Spurious Movie Reviews

After a long dry period, I started to watch movies again. Too much work and too little time for entertainment..hence a motion picture does the trick just fine. Although the first movie I have seen two or three weeks ago, the rest are quite fresh (from this week).


Charlie Wilson's War is a mixture of black comedy and drama showing how instrumental this senator was in pumping money into Afganistan's weapons to fight off the Russian invaders. The fun part is to see how politics is carried out and the outcomes as a function of various parts involved in the process. Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts have two great parts in which they show their best acting. (7 out of 10)


Shoot'em Up. I was expecting a Guy Ritchie gangsta type movie but instead I got some sort of cheesy half Tarantino shooting rampage. Didn't bother to time the actual time in the movie when gunshots are not present, but they main hero (Clive Owen) shoots his way out of everything (with and without broken fingers, etc) even from a hot scene with a gorgeous Monica Belucci. Which is not right at all.. (4 out of 10)


In Bruges. A slow paced but very sensitive movie about three serial killers than end up killing each other in a wonderful "almost fairy tale" city of Bruges. I got mesmerized by the beautiful sites which have stirred up my own memories about Belgium and Europe, in general. A must see & very artistic piece! (8.5 out of 10)

No Sweat

A clear victory (338 - 155 votes at 12:00am on Wed)ended one of the best carried out campaigns in the history and gave Obama the chance to make history, as the first Afro-American president of the USA. The name of the game is << CHANGE >> and America proves why it can be again the great engine of revolution in the world.

Voting Frenzy

YES, after two years of campaigning, fighting and elbow maneuvering, it finally came down to the big, final vote. While nobody in his or her right mind could believe any scenario under which Obama would lose (it is pretty damn hard mathematically/statistically speaking) they are trying to preserve the "excitement" of the race. This remembers me of the presidential election we had in Romania in 1996 when CHANGE was the name of the game and after 6 years of brain-washing by the left wing (former communist) people, everybody got excited to have a right wing government. They ended up calling that the worse period ever, although I thought they have fought the good fight and made some tough choices. But that's besides the point..Back then there was this frenzy about getting there & vote, although again, it was quite obvious that the right wing guy couldn't lose. It's a mix of self-enforcing importance, believe in your duty and stand up for it, so probably one should do it. But again, who would see McCain win? I bet that nobody, not even him.. This race was over before it began; change is in the air and it is a binary choice (1 for Obama; 0 for McCain) no matter how much the latter would avoid any comparisons with the Bush administration; Up next: a recession and a war to deal with. And maybe Pallin for 2012:))))..

Trick or treat & Troy Night Out

Last Friday was (again) Troy night out, one of the few opportunities when you can enjoy the city for all that it can give in terms of culture, music and night life. I am not sure if it still done every last Friday of the month or not (since I was away so much lately) but it seems like a good wake up call for the city. Incidentally, Halloween was also celebrated so more reason to get out and experience. After strolling the streets and checking out some art exhibitions and some music, the day ended up with a small but nice party, close to RPI. Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared at all for Halloween (no costume) so I felt a bit akward among all those pirates, unemployed, Fidel El Commandate, Winnie the Pooh people.

Intramural Soccer Champions 2008

Last Night on a freezing wonderful time for soccer, RPI Internationals did it again and managed to become Intramural Champions for C-League, here at RPI. And I was proud and happy to be a part of that. To double that joy, I even scored in the final, so everything went pretty smooth. The tough things was that we had two games scheduled on the same day, one at 6:00pm (semifinal) and the big final at 9:00pm, if we were to make it. The first game was good, we played better than the other team, we scored once but missed a lot of additional chances. However, in the end, the equalized with few minutes before the time. A bit disappointing and scary, especially since the extra time did not settle anything and we went to penalty shoot-outs. Fortunately, they've missed their last shot, so we were able to score and advance to the finals after a long and tiring game. At 9:30 when the game started it was really freezing, we had only 1 sub, and they were looking extremely good. They scored and ran a lot while we could not do much. After the break we changed the strategy and they got tired despite a nice bench. I scored the equalizer with a very nice shot, following after a couple of minutes by another goal which give us the edge we needed, and we never looked back afterward.
At the end, nothing was bothering us anymore (cold, muscle pain, etc). It was just great to wear the Champions' T-shirts, cheer and take pictures as a team. What a great feeling!

