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May 22, 2003

On cowardice.

Singh says Annika 'doesn't belong' on PGA Tour (USAToday.com)

And, true to his word, Vijay Singh did withdraw, claiming he had "errands" and "chores", etc that he had to do for his wife.
Suuuure.

Today, Sorenstam shot a 71, which is one over par. A very respectable performance, and certainly a hell of a lot better than I could ever do, but still quite beatable by a lot of professional players on the PGA tour -- she's 7 strokes behind the leader, if I remember correctly. She may not even make the Friday cut, but I'm rooting for her..

You see, I'm no big fan of Golf, but I tuned in to parts of the tournament just out of curiosity. I fail to see how having Annika, or any other woman, play in a tourny hurts the game of golf. If anything, it attracts more viewers, publicity, etc and raises the quality of the game.

The PGA is for professional golfers. Its bylaws make no mention of gender (though, I hear that is being debated and may possibly change) in terms of who it allows to participate. As opposed to say, the WNBA or the LPGA that are specifically for naturally born women.

Frankly, this whole "controversy" thing is ridiculous. Rock on, Annika. And Vijay's a wuss. Plain and simple.

Posted by bard at 04:04 PM | Comments (1)

May 21, 2003

Spring Cleaning

*gasp*

must... catch... breath
need... fresh... air...

You have no idea how much crap you actually have until you set about throwing it out.
Additionally, you have no idea how much friggin' dust accumulates on that crap until you throw it out.

...off to find a dust mask
and a crowbar to pry open the window...
and... well, bah to Spring Cleaning.

Posted by bard at 06:05 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2003

Bickering.

Hoorah for extended-family bickering.
wOOt.

Posted by bard at 06:09 PM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2003

Matrix Reloaded

First, there was "The Matrix".
Then, they made "Matrix Reloaded".
I've seen both. I've enjoyed both.
Howzzat for a review?

(You really shouldn't read the rest of this unless you want to be spoiled.)

In all honesty, Matrix Reloaded was a good flick. I saw a special "sneak preview" showing the night before the official release. So, the lines were pretty long and everything. Then on top of all that, they had the gall to have, um, "technical difficulties" with the film. (Yeah, yeah. I *know* the issues resulted from the shipping of the film and not any error on the part of the theatre. But that's less fun of a story).

To wit: The previews alternated from being compressed horizontally, then compressed vertically, then being displayed on the full screen. When the film started the first time, it was reversed. So, back to watching the previews all over again. When shown the first time, "Finding Nemo" solicited laughs, the second time -- not so much.

Finally, they got everything running smoothly.

So, in no particular order:

Neo and Trinity are an "item" so to speak. I could have done without certain scenes relating to this; the "access ports" were visually disturbing to me.

No matter what the conditions in Xion are like, they apparently have MTV as a pointless 15-20 minute "rave" broke out

Morpheus looks strange without shades to me. He's also become somewhat of a cult leader, it seems.

Special effects remain largely the same. Neo has learned to play "Superman", flying all over the place (ie, "Neo's doing his superman thing again.")

More explanation of The Oracle, but I'm still a bit confused.

Agent Smith has learned some new tricks, namely replicating himself/infecting others. The whole big fight scene near the beginning between Neo and "The Smiths" put a big arsed grin on my face. It was fairly obvious, however, that Neo was not going to lose under any circumstances, so it was kinda anticlimatic. For the record, Neo ends up flying away.

In general, the whole beginning of the film is Xion was dragged out way too long. Basic conflict: Morpheus wants to divert some ships for use in carrying out "The Prophecy", whereas others demand the ships remain in Xion for defense/counter attack. In case you didn't figure this out from all the previews, etc -- the Sentinals/machines are coming! Ack! Run for your lives! Ack! Big shock! Who would've guessed! RUUUUNNN!!!!

Best analogy I can come up with for the Matrix: those Chinese dolls (figure-inside-a-figure-inside-a-figure)

The "Keymaker" was one of those bland, cookie-cutter, "save the Princess" type characters -- important, but boring and not all that well developed, I thought.

We get to see the supposed creator of the Matrix. Scene kinda reminded me of a typical "I am God" affair. Bad mojo to whoever decided bright white light was fun to show after the rest of the movie was fairly dark. Ouch. My eyes. Help. My eyes. Ouch.

Neo has a choice between two doors: one that saves humanity, and the other that doesn't. (well, duh.) Seeing as Trinity is involved with the second option, is it any real wonder which Neo will choose?

One final point: The guy who tries to stab Neo in the back at Xion is apparently very important, but I honestly don't remember who the heck he even was. I might not have been paying much attention, or the director/writer/etc kinda neglected his developement. My friend said he thought this particular character would turn out to be "bad", but I pointed out to him "Why would the machines be after him unless he was "good"?"

Bottom Line: Good flick; a bit slow at parts... "deeper" story than the first, but a bit less suspensful. Visual effects impressive, but not a significant improvement over the first. Looking forward to the conclusion in November.



Soylens Viridis Homines Est

Posted by bard at 06:12 PM | Comments (2)