Work
Income is starting to go up a bit but still a lot lower than last year. I hope it picks up again as we head into the shopping season.

Dollar rally
A bit more positive is the huge rally the dollar made since July. A couple of weeks ago one dollar was worth slightly less than 63 euro cent but on Friday it was worth around 70 cent – that’s a gain of more than 10% in just a couple of weeks time. I hope the dollar continues to rally but I’m not sure how the markets will respond to the bailout of US home mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The US government will nationalize the two troubled lenders and invest $100 billion in each firm to keep them solvent. This is the largest bailout in US history and it might cause selling pressure on the markets.

Movies
A quick overview of some of the movies I’ve seen in the past couple of weeks. Last week I finally saw the new Batman movie. The Dark Knight is a very good superhero movie but it’s overrated IMO. I don’t really understand why this movie ranks third in the IMDB Top 250, I rate The Dark Knight 8.5/10.

Last month Carmen and I watched Horton Hears a Who, I give this animation movie a 7/10. I also saw a Flemish thriller called De Indringer this week, this movie is about a father who’s looking for his missing daughter. For a Flemish movie it was alright, I give it a 7/10. Action movie Taken has a (slightly) similar subject, it’s about a former secret service agent who goes after the bad guys who abducted his daughter. Taken is a pretty sweet action movie, I give it a 8/10.

A week or two ago I also saw the Dune mini-series, combined the Dune mini-series have a runtime of almost 9 hours. Not everyone will like the Dune mini-series but if you’re a fan of scifi it’s definitely worth it. Dune is the second film adaption of Frank Herbert’s Dune novel while Children of Dune is based on the Dune Messiah and Children of Dune novels. Here’s a Wikipedia snip that briefly explains what Dune is all about:

Dune is set in the far future amidst a sprawling feudal interstellar empire where planetary fiefdoms are controlled by noble Houses that owe allegiance to the Imperial House Corrino. The novel tells the story of young Paul Atreides (heir apparent to Duke Leto Atreides and scion of House Atreides) as he and his family accept control of the desert planet Arrakis, the only source of the spice melange, the most important and valuable substance in the universe. The story explores the complex and multilayered interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotion, as forces of the Empire confront each other for control of Arrakis and its spice.

There are also a couple of video games based on the Dune saga but except maybe a demo of Dune 2000 I never played any of them. The story of Dune is pretty interesting and I’ve started reading the original Dune novel, some people regard the Dune series as the best scifi ever written.

Körperwelten
Next week I’m going to Körperwelten (English: Body Worlds), a German exhibition of real preserved human bodies and organs. This should be a great opportunity to learn more about the human body.

Photography
I still need to post a couple of pics of my new 55-250mm Canon lens but the weather has been quite bad lately so I haven’t really had the opportunity to take some nice shots.

At the start of the movie the couple goes to a Christmas party where Bill flirts with two models while his tipsy wife has fun with a charming older man. Nothing happens but the next day when the couple talks about the day before Alice confesses that she nearly left Bill and their little daughter a couple of years ago to pursue a sexual encounter with a handsome officer. Bill is shocked and becomes obsessed with having sex with another woman. After a couple of unfulfilling encounters he meets an old friend which tells him about a secret ritualistic sex club where everyone wears black robes and Venetian masks. Bill is intrigued and against better knowing he decides to go to the secret party..

I didn’t really know what to expect from this movie but Eyes Wide Shut turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. The story is quite interesting and sometimes even bizarre, the actors are very convincing and I also liked the soundtrack a lot. I give Eyes Wide Shut a 9/10.

I also finally checked out 2001: A Space Odyssey. This movie is already 40-years old but it’s a real scifi classic about the adventure of space exploration, technology, evolution and artificial intelligence. 

It quite funny to see how people imagined 2001 would look like 40 years ago. Unfortunately most of the things we see in the movie still don’t exist today. Space exploration hasn’t advanced as much as in the movie and is still only for the lucky few, we have no colonies in space, computers have improved a lot but artificial intelligence isn’t as advanced as in the movie and many other technologies like human hibernation don’t exist (yet).

Today 2001: A Space Odyssey looks and feels a bit outdated but it still remains a quite impressive masterpiece with an overwhelming bombastic soundtrack. The only thing that annoyed me a bit is that some scenes took a bit too long, overall I give the film a 7.5/10.