Thursday, July 03, 2008
23:28 by FoxTwo First off - there will be NO spoilers in this post, so people who haven't watched it won't see things they don't want to see.
I managed to get a couple of free tickets to this movie and thus I caught it tonight, 3 July 2008 (same release day as US, ie 2nd July over there). Initially from the cinematic trailers found everywhere, it seemed to be a story of a downtrodden super hero, played by Will Smith. However, the story is not so straightforward.
Needless to say, I was engrossed throughout the movie and I bet I wouldn't even have to munch on any snacks if I did buy some. The lead character, Hancock, is so named because he has amnesia. He has no memory of how he got his super powers nor his name. He woke up in the hospital and decided to discharge himself, and the nurse at the counter requested for his "John Hancock" before she could release him. A "John Hancock", in US slang, means "signature". It is derived from the famous underwriters, John Hancock, where their signature is proof enough that the item is legit or worth what is written out to be. So, the lead character decided to adopt the name John Hancock for himself.
You can really identify with the super hero lead character because he's an ass, and is hated by people. While he might save people's lives or foil robberies, he does so with total disregard to property, and usually ends up demolishing half the city while trying to bring crooks in. Hancock behaves like this because he is all alone in this world - the only one of his kind.
He does not see himself as a hero, merely a lonely man in this world. He doesn't wear a costume nor a mask. Since he's alone, he has nobody to protect. Thus he has no need of a secret identity. Everyone knows who he is. He the "a**hole" to everybody.
His life changed when he saved the life of an image consultant. The man is so grateful to Hancock that he decides to help Hancock change his public image, and sets about bugging Hancock to be more "heroic" than just being an a**hole with super powers.
As the movie unfolded, there were many funny moments to break the sometimes sombre mood when Hancock is alone and reflecting on his life. I really would not want to bring up any specifics lest it spoils your enjoyment. Needless to say, I find them funny. One example would be his super-hero costume (which you'd have seen in trailers anyway). Just listen to the dialog when the image consultant friend first presented it to Hancock. Personally I find his costume too much like the X-men movie costumes - mostly black with some light coloured trimmings. Not very super-heroic, but cool.
Towards the end, you will find that the story isn't what it seemed. Hancock cleans himself up, and then starts to get the adulation of the general public.
I was a little disappointed not to see Will Smith topless in the movie. Would have loved to look at his rippling body to motivate myself for my workouts. Ah well.
This is a movie where I'll definitely buy the DVD to keep and watch again at a future date.
Oh yes, do stay a bit during the credits. There's a funny scene right in the middle of the rolling credits. Don't just stand up and walk out.
23:28 by FoxTwo First off - there will be NO spoilers in this post, so people who haven't watched it won't see things they don't want to see.
I managed to get a couple of free tickets to this movie and thus I caught it tonight, 3 July 2008 (same release day as US, ie 2nd July over there). Initially from the cinematic trailers found everywhere, it seemed to be a story of a downtrodden super hero, played by Will Smith. However, the story is not so straightforward.
Needless to say, I was engrossed throughout the movie and I bet I wouldn't even have to munch on any snacks if I did buy some. The lead character, Hancock, is so named because he has amnesia. He has no memory of how he got his super powers nor his name. He woke up in the hospital and decided to discharge himself, and the nurse at the counter requested for his "John Hancock" before she could release him. A "John Hancock", in US slang, means "signature". It is derived from the famous underwriters, John Hancock, where their signature is proof enough that the item is legit or worth what is written out to be. So, the lead character decided to adopt the name John Hancock for himself.
You can really identify with the super hero lead character because he's an ass, and is hated by people. While he might save people's lives or foil robberies, he does so with total disregard to property, and usually ends up demolishing half the city while trying to bring crooks in. Hancock behaves like this because he is all alone in this world - the only one of his kind.
He does not see himself as a hero, merely a lonely man in this world. He doesn't wear a costume nor a mask. Since he's alone, he has nobody to protect. Thus he has no need of a secret identity. Everyone knows who he is. He the "a**hole" to everybody.
