Open Range (2003)

Today I watched Open Range. It was a pretty good movie. Many may not like it because it is a Kevin Costner movie (Costner seems to have many haters), but Costner I think really blew it when he made The Postman, a horrendous movie. Waterworld and Dances with Wolves were not too bad, although not brilliant in my opinion. In Waterworld, I thought the hero's abilities were just too unbelievable. His swimming and fighting ability is so good and the little girl at the end was so sure she was going to be rescued that all suspense was sapped out.

Open Range features a very explosive and action-packed climatic showdown near the end. Guns fire everywhere and bodies literally fly (which according to Mythbusters is not realistic). Before and after this showdown, the film develops the characters and plot. Free-graziers go through a town led by a tyrant whose men manage to kill one of them as well as killing a dog. Two of the free-graziers, played by Costner and Duvall, vow to head into the town and take down the tyrant to avenge the death of their friend and dog. In true Western style, morality is settled by violence. However, in this Western, violence is used against the “state” and against the law, which goes against Biblical principles as well as putting the protagonist's actions into the realm of terrorism. Nevertheless, the American Constitution claims if government is corrupt then the people are to overtake it and that is why citizens bear arms.

To conclude, Open Range is a great movie. It is violent but there is nothing too gory, gruesome, or shocking.

Blood Diamond (2006)

Today was a stay-at-home day for me, which means I spent the whole day indoors in my house. The main thing I did today was watch the movie Blood Diamond. What's the verdict? It's a good movie. I watched the movie with my mom. I suspect my mom wanted to watch this movie because she liked watching Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic and wanted to see him again. Before the movie started, I tried to warn my mom that this movie was very violent. I knew because the classification or rating said so. It is rated R by the MPAA and MA15+ in Australia.

Blood Diamond turned out to be much more gruesome than I expected. There are endless scenes of killing and bloodshed, including limbs being chopped off children, bodies sprawled all over the road, mutilated corpses hanging from trees, and so on. Some of the scenes were excruciating, and I'm very sure my mom was not happy with what she saw. In spite of this violence, Mom watched the entire movie and she seemed quite moved by the ending. It's often very difficult for any movie to sustain my mother's interest for so long. Usually she'd get tired and walk away.

Blood Diamond also made me curious about real-life blood diamonds. Even if the specific plot is not real, the background, that is, the Sierra Leone Civil War, and the role of diamonds in funding the conflict, is all real. The rebels in Sierra Leone also made use of child soldiers. This conflict in Sierra Leone reminds me of the conflict today in Darfur and the Congo. However, in Darfur, the conflict is not over diamonds but over oil. The De Beers Corporation claims that, with the establishment of the UN's Kimberley Process, blood diamonds are a thing of the past. Even if there are assurances from certification processes, I am still wary about diamonds and to be on the safe side I myself vow never to buy diamonds ever. One reason for this vow is because I fear I may fund murder and rape. Another reason is because I believe that it's silly to buy for a woman an expensive and useless stone.

Top Gear Crew Attacked in Redneck Territory

I have just watched one of the most frightening moments on Top Gear, a British TV show about cars that was on SBS today. Clarkson, Hammond, and May drive through Alabama with provocative text on their cars, e.g. "Nascar Sucks" and "Man Love Rules OK."

When they stop off at a petrol station, the owner calls over a bunch of redneck thugs on the back of a pickup. What I find hard to believe is how they managed to amass an army of hillbillies so fast. Are these people waiting around for a fight? Rocks were pelted and the Top Gear crew made a run for it. The camera crew was also attacked.

What the Top Gear crew did may have been very provocative and politically incorrect in that part of the country, but I would believe it is protected by the First Amendment.

I Am Legend (2007)

I Am Legend is about a survivor of an infectious disease that has wiped out what seems like the entire human population. We look at the world from the eyes of Robert Neville (Will Smith) a virologist who has to cope with loneliness as he hunts for food and works on finding a cure in his underground laboratory. The symptoms of this infectious disease is aggressive, monster-like behavior.

