Wavelet Blog

Avatar not only won the best picture of the Golden Globes, it has surpassed Titanic and is setting the new world-wide box-office record every day. Looks like it will conquer the Oscar as well. James Cameron will stand on the top of the world again.

It’s a spectacular movie to watch when you put the 3-D glasses on. It is first movie that truly delivers the photo-real computer graphic. The world of Pandora is stunning scene by scene. The interaction between the characters and the environments are so believable, and you don’t realized the their world only exists in the computer. Besides the technical supreme, the film is brilliantly directed. It’s tight, balanced and fills the two and half hours with ceaseless actions.

However, it is also lucky for Cameron that there is no other movie this year can really challenge him. Putting Avatar in recent 10-year’s competition, its advantage would be pretty much diminished. (although I never thought Crash as a good movie, the nominations of 2005 was not bad). In terms of novelty and creativity, The Matrix challenges the audience visually at the same level and physiologically more. You can also see many similarities of other movies in Avatar. For example, both Titanic and Avatar can be divided into the first half of perfect and romantic theme, and the second half of conflicting and action theme. The turning points are exactly same, the two main characters make love. More creative people even merged Avatar trailer into Pocahontas. Comparing them side by side, it is really a piece of work.

I can’t help sharing this. The Poor kangaroo is certainly caught by surprise.

Although I think it learns the idea from Harry Potter’s trailer, it is still very creative in the way of bringing in a lot of elements in Chinese culture.

Sarah Chang, although not as well-known as Itzhak Perlman or Yo-Yo Ma, is recognized as one of the most talented and influential performers of the world. She earned her celebrity status in classic music since she was 10. By age 15, she has already collaborated with most major orchestras. Her album that plays Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto recorded with London Symphony Orchestra is one of first several classic music albums I bought and still remains as one of my favorite. I like her romantic interpretation of these master pieces. She played Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in Napa Valley Festival del Sole.

The following video was recorded when she was 15, playing the same piece.

Microsoft recently lauched a series of Ads featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. The following is the long version of its 2nd episode, New Family.

The feedbacks from the Internet community are almost negative since the first episode. Users critize the Ads. being ambiguous as a marketing attempt - not mentioning ‘Vista’ even once; attack its worthiness – spending 300 million instead of fixing the problem in the product; or just simply label it as ’stupid’ and ‘lame’.

However, the intention of the comercial is not to promote Vista or any Microsoft product directly, but to restore the public image of the company. Microsoft has been depicted as an “evil empire” for long time. It is a fashion that if you don’t say something negative about Microsoft then you are not cool. Looking at Slashdot website, it is easy to find many posts that talk something else but at the end add, “BTW, Microsoft sucks”. Although tech people have the tradition of being anti-authority, it has gone beyond that and become a bias. As an engineer in the network security industry, I know attacks that target Windows and its software are hundred times more than those to Apple’s OS. Not because Apple is safer, just attacking Windows can reach more so it is more profitable. In fact, it’s lucky that Microsoft won the OS war in 1980s, otherwise, a PC would cost $1000 instead of $300, and we could never order case, CPU, fan, memory, harddisk, power supply online and make our own PC – everything would be made by Apple.

It is unlikely that Microsoft could fix its image by this campaign, but it steps to a right direction. In the ad., Microsoft doesn’t put itself at the incumbent position, but more like a humble underdog who is easy to access and eager to learn. Because it doesn’t mention any product, the consumers feel it is not pushing anything, so they want to follow the story and feel the connection. To Microsoft, with 90% of market share, this is more important then a few Windows licenses.

As I am writing this blog, I read some articles that state Microsoft will stop the campaign because of the negative responses as planed. If that is true, what a shame.

Flint Center

As a long time classic music lover, this is my first time to go to a concert. The concert was performed on 7/9 at Flint Center by San Francisco Symphony as part of 2008 “Summer in the City” events. Three programs were played,

Bach: Toccata and Fugue
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition

The central piece, also the most popular one, is mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. It is played by Stefan Jackiw. At age 23, Mr. Jackiw is a young and charming presence, and he plays with a smooth yet sensitive style. The violin has the power to penetrate the indifference and cynicalness we put on, and touch the very weakness of our heart. Mr. Jackiw’s play just does that to me.