Sunday, May 28, 2006

Brace Yourself...

Get ready to fall onto the floor laughing. Ready? Ok ... get this. There's a Chicago-based company selling SHARIAH-approved leather socks!!! WTF?

http://www.khuffs.com

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Sample Size


Made the mistake of watching "8 Shani" the other day. Seriously, like do these guys have ANY business OR creative sense at all? The film fucking fails on both counts! I mean, how can you fail on both? You can have movies that are stellar at the box office and suck in terms of substance, and you can have movies that are artsy and full of substance that fail at the box office. But what calibre of dumb fuck must a producer (and the whole unit for that matter) be to make shit like this? Here are just some thoughts of mine.

-The movie starts off and says verbatim "It is a work of fiction" as if it's talking about another piece of work. Splendid. I went in assuming it was an astonishing depiction of reality.

-The main guy, a typically fobby looking individual, is for some reason walking around in Matrixy clothing. Of course, everything looks knockoff and cheezy though. And its not a fashion scheme that is found throughout the movie or reflected in its surroundings like the Matrix either.

-The opening scene places the main guy at a fair in England, where he's just looking around until he sees an old man turn a corner. Apparently, this is bad and he chases the old man for quite some time. The old man is SUPPOSED to be a ghost/apparition/scary/Michael Jackson-like but he looks JUST LIKE any other person!

-If the point of view is from the main character's view, shouldn't he see something that distinguishes dead people from living ones? Otherwise how can he tell? And if the point of view is from the audience, then why can we see him at all? HE's the one who is supposed to be special and able to see dead people, not us.

-The entire spectacle at the fair was really about him losing his niece. They barely showed her! And then when he realized he lost her, he went home instead of looking for her!

-The white-guy cops speak with a wicked Indian accent. Charming.

-An apparition of a little boy is visiting the main character for some reason. Another person comes in, and the boy decides to leave, fluttering the curtains on the way out. The other person doesn't notice. How convenient.

-In these wicked movies, the main characters are so stunningly rich you wonder what you've done wrong all your life. This movie is no exception.

-There's an idiotic trend of shooting exterior shots at the real location (e.g. in England, in Southall) and interior shots in India. I can't even begin to tell you what's wrong with that, but I can start by telling you that they spelled Southall "South Hall" inside the Indian interior to the real Southall Police Station exterior.

-Fundamentally, there's something wrong when the main character goes into a church and talks about karma. For a guy who is supposed to be in the know, he doesn't seem to realize that Christianity doesn't include the ideas of karma, karmic retribution and rebirth.

-The church is obviously in India. How ... umm, multicultural.

-What's jokes about movies like this is the attention to detail, or lack thereof. Seriously, not even a little bit of thought goes into anything. All their clothes are straight off the rack, the crease lines are still visible!

-The cops enter the main character's house without a warrant. In many countries, this gives you the right to shoot them. But alas, in this movie, it means move aside, let them come and in and then suck up to them.

-The main character's friend at the library is trying to convince him that the world is powered by numbers and cites two examples of this as enough proof to convince him. She is under the impression that ALL tsunamis and related phenomenon happen on the 8th of the month. Since this idea forms the basis of the story, shouldn't someone have developed it just a little bit? I mean, a little believability can go a long way.

-The Southall-area library has Indian lights, India-like grills on the windows and barely any books on the wall. Very realistic setting!

-The 2006 Lexus IS350 sounds just like a '50s Ambassador. Don't get me started on this.

-The main character has a friend who lives in a castle or something. Judging by the signs on his "house," the building is actually a museum or something.

-The same castle-owning guy has a sister parading around the grounds in an ultra-slutty outfit for no reason in what seems like pretty cold weather. Its ok to have revealing dresses (nipples protruding at times) where the atmosphere is supposed to be scary and dark, but in sex/love scenes they have to be cut/censored and even the kisses are near-misses.

-Why the fuck are random people hanging around talking in the living room when the old man is on his deathbed?

-Of as high a caliber as the idea on which the movie is based, the concept of the main character's main supernatural-measurement device being an everyday compass is to say the least, absurd. The writers/producers (probably the same idiot) don't feel the need to explain this at all to the viewers.

-Why is the main characeter's friend like 20 years older than him? Who has like a 45-year old friend?

-The old man on his deathbed looks just fine. People with acting like that shouldn't be anywhere near the the fucking CITY where movies are shot.