I Am Legend is a very anxious and suspenseful movie. This can be good or bad depending on what your preferences are. I was not happy with the number of times this film resorted to sudden bursts of sound. It may be an effective way to induce a reaction in the audience but it is cheap and manipulative. The MPAA gave this movie a PG-13, but I would caution parents about sending in little children because at times the movie is frightening. There is violence, loud gun fights, and blood. Many reviewers say the ending is poor, but I happen to think the ending is very creative and satisfying. All in all, a very good movie. An original and creative edge-of-your-seat thriller.

The Golden Compass (2007)

The Golden Compass takes place in what is described as a parallel world, so the rules of nature in this world is different to our world. In this world, an organization called the Magisterium threatens to dominate and gain a monopoly on truth. After the kidnap children, a young girl named Lyra goes off into the north to rescue them.

The special effects and imagery in this movie are very attractive. The story is a very interesting one, and the protagonist Lyra is played well by Dakota Blue Richards.

Like each Lord of the Rings movie, this movie is not complete. I did not realize this until after the movie ended. To have to watch another movie or read another book is disappointing. Personally I feel that a movie should be complete from beginning to end. This saves viewers the hassle of having to find every piece.

While watching the movie, many concepts are thrown in very quickly, many of which are confusing concepts about the nature of the parallel universe, for example, the daemons, as well as subplots like the fighting bears. These many things all thrown at you quickly can lead to confusion among viewers, especially for children. It left me feeling detached from the movie.

Another criticism is the intensity of the movie. This is not a light movie as I expected. There is a lot of rough fighting, killing, and violence, and it is all performed with very loud music and sound effects. At the end of one scene involving fighting bears, a small child in the theater started screaming in fright.

Recap of Survivor China

This post contains spoilers. Please do not read if you do not want to know who won Survivor China.

Unable to control myself, I went on Youtube and watched the rest of Survivor China. Watching Survivor China on Youtube is a challenge because you have to try your hardest not to look at the pictures while you are searching for the correct episode to watch. This is because the pictures can give away who is being evicted thereby ruining the suspense.

While I was watching Survivor I was very quiet and didn't speak to my family. I was so obsessed with watching what was going to happen. I feel really empty now that I can't watch any more Survivor and I am thinking of buying or hiring DVDs because I can't seem to find any other episodes on Youtube. I have only watched three Survivor seasons so far, Survivor Borneo, Survivor Australia, and Survivor China. China and Borneo were probably the best. Australia is forgettable, so much so that for a while I even forgot I even watched it.

Gay Mormon flight attendant Todd won Survivor China. I wasn't very happy because he was a big liar. I like watching Survivor but all the dishonesty in the game leaves me feeling dirty afterwards. It is especially hard to see players who I thought were good turn bad. It seems as if anyone who is in a losing position always appeals to honor but once the situation changes and they are in a powerful position, they try to excuse their dishonest behavior by appealing to the law of the jungle and survival of the fittest. For example, when PG was evicted she spoke about how she was honest and was focusing on the game, but if she were so honest why did she throw an immunity challenge to vote Aaron out? The same happened with James. When the double kidnapping occurred, James and Aaron had their heads on the chopping block. When Jaime and PG threw the immunity challenge, James was angry, calling these women dishonest. However, James himself was dishonest when he lied to Jean-Robert about possession of the hidden immunity idols. When the tribes merged and he was safe with two immunity idols, he felt invincible and when his arrogant side showed, I was turned off. Courtney is another example. At the beginning she was the weak player and I had sympathy for her smallness and lack of strength, which meant she performed poorly in the challenges. However, towards the end when her alliance put her in a powerful position, she became very cruel by bagging lunch lady Denise, saying that she "sucks at life" and that people shouldn't have sympathy for her. All this reminds me of the saying that only the impotent are pure.

