Meet the Fockers... I saw the film on Christmas Day, and needless to say, the film was friggin’ hilarious!!! Probably the best film I’ve seen at the theater in a while. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it! The commercials don’t do justice to its hilarity, hahaha. Seeing the Chihuahua hump anything that moves and the little kid cheerfully repeat the words, "Ass-hooooooole" alone is worth the price of admission.

THE RETURN OF THE KING: Extended DVD version... Yesterday, I attended one of my relatives’ Christmas party in Hawthorne (near Inglewood and LAX airport), and to kill time, we watched the extended DVD version of the third Lord of the Rings film...all 4 ½ hours of it. Actually, I went home right after Frodo destroys the Ring at Mt. Doom. No need to see a bunch of pansy Hobbits jumping up and down on a bed again. Anyways, out of all the extra scenes that were added into the film, there were 2 scenes that really stood out from the rest: Saruman’s death scene (oops, did I spoil it for you guys?? No I didn't.) and the Mouth of Sauron scene. Saruman’s demise takes place at the beginning of the film, when Gandalf and company find Merry and his boy toy—err, friend Pippin toking outside the Tower of Isengard. Words are exchanged between Gandalf and Saruman—who is standing at the very top of the tower, and the scene eventually ends with Saruman plummeting to his death after being stabbed in the back by his assistant Grima Wormtongue (the dude who was watching Saruman create gunpowder for a bomb in The Two Towers). What caused Wormtongue to do such a dastardly deed? He was standing next to Saruman when the wizard slapped Grima like a little bitch after Grima said something insubordinate.

The other cool addition to ROTK is the Mouth of Sauron scene that occurs near the end of the film (well, I wouldn’t say it’s near the end). It takes place as Aragorn, Gandalf and the rest of their army approach the Black Gates of Mordor to finally confront Sauron’s forces, and a lone figure—shown in the pic above and to the upper left-hand image of the montage below—riding on a horse exits from the gate to deceive Aragorn and Gandalf into thinking Frodo is dead by flaunting that metal vest Frodo received from Bilbo Baggins in the first LOTR film. [In case you forgot, or don’t care (I’m pretty sure it’s the latter), the metal vest was taken from Frodo when the Orcs bring his unconscious body to a Mordor tower after Frodo is bitten by Shelob the Spider.] This villain is such a cool-looking character, even though he gets his head chopped off by Aragorn. Being a Star Wars fan and all, why can’t a Sith Lord look like this in one of the prequels? Oh well, Darth Sidious still rules!!

Despite such a detailed journal entry about Lord of the Rings, I’m still a bigger Star Wars fan. How big a fan am I? You’ll know on New Year’s Day. Bring on Revenge of the Sith!




EDIT: Oh- and the dude getting stabbed by an arrow in the lower left-hand image of this montage is LOTR director Peter Jackson, making a cameo in his own Oscar-winning film.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!!! Hope you and yours are having a safe and gnarly holiday... Gnarly, haha... As for me, it's nice and sunny here in Southern California as I type this, so I think I'll take advantage of the great weather by staying at home and watching the Laker game. Speaking of which, today is the BIG DAY... Will the Big Diesel be cheered when he steps onto the court at STAPLES Center, or will he be booed? We shall find out in a few minutes!



or more bluntly:



EDIT: Shaq received a 37 seconds-long standing ovation when his name was the first to be announced during the starting lineup...

EDIT #2: Shaq fouled out of the game, but his team prevailed, 104-102, in overtime. The Miami Heat have won 11 games in a row.

CSULB AMONG TOP PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN THE WEST... California State University, Long Beach (my alma mater) has been ranked one of the top three public master’s universities in the west by U.S. News and World Report in its 2005 America’s Best Colleges Guide. CSULB also is among Princeton Review’s Best in the West.

U.S. News ranked Cal State Long Beach among the top 32 colleges and universities of all 129 private and public master’s institutions in the western United States, placing it in the first tier of rankings (the top 25 percent) for the first time in the university’s history.

As defined by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, institutions in the universities-master’s category provide a full range of undergraduate programs, some master’s level programs and few, if any, doctoral programs. Cal State Long Beach offers two doctorate degrees.

In U.S. New’s survey methodology, colleges provide data for up to 15 indicators of academic excellence. Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects publication officials’ judgment regarding how much a measure matters. Finally, the colleges in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score.

Among the indicators used to measure the academic quality of the colleges and universities were peer assessment (weighted by 25 percent), retention (25 percent in master’s colleges), faculty resources (20 percent), student selectivity (15 percent), financial resources (10 percent) and alumni giving rate (5 percent).

