| P |
I took some Benadryl and it helped me get through the day on Saturday as I helped Zac and Karen move back up to Bellflower, and it seemed to have subsided... until about 11PM, when I was very tired and had already gotten into bed... I couldn't sleep because my neck was itching so bad, and upon inspection I discovered that the hives had basically congealed into one huge, red, throbbing, swollen mass that itched so much it hurt and touching it increased the pain by a factor of about 30.
In the morning I woke up
and my neck was still burning up. But since then it has subsided again,
although it seems to come and go, and also move around to different parts
of my body. This afternoon my face was covered, then a little later the
back of my head, but my face was almost normal. Anyway. I'm like living
in hell. But I am on medication now (including steroids) and I hope to be
better enough to go back home to San Diego. If you wanna see a gross pic
of what my neck looked like this afternoon, click
here, but don't say I didn't warn you!! Cuz there's a good reason why I'm not just including it here for everyone to see!
Anyway,
pain and suffering aside, it's been a pretty good weekend. Homecoming on
Friday night was pretty weird. As I mentioned before, it was my first time
going back to my old high school since I graduated, and I was surprised
at just how little things had changed. As I looked around I saw that
everything was basically exactly as it was, except instead of seeing familiar
faces as I looked around, all I saw were these strange kids everywhere.
I did meet up with the Band Director, Mr. Compton... who I still can't get over the fact was even being called "Mr. Compton" as he had been someone I actually went to high school with... but now he's teaching there. When Zac and I walked in there, he was squinting and couldn't believe what he was seeing. Anyway, that was pretty fun to be back there.
Saturday I helped Zac move... again. Yep, it wasn't very long ago that I helped him move from one end of his apartment complex to the other. This time he was moving quite a bit further than that. All I gotta say is that right now I can barely move... but at least we got it all done before sunset!
And of course, as of today, sunset is an hour earlier than it was before, thanks to the end of Daylight Savings Time. Back to the days of dinner in the dark!
Tuesday, 30 October 2001
11:30pm
| M |
Shiri:
Special Edition
I first found out about
Shiri while reading about the San Diego Asian Film Festival. Shiri
was one of the films they were showing and they noted that it was the
top grossing film of all time in the Korean market, recently beating out
Titanic. Hmmm, to beat Titanic at the box office, I figured it
must be pretty good! Well, I didn't make it out the Asian Film Festival,
but what I did do was head over to HKFLIX.COM,
seller of Asian DVDs and VCDs, and whaddya know, they had a special edition,
two-disc set for this very film in stock. So I ordered it.
To tell you the truth,
top-grossing film or not, I wasn't expecting a whole lot. I mean, from
what I've seen of Korean movies and television shows, the term "high production
value" isn't exactly the first thing that comes to mind... but as soon
as I opened the package, from the get-go this movie was already impressing
me.
The packaging of this
DVD is on par with the best of what I've seen from American companies
putting out multi-disc sets. The box looks great, printed with metallic
inks, and other quality features of packaging that you don't normally
see in your run of the mill DVD boxes. Popping the first disc in, it became
clear that this was truly a first-class operation -- they really went
all out on the animated, interactive menus, putting together a real slick
interface.
The
film transfer of the movie looks pretty good, although there are a couple
of spots where you can see some specs and hairs on the film, but overall
it's a good looking, anamorphically encoded 16:9 widescreen transfer.
Did I mention this thing has DTS sound? It's like the real deal!
Ok, so the DVD is great,
but what about the movie? Well, by American standards, I'd say this movie
was just alright. It's basically your standard action/suspense movie formula
that you've seen a million times before in American movies of the 80's,
except instead of the cold war, you have the reunification of North and
South Korea running as a backdrop.
You've got your terrorist-type
enemy, who is trying further their agenda with a plot to take out the
leaders of a country, a top-secret, high tech experimental weapon stolen,
and your two good guy partners trying to find the spy that's on the inside.
It even comes with the generic ticking-bomb climax at the end. It really
is a generic action movie, to the bitter end. On the other hand, especially
considering its small-by-american-standards budget, it does pull of a
real high production value look, and was more than I expected of the Korean
film industry.
The
second disc is full of special features, including some documentaries,
trailers, behind the scenes stuff, and a nifty little index on all the
guns they used in the movie, with fact sheets. Unfortunately, most of
these special features are in Korean, so if you don't understand Korean,
they will be of little use to you. The main movie does include, however,
subtitles in English.
In the documentary-type
footage, you see a lot of people from the public expressing great pride,
that yes, even a Korean movie company can pull off a decent movie. Also
included in the trailers section are two spots used for the Japanese market
(for which the movie was subtly renamed to "Shuri"). Another interesting
tidbit in the special features is the inclusion of four "Dolby Digital"
intros, and also a DTS one -- the kinds you see attached to the beginnings
of movies at the theater when it is being presented with one of these
technologies. They are pretty fun to play with in your home theater system,
that's for sure!
So the overall verdict
on Shiri is that the movie is... OK. If you have some way of seeing
this movie without too much trouble, you might as well check it out, but
I wouldn't go out of my way to see it. And the quality of the DVD is pretty
high up there... the level of production certainly impressed me!
The Siege
This was a rather interesting
movie to watch, as there are some uncanny parallels to the September 11th
tragedies. You've got muslim terrorist cells bombing locations in New
York. The force behind them? An arab leader whose men were previously
trained and supported by United States to help unseat a hostile government.
Sound familiar? Infighting between different government agencies hinder
the investigations... Sound familiar?
After these bombings
start in New York, there is a rash of hate crimes and racism against middle
eastern people. Sound familiar? Yeah I thought so too. It was rather strange
hearing the newscasters in the movie talk about this being the "worst
terrorist attack ever to happen on American soil"... especially since
the things that happened in this movie pale in comparison to what happened
in real life.
The movie itself was
just alright. I thought Denzel Washington gave a pretty good performance...
Bruce Willis' character seemed kind of flat... but I just couldn't get
over the strange parallels between the events in this movie and stuff
that is going on in real life. Too strange.
DVD wise... this movie
sucked. The only special feature was a theatrical trailer, and the movie
was encoded in a letterboxed 2.35:1 aspect ratio... talk about
your wasted resolution! The film transfer was pretty clean though. Apparently
there is now a widescreen-enhanced, anamorphically encoded version out
there now though. The sound wasn't much to write home about.
So yeah. This movie is
worth renting (which thankfully, is all I did), if for no other reason
than to get the strange feeling that you've seen all this before... but
for you DVD fanatics out there, I definitely would not rush to make this
part of your collection unless you either really like this movie a lot,
or you've made it your goal in life to collect every DVD ever released.
And that's it for today's
update. Next DVD review will probably be Gods and Monsters follwed
by Leaving Las Vegas, yet more movies that I should have seen already
but haven't.
By the way, i'm itchy
as all hell right now. But nothign close to what i was experiencing on
sunday.
11:57pm
Woah, there was just an earthquake. Either that or someone hit the side of my building with a truck! There was an earthquake the other day too. Maybe the ground is gettin' active again!