The Sequels Year

If you have kept an eye on My Must See list, you will notice that next year (2007) is starting to become a major sequel year. With sequels from some of the most famous series expected to release.

  • Jason Bourne series
  • Indiana Jones series
  • Danny Ocean series
  • Spider-man series
  • John McClane series
  • James Bond series

So it will be a great year.

Movie Review: Red Eye

Poster
My Rating: 3Stars

This evening I saw the movie “Red Eye” on DVD.

This movie reminds me of Harrison Ford’s Jack Ryan series, but not as professionally made. It does have the same elements of conspiracy, but the character developments were weak and felt rushed.

I really should stick to My Must See Movies list, when choosing movies to watch.

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

Movie Review: She’s The Man

Poster
My Rating: 4Stars

This evening I went to see the movie “She’s The Man” at JP Cinema, Causeway Bay.

I guess this was the first time I had ever been to a movie and felt that it was a “girl’s movie”. The only other movie where I felt this way was “Legally Blonde“, but I did not pay to see that.

I can imagine “girls” would react in such a way, as portrayed, given the situations presented in the movie, and because of this it earn an extra penguin in my rating for this movie.

So if you are a female and like this genre of movies, you will also enjoy this one. For the rest, you know my rating system… remember to subtract the penguin earned.

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

Interesting Incident At McD’s

I was at a McDonald’s restaurant earlier this afternoon as most of you know; if you read my previous entry.

I was standing behind two young kids at the counter making their selections for their Happy Meal toy. These two were just about 7 or 8 years old and they ordered one Happy Meal between the two of them.

McD’s Staff: gave the kids four choices of toys.

Little Boy: could not decide on the toy and looked to the little girl to make the choice.

Little Girl: point to a toy and the LB made the selection.

MS: announced the total to the kids.

LG: took out a $20.00 bill to pay for the meal.

MS: are you the older sister? Since he ordered and you paid.

LG: shook her head

I then comment from behind the two kids and said, “she is the girlfriend”. The McD’s staff replied, “Really?”, then he realized I was not with the kids and that I was just joking.

Should Have Better Customer Service

In the typical marketing tactics of McDonald’s restaurant, they are having a World Cup 2006 promotion.

For those of you who may not know, World Cup 2006 is the international soccer match held every 4 years. This year it is being held in Germany.

The McDonald’s promotion involve them giving away World Cup 2006 team cards for every HKD17.00 their customers spend per visit. Each on of these cards represent one of the teams who are competing in the World Cup. If one of these teams win their game, every customer holding the winning team card are eligible to get a free food item with the purchase of their “Fantastic Value Meal” (aka. Rice Burgers), which cost HKD22.00. So you see that McDonald’s wins.

Most people who like soccer will want to collect the team card for their favorite team, causing them to keep purchasing HKD17.00 meals.

Not that I want to collect these cards or even like the Fantastic Value Meals, but I found it poor customer service today to find that the McDonald’s restaurant that I went to today did not have any of the cards left. They did not even have a sign at the counter or at the door letting people know before they purchase their meal.

The Real Story of Billy

Last night Bill Gates announced that he will start to involve less in the day-to-day activity as the Chief Software Architect for Microsoft. This transition will take 2 years before he leaves Microsoft totally.

Last year we saw Bill Gates steps down as the CEO of Microsoft and became the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft and now this departure announcement. Is Billy telling us something?

Some people like John Dvorak, feels that this recent announcement last night is not a big deal and will not affect the company’s operations or its stocks. But I have another theory.

Everyone knows that Microsoft had had some poor press this past 3 – 4 years. With “Longhorn”…. oops… I mean “Windows Vista” being delayed and delayed, year after year. Microsoft finally said that they WILL release Windows Vista this year, but earlier this year we found that the actual commercial wide release will not happen until January 2007, so another delay.

On top of delays, most of the original features that were announced when the code name was still “Longhorn”, had been removed or delayed to later releases.

They showed of the new Windows Vista at the Microsoft Developers’ conference earlier this year, but every feature they showed off were just features from the Mac OS X, which had existed for the past 4 years. Someone on the net even went as far as modifying the Microsoft presentation, to substitute slides of Windows Vista screen shots with Mac OS X screen shots, to proof his point.

