Movies that I think are Overrated

Time to bring this blog back. As usual I will start by complaining. These are the movies that over time I've actually grown to appreciate less. I don't think that these movies are bad, just that they were alright and nothing else.

Gone Girl

I really don't understand why people are saying this movie is Oscar-worthy. To me, this is the kind of movie you watch for 2.5 hours, have a good time and that's it. The story for me feels like something really trashy, which isn't a bad thing I just don't think it's one of the greatest things to have ever graced a cinema screen.
Also, to the people who keep saying this is a "well made" movie, or that it's "technically perfect", what does that even mean? Well made how? Technically perfect in what way? Does it elevate the story to something greater than what can be read from the script?
I don't think that this movie is particularly important or groundbreaking and the "cool girl" speech is way too overhyped. There was a great ending for the movie before the last fifteen minutes, but then the extra fifteen minutes happened and it just fell flat.

Inception

A lot of people said that they were "mind-fucked" by watching this movie but at the risk of sounding like an asshole, I didn't think this movie was that incredibly hard to follow nor did it make me think a lot. To be honest, that's a testament to how well Christopher Nolan structures the plot because you aren't confused. This is really a good movie, with really interesting visuals.
At the same time I never really cared about Leonardo DiCaprio or his crew because I never knew who they were. You can tell that the story is more interested in telling us how things happen rather than getting us to care about characters. For example, the scene when they are planning the heist, the Japanese guy says instead of booking tickets for a plane he just bought the airline. Sure that's a cool one liner and everything but do we really give a shit about the logistics of airplane travel? Get to the dream stuff already.
And then the parts when they explain how the dream world works just ruins all the surprises that were going to be in the actual heist. Like when they introduce the penrose steps and then show it again. Surprise ruined. I'm pretty sure the audience could've gone without the prior explanation. The most effective sequence was the corridor spinning one because you didn't know that was actually possible and it surprised you.
Christopher Nolan is one of my favourite director's and I'm still pretty psyched for "Interstellar" but I really think he peaked after "The Dark Knight". Which brings me to the next movie....

The Dark Knight Rises

My least favourite Christopher Nolan movie, and I would probably class this as actually bad. There were parts of it that were good such as all the parts with Bane (except for the very end reveal) and it was interesting to see Batman get defeated (even though the healing process was bullshit).
Everyone knows that Batman movies are sort of fantasy and so you should watch them with a suspension of disbelief so I didn't mind too much about the many plot holes. I did however, have a problem with the writing of the script. During the fight scene where Batman and Catwoman fight alongside each other Batman says "No killing, no guns". What the fuck. In Batman Begins there was a great scene where Bruce Wayne throws the gun into the ocean, and then in the Dark Knight Joker references the "one rule" without actually ever saying it and now you throw this shit at me?
Also, I think Nolan went too ambitious with this movie, particularly with the ending where months go by. That seriously could've been another movie but instead it gets squashed into 30 minutes.

The Notebook

Alright, I'll admit that I always thought The Notebook was a really crappy girly movie that I would not want to watch ever. And I've always really disliked it when people judge a movie because of what genre it belonged to or if it was too girly or whatever

So the other day I decided to watch it, because I found out that Ryan Gosling was in it and he seems to make romance movies less cheesy I guess (I saw Blue Valentine which was another really good movie).

The basic outline is that an old man reads to an old woman with Alzheimer's everyday from a notebook in the hopes that she will remember something. The notebook tells the story of how Ryan Gosling meets Rachael McAdams during the 1940s in some shithole town and they fall in love. He is poor and she is rich and her parents are dicks who won't let them be together. Eventually she has to leave for college which is in New York and they have to say goodbye. If you don't know by now the general gist of how this story will go then you're an idiot. The plot is so predictable that within the first fifteen minutes, you already know how it will end.

So logically I should really hate this movie. Like how I really didn't like Avatar. But I do like this movie and it is probably mostly due to Ryan Gosling and Rachael McAdams. Somehow they manage to make this seemingly bs story into something that feels real. I'm gonna sound like a massive pussy for saying this but I really felt bad for Ryan Gosling during some parts of the movie.

So if any guys out there who aren't afraid of being called a wuss or who are very confident about their sexuality and are not influenced in what your peers may call you, then go ahead and watch this movie. And it goes without saying that every girl on the planet has already watched it also.

The Dark Knight Rises

Recently, I went to watch The Dark Knight Rises at the midnight premier. After being a massive fan of Batman Begins and then going a little bit crazy over the The Dark Knight it's probably an opportunity I wouldn't have missed for anything. 

