IRIS Soundtrack

An amazing television series from the Koreans. I am just blown away. It makes perfect sense that this series would win so many Korean awards. In fact, if this was in English, it would probably grab a ton of Emmys too. Goodness knows that Hollywood lacks the depth to make these sort of stories anymore. Anyway, a good series comes with very good music, and this is a sampling.

PS: I must note that I think the hand-held cam is coming back in-vogue. It gives a dark series like this, an added boost in disorientation. Very well executed.

IRIS Series

Being unemployed has its perks. I have been curious about this Korean series for quite a while but never came around to buying it. I finally bought it recently and it has blown my mind. I have to admit that I bought it for three reasons: the beauties on the cover, the big-name stars and the bad-ass story-line. No disappointments so far.

Iris (아이리스) is a South Korean espionage television drama series broadcast by KBS in 2009. With a budget in excess of 20 billion won, it, along with its spin-off Athena: Goddess of War, share the record for the most expensive Korean dramas ever produced.

Premiering in October 2009, the series was a critical and commercial success, with an average viewership of over 30% in addition to ranking as the top program consistently every week after its debut. The series also took home many of the highest honors at the 2009 KBS Drama Acting Awards, including Lee Byung-hun winning the top recognition in the form of the Daesang Award. Among other nominations and recognitions, Lee and Kim Tae-hee were also named as one of the best on-screen couples.

The plot revolves around two friends from the 707th Special Mission Battalion recruited into a secret South Korean black ops agency known as the National Security Service. Of the pair, recruit Kim Hyun-jun begins to uncover evidence that his foggy past may not be so irrelevant to his joining of the secret organization after all. As the two friends find their loyalties tested and forge new, unlikely alliances, the journey takes them from their home country to Hungary, Japan, and China where they find themselves at the center of an international conspiracy.

What can I say. The story has not ceased to twist and turn like a hurricane gone crazy and it has been keeping me at the edge of my seat. The fact that the lead-actress is easy on the eyes doesn’t really matter. I am thoroughly attracted by the tensions between the three main male characters, best-friend and arch-rival – all flawed to the core with their own insecurities and fears and trying their hardest to kill each other.

I think that it will be useful to keep tabs on the Korean film industry. They seem to be intent on producing crazy shows.

Word Lens

Oh my GOD! This is just F**KING AMAZING!!! Live translation of signs – it’ll save lives. If it does Spanish, it can already handle most other romance languages with the appropriate dictionaries. Then, it’s only a matter of time before it supports other languages.

PS: And they did not even need a half-dressed hot-chick to sell it. The product sells itself…

The Grand Challenge

I need one of these, to bring my company forth. But, let’s start small, like really small.

Learning from Failure

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

I have been saying that, schools are not about book-learning, but is a place to learn about life. Very good TED Talk – “Failure is instructional…”

Tron: Legacy

Unemployment is nice for now. I managed to catch the first showing of TRON: Legacy today. To keep things short and sweet – it touched me.

I totally did not expect the show to move me so much considering that it is a Disney production and that it’s main attraction is Olivia Wilde and light-cycles. I won’t spoil things but I need to say that Olivia Wilde as Quorra – very fine; and that the light-cycle sequence was quite well done too and we get to see more than just cycles, in the show.

The show made me laugh, and more importantly, made me cry – several times. It’s not often that a show has that kind of an effect on me. The cinematography is classic Tron and the show was filled with 80s disco and classic 8-bit music. This brings back lots of memories from my childhood days, and the original Tron.

One thing that I would like to make note of is – the computer interface. For once, Hollywood did not screw up the command line. The parts of the show that actually showed the users accessing computer terminals, actually made use of real Unix commands. I was quite taken aback to see the correct commands used to execute the correct operations.

Furthermore, SUN should really be proud that their servers could keep the Tron universe running for more than a decade, without any power! The makers of the show also tipped their hat off to the FLOSS movement – splendidly anarchic too!

I really liked the show. I think it’s my favourite show this year and I will definitely buy the blu-ray when it comes out.

PS: I wonder what happened to TRON at the end?

Third Force

There has been a lot said about the Third Force in Malaysian politics. While this term has been mooted by the likes of Haris Ibrahim and Raja Petra Kamarudin, it has now been diluted by the main-stream media and political opportunists to include anything and everything under the sun, which is neither BN nor PR.

Personally, I am sticking it to mean the true political independents – the Malaysian Civil Liberties Movement (MCLM).

I like this group because, their candidates can be said to be truly independent, as independent as one could be in Malaysia. I like the fact that TheStar has painted them as a group of idealists, because that is exactly what I see them trying to accomplish, to strive towards a vision of an ideal Malaysia. For that, we definitely need idealists.

However, the only problem with idealists is that they tend to get jaded rather quickly with dumb asses and unfortunately, our local political scene is filled with too many donkeys. That said, I still hope that these idealists will not set their hopes too high for the next GE. Personally, I think that they have the chance to capture a few seats in the next GE – maybe just a couple.

However, I hope that these candidates and the MCLM realise that this is a long haul fight. It is not about winning seats in the next GE. It is about changing the landscape of local politics. With that as the target, the candidates will be less likely to burnout. But if Malik Imtiaz is the kind of calibre that we will be seeing from the MCLM, I doubt that burnout would be the problem.

Anyway, I just wish the MCLM the best and I will continue to contribute where I can, to bring forth the vision of a better Malaysia. I’m staying for the good fight!