CSULB also ranked first in the west among universities-master’s institutions in least dept load, meaning graduates from the university’s Class of 2003 [“Yenny-Pooh” (Remember her? Haven’t talked about her in a while!) graduated from CSULB that year] graduated with the lightest dept load in the west. Some 29 percent of CSULB students graduating in 2003 had a debt load of $6,319 to top the list. By way of comparison, some 89 percent of 2003 graduates from the University of Great Falls in Montana graduated with a debt load of $29,483, placing them among the “most debt” list.

Finally, Cal State Long Beach was also mentioned as one of the west’s top universities-master’s institutions in student body diversity, ranking seventh.

...

This Blog is quite a departure from the hot blonde and Titanic parody pics shown in the previous journal entries, eh? GO BEACH!

VIRTUAL BARTENDER: The Game... Click here for some good clean (unfortunately) fun of a hot bartender named Tammy taking any order you "place" to her. Here’re some keywords you could type to start things off: tattoo, pour, beer, t-shirt, Star Wars, Rocky, Metallica, Kate Moss, Rob Zombie, Method Man, jiujitsu, lick, kick, shower, hummer, dance, rapper, gitter jiggy, hustler and clothes. On second thought, maybe I should've left a few of those keywords out (since, on one hand, some of them lead to the same video clip)... Meh, oh well. Don’t worry, most of the things Tammy does aren’t as kinky as you think they are. Again, unfortunately. Good clean fun blows. Just resist the urge to type "I’ll be back" as an order...lest you want that warm feeling you were getting south of the equator while viewing the other clips to turn as cold as the 6-pack of Coronas I have in my fridge. Or am I being too graphic?


Enjoy!

I watched Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events at Paramount Studios last night... It was okay. A lot more entertaining, in my opinion, than Ocean' 12 because of Jim Carrey's performance. The one big flaw that I found with the movie was that they didn't explain the significance of those spyglasses (you'd obviously have to see the film to know what I'm talking about). But according to my friend Sarina (who works at Paramount and was able to get me in for free. Thanks, heheh), Paramount is planning to make sequels to Lemony Snicket since the story is based on a series of children's books. So essentially Paramount is trying to do what New Line Cinema did with Lord of the Rings and Warner Bros. did with Hairy Pothead--err, Harry Potter. Though I'm pretty sure Lemony Snicket will be the least successful of the three book-turned-movies franchises. Oh yea, I forgot about The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy.

...

Make that the least successful of the four book-turned-movies franchises. Oh, and I forgot about Mario Puzo's The Godfather (and Jurassic Park...though only two of the films were based on Michael Crichton's novels)!! Dagnabbit, nevermind!!!



EDIT: After the movie, Sarina, one of her Paramount friends and her sister (we all watched Lemony Snicket together) and I walked over to the set where they were shooting an action scene for the hit TV show 24. My question is: Shouldn't they be filming 24 at the Fox Studio Lot in Century City and not at Paramount, since 24 is a Fox show? Sarina replied that it was probably cheaper to film at Paramount.

Miniature models of Episode III: Here's an article that dealt with all the miniature sets that were built for Revenge of the Sith. For those of you who thought the prequels overdid it on the CGI (that's computer-generated imagery for the layperson), here's an excerpt from that article:

"To the layman, it's become increasingly easy to credit the amazing visuals of modern effects movies to the ever-present computer. If the talents of digital artists are often casually dismissed with a simple, "it's all CG," then the physical art of miniature construction is often completely ignored. In reality, the Star Wars prequels have featured more miniature work than the Original Trilogy -- Episode I alone had more models than the original films combined. It's the way in which miniatures are used that has changed dramatically."

To the naysayer who doesn't know jack about movie visual effects or even filmmaking in particular, and uses the clichéd "It's all computer-generated" when commenting about certain fantasy/epic films, TAKE THAT!

A year ago today, I got rained out on the third and supposedly final day of shoot for my senior film project Envious. Technically, this was a blessing in disguise... Otherwise, without being disgruntled or distraught or whatever I wouldn't have been able to warrant the sympathy (That sounds too negative. Make that 'pity') of my cast and crewmembers, who were willing to help me out on the pick-up shoot that took place on January 31st and February 1st of this year. And technically, with the number of shots I had planned for my film, there would have been no way in hell I could've gotten everything done in just three days last December! So having it rain during my production helped persuade my classmates and actors to deal with my masterful directing just two days more, haha! Just kidding. For more info, go to the links I provided in the Sunday, December 12, 2004 entry below. ... Oh, and sorry Christina. Didn't mean to have that last entry on you sink to second place so quickly.