So the basic outline of the plot is Batman /Bruce Wayne (hope I didn't spoil anything) has been a hermit for around 8 years and then a new bad guy called Bane comes into town to disturb the peace in Gotham city that has lasted due to Batman's actions in the previous film. In a sense this movie is like a sequential sequel to the second film, but a spiritual sequel to Batman Begins. Bruce Wayne has to become Batman again. 

I'll start off with what I liked about the movie. This movie touches on some interesting character aspects of Bruce Wayne. It's hinted that without Batman, Bruce Wayne has lost all his purpose and it explores more of the concept that Bruce Wayne needs Batman rather than Gotham needing him.

Bane was another part of the movie that I really liked. Lots of people have been saying they cant really understand his voice or his voice is weird. I kind of thought that the voice made him unique and actually pretty scary. Some of the lines he has are also pretty epic like "When Gotham is ashes... you have my permission to die". Also, since most of his face was covered by a mask (any fans of Tom Hardy's luscious lips will be disappointed by this movie) I think the acting was pretty effective considering all we had to go on were the eyes. There's a particular scene at the end which really shows the great acting done by Tom Hardy. 

Speaking of the acting, it was really good from all of the actors. A special mention should go to Michael Caine who had to do the half crying voice for most of the movie (watch The Trip) without making it seem cheesy or overdone. 

Now to the things I didn't like. There was a lot of political and social backdrop in this movie. Maybe this is just me but I really hate it when movies do that in a really obvious way (unless its a documentary or a movie that's aiming for that sort of thing). There are a lot of scenes which try to integrate Gotham into the real world, like having a stock exchange and showing the greed of corporate America or something like that. To me, for some reason it makes Gotham seem less real, like it made me realise Gotham is not a real city. In the previous two films, there was just this sense that Gotham was an actual place, something which this movie lacks. This might also have something to do with the fact that it was no longer filmed in Chicago, and instead in other cities like New York and Pittsburgh. Gotham just doesn't feel the same. 

Also different from the other films is the quality of the script writing. There's a sharp increase in cheesy lines ("You've given Gotham everything" "Not everything..not yet) and really big plot holes (which I will not spoil for you). I think this has something to do with the fact that one of the previous writers, David S. Goyer, left to write the new Superman. I think that when Christopher Nolan writes his own stuff, it tends not to be as good (like in Inception). His ideas are good, but the execution of it isn't as great. And the plotholes were really  really annoying. Most of the time when I was going "WTF" in the cinema it wasn't because something epic was happening, it was because I couldn't believe that such a huge plot hole was not obvious to Christopher Nolan. 

Of course there were parts where I went "WTF" because something truly amazing was happening. I really liked the fist fight scenes between Bane and Batman because they were so raw. But the last half hour of The Dark Knight really seemed to be directed by Michael Bay. There was just a series of big explosions with jets flying around and then the Pentagon gets somehow involved. It reminded me of Transformers 3 without robots. 

Lots of people have been saying that this is the perfect conclusion to The Dark Knight trilogy. It's not, otherwise it would have been called The Dark Knight Rises trilogy. Instead what we got was an OK ending to a very good trilogy. And that's better than a crappy one. 

My first week of uni!

I wasn't excited to start university. It's true that during the holidays I started to feel like four months was too long a break for anybody and that my life seemed like one big waste of time. But on the day before my first day of uni, as I set my alarm to go off at 6:40 in the morning, I suddenly appreciated all the good things about sitting at home with nothing to do.

Uni is not so bad. I've made this joke so many times that doing UNSW medicine is like going back to Ruse and it's quite true because I spend all day hanging out with Ruse people. That might seem a bit antisocial but my reasoning is why make new friends when you have so many perfectly good ones already? I admit that this isn't a great attitude though because everyone else tries to make new friends so I probably don't come across as a nice person.

The first two days were boring as hell because it was all introductions outlining the course. Some days we get four hour breaks and we hang out in one of the study rooms in the library. These ridiculously long breaks can get as boring as class which is why Luan screwed up my Facebook and made the last post. Things got better when we actually started learning things. In the first week we started learning anatomy, histology and cell biology, most of which were interesting enough. 

We had a practical where we got to see the cadavers for the first time. Someone told me that every year, someone faints on seeing the cadavers and I didn't believe him until we did the practical and someone actually fainted. The cadavers were chemically preserved so the body parts didn't look very human at first. But then we saw the head which was split vertically with an eye and ear still intact and also the arms and legs which had the skin removed except for at the fingertips which still had fingernails attached. I didn't actually feel hungry from the smells (apparently formaldehyde stimulates appetite) though that might have been because I ate beforehand.

I watched Love Never Dies with Wilson and a whole bunch of other people (Wilson organised it). Being the eager person I am, I was the first one there so I went to Galaxy World with Wilson and kicked his ass at everything we played. The musical was pretty cool at first because I've never watched a professional musical before and seen such spectacular sets and stage effects. In the end though, I didn't like it as much as I had hoped.

