Engineering an Empire (2006 - 2007)

image from Calgary Herald

Engineering an Empire: the title I thought was an interesting combination of two words: engineering and empire. It was enough to catch my attention.

Rewriting Pandora's Box

Search Pandora’s Box and moral lesson together in Google it will point to sites that say the myth is a condemnation of curiosity. ‘Curiosity kills the cat’ was even among those results.

Battleplan (2005 - 2006)

Battleplan is not the Art of War. Certainly it is not as poetic, insightful, or as comprehensive as Sun Tzu’s work.

While many say the Art of War can be a great philosophy for both war and life in any age, the History Channel production, Battleplan, is still one of a kind for having clearly defined the steps of well known battle plans in the past 100 years.

e-Minority Report

Yesterday I was googling “divine right to rule” at work. Politics was on my mind for many reasons other than the Nonoy Aquino for president campaign getting a boost. The term just came to me out of the blue, weird as it is.

Freudian slip or honest mistake?

Is there anything more hurtful than this caption to a sitting president?

Leaving your Car in the Flood

Angels and Demons (2009)

I struggled how to write this review thinking how I can judge the movie independent of the book. Eventually I accepted the fact that there is no other view that I can offer except that of a reader. As a film Angels and Demons is a failure.

A Day or so in Palawan

April 16 at around 4:30 p.m. I hopped on a plane along with two fellow employees of DBM and their families, onward to Palawan: from the afternoon of the 16th to the afternoon of the 18th.

Dexter (2006 - 2013)

 

In Red Dragon, Hannibal Lecter said to Will Graham; ‘we’re very much alike’. It was not out of spite that made the canniba serial killer say what he said. He meant that the fear and revulsion of Graham was misplaced, that there lies deep within the FBI agent a killer nature similar to Lecter’s own.

Such remarks are not unique, however. The hero and the villain sometimes are said to be just opposites of the same coin. Often it is the villain who says it with the hero saying something like ‘I am not like you’.

But more often the truth is neither side can stay apart or different from the other.  One side needs to understand the other side in order to win.

Demented Thinking

A group has the right to enforce conformity among its members like a secret handshake, tattoos or burn marks, or walking naked around the campus which I hear some fraternities do. And so does the church with its policy of no abortion.

Not Innocent

Legally they may be qualified for parole. It is even never in doubt that they are not the mastermind.

Defiance (2008)

Defiance is a story about the struggle of Jews from Belorussia. Hunted like animals they retreated to the forests in order that they live as men. There, even far from the people that hates them; it proved no easy task to maintain the humanity day after day.

Valkyrie (2008)

In the later years of World War II members in Hitler’s own army were attempting to kill him, and the most famous of these, because it almost succeeded, was the July 20 Plot: the inspiration for the latest Tom Cruise starrer, Valkyrie.

W. (2008)

Watching W. was distracting to say the least. All the time I was thinking, this is a movie full of impersonators, good and bad. Which is not to say that they were bad actors, it’s just that I never had the ‘suspension of disbelief’ as they say in watching the film. There are physical limitations to looking and sounding like some else it would seem.

Passengers (2008)

The strangest manifestation of post traumatic stress I’ve ever seen depicted on film is the victim, almost like an addiction confronting death which is the very thing that traumatized them.I saw that in Fearless in Jeff Bridges. Among other self inflicted brushes with death, he ate strawberries, a fruit which he had history of near fatal allergic reactions.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans came as a surprise and in some ways a disappointment to me because instead of seeing what happens next to the main character Selene (Kate Beckinsale) the story went into rewind.

Lack of Probable Cause

What sufficient belief can you derive to determine a crime has been committed or will be committed with three persons riding an SUV? What is the probable cause?

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a movie meant to give the audiences the unique perspective of someone who ages in reverse as he goes through in life. There is no magic nor are there wizards; neither is it about biological warfare or bad DNA. It’s all drama about being born with a different deck of cards than people would normally get, and triumph in spite of it.

Revolutionary Road (2008)

 

The lead tandem of the highest grossing film of all time – Titanic – reunites in Revolutionary Road, a film adaptation of a book by Richard Yates.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are Frank and April Wheeler, husband and wife experiencing the ups and downs (more of downs in fact) of married life in 1950s America.

Seven Pounds (2008)

I don’t quite remember if the motives match but the title hit me at once as inspired from The Merchant of Venice wherein the Jew, Shylock, demanded for payment a pound of flesh instead of money. So Seven Pounds to those classically inclined would mean at once to seven people.

Return Duckpin Bowling for the Department's Anniversary

It was January of last year when I joined fellow members of the New Worlds Alliance (NWA) in weekly bowling (ten pin) at Farmer’s Plaza. The group then had a bowling craze which ended somewhere in the second quarter of 2008.

What I had hoped besides having fun with fellow fans of geeky shows was to ready myself for the office’s anniversary season; duckpin bowling in particular. I was a player for the yellow team in 2007 which collapsed in the championships. I wanted to get back and get some satisfaction.