I fear that many who watch Survivor will believe that this is the way the real world operates and that they themselves need to behave deceptively if they want to be successful. One of the biggest myths of business and life in general is that it is a zero-sum game like Poker or Survivor. It is not. In real life or in business you generate wealth for yourself. In man-made games, you fight for the wealth that already exists, that is, the prize money.

Survivor China: Jean-Robert Evicted

I have just watched the episode of Survivor China in which Jean-Robert was voted out. Another very exciting episode. What I love about Survivor is that it leaves you guessing until the end. I had no idea who was going to be voted out this time. I was worried that it might be James but it turned out that Todd and Amanda pulled a fast one on Jean-Robert and voted him out. Frosty seems to be part of the Todd-Amanda alliance because he voted for Jean-Robert as well.

During the start of the game, it is better to vote out the weaker players because they lose challenges and force the tribe to vote off members, thereby decreasing the tribe's size. If your tribe has fewer numbers pre-merge, you go into the merged team with a minority and in a democratic system you are picked off one by one.

But in this game at the moment the tribes have merged but the tribal lines have broken. Frosty is all over the place. The same can be said about that lunch lady and Courtney. With a merged tribe it is best to vote out the stronger players first because they have a better chance of winning immunity and are thus stronger. This is why I think James is very vulnerable, even if he has two hidden immunities. My guess is that the tribe will do what they can to get James out.

I have been watching Jean-Robert's talk just after eviction and it is really clear that this guy has no idea what he's doing. His plan was to act stupid and crazy at the beginning of the game and then improve as he went along. The only thing that did is (1) annoy people, thereby making them vote for you (e.g. Courtney), (2) make you stand out so that those from the smaller tribe will vote for you with the hope that fellow tribe members of Jean-Robert will go against him (e.g. P.G. and Erik), and (3) signal to other that you are duplicitous and untrustworthy. I think the last reason is why Todd and Amanda voted for Jean-Robert. In the video Jean-Robert seems very confident in himself.

Review of Anne of Green Gables

Link: Anne of Green Gables (Librivox)

Anne of Green Gables is about a couple, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, who plan to adopt a boy with the intention of using him around on the farm. By mistake a little girl is sent to them. Marilla is not happy and intends to send her back to the orphanage, but after spending some time with the little girl, Anne Shirley (Anne with an E), they decide to keep her. This story, by Lacy Maud Montgomery, is very nice. The main character Anne talks a lot, and she is very vain.

After the Cuthberts decide to keep Anne, the story moves into descriptions of her time at school. Anne also gets up to many antics around Green Gables. If there is anything wrong with this book it is that after Anne is adopted the story read like a journal of someone's childhood. The rest of the chapters are a series of small events that are quite typical of children and teenagers, such as exams and boyfriends. There is not much substantial things that happen. But otherwise, it was an enjoyable book because Anne is a very likable character.

Review of A Little Princess

Link: A Little Princess (Librivox)

I have pretty much no time to read novels nowadays. It's a pity because I used to love reading when I was little. Now that I'm a uni student I find that I just don't have the time. My bedroom has been rearranged and there is no lamp near my bed anymore, so I cannot read just before going to bed. When I walk around with my backpack I like to travel light and so try not to carry around too many books, which means that I only bring the essentials. Furthermore, I find reading tiring on my eyes. I already have textbooks and lecture notes to read, and so reading a novel is like overworking my eye.

I now listen to novels with my MP3 player. I purchased an LG UP3 MP3 player from oo.com.au for only $40 and it's amazing how many free public domain audio books you can find online, especially at Librivox. Why pay for anything when there are so many great free things?

A Little Princess, written by Frances Hodgeson Burnett, is about a wealthy little girl named Sara Crewe. Her wealthy father puts her in a boarding school. Miss Minchin, the headmistress, treats her well because of the father's wealth. But then when the father dies, Sara is treated badly. It's a sad and really sweet story at the same time. I have read Burnett's biography and learned that she herself lost her father and had to endure poverty. This story then is probably an autobiography to a degree.

