Movie Review: The Fourth Kind

This movie “The Fourth Kind” tries to recreate a “documentary” movie style mixed in with “real” video & audio footage created a fantastic modern yet believable movie that tries to convince the audience that such things do happen all the time.

My first reaction to this movie is shock & awe with a wave of tingling hair standing at the back of my hair as me myself had witness Unidentified Flying Objects in the sky before I can fully relate to the experiences portrayed in the movie starred by Milla Jovovich (Fifth Element, Resident Evil).

I can catch a glimpse of Milla Jovovich Fifth Element lines “Please please” half expecting her to say “Multi-Pass” LOL. Anyway, this movie you have to go into the theaters with a OPEN mind, don’t read reviews, don’t watch the trailers, don’t analyze or proof it’s real or not.

———SPOILER ALERT!!——-

———— Don’t read the following until you had seen the movie—————-

Entertainment wise the movie deliver a fantastic thumbs up for imaginative people like me enough to compare it to the movie “Paranormal Activity” or “The Exorcist” with simple but believable plot but it can be improved.

After the movie, I feel there are some parts of the acting are deliberately poor to purposely create a more believable “REAL” footage compared to the reenactment footage hence many complaint about the poor acting of some of the actors but to me they are all GOOD acting as they gave the “REAL” video footage much more credibility.

The idea that the movie is based on TRUE story or events are simply a irresponsible because it’s NOT a REAL story but the circumstances & experiences of some of the events portrayed may be REAL but the “Real” video footage are simply fake.

The impact of this movie may be two extremes, more ordinary folks will starts to get interested in the subjects of UFO encounters, alien abductions and the paranormal but on the other hand may increase the skepticism bar on actual video footage of the REAL encounters causing more distress to witnesses that want people to believe their experiences and they may get more ridicule even thou they have REAL video & audio footage.

The question now is how people believe video footage anymore as evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial?? Ok, leaving the feelings aside and focus on the movie…yes the movie does have some trivial to take note.

1. Note that Cindy Stracinski mentioned that there are 2 suicides & murders within months earlier in the movie indicating that they KNOW that Will Tyler death is actually suicide before it’s being revealed
2. Ronnie Tyler (Abbey Tyler’s Son) know in the beginning that Will Tyler (his father) died of suicide hence ask his mother “How did father died?” but hushed by Abbey Tyler instead
3. The false memory of the “murder” of Will Tyler are speculated to be imprinted into Abbey Tyler’s mind by aliens due to a failed abduction attempt
4. Abbey Tyler “Real” footage interview at the end of the movie shows she is in a special wheelchair that indicated that she is paralyzed too from her own “hypnosis” misadventure.
5. The Sumerian depicted in the movie are real and does have statues that looks weird & looks very much like aliens & spaceships
6. There are REAL alien abductions in the world but remains hidden because of fear of ridicule but many do have unknown implants removed from their body
7. The reason why Ashley Tyler was taken away forever probably because she is a “failed” experiment by the alien.
8. “The Fourth Kind,” is a reference to scientist J. Allen Hynek’s famous categories involving the sightings of UFOs. Close Encounters of the Third Kind also referred to this scale.
9. According to promotional materials from Universal, the film is framed around a psychologist named Abigail Tyler who interviewed traumatized patients in Nome. However Alaska state licensing examiner Jan Mays says she can’t find records of an Abigail Tyler ever being licensed in any profession in Alaska. Ron Adler, CEO and director of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute and Denise Dillard, president of the Alaska Psychological Association say they’ve never heard of Abigail Tyler. Web sites for an “Alaska Psychiatry Journal” and “Alaska News Archive” containing references to Tyler were created by the film’s producers, but were outed as hoaxes when it was discovered they were registered a month before the film’s release and the purported author of one of the archived news articles stated she had never written it.
10. The movie’s hoaxed interviews have angered the families of real missing persons in and around Nome, Alaska, for trivializing their loss. Melanie Edwards, Vice President of Kawerak Inc (an organization representing tribal peoples in Alaska) described the movie as “insensitive to family members of people who have gone missing in Nome over the years”. Universal has refused to discuss the movie with that organization or with local journalists.

