War of the Worlds
It's just another day in the life for Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise). Getting off work. Picking up the kids from his ex-wife. Parenting and all that. Little did he know that in the next few hours, his life would change drastically. Lightning bolts come down from the sky at one particular spot and from it rises a giant tripod, a scene replicated at thousands of sites throughout the world. And while the naive humans stare with their jaws open, the tripod begins its assault on the town, shooting humans to dust and destroying anything in sight. Ray, with kids Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and Rachel (Dakota Fanning) in tow, leaves town to head to Boston where his ex-wife is staying. It's a race against time as the tripods close in to find any human in sight.

There's a scene when Robbie is drawn into the battle by the sounds of gunfire with Ray and Rachel hurriedly chasing him. Ray leaves Rachel and tackles Robbie in an effort to force him to come back with them. The obviously ambitious boy responds that he needs to go look for himself what's going on. I won't say what happens next, but I wish I could've gone. Instead, we're stuck following Tom Cruise around the whole time. And that's the problem with War of the Worlds. The first hour is a mind-blowing, eye-opening adventure as people race to escape the wrath of the tripods, but eventually the film settles down to focus on the plight of Ray as he weaves his way toward freedom. While itself somewhat riveting, it totally ignores the more interesting adventure of, well, everything else. One of the few redeeming features of the final half is a silent Fanning, who seemingly spends the first half just screaming. This film stays true to the H.G. Wells-written ending and while it makes sense, you must think that a story one million years in the making would produce a much more exciting ending. Hey, at least it's better than those aliens from Signs being afraid of water. 2.5 stars

Batman Begins
Summary coming soon.

The film starts out with a multitude of events so tightly packed, it's hard to figure out what's going on. But once the plot gets settled and the filmgoer has a sense of what the heck is going on, it turns out to be one fine film. Christopher Nolan's dark look at Batman is a welcome contrast to the Joel Schumacher wrecks. Bale isn't my first choice for Batman but I can get used to him if all of the Batman movies end up like this. While it's not the best Batman film (I still like the first one more), this beginning ranks up there with hopefully many more to come, but please, keep it like this one and don't obsess with nipples on the costumes. 3 stars

Madagascar
All Marty the zebra (Chris Rock) dreams about is living in the outside world, even though he enjoys his current lifestyle of living in the Central Park zoo while hanging out with his best friends Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer), and Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith). One night, Marty makes a run for it to try to go to Connecticut. While his friends catch up to him, so do the humans and soon all four are being shipped to an African wildlife refuge. En route, penguins take over the ship and during the ensuing madness, the four crates holding the four friends go overboard, ending up in the African island of Madagascar.

There's a lot to admire about this animated feature (hey, they're just not cartoons anymore). Its depiction of the New York City nightlife is impeccable. But with the Disney cartoons of the '90s and the recent Pixar features, the bar has been raised and Madagascar just barely rises above it. Where the other features in essence dream the impossible dream, Madagascar only has the reality of being dumped on an island with singing lemurs and the daunting task for Alex the lion to refuse to eat his dear friend Marty. Not exactly the same. The film is humorous and will certainly entertain the kids, it however will not appeal to adults as today's animated features do. 2.5 stars

Two articles from the paper to mention.

The first is from The New York Times about GSI's who can't speak English. Honestly, I've never had a problem with this, simply because in my difficult classes, my GSI's could speak English well and in my easy classes, it didn't matter. The article states that 22 states require or have legislation that requires teachers to speak proficient English, but don't all these foreign-born college students need to take English tests before they're admitted? If not, they should. They really, really should. College students' futures are on the line.

The second is from the Mercury News. A radio DJ promised to give away 100 grand to a lucky listener. When the winner came down to pick up her prize, she dressed up her family and they all went down to the station to pick up their prize only to be horrified and dismayed at the sight of a 100 Grand candy bar. Now the woman is suing the DJ and the station. Yes, it was funny but it was also mean-spirited. I'd be skeptical if a small radio station would offer to give away that much money.

Things continue to move along smoothly as the person who trained me went on a one-month vacation, leaving me in charge of all her duties. But still I've managed to finish everything early. Now I've got nothing to do...but don't tell my boss that.

Last Friday, I made the trip to Davis to see my cousin graduate. Nice place they've got up there...apparently, it's new. Overachiever that day? The student honoree, home-schooled prior to her Davis experience, received 33 A+'s in her 4 college years. My gosh, that's too many to count. Then the student speaker yelled out "We are engineers! Hear us roar!" and then the names were called and that was that.