-Dumb fuck main character enter's old guy's room and starts snapping pictures. The old guy is freaking out, but the main character doesn't feel the need to answer any of his questions.

-After visiting his friend's old man on his deathbed, the main character just says "is it alright if I go through your house?" What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Without any explanation or anything, I consider that to be a crazy-person comment. His friend then agrees!

-Who wears shoes in an English house?

-Inside the castle, the decor is exactly like the SET of an Indian hospital. How creative.

-Later on, main character pulls up the pictures he took of the old guy. Based on common ideas, I would have thought an apparition or at least orbs would have been visible. But no, not here. He sees the covers under which the old guy is lying MOVE on his computer screen. Can anyone explain to me how a common JPEG file can take on the properties of a video (with cheezy 3D effects) and then display right from Windows Picture and Fax Viewer?

-The castle-owning friend later decides to tell the main character off by saying that his money can buy the best doctors and "bring them here" in his helicopters and planes. Well firstly, duh ... money buys healthcare. Secondly, the main character is rich too! Thirdly, if you're not in England, chances are ... you'd take a plane to get there! Why does the dialogue of rich people in these movies reflect the dialogue of a person with newly acquired wealth? Like something the average poor Indian would love to say after coming into some cash?

-The main character deduces that there is a spirit haunting the old man, and the only way to get rid of it is a simple apology. I guess it wasn't important to show us how he knows who the spirit is and what the ideology being the apology is.

-No explanation is offered as to why the main character sees what he does. Just as well, why would you want to know structural details of the plot in a movie? Ridiculous concept, that.

-The main character at some point claims that he can see spirits 100s of years old. Why are they so rare then, only occassionally making appearances? Shouldn't he be able to see dino-ghosts as well then, since all the ghosts are present on earth?

-Mercedes S-class also sounds like a '50s Ambassador.

-Main character's friend at library reads really thin childish-looking books to draw her main (crazy) conclusions.

-Its only natural that all the chicks in the movie love the main character, right?

-when they step out into their garden in London, they actually step into a beautiful tropical paradise-looking garden, with swaying palm trees and all. Aw, just like London.

-Who the fuck covers their own ears when they scream?

-Who the fuck calls their sister "babe?"

-The main character is really disturbed about his ability to see dead people. Since that's the case, it really boggles the mind when we see him joking to his new girlfriend about seeing dead people. That makes no sense at all! He got kicked out of his house by his brother for his freaky side, the same one thats been bugging him since childhood, the same one that at times has caused him to consider suicide, and here he is JOKING that some people in a club are dead so that his girlfriend embarasses herself by checking. How realistic. I deal with all my fears in the same way too.

-The girl's ass is as wide as East London.

-Main character's brother's daughter is the worst child actor ever to come in front of a camera. The voice is not lip-synced and she speaks with a crazy Indian accent (presumably being born in Britain, this is impossible).

-According to the main character, you can't trust the weather in England. Ever heard of a forecast, buddy?

-Apparently the beach is RIGHT NEXT TO the London subway AND an inner-city park.

-Chick in red dress has stuffed her bra with either a 1982 Volvo GL or a 1976 Studebaker. The furthest tip of her bra sticks out approximately 8 inches!

-While (oh, its teatime, I shall say "whilst") walking through the park, every sound on the Indian sound guy's soundboard was used including but not limited to birds, cats, growls from lions, explosions, heavy breathing, sexy breathing, and of course 80s synthensis.

-The little girl sleeps on the same bed as her parents? Don't they ever fuck?

-The lights are fluctuating in the Indian interior of the British house always. Trustworthy Indian power supply I suppose. In England.

-In a dream, main guy's sister-in-law tries to poison her husband. However, even before he has drunk the poisoned tea his eyes are red and his skin has a very Indian powder coating. And there's a weird spotlight shining on him.

-Apparently if someone throws tea in your face, you'll have scarring and bleeding just as if it were acid.

-Lamps and things are supposed to be flying around the people, but you can see that they are suspended from a circular structure that is being rotated. And its better that way, lest we forget its a movie and freak out.

-The graphics of the spirits leaving the house is disturbing. Disturbing in that I have personally made better looking effects in my home videos.

-The guy says its "obvious" from the compass that supernatural entities exist. Almost fell onto the floor.

