I don’t watch a lot of comedies, but I am willing to make an exception for Rowan Atkinson. There probably isn’t a soul who isn’t familiar with Mr. Bean. Atkinson’s non-verbal acting skills are simply amazing. However, he has to rely on more than that to play a secret agent. Is this follow-up to the “so, so” 2003 Johnny English, any good?

The movie starts off with humorous scenes of Johnny English in a Tibetan Monastery, followed by his re-entry into MI7. He’s assigned the mission of uncovering an assassination attempt on the Chinese head of state, and has to reluctantly accept the presence of a sidekick. From there the film kicks into high gear, with numerous parodies of cliché moments in more serious action and spy films. This never gets old thanks to Atkinson, who is often doing something totally inappropriate in the background of a “serious scene”.

British director Oliver Parker isn’t known for box office hits, but does a decent job here. The unbelievable plot isn’t really a distraction, as most of the movie leans on Atkinson’s scene-to-scene performance and his sidekick excellently portrayed Daniel Kaluuya. However, not everyone acts very well: although Gillian Anderson, of X-Files fame, is billed as one of the top cast she gives a surprisingly poor and plastic performance.

This movie is certainly no gem, and people have likely become accustomed to better performances from Atkinson. However, all in all Johnny English Reborn offers good value. It’s better than the original Johnny English and good as a light “popcorn” movie. If you’re into that, or a die hard fan of Rowan Atkinsons, you should go see this movie.

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Trailer hosted by YouTube. Copyright © 2011 Universal Studios.

Someone knocked on the door of my apartment.
“Almer?”
“Yes?”
The door opened with a shriek.
“Do you have classes?”, Sophie shouted.
“I don’t, what’s up?”
I walked down the stairwell to the landing so I could see her.
“Can you help me with something?”, she asked while looking up at me.
“A friend of mine got her phone stolen, and she traced it to some pawn shop,” she paused briefly, “so she asked me to go with her to pick it up.”
“Uhm, oh, really?” I replied in surprise. “Did she report it to the police? Did she ask them for help?” I added.
“Yes, they made a file, but said they can’t do much about it. It’s not a priority for them.”
“Okay. So, how can I help?”
“Well, it’s not really in a safe part of town and we’re just two girls …”

Twenty minutes later I was sitting in the back of a Hummer-like car. Sophie, in the front passenger seat, discussed strategies with her friend Mithra behind the wheel. This was going to be more than simply picking something up …
“So, what will we tell them?”
“We can say we’re Pitt students”, Mithra replied to Sophie.
“Where are you studying?”, she briefly turned her head towards me, then fixed her eyes on the road again.
“CMU”
“Oh, don’t tell them you’re from CMU, they’ll know you’ve money, they’ll raise the price you know, we’re all just from Pitt, okay?”
“Sure”, I replied, but I was still a bit puzzled about the whole thing and only half awake. Just half an hour ago, I was engaged in my daily morning routine, specifically: having breakfast.
“I was wondering: how did you track the phone?” I continued.
“With some remote tracking app you can see where it is,” she replied hesitantly. “After I found out where it was I called the phone.”
“You called your stolen phone? Did someone pick up?”
“Yes, a man answered and he was willing to give me the phone for hundred bucks.”
I blinked, frowned and repositioned myself after Mithra’s car hit a pothole.
“So, what was the catch?”
“We arranged an exchange, but he backed out and asked me to come to his shop.”
“So, that’s the shop we’re going to?”
“No, no, it’s a different one.”
“So, you tracked it to this shop?”
“No, I did a remote wipe and then could not track the phone anymore,” she paused, “I didn’t know the wipe would do that.”
Uh? I decided to end my cross-examination. I inferred she had probably frantically called pawn shops around town, trying to locate those with iPhones, after she lost the tracking signal.

We crossed a huge bridge across the Monongahela river.
“So, where’s the shop?” Sophie asked.
“Just across the bridge, in one of the side streets”, Mithra replied.
She turned left onto the street where the shop was supposed to be. We passed an intersection and were supposedly almost there. Since no cars were behind us, Mithra slowly let her car roll forward.
“That’s the place, that’s it”, she said.