Adventure with Sony HandyCam & iMovie 09!

Ever since I gotten my Sony HandyCam & Mac Mini loaded with the latest iMovie 09, my mind just went berserk with great anticipation! I am running everywhere on with my camcorder!

The first event I went to last weekend is my good friend’s daughter’s Full Month celebration and I I reached there and enjoyed a great deal with all my old classmates of Jurong Seconary School.

Here’s the video of that happy event!

The second event is a Tweet Up organized by @Aprilyim as she head over to Singapore from Malaysia with a “social networking experiment” in mind to get to know many people in Singapore.

Here’s the video of the event!

To be honest I was too tired and I bet my eye bags were very deep that night haha that’s why I was kind of quiet but I do love to share cool tech stuff to all these twitter friends!! To my delight, many of them have iPhones that I can share my knowledge & passion.

I am glad to know you cool dudes & gals which made me feel young again! haha.

Telco existing contracts leave loyal customers high & dry for iPhone 3Gs

Currently, I am a proud owner of a iPhone 3G and I bought it early March 2009 and even created a iPhone/iPod application review site! Understandably, I got pretty annoyed when Singtel announce their iPhone 3Gs back in 10th June 2009.

It’s because my contract just entered the 3 months period and initially was told on the phone that I am eligible to upgrade then on the 2nd call the person said sorry cannot.

I waited patiently for another few more months and comes M1 & Starhub to comes out iPhone 3Gs with EVEN BETTER DEALS!!

Once again I tried to call Singtel, but this time round there seemed to be too occupied to pick up my call as I had waited 20 minutes and no luck.

Then I went to a Holland Village Singtel shop to find out I need to wait until 13 March 2010 (with a top up charge) before I can sign up a new contract with iPhone 3Gs!!

However with the speculation that iPhone 4G might then be out end of 2010 that means I need to wait A WHOLE LOT LONGER to upgrade my iPhone 3Gs to iPhone 4G!

Dear Telco, please give your loyal customers a chance to upgrade to the latest iPhone without stupid restriction, you can simply extend our contract period with the stipulated numbers of years or you risk losing the customer to a competitor who have nothing to lose.

Currently M1 offering rebates over 12 months period that may cover the termination penalty of $800+ bucks & of course not to mention cheaper deals with bigger data limit.

It’s obvious why Singtel is offering existing customer to a better deal of 12 GB data & a $30 data cap but the lure of a faster iPhone 3Gs & video camera functionality is also what customers are looking for.

Apparently, these companies still using the old but “proven” formula to practice their business by tying people into long contracts.

If I am to have controls over these companies, I will force them to be consumer friendly & ever forward thinking instead.

The following is what I will do

1. subcontract their call center to other countries based on their languages preferences, Chinese goes Taiwan or China, English goes India or other English speaking countries that is cheaper
2. Increase numbers of hours for call center to 24 hours a day 7 days a week
3. VOIP all call centers to be over the internet like SKYPE calls to computers instead of over the telephone network to save on telephone cost for consumers
4. Hire over 50 twitter customer relationship officers to reply to customer complaints or queries over twitter, using the search option – makes sure they know their telco short form names such as SinTel or SinkTel or ST
5. Allow existing customers to buy new iPhone 3Gs at real retail prices with NO PLANs instead of allowing outside retails to charge super high prices

The reason I am saying the above is because in the fast modern world, nobody will wait for you especially in the technology sector.

If you cannot sell hardware on demand, you lose customer…equal you lose them forever.

Singtel Offer Upgrade My iPhone 3G plans for Free!

Yesterday night, I had a revelation about switching my telco from Singtel to M1 and wrote an email to Singtel about my intentions.

I wrote about how the new telco plans are so much cheaper and the potential savings I can get if I ever switch over and get a new iPhone 3Gs Plus higher data usage of 10GB vs my 512MB limit.

This morning I get an SMS from my telco Singtel as shown below.

I was like, OMG Singtel response really quick! It’s like they had set up a war room to reply all inquiries and emails with immediate counter offer!