Ive changed my gender

As you guys can recently see from my new facebook profile picture, i have changed my gender and became a woman.  I feel that in this world, the subject of homosexuality is frowned upon in a very negative light.  I for one am against this, because I understand the trauma and prejudice modern society homosexuals are subjected to on a daily basis, mainly due to my new found sexuality in that I too am a gay.  Due to the stereotypes and image projected by society, I find it hard to truly express my deep feelings towards my male associates, and as a result have fallen into a deep depression.  My friends are no longer close to me, and are wary around my presence, scared that I would touch them.  Yet this is what I lust for, a man to touch, a man to lean on, a man to hold.

This life is too hard for me to live, thus i have taken some appropriate steps towards changing my position. I underwent gender surgery to get my penis removed, and some boobs modelled out of silicon, which fit nicely on my well proportioned body.  I have also long since felt an affection towards more bigger frames in both men and women, thus i have adopted a bigger sized body.  I hope this will help me find love.

Every movie I've seen since the HSC

A list of movies I've seen through these holidays, with a brief comment on what I thought about it. Underlined ones are movies I would highly recommend other people to see.

Midnight in Paris: Owen Wilson plays a charming protagonist as he is treated to a parade of artistic legends. Chortles to be had.

Kung Fu Panda 2: Slickly animated action and an efficiently presented plot which culminates to scenes that are visually and emotionally brilliant. This really exceeded expectations.

Laputa, Castle in the Sky: (below) As expected of a Miyazaki film, it creates a rich, fully-formed fantasy world in which protagonists who are pure of heart experience magic and romance. Greatly enjoyable.

The General: Silent comedy star Buster Keaton gets into wild shenanigans with plenty of slapstick humour. If you like funny silent films, this is considered one of the best.

Bicycle Thieves: (below)A father and son search for their stolen bicycle, which the father needs to do his poster-sticking job to make ends meet for his family. This film is heartbreaking.

Metropolis: An old German silent movie containing many great iconic images of cinema. It builds up to a thrilling finale which may be the most exciting thing I've witnessed on silent film.

Goodfellas: A movie which follows the life of a kid who grows up to become a successful gangster. Kinda like Raging Bull though, I didn't really connect to this one. I'm too busy trying to keep up with the plot to feel much for the characters.

The Godfather: (below)I rewatched this because I barely understood what was happening when I saw it in Year 9. I suppose now I have a slightly better attention span because this truly is a great film.

Bridesmaids: A chick-flick directed by a director who usually makes films like. This was funnier than I thought it'd be and was a pretty good movie.

Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides: Given all the bad reviews, I was pleased to find that I enjoyed this movie. It's all more of the same action-adventure fluff but Jack Sparrow remains entertaining even at his fourth movie.

Larry Crowne: I watched this on the cruise planning to sleep but instead kept watching this movie on the little television in the cabin until it was over. It's a story with quirky characters but no real drama, tension or even purpose. I wouldn't recommend seeing this on purpose.
Captain America: The First Avenger: A solid superhero action movie worth watching, if only to get ready for the upcoming 'The Avengers', which I am really looking forward to.

Fitzcarraldo:  (below) In this film, an enterprising businessman with an obsession for opera pulls a steamship over a steep hill in order to reach unclaimed rubber trees and make his fortune. What's amazing is that this was filmed on location and to make this film they actually did pull a steamship over a mountain using nothing but logs and ropes.

The Bourne Trilogy: I may well be the last guy to watch this series. Matt Damon plays a quietly intense hero who blazes his way through series of cleverly constructed action scenes to find his identity and purpose.

War Horse: As he did with Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg explores a large historical tragedy through the journey of his small cast of characters. This is quite a sentimental film but is done well enough to be satisfying rather than cloying.

The Third Man: Watching this the second time, I once again failed to get drawn into it. Give it a try if you like old movies.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol: A well made action movie with generous helpings of humour that let's it all go down nicely. 

Winter's Bone: (below) A seventeen year old girl with a missing father and a catatonic mother struggles to support her two siblings while facing the hostility of the local drug business. Not the most exciting movie but it has a very admirable protagonist and provides a look into the isolated community of the Ozarks, which before this I had not even known existed.

Melancholia: (trailer below) This movie features Earth being destroyed after colliding with the fictional planet 'Melancholia'. This is not a spoiler because the movie depicts this spectacle right in the beginning and instead focuses on the story of two sisters in the weeks preceding the collision. This is a powerfully executed movie and I shall write more about it later so as to convince more people to see it.

Hugo: I expected this to be another very well-made children's movie but I think that it speaks more to older audiences who are interested in film. In Hugo, director Scorsese breathes new life into films from the beginning of cinema.

