i just got back from seeing equilibrium at the revere theatre. alex huang first told me about it a few nights ago when he came by to get some director help. he had already seen it, i watched the trailer online based on his recommendation. it looked interesting enough, with big enough stars like christian bale and taye diggs, it was just strange that i haven't heard about this movie before, a science fiction action film, which is the kind of movies i normally go for. it was a spur of the moment decision, after i showed alex wong the trailer (he was over tonight trying to fix my router problem), he checked the movie times and said we should go see it tonight. you have to understand that alex is a creature of habit, so it was surprising to hear him make such a spontaneous suggestion. never one to shy away from adventure, i said yes, and an hour later we were at the revere cinema, one of the few places that was playing this limited release film.

in a nutshell, the story takes place in the near future where after WWIII, a new society is created that abolishes human emotions because it leads to bad things such as wars. in order to help people cope with their feelings, the population regularly takes scheduled drug injections that inhibits their emotions. there are also these elite trained defenders of this new order (called "clerics"), kind of like super cops, that go out and destroy anything that might make people feel, things like books, or works of art, or music, or criminals guilty of "sense" crimes. john preston (christian bale) is a cleric who one day starts feeling and the movie is about how he revolts against the status quo. the premise is very interesting, shades of 1984, fahrenheit 451, gattaca, and matrix, a real thinking man's scifi film. but guess what? it's got action too! i wouldn't say it's an action film, but the few action sequences in the movie made the hairs on my arms stand up, made me hold my breath from the rush of adrenaline, got me to exhale with a "wow" afterwards! the movie introduces this interesting fighting style called gunkata, to put it bluntly, the art of bullet dodging through the studies of trajectory, kind of like a crazy form of taichi. if you need an action fix like the first time you saw matrix or crouching tiger hidden dragon, you need to see this movie! it's a shame the studio isn't promoting the film at all.

the rest of today, working in my bedroom on the pc, sometimes listening to the radio, other time watching some tv. when it got dark, i vacuumed the house a little bit, because my sister was bringing over her architect friend deric over to show him my place. he'd seen it once before when i first bought it, gave me some ideas on what i could do (adding a coat closet, wheree to put recessed lights). my father stopped by briefly to bring back the mini rice cooker that broke but he fixed. at 7pm my sister showed up, but without deric, who was supposed to come here in his own. alex wong dropped by with a bagful of ethernet cables, reams of printing paper, and a netgear ethernet hub to test my router with. close to 8pm and with deric a no show, my sister left. alex continued to help me test my internet setup, tapping into my connection with his packet sniffer, showing me how he could see my passwords and read my e-mails. we connected the hub between the cablemodem and the router, and so far so good, it's still working, 5 hours later, but my ip number has annoyingly remained the same. i need it to change, and i need the router to automatically grab a new number, in order to know that everything's working. tomorrow morning i should be able to find out for sure.