I forgot to mention that another reason why I like to read audio books is for privacy. A big tall young man reading A Little Princess on the train is not attractive, but when listening to an audio book using earphones, people just assume you're listening to music, and they can't hear what you're listening to.

Review of The Village (2004)

This review contains spoilers. Watch the movie first before reading this.

The Village is about a group of people who isolate themselves, similar to the Amish. They have been told that there are creatures around them. Fear grips the community when dead animals are found all around them and they hear noises coming from the woods.

We later learn this is not the case at all. The monsters that surround the village are fake. Everything is an elaborate hoax perpetuated by the elders designed to keep the villagers from leaving. It is done to keep the villagers' way of life alive, to protect their culture.

I didn't watch this movie in the cinema where it was perfectly quiet or on DVD where I could read subtitles, but instead I watched it on TV, so sometimes it was difficult to hear the actors talk. In most if not all Shyamalan films, characters tend to talk very quietly, often whispering. This I don't think is a problem if there is enough silence in the room.

This is not a horror movie like House of Wax where we are served endless blood, gore, and homicides, all delivered with sudden music swells during moments of silence to shock the audience. I thought the mood was creepy and throughout the film there was a mild feeling of anxiety, but no masked killer will appear from nowhere to make you jump in your seat and there will be no over-the-top torture scenes to make you cringe like in Hostel.

One member of IMDB, bartond57, gave what I believe is a very good commentary on the film: "I felt is was a story about the power of myth, and how far people will go, even for good reasons, to perpetuate their myth. Innocence is a topic as well. How does one keep people innocent and trusting in a evil, sinful, world. And how far should someone go to 'protect' one's innocence? I grew up in a conservative religious subculture. This movie speaks to that experience. In the end, the decision by the elders was to continue their myth, regardless of the circumstances. I found this disappointing, but how true is it today with many religions? Religion can be a good thing, but it is always a struggle to know how much 'innocence' should be protected. How sheltered should we be? But even in the movie, the evil they were trying to run from (murders) took place in their own edenic setting. In other words, we can't run away from human nature. It is part of the human condition."

I feel the same way. The movie says a lot about how much of a role deception plays in keeping communities together. It reminds me of what Plato said about the Noble Lie, how the survival of a population relies on grand myths. People need to believe in ideas greater and more significant than their own individual selves or else they will descend into nihilism, which leads to chaos and a breakdown of society. These ideas are still popular in modern times with people like Strauss and even with today's politicians like Wolfowitz, who envisioned a role for America as a noble hero that fights injustice and spreads democracy on a world scale.

What is Wrong with The Secret?

"The book perverts reality by encouraging people to equate a positive outlook on life with a childish, idiotic narcissism." --Longhorn24

One of my co-workers gave me a book to borrow. She claimed she saw it promoted on Oprah and after seeing it on Oprah she figured she had to get it. She hasn't read it but instead gave it to me. She gave me The Secret.

The Secret is a self-help book that claims to be able to better your life by giving you a secret that has been passed on from generation to generation. It is the law of attraction, that you attract things with your thoughts. The book tells you how to be successful, how to be rich, etc.

First off, I just want to say that this is one of the worst books I've ever read. It claims that everything in the universe is exact and that the law of attraction is exact, yet it provides no real evidence of this and then goes on to provide superstitious claims such as "Ask the universe for what you want and the universe will give it to you." How in the world do I communicate with the universe? How can the universe comprehend what I want? Can a subset of the universe, e.g. my mug on my desk, understand me when I try to talk to it?

The law of attraction states that everything we get in our lives is attracted to us from our thoughts. If you want a Lexus, picture yourself driving the Lexus, imagine yourself driving the Lexus and then magically the Lexus will come to you. I wish this were true. Right now I am thinking about a Lexus in my mind but I see no Lexus flying out of the nearest dealership towards my house. Of course, perhaps what the author is trying to say is more subtle than that. If you want something, you need to focus on it. E.g. if you need to study for a math test, if you think about the math test, focus on the math test, etc, then you will more likely actually study for test whereas if your mind is occupied by Harry Potter, pornography, sports, etc then you are distracted.

