Yay! Today I received a package in my mailbox from my dear friend Susanne. Yi-Jia Susanne Hou is a Canadian concert violinist that I met online a little over three years ago and have been friends with ever since. Enclosed in the package was her second CD called Fantasy, personally signed of course ;). I […]

Now that the latest update of iTunes (7.4.1) has Album ratings, I thought it was a good idea to see which albums I actually ‘like’ most. They actually made it smart enough to use the average of all the songs as the default rating for an album. Too bad it doesn’t have fractional ratings though.
Anyway… […]

Work in Progress…

Oxygene II - Jean-Michel Jarre
Tubular Bells, Part 1 - Mike Oldfield
Theremin Memories & Chronology 2 (Live @ Solidarnosc) - Jean-Michel Jarre
Secrets & Far Above the Clouds (Live) - Mike Oldfield
After All - Delerium
Venus - Dj Tiësto
Eerste Sneeuw - Jan de Wilde
Ommadawn - Mike Oldfield
Oxygene VIII - Jean-Michel Jarre
Frozen - Madonna
In The Beginning & […]

Yesterday I went to a private showcase of the new album Téo & Téa by Jean Michel Jarre. By sheer coincidence I had been checking up on one of the many Jarre-sites, jarreuk.com, last week when they were offering free tickets for the showcase. Of course I couldn’t say no to this offer, as I’ve […]

Following the success of the petition I started two days ago, I’ve been interviewed today on Radio 1 (Dutch radio station) in the MM-Magazine program. Unfortunately there was less time than expected and the guy representing RTL - the station that broadcasts Formula 1 in the Netherlands - was quite rude and was clearly trying […]

This afternoon I started a petition after somebody gave me the idea on a Formula 1 forum. Yesterday it was the first grand prix Formula 1 of the season in Australia. This year the broadcast rights had been transferred to a new channel here in the Netherlands. Like many others I was hoping the annoying […]

I saw House of Flying Daggers for the first time on the plane from New York to Amsterdam if I remember correctly. It didn’t impress me that much back then probably because I was pretty tired, the sound sucked and the screen was too small ;). Now almost two years later I saw it on […]

“If you don’t follow your dreams, you might as well be a vegetable.” - Burt Monro
The World’s Fastest Indian is one of those inspirational films that warms your heart and shows true humanity shining through. You know… that’s what I generally like about true stories and biographies. They have all the more impact because you […]

A few days ago I watched Lucky Number Slevin, another film noir gangster movie about a guy “Slevin” who is mistaken for someone else and finds himself wrapped in a web of debts, gangsters and personal vendetta’s. The lead roll “Slevin” is surprisingly well played by Josh Hartnett from Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor. […]

Ik blijf hem geniaal vinden :D.

When I watched Inside Man a few days ago, this action-thriller with Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster and Clive Owen pleasantly surprised me. While I was expecting it to be the usual Hollywood bank robbery movie, it turned out to be quite more than that with its unexpected twists and turns and the clever use of […]

Ever wondered if you can go to bed and fall asleep with some iTunes music on the background without having the music play all night long? Ever wondered if you can be woken up by your iTunes music or an internet radio station? Ever wondered if you can do both of this without having your […]

Last Friday it was SKC’s first competition evening of the season. I tried to take some pictures of the games with the Canon Powershot A630 I bought for my sister, but it’s really hard to do in those dark conditions in the hall. If you only use flash and short exposures you get a very […]

Saw a weird but nice movie yesterday: ‘Elephant‘ by director Gus van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, Drugstore Cowboy). The story is about an average American high school, where van Sant follows a number of students literally from room to room. It seems as if there’s no point in filming it all, but it’s […]

Last weekend I did a Lord of the Rings marathon together with a housemate and a friend of his. All three movies - the extended versions! - starting at 2pm and wrapping up at 3 am :P. It was great! Wonderful to see the story unfold in one day without big gaps between the movies. […]

I’m speechless… I had expected ‘Black’ - a 2005 Indian movie about a girl that is both deaf, mute, and blind - to be a good movie based on the ratings, but I didn’t expect it to be this good. I was expecting a tough but beautiful movie that would not really make me feel […]

That’s the English title of a movie I saw this week. Its original Italian title is La Meglio Gioventù. It had been on the top of my movie list since a few weeks, but I didn’t expect it to be a 6 hour movie!!! At first thought that seemed like way too long to hold […]

I was just cleaning some stuff up in my room when I came across a folder with a Lord of the Rings script from The Fellowship of the Ring that I typed out a few years ago after I got the dvd. I don’t even remember why I did this (**rolls eyes**), but that made […]

