Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - 1

Wow wow wee waa.

Watching the yearly Potter series has become my routine. For the books, I finished them almost right after they were released, and that makes watching the film mainly for watching the film per se. Instead of the plot, I am in fact more interested to see the actors growing, pretty much like doing my Family Follow Up Project, haha.

Starting from The Order of Phoenix, Harry Potter was no longer a children novel, from bits of good wizards bad wizards it turned into darker theme, this generates at the same time an expanding tension. Ummm, the struggle and frustration in companionship is well built in book; however, even when the film is halved in two pieces (for boxoffice and money), 140min is just way too short for everything to bridge up, scenes are pretty disconnected, making it like flipping slides of snapshots - lacking continuity.

Opinions towards this final episode are diverse, at least, quite a number of my friends saying it is boring, dull, and climax-less blablabla, and most are referring to the mid-part - where Harry, Ron and Hermione are purposelessly wandering here and there in forrests, searching for the Horcruxes with no clues at hand. In fact, though slow the pace is, I personally quite like this layout.

For those who have read the book may agree with me, that in reality, as the characters grow older with their egos sharpened, JK Rowling did put much emphysis on setting the scene for the three young adults to interact, and spent more paragraphs in displaying their complex interactions in between. The fact that Ron left the team was actually portraited in an even more detailed way in chapters, and I would say, despite that the director deliberately stalls the plot, only barely could it make it closer to the gravity in book. But as always, trying is better than nothing, and to be fair, judging by that they need to shrink the whole hundreds pages down to two hours or so, it is not bad at all.

Anyway, as I have said, to me seeing the three young current-billionaires on screen already worths the ticket. Feels like Christmas is never coming if not hearing th deadly Avada Kedavra from the Dark Lord (who somehow has a flattened nose).

P.S. Too bad that we could see the Emma kissing scene only in next year!

Sharing

Skipped a renal bedside teaching in Nethersole Hospital today, just to go back my high school for a sharing session in the morning assembly. Yeh, the opportunistic cost is high (it might be the one and only one bedside teaching on the beloved kidneys in the year...), but there is no regret speaking for the school that have developed and moulded the present James Chow.

The assigned topic is Challenges faced by a university student. This is exactly the kind of topic that stuporizes me when I was young. Luckily it was run in a Q&A manner - a planned one - between my ex-teacher and me, at least not a boring one-man-talk.

Of course when the teacher invited me for the talk three months ago, with no hesitation I agreed. But only after a while, when preparing for the talk, I see a huge big problem - how on hell the life of a final year medical student be representative for university as a whole! Sharing with them my daily routine would for sure portrait a cant-be-more-skewed picture of university life, that's so wrong.

- The last time I went to CU campus was in August, when I only have a spare 1.5 hour between lectures to fixed my broken library card in lightning speed. The time before, was already my year 4 final MB.

- We don't have GPAs, just pass or fail in each and every subject. So fighting for marks are usually not an important issue.

- Yes, I enjoyed my hall life very much eating drinking and chitchating with my buddies, but I am sure our Mrs Ho Hostel is one of the most peaceful, silent (and perhaps in some sense - boring) student hall in Hong Kong. At 3am when students in the-closely-named Ms Ho Tung Hall in the opposite shore are screaming and running down streets for a late night meal, we on the other hand are either sleeping on bed, or sleeping in books.

Sharing on these parts of u-life are definitely deadends, so the teacher and I agreed to explore on another aspect, which my fellow schoolmates might be more interested in - the love story between the ex-president and ex-vice-president of Student Union - and the way they grow from high school to uni, and to now one of them starting to work.

(To be continued...)

The Cove - blood, dolphins and human

It took me quite some time managing to get a ticket for this documentary. I agree, films are put on screen largely based on economical concern - box office driven; but it doesn't make sense to me when this Winner of Oscar Documetary is only played in two and only two cinemas over the entire city - and sad enough - two shows per day in each.