Well, I am not sure if you have the same SMS on your iPhone 3G but this means I do not need to terminate my existing plans on my iPhone 3G that potentially cost me SGD$856 early termination fees quoted from Singtel website.

For new customers who terminate within the three month minimum subscription period, three months’ list price on the respective price plans plus an $856 equipment penalty will still apply.

For terminations after the minimum three months subscription period, the $856 equipment penalty will apply. For existing customers who terminate at anytime within the contract period, the $856 equipment penalty will apply.

However that means I won’t be able to upgrade my iPhone 3G to a more advanced iPhone 3Gs with video recording capabilities & faster processors to run bigger applications.

Now, it’s a tough decision time…maybe I need to ask more questions about possibility of upgrading my iPhone 3G to 3Gs hardware TOGETHER with the FREE iPhone Plan upgrade!

Of course by paying for a new hardware minus the cost of the old iPhone 3G trade in.

Am I asking for too much?

Tonight Who Can Join Me See Meteor Shower? 3am – 5am

According to a forum I found and many other news, there will be a Leonids Meteor Shower appearing in the wee early morning of tomorrow 3am to 5am. (Tonight after midnight)

Singapore Science Center got event planned for this too at Japanese Garden, if you interested also can check it out.

I will be planning to watch it either at the Multistory car park rooftop near at block 395A bukit batok west avenue 5.

View Larger Map

Anyone interested to watch it do tweet me at @simontay78 NOW!

Things to bring

1. Your jacket since it will be cold in the night
2. Binoculars or Telescope
3. Good Camera with wide angle lens (I don’t have one so I’m sad)
4. Good video camera with battery fully charged
5. Umbrella…brella brella brella yeh yeh yeh
6. Newspaper to sit on the floor or mat to lie
7. Own beverages or breakfast
8. Perfume or cologne since may go to work direct

Sleep earlier tonight and wake up to come if you want.

2012 (2009) Ultimate Movie Review

Yes, the ultimate disaster movie is on the movie screen in Singapore today! Yes! I managed to book the ticket early at a later time of 9.45pm on a Thursday night even thou I know it’s a 2 hours & 30+ minutes movie. It’s worth EVERY PENNY that I had paid for the extra $1 online booking fees, the $17 taxi ride home and the $4.5 PC lan game I played while waiting 2 hours for the movie to start. Not to mention the popcorn & lemon tea combo & the KFC dinner that I could have avoided for a cheap meal.

Eagerly I waited outside the theater 15 minutes before the theater 3 was ready for us to enter and I can see lot’s of people holding on to their tickets with fire in their eyes almost wanting to peel the skin of the guy guarding the entrance. (A scene hard to forget too)

The moment the theater 3 light flashed we rushed towards the poor guy with outstretched hand to “tear the tickets” and rushed into the entrance like mad.

Strangely the popcorn booth is inside the entrance and I managed to buy the popcorn (sweet) combo & a non-fizzy drink and enter the theater by then is almost half filled.

I placed my popcorn & drinks onto my seat L10 and proceed quickly to the toilet in the theater knowing it will be a LONG movie and need to relieve myself before the start of the movie.

The movie have few normal commercials but I know everyone just too happy to be inside this theater to even care about the commercials, strangely I can’t remember if there is any trailers AT ALL! I don’t remember seeing any!

hahaha It was like as thou the cinema operators knew we won’t even want to watch other movie trailers and started the crisp digital theater THX sound test with effective vibration on my legs. (Cinema at Cathay Orchard)

The movie finally started………

ONE WORD! “AWESOME!”

Here come the review, the cast are excellent…the dialogues are engaging, the acting 1st class and the effects….MAN!! The effects BLOWN ME AWAY! I seldom cry at awesomeness but this movie’s special effects just convinced my tear ducts that it’s OK to cry ….it’s the end of the world after all.

I will not go into details about the plots & what happened but I may start on the theory about the movie.

If you google the word “2012″ you might get lot’s of details that might or might not appear in the movie but as you know there are lot’s of scientific theories or even documentaries to tell us the world is about to end and it all coincides on the year 2012.

One such webby is the wikipedia which gave all details possible to form almost a “convincing truth” about our coming future.

