A Life Reset

Finally had a chance to see Dark Knight this past weekend and it is an epic film. Soaring themes of what is good and evil, what good has to do to overcome evil, the notion of personal sacrifice all had a role in this film.

I have been a Batman fan for over 30 years now. I have the comics which collected back in the late 70’s through the 80’s. I have read the Golden Age Batman through his reinvention in the 60’s and onward to the present day. The nuances of the character are well known to me. For once, a film has come to realise the Batman I have read about.

This is a very dark film bu then again so too are the comic editions. People have died in the pages of the various Batman titles and so too does many of the characters in this film. Yet, while Batman moves sometimes into those dark areas as well, he seems to be able to pull back from the edge, knowing who he is and what he is trying to represent for the citizens of Gotham.

This Batman is more than a fighter, though. We see the detective side of him as he tries to piece together the various threads of the Joker’s plan. We see his resourcefulness especially on his side trip to the Far East.

This is a superlative film, head & shoulders above all others to date. It is intense, of that there is no doubt. Performances are trult stellar but as you may know, one stands above all others. Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker will make any one forget that over the top performance by Jack Nicholson 20 years ago. That was a performance where you barely saw the Joker but rather just another wild rendition of a Jack Nicholson character that seems interchangeable these days. But here, Ledger’s Joker is the character we all have come to know for those who read the comics. Terrifying, utterly insane to us but perfectly sane to his own sense of logic. On screen, you see the Joker and not Heath Ledger. It is a shame that he will be unable to repeat that role.

There are many good things about this film I like. The Far East trip took on a James Bond flair even to the sweeping shot of a yacht owned by a billionaire. The Gotham city shots were of a real city and not an architectural fantasy. The effects were real for the most part and seem grounded in reality.

Not too many films I see this days warranted a second viewing while still in theatres but this one does. For now, I have seen the Batman film I have been waiting for all my life.

Note

My first real attempt to apply some serious editing skills to a video using Microsoft Movie Maker tool. The limitations of the tool became quite self-evident. Also self-evident was the capabilities of my computer too as the large side of the edited file was a bit too demanding on the computer.

So I am using a variety of transition, running a soundtrack and a few other things. I like to think it turned out well.

Birthplace: Portugal
Date of Birth and Death: 1185-1231
Feast Day: June 13th

Notable: Patron of the Poor, “Finders of Lost Things”
Life:

Anthony was born in Portugal in 1185. At the age of 15 he entered an Augustine monastery but left for another in Coimbra. There seeing the bones of Franciscan martyrs and was inspired to be like them giving his life to spread the Gospel.

He joined the Friars Minor order and travelled to Morocco but he became ill and had intended to return to Portugal but a storm threw his ship off course to Italy. Arriving in Padua, he lived a quiet and unassuming life but a chance opportunity to speak at an ordination revealed a talent for preaching and his life changed forever.

As a gifted and magnetic speaker, Anthony drew large crowds to hear him preach, crowds so large that the meetings had to be held outdoors. His speeches caused enemies to reconcile,thieves to confess and heretics to convert. He became known as the wonder worker.

The story of how Anthony’s favorite prayer book was stolen by a novice monk and through his prayers, an angel compelled thenovitiatee to return the book have made St. Anthony the Finder of Lost Things to whom people pray to intercede on their behalf to God when they are searching for lost articles.

Prayer:

Dear Saint Anthony,
you are the patron of the poor and the helper of all who seek lost articles.
Help me to find the object I have lost so that I will be able to make
better use of the time I will gain for God’s greater honor and glory.
Grant your gracious aid to all people who seek what they have lost -
especially those who seek to regain God’s grace.

Being a programmer never was the first thing I imagined my life’s occupation to be growing up. I always had dreams of more adventurous jobs: test pilot, military soldier, doctor. But reality and an understanding of what avenues for success were available to me lead me to business school. Even then, I chose the more glamorous major of marketing with visions of being the key creative person in advertising or marketing campaigns. What I ended up doing after graduation was spending four years in the retail trade working as a retail manager. I did ok in that field but never really excelled as my heart was never in it and I always sought something different. When I left the trade and went home, I had to figure out what I was planning to do with my life. Some research let me to return to college to take up programming and receive a diploma in it. It forever changed my life.

When I first started out in programming, I specialised in the language PowerBuilder. At the time, 1996, it was considered to be the superior of fourth generation programming languages like Visual Basic and consequently it was in high demand. That skill led to jobs in Florida and Europe and I rode it for it was worth. But I always considered myself very forward looking. In this field, employers always were looking for the hottest new solutions to address their business problems. When I returned from Germany, I was aware of Java as the new language of choice for development. In quick fashion I started learning how to use it and for several years as the language grew in size and complexity, I grew along with it. It was with these skills that I found a position in Winston. But times are changing again.

It was two years ago that I sensed that as a leading edge language, Java was fading. That was typical of mature languages. The new trend was towards scripting languages like PHP, Python and Perl, a part of the LAMP paradigm where components were built on open source technologies. So I have a practice of doing my personal programming in PHP. This website and the sub sites run on a PHP engine using MySql as the database. Much easier to use than Java and more widespread today in running web sites. Knowing this language I hope to keep my marketability as a web programmer high in the face of outsourcing and off shoring the very skills that my family depends upon for keeping us comfortable.

