I’m not sure how I missed this dorama when it first aired, but I’m happy to have found it and watched the whole series in a couple days. (A couple long nights, actually) I’m a fan of Miho Kanno and thought she did a great job as Kiina, a detective who handles the odd cases that the regular detectives find either too goofy to take. Each episode is about a single case, usually involving some kind of supernatural angle, but ultimately is solved by some kind of scientific explanation. It’s pretty easy to figure out who the culprit is but the interesting part is how they explain how the crime was done. What makes Kiina (the character) special is that she has a photographic memory, and picks up on obscure clues throughout the investigation. She’s also very idealistic, and her partner serves as a counterbalance to her personality. It’s a pretty good dorama, and I recommend watching it. My only complaint was that the subplot involving the chief wasn’t very interesting, or the resolution of that subplot wasn’t as fulfilling as it could have been. But still, each episode is pretty fun to watch. Also, each episode features a different guest star who will be familiar to regular dorama viewers.

This weekend we watched the movie Departures, the 2009 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film. It’s about a man who loses his job as a cellist when the orchestra disbands, and his new job as an “encoffiner” which mean he prepares dead bodies for the coffin. At first I thought that this is going to be a really upsetting movie, but it is actually really touching and has a lot of humor as well. Throughout the movie, you experience the emotions that Daigo (the main character played by Masahiro Motoki) has, starting with shock and surprise. Soon, you start to see the importance of his job to the families of the deceased. You also understand the feelings of his wife Mika (Hirosue Ryoko) and her objections to his new line of work, and then you relate to the predicament that Daigo is in. The story is excellent and the acting is great. My favorite character is the owner of the encoffining business. You would probably recognize him as the cowboy from Tampopo. He’s so cool, yet you can tell how caring he is. All-in-all, Departures is a great movie. Just make sure to have some tissues handy since it can be a real tear-jerker!

We finally went to the theater to see the new Studio Ghibli film, “Ponyo” and it was wonderful! It’s so fun to see a new release from Hayao Miyazaki because you are sure to see quality artwork and a great story, set to a terrific musical score. Ponyo has all of these elements, but the artwork was what truly stood out for me. You could see so much detail in even the most basic areas of the scene. For instance, the colored-pencil shading was made up of so many different colors as opposed to many other animated films or cartoons, you’d just see a flat grey. Near the beginning of the movie, Sosuke is running down the hill from his house to the water, and the grass alongside the path was amazing. I really can’t wait to get this movie on disc so I can pause different scenes just to check out the quality of the artwork.

The English voice-acting was pretty good, and it was cool that they used all the Japanese names for the characters. And it was pretty neat to see a Ghibli movie set in Japan again. I like the movies that are set in other places, but the Japanese ones seem the best to me. Totoro and Spirited Away are examples. I guess it’s because I think Japan is such a neat place, and it just seems natural for a Miyazaki movie. To me, it’s a little strange to hear Kiki or Porco Rosso speaking in Japanese while the setting is in a Western country. (Yes, I prefer to have Japanese audio/English subtitles) Ponyo has a lot of really Japanese elements to it, like the mother’s micro-car, the Kindergarten, and even the mother cracking open a big beer! (looked like a Sapporo to me).

Another thing I love about Ghibli movies is that you find yourself expected to take these fantastic and unexpected things as being normal. For instance, this strange fish with a human face and hair is seen as just a goldfish to everyone. And the towering waves that were chasing a car were so crazy, but the mother just remarked casually something like “what’s with the waves today?”. That kind of thing really opens up your mind and you think that anything is possible in that world.

I’m not sure how much longer Ponyo will be in theaters here in the U.S., but if you haven’t seen it yet, you should!

One of the strengths of the Android OS is its ability to run apps in the background. However, this can also be a weakness because sometimes you can feel the OS bogging down after you have been using it a while. It’s supposed to automatically shut processes down as needed, but it doesn’t always do a great job. That’s where the task manager app Close Everything 2 comes in. This app will basically shut down any processes and services that you don’t want running any more. To use, just click the icon to launch it.

You’ll then be presented with a list of running apps. From here, you can choose to close everything in the list, or you can tap an individual app to close it, or select multiple apps to close using the checkboxes. One really nice thing about Close Everything 2 is that you can choose to exclude certain services from being closed. Just long-press on a service in the list to set it as excluded. It’s a good idea to exclude things like weather widgets, otherwise their auto-refresh will be disabled.

Finally, there is a Close Everything 2 widget that you can put on your desktop. It indicates the number of apps running in the background (that aren’t on the exclusion list) and you can just tap the icon to shut down the background processes. Whenever I feel that my phone is running a little sluggishly, I just tap the widget and voila, my phone is running at top speed again!

Close Everything 2 at AndroLib

Amazon.com recently released their native Android app and it’s a keeper. With it, you can check your account, cancel orders, view recommendations, and of course buy stuff. But what is really cool about it is that you can use it to save products or “Reminders” for later purchase. Here’s a quick run-through of the application.

First, launch the app and then you’ll find yourself at the home screen, with your recommendations that are pulled from your previous activity associated with your Amazon.com account. (The first time you launch the app, you can sign in) From here you can search for a product or if you are in the store and standing in front of the product but don’t want to buy it right then, you can click on Search using barcodes or photos. This will take you to the Amazon Remembers screen where you can view your saved items.