The official movie website too is filled with all kinds of music, trailers, information and even iPhone Applications!

This movie is for the theater experience and not for the torrents, it’s best watched on high definition digital theaters with loud …I mean LOUD theaters

All I can say now is go watch it and book early since after today’s 1st wave of “enlightened” movie goers, I can safely bet tomorrow’s viewers will be snapping up the tickets way earlier with online booking!

I give this movie a 10 stars over 10 stars for entertainment, special effects, background research on this 2012 phenomenal.

Luckily this is just a movie…but what comes next in the next 3 years is up to you. Just say your prayers.

The Chain Mail That Touched Me :D

Today going to share with you a chain mail story sent by Renyang, I don’t have the intention to spread this as a chain letter but just to share a touching story.

I will remove the part where you need to send to your friends and love ones part.

Here goes,

UNEMPLOYED GRADUATE:

An unemployed graduate woke up one morning and checked his pocket. All he had left was $10. He decided to use it to buy food and then wait for death as he was too proud to go begging.

He was frustrated as he could find no job, and nobody was ready to help him.

He bought food and as he sat down to eat, an old man and two little children came along and asked him to help them with food as they had not eaten for almost a week.

He looked at them. They were so lean that he could see their bones coming out. Their eyes had gone into the socket. With the last bit of compa ssion he had, he gave them the food.

The old man and children prayed that God would bless and prosper him and then gave him a very old coin. The young graduate said to them ‘you need the prayer more than I do’.

With no money, no job, no food, the young graduate went under the bridge to rest and wait for death. As he was about to sleep, he saw an old newspaper on the ground.

He picked it up, and suddenly he saw an advertisement for people with old coins to come to a certain address.

He decided to go there with the old coin the old man gave him. On getting to the place, he gave the proprietor the coin. The proprietor screamed, brought out a big book and showed the young graduate a photograph.

This same old coin was worth 3 million dollars. The young graduate was overjoyed as the proprietor gave him a bank draft for 3 million dollars within an hour. He collected the Bank Draft and went in search of the old man and little children..

By the time he got to where he left them eating, they had gone. He asked the owner of the canteen if he knew them.. He said no but they left a note for you. He quickly opened the note thinking it would lead him to find them.

This is what the note said: ‘You gave us your all and we have rewarded you back with the coin,’ signed God the Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost. 1 Kings 17:10-16; Matthew 11:28-30

PRAYER:
Here is your financial blessing! It’s a simple prayer, you’ve got 30 seconds. If you need a financial blessing,continue reading this e-mail.

Heavenly Father, most Gracious and Loving God, I pray to you that you abundantly Bless my family and me. I know that you recognize, that a family is more than just a mother, father, sister, brother husband and wife, but all Who believe a nd trust in you.

Amen

p.s. I’m not a Christian but the story is very very touching for me as I had once been unemployed with only $12 on me and I did strike lottery 1st prize with the number 2178 with that last bit of money.

The Google Story

Description:“A (very) quick look back at the Google story over the last 11 years. From Stanford to Mountain View and around the world, featuring many different products, starting with BackRub (Search) up to Google Wave, StreetView and Chrome.”

I believe this is one of the most fascinating company other then Twitter & Facebook, their successes with each milestone are not without failures of many small experimental projects that did not do well but they stick with their never say die attitude and focus on their core business of providing a elegant way to use the internet by providing the users a nice & clean search database that makes a lot of sense.

Their development from initially a small search engine to a major competitor against other search engines, email services, video sharing services, blogging, advertising, mobile OS to future cloud computing with Chrome OS in the future may means one day Google will be everywhere in your everyday life.

I do wish they can stick to their “Do no evil” mantra so that we can continue to support this great company while Google give us the users the benefits for supporting them.

All in all I wish Google best of luck & continue to be successful in the future in cooperation with other successful companies or up and coming mini explosive company such as Twitter.

My thoughts about money…hmmm

There was saying life isn’t about money but you cannot live without paying the bills hence cannot go without $_$.

We grow up educated from day one to study hard and one day get a stable job and earn $$ to pay for doodads such as a nice house, a family car and if possible all the techno gadget ever invented (LOL).