This book gives some examples of how you attract things with your thoughts. One example is the hassle of trying to find parking. If you drive into town and you are overcome with the fear of not getting a parking space, you will attract those negative outcomes. If however you drive into town expecting to get a parking spot, the universe will magically give you a parking spot because you expected it and because you were thinking about it. The reason why many people may think this works is, I hypothesize, because of a cognitive phenomenon knows as confirmation bias. "Confirmation bias refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs."

Update 10/9/2007: The Chasers denounce The Secret in a very funny way.

Review of Babel (2006)

Babel is a film by director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who was also the director of 21 Grams. Like 21 Grams, Babel is about different stories of people's lives, and all these stories are linked in some way. The movie stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as American tourists. Elle Fanning, little sister of Dakota Fanning, plays one of the American parents' kids.

After watching the film, the message that I took from it was that even though bad things happen, often there's nobody to blame. The tragedy happens because of a chain reaction of unfortunate events and bad luck.

The title makes reference to the Tower of Babel, which is from the bible. According to the bible, everyone spoke one language but God confused the people by changing languages. This of course is at odds with the idea that language evolved (see linguistic evolution). The movie seems to show conflict because of different languages or cultures. The movie seems to suggest that this happens because many are not willing to listen or understand others. This theme in the movie can perhaps be summed up with one biblical quote from Hebrews 13:2 that says, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it."

Unlike in 21 Grams, the different plotlines seem too independent. As a result, the film ends up looking like a collection of multiple short stories rather than one whole film itself.

The movie, I though, felt very superficial and sometimes stereotypical. The American are just so superficially American with all the imagery and stereotypes emphasized to the extreme. The same can be said of the Mexicans and the Japanese. The real world is a complex mess, but while watching the movie I had the impression that the writer had a simplified perception of reality in his mind: Japanese people are like this, Americans are like that, a tragedy is supposed to use this kind of music, this kind of camera work, etc.

While watching The Door in the Floor, another film with Elle Fanning, one of the characters in that movie talks about the art of telling a story. He says the following: "Everything in fiction is a tool: pain, betrayal, even death. These are, you know, these are like, uh, different colors on a painter's palette. You need to use them." The problem with this film is that, for me, it really seems as if the writer knew he wanted the film to be tragic and just dabbed the usual elements of a tragedy, lost kids, close-ups of people's faces as they cried, etc. With solemn music and scene after scene of people crying and walking around dazed, the film has all the imagery and tone of a tragedy. For me this story really felt like a story, as if all the parts were just put there for the sole purpose of manipulating the audience.

Review of The Italian Job (2003)

The Italian Job is about a robbery done for money and for revenge on a man who betrayed them in an earlier robbery.

First off, this is a very entertaining, very cool movie. It glamorizes thievery but also shows a noble side among thieves. Charlize Theron is by far the most attractive woman ever, and in this movie she is just sizzling hot. From every angle she is a work of art.

One of the things about this movie that annoyed was the branding. I don't know whether the brands were deliberately there for marketing purposes or whether they were essential for the plot. At the beginning of the film we notice the divers are wearing Casio G-Shocks. One hypothesis is that the film is marketing Casio watches. The other hypothesis is that G-Shocks are normally what divers use anyway because of the brand's shock resistance. There are plenty of references made to Aston Martins, and the film probably help market many new MINIs. Of course, they're not going to use a Ford Suburban for this robbery because of the SUV's size and slowness, so the MINI was probably necessary. The MINI is an icon for many people. Even though MINI is owned by BMW many believe the MINI is a symbol of Britishness. The car's status as a cultural icon is probably what justifies its price premium, as it is about double the price of a Corolla. Probably not worth it for a small car if you were totally utilitarian, but most people don't buy cars just to get from A to B.