To add an item into your list, you can take a photo of the product or scan its barcode. The G1 has a really nice camera that can auto-focus within a few inches making it perfect for barcode scanning, but I prefer to use the photo-mode since it’s pretty cool technology. After clicking on the photo button, you just need to line up the product and then click the on-screen shutter button.

You’ll then be asked if you want to use the image or take another one. Once you are happy with the photo, the app will add the photo to your “Amazon Remembers” list.

If it found a match, you can click on the item to see more detail, such as price, ratings, reviews, and the option to Buy Now, Add to Cart, or Add to Wish List. If you’ve enabled the optional “Mobile 1-Click Ordering” feature, you can purchase the item that way as well. Besides the Amazon Remembers feature, you quick access to the Goldbox specials page and your Wish List.

I’ve been using the wonderful SnapTell app which uses the same camera analysis technology as the Amazon.com app, but I’m not sure if I will keep using it. The advantage of SnapTell is that you will get links to a list of retailers besides just Amazon.com, online and local prices (it uses your GPS fix), and also links to other information about the item such as Wikipedia, Yahoo search, and Google reviews. However, with the Amazon.com app, I can save these items to my Wish List as well, which I can access on any computer. For now I will keep both since they each have their plusses.

The only complaint I have with the Amazon.com app is that it is not really built for browsing. You can search for an item, but there aren’t categories to browse. Hopefully they can add something like that in the future.

T-mobile has been releasing a ton of new goodies in anticipation of the launch of their second Android phone, the MyTouch. Us old G1 users can also take advantage of the slew of new apps, including T-Mobile’s Visual Voicemail. It’s pretty cool, and something that we’ve been waiting for a quite some time. IPhone users have had visual voicemail from long ago (my buddy Mikey replied to my tweet by saying “@barron Welcome to iPhone 2007! (Happy for you, though!)”. Fair enough. Android still has a way to go, but it’s definitely picking up steam.

The app itself is pretty straightforward. You just launch it from the icon, then your inbox opens up and you can see all your voicemails in a list, with phone #, time called, duration, and Name and Icon of the person if you have that listed in your Contacts. From there, just select a message, and you get the message screen where you can listen to the message. You can also delete it from here or call back the person. There’s a handy button to switch over to speaker phone as well. Other features that can be accessed via the Menu button are Add to Contacts, or Reply via phone or Text Message. All in all, it’s a really nice feature to have, and it’s free! All you have to do is call T-mobile and tell them to activate it. It won’t cost anything, and you can stay on the plan you are on, without losing any of the features you already enjoy.

It’s so nice that new features are added to the phone with pretty good frequency. The fact that Google can update core functionality to their phone via Market updates is also really neat. Seems like a quick and easy way to deploy cool stuff to Android users.

You can get the T-Mobile Visual Voicemail app from the Android Market on your phone, from the T-Mobile AppPack bundle, or you can visit Cyrket and point your camera at the QR Code (use the free app “Barcode Scanner”.

One of the apps that I have had on my G1 for the longest time is Locale by two forty four a.m.. It’s a really nice utility that lets you customize your phone based on certain dynamic situations. It’s really easy to do.

First you add a new Situation and give it a name, then you add at least one Condition. You can see the list of Conditions in the screenshot above. Then you select what Settings you’d like to have changed when that Condition is met. All of the Situations I have set up are based on time, but you could specify something to happen based on Location. For instance, when the phone is 100’ or more from your home address (using the phone’s GPS to pinpoint your location), you could have it turn off your wi-fi to save battery. Or when the battery drops below 20%, you could set the screen brightness to 10%.

Like I said, all of mine are simply time-based. The Situation named “Quiet Time” has the Condition of 11PM - 7AM, and the Setting is to turn the Ring Volume down to it’s lowest audible setting. The other Situations I created just change the wallpaper at certain times throughout the day. It’s very basic, but it adds a bit of fun customization to the phone.

As with most Android apps, just go to the Android Market on your phone and search for Locale, or you can visit the Twofortyfouram website for more information.

After reading Mikey’s re-review of Manhattan, I decided that I really needed to see it. I just finished watching it, and I have to say the movie is incredible. The dialogue, acting, story, were all excellent, but the beautiful black and white images of the city were what really got to me. Couple that with the Gershwin soundtrack and you have a classic. And it really does have one of the best ending lines of all time (and the delivery by Mariel Hemingway is perfect).

I enjoyed reading Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” a couple years ago and was pretty excited to hear about the movie. Well, I finally got around to watching it (it was in my Netflix queue forever) and thought it was really good. As opposed to Stardust, I thought the screen version of the story matched exactly what I imagined when I was reading the book. Sure, they are real world locations in DaVinci Code, but still, it was so weird that while watching the movie, it seemed like I had seen it before. The movie was just sort of an enhancement of the written story. I guess if you never read the book, the movie might be kind of weak, but I thought it was wonderful. Tom Hanks did a great job as Langdon, and Audrey Tautou was perfect. Now I am looking forward to the film version of “Angels and Demons”, which I thought was even better than Da Vinci Code.