We parked the car somewhere around the corner and walked up to the shop. With every step closer the atmosphere became grimmer. A tall black guy with a black cap was leaning against the shop front, arms crossed, while discussing something with an older woman. Some other people were standing around waiting. We reluctantly joined them. Two people could be seen scurrying around inside the shop: one with a ring beard and dreadlocks resembled Wyclef Jean, the other, in the back, was harder to see.

After several minutes “Wyclef Jean” came to the front door and opened it. The other person, apparently the shop owner, followed him at a distance. Black cap moved inside, as well as all other people that were waiting, including us. The large store was full of “second-hand” stuff: flat screens, stereo receivers, and phones.

Mithra walked to the back of the store and addressed the shop owner. I fixed my gaze on his face, it was scarred. He seemed to be in his late thirties, the girls thought he was of Iranian descend.
“I called about an iPhone? For about hundred-fifty dollars?”, Mithra asked.
He smirked.
“Oh yes, yes, we have three or so,” he assured, “but there are lots of people interested in these phones, so the price will be higher, you know.”
Great.

Although the shop was quite large, Sophie, Mithra and me stood huddled together in the back. The atmosphere was grim. Two girls came in, one of them holding something small. Wyclef Jean shoved them dollar bills in, what was intended to be, a concealed way. Some other guy came in with a host of items that he wanted to sell and bantered with the shop owner.

Finally, the owner gave us two phones to try and yanked out a third one after Mithra insisted. Not all of them were charged, so we had to wait for a while. Sophie walked around looking at various gadgets. She contemplated buying something, before deciding that it probably was a bad idea to buy anything here, despite the shop owner reassuring here that she would get a “full week warranty”.

One of the three phones was obviously not Mithra’s, as it turned out to be an older model. After one of the remaining two was charged, Mithra handed it to me.
“Is this one mine?”, she asked nervously.
I looked at the palm of my left hand where I had written the serial number of her phone that she told me in the car. Unfortunately, this phone was somehow locked and I could not get into the right menu to actually check it. Mithra asked the shop owner to unlock the phone. After hooking the device up to a MacBook we could see the name of the original owner: it wasn’t hers.

We examined the last phone and established it could not have been hers either. The owner tried to sell us some other “wares”. After repeatedly asking him about other iPhones, Mithra gave up. We walked out the shop and back to the car, crossing our fingers that it’d not been vandalized.

It wasn’t, and in a matter of minutes we were back on the road. Mithra called other pawn shops to try and locate more iPhones, she seemed to obsess over it.
“You want me to tell you the obvious?”, I asked. “Let it go, it’s just a phone and your data is no longer on it, just buy a new one, and … I mean, how did you lose it in the first place?” I continued. My brain had fully awakened.
“I left it on the counter at Target, the next moment it was gone.”
I sighed audibly. “Always leave your phone either in your pocket, bag or in a secure place”
“I know,” Mithra replied, “but we girls don’t always have enough pocket space for a phone.”

After ten minutes we were home. Sophie and I got out of the car.
“Thanks for coming,” Mithra said. She drove off.
“That was weird,” I concluded as we went back inside the house.
Sophie nodded in agreement.

Truth be told, I wasn’t really aware of Ryan Gosling before Drive, although I vaguely recalled him from Remember the Titans. Shame on me, as he delivers a convincing performance in Drive as a man of few words. Other cast members deliver good acting as well, notably Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks. This movie is not permeated with slick dialogue like Fast Five and it doesn’t have the cliché Michael Bay look, but instead stylistically resembles an early eighties film. All the better since it is exactly these elements that give Drive a unique feel.

The movie heavily relies on non-verbal behaviour: glances, smiles and awkward pauses. This builds excellent tension between the main characters. Rosling plays the nameless driver who seems somewhat of a lone ranger. His genuine care for a woman results in him getting caught up in a violent plot.

The cinematography is excellent and makes up for the film being a little bit slow in some spots. Although the music used is fitting, the soundtrack is very minimal and large portions of movie are without any music at all. This is quite effective and sets Drive apart from a pack of over-the-top action films that rely too heavily on constant pumping audio to move the audience along. Nevertheless, because the film is so silent, the moments where gunfire and other types of violence are used, are all the more shocking and gruesome.

