The Dark Knight

I went out and saw The Dark Knight last night. Packed theatre on a Tuesday night. As I've said, this thing is making mad cash. I have to say, it was very good. Very very good. Perhaps a tad long, but I didn't particularly mind. There wasn't wasted time in any case.

It had a stronger feel of Batman than the last movie too. The reason of course is that the last movie was playing out his origins. Now that he's here, he's Batman. The example of this is his interaction with the police force and Gordon in particular. He shows up suddenly at crime scenes, conducts his investigation, and disappears. Very much like the comics. The bulky suit, which I slightly disliked from Batman Begins, gets replaced with a slightly more streamlined version (which I still don't love, but it's a minor point). The fight scenes were different, less jumpy, allowing the viewer to see more. I fully understand the tight, fast, and almost invisible fights of Batman Begins, it worked perfectly for illustrating his Ninja training and style. That being said, the fights were more impressive this time around.

Aaron Eckhart made an excellent Harvey Dent, and Twoface. His fall was well done and painful.

Heath Ledger did a very good job as the Joker. He was scary, powerful, and insane. I don't quite think Oscar sure-thing as some people are saying. I don't want to belittle his performance (which was excellent), but I believe that had he not died, fewer people would be talking Oscars, especially fewer suggesting it before the movie was even released and having not seen screeners themselves.

But, an excellent movie, with excellent jobs done all round. I highly recommend.

Big Batman Bucks

Oh man, I made so much fake money this weekend. As I've mentioned before, I play a game called Hollywood Stock Exchange. Well, this weekend Batman The Dark Knight opened, and it broke several box office records, beating Star Wars Ep. 3's one day record and Spiderman 3's weekend record (155 mil. vs Spidy's 151). In HSX land, I bought it at $222/share, going into the weekend it closed at $333 and today with the weekend records, it adjusted to $434. I maxed out my shares, now I'm rolling in the fake HSX dollars! Awesome!

That and the fact that I'm really looking forward to seeing this film, as I love Batman, and loved Batman Begins. It should be good, but I avoided it this weekend as I figured the lines would be somewhat intense.

Red Dragon Desires

We started on the process of gift registry for our wedding and went to The Bay to see what they have, etc.. They hook us up with a large package of paperwork and guides and stuff, including this one:

White Dove Dreams, Red Dragon Desires
The Ultimate Wedding Planning Resource for the Chinese Canadian Bride

I kinda like how the associate we were talking to just slipped it into our folder. My fiancee is Asian, but not Chinese, and was born in Canada, but often gets people assuming she is Chinese, with the occasional question like, "Are you from the mainland?" And while it doesn't bother her particularly, I find it slightly amusing that the sales associate we were dealing with was also Asian and made the same assumption. What I find funniest though, is the book's title.

Also quotes like this:

"As you and your fiance embark on this great new adventure together, you'll be faced with a seemingly never-ending stream of choices - Should we serve the braised sliced abalone with black mushrooms or the braised sea cucumber with black mushrooms? Should we use red or gold or pink-coloured ribbon to tie the bonbonnieres? Should we seat Mr. and Mrs. Wong with Mr. and Mrs. Chang or Mr. and Mrs. Yip?"

Fire In The Disco!

So, both my family and my fiancee's, like to keep a lot of stuff. You really never know when something might be useful. Anyhow, we've debated occasionally about which family is worse. I must say, my family (myself included) has quite a large collection of stuff. Her case, however, was somewhat made when I helped her parents move and discovered that they threw out nothing. The point was sealed just the other day when we were at their place and discovered a still shrink-wrapped 8 track in one of their kitchen drawers. Now, as I just said, they recently moved, and they don't own an 8 track player, thus they must have realised they still owned it, and had no way to play it, and still decided to keep it.

Regardless, it looks to be an awesome tape!

Forged By The Dark Lord

We went looking for wedding rings today and I have to say that friendly service cannot be overstated. We went to three places and at two of them, the sales staff mostly ignored us, were fairly useless, and somewhat inaudible (the one woman spoke very quietly and the other man wasn't particularly helpful either). However, the people at European Jewellery were very friendly and helpful. They definitely made the sale over the other two.

Plus, my fiancee aborted our mission at the one place when the women quoted us a price that was 4 or 5 times that of the other two stores. We casually asked her for a business card and left, with my fiancee asking me, "Do they mine the gold themselves in the back? Are they forged in Mordor?"

Ha! Mordor! I love her.

All The Best

This past weekend I attended the wedding of one of my good family friends. It was a great night, and I wish them all the best.

On a side note, it was a first for me drinking Scotch with my brother at the bar that night. Good times Craig.

Stumbled Upon An Awesome Evening

So, I've been using SumbleUpon in recent months and rather enjoying it. I have to admit, 80% of sites I stumble are either dumb, or not interesting or important to me, but sometimes you find some real gems. For instance, this evening I came across some advice for finding drivers of unknown hardware devices. You see, I brought a cheap computer a month ago to replace my one dead server and as it came with no operating system, I had to find drivers for a bunch of stuff. Now, I'm no expert at this, but after a fair bit of searching, I still couldn't find one for the onboard video card. While I didn't need the driver, as I usually remote desktop on to it when I need, it just annoyed me. So, this site happily taught me something I didn't know and got me the driver I needed.

To follow it up, I stumbled another site, that pretty much summed up my opinion of the latest Indiana Jones movie, and my life sans-cellphone. I'm fairly happy.