Listening to Destiny by Zero 7. I love this song, although it's about a girl singing about breaking up with her boyfriend. The singer sings that "we are each other's destiny", and the music is so dreamy and haunting.

Movie review time.

Blue Crush I love surf movies. I grew up in Hawaii, and watched surf movies constantly. The surfing shots are great! The story line is so so. It's supposed to be a girl power movie, but it gets spoiled by some contrived love story in the middle. I thought the story fell apart after the main girl and the friend had the fight after the jet ski thing, and she runs into the arms of the quarterback. Not sure if it was the actress' fault because she couldn't convey enough emotions or the writing or the director's fault. The pro football quarterback love story for me, kind of took away from the girl's story. Too much of them flirting and not enough of her fighting to overcome her fear.

What worked was how they showed her having flashbacks of her accident every time she surfed. Also, depiction of surfing life and guys skateboarding was very authentic. Strange how it's all still like I remembered it. Things in Hawaii never seem to change. The music was great and also authentic with the reggae and rap/hip hop. Not enough Hawaiian music though which is off, because surf culture is into all things Hawaiian including the music. Also authentic were how some of the locals feel about tourists in Hawaii.

There is a lot of racial tension between locals in Hawaii and the tourists, especially the white tourists. I remember growing up and hearing about some murder spree in Honolulu in the late 70's called "Kill Haole Day". Haole is hawaiian for white person. My cousin is the assistant DA on the island of Kauai, and she was filling me on the few tourist murders that never get reported in the press. The press don't want to scare away the tourists, but yes tensions between white tourists and the locals is there, although very few incidents lead to actual murder. The condom scene was hilarious, because to most girls, condoms are so darn spooky and gross!!!

Some off things. The girls came across as really stupid! How can you have a girl power movie and have stupid chicks! No one had authentic Island accents except the boss lady at the hotel, and the surfer boys. Supposedly one of the girls was a local, but she hardly spoke so I couldn't figure out whether her accent was good or not. The main actress looked way too nice. The real surfer girl at the end is how surfer girls really look - sunburned and old and full of scars from falling on reefs. No real surf girls wear skimpy bikinis to surf. Those things would come off when they're tumbling in a wave. Getting wiped out in a wave was very authentic, haven't done it lots of times myself.

NY Times review touched on this a little, but surfing for girls in Hawaii is like skateboarding was for the kids in Dogtown and Zboys. Only girls from the bottom rungs of the economic scale surf in Hawaii. It's a class thing. Film showed it, but didn't really go into detail. I mean, you could kind of tell that the girls and the surfer boys were all from broken down, poor homes. Surfing and getting famous for it for those kids is a way out of their economic hell hole, like sports is for minority/poor kids.

Because the film didn't really go into it, surfing for girls comes across as this glamorous type thing to girls not from Hawaii. But sadly when I was there and I think till today in Hawaii, like my mother used to say, "girls from good families don't surf." For boys though, it's a different story. In other words, the film glamorized the world of women's surfing for anyone outside of Hawaii. Also, not enough drugs. Surfing and skateboarding is a drug culture, except for those christain surfer types. I think there should have been more people smoking marijuana, drinking beer, etc, but maybe that's just me.

Other than that though, great photography of the banzai pipeline on the north shore of Oahu and surfing, and for me the movie was worth seeing just for that.

13 Conversations about One Thing I liked how all the characters lives intersected and interweaved, but thought the movie in the end seemed shallow somehow and rather depressing. I don't see the movie playing well across the country, and didn't stay long in the top movie houses here. There was such a big missing in the film, and for me it was faith. None of the people in the movie had faith, or seemed to have faith in anything but themselves. I found the characters hard to relate to because of that. I don't know how people go through life without sme kind of faith. How do they get through life when bad things happen to them, or when good things happen to them? I can't imagine.

I think what the film tried to do, as one reviewer put it, was to show in a literary way the movements of a person's soul. But how do you show that without showing what they believe in? I thnk that the movie tried to show how life is random and that sometimes you don't have control over it, but in the end the conclusions the film reaches left me feeling deflated, and thinking interesting movie, but not very enlightening for me on what is to be human and to live in a world that could change at any moment.

I didn't see alot of humor in the movie, which is odd, since I think humor is necessary for survival. It made me wonder that if the characters in 13 conversations just laughed more and didn't take life so seriously, maybe they wouldn't be so damned depressed about life. Perhaps this movie is a lesson on what happens to people who totally bought into the enlightenment's premise that we live in a rational world of science and reason, where there is no god. See what kind of life you'll likely to be leading if you give up god and your faith.

Minority Report Philip K. Dick is a genius. I need to read his stories. That man's mind goes further than mine will ever go in my lifetime. Compared to 13 Conversations, Minority Report was the better movie for enlightening an audience of what it's like to be human and to live in the world that we live in. First, the world the film makers created for 2056 was just amazing. The only bothersome thing was the ad placement. As if Gap is going to be around in 2056, and Lexus and Aquafina for that matter. Yeah right! Gap has the butt ugliest clothes, and their stock prices shows how far they've fallen in fashion favour. Second, the plot was great and really kept you guessing. I hate plots that I can figure out right away. Tom Cruise gave a great performance, probably his best since playing Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July.

Philip Dick's story shows such a deep understanding of the human need to love, for revenge, for power, and for good. And he shows it through an action filled story. The ending was fulfilling, and left me marvelling at Dick's storytelling ability. You see how low people will sink to further their cause, and what's worse, as an audience you totally understand how they could have done it. Dick plumbs the depths of human depravity and how much a person will do to achieve what he/she thinks is right. What is that saying, more crimes are committed in the cause of righteousness and good.

I also loved the precogs too. I'm supposed to have some precognitive ability, and it's sometimes such a burden. I pick up impressions of people, and it shows up like someone dropping information in my head. Most of the time I freak out, and I don't pay attention to them, but I do remember them. But it's not long before I find out that my impressions are true. I don't pick up future events instantly like pecogs, but just whiffs of what people are like and a general feeling about their future. My impressions are never wrong either. I only pick impressions up if I think about doing it or if they're so strong that I can't ignore them.

I get depressed sometimes, especially if pick up a general feeling about somebody's future. I hate when I do that. No one should have the right to know anyone's future, and I believe that the future is always changable anyway, so what I'm picking up is just a point in time impression. In a month, that person's future could change depending on what choices they make.

I wish I had Philip K. Dick's deep thinking mind. It would make the writing thing much easier for me. Dick's story blew me away. There are very few stories that blow me away like this. In the last few years, the only the movies that blew me away were: Signs, Bulworth, The Matrix, Gattaca, What Dreams May Come, and The Truman Show. At least, that's all the movies I can think of right now.