The amount of violence in Drive is also my primary point of criticism. I don’t mind this when it is essential for advancing the plot, and some parts of Drive rely on it to bring forward the violent nature of the main character. However, I think there’s a bit too much visceral violence. Drive is often compared with Tarantino’s films. However, in his work violence is often so over the top that it becomes light-hearted and almost humorous besides also serving a plot wise purpose. In contrast Drive has a much darker tone than most of Tarantino’s work, making it even more essential to strike the right visual balance.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive is an overall good movie with an interesting storyline and memorable characters. The style and overall atmosphere is reminiscent of movies like American History X, Pulp Fiction and No Country for Old Men. Even though it is too blunt to actually belong among those classics. Nevertheless, Drive is recommended if you liked those movies.

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Trailer Hosted by YouTube. Copyright © FilmDistrict

Sixty-one days went by, sixty-one days to go before traveling back to the Netherlands. After a relatively rough start I am pretty settled now in Pittsburgh. I’ve made some friends and have gotten used to some of the American peculiarities. Although, I can’t appreciate everything about the United States, there are certainly things we Dutch can learn from. As someone on a bus remarked to me: “people keep coming here, so we must be doing something right …”

Carnegie Mellon University is pretty nice, in terms of bright people, decent facilities and the overall atmosphere. There always seem to be things to do and there are also always people around, even during the weekends. They aren’t kidding when they say the American work ethos is “all work and no play”, although the two aren’t, and shouldn’t, be mutually exclusive in my view.

I didn’t expect Pittsburgh to be quite as big as it is. Although it is a medium-sized city for American standards, the distances are huge and places to go to are spread out. People here are generally friendly, also service personnel. For example, people in banks and shops tend to be warm and helpful without their behaviour feeling contrived. I can’t put my finger on it, but they have perfected the art of making you feel good and special.

Do I still feel nostalgic? Well somewhat, I still miss my friends and family, quality Dutch cheese, and normal sized food portions. But as mentioned before: I’ve also grown to appreciate some of the American ways. As predicted experiences like this change you in profound ways. And while the clock might be ticking, I am not done changing just yet.

Being an avid reader, I find it inconvenient to carry around heaps of books. Luckily, there is a solution for this: an e-reader. These devices have both improved in quality and steadily dropped in price over the last couple of years. I decided to bite the bullet and buy one.

There are plenty of options, some major product lines are: Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Sony’s Reader. After some careful deliberation I choose Sony’s newest offering: the PRS-T1, known by the friendlier name “Sony Reader WiFi”.

Sony had a plethora of different Readers before, but decided to consolidate everything into this one new model, which is the first in the Reader line to offer WiFi. The PRS-T1 uses a six inch e-ink Pearl screen which offers excellent contrast and makes for easy reading in both natural and artificial light. The device is extremely light and conveniently sized for easy holding. Although, the cover with built-in light makes it quite a bit heavier. Nevertheless, there’s also a cover without light, and of course: if you want a cover you’d have to buy it separately: it’s not included in the package. The stylus can not be placed in the device, so it’s nice to have a cover to clip it on.

My main gripe with the device is the glossy border of the front panel which is somewhat annoying when reading under a bright light source. Additionally, the Sony Reader WiFi has a tendency to do full screen refreshes, which makes the e-ink screen flicker quite often. When reading books or navigating through the interface this is not really a problem. However, when browsing the web the screen often flickers two to four times when loading a page, which is distracting. On the bright side, the screen itself looks extremely crisp, the infrared touch screen is fairly responsive, and the pinch & zoom is a welcome feature especially when reading PDF files.

The Reader uses a stripped down version of Android under the hood, which is noticeable when navigating menus. The interface is well thought out: putting books on the device, or downloading them via Sony’s Reader store, is quick and effortless. Some of the options that are offered are quite nice, such as a choice between built-in dictionaries, quick search and hand-written note taking capabilities. The 2GB of built-in memory can be expanded with a micro-SD card, which is probably only useful if you want to use the device’s MP3 playback capabilities or if you store huge collections of books on there.

If it isn’t obvious yet, I am quite sold on this gadget. It’s affordable, quick, light and perfect for a polyreader like me. The Sony Reader is already widely available in the United States and will be available in the Netherlands in the coming week. This will likely become a popular holiday season gadget, and rightly so. Nevertheless, when I walked through a Barnes & Noble store yesterday, I felt both preemptive nostalgia and despair: am I walking through what will one day be a museum? There’s definitely value in holding a real book. Hence, I am feeling ambivalent towards the replacement of my beloved physical books with electronic “equivalents”.