Battle Royale: I watched this because I had just finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy which I thought was great. I found this movie disappointing though. The characters are crudely formed and unconvincing and the violence is more gratuitous than unsettling. I suspect the success of this film lay in the novelty of its idea.

Some stuff I wrote but never bothered posting before...

Consider the following situation:

One hundred random innocent people are selected and imprisoned. You are provided with two choices. The first is to personally execute fifty of the prisoners, allowing the remaining fifty to walk free. The second is to walk away, resulting in the execution of all the prisoners at the hands of someone else.

I think most people would agree that the first choice is the right thing to do. It causes the least total amount of suffering and since the only disadvantage of the first choice is that you may bring mental distress and social condemnation to yourself by becoming a murderer, then you could even consider it as a selfless choice. However, does doing the right thing necessarily make you a good person?

Let's say a homicidal maniac (a bad person) and Mahatma Gandhi (a good person) are both faced with this situation. Homicidal maniac picks choice one (the right choice) because he wants to kill fifty people, being a bad guy and all. Gandhi picks choice two (logically now, the 'wrong' choice) because he is opposed to killing, being a good guy and all.

So in this case it seems that doing something that is wrong can indicate that you are a good person while doing something that is good can indicate that you are a bad person. Something's obviously wrong here since by definition, doing something right should indicate that you are a good person and vice versa.

The problem here is that we've defined good and bad in a different way to how we've defined right and wrong. We've defined a righteous decision as one which causes the minimum amount of harm to human beings and therefore a wrong decision as one that causes a greater amount of harm. We've defined a good person as someone holding benevolent values and intentions (e.g. Do not murder) and a bad person as someone with malevolent values and intentions (e.g. Murder is fun). The allocation of these definitions to each word pair doesn't really matter since we could've switched 'right' with 'good' and 'wrong' with 'bad' for this entire post and nothing would change. What's actually important is that we now have to wonder what's more important when it comes to one's behaviour: consequences or intention?

I planned to expand on this topic more but it now seems more complicated and less interesting than before. I may try this again when I think of an interesting real life example to apply it to.

Stuff I've been doing since the HSC

Loyal readers may have been growing concerned that I have begun to neglect and forget about this blog. Unfortunately, being on holidays for so long has made it difficult to get out of procrastinating and get something done, even something as easy as a blog post. Anyway, here is my return to blogging with a recount of everything I've done since the HSC.

Schoolies!

Spent with a lot of guys at Byron Bay. The (possible) highlight was the intense mafia games where everyone played very seriously, resulting in daytime votes that would last for up to twenty minutes before someone got lynched. Fun was also had on the beach and we played a lot of video games. I watched the first season of Suits. I also spent at least 5 hours trying to make a song using GarageBand on Alex's laptop. Pretty cool

Formal!

Pretty cool. I had a good time.

Medicine Interviews!

Nothing too interesting to note here. At the UWS interview while they gave us a briefing, me, Jinghang and either Falko or Clement were sitting on dodgy chairs in the lecture hall and we kept swinging on them and nearly broke them. It was pretty funny if you were there. Went to Newcastle as well and saw the stupid Clement there. He was very stupid. Also went to Monash interview and flew to Melbourne with mum and dad. My sister was in Melbourne too for some volleyball tournament and we saw her there. We ate at a restaurant there and I had something nasty that (literally) gave me the shits.

Cruise!

Went on a P&O cruise to New Caledonia and Vanuatu with some family and family friends. At first I was disappointed because it didn't seem as big and luxurious as I imagined. But then we had dinner and I changed my mind. There's a buffet and a restaurant and you can eat as much as you want! The food was quite good and there was a large variety. Spent time at sea playing board games, cards, table tennis and watching movies. I had to take care of my eight year old cousin the whole time because he was attached to me and followed me everywhere the whole eight days.

At each port of call we would get off the ship and the general routine was to sightsee and then spend the day at the beach. New Caledonia was interesting because it was weird to be in a French-speaking country. In Vanuatu there was a beach with sea cucumbers littered across the sea floor. What an array of sumptuous delicacies! There were also lots of crabs and large fish. The asian parents got quite excited.

Also something I remember is going above deck at night. The sky was cloudy so there was no light coming in from the sky nor reflecting off the ocean. It seemed like the ship was just surrounded by pitch black. It was quite terrifying to imagine falling overboard into the darkness.

Here are some nice photos.

 It cost us $2 to take a photo with this sign.

 My cool cousins.

Eating food.

HSC Results!

Pleasantly surprised by 4U maths state ranking. ATAR 99.80. Actually a little disappointed because my estimate was 99.90. Let down by Band 5 English like an asian stereotype.

Macbook Air!

