6:35 PM - I'm pretty sure he and I are not on a first name basis, but sometimes people should do away with formalities as they can often get in the way of showing one's true feelings of affection. Today, July 26, 2006; Stanley Kubrick would have turned 78 years old, and although it is obvious that he is not with us anymore, he has left us all with treasures to remember him. Personally, he is one of the main reasons I plan to go into film; I hope that Insha Allah, one day, my films will be almost as perfect as his are. His films have touched an array of topics, some of which were banned for their controversy, including war, life, before and after death; partnership, and sexuality; all of which have been plagued by his disease of perfectionism. In his films, he does not just tell some story for the simple fact of doing so, he tells his story when and only if his story will be an entertaining piece of art. If we look at his filmography, we see only sixteen films, three of which are shorts. Why did he just settle for so few of films? Was it because he came into film at such a late age? No, that can't be it, he made his first film before he turned twenty-five. Was it because he could not think of any stories? No, that is not the case, as it is widely known that he had many plans to make more films after Eyes Wide Shut. The reason he resorted himself to a small number lies in the realm of his perfectionism. He wrote many films, and adaptations, in his time, but only the ones that were perfection were the ones he decided to make. His wife, Christiane Kubrick, is quoted saying this on the topic, "And a lot of scripts he wrote he never made because he ultimately decided it was a waste of time. It made him very sad -- he wanted to make more films. But he didn't want to launch into a film when he wasn't a hundred percent certain."

Stanley left a stamp of himself on each and every film he made. His creation process of his films were not only limited to directing, he delved into everything about them, writing, producing, lighting, filming, editing; these were his films. He has been widely known for his unique cinematography, with his first person point of view shots, to his overly wide angles. One perfect example of both filming techniques can be easily found in 2001 (which, by the way, is from where the picture to the left was taken, during the filming of 2001, scanned out of "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures"), Kubrick's space film which was made to be like no other film and make people continually ponder the true meaning of its magnificence; in HAL 9000's character. He has always been a lover of art. His first real job was as a photographer when at the age of sixteen, he took a photo of a news vendor in New York after the news of FDR's death; he sold this picture to the popular Look magazine which later hired Stanley as a freelance photographer, still in high school. Due to this early love for art and photography, each one of his films deal with such techniques beautifully. Related to his love of art is his love of classical music. Almost all of his films include a classical piece of music that was previously composed, the most memorable being that from 2001 and Alex de Large's love of Ludwig van in A Clockwork Orange. A noticeable thing that Stanley has been known to do in his films is have them narrated. This may be greatly due in part because nearly all of his films are adaptations of novels; some naysayers may take this fact and flip it by saying that Kubrick was not creative at all, but this is not true, he just strived for perfection, and what can be more perfect that a film based on another story that is already great? That doesn't mean that all of his films greatly mimic other already known forms of writing, in fact, many people have been known to condemn Stanley for butchering great pieces of literature, such as in The Shining. Another instance of Kubrick making the books his own films is with 2001, how it is is based on only a very little portion of Arthur C. Clarke's book; and Dr. Strangelove is based on the same book of Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe; although both films' stories are obviously the same, they are greatly different in terms of how serious they take themselves. Yet the most obvious and remarkable love of Kubrick to implement into his films is the dehumanization of people. Each and every one of his films focus on characters that represent the utmost negative parts of human existence, from the pedophile Humbert in Lolita to the insane in The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Dr. Strangelove, and the strongest of dehumanization, The Holocaust in The Aryan Papers, which was never completed because at the time of pre-production, Stanley found out that his buddy Steven Spielberg was doing Schindler's List, and Stanley did not want to compete (a prime example of just one of those films that Kubrick left behind). Each and every one of these films are so perfect because of their themes and because of Kubrick's great attention to detail. Stanley Kubrick's films and Stanley Kubrick's messages will always be left with us as long as we continue to watch and cherish them, Insha Allah. So tonight, if you really have nothing to do, or have something to do but love Stanley so much, grab a Kubrick film and watch it; remember the greatest filmmaker with all of us, "One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film" - Stanley Kubrick.

There have been a lot of things going on with this site and me, but I want to reserve this post for Kubrick; all else will be said tomorrow, Insha Allah. Take care everyone. And don't worry, no one is forgetting about you, Sonia - we just decided that Kubrick should come before you on this day, although it is your birthday as well. So say Happy Birthday to Sonia everyone, so she doesn't end up hating Kubrick. And by the way, it's also Pit Stop's birthday. Okay, don't miss 30 Days' premiere tonight on FX at 10PM. Take care again everyone. see u.