-"He is an evil." Actually rolling around on the floor over this.

-Main guy's monologue in the park has the shittiest lipsync ever (you'd think this industry would be perfect at this by now, lip-syncing regular dialogue and songs). Camera shakes as if Indian cameraman is having reactions to spicy curry eaten earlier.

-Nothing scary about woman in red dress, and nothing distinguishing other than her typically bad Indian acting.

-How come everyone is a FOB?

-Amongst all the hauntings, kicking-outings and generally freaky phenomenon, main character decides to fall in love and focus on that instead. He doesn't have place to live or shower, but he's IN LOVE. Yeah.

-The forests of London look strangely like the jungles of Mumbai.

-Woman in red dress dissapears with a really cool effect, a stop camera. I did this when I was in grade 7, where I had an object on my hand, stopped the camera, removed the object while keeping my hand stationary and then starting the camera again. Mine actually looked better!

-The main guy's GF is supposed to live in London, but they drive up to a house in a steamy, palm tree-infested setting. That must be South London, I guess.

-People are possessed, some have died, and these people find time to sex each other up.

-Do you really need to be naked for a seance? Being a straight guy, how can you NOT get a hardon when sitting next to a naked sexy chick?

-Conviently enough, guy's GF walks in on above-described seance.

-Who keeps saying "8" in a deep voice? The dictionaries should include this specific reference in their definition of cheese.

-Why do they refer to a chateau, or a cottage as a "farmhouse?" You might as well break out the dal and spill it over everything.

-When they go to the African psychic about the possession case, why are dolls floating around? Is supernatural stuff really that common? Man, I must really be dumb to miss it.

-The woman in the red dress, is a spirit, but can't walk through gates, walls or doors. She has to wait for them to open.

-Horses running around is now supernatural phenomena.

-There's a scene when a chick gets possessed and tries to strangle another. During this, why is EVERYONE's voice echoing?

-People flying around (being pushed around by spirits) is wicked ridiculous. A person hits a window, the window breaks, and they bounce FORWARD from this.

-The spirit of the woman is supposed to be on fire, but you can see its a fat, balding stuntman instead.

-Apparently all of the supernatural phenomena could have been stopped with a simple "sorry."

Over the course of the movie, the guy's abilities are of no advantage to anybody. He doesn't actually help in any way. Its amazing how people can invest in such filth but not in more innovative business projects.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The Eye of the Storm?


Broadband municipal Wi-Fi networks are being deployed across the US, Japan and even (yes, I know ... its unbelievable) parts of Canada. Toronto is working on a blanket Wi-Fi network to be deployed in stages starting in December 2006. Telephone companies have hit on VoIP companies hard in the past, and have aggressively maintained what they reckon is their own turf. Phone companies did draw the line at PC-to-PC telephony (well they couldn't do much about it), but what will they do now that major cities in North America and Japan are adopting city-wide Wi-Fi that will be either cheap or very free?

Combine this municipal Wi-Fi with the advent of Wi-Fi Skype phones, as well as cell phones like mine that have Wi-Fi (and will soon run Skype), and we basically have free telephony! Is there even a need for a Verizon, Cingular, NTT DoCoMo or Rogers AT&T? I sense a huge war coming ... the phone companies vs. the governments (both provincial/state and federal). It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

PS3 vs. XBOX 360, Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD

Competition is usually a good thing, or so they say. However, I think most people agree that in the case of two competing household video formats, it may not be such a good thing. Constantly being compared to VHS vs. Betamax of yesteryear, this war IMO will take a totally different turn. I think people will just not care, and not buy (either one). Isn't that what people are doing now, just waiting for the formats to sort themselves out? Consumers aren't gonna care about which format is technically superior, or which studio is backing which format either. It all comes down to availability, price and testifiable quality. Sony has said that its first Blue-Ray DVDs, or BD-something as they're supposed to be called, won't have the limited-resolution thing in the beginning, which I think may give them another advantage. I've heard people on tech podcasts say that it might come down to the PS3's popularity, but I don't really think a system aimed at 20-30 year olds is gonna affect the entire industry at large. Looking at Sony's dominance in movies, music and electronics, I think I'd bet on Blu-Ray at this point. They're very good with branding, and just because they had one failure in the past (BetaMax), it doesn't mean that it'll necessarily happen again in a showdown. Handycam, Walkman, Playstation, Sony Pictures, Sony Music, WEGA, BRAVIA and Trinitron are just some examples of Sony's incredible power of branding.

