nan | 楠木

Sneakers, starring Robert Redford and featuring Ben Kingsley, Dan Aykroyd, Sidney Poitier as well as the young River Phoenix, is a high tech comedy thriller, the 1992 equivalent of The Italian Job and similiar films.
As should be noted, the cast has enough meat, and there’s decent performances. I don’t especially enjoy the comedy ingredients added (frankly, I thought the last few minutes of the film to be plain dumb), and it didn’t help to make the film balanced– for a decent hour or so the film plays out like a great thriller, and then it falls flat on a climax with few surprises (and dumb ones, too), and then it’s a comical ending full of nonsense. The film might have been a lot better if it sticked to being a thriller, or was consistent in providing the humor. As it is, it provides neither satisfactorily. Still, it was nice to see the actors at work.
7 out of 10.

Some of the decisions made by Donald Trump were indeed controversial.

This was especially the case in Season 1. Omarosa, who constantly got all the girls irritated, lasted longer than perhaps generally expected. In season 2 and 3 we’ve seen unpopular people get fired really quickly, which might be a readjustment.

Sam, of season 1, wacky and enthusiatic, was given far too many chances. Perhaps Trump liked his eccentricity. But it was pretty clear to me he could never make it as the apprentice.

And that’s where the contradiction comes in. Trump is inconsistent with his judgement. Mostly it’s for bad leadership or huge mistakes, but sometimes he says it’s because the person lacks what it takes to be the apprentice. If he always has the final goal in mind, then I would seriously question some of the decisions he made.

But then again, the killer blow is this: there’s a disclaimer at the end of each episode citing that though the producers discussed with Trump on player elimination, Trump himself is solely responsible for the final decision. This is equal to saying they can fix the game whatever way they want it, and you can’t legally blame them for being unfair. So it is quite questionable that some of the decisions were made to make the show look better, to create more heat and drama. If unpopular people stayed longer, there would be more fights and backstabbing and conspiring, which is what the audience wants. So perhaps we should remember it’s only a show.

And by the way, season 1 is by far the most engrossing. The players of season 2 and 3 are just unlikable, and what’s worse sometimes they really suck. Big time.

It’s one thing that this girl is raving across the Chinese Internet space, but now it’s the Washington Post!?

It’s a weird world…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/18/AR2005071801561.html

Matchstick Menis a con comedy by director Ridley Scott, and this fact itself is instantly suggestive, as he usually does serious thrillers or drama.
The film stars Nicolas Cage, and he is well up to the role of being a quirky con artist with a quite a serious neurosis among his load of problems. And he suddenly finds himself a long lost daughter, which puts a totally different perspective to his whole life.
The movie goes from there on to a big con twist, and we all know there’s a big “smart” twist. That’s how con films work. The objective is to outsmart the audience, and let the audience enjoy this process. However for Matchstick Men, the big twist could be seen miles away, and I more or less instantly questioned the authenticity of a few to-be-twist factors the moment they appeared. I don’t think this is because I’m too smart. Honestly, the film does not succeed on hiding its cards until the last moment.
But viewed as a comedy about relationships, this film works. The drama developed between Cage and his daughter takes the main spot for a large portion of the film, and it is entertaining. Cage’s oddball performance (when his character is in one of his fits) offers nothing truly original but it is hilarious nonetheless. And the flow of the film is seamless, as is the cinematography. The film looks great and feels great, and Cage at the center of it all just makes it fabulous. This is great two hour entertainment, and what’s beautiful is that you have lessons to think about too.
8 out of 10.

This is a serious love drama starring Andy Garcia and Meg Ryan, both at their prime at the time.
The movie is meant to be emotional and touching, and many a time it accomplishes that task. However, for me the music sometimes really lets it down. It feels cheesy and unnecessary, and I was more absorbed in some of the more emotional scenes which featured no background music.
Apart from this personal dislike, I was a bit surprised with the intensity of the two leads’ performances. They were natural and their emotions felt very true. Meg Ryan was quite exceptional in her role, and sometimes Andy Garcia was simply on fire.
The plot was a bit conventional, and so the whole of film relies on the two stars’ acting. In that aspect the film is not let down, but I felt the film needed more to be a really strong love drama.
7/10

I’ve spent a lot of time recently catching up on the NBC hit show The Apprentice, and it proves to be a both rewarding and entertaining experience. Although I cannot say my resume is any stronger after watching it, I am confident that I have learnt some practical lessons.