7:30 PM - Alright, so I was fortunate enough to catch M. Night Shyamalan's fifth big film, Lady in the Water. Now I knew going into the film that it would be nothing like his past films, no real horror themes, no real twists; a fairy tale; I told this to the people I went with as well, Marc and Robyn (Sonia couldn't make it). The poster you see on the left isn't the one you normally see everywhere, instead you see Bryce Dallas Howard in some icy cloak or whatever; I felt this poster on the left fits the film much better. Is there any bitterness in my voice? I hope not, cos I really do not want to keep people from watching the film, nor do I want to diss M. Night. Yet, I will tell you my thoughts on this film, hoping that my readers will not take any offense from it, and will instead venture out to the theatres and watch it for themselves. If you do not want to hear about the film, I suggest you do not read the remainder of this "Review" as it reveals a lot about this film, which is conjured up as the film progresses, and since you are not watching the film right at this moment... I hope... it may make your mind wander. And also, if you haven't seen any of M. Night's other films, I suggest you do not read this either, cos I will try to bring back his past in this "Review". So proceed... if you dare... haha.

continue with my thoughts on M. Night's newest film...

10:00 PM - The title may be a bit misleading - I was not the one to interview Mr. Shyamalan (did you know that that is in the Dreamweaver dictionary?... interesting...). Yesterday, I told you guys about The Daily Show and that he will be appearing, and I said that if my computer wasn't busy that I'd capture the interview, well, it turns out my computer was busy, but I recorded it (not DVRed it, I am not blessed with such luxury, I went old school and used one of those rectangular black plastic things with ribbon on the inside... and it's not SVHS, so that's why it doesn't look as clear) and I have it for you guys now. Jon Stewart opened his show by saying his name, and also ended his show by talking to Stephen Colbert about a twist in the show's preview... haha, damn comedians, they crack me up. Anyway, the interview was pretty good; Shyamalan spoke about how people tell him that he sucks on the street, and when got to the table in the beginning of the interview, he sat more to the side of where Jon sits, to which Jon exclaimed that although he was a director, that he has to sit on his own side... jokingly of course. Shyamalan seemed as if he had never seen the show, cos as soon as he came out, and Jon told him to sit down, he had to confirm with Jon the seat that he was supposed to sit in... but perhaps it was just something that he is accustomed to doing, confirming things. Well anyway, the interview was pretty good, and Jon is good at not causing awkward pauses and incorporating tons of jokes into the mix - so I recommend you guys to check it out, here. I'm making this short cos I want to work on my newest client's site [Leader Mattress] a bit before I go to bed, it's just prep really. Oh, also, I tweaked the Videos page a bit to make it more aesthetically pleasing, as it was too cluttered before; I like what it is now - and you'll notice I added a new TV Show to the TV Shows section with a Coming Soon tag. 30 Days Season 2 starts Wednesday, and I was unable to capture Season 1 last year, but I will Netflix the DVDs and get Season 1 ready before Season 2's Premiere on Kubrick's birthday (and Sonia's) the 26th on FX at 10PM - I plan to work on that this weekend, Insha Allah. Oh, and if anyone is curious about the Speakeasy situation, the DSL has been done for almost two weeks, but today was when they activated the VoIP service... but I think my VoIP adapter is a dud cos it cannot connect to their servers... ah - I'll deal with it in the morning, until then, our home phone goes to voicemail - but it's not like any of you guys call me their to begin with. I am very excited for Lady in the Water. Alright, take care. see u.