Winner: Blu-Ray



Microsoft, in either an attempt to be more competitive or more stupid wants to have an HD-DVD addon device for the XBOX 360. I think its fucking idiotic for them to demand customers spend $500 on a new system that they link will last them some time, only to have an all-new essential HD-DVD addon cost them another $200 or whatever. I smell the putrid odour of rejection, as was smelled when the Sega CD debuted, and other "addon" CD systems. Its unlikely that the addon will improve the XBOX 360's performance in any way, and seems to be more of a "my balls-are-bigger-than-your-balls" attitude towards the PS3. If its mainly for movies, then ... dare I say ... isn't buying a smooth-running standalone player better than a box that connects to your XBOX 360 for clunky video playback? I think that Sony is very smart, over-hyping their products before debut. Just the fact that there are people waiting for the PS3, and talking about its debut shows that the XBOX 360 will be best known as an also-ran.

Winner: Sony PS3

Nokia N80 review!

I picked up my Nokia N80 a few days ago, and have been playing with it since then. I've been waiting a while to make this purchase, as many others have, because if you go by specs, this is the phone of all phones. The spec sheet read small, sliding form factor, 3.2-megapixel camera (fixed focus), TV-quality video recording, front VGA camera, Symbian 9 3rd edition operating system, and most exciting of all were the connection options ... infrared, bluetooth, GPRS, EDGE, 3G and .... (drum roll) Wi-Fi! That's right, this phone was supposed to have WLAN connectivity built in, so you could use it anywhere a hotspot existed. On top of all that, this was to be one of the few phones to be quadband GSM, covering both the American GSM bands and the rest of the world's. Let's see how it fared...

As exciting as the idea of having Wi-Fi in your pocket was, it wouldn't be very effective unless you had a great browser and a screen that's capable of displaying what you need. Tech geeks will recall that SSR (small screen rendering) made quite a buzz when Opera showed it off proudly in their Opera for Symbian and later Opera Mini browsers, but if you've ever used it, you'd know its not all that effective for a significant portion of the internet. While its true it gives you ease-of-use in that it rearranges given web pages to fit the width of the screen you're using, you can't really do much with sites that use frames, or Java, or Flash, or other plugins. Its basically not good enough to be a desktop replacement. Enter the new Nokia browser, and its dominant partner, the 352x416 screen. Nokia has been very cheap with the screens in their smartphones for some time now - consider that the Nokia N70 (oooh ... an N-series phone!) has the same screen resolution as the original smartphone, the 7650. Now that's not much of a jump for the user, is it? That screen, that has been present on all Nokia Symbian devices until the N90 had just 36,256 pixels to work with. Even if you had Wi-Fi on that (like on the N91, a useless, out-of-date phone if there ever was one) you couldn't really use the 'Net effectively. You'd be scrolling all over the place all day long. And this was while other competitors had much better screens ... my old S700i had a 320x240 screen, as do many Samsungs and other brands. Even Motorola, the most American (read: laziest) of all brands. Finally someone at Nokia woke up and decided to do something. This new screen is 2.1" diagonally, but has an astounding resolution of 352x416, or 146,432 pixels. More than 4 times sharper than the old Nokia screens, this one is unlike any you have ever seen. This is the very first LCD I've seen that you can't see the pixels on, at least with the naked eye. You can try real hard, but you can't see anything. Just crystal clear perfection - the fonts are shown with incredible smoothness. Once you see this screen, you'll wish all the other screens you have around you had the same pixel density, which by the way, is around 10,000 pixels per square centimeter! When you combine this with the new browser, which renders every page as it was originally intended (plugins and all), the internet experience is superb. It has a mouse pointer that, in my opinion, works very well. Better than a touchscreen with stylus, because its more accurate. The mini-map feature is useful on large pages as well. I like this browser so much, I've already started to transfer my bookmarks to it, and being open-source, it will probably get continuous improvement from developers and enthusiasts alike.