The Graphic Novels section in Barnes & Noble

A quick final note on Amazon:
Amazon’s e-readers are quite popular in the United States. They come with free worldwide 3G, good quality screens and are very affordable. Until recently these models lacked touch screens. However, that has changed with the Kindle Touch. Amazon also recently launched the Kindle Fire which lacks 3G support. The Fire looks to me more like a tablet, not an e-reader. Amazon cites its broad selection of content as the Fire’s unique selling point. However, I have my doubts about whether that will convince anyone outside of the US. Amazon’s lack of support for the open ePub standard, dubious history with remote book deletions, and the recent controversy with their Silk web browsing acceleration, have convinced me not to buy their products.

Turn on your speakers or headphones – although this is a silent movie, some of the audio is essential – then sit back and watch it:

This video is the result of a collaboration among many people, see the ending credits for details. A brief history: during the first CMU Filmmaking Club meeting a representative of every group had to draw a random profession from a bag as well as a prop. The profession we picked was “coroner” and our prop was a set of “dog bones”. Admittedly, we stretched the profession a bit when developing our story The entire thing had to be without any dialogue, the end result would have to be a silent movie.

The excellent initial script created by our writer was a lot more ambitious than what we ended up actually filming. Nevertheless, it was interesting to cut back so that we could complete this in the short time frame alloted. We had a lot of fun making this together. Special thanks goes to the CMU Filmmaking club for their guidance and the CFA Cluster for providing equipment.

Calculating the number of days between two arbitrary dates is doable for humans and trivial on modern computers. However, calculating the number of working days: Mondays through Fridays, is more complicated. In this puzzle you are asked to devise an algorithm for doing this. It is something you can do on the back of a napkin, so you don’t need anything besides pen, paper and the rational part of your brain.

Problem:
Given two dates where , what is the number of workdays between these two dates? Assume that only Saturdays and Sundays are not workdays: holidays can be ignored.

You may use the following definitions augmented with any standard mathematical functions, like and .

• is a date
• Subscripts are used to indicate different dates:
• yields the number of days between two dates. This is negative if and zero if the dates are identical
• gives the day of the week for the given date as a number (1 = Monday, 2 = Tuesday, …, 7 = Sunday)
• gives the number of the week for the specified date (in the range 1 up to including 53)
• is the set of numbers that represent working days (a subset of the domain of the weekday function)

Try to work out a solution first, then expand mine below.

Luc Besson’s two most memorable films for me are The Fifth Element and Léon: The Professional. The latter stars a very young Natalie Portman that wants to learn the trade of being an assassin, and this is in fact the starting point of the French-American movie Colombiana. It opens with scenes from our heroine’s childhood: Cataleya, but quite quickly switches to her story as an adult portrayed by Zoe Saldana.

While Besson has written many over-the-top action flicks over the last decade, he has not directed any of them. This also holds true for Colombiana which was instead helmed by Olivier Fontana. Fontana has given this film the same look and feel as the purely action-oriented production The Transporter. Unfortunately, this does not mix well with a plot which is more reminiscent of the drama and human-condition-driven Léon. Especially, for the scenes with the young Cataleya.

Cataleya wants her uncle to help her become a professional assassin for reasons that are revealed near the beginning of the movie and in the trailer below. At one point she insists on being taught the trade and her uncle’s reaction to this is far too extreme, let alone the lack of reaction of others in that scene: it just feels contrived. These kinds of moments significantly hamper character development making the audience less engaged with the rest of the movie.

Fortunately, Colombiana gets better as focus shifts to the adult Cataleya. Zoe Saldana saves the day with excellent acting, and some well choreographed fight scenes make the second half a treat. However, it is hard for the audience to sympathize with anyone’s faith in the movie apart from Cataleya. This is where Leon so excellently succeeded and Colombiana fails. Perhaps this would have been in better hands being directed by Luc Besson himself. Nevertheless, this is an okay movie to go see provided you like the over-the-top action style and can forgive the lack of character development.

Rating:  

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Video Hosted by YouTube, Copyright © 2011 Sony Pictures

Read Part I here.