7:50 PM - hahaha; life is hilarious! Yes, laughter is good; and you know, they say it is the best medicine - therefore, I will do my duty as a decent human being by distributing illegal videos via the web in order to cure the world, there's no harm in that I'm sure. I was watching Premium Blend earlier today (an act that I don't always take part in as three minutes cannot do any justice to even the best comedian... well maybe it will to the best comedian, but definitely not to most of the people that go on that show; they're too new) and I caught Kyle Cease's act. Now for those of you that don't pay any attention to the things that I *slave* over on this site, Kyle Cease was the first comedian to be added to the "Stand-Up" section. Well, most of his bit was brand new, so I decided to share! Two other comedians that were on Comedy Central Presents a couple of hours ago are also going to be put up on the site later tonight, Insha Allah - they are rendering as we speak. They are Kevin Hart and Clinton Jackson - two pretty funny black guys, just to show that I'm not a dang ol' racist. Now let me explain to you the deep selection process that goes into choosing comedians that are worthy enough to get me into trouble... well there isn't a rubric, I just pick the people that I think are funny; some comedians are funny throughout the whole thirty minutes (or twenty two, depending on if you choose to count commercials), while some can be funny for a couple opening minutes or half the time - I usually choose the former (haha, I make it sound like I've been doing this for years, I guess you can say this is my rubric for whether or not I like comedians in general). Kevin Hart is a short black guy, and I'm secure enough with my sexuality to say that he's an attractive man, haha, and is unbelievably funny throughout his act. The other guy, Clinton Jackson, had a couple freaking hilarious parts, but affirmative action led me to chose him over some other more funny white guy... haha - I was saving that joke all day. Both of those, like I said, will be released either later this evening, or early tomorrow morning at this page, Insha Allah.

In other interests (boy, I haven't said that phrase in a while!), Marc, Robyn, Sonia, and I are Insha Allah going to go watch (or is it see, I never remember, luckily there is someone at school who always advocates the real way to say it, unfortunately, I don't remember what her name is, but for sure she's a girl... I'm pretty sure) Lady in the Water this Friday [and if Marc or Robyn are reading, Sonia said she might be able to make it Friday - haha, now the whole world knows too]. It'll be the first film I've seen in a theatre since The Goblet of Fire... exactly eight months ago, today. I really like M. Night Shyamalan's work, but some people are saying that this one isn't all that it could be, and there are some other things going around, like some controversy behind Shyamalan's role in this film and others in general - not to sound pretentious or anything, but I honestly felt that there weren't enough hours in the day to learn about this subject. Anyone else who is interested in this, catch The Daily Show tonight as Manoj is supposed to be a guest, perhaps Jon will say something about it. I will try to capture it if my computer isn't too busy (I'm running at a record 1.25GB page file right now), and Insha Allah post it tomorrow. It will be starting in a couple minutes for the East, and at 11 for Pacific on Comedy Central. Oh, and Happy Birthday Vin Diesel, we're all dying to hear who you really are! haha. Oh, and those of you that weren't sure whether or ont you should upgrade to Firefox 2.0 Beta 1, it's really unstable, I reverted back to 1.5, so check back when it's in Beta 2 - I'm sure it'll be much better then, Insha Allah. Alright everyone, take care. see u.

12:30 AM - A couple of years ago, I decided for myself that I would not add too much videos to the internet - any website - as the internet is not a place to go to webpages and download videos, but just look at us now, megabit download speeds, used up hard drive space, websites upon websites dedicated to downloading videos; the internet has truly changed. I try to bring my readers some fun video stuff, such as the two TV Shows you can download - but I am here to announce a new section to my site - Stand Up. Earlier it was a very small section known as "Comedians" where I only had two guys, but now I've decided to give it its very own dedicated section where I plan to Insha Allah get stand-up specials, mainly from Comedy Central Presents, and post them here for your humor fixation. Also, while I was fooling around with that, I decided to clean up the videos, no - not go through each frame and censor them (though there's nothing to really censor), I mean the file organization. I started the "Video" section quite rapidly without much thought, and now I'm making myself work hard. If you like to go into my indexes, you'll notice the changes, otherwise, you probably won't - so no worries.

Another thing I wanted to talk about quickly is Mozilla's Firefox. For those of you up on the news, you will have noticed that Mozilla has released a Beta 1 version of Firefox 2.0. For those of you that want to be up to date on this stuff, without worrying about software stability, then download it from me here, or from their site. I haven't been searching for new stuff, but the most noticeable new thing they added is a close box to each tab individually, which I don't really like as it wastes too much space - I loved the whole 'X' to the side. Another thing that I think I will fall in love with is a spell checker... yes, that's right... a spell checker. You can right click on field and chose to keep the spell check on or off - on fields with multiple lines, spell check is on by default - if you spell a word incorrectly, Firefox underlines it in red - you can either then right click it and change it to another word that it recommends or add it to Firefox's built in dictionary; you can also install different languages via the right click. This, my friends, is freaking genius. Another very awesome feature, taken again from the books of Microsoft Word, is a "restore" option if you crash. This may sound like they expect it to crash, but I guess it's precaution... like a prenuptial agreement (thanks Geoff, I forgot the word for a couple minutes)... don't ask why I'm relating it to that - I just hate the idea of a prenuptial agreement, at least softwares are known to crash... marriages shouldn't. Anyway, what it does is, if it crashes, when you restart Firefox, it asks if you want to restore your earlier session or if you want to start a new session - pretty damn cool if you ask me - I found this out the hard way when I downloaded the Windows Vista Beta 2 .ISO... twice... cos Firefox kept crashing at 95%... damn Microsoft, haha. Well that's all I got for you guys now - I've been real busy with a new client and some new car stuff, so expect me to stay like that, haha. Oh, and Happy belated Birthday Robyn, and my car (she turned two-years old on the twelfth... my car - Robyn turned seventeen). Oh yah, haha - I didn't get time to make a post about "Sunny", but the new episode has been up, and the ending is damn hilarious, haha. Take care everyone, see u.