My uncle bought me a Macbook Air which I am using to type this up. Hooray!

Wilson's Party!

The amazing race thing was pretty fun at first but for our group was really slow and so we gave up when we found out we were coming last. Roger and I stayed behind to watch a busker juggle some knives and an axe and then everyone had dinner at a Chinatown food court. Afterwards some of us went to karaoke. I had only been to karaoke once before and I didn't really like it. This time however, everyone was really into it and we started dancing on the chairs and coming up with really dumb moves and it was actually really really fun.

I stayed over at the penthouse with everyone else. Before the karaoke people got there, Raymond had been a pyromaniac chucking flaming tissues off the balcony. Later I suggested we shaved the powder off all the sparklers to make a sparkly bomb and that was pretty cool. When we ran out of sparklers, Raymond kept chucking more tissues. One time the wind blew back and the flaming tissue landed on someone's balcony and we may have scared the shit out of someone because I think NY said she heard someone scream.

The morning after I had breakfast at McDonalds and ate a NY Bagel, a Hash Brown and some orange juice.

Maplestory!

My sister started playing Maplestory and said the new Mercedes class was really cool and I should try it. So I did and now I have joined Vincent Tran, Jinghang, Edwin, Edward and Allan as a Mapler (the dumbass Arthur plays too but he's in America or something). I decided to make a female character called PastrySwirl to be ironic and funny but Vincent Tran keeps bagging me out for it. In fact, he decided to get Edward to broadcast across the server that I was looking for a BF and that I was hot IRL. I got hit on by some guys which was really weird and blowing them off gave me an enlightening insight on how it's like to be a girl. (I'm not serious.)

Christmas!

Spent it with family and family friends at Blaxland Riverside Park, the new playground/cycling track area in Olympic Park. The playground is cooler than the one in Bicentennial park though the park itself isn't as nice. Not much to say besides that we went bike riding a lot.

New Years Eve!

Went with a bunch of people to see the fireworks from the Opera House. Really good view though whether it is worth getting there at 10am to secure a seat is debatable. It was fun though, and Wilson cooked mountains of tasty of food so we had a nice picnic all day.

The Dentist

You know how people usually say, "Oh, going to the dentist doesn't actually hurt, you're just scared of the drill?". Well those people can just go screw themselves. Call me a pussy but going to the dentist really hurts. First of all the cleaning bit is just uncomfortable. Then when the drilling starts it just hurts a lot. And what's with the porno jazz music they play in the background? Apparently its supposed to be soothing, but seriously you can't even hear it when there's a drill boring into your teeth. Probably out of all the specialists, dentists are my least favourite because they involve the highest degree of pain no matter what procedure they're doing. One of the reasons I do not look forward to getting old is that the dentist visits will get progressively more complicated and painful.

That is all.

Midnight in Paris

I do not know who Gertrude Stein is. I've heard a lot about Ernest Hemingway but have never read one of his novels. Midnight in Paris requires for its full enjoyment a degree of cultural literacy which I unfortunately did not have. This is not really a failure of the film. The film is made for a cultured audience charming it with a playful parade of artistic legends and unfortunately in this process, alienates those who have no idea about the characters on the screen.

There is still much to like, however. The film tells the story of Gil (Owen Wilson), a Hollywood screenwriter who dreams of writing a serious novel. He visits Paris with his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her wealthy parents and is enamoured with the city, walking its streets and fantasising about the great artists and writers who inhabited it in the 1920s. On his walks at midnight every night, he enters a carriage that actually transports him to the 1920s where he meets people like Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and Salvador Dali.

Even if you don't know these people, it's still easy to get caught up in Gil's enthusiasm. Owen Wilson creates a very likeable character whose adulation for his literary idols makes them look good on the screen. He has a charming relationship with Adriana (Marion Cotillard), mistress of Picasso and a student of fashion. However, though their relationship is enjoyable to watch, it is not enough to sustain the movie.

Which brings us back to the first point. There is a scene where Gil sits in a café with Dalí, Buñuel and Man Ray. He tries to explain to them that he is travelling in time between the 21st century and the 1920s. Dalí, without humour, explains that this is perfectly normal and he states that he often feels similarly himself. Exasperated, Gil replies 'Yes, but you're a surrealist!'. If you find that kind of thing funny, then this may be your kind of movie.

Drive

Drive makes you think you're getting one type of film and then gives you another completely different one. This is one of those films that at the end makes you realize that you just watched something great and by the end of the week you thought you watched the best movie in a long time.

I don't want to give too much away but I'll give a general outline. A man who is a stunt driver during the day and is a getaway driver at night helps his neighbour and her son when she gets involved in some deep shit. Thats really all you should know about the movie and not much else. I wouldnt reccommend you read up anything about it (apart from the Roger Ebert review which also doesnt give much away). This is however, one of the few movies I would recommend you watch the trailer for because it tells you nothing but sets up your expectations. In fact I encourage you to watch the trailer because it gives the movie much more impact.

