Category: Entertainment

Be A Movie Producer for $100

An interesting article from “The Economist” (thanks, Jason and “A”!) about how India’s rapidly growing movie industry is thinking differently:

Thanks to a boom in urban multiplex cinemas, the economics of Bollywood filmmaking is changing. Small-budget productions, often made by debutant directors experimenting with genres-such as “Being Cyrus”, a twisted tale of a dysfunctional Parsi family in Mumbai-are now finding audiences and critical acclaim. Big Bollywood players are taking notice: “Iqbal”, another recent release, was financed by Subhash Ghai, a powerful producer.

One group of aspiring directors hopes to avoid Bollywood altogether. The makers of “Betelnut Killers” are using a website to solicit “investments of as little as $100” to raise $1m for their film about an Indian shopkeeper in a small American town who plots to get rid of an unwelcome rival. The word “investment” suggests an eventual pay-off, and indeed there is, according to the site-a credit at the end of the yet-to-be-made movie, a T-shirt crowing “Co-producer, Betelnut Killers” and exclusive rights to contribute to a blog. By early May, contributions totalled almost $14,000.

The website actually offers a fairly complete proposal on many aspects of the project. So if you ever want to put “Movie Producer” as a credit on your resume, this is the time to do it… 🙂

On a related news, Patrick has decided to let his hair grow until he sells his next movie script (or so he threatened his agent). Apparently Hollywood is a bitchy industry to be in… His wife, Ee-bin, said Patrick’s hair is now growing nice and long. I told Patrick if he still has his hair by Christmas, I’d buy him a dress! Hah!

Best Animated TV Sitcom Ever!

Wow… Has it really been almost a week since I last posted that short entry on the baby blogs? Time flies.

I “got” all five seaons of Futurama and have been watching them one or two episodes everyday. It’s truly a great show with so much stuff in every episode. I don’t know how they can come up with so many ideas, work them all in an episode and cram them out in animated series. Simpsons have been good, but I think Futurama tops it with Bender — sort of a “blend” of Homer and what Bart will grow up to be.

Rare Appearance of Steve Jobs

I don’t know where he found it, but Murdza sent me a link to City of Cupertino’s webcast archives. And in it, there’s a short appearance of Steve Jobs announcing Apple’s decision to stay in Cupertino for its second campus it decided to build.

Steve Jobs addresses the city council of Cupertino

To view it, you can download the Real Player file here. Or you can go to the webcast archive, under “CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS”, and in the “MEETING VIDEO” drop down menu, select “April 18, 2006” to download. When your player of choice launches, there should be a menu somewhere around the main video itself. Simply click on “Oral Communications”. Steve is the first one to speak.

Murdza said Steve looks drunk. I thought the image of him scratching himself didn’t look too graceful. But at least he was true to his all-too-cliche image… he wore a black turtle-ish long sleeve shirt with jeans. I wonder if he considers that outfit his uniform… I mean, I wear similar stuff all the time, but not to the extreme of wearing the same thing day in and day out… I guess the way he thinks is the same as how school administrators in most Asian countries think: Don’t get distracted by what you have to wear everyday to school/work. Thus, if everyone wears exactly the same thing everyday, there’s one less thing to worry about which allows one to concentrate on what matters the most — work.

The Best Story on Adam and Eve

I was in my microeconomics class ALL day last Saturday. But during break, I caught an interesting reanimation of Adam and Eve narrated by Jonathan Goldstein at the end of “This American Life“. The Real Audio file can be downloaded here. The segment starts at about 42:30.

This is probably THE Biblical story told over and over again and is probably one of the most recognizable icons of Christianity. But the way Goldstein narrated the tale was so fresh, dark and humorous that I couldn’t help but to track it down and listen to it again. As always, “This American Life” produces one of the most interesting and original radio shows on NPR.

Cute Overload!

Slashdot was making fun of Cute Overload on April Fools which basically just made Cute Overload exploded with traffic (a.k.a. The Slashdot Effect). I am glad Slashdot covered the site though. There are tons of cute pictures of animals for you animal lovers… Even if you don’t like animals, I am sure your kids/spouse will appreciate the fun.

via [Slashdot]

Married to A Mary Poppins

Grace also took the “movie character” test and was determined her personality most resemble to that of Mary Poppins…

What jolly…

Grace as Mary Poppins

One interesting note: When I took Bryan out to run errand this morning, the children’s CD was playing exactly that song! Talk about jolly coincidences.

It’s very clear to me

That a…
Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way

UPDATE: Grace wasn’t convinced that she was Poppins. So she did the test AGAIN deliberately choosing certain answers differently….
.
.
.
.
She ended up with Mary Poppins AGAIN.

HAH HAH HAH HAH…

Zagat of the Bay Area

Sometimes I wish there was a Zagat for absolutely everything and for everywhere. Zagat was great for New York when we didn’t know what the hell to eat because there were so many damn choices. If we ate at a different restaurant for each meal, I am sure it’d take Grace and I a long long time to really completely try just 60% of all the restaurants in NYC. Unfortunately, that’s the opposite for the Bay Area (or, at least for the South Bay where absolutely nothing happens). Everything is so far apart from each other here that it’s very hard to discover new “hole in the wall” places. I mean, it’s not like in NYC where you walk by somewhere and go, “WOW, I have walked by this corner of my daily routine a thousand times but never saw this place!”

Luckily, there’s Jason and Terry’s Bay Area Review (or JatBar.com for short) for this activity starving place. I look forward to actually using this site once in a while before Grace and I dare each other to eat at the same places again!

As of today, there are 600 some odd restaurants reviewed and listed on the site. That’s like… one-tenth of a thousandth of restaurants in Brooklyn Heights where we used to live! WOW! Sweet! Choice has become an exciting option again… Or is that an oxymoron?

Aw, shoot… Did I mention I miss that stinkin’ New York City?

Wasp Slaves Zombie Roaches

This is a pretty cool article about how a species of wasp evolved into a slave master, chemically controlling roaches to become hosts of its larvae. Yuck…

As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it’s time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg’s host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach’s mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head.

The wasp slips her stinger through the roach’s exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently use ssensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach’s brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears.

From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach’s antennae and leads it–in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex–like a dog on a leash.

Pretty sickening but amazing stuff…

via [Slashdot]

Octopus Attack

After having seen this video of a shark being attacked by a giant octopus, it reminded me of an article I read about remains of giant squid and colossal squids being found from the stomach of a shark. The same article also cites how it is common to see whales bear the scars from a fight with giant squids. Jesus Christ… fighting a whale?

And then today I read yet another article about this giant octopus attacking a submarine! Holy Christ… These squids and octopuses really kick ass.

Giant squids

Image courtesy of BBC News.

Related articles about these magnificent creatures.
Super squid surfaces in Antarctic
Giant squid ‘attacks French boat’