However, by studying the origin of money and how money is being created out of thin air by the banks by printing pieces of paper by the government as bonds and selling the bonds as an assets, subsequently the money acquired are loaned out to individuals and interest are collected on top of the money returned hence creating new money out of thin air.

Knowing that money are created out of nothing that means everyone too can create money…out of thin air! Of course it’s up to us how to do it legally…

Some options are laid out in the table…here’s some

• Work our asses off and get paid a monthly salary
• Become a entrepreneur and work our assess off too…and with some risk & returns hopefully get profitable by 6 months into the business
• Invest some savings into high risk high return investments and with some good luck get high returns but easily turn south
• Own multiple businesses that already working fine but cost lot’s to invest to get significant returns
• Rent out properties that you own and reap the rewards after the house get fully paid but high risk of volatile property market
• Do all of the above….

Well, time are bad and everything have risk and could potentially turn sour in moment’s notice. For example my dad actually loss some money in the stocks as he was misled by other “retirees” to buy risky investment “contra” without knowing English and the risk involved and got burned when the stock got halted suddenly, luckily the stock was not suspended otherwise my house will be sold by now to repay the heavy debts incurred.

My dad is one fine examples of not knowing the proper knowledge before following the sheep in front straight into the slaughter house bringing the whole family down with him…

Well, what is life? Life is about enjoyment, freedom and healthy to enjoy life daily…if you are super rich but very very stressed & unhealthy to enjoy the life ….there are no point…imagine a millionaire that have not real friends or love and got very sick from all the unhealthy food & bad liver from entertaining clients using expensive alcohol.

Enlightenment is to live life happy even without much money and be contented with “sufficient” money to survive but human always have many sins of Pride, Vanity, Gluttony, Greed, Laziness, Jealousy and many more to push us away from the path of happiness.

To get money we have to be generous with money, to give before we can take…not be stingy and never complain about money. Don’t compare yourself with others and stay away from people who does, peer pressure to get more and more expensive doodads using future money like credit cards are totally idiots that enslave themselves with debts.

Good debts are debts that can potentially used to earn more money with at least above 60% chances of success and some effort must be taken to study & plan carefully each step into the debts usage & investment into the business.

Love & be love, spend within your means and if your love ones don’t understand that theory…he/she don’t really sincerely love you but love your “ability” to spend. Real friends don’t ask for treats, they offer to treat first instead.

Honesty is the best policy when dealing with money, never lie. Once trust are broken in any way it’s very hard to mend back, even family members can be broken up when trust are broken on money issues. “Once Bitten, Twice Shy”

Be aware of all information regards to the investments you going into and analyze all possible scenarios from the best case to the worst case and decide how much risk involved and potential returns before making a decision.

Don’t put all eggs into one single basket, it’s like using all your savings buying a single lottery ticket that can potentially goes horribly wrong.

Diversify your money into many ways and when possible save as much money as possible to reinvest into something that can make money.

Motivation is required to take actions and such motivations can be boosted by goals or desire achievement set for the future.

Always take action first and correct the mistakes later, the worst you can get is not even trying.

I heard a phrase by some successful person “The secret of success is never fear of making mistakes, in fact make as much mistakes as possible…it’s better then making no mistakes by not trying out new ways to be successful”

All above are from books & audio tapes and I thought I will write them them down for reference for myself and maybe someone may find it useful.

iMovie 9 is Great!

Today I had found out that iMovie 9 is one of the easiest way to make short videos for youtube which previously way harder for me.

Previously I need to retake many times to get the best 1 take but now I can slice & dice multiple scenes together & even put a video into a video!

The best part is the ability to put in a green screen! HOLY! That’s usually reserved for higher end video editing software but now come bundled into iMovie in my new Mac mini!

This is what I really need for my iPhone Application Review site at appleappreview.com

But first I need a few studio equipment setup for my green screen to work

I need

1. Green shower curtain or green plastic sheets (If you know where to get one in Singapore let me know)
2. Diffused gentle lights x 02 for the green screen
3. Gentle lights on the subject in front of the green screen (e.g. me?)

Maybe time to visit Ikea again!! LOL