A problem I faced with previous smartphones I had was that they were actually pretty ineffective at work. Viewing Word, Excel, Powerpoint or PDF documents was essentially a gimmick, partly because the screen couldn't display the necessary information, and partly because the memory couldn't handle a lot of documents. I found this to be of particularly bad design, because Samsung's D600, while not a smartphone, could load a 20 MB PDF in 2 seconds. And it would be reasonably useful on the 320x240 screen, unlike Nokias. So what were Nokia's smartphones really good for? Bulkier, with crappier battery life than standard phones, I found they didn't do much other than restart all the time. So for everyday use, I made a Sony Ericsson W800i my phone, and it served its purpose very well. Finally, with this iteration, Nokia has improved on all the complaints I had with their previous smartphones. It is now fully capable of using the Word/Excel/Powerpoint viewers, with a PDF viewer on the way. I really hope its capable of loading 20 MB+ PDFs, because most digital magazines are at least that much. The combination of Wi-Fi and the new screen really make it a competent internet device as well. It rendered every page I asked it to without complaint. I frankly wasn't expecting it to load my university's course materials download page, because it wouldn't open with my Windows Mobile-powered O2 Mini, but not only did it load, it looked awesome! I was able to download lecture notes and view them directly on the device - very handy. I also went to pages that had embedded media, which played perfectly as well. I loved how it has an RSS reader built in. If someone can adapt this to automatically download podcasts, then we are SO in motion! Nonetheless, at least I can check when I have new podcasts to download, after which I can just proceed to download them. I noticed something while I was doing that, though - the Wi-Fi on this device is no less than a notebook! It was downloading as fast as my PC would! The range is also quite decent, comparable to a notebook. The interesting thing is that it has a page for SIP VoIP configuration. I put in settings for Gizmo, but I couldn't get it to work - mainly because I don't know how to initiate a VoIP call. If anyone knows how to get this to work, let me know.
Nokia is about to release an AVC codec for S60 3rd edition devices like the N80, so that you can view standard MPEGs and all that. That'll be really good, because someone will be able to do the plugins for the browser (most of it is open source) and then there'll be no difference at all.
S60 3rd edition is a vast improvement on the last version. The way it looks and feels is like Windows XP versus Windows 3.11. It has some good programs built in too, like a music player that works pretty well. The only issue is that there isn't much software for this version yet. I'll be looking forward to Agile Messenger and Skype for sure.
Physically, the device is MUCH smaller than I expected. Its the smallest smartphone I've seen, in fact. Its a little thick looking, but thats excusable when you see the 3.2-megapixel camera at the back. The standard of the slider market is Samsung, and sadly, this phone's slider is not as good. Samsung's are spring-loaded, so when you push up a little bit, it will travel the entire distance. With this, you have to push up all the way, but it at least feels reasonably smooth. I tried playing with the N91's slider, and that was horrendous! Its like forcing it along rails, and the sound it makes will remind you of an old train trying to stop (and you can almost picture sparks from the slider's rails). That thing costs so much and performs so crappy - I don't know what Nokia was thinking releasing that recently. There is a little bit of play horizontally when the slider is closed, but its not enough to bother me (I'm easily bothered by these things). I do think the design itself could have been a little better, because the squarish edges really make it easy for the slider to open in your pocket. Rounded edges would have reduced this a lot, and I suspect this is why Samsung sliders are built that way. Still, its the most attractive smartphone to ever come out of Nokia, and given the capabilities it has, the little niggles I have can be excused.

The camera is a 3.2-megapixel, fixed focus unit with macro mode. Its not as good as your average 3-megapixel digital camera, so it won't replace it totally. Still, the shots are a bit better than the K750i/W800i which was the king of the camera phone hill until now, so in a way, this is one of the best camera phones on the market at the moment. It did win some imaging award from some European company, but who cares about Europe, really (say "really" with a British accent)? The video is quite decent, at 352x288, 15 frames per second. If you don't pan a lot, it looks decent enough on a TV. It has an image stabilizer which I tested out and found to work very well. We're getting closer to eliminating the videocamera, I think. Sony Ericsson has a phone, the W900i that can take video at a full 30 fps thanks to an ATi chip. That is totally decent video, and I can just see Handycam-branded Sony Ericsson models in the future shooting in 720x480 anamorphic video, with a "burn to DVD" button in the SE PC suite.