Richard O'Barry was a previous worldclass dolphin trainer specialising in captivity, and probably you have seen him - if you are old enough - on the famous Flipper TV series, where he personally trained 5 dolphins to perform extraordinary actions and gestures, playing into drama. And since then, these intelligent creatures became popular and were loved world wide, dolphin-capturing also raised together as a goldmine industry. As anything that goes commercial, hidden cruelty is here and there. Now, Richard regrets, The Cove was then filmed to reveal to the world, the inhumane business undergoing in Japan, and vividly the way 23000 dolphins got killed in a year.



I try not to think about the political reason behind the documentary, merely listening to the sound of dolphins screaming, and seeing the bloody red cove water, how digusted could I be for the egocentric title Crown of creatures - we called ourselves.

It almost instantly reminded me of the horrible experience in Chimelong Wildlife Theme Park in our growing mothernation.

The so-called wildlife conservation park is no way close to conservation but nature destruction. All that I saw was monkeys being chained on legs, parrots' wings being fractured so that they can't fly (I am amazed by how parents reacted and said to their children: Hey son, see how obedient those parrots are! standing there and let us take photos...son this is how you should behave...), and turtles kept in turbid cloudy waters which I almost thought they were fishes.

Decorating with eduacation and nature protection, in actual fact everything is again the sweet sweet money.

When we call ourselves the human, please, be humane - to those primitive but not necessarily worthless creatures. As Richard says: when you feel it, you know souls are talking to each other.

Just the way you are

When Mr Obama kept talking about change.
I believe there is one thing that's everlasting.

Just The Way You Are - Bruno Mars

Oh, her eyes, her eyes, make the stars look like they're not shining
Her hair, her hair, falls perfectly without her trying
She's so beautiful, and I tell her every day

Yeah, I know, I know, when I compliment her she won't believe me
And it's so, it's so, sad to think that she don't see what I see
But every time she asks me do I look ok, I say

When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change
Cause you're amazing, just the way you are
And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while
Because girl you're amazing, just the way you are(yeah)

Her lips, her lips, I could kiss them all day if she let me
Her laugh, her laugh, she hates but I think it's so sexy
She's so beautiful, and I tell her every day

Oh, you know, you know, you know, I'd never ask you to change
If perfect's what you're searching for then just stay the same
So, don't even bother asking if you look ok
You know I'll say

When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change
Cause you're amazing, just the way you are
And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while
Because girl you're amazing, just the way you are
The way you are, the way you are
Girl you're amazing, just the way you are

When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change
Cause you're amazing, just the way you are
And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while
Cause girl you're amazing, just the way you are. Yeah

===============================================

P.S. Happy 4th anniversary!

Abalone - the affordable luxury

Right, last time after writing some comments on Blokus, we did have some fun on blocking others' way in the library. Some of my friends asked me about the Abalone I mentioned, okay, lets get the chess-game on!





I first met this cleverly designed game when I was in high school.

Since the time in form 6, when I started to earn some extras with the parttime job of tutoring, quite a portion of my income would go into the boxoffice every month. One of the frequently-visited cinemas is definitely AMC in Festival Walk. And almost everytime after the film, I would go get a walk in the nearby Log-On, where innovative products are often found (and of course, by innovative I am refering to the prices as well).

In a random day of winter, a huge promotion counter was set up right outside the store, where at least thirty kinds of new-to-me chess and board games were open for trial and purchase. Walking within the shelves, I was caught by this seemingly primitive game - a weird hybrid of Black-White-chess and Marble-chess. And when I looked up the banner, it wrotes: "No.1 Game of the decade - INTERNATIONAL GAME FESTIVAL".

At this very moment, the enthusiatic young handsome salesman approached, explaining the game rules, and challenged me for a quick play.

The rules are simple:
- Each player has 14 marbles arranged as above.
- For each move, a player can move 1,2 or 3 consecutive marbles.
- The move can be either in-line (parallel to the line of marbles) or broadside (not parallel to the line of marbles).
- A player can push their opponent′s marbles, IF the pushing line has MORE marbles than the pushed line (three can push two or one; two can push one).
- Marbles must be pushed into an open space (i.e. not blocked by a marble of either colour), or be ejected into the surrounding groove.
- The goal is simple, if you can eject 6 of your opponent's marbles into the groove, you win!