While watching The Italian Job, I kept thinking to myself how unrealistic the whole plot was. Everything was planned to perfection and only one small thing had to go wrong for everything to fail. For everything to fall into place so perfectly is like flipping a coin twenty times and getting it to land heads up every single time. The film is definitely over-the-top but that was probably what made it so entertaining in the first place.

Why I Like Paris Hilton

It's very strange to witness so many people ranting and raving about how much they hate Paris Hilton, yet at the same time so many people are eager to know what she is up to. I am sure there are many people who both admit hating her and are curious about her at the same time.

When I first heard about Paris Hilton it was from the sex tape scandal. I have seen the sex tapes myself. It's nothing special. I never watched the first episode of The Simple Life when it came out on TV. I went to watch with my brother the movie House of Wax, which had a Paris Hilton death scene.

I am a car enthusiast. I first became interested in Paris after learning that she drove a Bentley Continental GT. She has since sold her Bentley and gotten herself a Mercedes McLaren SLR worth about half a million dollars. Of course, I don't automatically like someone just because they drive an expensive car, but this sparked my curiosity, so I watched some episodes of The Simple Life, which happened to be on. While watching the fourth season of The Simple Life, I started to notice that Paris is not really that dumb. Rather, she displayed signs of creativity. For example, in one episode her hosts, the Contreras Family, wanted to go camping in the wilderness. Instead, Paris drives the Toyota minivan all the way to a nearby Hilton hotel. Paris tells the family to go camping in the hotel instead. The family, including the two little boys, were disappointed at not being able to go camping in the wilderness. Saddened by the family's disappointment, Paris told them to go out to the cafeteria to eat. What Paris did next was stunning. While the family was away, she ordered truckloads of stuff to be delivered to the hotel room where they were staying and she completely changed the hotel room into a forest. The room had a tent, real trees, an animated fire, wood, and even stuffed animals. It wasn't as real as the real wilderness, but it was close enough, and it illustrated the lengths that Paris would go to to please the children. This event shows not only how creative Paris is but also how kind and generous she is.

Paris's creativity is further proved in later episode in which she directed a music video about the difficulties of being a mother. Nicole Richie's purpose during the fourth season seemed to be to shock people with rude language, and Nicole provided the lyrics for this music video, which was obscenity laden. Paris, on the other hand, tried to dilute the negativity of the lyrics by infusing the visuals with humor. She succeeded, and the host family was extremely grateful for her attempts.

Paris Hilton, it seems, is a misunderstood girl. In prison when she said she had been acting dumb all the time, it came as no surprise. Those who know her should know that she is smarter than what the mob would lead people to believe. Some criticize her for not achieving anything substantial in her life and not earning her celebrity status, but for me and many others Paris is a simple and sweet girl who excels in just being herself.

Elle Fanning Wears Glasses

It looks as if Elle Fanning, little sister of Dakota Fanning, is wearing glasses now. I don't know whether she's short-sighted or long-sighted though. Elle's sister Dakota played in War of the Worlds alongside Tom Cruise. Elle herself has been in many movies, such as Because of Winn-Dixie, Deja Vu, and Babel.

Trading Spouses: Chase/Lane

In this episode of Trading Spouses, mommies from two families are swapped. The mom in the Chase family is an angry, intolerant woman who, if she was pregnant with a child with Down's Syndrome, would abort it. She also hates Hispanics and thinks homosexuals have defects. The Lane family coincidentally happens to be a Lesbian couple living in California with two kids, one boy and one little girl. As you may expect, the spouse swap created a lot of drama.

The Chase household turns out to be filled with anger. The father kept verbally abusing the teenage daughters, especially during sports games. These sports games are just regular suburban soccer matches, yet the father acts as if they were in the Olympics. He constantly criticizes his daughters, telling them they're fat, they're too slow, or they're having too much fun. During a game of baseball he throws the ball at one of his daughter's legs and the force of the ball on her legs was so much she started crying. The father just brushed it off and went back to playing the game. The new spouse recommended the father lighten up.