I saw Ocean's Twelve last night... It was entertaining, but also a bit confusing in how the main heist was explained at the end. Also, Soderbergh was a little too happy using those handheld Steadicam shots. Either he chose that visual style for this film or he was running behind schedule and didn't have time for more dolly camera movements! Also, there was a small subplot featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones' character that was thrown in at the last minute that I could care less about. Ocean's Eleven was obviously a lot better. On the plus side, the new trailer to Batman Begins was shown before the screening...as well as the Meet the Fockers trailer and a preview to Be Cool, which stars John Travolta, Vince Vaughn, Uma Thurman, The Rock and...Christina Milian.

A year ago today, I began shooting my senior thesis film Envious at CSU Long Beach. Just felt like mentioning that since I miss school!! No I don’t. If you want a full account on my production shoot (not bloody likely), go to my journal entry for February 17, 2004. And go here for some nice voyeuristic pics of my cast and crewmembers. Just kidding...about the pics being nice. Later.

I saw Blade Trinity today... It was pretty entertaining. Then again, I also thought National Treasure was enjoyable when I watched it about 2 weeks ago, so what does that tell you about my standards? I have The Matrix sequels, Starship Troopers and some Star Wars parody called Thumb Wars on DVD, for cryin' out loud!! But seriously, the new Blade film was okay. The "reaper dogs" were cool. Vampire Pomeranians, hahaha. In the words of Bart Simpson: "You can't make that stuff up."


My favorite Blade film is still Blade 2.

Batman Begins domestic and international teaser posters:



Click here for more details on the film...which I haven't talked about in my Blog for quite a while. Last I heard, composer Hans Zimmer (Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, The Last Samurai, Hannibal, Pearl Harbor, Crimson Tide, Broken Arrow and...The Lion King) was helping on the music score. That should be interesting...considering all of Zimmer's scores have been unique in one way or the other. In other music news, Kanye West, Usher and Alicia Keys lead the list in Grammy nominations. See how quick I change the subject?

This picture would be a lot funnier if Dubya didn't get a second term. It's been said that Democrats resorted to emotion and childish name-calling just to make a point. Not me. I resort to childish picture-posting. That, and I found this image online and thought it would be funny to display it here. Well... It's funny if you're a liberal.



EDIT: Since we're still on the topic of awesome pics you can find online (like on Google), I have three more for ya:

I went to a housewarming party with two of my friends (Shaun and Sheena) last night, and it was pretty fun. Lots of cool people that I met over there. I think the highlight of the gathering was the drunk dude who was vomiting into a plastic bag inside the garage the whole time...and the two Ferraris that were parked at the house where the party was held (this being a gathering attended mostly by Asians, I think this pretty much reinforced the stereotype of Asian Americans being spoiled with nice rides by their rich parents. Good for us!! Though I drive a measly Toyota, haha). Another highlight was the four import models in attendance at the party!! Rowena Galam, Kyanna V., Aiko Tanaka and Kaila Yu were there. I managed to start up a conversation with Rowena...and she said next year might be her last year in modeling. That sucks. Well, not really—I already took a picture with her at the Asian Model Expo in Long Beach 2 years ago, hahaha. Sheena Chou

So overall, the party was enjoyable. Shaun and Sheena actually left before I did...but that was because they weren’t buzzed like I was, so I had to wait till I was sobered up before I headed home. Lousy cheapskates (Just kidding)... They brought nothing while I bought a 6-pack of Coronas for the party. Oh well, haha. Stop laughing, Parno.

Two of my friends and I went to the City of Whittier today to attend an autograph signing by Magic Johnson. It was pretty cool... I got two autographs by the NBA legend--one on an 8 X 10 photograph and the other on a basketball manufactured by Magic's own company and sold at the store (Shoe City) where the signing was held (which, obviously, is why Magic did this signing anyway...to promote his new brand of basketball). Although I didn't take a picture with the 5-time NBA champion, at least I got to take pictures with beautiful import model Mia Guzman, who along with fellow model Flo Jalin attended the signing (I'll leave the significance factor of taking a picture with a cute Asian model as opposed to posing with a famous celebrity up to you guys). I didn't take a picture with Ms. Jalin though...since I took a picture with her at a model expo in Long Beach 2 years ago and she wasn't looking at the camera. Oh, and I took a picture of her at an import show in Los Angeles in 2001...and again, she wasn't looking at the camera. So that's obviously why I only asked Ms. Guzman for a picture. At least she waited for the flash to go off before looking away. Geez...I'm all over the place with this journal entry. So basically, the point of this blog is to point out that Magic Johnson is pretty cool in person. Later.

So anyways, I got all 4 of my wisdom teeth extracted yesterday and the right side of my face is swollen like that of a chipmunk. And I'm officially addicted to painkillers...just kidding. Though it is a bit um, interesting to see all that blood ooze out of my mouth the minute I removed the gauze when I got home last night. Or am I being too graphic?