The Apprentice is about leadership and teamwork. It’s also about business sense and practical skills. Creativity also plays a big part in it. So in short you can say that this show reflects basically all the major skills and attributes required in becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Before I go on, for those of you who happened to have missed out on this great show, here are the basic rules of The Apprentice: two teams compete against each other in a series of business tasks, and after each task, the winning team is rewarded while the losing team must go to the boardroom with Donald Trump will fire someone responsible for the loss. When there are only four players remaining, they will be interviewed and another two will be fired. The final two players go up against each one on one in a business challenge, each with a different goal to achieve. Donald Trump will then decide who has done a better job and shown better skills, and choose that person to be his apprentice.

In Season 1, it began as 8 men versus 8 women, and the men were really "handed their asses" by the women early on. The female team easily used their feminine charm to beat the men. It seemed a bit unfair, because we all know and we all see that sex sells, and the men were badly at a disadvantage.

After four tasks, the men were four men down. The women were at such an advantage that the teams had to be reshuffled to make the game more interesting. And this is where the fun really starts in season 1. The two teams now had 4 women and 2 men each, and in the following weeks 7 women got fired consecutively. Then the men lost their performance streak and one got fired, making the final four 3 men and one woman. After the interviewing round that woman got fired too, and it was two men in the final round. A man named Bill Rancic eventually won.

For me, Bill showed his abilities really early on, even when the men were getting a beating from the women. He demonstrated common sense and business intuition, and he had strong ethics. What impressed me most was the way he handled himself under pressure. When being fired tough questions in tough interviews, he would calmly say with a smile: "I respectively disagree. I think…" And what a comfortable smile he has.

Bill has great character. He gets on quite well with others, and I thought that was very important. As a counter-example, a very tough smart woman of Season 1, Omarosa, thought everything was business and didn’t care about her relations with her team mates. It would come back to haunt her and she paid the price. So as a lesson, I would say that indeed business is not personal, but that is no excuse for disrespecting others. If you do treat others poorly, professionally you will fail.

Another lesson I learnt from Season 1 was that sex sells but only sells so much. The women probably learnt this the hard way. As the game went on, the importance of planning and strategy became increasingly important, and unfortunately the women didn’t show their capacity in this region. As the players got fewer and fewer, I honestly have to say there was no chance that the women could win. The last woman to be fired, Amy, was smart and creative, but in the interviewing process she couldn’t fool the interviewers. She lacked the depth to be a leader, and that was probably a problem they all shared.

In Season 2, I was secretly hoping the women could prove me wrong and show me that they too could be great leaders. The season started with a great twist: now it was 9 against 9, but as a start, the teams must exchange one member, making it a team of 8 men and 1 woman and another team vice versa. As it turned out, the female team lost one of their toughest characters, Pamela. They won the first game, however, sending a guy called Rob home. Losing the first game was always unfortunate, as up to this point people really don’t have a lot of time to demonstrate themselves, and as there were so many players, anybody could get blamed for the loss. That was what happened to Rob.

The mostly male team then went on to do great: 3 wins in a row. The mostly female team lost their one male member and two other girls, and more importantly, were at a complete shambles. Everybody hated everybody else, and there was constant plots and conspiracies. For a while I thought things might better after a certain somebody was gone, then next week I find out there’s another person who has just got to go. In the end I understood it was the whole team that was at fault.

Pamela went back to the female team to make the two teams even in numbers, and she got fired after she unsuccessfully tried to get the team together. They redeemed themselves a bit after winning a task that was all about fashion and women’s clothing.

From then on the game progressed. The teams were reshuffled to have 3 men and 3 women each. More people were fired, and some players got desperate in their actions. Kelly (male) and Jennifer (female) made it to the final two. I favored Kelly because he showed consistency throughout, and he really demonstrated strong leadership (he went to West Point), whereas Jennifer really was lacklustre in my eyes. I was surprised she got to the finals, because she really shirked responsibility a number of times in the whole game. And in the end Kelly was chosen by Donald Trump to be the second apprentice.