His life changed when he saved the life of an image consultant. The man is so grateful to Hancock that he decides to help Hancock change his public image, and sets about bugging Hancock to be more "heroic" than just being an a**hole with super powers.
As the movie unfolded, there were many funny moments to break the sometimes sombre mood when Hancock is alone and reflecting on his life. I really would not want to bring up any specifics lest it spoils your enjoyment. Needless to say, I find them funny. One example would be his super-hero costume (which you'd have seen in trailers anyway). Just listen to the dialog when the image consultant friend first presented it to Hancock. Personally I find his costume too much like the X-men movie costumes - mostly black with some light coloured trimmings. Not very super-heroic, but cool.
Towards the end, you will find that the story isn't what it seemed. Hancock cleans himself up, and then starts to get the adulation of the general public.
I was a little disappointed not to see Will Smith topless in the movie. Would have loved to look at his rippling body to motivate myself for my workouts. Ah well.
This is a movie where I'll definitely buy the DVD to keep and watch again at a future date.
Oh yes, do stay a bit during the credits. There's a funny scene right in the middle of the rolling credits. Don't just stand up and walk out.
Labels: movies
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
17:28 by FoxTwo
As an aside - yeah I'm plunging headlog into work. The new place wasn't really what I expected when I went to be interviewed. It was MORE. In other words, better.
Anyway, during my random surfing and stumbling around, I came across yet another Increase-Your-Blog-Traffic website called Scoutle. To describe it, it's similar to Blogrush in that you install a widget and then the traffic is supposed to start coming in.
However, that's where the similarity ends. In Scoutle, you create a robot, a web-crawler called a "scout". You program your scout to start scouring the web and "connect" to sites which you programmed it to. The scout then will trawl the web and hit websites with the widget installed, and "make contact". They call the widget "a stage". The different versions offered at the Scoutle website offers differing levels of traffic when installed, and it's up to you to select the levels of traffic you would want.
I think of this as a sort of "robot social networking" where the bots talk to one another, and then shows the URL and links up in your dashboard on the Scoutle site. What you do is to visit the Scoutle dashboard every couple of days and check up on the new "connections" made, to discover new blogs and interesting websites.
I'm still new in Scoutle, so my connections aren't alot right now. It's been just a couple of days and I can't really tell if Scoutle's worth the hype right now. I will post again a couple of weeks later to see how it goes with Scoutle.
17:28 by FoxTwo
Increase Your Traffic with Scoutle
As an aside - yeah I'm plunging headlog into work. The new place wasn't really what I expected when I went to be interviewed. It was MORE. In other words, better.
Anyway, during my random surfing and stumbling around, I came across yet another Increase-Your-Blog-Traffic website called Scoutle. To describe it, it's similar to Blogrush in that you install a widget and then the traffic is supposed to start coming in.
However, that's where the similarity ends. In Scoutle, you create a robot, a web-crawler called a "scout". You program your scout to start scouring the web and "connect" to sites which you programmed it to. The scout then will trawl the web and hit websites with the widget installed, and "make contact". They call the widget "a stage". The different versions offered at the Scoutle website offers differing levels of traffic when installed, and it's up to you to select the levels of traffic you would want.
I think of this as a sort of "robot social networking" where the bots talk to one another, and then shows the URL and links up in your dashboard on the Scoutle site. What you do is to visit the Scoutle dashboard every couple of days and check up on the new "connections" made, to discover new blogs and interesting websites.
I'm still new in Scoutle, so my connections aren't alot right now. It's been just a couple of days and I can't really tell if Scoutle's worth the hype right now. I will post again a couple of weeks later to see how it goes with Scoutle.
Labels: blog, internet, scoutle
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
19:41 by FoxTwo Today was sort of a whirlwind. I arrived on the dot, right at the start of the business day. The Human Resource Officer had not arrived yet, so the receptionist suggested I wait in the lobby for her arrival.