Time for another I-guess-not-so-weekly movie review ;)… Four movies again: Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement), Collateral, Festen (The Celebration) and Les Invasions Barbares (The Barbarian Invasions)
I was really looking forward to seeing Audrey Tautou from Amélie in another movie again, as I really liked Amélie. Thus I did not hesitate when […]

My room has never been so full of breathing creatures as yesterday evening :P… With eight people (four from our floor plus a boyfriend and three from downstairs) we watched Million Dollar Baby on the big screen. Three on my couch, four on the bed, and one on a chair in front of my door. […]

Well well… My housemate clearly has too much time on his hands. Marijn made his own homemade Onion Cannon… It’s about 1.5 meter long consisting of a 50 cm long and about 15 cm thick PVC tube (the kind of plastic that is used in buildings) being the ‘gas chamber’ with attached to that a […]

I went to my second volleyball training yesterday :). Femke, my housemate convinced me to play volleyball this year, so I subscribed for a year as a training member. I’m not going to do competition until at least January, as that would mean I’d have to play on Friday night’s as well, and I’m not […]

Cool, I just made my Denon DVD player region free. All I had to do was download a file from the internet, burn it on a cd, plug it into my dvd player, have it update the firmware and it was ready to go :). Easy piecy and free ;). Now I can finally watch […]

Two days ago I watched the Hotel Rwanda with my mom and sister. It was a really really nice movie. At several points during the movie the tears were close to welling up.
Hotel Rwanda is about the conflict between the Hutu’s and the Tutsi’s in the early 90’s. It shows how both parties generate more […]

While I was browsing the net this morning, I found a fun IQ test. I thought it was a good way to warm up my brain a bit for the next few hours of studying and then the exam this afternoon… ;)
It’s a pretty tough test with 35 questions taking about 45 minutes (the longer […]

Well well… I might be on TV tomorrow :|. I participated in a speed-dating with 400 other singles here in Leiden today. There’s a TV show called ‘Tegen de Klok’ (Against the Clock) here in which a city or village is challenged to fulfill five assignments. One of these assignments was to bring together 500 […]

Yep… I confess… I have an irresistable and unstoppable hate towards Dutch cinemas.
Here’s a scenario of me going to a Dutch cinema:
0 min: I enter the building.
5 min: I have my ticket.
7 min: I pass by the drinks and food stuff… 3 euro for a normal coke? yuck. And 3 euro for a bag of […]

Yep… I confess… I have an irresistable and unstoppable hate towards Belgian videostores.
Here’s a scenario of me going to a Belgian videostore:
0 min: I enter the store with a list of 5 top movies from my famous **cough** moviedatabase.
1 min: I’m downstairs in the basement of the videostore. I take a look at the first […]

Only one movie last week… I watched it yesterday with Desiree and her boy friend ‘Mouse’.
West Side Story is a 1961 musical about a boy and a girl from two different ‘gangs’ falling in love. This pretty ’sticky’ 20th century version of Romeo and Juliet, surprisingly uses the modern 2.35:1 screen ratio. In the mean […]

What can I say? This is just unbelievable… The Formula 1 grand prix in Indianapolis in the United States started today with 6, I repeat, 6 cars… The fourteen other race cars, all driving on Michelin tyres all retired from the race by only driving the formation lap and not even doing the race start. […]

Since I watch quite a lot of movies these days (I just love my screen :P), I thought I’d better put all my movie reviews in one post and post them weekly ;). So here goes… The movies I watched since my last movie post are In America, Amélie, Der Untergang (Downfall) and La Vita […]

Finally… it had been a while since Michael Schumacher (or any Ferrari) had been on the front row in qualifying. It was about time… Ferrari has been doing really bad this year in Formula 1, and since I’m a Ferrari fanatic, I was hoping that’d change soon, so… I’m hoping we might even get a […]

Last Wednesday we had some kind of spontaneous house dinner accompanied with a movie. Well, it wasn’t completely spontaneous, the movie had been planned, but I didn’t expect to be having dinner with five people (Annemarie, her boy friend Egbert, Femke, Saskia and me).
We also ‘borrowed’ the room of the new housemate who hasn’t moved […]

Apart from Out of Africa I watched four other movies the last two weeks: Platoon, Rocky, The Incredibles, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Platoon is a 1986 movie about a ‘platoon’ (’peloton’ in Dutch) in the Vietnam war. It’s nothing incredibly special, but it gives a good view of the soldier’s real lives in […]