In the Lane household, the new woman was offending the lesbian, telling her that she thought lesbianism is wrong, etc. The lesbian decided to invite all her friends over for a dinner and then everyone spoke to Ms Chase about her opinions. Ms Chase revealed that she had something against Hispanics, disabled children, and homosexuals. It just so happens that she was having dinner with a crowd that includes Hispanics, a woman who had a daughter with Down's Syndrome, and some homosexual couples. Ms Chase was infuriated, accusing the lesbian of setting her up. This was strange because one minute Ms Chase was saying she doesn't care if she offends people, yet when she actually does offend a crowd she seemed to care very much. There's no question the lesbian did set up the whole thing. If I met a woman who was as rude as Ms Chase, I would try to keep her away from others for their own safety. Ms Chase later described herself as a "monster" and if you had a monster or an angry dog you would keep it away from other people. What the lesbian did was release this angry dog out into the public. But Ms Chase at the end seemed to realize the effect her rudeness had on other people, and at the end she says she doesn't want to be a monster anymore. I'm guessing here but I don't think deep down she is a monster, but she acts that way maybe to feel better about herself. Ms Chase was told that she could "dish it out but couldn't take it." She seemed to be perfectly happy offending others but she couldn't take it when someone else offended her. Like I said, in the end she seemed to learn her lesson, but I have little faith in these reality TV shows because I suspect that usually they contrive a happy ending. It's be great if she did change.

What is the Secret?

I watched The Secret on TV a few moments ago, and I must say I am quite disappointed. They say that this secret was kept by all the great thinkers and philosphers like Newton and Einstein, that the Catholic Church knew the secret and it gave them greater power and that they tried to stop the secret from getting out to the people. I thought the secret was going to be something like "There is no morality," but the secret turns out to just be a simple rehash of positive psychology, i.e. think positive thoughts and conceive and you will believe. All that stuff. I've already read this in Neapolean Hill's Think and Grow Rich.

What I don't like was how they were going on about how simply thinking positive readiates some sort of energy that affects the whole university around you and the university responds to this. If you are happy and other people see this then they may be happy as well. That is true. But this program suggests that non-living objects like tables will respond to your positivity! As if!

Am I a positive thinker? Well, I am in that I do avoid looking at things I don't like. For example, if you see something horrendous like an heated argument among co-workers over political or religous issues, then I'd rather just ignore it. But otherwise I do not try to brush away negative things because negative things make up reality and negative things are often important. For example, if you were shopping for a used car and the salesman says to you, "There's nothing wrong with this car," then you have a choice betwen being negative or cynical and thinking, "Hmm, what if this guy is lying? I ought to check the car out" or being positive and thinking, "Yeah, I trust this used-car salesman." Simply trusting the used-car salesman is a case of positive thinking. You are ignoring the negative thoughts. But when shopping for a car it is damn important to think about negative things like whether the engine actually works!

Swan Brooner on Living Dolls

YouTube - Living Dolls (1 of 9)

I have just watched Living Dolls on Youtube. It's about Swam Brooner, a five-year-old little girl who competes in child beauty pageants. Sometimes I wonder whether she wants to do this because she often seems sad. Her smiles on-stage seem fake. Her mother is extremely pushy and critical, telling her daughter to look up, not sing too low, etc. At the end, Swan wins $2500 prizemoney but the family has spent more than $70,000, so really the whole exercise was not profitable. If the same effort were put into trying to get her into college I think that might have been more profitable. With $70,000 you can get into quite a few universities.

I have recently heard that Swan's mother died and she is living in Alaska now. She is 13 and no longer doing beauty pageants. Even though she won some beauty pageants, she lost as well, and it was really sad to see her face when she lost.