Afterwards, I saw my high school twin. Huy was his name, right? Well, I'm sorry to say, it looks like he kept on that freshman 15, if you know what I mean.

After dropping by to see Di and Jimmy, I made my way home. Have you ever dozed off while driving and when you wake up, have no idea where you're at? That happened to me quite a few times. One second, you're driving at a reasonable 80. Next thing you know, you don't recognize where you are and you're going 100. Yikes. But hey, I got from Sacramento to San Jose in less than 2 hours, which is great...or dangerous.

All that freeway driving is great for the gas mileage. I got 26+ MPG when the average is about 23.

Totally unrelated, but I was reading in EW about a new reality show called Being Bobby Brown. Accompanying the article was a picture of Brown and my first thought was, man, couldn't they have gotten somebody that actually looked like Bobby Brown? Then I realized the pic was actually of Bobby Brown.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith
John and Jane Smith (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) lead normal lives with normal jobs in a normal community. But when you're using the word "normal" that many times, you know something is amiss. In fact, both are trained assassins but have never revealed that fact to each other. When both receive orders to take out the same target (Adam Brody), their secrets eventually come out and they deal with it the only way they know: by trying to kill each other.

While it's nice that Jolie and Pitt bring an unexpected sense of chemistry to the picture, the whole thing seems to be a derivative of movies and shows we've seen before; chief among them is director Doug Liman's previous work in "The Bourne Identity." But then you could also see elements of Pitt's "Fight Club", "Spy Game", and the Ocean films as well as Jolie's Tomb Raider films. Even Adam Brody's character could come straight from The O.C. As a result, its only original idea is to bring two main characters in the mix, something Liman does well. But with the lack of a cohesive and plausible plot (the final confrontation isn't too believable, but not seeing the signs after 5, no 6, years of marriage is even more unbelievable) as well as its ignorance to the strong supporting cast (Vince Vaughn and Kerry Washington should have been used more) doom Mr. and Mrs. Smith to a continuing anonymous status. 1.5 stars

The Longest Yard
Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler) is your typical washed-up football player forced out of playing because of money. This time, he was shaving points. When a little drunken driving causes a really big accident, Crewe gets sent off to a Texas prison where the warden (James Cromwell) is obsessed with football. As a tune-up for the prison guards' season, the warden pits the guards against the prisoners, forcing Crewe to lead the team. Crewe, sensing this might become a blowout, trains his men to work as a team to at least become respectable. At his side are Caretaker (Chris Rock) and old-timer Nate Scarborough (Burt Reynolds).

With "The Longest Yard", Sandler continues his ability of starring in above-average comedies, but this one is hurt by the fact that it's a remake. You either need to go all out in respecting the original or go in a totally new direction. This one turns out to be a hybrid and gets mixed results. I never saw the original on which this is based, but from what I hear, (spoiler) Caretaker dies in the original and becomes a big rallying cry for the rest of the movie. In the remake, Caretaker also dies, but it seems to be totally unnecessary, especially since he had been the go-to guy for comic relief up to that point. Things like that make you go hmmm. It also lost any kind of comedic rhythm it had going for it and could not recover since you had to go through the obligatory football game at the end. The movie then is not laugh-out-loud funny as previous Sandler flicks have been, but it gets good mileage out of what it has. 2.5 stars

Great photo brought to my attention at Hollywood Elsewhere. The still is from the upcoming film "War of the Worlds". It's like Annie Leibowitz took the picture or something. Everyone has a different reaction to, presumably, different aliens coming at them from different angles. The best one is probably the lady behind Tom Cruise who looks like she's smiling. Must be because she's standing next to Tom Cruise.

As a Cal grad, you're not supposed to be envious about anything done at Stanfurd, but when it comes to money and getting things done, give the Cardinal credit. For proof, just look at these passages from the Mercury News today.

Plans for the new stadium were approved by Stanford trustees Monday. If all goes smoothly, demolition of the existing stadium will begin immediately after the last home game in November. University officials are not predicting a finish date, but there is an unofficial goal of not missing any football games in 2006 by driving the project at breakneck speed.

And...

Cal athletic director Sandy Barbour said Tuesday that the project won't begin after the 2005 season as some had hoped, but she said it's likely construction will begin immediately after the 2006 season.

The plan is to complete one phase of the project (such as renovating the east rim of the stadium) in time to play the 2007 season in the stadium. Immediately after the 2007 season, construction would continue on the rest of the project, with the goal of playing the 2009 season in the completed stadium. Cal would need to play the 2008 season at another site such as San Francisco's Monster Park.