Although there is a rumoured N83 coming out, with a 5-megapixel autofocus camera and a 4 GB hard disk built in, I don't really see a phone making huge strides over this one for some time. While the hard disk provides additional storage, which is good, considering this phone has 3G, WiFi and can download fast (and Bit Torrent clients are being made), 4 GB is too low for a hard disk that uses a large amount of space and energy and makes the phone susceptible to damage. And the N91's hard disk doesn't work below zero, so my countrymates will probably have an obscenity in response to that. Plus, consider that they already have 2 GB memory cards for this phone, which will probably swell in a few months. They have 8 and 16 GB Sony Memory Sticks (at least in Japan), so a 4 GB HDD won't cut it. The 5 megapixel camera is definitely welcome, though. That's it for now, I'll probably have additional posts about the device as I learn more. Yalla bye-bye!

Monday, May 01, 2006

Lost ...


I really like watching Lost. I think many North Americans actually like the idea of being "lost" on some remote island. Even more, I think most people love a great mystery. I know I do. Here's a little story: When I was a wee little boy about 14 or so, I went to some event that took place at a high school far away. I was with my cousin, and we took off from the gym (where the event was being held) and found our way to the 2nd floor (to Brits and Asians, the 1st floor). We wanted to feel like we were snooping around or something, as if we were junior Macgyver meets Michael Knight meets James Bond type of guys. I had a paperclip which I was pretending to pick locks with and my cousin was probably trying to do the same (I was the hero from my perspective, so I don't remember much about the background "actors"). We got to the staff room, where I tried my lock-picking skills and magically enough the door opened! Well, I guess somebody forgot to lock it, but in that moment, we just pretended that we were responsible for the unlocking. We went inside, and I guess every kid wants to check out what the staff room is like, so we found it intriguing. There were sofas, a TV, a full kitchen and other stuff too. Our adrenaline was really pumping at this stage, so we decided that the best thing to do was to make ourselves comfortable. We grabbed drinks from the fridge and sat down in front of the TV. Just as we were about to turn it on, somebody was unlocking the door that we had locked behind us. We quickly hid behind a wall, and some teacher walked in!!! We waited until his back was turned and then bolted out as fast as we could, never looking back.


Right, then. Back to Lost. I recently watched the 2nd season finale. It was OK I guess, but I think I was expecting more answers. I watched most of Lost non-stop (Go BitTorrent!) so I was able to detect continuity issues and such easily. The first season of Lost started slowly, didn't develop much until the last few episodes where it really picked up. The second season also started with a bang, and then really slowed down. I think from about halfway the second season has been slow, and has really begun to lose its lustre. I wasn't interested in Ana Lucia at all (I hate the chick who plays
her), and the fact that she and Libby are dead feel like they were a waste of my time.

Some other points:

They have COMPLETELY forgotten about the other hatch where the other survivors of the crash lived, and where Claire was taken when she was pregnant.

The first time Locke experienced lockdown in the hatch, nothing shook and went berserk. What happened to the map that was displayed? Why didn't he try to grab a glimpse of it again?

The "others" didn't care much for the crazy looking sky during the lockdown.

How come nobody noticed the electromagnetic properties at the hatch other than Mr. Eko? Why didn't Eko share that information with Locke, since he was having such a hard time convincing him to push the button?

Yeah, I'm getting bored now, but check out the relationships diagram I have and lemme know if I missed something.

The Da Vinci Code

Sucked. Tom Hanks didn't get much of a chance to pull off acting, which was a dissapointment. Certain things were SO unnecessary. His fear of elevators - why include this shit in the movie? Also, towards the end, when they arrive in London by plane and the police search the plane and don't find Tom Hanks and the French chick because they're hiding in the getaway car, isn't it obvious that they got out before the police got there? Why did they have to show them getting out early to sneak in the car? On one hand, we have guys who can crack abstract codes which the viewer is supposed to follow, but somehow, this same viewer can't understand how they could have gotten out of the plane before the police got there. Right.

The promos made it seem like there's a huge conspiracy "at foot," which really made me wanna see the movie. You see, I love a good cover-up. But oh, how this movie dissapointed. The big secret was already told in the teaser trailers, and the most dramatic scene, too. The movie didn't have any huge mysteries, nor did it have big action or big dialogues. And why did Silas have those ugly, obvious contact lenses? What was the significance of him injuring himself? I mean, I understand why he did it ... I just don't understand why its relevant to the movie.

And DUH ... it was pretty obvious who was going to be Jesus' last living descendant. I just wanna know how an African-Arab bloodline became French.