Yet I sense a new shift now. These shifts happen way too fast now for me to keep up with them. Web 2.0 technologies are everywhere exemplified by AJAX applications like the ones behind Google Maps. Flash and now Microsoft’s new tool, Silverlight, are making web sites more immersive doing things that even AJAX sites can not do especially in video. As more people acquire faster connections, they yearn for more involved websites with all sorts of eye candy and immediate feedback. In my experience the most useful of websites are those that display information which is best handled through plain html.

So I have a decision to make: do I plunge in and try to learn as many of these various technologies as I can to diversify my skill set to stay competitive in the workforce as a computer programmer? Do I try to become a master of Google’s Web ToolKit APIs? Will it be similar to the experience I had in spending my free time learning the Mobile Java APIs (used in cell phones and PDAs) for several months back in 2000-2001 and then find out that the whole industry demand for the technology had collapsed? Or do I stay with the technologies I know and build on those for there is still a demand for applications that require basic functionality and nothing more.

I am now at an age that I do not have many re-inventions of myself left and with increased family responsibilities, my time is scarce. I may take the plunge or maybe not. For now, I am a computer programmer by trade and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Question is will I stay relevant?

When I think about my favorite movies, I realised that there are no easy top ten list for me to pick from. My film watching habits over the years has transverse every genre, over many countries and different film eras. It is rare for me to view a film repeatedly. Actually, my problem is that i do not watch enough films anymore considering the demands on my time these days. Still, I think it is worth a shot to try to pin down the films that I felt most entertained, most moved and most deeply affected.

• Citizen Kane – a classic of traditional American film making showing the rise and fall of a William Randolph Hearst type character shot, for its time, in a radical way of film making and cinematography that stands up today
• Excalibur – John Boorman beautiful looking retelling of the King Arthur legend where Camelot dazzles and man’s honor soars, falls and soars once more.
• Charge of the Light Brigade – The first eighty percent of the film is standard 1930’s Hollywood fare of stories of the British Empire but whenever the DVD version comes out, I will replay that glorious charge lead by Errol Flynn over and over again.
• Last of the Mohicans – the version starring Daniel Day Lewis, this adventure story set in a lush wilderness barely touched by man has strong performance by Wes Studi, Lewis and Madeleine Stowe.
• Lord of the Rings trilogy – adventure, magic, an altogether different world, I looked forward to December each year for three years in seeing the new released part. Decembers are not the same anymore. It is a triumph of film making where the personal stories are never overcome by the special effects.
• Farewell to my Concubine – an epic tragedy set during the turmoil within China in the mid 20th century, it is a masterpiece by Kaige Chen with the luminous Gong Li in the starring role.
• Ran – from a director noted for several masterpieces (Seven Samurai, Rashmon, Dreams), Akira Kurosawa retelling of Shakespeare King Lear set in medieval Japan is his greatest film. Battle scenes set against the human drama contained within a family, it should be a must see by anyone who appreciates film.
• Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – western panoramas, humorous dialogue and strong performances by Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee van Cleef set against the familiar soaring Enrico Morricone’s score, this film defined the western for good against Hollywood’s sanitized version at that time. It must always be seen in the original widescreen for nothing else would do.
• Metropolis -Lang’s futuristic vision still haunts us with its depiction of a society tearing itself apart over class.
• Lawrence of Arabia – brilliant cinematography, a reluctant hero and a nearly true story that needs to be seen in its restored glory. David Lean’s finest
• Zulu – starring Michael Caine and Stanley Baker, this last stand film is a thriller set at the original location of the historical battle of 120 British soldiers holding off three thousand Zulu warriors.
• Raging Bull- in a long line of performances that have diminished in quality lately, this is Robert de Niro’s finest and deserving of an Academy Award of the boxer who can not control his demons
• Tora,Tora,Tora – shot in a documentary style, this is a superior film to the recent Pearl Harbor film. Using real planes and ships and shot on location, you feel that you are seeing a real-life enactment of that day in December

Undoubtly there are other films of a more personal nature and more obscure that I should put on this list but these films should be recognized by most people. Naturally, they lean to the epic and spectacle genre of film but I do a softness for the grandiose visions.

As can be seen from the list, there has not been much in the past few years that really have captured my imagination. Like I said, I have not been able to view many films in the past few years and what I have seen tend to be more escapist fare to pass away the time. I miss the days especially back in the early nineties when I lived in Toronto and I watch films all of the time whether in the theatre or on video. It is was a golden age for me in many respects when it came to film. I do wish I could watch as many films now as I did then but family and work life takes precedence now.

Even though I do have a DVD player, it is virtually unused. Cable television is what I use the television for these days. I even gave up my Netflix membership this past year because I was not watching any films. I would rent them and then they would be sitting there for weeks unwatched and sometimes returned unwatched.

Then again, life changes. Back then, I did not have the Internet or photography to distract me. Now, my free time is seemingly consumed by them. But I do not regret it and if perchance, a film comes on one of the cable television stations that I always desired to see but never took the opportunity to do so, then I may just be able to update my list.