I thought the contestants of the second season were not as good or outstanding as season 1. The personalities of the contestants in season 1 were great, likable or not. In season 2, nobody really attracted me. There were interesting characters, of course, for example a guy called Raj who always wore butterfly ties and hit on every girl he met. But business and leadership-wise, they seem to pale in comparision with the people of season 1.

And the women– oh are they bad. It’s not that the men didn’t have fights, they did, and they got over it. But with the women it was one conspiracy after another, in both seasons. This goes to say something about the nature of our female counterparts. They always made it personal.

And that’s another lesson I learnt– EQ is indeed more important than IQ. If you can’t handle yourself in a team, and if you can’t get along with people you dislike, or simply people with distinct personalities, there’s no way you are going to go very far. Some of the players just didn’t seem to get this, or maybe it’s simply because I’m standing on the outside.

All in all, it’s been very entertaining and thought provoking, and here I am starting season 3.

The Sum of All Fears is quite an engaging Jack Ryan thriller. In terms of capturing the audience, it can reasonably hold itself against its Jack Ryan predecessors, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger; in terms of a competent Jack Ryan, Ben Affleck however is no match for Alec Baldwin or Harrison Ford.
But fortunately(or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it), the film does not rely on Affleck being convincing. The story more or less sells itself, and the style of the film, cold, silent and discomforting, is perfect for the story. As a minor spoiler, the nuclear blast scene is perfectly done. There’s no sound, just the visual as we see the shock wave of the blast easily topple the president’s motorcade and bring down Ryan’s helicopter.
The ending 20 minutes of the film, however, falls rather flat on the brilliant construction of the whole film. The climax is more of an anti-climax. But then again, there’s really not much room to maneuver with the given conditions of what the plot had developed into. Still, there could have been much better exeucution.
7/10

下午在徒弟家，闲来无事一起看的。
《全民情敌》，从内容上来看，译名并不贴切，但或许是为了搭上同为Will Smith作品的《全民公敌》的关系。
老实说，我并喜欢Will Smith演这种温馨电影。他或许惯于扮演魅力男人，但以此搭建一部影片显然是不合适的。然而这部影片就是他的个人魅力秀。
影片的情节不甚有趣，Smith的角色就是一个负责包装男人的男人，把这些男人和他们所心仪的女人勾搭在一起就是他的工作。这么说过于低俗了似乎，因为影片一直在强调真爱，强调爱情的力量。但影片的情景实在是老套而无新意，弥漫着cheesy的味道。
不过话又说回来，Smith的个人亲和力–看他卖傻–还是起到了足够的娱乐效果，这部影片拿来和恋人浪费两个小时也完全不为过。
6/10

I didn’t know it was lying there in the Foreign Languages Department all along…

But it was will worth the wait. And finally I have something to brag about.

补写昨天的日记。

    今天终于可以去现场测试了！跟公司的两位员工去了北京某医院，做无线网的安装测试。

    测试的内容说起来也不是很难，在现场架设起一个AP（Access Point），发送测试信号，然后用接受装置（一台笔记本）测试网络欲覆盖区域内各处的信号强弱。之后，工程师会根据信号情况设计出合理的AP覆盖方案。

    基本上，我们的角色就是给工程师打下手，提着AP走来走去，工程师说接上电就接上电。听起来有点丢人呵呵。不过我们没啥技术，也只好就这样先学着了，其实能不给人帮倒忙就不错了。

    平时有幸很少来医院，即便来了也不会注意医院的网络硬件设施。今天因为测试的缘故，认真地看了看，才发觉真的到处都是无线产品。连通、移动的手机信号覆盖就不用提了。医院的病房区，也另安装了一套无线心电监控设备，每个病人随身携带一个“客户端”的脉搏仪，心电情况就会发送到护士区的服务器上，值班护士只需要注意屏幕上各病人的数据就可以了。

    在病房测试，还有幸去了传染病病房。应该是非典期间建的，看起来有点恐怖，外面一个大防盗门，进出都需要密码。护士给我们开了门，进入病房区，每个病房的墙上都安了一个从走廊和病房内都可打开的消毒柜，用来给病人送物品。有那么一点点进了监狱的味道。

    在妇产科，还补了补常识，母乳喂养对母亲的身体也非常有好处，不仅可加速产后身体恢复，而且据说会降低患子宫癌和乳腺癌的概率。原理好像是因为母乳喂养刺激了母亲的身体激素分泌。