.

I'm a sucker for music films.  That should be pretty apparent by this point.  I also pay a lot of attention to trailers.  I've been fascinated for a long time in the process of story telling in movie trailers.  Through 90-120 seconds of disjointed footage from various parts of the movie, a good trailer should give you a complete synopsis of the plot of the film.  But my analysis of trailers should make for a whole 'nother post.

A bit more than a month ago, while sitting down to watch Across the Universe, I saw a preview for August Rush.

At first, I was completely in to this film.  The plot seemed intriguing if corny and my aforementioned love of music films meant that I automatically had a positive bias towards this film.  Also, I have a thing for Freddie Highmore who has been in quite a few good movies and TV shows recently.

And then, Robin Williams appeared in the last thirty seconds of the trailer.  At that point, I was pulled completely out of the experience.  It was really quite amazing.  The mere presence of Robin Williams in the trailer has ruined the entire film for me before the film has even been released.

This experience has led me to the conclusion that I hate Robin Williams.  He somehow has the power to single-handedly bring any movie to a screeching halt.

Aah, refreshing hate.  It tastes so great.

So, I watched a few movies and DVDs this weekend.  Here's the low-down in order of release date starting with the most recent:

• The Darjeeling Limited
• Watched it in the theater.  Really fantastic.  I had heard some negative reviews before coming into the film, so I was wary.  Fortunately, the movie was much better than I had expected.  I also watched the film with an Indian friend who was impressed by the accuracy of the movie's portrayal of life in rural India.  I have renewed my love of Adrien Brody.  The only thing which really bothered me was Jason Schwartzman's character and his aversion to wearing shoes except while in pajamas.  The boy is going to get tetanus running around India with no shoes on.  Also, the symbolism at the end was corny.
  
• Avatar:  The Last Airbender Season 1 Disc 4
  
• I came to this show after hearing many people rave about it.  From the start, I was completely impressed.  From the intricate care shown to the fight choreography to the interesting characters, this show is amazing.  I honestly am shocked that a show of this caliber and depth is played on Nickelodeon.  The voice acting, animation, writing, direction, and music are all fantastic.  I especially love the humor of the show, which is smart and funny but still accessible to kids.
  
• Tommy
• So I watched the new documentary on The Who on VH1 this weekend and got the urge to view this movie again.  The problem with musicals in general for me is that, no matter how unbelievably bad they are, there are always a few points that I like and that stick with me.  This inevitably leads to me re-watching them over and over again.  To that end, I have to admit that this is not a very good movie.  The musical performances are shockingly lackluster and I never really got into the music like I did when watching this as a stage show or while listening to the album on its own.  That having been said, I admire it for its vision.  The most indelible moments of the film are the bits which depict Tommy's torture at the hands of his family.  The iron maiden from the Acid Queen sequence is truly horrifying.  I get the willies just thinking about it.  I love The Who and the album, but the movie did not make me so happy.
  

I'd also just like to say that Roger Daltrey is hot.  I completely respect the fact that after his character in Tommy regains his awareness, he immediately removes his shirt and goes jogging on the beach and then proceeds to spend most of the rest of the film shirtless.

A very rough (and probably deeply flawed) translation:

In the state of Cang there was a man named Pan Ban who was good at calligraphy.  He called himself the Yellow Leaf Daoist.  He once stayed at the home of a friend and was in the study when he heard a small voice from within the house say, "Sir, if tonight there is no one staying with you to keep you company in you bed, I will come to you."

Ban was greatly startled and rose to leave.

His friend said, "The house has been haunted for a long time.  The spirit looks like a beautiful and graceful woman and will not harm you."

Later, the friend said in private to his lover, "Must it be that Lord Pan will come to the end of his life soon?  The creature haunting us is not a ghost and not a fox.  I have not been able to find out what it could be.  When it meets with a vulgar person it will not come out.  When it meets with a rich and noble man it also will not come out.  Only when it meets with a noble man who has fallen into obscurity will it come out and share this person's pillow."

Afterwards, Pan fell into hardship and died.

More than ten years passed.  Suddenly, in the night a sobbing sound could be heard in the middle of the study.  The next day, a great wind blew down an old apricot tree.  The haunting stopped after that.

An outsider Mr. Zhang Xue Feng once laughed and said, "This spirit is really great.  It knows the difference between fine people!"

Translated from Random Notes from the Cottage of Close Scrutiny by Ji Yun - 18th century

...Now I'm coming back home.  I've been away now, oh how, I've been alone.

So I saw Across the Universe the other day.  I came out of the theater with very mixed feelings.

As far as the plot goes, the story of Across the Universe is clunky and illogical at best.  The audience is forced to make logical leaps several times in order to simply understand what the hell is going on.  Characters are introduced and named wherever it is convenient to have a song break.  Random extras make comments like "When I'm sixty-four...", which are overt references to Beatles songs, without following up on them.  The fact that they included characters with names like Jo-Jo, Sadie, Maxwell Edison, and even Lucy without even including background music cues for them, while other characters such as Jude and Prudence got full songs, was infuriating.

Acting-wise, the whole film was a crap-shoot.  Some of the actors were decent, some were not so great.  There was a lot of over-acting from the cast, but that's to be expected in what was essentially a two-hour music video.  None of the actors put forth particularly memorable performances.

Had all of the arrangements and musical numbers been fantastic, I could have easily forgiven the shortcomings of this movie.  However, I only found half of the numbers to be in any way compelling.  The other half were absolutely horrible.  I was impressed by the inclusion of some of the 'sillier' elements of Beatles songs.  For example, the long, audible inhale in the chorus of Girl at the beginning of the movie and the crowd yelling 'Whoo!' at the end of each phrase in the chorus of I Am the Walrus.  I also laughed out loud during I Want You as concrete meaning was given to the typically-nonsensical phrase 'She's so...heavy' and in Hey Jude when the character singing the song jumped up on the fence and screamed "Judy-Judy-Judy-Judy" - a fun nod to the original record where McCartney gets way too into the music.

What I did not like was the way in which some of the songs were arranged and placed.  Dear Prudence seems to be included simply for something do fill time during an act break.  In several of the songs, the actors depart completely from the melody line and either sing only the harmony or something completely unrelated.  The melding of Across the Universe with Helter Skelter near the end was extremely difficult to listen to.  While I realize that these completely different songs were put together for effect, that same effect could have been realized without so much dissonance by placing the former in a separate part of the film and only using the later.  Each of these elements in the music really took me out of the film.  It was slightly upsetting.

In the numbers Come Together, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, I Want You, and Happiness is a Warm Gun, the choreography was extremely impressive.  Dancers weave about in wonderful formation in each of these pieces.  However, most of the pieces seem to have lacked coherent choreography or even direction altogether.  I Am the Walrus in the first half is at least decent, but in the last half, it degenerates into a bizarre experimentation with lens-filters and film-processing.  The negative exposure effect, which hasn't been interesting in film for years, was overused and ridiculous.

As a Beatles enthusiast, I enjoyed most of this film for its scope.  However, also as a Beatles enthusiast, I was extremely disappointed by some of the musical choices in the film.  The direction went back and forth between inspired and insipid.  I would say that this is a must-see for true Beatles fans or people who love musicals.  However, anyone without the patience for musicals should skip it entirely.

This is sad to say, but I think I liked Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band better than Across the Universe.