8:00 PM - Sorry I didn't post It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia up right away, as it took me 'til noon on Friday to finish encoding them [H.264 always takes the longest] and I've been with my family all weekend. But they're up now, visit the "Sunny" Page here. Also on Friday, the Speakeasy guy came and completed the DSL install... have you noticed any faster speeds? Saturday morning I re-input all the new IP information... so 66.51.219.42 doesn't work anymore! It's now officially 66.93.64.126, like I said. I did some comparison speeds, and here we go. With DSLExtreme, I was paying about $55 a month for 1669Kbps download and 419Kbps upload - plus a $65 telephone bill - now with Speakeasy, for $95 a month, I get 2524Kbps download and 642Kbps upload - plus $27 VoIP bill, with free long distance and free to some places overseas. So is it worth the two extra bucks a month? You bet your Mom's China it is (and yes, my Mom doesn't have any China either). I also tested the speeds from my server - with DSLExtreme, modenadude.com's home page used to take 9.45 seconds (cos of Google Adsense) for the first try, then once Google Adsense was cached, it'd take 2.44 seconds - but now with Speakeasy, the first try takes 4.66 seconds and the second try takes 2.25 seconds - with Vertain's (my server speedtest of choice) benchmark at 3.01 seconds, sweet, eh? My family site took 4.61 seconds for the first try with DSLExtreme and 2.91 seconds on the second try - and with Speakeasy, it takes 2.97 seconds on the first try and 2.06 seconds on the second try... almost in the one second mark range (I just tested it just now and got 3.38 seconds for first try and 1.38 seconds for a second try... sweet)! So as you can probably see, I'm pretty damn excited with the new service, and obviously recommend it to anyone. In other fun news, I am almost completely done with a new project I'm working on for my car... power windows - I basically finished on Friday, but had to leave for the reunion, so I wasn't able to make it perfect - so tomorrow is Insha Allah the day where I clean it all up and make it perfect, and of course show pictures. And who called the big box office Pirates 2 hit!? I did... well in my head; I represented pirates everywhere by wearing my pirate shirt to my family reunion. Until later guys, Insha Allah, take care. see u.

12:45 PM - Am I the only one in love with re-runs? I hope not. Re-runs are probably the best shows on TV right now, cos TV isn't too amazing - Turner has had a hit with their total re-run network TBS, which also reigns as one of TV's top film hosts. Another huge TV company is Disney - they own companies like Pixar, Miramax, Touchstone; as well as TV stations such as ABC and ESPN. Some of you may have caught the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee last month - I, on the other hand, was not able to. I saw the re-run today on ESPN, and although I knew it was a re-run, I did not know who won and who lost last month, so I watched it, and boy was I enjoying myself.