Microsoft started to compete with Google and Yahoo, by copying Google and released a product that is similar to Google IG and Google Maps. They even copied Google’s approach and launched their products with the “Beta” label. I guess this is just in case people say that their products are no good. Microsoft would then have an excuse, and say “that the products are still in beta”.

Now with more any more people migrating away from Internet Explorer to FireFox and other standards compliant browsers. Microsoft finally announce their support for some of the W3C standards, but they do it in such a way that there are still Microsoft extensions to the Standards, hence the resulting behaviours are not what the developers would expect. So developers out there still have to condition their code so that it works in Internet Explorer.

All in all, I think that Microsoft had made some bad decisions lately, especially after Billy step down as the CEO. I am not sure if it is a coincident or is directly related to Billy’s lesser involvements with the company. Therefore, I think last night’s announcement should not be good news for any Windows fanboy. As everyone know, any innovation, if any in Microsoft, came mainly from Billy himself. The only exception is XBox 360, which had a very good User Interface design and over all user experience.

One possible reason for Billy’s departure, is that he is already too rich and he wants to focus on other things; like finding a cure for Malaria. He wants to disassociate himself from Microsoft before it ruin his own reputation.

I am sure my last statement will generate some opinions.

US Imposing On Others

To be accurate, I am speaking of the United States government imposing their foreign politics on other countries.

Where can I start. I don’t want to get too political and start debating US foreign policies. One thing I do want to comment on is the fact that everyone pounded on Google for creating a Google.cn site that is censored, and Yahoo.cn for providing information on Yahoo users whom the Chinese government wanted to locate.

Google is a business and a public company. Being so, must make money and answer to its share holders. Creating Google.cn is Google’s way of complying with China’s policies so that it can operate in China. Like any companies that wants to do business in the United States must comply with US policies.

I am not trying to say that “censorship” is a good thing. I live in Hong Kong and I enjoy the freedom of speech that still exist here.

Mainland China for that matter is not the same as most western countries. Their standards and sense of what’s right or wrong are different from most western countries. People need to realize that we cannot impose our own sense of what’s right or wrong onto other cultures or countries.

US Imposing On Others

To be accurate, I am speaking of the United States government imposing their foreign politics on other countries.

Where can I start. I don’t want to get too political and start debating US foreign policies. One thing I do want to comment on is the fact that everyone pounded on Google for creating a Google.cn site that is censored, and Yahoo.cn for providing information on Yahoo users whom the Chinese government wanted to locate.

Google is a business and a public company. Being so, must make money and answer to its share holders. Creating Google.cn is Google’s way of complying with China’s policies so that it can operate in China. Like any companies that wants to do business in the United States must comply with US policies.

I am not trying to say that “censorship” is a good thing. I live in Hong Kong and I enjoy the freedom of speech that still exist here.

Mainland China for that matter is not the same as most western countries. Their standards and sense of what’s right or wrong are different from most western countries. People need to realize that we cannot impose our own sense of what’s right or wrong onto other cultures or countries.

Pixar & Disney, Friends Again?

It looks like the sale of Pixar Animation Studios to Disney made Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios friends again.

In the original partnership agreement started in 1995 with the release of “Toy Story“, and was to end with the upcoming release of “Cars“. There were talks that Pixar was seeking a new partner for its future full length animations, after Disney openly announce their desire to discontinue the partnership, while still under the lead of former CEO, Michael Eisner. All this was before Steve Jobs sold Pixar Animation Studios to Disney (January 25, 2006), became the largest share holder, the former President of Pixar became the President of the combined Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, and the former Executive Vice President of Pixar became the Chief Creative Officer of the combined Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, which also give him the responsibility of “Principal Creative Adviser” at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Now Pixar had released a new trailer for its upcoming full length animation, “Ratatouille” (Rat-a-too-ee), to be released by Disney Pictures.

I hope that this is a sign that this successful partnership will continue for years to come. Since I believe the quality of humor from Pixar is far better than those from Dreamworks or Sony Pictures.