Movie Review: I, Robot (2004)

Poster

My Rating: 4Stars

This afternoon I went to see the movie “I, Robot” at Broadway Cinema, Olympian Plaza. Another one of the movies from my Must See Movies list.

The plot of the movie is nothing too original, matter affect it is very familiar to me. I did not read the book by “Issac Asimov”, but then I never do before a movie accept for the “Harry Potter” series. Of course Will Smith helped a lot in keeping the movie interesting.

The special effect is quite impressive, most of technologies used in the movie are very believable and possible. I have noticed recently in the past few science fiction movies; the technologies appeared in the movie are all very possible and some of them I can imagine seeing in the next few year. This shows a great deal of research were done by the set designers.

This is the first time Product Placement is done, where the manufacture designed the product especially for the movie, rather than placing a product that the manufacture is currently selling. Audi spent a year creating all the vehicles in the movie after studying the script and characters of the movie.

Rating Legend:
5Stars Not to be missed
4Stars Wait for the DVD
3Stars Buy from iTunes Store
2Stars Rent it on iTunes
1Stars Waste your time elsewhere

Movie Review: The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)

Poster

My Rating: 3Stars

This evening I went to see the movie “The Chronicles of Riddick” at AMC Cinema, Festival Walk, Kowloon Tong.

Vin Diesel did his usual level of acting, not great but also not bad. I did not like the director having the actors describe some of the scenes and actions, I think he could have let the audience discover or let the story line review itself a bit more. Some part of the story sounded like it is trying to set the audience up for a sequel, but did not do it so obvious that they have to commit to it. I guess even the movie makers themselves are not certain if this movie will be a success. Given the amount of audiences at the theatre I was in, it is doing okay, but then this is only the third day of its release in Hong Kong.

This movie reminds me of the movie “Dune” of yesteryear.

Rating Legend:
5Stars Not to be missed
4Stars Wait for the DVD
3Stars Buy from iTunes Store
2Stars Rent it on iTunes
1Stars Waste your time elsewhere

How Does It Work? – Silica Gel Package

I hope “How Does it Work?” will become a regular category in my Weblog. I will start this new category of rant by asking the following question.

“How does Silica Gel package work?”

You must have seen those small gel packages placed inside food products to help prevent moisture inside the product. What I don’t understand is how they actually work? Many of these Silica Gel packs are sealed inside their own self contained package. So if they are sealed inside their own packages, how can they do its job of drawing moisture from inside the food product? I think I will have to seek the answer from a food manufacture.

Although I did find out a lot about Silica Gel and what it is. Silica Gel was invented prior to WWI and was used in Allied gas masks. During WWII it was used extensively to keep penicillin dry. It is the highest capacity adsorbent available today; something that is not normally associate with “gel”. Also not to be confused with “silicon gel”, silica or silicon dioxide (SiO2) gel is a porous, granular form of silica, synthetically manufactured from sodium silicate.

Silica gel can adsorb about 40 percent of its weight in moisture and can take the relative humidity in a closed container down to about 40 percent. Once saturated, you can drive the moisture off and reuse silica gel by heating it above 300 degrees F (150 C).

Silica Gel is mostly harmless that’s why it is used with food products.

NTT’s Latest Advancement

Info-MICAEarlier this year (February 12, 2004) NTT (“Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation”), the Japanese telecom giant who brought us i-Mode, announced a memory media break through called “info-MICA”, which stands for “Multi-layered Imprinted CArd”.

This revolutionary invention may change the storage media industry forever. Basically what this is, is a cheap, light weight, durable, inexpensive to manufacture and high capacity storage medium.

Remember what CD and DVD has done for the music and movie industries, well this could be in line to replace the CDs and DVDs of our time.

Just to give you an idea what this can do, remember Tom Cruise’s movie “Minority Report” in 2002? Remember how the characters in the movie, particularly “John Anderton” [Tom], played the recordings of his family movies over and over again. Well think back to the media in which the recordings were stored. This clear plastic disc is what Info-MICA can be and will be.

At the moment NTT has achieved a 1GB storage for the media, they are hoping to reach the 10GB mark very soon.

At the moment the 1GB Info-MICA card is only the size of a 1 cent American stamp. By the time they reach 10GB storage, a full motion picture will be able to stored in this Info-MICA cards.