Those kids are pretty impressive... I only got three or four words right myself, and one of those words I got right cos I read it from the bottom of the screen - and you have to be under a certain age to enter, I think not in High School or something like, so these kids were tough. Of the last like fifteen kids, four were Indians - so I guess I was somewhat proud, although I don't consider myself Indian. But one girl which I paid close attention to, was Saryn Hooks. Ahh, this girl is fourteen and probably the only looker from the Bee. I watched it mostly for her. She's from North Carolina, and this year was her last year to win, cos she'd be too old next year - a shot of her on the left. The biggest thing that stood out about her, Bee wise [she's fourteen, guys], was the huge controversy in the eighth round. She was given a word, "Hechscher" to which she responded with, "what?" with a smile on her face. It is a word derived from the language of Hebrew meaning kosher approval. She, being a Christian, had little to no knowledge on such a word... but she tried it anyway, and after a grueling two minutes, she gave [SPOILER WARNING] "Hechsher". Yet, it didn't match what the judges had, "Hechscher" - she missed the extra "C". Oddly enough, the judges weren't even paying attention, and it took them another minute to listen to the audio tape and decide she had missed the word. Her parents were upset, but she wasn't crying or anything, she stuck it out. Then we went to a commercial break. When we returned, we find out that before the ninth round begins, they [the judges] were told by a member of the audience, a brother of another contestant who was on a laptop, that the judge's word of "Hechscher" was incorrect and that Saryn had spelled it correctly with "Hechsher" - they let her back into the Bee. She duked it out until there were only three girls left, a New Jersian, a Canadian, and Saryn, the North Carolinan. In the first round with the Championship Words, Round Twelve, Saryn spelled "icteritious" wrong, which meant jaundiced, yellowish color. Of the two that were left, the Canadian was a better looker... but she ended up losing to the New Jersian - but props to Saryn - I liked her the best. Too bad we won't be able to see her next year though... too bad. haha. And just in case you guys don't know what anniversary it is today, it's the anniversary of Joe Louis winning the first professional boxing bout in 1934 - and two years ago today, the corner stone of that Freedom Tower was put on - as well as the Discovery launching an hour ago. Update for my DSL - the modem and filters came yesterday, we're still awaiting for Friday to come and for them to install the DSL, Insha Allah. Alright, that's it for me. Take care everyone. Oh, and Happy Birthday America. haha. see u.

IMDb - 2001: A Space Odyssey

12:01 AM - Ahh... a good month this shall be, Insha Allah. We got a couple important birthdays coming up... including the one and only, Kubrick's. We also have Sonia's birthday coming up on the 26th, Insha Allah - she shares her birthday with Mr. Kubrick; we also have Robyn's birthday coming up on the 12th, Insha Allah, who shares a birthday with my car. Our month's layout, coincidentally, is 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of Kubrick's most known works, and I have to say, it is by far the best layout I have seen on this site, coming just ahead to Magnolia - two great films, and two layouts that have dark accents. So perhaps I shall convert this site to a dark theme... perhaps a Tim Burton layout next? Okay, I'll tell you what, before Tim ever Insha Allah picks back up that biopic about Robert Ripley (played by Jim Carrey) with those two USC grads who wrote Ed Wood, I'll have a couple of months mimicking some of his great films - but trust me, you have not seen the reign of directorial designs I have for this site.

But I want to talk about this month's design, because I took a bold and giant step to the future. Perhaps it was 2001's power that brought forth my attention of the future, or perhaps it was my ill contempt towards Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6.0; whatever it was, I've decided to bring .PNGs onto my site. Like some of you may know (most of you, I hope), .PNGs are known for their transparency capabilities; they handle much better than .GIFs could ever. The only thing that keeps designers (and I will add myself to that group of so-called "designers") from adding .PNGs to their sites is the lack of support of .PNG reading in IE6. But I've decided, I don't care. To hell with IE6. I believe in .PNGs and I will use them. So now - if you'll notice, I made a little background change - we have these diagonal lines that I've been hoping to you use on this site for a while, and just not decided to use them. On the index, those logos now are .PNGs so that the background gets shown better. Also, there is a "shadow" (actually, a custom outer glow) around this new design that can only properly be seen by using .PNGs - so I will tell you now, for optimum performance on this site, I recommend browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari, or Netscape's Browser. But of course, due to my absolute devotion to Firefox, I prefer that first. So the design has the HAL 9000 (which is also featured in the awesome ThinkGeek gadget which I own, the 1GB HAL 9000 USB Memory Unit) on top, with a nice glare and stars in the background - and not the signature font, but close enough, haha. So a very simple design, but you know what, I love it. And please, if you haven't seen 2001, please, rent it, sit down, sit through it, and enjoy it. Not to take away from Mr. Kubrick, but I just saw a movie a couple minutes ago. A movie that I wanted to see when it had it's limited release a couple months ago: Find Me Guilty. That one is Sidney Lumet's latest film, and I recommend this film to every single soul on this planet. It is a greatly entertaining movie, and it is written, and directed, and acted so damn wonderfully (Vin Diesel does a freaking amazing job... even with that goofy hair, his character was able to scare the crap out of me)). It's very funny, but at the same time, it had i's slight sad parts - and it's like 95% true. So go get it - it just came out on DVD Tuesday. Alright everyone, keep up the hits - I have always appreciated it. Take care. see u.