WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING (with Sandra Bullock)

What's special about that movie WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: What I especially like about that movie is that it often talks without speaking.

Of course the instrumental parts (issit orchestra ?) belong to this, above average music orchestra painting at timelines in the movie that would feel naked otherwise. And the first interesting thing about the music score is that the empty road is not filled with JUST music but with a music landscape of hills and valleys, i.e. changing emotions.

And then there is also the second interesting means of emotion paiting in this movie and that is the face of Lucy (and also the faces of other people in the movie): Lucy (Sandra Bullock) arrives at the house of Peter's family and at first you neither see the car nor see Lucy. However you hear the music painting, painting a balanced landscape but as the car gets closer to the house the music rises its emotions and paints some nervousness into the landsacpe. Lucy's face exactly matches this nervousness, these mixed emotions, but it also shows her inner balance at the same time.

Before the taxi came into view, the music painting had already started on just the empty road. I actually wondered then why there was emotion in the music when there was just an empty road visible. But then I understood as the taxi came into view: The music had described Lucy's emotions even though she was not yet visible.

Very sophisticated music painting - or more exactly - skillful timing. Such skillful painting can not be found every day.

And also funny: Lucy's feelings are like layers: There is the basic calm layer of her character shining through and then there is the HOW-TO-DEAL-WITH-THIS-SITUATION layer of emotions on top that shows her doubts and nervouseness.

Her face talks and the music paints a supporting landsacpe and no words are necessary to make the audience understand what's going on. That's what I mean when I say this movie is talking without speaking.

There are many other examples in this movie where there are no words wasted. It's so great that the silence, the music and the faces (Lucy's face) are speaking so nicely in this movie.

Making "THE LAKE HOUSE" work

I like that movie THE LAKE HOUSE from 2006 with Keanu Reaves and Sandra Bullock.

I like it more than the original Korean movie from 2000 - see IMDB.COM for that plot: http://imdb.com/title/tt0282599/plotsummary , entitled Il Mare (International: English title), Si Wall Ae (South Korean title).

However, the timeline does not seem to work. So, I now wonna try to make things work and since pictures = actions overrule words in real life, the movie picture frames shall reign before the spoken text, too. What I mean by this will probably become clearer later on.

My date selection appears in green.
Essential must-be-correct movie chosen dates appear in red.
Wrong movie dates appear in light grey.

Explanations are given to justify the chosen date.

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2002-01-05 (2004-04-14 Wrong movie date in trailer)
Alex gets to know Kate through the mail box

Explanation: Alex moves into the lake house in winter. It can not be in April of that year ! It snows again in April but that's not the time when Alex moves into the lake house. Alex and Kate exchange mails already when Kate warns him to beware of the upcomming April snow fall of that year.

2002-02-14 Valentine's day
2002-04-05 Second snow fall of the year, return of winter, red scarf

2003-02-13 Alex asks Kate to have a date in two years' time in 2005 on Valentine's day.
2003-02-14 Valentine's day

2004-01-05 Time span two years: Kate gets to know Alex through the mail box

2004-02-14 Valentine's day

2005-02-14 Valentine's day: Alex asks his brother about the date of the day (wrong answer in movie is: 2006-02-14). Alex dies on this day.
Kate waits for Alex in the restaurant in the evening but he doesn't show up (since he died that afternoon).

2006-02-14 Kate visits Visonary Vanguard (the company of Alex and his brother) together with her fiancée to talk about the interior design of their new apartment. During their talk she learns that Alex died (wrong time span: two years ago - one year ago - in the afternoon).

She then drives to the lake house and warns Alex through the mail box. Alex receives the warning in 2004 (one year before his actual death). He has enough time to avoid the accident. He receives the warning in 2004 because two years is the time span that their messages are seperated by.

It is neither necessary nor logical to also apply the two years' time span to Alex' date of death: The two year time span just applies to the time span of the messages.

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The movie came out in 2006, so 2006-02-14 sounds plausible. The above timeline is preliminary and subject to improvment.-

About the the death of the winning Blue Ray Disc

In my point of view, the Blue Ray Disc is actually dead. The movies in Germany are still too expensive.

NEC, Microsoft, Toshiba, Intel, IBM und Hewlett Packard had formed the HD-consortium to promote the HD standard.

The all deceisive question however is: Why should one buy a mechanical disc with a movie or software on it when all stuff could actually better be stored on a USB-stick ? Since the 8 GB sticks are out and other non-mechanical memory devices surely on their way, why should one use an antique mechanical disc system ?

The only reason seems to be for copy protection purposes. I wonder if that is a sufficient reason to become a successful product ?

Maybe a small company who builds a copy protection into a USB stick will be the final winner ? If I were in electronics, I'd bet on that.