You may say, why do we need another storage media, given that we have so many Media Cards already. Possibly type for our digital camera, another for our DV (digital video) camera, yet another for our PDA and may be one more for the cellular phone.

Well, what makes a “high” capacity media card great are the following:

1. storage capacity

2. power consumption of the drive that reads the media

3. cost of manufacture

4. size

5. durability

6. last but not the least, given the paranoidal behaviours of the “media giants”, Digital Rights Management capability

Info-MICA does well in all of the above. Because the medium on which Info-MICA are made with, are just plastic wafers. Therefore, they are inexpensive to make and light weight. Due to the technology used, “thin film holography”, the media is relatively durable unless you snap it in half. Although, I think in theory, if you have all the pieces you may be able to tape it back together and it should still work.

Again because of the thin film holography technology used to etch the information onto the media, according to NTT it “tolerates fluctuation in light source wavelength and thermal expansion of the media”. Meaning it can use a pulsating laser to read the information on the card, plus tolerable to the varying temperatures that may cause the card to deform.

As for copy protection, according to NTT, “because this media uses hologram, high level of knowledge is required for the creation of the master. It is virtually impossible to physically copy the fine concave-convex pattern engraved on the plastic material.”. This solves the problems that the “media giants” have.

Well you may ask, why isn’t there more fan fare. The industry analysts may be skeptical, pointing to past storage media that came and gone, for example:

1. Sony’s MiniDisk

2. Zip/Jazz/Cip disk

Well the Info-MICA is quite a big leap in technology advancement compare to these two example, additionally it has the benefits that I mentioned above.

My only reservation is that Info-MICA is currently a “read only media for consumers. I hope that NTT will cooperate with other manufactures (particularly the personal digital appliance manufactures) to explore the possibilities of the Info-MICA technology further. So that consumers like myself can benefit from their hard work.

The Minority Report feature, at least for storage media, may be here sooner than we think.

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

Poster

My Rating: 5Stars

This afternoon I went to see the movie “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” at Broadway Cinema, Olympian Plaza.

Yesterday, I said “Spider-man 2” was one of the best sequel I’ve seen since “Bad Boys II“, and today I have another one. This follow up to the Harry Potter series is very well made. The details of the set, costumes and the various different gadgets that one reads about in J.K. Rowling’s book were magnificently reproduced to the finest details. I truly like to compliment the set designers, visual effect producer, and CGI artists. Their efforts really had the ability to fully capture your attention and to mesmerize.

Before watching the movie I was going to reread the book, believing that I would enjoy it more, because it was my experience with the first and second movie. Unfortunately, I did not get around to it, but was still able to enjoy the movie. I believe it was because I still remember the book from before. So if you had not read the book before, try to read it first before going to the movie, you will enjoy the efforts of the movie makers much more.

Rating Legend:
5Stars Not to be missed
4Stars Wait for the DVD
3Stars Buy from iTunes Store
2Stars Rent it on iTunes
1Stars Waste your time elsewhere

Movie Review: Spider-man 2 (2004)

Poster

My Rating: 4Stars

This afternoon I went to see the movie “Spiderman 2” at Broadway Cinema, Olympian Plaza. Another one of the movies from my Must See Movies list.

This is a good sequel to the Spiderman trilogy, and the title of “good sequel” is not easily awarded to just any movie on my scale . The last good sequel I saw was “Bad Boys II“.

In this version of the Spiderman trilogy it used an unique method of bringing the audience up to date on what happened in the previous episode. This time the characters are more developed, the acting is more mature and overall better. I guess this may be contributed to the actors themselves being more mature and experienced.

I find that it has the right balance of action and drama to be a good movie in my books. Unfortunately, it was not enough to capture the audiences around me at the theatre so that I can enjoy the movie, and it did not help things for many of them to be kids. Now this brings up a good point to mention, especially for those who will be taking their kids to this movie. In my opinion this is not a kids movie, it has too much drama and dialogue to keep those young adults in their seats for the 2 hours and 7 minutes of the movie.

BTW: if this episode is not enough for you Spiderman addicts… there will be a third.

Rating Legend:
5Stars Not to be missed
4Stars Wait for the DVD
3Stars Buy from iTunes Store
2Stars Rent it on iTunes
1Stars Waste your time elsewhere