The latest Paris Hilton presidential spoof

It's the third and last spot "supporting" Paris for presidency.

First Snowflakes :-(

Today, I had the (?) experience to see actual snow flakes here in Troy. Somehow, I feel that is really TOO SOON for that, I need some more Autumn with warm days and cold nice, foliage and farmers' markets. Don't you?

Economists's clips

Krugman facing O'Reilly
Would be nice to see a rematch now that Krugman got the big prize and his predictions came true about the Bush policies.


Stiglitz and Colbert
A more friendly chat on the Colbert Report show.

Positive externalities from long (segmented) haul flights

When I was coming back from Europe I had to face a hard route for the sake of saving some valuable bucks: from Maastricht I took a bus to Aachen, then a train to Cologne/Bonn Airport and then three planes: 1. Cologne-London Heathrow; 2. London-Washington Dulles; 3. Washington - Albany, NY. I was supposed to arrive in Albany close to midnight after an overall 23 hours of travel. However, in London, where always (almost) "funny" things happen, they managed to put the luggage load somehow wrong and they had to re-position it (30-40 minutes) and then re-fuel (why? and why not at the same time?) (another 10-15 minutes). Well, overall we had about 1:30 hrs delay which we never recovered. In Washington, unlike my previous trip from Mexico, there were a lot more officers at the US entry and things moved relatively swiftly. However, by the time I got out it was already 10:00 pm. My Albany plane was probably closing the boarding gate. However, the UNITED guys were on top of things: a person was already expecting us there with new tickets for next morning and hotel, dinner vouchers. Which is very nice. I had to spend some extra half an hour negociating to exchange my 8:00 am ticket to a 12:00 pm one..but it was fine. The I head out to the Hilton in Dulles which was very nice and confortable way to get re-accostumed to the US.

Re-visiting Brussels

I always enjoyed Belgium and its funny open-minded people. Now, there was no exception. After a really long and sleepless flight from Washington to Brussels (I hated United for its 767 with row 4X where there were only 4 seats on the middle row compared to 5 in front -- nothing fitted right--tables/TV screens/legroom etc) I finally landed there around 7:30am. This gave me the opportunity to check out the airport (full of hippies sleeping around closed stores), grab a cup of Starbucks and unwillingly peak at the conversation between two Romanian chicks going somewhere warm. Around 8:40 I couldn't stand it anymore and went to the city by the fast train connecting Bruxelles National avec Le City. people speak Flemish mostly in BXL..although I am not so sure on that one. There were about 4C outside and I was freezing my ..ears off walking in the early morning in BXL. Fortunately, by 10 the sun was up and I was like happy like a see lion. Magnificent buildings, the pissing boy, old houses and churches, the chocolate museum, all those familiar things that I was happy to revisit made me forget about the cold and my summer jacket. Around 11:30 I gave my old friend and ASP fellow a ring and we were set up to meet in the train station. Then Freddy gave me the Royal Tour, explaining me things in a pure Belgian relaxed/half joking style...which was pretty cool.We tried a Greek gyros just to remember the good old German Donner from Kiel but it was far from it. Then we strolled the city until 5 in the afternoon, sightseeing and checking out the Royal Palace, nice parks and European Institutions (were possibly I would like to work when I grow up) when both of us were basically finished. His roommate was kind enough to provide me with accommodation and (unknowingly) I gave up the chance to experience Brussel's funny White Nights, when Museums, Bars, Streets, Everything is full of people. Tomorrow I'm heading for Maastricht.