Some of the comments on Youtube were about the observation that although many of the children in these child beauty pageants were very pretty, many of the mothers of these children were obese and homely. This suggests the possibility that these mothers are trying to compensate for their failures by succeeding through their children. That is, the parents are using their children to live their own lives.

Wife Swap v. Trading Spouses

I've watched a few episodes of Fox's Trading Spouses and I liked it a lot. I especially loved the episode that takes a man from Southern America and puts him in a New York city apartment with a very rich New York family. The two families were different, yes, but the Southern man tries to fit in with the new culture and does a very good job.

Wife Swap is different, however. Like Trading Spouses, the families are completely different, but the problem is that the wives who swap don't even try to adapt. They loudly and proudly hold on to their way of life, thinking it is superior, and try to change the other people in the process.

It's not just the contrived conflict that makes Wife Swap so painful to watch but also the fact that you know the wives are acting for the camera. It is so clear these women are desperately trying to show off their identity for the world to see. In other words, they are acting, and that goes against what I expect in reality TV.

The Prestige Movie Review

I went to this movie with my brother and his girlfriend. Only about one in eight seats in the theater were taken, not that many. Most of the people in the audience seemed young.

The movie starts off ordinarily. The first half is a series of events. The movie jumps from one time period to another. Many scenes left me scratching my head. A magic trick consists of three stages: the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. Like a magic trick the movie started out ordinary. Borden and Angier are two magicians in deep rivalry. They go to great lengths to sabotage the other's work. It got to the point where every time they were performing a magic trick on stage I would anticipate something would go wrong. Many of these tricks involved guns and axes, so I was preparing myself for something very loud and shocking.

After about halfway through the rather ordinary story of rivalry turns interesting as the two magicians read their diaries. But still I felt disoriented and didn't fully grasp everything. Towards the end though, everything made sense, and the plot fell together. It is a very complex and very shocking story. It is not just the plot that was excellent. The film seemed to have a lot to say in terms of themes. I won't give away too much but at the end the little girl Jess watches the magic trick that involves the little bird disappearing. She's amazed by it. She may want to know how the trick is done but once you realize how it is done it's probably not a good idea to tell her. Essentially the world is simple, cold, cynical, and miserable, but these tricks give happiness because they suggest this is not so. This deception is not isolated to simple magic tricks. The vanishing bird trick is analogous to what happens to the magicians. Some people will go to great lengths for an art.

I enjoyed this film not just for its plot. I started to think that deception is just in the magic shows. They are not just in the characters and their lives. They are everywhere. It watched this movie six days before Christmas and in many ways Santa Clause is a magic trick, a deception. But it's more than that. I look at the football fans in stadiums and wonder whether they are just individuals proud of their teams or country or whether they are just totally deceived by marketers. In my life pretty much everything that gave me happiness turned out to be quite simple, quite pessimistic in reality, whether it's religion, family, or love. There is no magic, just science. There is no emotion, just biochemistry. No country, just politics. No morality, just power. Like the vanishing bird trick, you just don't want to know how it's done.

Now when I spoke to people after the movie most of them didn't mention these ideas to me. They were too busy asking me about the mechanics of the plot, who was who, why this happened, and so on. But I think if you plan to watch the movie you should focus on more than what happened on screen. Try to infer certain concepts from the film and relate these to what you already know from experience in your own life. You may be quite surprised.

The movie probably shouldn't be seen by small children. One reason is because of the on-screen deaths that occur.

The Prestige is directed by Christopher Nolan, who also directed Memento and Batman Begins, two other very good films. Like Batman Begins this movie has Christian Bale and Michael Caine. Scarlett Johanson was in this movie, and she was very beautiful, as always. I've seen Scarlett in Lost in Translation and I especially love Scarlett in The Horse Whisperer when she was much younger. The little girl in this movie who played Jessica Borden is really cute. The movie is based on a book by Christopher Priest. After some Internet research I realized that the book's plot is different to that of the movie.