One of the main highlights of this movie is the use of music, which perfectly matches the mood and meaning the director is trying to convey. Also effective is Ryan Gosling as the Driver. Even though he doesn't say much in the movie, he exudes cool and style and makes driving gloves seem fashionable. Whereas his character is subdued and silent, the other characters are a complete contrast. Nino, played by Ron Perlman from Hellboy, is particularly loud and rude.

I think this movie has the potential to gain a cult following in the years to come. The way it blends so many genres together and its use of retro definitely make it more timeless and I'd go so far as to say that this might be considered as a great film as time goes on. I watched this movie maybe a week ago and I can still remember how I felt watching the film and after I left the cinema. Its emotional impact stays with you.

That is all.

Top 6 Greatest Minecraft Creations

I'm not sure if there's not much point in making this post because I'm guessing that at most only about eight or so people I know would read this and find it interesting. So to those eight people, this post is made just for you. I hope you like it.

#6 Halnicholas' USS Enterprise

The reason I put this up first is because it was the first Minecraft creation that left my mouth hanging open because it was so huge (safe). This was made when Minecraft was still in Alpha (though the creation is made in Classic) so this was before people had crazy mods and stuff to design massive epic structures. I think this was the first project of its scale ever made. An early milestone of Minecraft creations.

#5 Minecraft Cathedral by 'Sunflower'

Original forum thread and more images here. (I think the server on which this is built is still open to public).

The guy who built this (I'm guessing it was a dude) writes that he is a 'field expert in historical architectural theory and design' and that this cathedral takes inspiration from 'from Chartres, Amiens, Rouen, and Notre Dame de' Paris, and my experience studying and designing churches in real life'. This is quite a believable claim, looking at how intricately detailed both the interior and exterior of this cathedral is. It's worthy of note that this is designed using the original Minecraft texture pack, which is quite impressive considering its limited colour palette and tones compared to say, Painterly.

#4 Kiershar's Sky Monster Trap



There are two ways to play Minecraft: Creative and Survival. While Creative creations are generally much more interesting and impressive, there's something to be said for Kiershar's survival creations. Doing everything legitly with no mods on single player, he makes all kinds of clever and amazing traps for mobs and other players. This sky monster trap is the most impressive creation he's made so far though his devious traps to ensnare unwitting players are also definitely worth a look.

#3 FVDisco's Temple of Notch



Of all the Minecraft creations I've seen, this guy's creations, without a doubt, have got the most style. What sets this guy apart is his quirky and unique sense of design. He uses his own texture pack named 'OCD' which is changes all the textures to solid colours, straight lines and 90 degree angles. All his creations are compulsively neat, smartly presented and for lack of a better word, very, very groovy. If Minecraft creations were computer products, this guy would be Apple.

The video above is a prime example of why he's so cool. On my first viewing when the Notch statue opened its eyes I shat myself.

#2



Because every list needs a troll entry.

#1 The Voxel Box


It's not really right that I'm putting everything made by the Voxel Box server as one listing because really, this could be a list of top 5 Voxel Box creations. This is a very dedicated community of creative builders who build pretty much everything from towns, theme parks and crazy redstone devices. Their stated goal is to 'push the limits of what Minecraft can deliver to builders and players'. They also recently released an adventure map which is really amazing. It uses a mod that adds in custom sounds for atmospheric music and voiceovers.









And I just realised that this post completely contradicts the first sentence of my previous post.

The Thin Red Line

I've managed to pick up movie watching again as a slightly more constructive study-reward habit than Minecraft. I'm really glad I did because the three movies I've watched in the past week or so are some of the best I've seen all year (which doesn't really mean anything because I don't see movies in the same year they're released). Those movies are Minority Report, Being John Malkovich and The Thin Red Line. I just finished watching The Thin Red Line ten minutes ago so I'll write a few things. I'm typing this on my iPod so I won't write a lot.

The Thin Red Line is a movie portraying the Pacific theatre of World War II. It came out around the same time as Saving Private Ryan did and it's quite tempting to make comparisons. I'd say that this movie is more ambitious than Spielberg's in that it tries to encapsulate more completely what war is about. Whereas Saving Private Ryan told a story about one particular group of men on a mission, this movie dwells on a larger ensemble of characters and often alternates between different perspectives.

