Findet Nemo Review
Haben wir gerade gestern abend gesehen - der Film ist der HAMMER. :) Wer ihn noch nicht gesehen hat und einfach mal eine super lustige Zeit haben will - geht da rein! Erstes Plus - Kein Rumgesinge! Der Film ist kein Musical, sondern einfach eine absolut lustige Komödie mit total genialen Charakteren, die einem hinterher richtig viel bedeuten - von Crush der 150 Jahre alten Surfer-Schildkröte ("Watch it, I just waxed the shell, dude..."), über Dory, dem sonnig-freundlichen blauen Fisch, die über den ganzen Film hinweg kein Kurzzeitgedächtnis hat ("Uh...hello, who are you?"), über den Anonymen Fischfressern - 3 Haie, die über ihre Sucht nach Fleisch hinwegkommen wollen ("I am a nice shark. i am not a fish-eating machine. If i am to change this image, I must change first myself..."), bis hin zum freundlichen Pelikan, der die Fische vor den dummen Möwen retten will ("Don't make any sudden moves. Jump into my mouth if you want to live..."). Vor allem in der Szene habe ich mich schräggelacht - aber ich will auch nicht zu viel verraten, schaut ihn euch einfach an.
Also gut, der Film kriegt von mir eine 10 - heißt, ich hätte bis zu 10 Euro dafür bezahlt, den Film zu sehen, wenn ich gewusst hätte, wie gut er ist. Nicht ganz so viel wie Matrix III (14), aber trotzdem ein krasses Ergebnis! :)

"Streik"!
Tja, wegen den ganzen Kürzungen an der Bildung "streikt" gerade die FU Berlin, und dazu gehört seit gestern auch der Informatik-Fachbereich, obwohl wir so gut wie keine Kürzungen mitkriegen - [Ironie]schließlich sind wir ja Informatiker, die alle brauchen[/Ironie]. Wobei "Streik" natürlich eine witzige Formulierung ist - die Definition des Wortes ist: gemeinsame Arbeitsniederlegung oder Arbeitseinstellung durch Werktätige eines Wirtschaftszweiges, Betriebes oder Berufs. Tja, äh...wir sind keine Arbeitnehmer, schaden also im Grunde nur uns selbst, wenn wir streiken - das interessiert die Politiker kein bisschen. Wäre vielleicht anders, wenn wir ein paar Autobahnen sperren oder so. :)
Von daher find ich die Idee ziemlich blöde - so müssen wir einfach ziemlich viel ohne Vorlesungen nachholen, und das ist doof. :-/ Jedenfalls habe ich jetzt ziemlich viel Zeit, da erst mal keine Vorlesungen laufen. :)

Post-revolutionary thoughts
Well, after about 7 hours of Matrix goodness and about 4 hours of sleep(I got to bed at around 3am, had to get up about 7am 'cause my class started at 8:15 8-/ ) - I'm tired. :) I'm going to try to keep the following as spoiler-free as I can, but of course you'll probably want to see the movie anyways before you read this. ;-)
I personally LOVED the third movie, I thought it was even better than the second. The movie definetly goes along the lines of the second - lots of action, some more deep things to think about, etc.
I personally feel the three Matrix movies can definetly be compared to the three first Star Wars movies (Episodes IV-VI) - Episode IV was a movie that was completely finished in and of itself, just like Matrix I. It had a pretty clear ending(Death Star is destroyed / Neo is the One), though not as open as Matrix I, but it was revolutionary for its time because of the scale of the world behind the movie, and because of the effects. Now, Empire Strikes Back(Episode V) was a whole different matter. It had an extremely open ending(Han Solo's in carbonite, we just figure out Darth Vader is Luke's father, etc.), and it made Return of the Jedi absolutely necessary, simply to close all the open lines of plot. Well, that's exactly what happened in Return of the Jedi - it was a total grand finale of the war against the Empire, had a very clear ending, etc. Well - that's Matrix: Revolutions in a nutshell, it knits all the loose ends together(ever wonder who that guy is that is being led away when they go to the Merovingian in the second movie?), it has about thirty minutes of incredible battle scenes with hundreds of thousands of Squiddies fighting a hundred Mechs, more Kung Fu. It has an absolutely incredible ending, my jaw dropped at the genius of it. I won't say much, but for those who feel like it, read 2 Corinthians 5:21 for a nice description of what happens.

So...in my movie rating scale (which is basically - how much money would I have paid for the movie if I had known in advance how good it was?) this movie gets a 14. Yup, I really would have paid 14 Euros just to see this movie at the theaters. :) I know I'm crazy...so what? Well, see you later, I'm going to go take a nap. *snore*

Pre-Revolutionary Thoughts

Hi everyone. Well, tonight is the night! LaChelle(from our church), Stephi and I are going to watch The Matrix, Matrix: Reloaded and Matrix: Revolutions(!) all in a row, starting at 6pm, ending at around 2:30am.
I am very interested to see the third one, since I really really enjoyed the second one. Surprisingly, I felt like most people seemed to think the second one wasn't as deep as the first one. I disagree - I felt the second one got (for a secular flick) surprisingly deep into the whole "free will vs. predestination" issue. Here's my take on it:
Morpheus seems to be completely convinced that free will and choice is the A and Z of life - "Everything begins with choice". That's a pretty intense statement, which Morpheus clearly believes with all his heart.
Well, the Merovingian is the counter-pole to that, saying that basically everything is simply "cause and effect". His main point is that there basically is no freedom from that law, and that life is about having power by "owning" all causes, by knowing the "why".
Neo is sort of on neutral ground - I think at the beginning of the movie he's on Morpheus' side, but then after talking to the Architect at the end, he's majorly confused - the machines have been allowing Zion to go on, then be destroyed, for centuries! And each time, the humans and the One believe they have free will - and in a sense they do, it's just there is a higher power - the machines - which is in control in the matters that count.
The movie ends with a huge open question - so how are they going to break this cycle that the machines have set up? How will free will triumph over control? Or will it?
Well, the third movie is "Revolutions" - so my guess is it will. The question still remains - who is in control? There is a key scene in Reloaded where Morpheus says "I do not see coincidence, I see providence. I see purpose." While he says that, you see the "bad luck" of the ship in charge of shutting down the electricity - the bridge just "happens" break during an emergency, and everyone on the ship dies - leading to Trinity having to enter the Matrix, leading to Neo not resetting the system. So basically the movie is saying - Even that bad thing is not an accident and has a purpose! That definetly reminds me of God - who can work "all things together for good" - not meaning all things are good, but that all things are knit together by God for good! So in the end - both Morpheus and the Merovingian are right - we have choice, but there is cause and effect - and purpose.
Anyways, more on Revolutions tomorrow, I'll try not to give anything away though. :-)

Well, finally finished my homework. Man, that was pretty hard, and I'm totally tired. Anyways, just wanted to give a victory shout to end the LONG day: YAWP!!! There we go...
Talk to ya later.

Wow, pretty long weekend. We had a looong brainstorming session on Saturday that was really cool and we came up with quite a few thoughts and ideas. Anways, now it's time to start homework, I need to compare a mergesort algorithm with an m-mergesort algorithm. Whoopee. :)