Asian Santa

For some reason, my wife's colleagues at the villa thought it's a good idea to get me to play Santa at this year's Christmas presentation. With so many other possible candidates, I said "Yeah, sure, but only as a last resort, if you guys can't find anyone else." Turns out they can't find anyone else. So here I was in my Santa suit and Santa wig and Santa beard and Santa hat, waiting for the kids to cheer, which is my cue.

I come out of my hiding place ho-ho-hoing and spouting "Merry Christmas". After distributing bags of lollies to the kids, I loitered around the greens for picture-taking (FOC). I must be a strange sight - thin Asian chinky-eyed Santa.

Movie 2009.12.14 - Jennifer's Body

I wonder why they called the movie Jennifer's Body, as I didn't get to see much of it. Yeah, there were parts where Jennifer took off her clothes (while seducing her victims), but none of the good parts were shown.

The story has nothing to do with Jennifer's body though. Murdered in the woods as part of a Satanic rite sacrifice by a rock band after fame and fortune, Jennifer comes back from the dead with the demon inside her because the ritual asks for a virgin, and she's not. She attains some superhuman powers, but these wane after a few days. To top up her powers, Jennifer needs blood, so she preys on her male classmates. Best friend Anita starts getting suspicious about the weird things happening. She does some research in the occult section of the library and comes to the conclusion that Jennifer is a succubus. She then tells her boyfriend Chip to stay away from Jennifer.

School dance time. Jennifer seduces Chip, leads him to the nearby pool house, and proceeds to feed on his neck. Anita manages to save Chip from Jennifer, but he later dies from loss of blood. Furious, Anita later sneaks into Jennifer's bedroom, and kills her by stabbing a boxcutter into her heart. For this, she was confined in a mental asylum. Having been scratched by Jennifer during their confrontation, Anita assumes some of her superpowers and is able to break out of the asylum easily. She hitchhikes her way to the hotel where the band is staying, and kills them all.

Unbelievable (not in a good way) performances. False advertisement - didn't see much of Jennifer's body. Plot is too simplistic. Pass.

Movie 2009.12.13 - Where the Wild Things Are

Watched this movie in Gold Class at Westfield Parramatta. On top of our $50 voucher, we had to pay $24 more. That's fricking' $37 per person! Should've watched 2012 instead to make it worthwhile. I mean, 2 hours and 4o minutes.

Saw the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are, and I liked it. Should've stopped at the trailer and not watch the movie 'coz you're not missing much. Story of a kid called Max who has a wild imagination and overly hyper. One time, he overstepped the line and bit his Mom on the shoulder. Mom shouted, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" Max didn't agree with her observation, and stormed out of the house. He found a boat and sailed into the oceans and later landed on the island of the Wild Things.

Bluffing about his abilities, he became king of the Wild Things. They don't really do much - wrecking houses, smashing trees, building forts, having dirt-clod battles, etc. Beneath all this fun and contentment, there's an undercurrent of tension, as some of the Wild Things feel that Max is playing favourites. Some even suspect that he's not a king - "regular, like us." Carol later discover Max' secret and throws a tantrum, threatening to eat him. Max eventually leaves the island, but not before settling their differences.

So you see, this is how Max deals with his pent-up angst and rage. He realizes that it's fun to be wild, but there are consequences to other people, and he has to be sensitive to that and not be selfish. At the end of the movie, he comes back home. Instead of giving him a good beating, his Mom was at the kitchen waiting for him with a piece of cake, which Max eats in silence.

Movie 2009.12.12 - The Man Who Knew Too Little

Another Bill Murray masterpiece. Movie is about this not-too-bright guy Wallace who visits his brother living in London to spend birthday with him. His brother is hosting some German executives that night, so he got Wallace to take part in the reality show/crime drama called the "Theatre of Life". While in a phone booth waiting from a call from the one of the cast to start the show rolling, he picks up a call meant for a hitman, and is mistaken for an American agent. Hilarity ensues. Turns out some some Cold War hold-outs are trying to kill Russian and British dignitaries during the signing of an important peace accord. Wallace unknowingly foils the plot and saves the day.

Movie 2009.12.11 - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Would've been nice to watch this on 3D - imagine the foodstuffs flying right into your face, but then we watched this at home on the telly. Not too bad. The plot is only so-so, but some of the jokes are really funny. Wacky wannabe scientist Flint invents a gadget (called FLDSMDFR [Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator]) that uses microwave that mutates water into any kind of food you can ask for. And ask they did. The town of Swallow Falls changes its name to Chewandswallow, and eventually becomes deluged with food.

To stop his machine, Flint improvises his car into a spacecraft, flies up into the sky to upload the kill code via USB (a la Independence Day). He loses his thumbdrive while fighting off the sentient super-food, so he asks his Dad to email the kill code to his mobile, and you know that's never gonna work. In the end, the blocks out the machine's output port using his super-sealant, and the machine blows up. Flint plunges back to earth and was saved by ratbirds, another creation of his.

Movie 2009.12.06 - 2012

Another disaster movie. We were supposed to watch this on Gold Class, but it was booked out. Would've been nice to watch this on Gold Class. I'm pretty sure the plot is so-so, but the special effects must be very good. And at three hours, it's a good way to spend your time inside the Gold Class cinema.

Scientists in India discover that the earth's core is getting hot at an accelerated pace. World leaders were told to prepare for the worst. Taking a leaf from the Bible, they thought of constructing these massive, hi-tech arks to weather out the tsunamis. To fund the project, places on the arks are being sold to the tune of 1 billion euros a pop.