The folks across the bay will work their construction crews around the clock to get things done in-between football seasons while angering Cal fans by not being able to guarantee seating at the Big Game when it's on the Farm.

Getting back to the point at hand, remodeling Memorial Stadium has been a pain for many years now and only got jump-started again due to the football team's recent success and the desire to keep Jeff Tedford. Meanwhile, Stanford seemingly has taken the public by surprise by dropping these plans on us. They claim to have had this planned for years as well but remember, as recently as last year, a rebuilt Stanford Stadium was supposed to be the epicenter for the 2012 Olympics, a vision much different than the 50,000 seat stadium they have proposed now.

Admittedly, the task is tougher for Cal. The law and business schools are part of the plans. Memorial sits on a fault line. There's only so much space to work with on Strawberry Canyon. UC bureaucracy is pretty much awful and money is tight. All told, it's going to cost up to $250 million compared to Stanford's $85 million.

But in all that time for the planning stages, Stanford has raised $60 million with little media coverage while Cal has raised only half that with the entire process playing out before our very eyes. Cal needs to get something out there to convince the big donors to donate or else they'll be the ones coming up with new delays for their donations before they disappear completely.

Remember how we all thought Kerry was much more intelligent than Bush? If you compare their undergraduate grades, they tell a different story.

Sen. John F. Kerry's grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush's record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Kerry had a cumulative average of 76 and got four Ds his freshman year — in geology, two history courses and political science, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.

His grades improved with time, and he averaged an 81 his senior year and earned an 89 — his highest grade — in political science as a senior.

"I always told my dad that D stood for distinction," Kerry said in a written response to reporters' questions. He said he has previously acknowledged focusing more on learning to fly than studying.

Under Yale's grading system in effect at the time, grades between 90 and 100 equaled an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, and anything below that was a failing grade.

In 1999, The New Yorker magazine published a transcript showing Bush had a cumulative grade average of 77 his first three years at Yale, and a similar average under a non-numerical rating system his senior year.

Bush's highest grade at Yale was an 88 in anthropology, history and philosophy. He received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy, and improved his grades after his freshman year, the transcript showed.

Kerry, a Democrat, previously declined to release the transcript, which was included in his Navy records. He gave the Navy permission to release the documents last month, the Globe reported.

Kerry graduated from Yale in 1966, Bush in 1968.

Link

No information was released about how well each did during their postgraduate careers. Kerry graduated from Boston College Law School in 1976 after returning from his tours of duty in Vietnam. Bush earned his Harvard MBA in 1975 after serving in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

Wouldn't life be much easier if people knew when and how to change lanes? Every morning, unnecessary lane changes lead to massive amounts of slow traffic, causing headaches during my slow commute to work. People see an opening but are slow to react to it, forcing people to slow down in both lanes. My commute consists of taking 280 every morning, which wouldn't be so bad if people knew how to merge when the lanes drop from 4 to 3. Instead, people slow down further trying to get over to the far left lane, which makes, surprisingly, the right lane the fastest lane most mornings. As a result, my 20-mile commute takes 45 minutes. Sure, I could work at 7 and avoid all of this but who in the world would want to do that?

The company gave me business cards to give out, but I've got no clue when I'm supposed to give it out. It's not like I interact with customers. Maybe they want me to win some lunches. If you want one, come and get 'em. I've got like 500 of them but I guess they're supposed to last me my whole career there.

6 weeks after I bought my car, it's got 1800 miles on it. Have I really driven it that much?

I really feel sorry for the Quiznos guy. For a couple of months, he was dressed as a soda cup with a big Quiznos logo on it and was forced to wave to people. Its quite embarrassing, especially when you have to put it on in front of the folks in their cars. Now, with summer approaching, out goes the costume and in comes just a regular sign. So now we can see his face all the time.

Anyone out there have a Mastercard I can borrow? I'll give it back...honest.

Small O's update. After sweeping the O's last week, the Tigers lost 2 out of 3 to them this weekend. But it's tough going for the Birds as the injury bug has hit, losing Javy Lopez, Sammy Sosa, and Brian Roberts. Sosa is back and Roberts is supposed to come back tomorrow, but I don't know how long the O's can handle the Gil/Fasano combo at catcher. Pitching remains strong except for the inconsistent Daniel Cabrera with the hot/cold games he brings to the table. Today, it was a hot game, giving up only 2 runs.

Finally, a warm congrats to my cousins Trang and Hung, graduating from UC Davis and Oak Grove, respectively.