About a BBC documentary about Nano robots by Nick Green from 2004

Preliminary statement: I assume that journalists are always under pressure to make a story look interesting, even more interesting than it would actually appear to the majority of spectators (if they came across the subject themselves).

The documentry: In 2004, BBC aired a documentary on TV about the dangers of nano robots and the threatening end of the miniaturization of electronic devices, referred to as "the end of Moore's law" (see Wikipedia.com for details).

My statement about this documentary: The way that Nick Green builds up an apocalypic tension in that documentary saying (among other things) that "the end of Moore's law will bring our economic progress to a halt" and finally destroy our industrial civilization is at best provocative and at worst absolutely nonsense.

Everyone with a slightly clear mind will accept that indeed the miniaturization will come to a halt one day because at the size of the atom level it might not be possible to further miniaturize electronic devices.

However, the conclusions that Nick Green draws from this are pretty much outrageous and rediculous.

Nick Green elaborates that when this happens, companies will not be able to make any more profits.

I can only assume what his funny trails of thoughts want to express by this statement: If he wants to say that companies will not be able to continue competition due to this, I would suggest that he interviews some company leaders who sell products in a saturated market (because that's a similar situation):

It seems that Nick Green takes the view that only competition due to technical innovation let's a company go ahead of the other and therefore gain them a temporary winning margin which delivers them the gains that they need to survive the battle.

Wait: I tell Nick Green a secret: If that was true, our world would have stopped long ago: One thing is clear, if there is no technical progress in a certain sector with mass products such as e.g. butter there must be other mechanisms at work as reality shows us every day. So, how can those companies survive ??

Well, it's rediculous being forced to answer that question, I actually feel like an idiot: In short I could say: The company with the better management will succeed the economic battle.

But, all right, I give some more ideas: The company with the higher marketing budget will probably gain an advantage (and the battle), the company with the cooler packaging design will win the battle, the company with the better sales personal will win the battle, the company with the better milk buying agents who get a better milk prize will win the battle and so on and so on and so on.

And what about the end customer: Will he suffer from the lack in technological progress in the production of butter or even computers and electronic devices ??

Answer: Of course not, as log as you don't take the butter or the computer away from him: The end customer still can do wonderful things with the butter of a hundred years or a computer - e.g. writing better articles than other authors against stupid documentaries such as the one by Nick Green.

And by the way, there will be technological progress in other areas so there is always hope.

End note: Thank you BBC for all the other great documentaries.-

Movies with a wrong ending

Witness (Harrison Ford)

• One day of love can be enough for a lifetime.
• The presence of Mr. Hochleitner is superfluous.
• Some people might find it reasonable to accept the advances of a Mr. Hochleitner (a 'friend of the family') at last, however that idea seems strange to me.

Million Dollar Baby

The "Million Dollar Baby" depended her life on the cheers of the audience and thought that she was meant.
But she didnt know that the audience cheered another boxer the next evening and a year later nobody thought about her anymore.

Nobody loved her and she was loved by nobody. Somebody read her some literature. But he didnt teach her love cause he didnt know love himself.When she was laying down handicaped in her hospital bed she thought that she was dead. But in fact it was the only time when she had the chance to become alive. But she didnt know and nobody told her.

There she had the chance to forget about the physical and awake her mind. Instead she killed her body and thereby killed her mind, too.

She was full of self-pity and fear that people would forget about her. And she was right. 'Cause the qualities that she had gained in the gym were exchangable.

She never discovered the human inside herself. And her trainer neither. She never discovered the love inside herself. Neither did her trainer.

She never realized that there was a flower growing in the sun and never let her thoughts strive in the clouds of the Himalaya. She never saw a child dying in Africa and never smiled at the soul of her clients in the restaurant.She defined her happiness by the physical qualities that she had gained in the gym.

She never discovered the beauty within her physical body.

And never realized that some people smiled at her soul. Mother Theresa was in the restaurant more than once and she didn't realize.

The "Million Dollar Baby" had a dream to become someone famous and when she had almost succeeded she had an accident and had to realize that she could not HAVE her dream fullfilled anymore.

So she decided to die cause she couldn't HAVE anymore, she would just be able to BE.

But she wasn't satisfied with just BEING.

She didnt love herself enough for just BEING,
she thought that without HAVING, life was not worth living.

Some of my favourite movies

The Cutting Edge, 1992
Director: Paul Michael Glaser
with D.B. Sweeney, Moira Kelly









Eat drink man woman
(Yin shi nan nu), 1994
Director: Ang Lee
with Yu-Wen Wang, Chien-lien Wu,
Kuei-Mei Yang







The Parole Officer, 2001
Director: John Duigan
with Steve Coogan, Lena Headey





See the IMDB (International movie database) for details.