Come 2012, the crustal displacement begins. There are earthquakes everywhere, volcanoes erupting, and the world's famous landmarks come tumbling down. There were some suspenseful moments as John Cusack and his family were escaping from the carnage and trying to head to safer ground in the Himalayas, where the arks are hidden. A bit of drama where Chiwetel Ejiofor defied authority and argued that they should take in everyone, and not just the ticket holders. (I just hate freeloaders.) More finger-biting suspense as the giant tsunami hit, and one of the arks was rendered useless as its main hatch got jammed. Just as the ark was about to smash against Mount Everest, John Cusack managed to fix the problem and saved everyone's lives.

Come year 0001 (about a month after D-Day), the waters have receded and the arks set sail for the Cape of Good Hope to start life anew.

Movie 2009.12.04 - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer A.K.A. Scent of 13 Women. Directed by Tom Tykwer of Run Lola Run fame based on the novel by Patrick Suskind.

Strange story about an 18th century lad named Grenouille, who was born in a foul-smelling fish market, but had the uncanny gift of smell. With some training from a perfumer called Guiseppe Baldini (Dustin Hoffman), he masters the tricks of the trades, and sets out to create the ultimate perfume using oils derived from the scent of 13 very beautiful women - all of them now dead.

Grenouille was eventually caught and sentenced to die by beheading. Just as the guards were about to give him a beating in his cell, Grenouille pulls out his vial of perfume, and the guards stop in their tracks. At the town plaza, Grenouille arrives wearing expensive clothes in a magnificent coach. The moment the murderous mob smelled him, they too had a change of heart and started cheering for him, declaring him to be an innocent angel. Grenouille drops some perfume on his handkerchief and lets it flutter in the wind. The crowd goes into a rapture - all the townspeople took off their clothes and started having an orgy right then and there. By the time they woke up, Grenouille is gone.

Would've been nice to see what he would do next, given that he can make people do his bidding so easily. Well, back in Paris, he was feeling a bit down because his first love didn't return his affection, and he eventually killed her. So he returns to the place of his birth and drenches himself with his vial of perfume. There was a crowd of homeless people nearby and they become enraptured. Everyone wanted a piece of him, and that's what they did. By the time the people came back to their senses and left the scene, all that's left of Grenouille is a pile of bloodied clothes. Loved to death, literally.

Movie 2009.12.05 - Be Kind Rewind

I had high hopes for Be Kind Rewind. I mean Jack Black? And Mos Def? And Danny Clover in a comedy? What could go wrong? For one, comedy-drama doesn't really work for me. The movie is funniest whey they were doing the skits for Ghostbusters and Rush Hour 2. During the latter part of the movie, it switched to drama, and I lost my interest. Still not too bad.

Be Kind Rewind is the name of a neighborhood general store that rents out video for $1. It's so old school they only do VHS tapes. Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) is the store owner. Mike (Mos Def) is the store assistant, and Jerry (Jack Black) is the tambay. One night, Jerry is trying to sabotage the local electric plant and gets electrocuted, making him highly magnetic. Next day, he walks into the store and fries every single tape, leaving only static behind.

If that was me, I would've just gone out and ordered more replacement tapes. But these guys are down on their luck and out of cash. A few more weeks and their building's gonna be demolished to make way for a modern housing complex. Instead, Mike and Jerry had this great idea to recreate the movies using a clunky videocam and themselves (just the two of them) as actors.

And what do you know? The "new" movies become a hit in the neighborhood, and everyone can't get enough of it. So with the help of the girl-next-door Alma (Melonie Diaz), they start a backyard industry creating 20-minute "Sweded" movies. That was until the FBI came along and shut them down for copyright infringement. Too bad. So they decide to create an original movie as a last hurrah, with participation from everyone in the community. Screening is the night before the demolition team moves in.

Damn You, Antivirus System PRO!

I was using my laptop when all of a sudden I started getting these pop-up and system notifications about this virus and that malware. I didn't go to any naughty websites and I wasn't installing any new software, so can't explain how it happened.

I know I'm in the middle of a malware attack, so I tried to call up my arsenal. Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up Task Manager. No good, Windows tells me that it has been infected. I tried running HiJackThis! and ProcessExplorer. No good, they're being silently killed as soon as they start to execute. Tried to Google for more information. Even my Internet access is being blocked. Instead, I was being redirected to pr0n sites, and more notifications urging me to install Antivirus System PRO now!

Using another laptop, I found out that this Antivirus System PRO is itself the culprit. Most websites suggest killing certain processes, deleting certain files and registry entries, but I'm not even being allowed to do that. Booted into Safe Mode with Networking, and went straight to the BSOD. Left with no choice, I booted up normally and fired up Task Manager and HiJackThis! the first chance I got. The rouge process (bwbtsysguard) eventually showed up and I terminated it quick. That seemed to be the end of it, as the system worked fine afterwards.

A quick scan by HiJackThis! found this:

O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [isavkgid] C:\Documents and Settings\alching.***-INTRA\Local Settings\Application Data\shxroa\bwbtsysguard.exe

which I promptly deleted.

Just to be on the safe side, I downloaded Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Spyware Doctor and gave the hard disk a good scan. After weeding out a few more startup entries, everything seems to be back in order. Whew! Just imagine if this had happened in the office. Half a day of downtime.