The Curse of the Golden Flower

We went to see The Curse of the Golden Flower tonight. I had high hopes for the movie, since it comes from Zhang Yimou, the same director who made Hero and The House of Flying Daggers.

The short version is: I liked the story, I liked the characters (they were all unique and very well defined), and I loved Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat. That said, I also have to say that it does not hold up to the high standard set by Hero. I can't pinpoint the problem, but I did leave the theater feeling like something was missing.

The one thing that really surprised me was the colors. Instead of the strong color theming I've come to associate with Zhang Yimou, Curse of the Golden Flower had this lollipop rainbow swirl thing going on which I found rather distracting.

Two final points: I liked the pomp and circumstance and the sheer spectacle of it, and I found the underlying message of the movie rather novel, cynical as it may be -- power is everything.

It's just too darn bad that watching this movie is like eating a great meal where you're still hungry when you're done. 3/5 - worth renting.

SecurityManager Woes

*grrr*

Charity and I decided to set up a website for our wedding that our guests could use to RSVP. It's all very basic stuff and I pretty much had it up and running without too much problems... Until I tried to deploy it.

That's when I ran right into Java's SecurityManager. The web hosting provider we're using runs Tomcat with security enabled, which makes sense, but it's something I've never had to deal with in the past.

I've been banging my head against the wall for a few days now and it looks like I finally have everything working. My three biggest problems were/are:

• Figuring out how to grant the webapp permission to read files that are inside a JAR (e.g. with a URI of "jar:file:/path/to/jar.jar!/file"). Nothing I do seems to work, and my current solution is to just expand the jar file.
• Apparently OGNL implements its own security checks if you're running with a SecurityManager, and you need to grant special OGNL-specific permissions if you want it to work. Since my provider is loath to grant new permissions, my solution was to just fool OGNL into thinking that there is no SecurityManager by implementing a ServletContextListener that calls OgnlRuntime.setSecurityManager(null).
• Figuring out how to use Log4J with the SMTPAppender. Haven't had time to dig through the source, so I decided not to use it instead.

These aren't solutions so much as dirty hacks to side step the SecurityManager. It just shouldn't be this hard...

The Producers

Flew from NYC to Boston today to join Charity since her family had decided to spend Christmas at her brother's place.

Of course I couldn't leave NY without watching something on Broadway, so I went to see The Producers last night, with Tony Danza playing Bialystock. I'd seen the movie first, so I was constantly comparing Tony Danza to Nathan Lane. I prefer Nathan Lane; Tony just didn't seem all that comfortable on the stage, looking a little too rehearsed. That aside however, I did enjoy the production. I especially liked the actors playing Ulla (her accent was perfect!) and Carmen Ghia (totally hilarious exits).

As an added bonus, I got to meet Liza Minelli. My mom recognized her first in the lobby, and we went up and shook her hand. She was nice!

Made Out Like a Bandit!

Woo-hoo!

Had lunchner (there really needs to be a word for a combination of lunch that goes into dinner) with the extended Woon gang and had a blast. I'd brought my Wii with me and I think it's safe to say that we had a ton of fun playing with it. Benjamin and Kingsley were both complaining of sore muscles afterwards...

I made out like a bandit when it came time to open the presents: two more Wii remotes and nun-chucks, along with Rayman: Raving Rabbids and Metal Slug Anthology.

We ended the night with a Scrabble match with my mom, Jeanne and George, and wonder of wonders, both George and I finally beat my mom! My win was mainly due to an early seven-letter word (hothead). George took second place, a mere two points behind me.

It's been a good day.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

I'm back in NY/NJ with my family this year. I'm in complete disarray as far as my gift giving plans go since not all my gifts have arrived (one of the perils of buying online) and of those that have arrived, I seem to have managed to leave them back home in CA. *sigh*

Quote of the Day

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
 - Charles McCabe

Wii Games

Emily threw a gaming party last Sunday and I brought along my Wii. Because I'd only bought single player games, I decided to sign up with Gamefly so that I could rent a couple multiplayer games. So far, the service has been pretty good - I received Rayman Raving Rabbids and Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz within two days.

I know Super Monkey Ball has been pretty popular on the GameCube, but I really didn't have much fun with it on the Wii. Most of the games just lasted too long and didn't necessarily use the controllers optimally.

Raving Rabbids, on the other hand, was a blast! All the games were pretty fun, and even the few weak ones were at least amusing to watch. For example, there really isn't much to jumping rope (you just shake the nunchuck to jump), but when you have rabbids popping up and screaming in an effort to distract you, you just have to laugh.

I sent Super Monkey Ball back to Gamefly on Monday. Let's see what their turn around time is. With luck, I should have a new game to try out by Friday.

In the mean time, I'll be playing Twilight Princess whenever I get a chance. I've always liked the Zelda games, and this one is proving to be pretty fun as well.

The other game I have is Trauma Center: Second Opinion, which is... interesting. The surgery bits are a little campy and the storyline is "very Japanese" (to quote Scott), but I've only played it for a little bit at the party and haven't made up my mind about it yet.

New Toys

In addition to the new TV, I've acquired a couple new toys as well: a Wii and a DS Lite. I'm hoping that the new gameplay options on the Wii will be fun enough to tempt non-gamers like Charity into playing...

Now all I need are some games! I only picked up The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii, but the options are limited at the moment. I'm considering signing up with GameFly (a Netflix for games) so that I can try out a bunch of different games.