Congratulations Justine Henin :). I hope you’ll forgive me for taking a picture from you at the airport in April ;). But that was one dominating match against Mary Pierce… 6-1 and 6-1… My best wishes for your 5th 4th grand slam title! You’ve been doing a great job at keeping the Belgian honor high.
Poor […]

Yesterday evening I watched one of the movies that was next on my list of to-see-movies was Out Of Africa. A 1985 movie with Meryl Streep and Robert Redfort about a Danish woman moving to Africa with her husband in 1913 to see a bit more of the world. Three things that make the movie […]

Last Saturday I went to Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in the local THX certified theater ;). I wanted to go to the digital version (which is starting to come up here in Belgium), but we were a little late, so it was almost full. I decided that I thought sitting in […]

I just watched Fight Club with Femke after we had had dinner together. I was cooking when I asked her whether she had eaten already, and she said she was about to start cooking. So I suggested to join me with my dinner, since I was cooking for two days anyway :). (pork with pasta, […]

I bought The Ultimate Matrix Collection two days ago. I was checking the current market prices on dvd.nl and saw it had gone down to 40 € in Free Record Shop. I thought that was pretty cheap for a 10-dvd box, so I went to town and bought it for 36 € (I have 10 […]

Last Sunday evening on Mother’s Day, I went to the cinema in Kortrijk to see Million Dollar Baby. I knew from the oscars and from imdb.com that it was supposed to be a good movie. It won oscars for Best Picture, Best Actress (Hilary Swank), Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman) and Best Director (Clint Eastwood). […]

Mr Bob mentioned this hilarious blog to me this evening. It’s a journal of Darth Vader himself about his life at the head of the Imperial Order. It really gives the whole Star Wars universe a more humane and real feel :).
Extract:
“Big day. Storming the rebel ice fortress.
Took a nap first so I would be […]

I just added a list of THX, DTS and Dobly Trailers to my site. You can access them by the THX Trailers link in the menu. I’ve always been a big fan of especially the THX trailers. I just get an adreniline shot every time I feel the sounds flow through my body. Especially when […]

I hope all of you had a happy Easter weekend :).
I had a nice dinner with Femke on Saturday night and watched Monster on dvd. It’s a movie about ‘the first female serial killer in the United States’, a prostitute who killed 7 of her customers. Good but very hard movie. This is not a […]

Just watched Les Triplettes de Belleville on DVD. I was pretty curious about this movie since it was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars last year, and also for Best Song.
And I must say, it definitely deserved the nomination. While I don’t find it a superb movie, it is a very nice one, […]

This is soooooooooooo cool! My housemate Annemarie, who I’m also doing my research project with, is participating in a program called ‘Be A Moviestar’. It’s kind of the acting equivalent of ‘Idols’ which has been done in several countries around the world.
So I just saw her doing a scene from a Dutch movie. Soooooooooo cool! […]

Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?

“To take the test, select an answer for each of the questions below, then click Score Results. There are no right or wrong answers, merely virtues and traits you most adhere to. You will then be matched with the fantasy or science fiction character that you have the most in common […]

Samsung 243T Widescreen LCD
**sigh** I really need to get myself some filter that prevents me from checking on big screens… I have a crush on those things :P. The thing has a resolution of 1920×1200, widescreen and a diagonal size of 24″…
Price tag: 1,700 euros :(.
I’m seriously thinking that I’d better just get myself a […]

I watched Saving Private Ryan tonight. I rented 3 dvd’s today (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List and Master & Commander). At first I was going to watch Master & Commander with Boefje, my housemate. But right before we were going to watch it, he found out he still had a lot of paperwork to do […]

Well… it was a crazy day today, concerning time managment :P.
I stayed up last night till 1.30 am, then I went to bed and put my alarm clock on 3.45 am to watch Formula 1 from 4 am till 6 am (in which Schumacher made a stupid mistake costing him the race, grrrrrrrr). Then I […]

I watched City of God last Saturday with Femke after having a delicious dinner ;). Very nice movie about the street criminality and gangs fighting each other in Rio de Janeiro. A very beautiful (but hard) movie with great cinematography. Definitely to be recommended!
And today I watched Hero with Boefje. I had heard it was […]

My mother, my sister and me wanted to do something fun Saturday evening. We tried to get a fourth person to play Settlers of Catan, but we didn’t find anybody, so we thought of going to the cinemas. Turned out only ‘Der Untergang’ and ‘Closer’ were worth watching, but we weren’t really interested in those, […]

I just got word from my American S3D buddy Chris (aka Tintin), residing in Madagascar, that last Wednesday his mom mailed the settlers box that he has been working on for me :). I can’t wait till it gets here in the Netherlands! :P
Thanks again, Chris! I’ll send you the money as soon as the […]