Gamerule illustrated


The game is fun in its dynamic game mode. As you may have spotted, the moves involve both attack and defense intention, and everytime you are pushing your opponent's marbles to the edge, you in fact on the other hand create a weak point in your territory, which allow a potentially fatal strike back. To go advance, there exist also various starting positions to choose from, so as to create more variability and actions.

Going back to the young salesman, after 15min of play and struggle, I actually won the game.

Trust me, he looked really ashamed, and said to me:
"No, no, no way. That's impossible. Let's play for one more time!"

That is how I got this lovely playable game with me for 6 years!

The Social Network

Oh yes, it is David Fincher again.

I remember well that when I was in form 5, I wrote my first movie review on Fincher's legendary Fight Club for my summer project. I spent quite some weeks studying the plot and reading all the trivias, and was then caught by this amazing director.

Reviewing my VCD shelf at home, most of his collections are on it.
Se7en (1995)
The Game (1997)
Fight Club (1999)
Panic Room (2002)
Zodiac (2007)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Judging from the trend, it is not hard to tell Fincher is switching his choice of genre, from crime and thriller to the recent dramas - which, are always the tough ones to film. Comparing mere dialogues to the guns and blood, it is much more harder to maintain the same degree of eyecatchiness. Asking the audience to sit and listen to people talking, chatting and arguing for 2 hours could be a risky move, but Fincher did it phenomenally well.

In fact, the career story of Zuckerberg is not of a stunning kind when matched with that in Aviator, but it was the scent of reality which makes this film attractive. The ending is known before entering the theatre - we all have felt the power of Facebook. So, seeing how an ordinary university student (err, we are talking about Harvard - it is extraordinary, haha) expands a small idea step and step, and the in between realistic interpersonal betrayal and distrust, we are all curious - how on earth did he finally made it?

The choice of character is also worldclass. Seriously I knew none of the lead roles, but I guess no one would deny - they all played it right to the point, each has his character sharply shaped, and this makes the following interaction tight and fun. In particular I appreciate the line-writers who wrote the brilliant dialogues between Zuckerberg and the lawyers, it is like entering a language gunfield, bullets here and there. Armie Hammer's play for the Winklevoss brothers is as well wonderful - one actor two characters - wow!

Haha, in fact, I am more curious of how the real young Zuckerberg thinks about the way he is portraited in the film, well, it is not entirely positive to be a weird genius who did cheat a bit to have achieved his current status.

But yeh, being smart per se usually does not make one a billionnaire. =]

Burger, brand, burger

For friends who know me and Landico well, they should realise that we are both burger lovers. Unhealthy it may be, it is simply irresistable to get a juicy bite together with sips of coke.

There are few more weeks before my girl is back from the States, and I had a chance to visit Burger King with my dear groupmates. As usual, I ordered a Regular Whopper Meal, but when I was standing at counter waiting for my junk delicacy, this time, something new I observed.

Along the row of serving counters lies trays of meal awaiting to be picked up. When I scanned across them, I started to realise how neat the food was placed - from left to right: coke, fries, burger - on each and every tray, no exception.

Amazed by my new discovery, I was about to pick up my meal. Suddenly a hand from the Branch Manager reached to my tray, quickly touching every item of my set and made a minor turn - so that ALL of them have the Burger King Logo facing me - then, I overheard him talking to the newbie trainee: "This is how we position our food."

As minor as it might be, I can't help to appreciate the detailed thoughtful servive proctotol the shop has made. Not realising in the past, this is probably one of the reasons for why I always find (subconsciously) Burger King a neater and brighter brand than McDonald, KFC or its other counterparts.

This, is brand image construction, we may not notice, but it exists - serving as the unseen advertisement.


P.S.
Talking about brand imaging, in the old days, I once saw a Burger King TV commercial that I love so much. The layout was simple: The camera shot pairs of legs queuing in front of the counter, walked forward and ordered different sets one by one. At barely one second before the ads ends - a pair of legs in yellow trousers and red plastic shoes came - suffice to say - yes, that is Mr Mcdonald.