Often you judge a war movie by how horrific and gritty it is. While this movie certainly does do this, more amazing is how much of a sense of loss you feel after each violent episode. Terrence Malick (director) has this trademark where he likes to break down the events into a montage while the protagonist voices philosophical questions like 'Where did our evil come from?' and 'Who is killing us?'. Sometimes the film gets very reflective and you're at a loss at what it's trying to say. There are times when the film lingers on images that are beautiful but kind of come out of nowhere. I think they are there to prolong the mood of a scene in order to signal to us that something profound lies underneath. There is one character, Private Whit (I think) who is the closest thing we get to a protagonist and his belief that there is goodness in humanity that is being carelessly discarded becomes an important theme in the film.

Well anyway this was a great movie and I'm glad I decided to see it. Its quite unlike any other war movie I've seen.

(500) Days of Summer

Right at the beginning of (500) Days of Summer, a deep-voiced narrator tells us what the movie will be about:

'This is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know upfront, this is not a love story.'

The movie is about a guy called Tom who falls in love with Summer, dates her, gets dumped by her and spends the rest of the movie trying to get over it.

The reason for the popularity of this movie, I believe, is how easy it is to relate to. A lot of guys could empathise with the idea of loving a girl so much but being mystified at how she can’t return it. The other reason is that it deals with this feeling gracefully in a very light-hearted and enjoyable way. I wish that if I was put in the same situation as Tom, I could be just as witty and likeable.

It's a great movie because it takes an approach to the feeling of heartbreak that is humorous but true to the feelings involved. Tom's anguish appears genuine but the film takes every chance to make light of his situation. The balance between drama and comedy is helped a lot by Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance which is really great.

There is also a lot of exciting editing in this film. The director (Marc Webb, who previously directed music videos) stated that he wanted this film to be like a 'pop song in movie form' and we see this in the use of split-screens, the narrating voice-over and the non-chronological sequence held together by 'Day X'- type title cards. It's all designed to be choppy, exciting and highly palatable to a modern audience. In fact, I think Webb is a bit critical about the relevance of 'serious art' for being so esoteric and inaccessible to most of society. My evidence is a scene in a modern art gallery, and a short montage of scenes parodying some Ingmar Bergmann films.

The cinematography's great too. I can’t describe it technically but it has a nostalgic tone to it and alternates between very warm and very cool. On IMDb it says that the bluish tones are there to bring out Zooey Deschanel’s pretty pretty eyes, which is nice.

If I had a choice of the kinds of movies I'd like to see more of, it'd be movies like these. Not necessarily important or challenging movies, but clever enjoyable movies that tell important truths through lives not very different to our own.

(Normally I should be posting this on the other blog, though since both are inactive right now I'd thought I'd revive this one first. And also because people asked for this on this blog.)

Last Day of School

Today was the actual last day of school. Well technically it was yesterday because we went to the beach today but whatever.

Over the past week, I have been ticking off all the lasts that I had. Last math period, last english period, last free, last recess, last lunch, last bus ride to and from school etc. etc. and I realised that there was absolutely nothing special about any of them, apart from the fact that we did nothing. In fact, I would probably say that my last free period was one of the most boring I had in a while. I guess what I'm trying to say is that all the days we have are basically the same and even something special like graduation doesn't change that. I imagine that the day I die would also be quite unremarkable.

Going through graduation sort of reminds me of the episode of The Office when Steve Carell left. I watched it again yesterday.

That is all.

Leaving School

If somebody had asked me a few months ago what I felt about leaving school, I would have replied that I was feeling pretty pleased about it. I would have explained that the HSC was like a great mental sponge, soaking up all the energy out of my body. I looked to the future as some vague dot in the distance where I would study things that I needed in life and work hard for reasons that made a lot more sense. It confused me when I saw the previous batch of Year 12s were so nostalgic and told us to treasure our days of school. They must be institutionalised, I thought. Like in The Shawshank Redemption how Red has been in prison for so many years that he doesn't know how to live freely once he is finally released.

Now that the future is a little more than a dot in the distance, I feel a bit more trepidation about leaving school. In a way, I guess I've been institutionalised (I'm only using this word half-seriously) too. What I mean to say is that in school you're stuck in a little bubble but in a way that's good because that's all you have to deal with. Once the bubble pops, you have to look after yourself in a much bigger place. I do look forward to making my own choices and deciding what kind of a person I want to be. But still, I worry that I will be burdened by choices rather than freed.

Also, only with the end so near do I realise that I'll really miss everybody. Once it's all over, it will certainly be strange no longer seeing so many familiar faces every day. There's still the formal and everyone will probably still maintain their networks of friendships but without the routine of school and being stuck with each other, things will be different.

Though I've had a change of heart about leaving school, I certainly have not forgotten the bad things about being in Year 12. I don't think I've ever experienced anything as stressful as the week before the English exam in Term 1. And there's still the HSC in 4 weeks. But I guess what I mean to say is that being a member of our year group has become a big part of who I am and it won't be easy to see the end of that.