About 10 minutes later, a lady brought a huge burly gentleman out to greet me. I was told this is the head honcho, the big cheeze. He's da man! So after a quick round of handshakes, I was brought in to see the rest of the crew. More handshakes, and quick introductions. Then it was down to business.
Within 10 mins, one of the guys said - "Good timing, we got a meeting to get to!" and whisked me away offsite to a high-level pow-wow session with some business partners and vendors, to "give me an overview" of the upcoming project.
It was only 8.45am or so, and I haven't even been processed by the HR yet!
We came back to the office near to lunchtime. Finally I got processed by the HR and was "given back" to the IT department. Since nothing much was going on, my "guardian" (which is a tall American guy) and I proceeded to lunch, and thereafter went shopping for a phone, seeing as he just got into Singapore a couple of days ago and he needed a local number to be contactable.
In the afternoon, a big pile of project documents was placed on my desk and "it would be good" if I went through it so that I have an idea of the scope of the project as well as the work involved. When I say a big pile, I mean big. Easily the size of 3 reams of A4 paper stacked. Needless to say, it wasn't light reading.
What I can say is - the "foreign talents" here in the new place are truly talented. They know exactly what's going on, and what they need to do to "make it work". They don't "throw smoke" and if they don't know something, they will admit they do not know and they'll find out and get back to me. Talking to them is definitely nowhere near frustrating like it was in my previous workplace. The majority of them are from Europe and USA, but we have a couple there that are from China and India.
Towards the end of the day, my laptop arrived. Brand spanking new too, not an old, re-formatted, used one like what most other companies would do.
This was actually one of my better "first day" experiences with a new job and company. It wasn't too boring, aside from the big stack of documents that I had to read through. By the end of the day, I had gone through half anyway, so I guess by tomorrow I'd have a birds-eye-view of the whole thing, and thus, what my role is in the whole thing.
19:41 by FoxTwo Today was sort of a whirlwind. I arrived on the dot, right at the start of the business day. The Human Resource Officer had not arrived yet, so the receptionist suggested I wait in the lobby for her arrival.
About 10 minutes later, a lady brought a huge burly gentleman out to greet me. I was told this is the head honcho, the big cheeze. He's da man! So after a quick round of handshakes, I was brought in to see the rest of the crew. More handshakes, and quick introductions. Then it was down to business.
Within 10 mins, one of the guys said - "Good timing, we got a meeting to get to!" and whisked me away offsite to a high-level pow-wow session with some business partners and vendors, to "give me an overview" of the upcoming project.
It was only 8.45am or so, and I haven't even been processed by the HR yet!
We came back to the office near to lunchtime. Finally I got processed by the HR and was "given back" to the IT department. Since nothing much was going on, my "guardian" (which is a tall American guy) and I proceeded to lunch, and thereafter went shopping for a phone, seeing as he just got into Singapore a couple of days ago and he needed a local number to be contactable.
In the afternoon, a big pile of project documents was placed on my desk and "it would be good" if I went through it so that I have an idea of the scope of the project as well as the work involved. When I say a big pile, I mean big. Easily the size of 3 reams of A4 paper stacked. Needless to say, it wasn't light reading.
What I can say is - the "foreign talents" here in the new place are truly talented. They know exactly what's going on, and what they need to do to "make it work". They don't "throw smoke" and if they don't know something, they will admit they do not know and they'll find out and get back to me. Talking to them is definitely nowhere near frustrating like it was in my previous workplace. The majority of them are from Europe and USA, but we have a couple there that are from China and India.
Towards the end of the day, my laptop arrived. Brand spanking new too, not an old, re-formatted, used one like what most other companies would do.
This was actually one of my better "first day" experiences with a new job and company. It wasn't too boring, aside from the big stack of documents that I had to read through. By the end of the day, I had gone through half anyway, so I guess by tomorrow I'd have a birds-eye-view of the whole thing, and thus, what my role is in the whole thing.