Creak-creak, creak-creak, creak-creak, the steps of the wooden stairs went as two people ascended: me in front followed by Jack. When we finally reached the top I recognised everything from the initial viewing. First there was an alcove with two chairs and a small round table opposite a wooden cabinet. From there the studio extended into a large open space with wooden floors and several doors. One of these lead to a small, but fully equipped kitchen with a microwave, fridge and a stove. All utensils were there as well: cutlery, plates, pans. Opening an other door revealed a bathroom that actually had a bath in it besides a toilet and sink.

The main space of the apartment was fully furnished with a bed, tables, cabinets and also a desk, chairs, and a bookcase. There was a small TV with satellite access. Furthermore, the studio had as many as four large closets for storing stuff: plenty of space for a guy with only a suitcase and backpack.

I glanced at the large wooden bed with a mattress nearly a meter thick.
“I need to buy something for that,” I concluded.
“You’ll need some sheets”, Jack confirmed. “Wait, Laura knows where to get that. Lauraaaaa,” he shouted downstairs. She came up, stood besides him and stared intently at the bed while stroking her chin.
“Yes, you’ll probably need a mattress pad too. I think it’s a standard size bed, right?”, she looked at Jack for confirmation.
“I think so too,” he uttered. “They won’t have sheets anywhere close though. Look, we have to do some shopping in the afternoon. If you want we can take you with us, so you can buy anything you need”, he offered.
“Okay, I have a meeting in the afternoon. So, perhaps thereafter, but: only if it’s no problem. I don’t want to be any trouble to you”, I replied.
He smiled.
“No problem at all, we have to do some shopping anyway, so we’d be happy to take you with us.”
We walked down the stairs. Laura extended her hand as we reached the living room: she was holding something.
“Here is the key. Perhaps you should try it, since the door is a bit stiff.”

After some fumbling around with the key and getting the hang of how to get the door to actually open: using some force, I went out of the house accompanied by Jack. Laura was staying briefly to sort out some stacks of mail while he brought me back to CMU in their white car.

I called late in the afternoon, after my meeting, to set-up a time to go shop.
“Alright, Jack has to take care of something else, so only the two of us would be going there, is that okay?” Laura asked.
“Yes, no problem.” I was happy they were even willing to help me with this.
“I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes in front of the University.”
“Great.”
“Oh yes, before I forget to mention: we have yet a third car. I’ll pick you up in that one: so, be on the look out for a black Mazda.”

Not long thereafter I was sitting in the front passenger seat headed towards the Waterfront: a shopping area just outside of Pittsburgh, across one of the bridges, situated in the Homestead borough.
“So, you like biking,” she inquired.
“Well … yes, but it’s a lot harder here then back in the Netherlands.”
“Indeed, it must be, with the hills here and all,” she replied while taking a turn. “We don’t bike here often, but we always bike when we go to France.”
“Cool, recreational cycling is nice, but given the roads and hills here in Pittsburgh: I can understand why you do not commute by bike.”
We approached the Waterfront: a plethora of tall buildings surrounded by huge parking lots, and a smaller core with restaurants and shops: paradise for girls that want to shop.

Laura first took me to CostCo: a wholesale shop somewhat similar to the Makro in Holland. However, of course: this is America, thus: everything is an order of magnitude larger. We approached the entrance and picked a cart.
“It’s a really big place, they have lots of stuff, not only appliances, but also good quality food items in large packagings,” Laura said. She leaned in and whispered into my ear: “and pay attention: consequently many of the people that shop here,” she paused, “are really `large’ too.”

I bought myself an electric kettle after which we went to several other shops: the Target, like the Dutch V&D, and finally Bed, Bath and Beyond which is, well: what the name says. After three hours the back of the car was stuffed. It would have taken me ages to get and move all these things myself. I sighed a breath of relief.

Finally, Laura dropped me off at what was going to be the place I’d be living for a while. I climbed up the stairs to the front porch, put the key in the front door lock, twisted it and give it a push with my shoulder: open sesame. I went upstairs to sort out the bags and put some cold water in the kettle I bought. I was still feeling ill, but I felt a lot better than a day ago: at least now I had some certainty. The kettle clicked as steam escaped from it. I gently poured some water in a cup with a bag of Earl Grey tea. Finally, this hectic day had come to an end. I stood near the window, sipping my tea as I overlooked my new neighbourhood: Squirrel Hill.