Devolution

I've been wondering whether or not we've come to a point in our evolution where we now are actually undoing all of the hard work that billions of years of human evolution has done.

As most of you would know, the concept of evolution is so that a species can reach perfection in adapting to its habitat. Humans have obviously been very good at this since we are now probably the dominant species on the planet. But I think now, because of all this scientific progress we're making, our genes are actually becoming worse. If you think about it all this medical innovation is actually ruining our gene pool because it means that people with hereditary diseases aren't dieing out but are instead able to continue to breed and pass on their genes. Also stuff like adaptability to the environment has probably been diminished because we can build our own homes and make our own climate to suit us.

Also, our social preferences are probably ruining our gene pool too. Note how now we not only select our mates based upon physical characteristics (traits which are actually hereditary), as a society we also covet other stuff like personality (which is probably not hereditary). This would probably mean ugly people like me would never be born but I seriously wouldn't mind if there were a few more Miranda Kerr's out there. The male preference for women with less hair on their bodies (I think men like hair on the head more), is also counter-evolutionary because hair is meant to keep our bodies warm, although I guess we don't really need it now since we have clothes, but still it reduces our adaptability. I also believe that women are also trending towards the less hairy male but I'm not too sure, and if this continues we will all probably end up being hairless.

What I'm trying to say is that if some alien life force came and managed to take away all our clothing and any means of producing more clothing, we would be pretty screwed. On the other hand, if evolution was allowed to continue normally, we, as very hairy Miranda Kerrs, would stand a much better chance of survival.

That is all.

I've been thinking hard recently.

A few days ago after reading his blog I asked Jeffery on Formspring what he thought about determinism. I first learnt about determinism a few months ago from watching Waking Life (which I found about from Roger) and the idea seemed so amazing to me that I've thought about it a lot ever since. I now know that what I thought was determinism could be more accurately described as deterministic fatalism. That sounds a bit complicated but you can basically summarise it as this: if the laws of nature precisely govern the behaviour of every little particle in the universe, then everything that ever happens in the future can only follow one set path.

I had difficulty getting my head around this idea. It's not so hard to imagine that things like the orbit of the Earth, the death of a star, the formation of a galaxy are all predetermined events brought on by pre-existing conditions. But it gets harder when you realise that our minds are also made of the same particles as anything else in the world. So everything we think about, everything we do is not guided by our free will but rather the Laws of Nature being carried out within the particles of our mind. It's such a drastic conclusion but I can't think of any way that it's not true.

Accepting this belief of determinism, it then becomes quite hard to contemplate the implications of it. Should we resign to the futility of human will and forgo responsibility for our decisions? Technically, you don't even get to make that decision because that's predetermined too. But in real life when you make a decision, it still feels like you're making a choice and that you're in control of what you're doing. Free will may be an illusion, but it's certainly a very good one. People seem to make decisions everyday that affect the course of their lives. Everybody still needs to be held accountable for their actions and their decisions if society is to function. It seems that for all discussion of ethics, politics and practical real world issues, a fatalistic viewpoint while logically valid, is quite dangerous for the attitude of defeatism it implies.

Perhaps more profound are the consequences of these beliefs on things like spirituality. When one imagines the universe and consequently everybody within it to simply be a jumble of particles forced to follow a set sequence of interactions then that leaves pretty much no room for concepts like the human soul. I think this is a different topic altogether but thinking about this made me realise that the attributes that make up what we believe to be the 'human soul' like our personalities, memories, thoughts and beliefs are really just a specific arrangement of neurons. These things that we believe to be immaterial and maybe even persistent after death are in fact physical things that exist within our skull and decompose when we die. For this reason, I believe that there is no afterlife.

Anyway, this post was initially intended to be just about my fatalistic beliefs but it diverged a bit at the end. The reason I wrote about this stuff is that Jeffery lent me his course book thing from the philosophy course he did last year on the module 'Time and Cause'. This was meant to be a kind of introduction about why I'm interested in philosophy before I started writing about what I thought about the book Jeffery lent me but it turned out quite long. I'm halfway through the book Jeffery lent me and I'll blog about it sometime soon. It's titled 'Time and Cause'.

Harry Potter!

I saw Harry Potter yesterday and wrote about it in the other blog.

I know its kinda pointless writing about Harry Potter, since it's Harry Potter and all but if you value my opinion on movies/ find it interesting then you might like reading it lols.

Formspring

Today I decided to get a formspring for some reason. I guess I've been put off from getting one from either not wanting to conform to society or for the reasons Vincent had for not wanting to publicize his.
I suppose I should be happy with the four questions I've received from real people and my 2 followers but I always like to expand my horizons. My answers will probably vary in tone depending on how troll i feel.

The link is here

That is all.