I just watched the remake of My Sassy Girl today, starring Elisha Cuthbert and Jesse Bradford.  What did I think about it?  I’m gonna go a little in depth into what I liked and didn’t liked, but if you want you can just check out my quick summary of my thoughts at the end of this entry.  You should also do that if you wanna avoid spoilers.  Otherwise, continue on . 

Because I’ve watch the original and absolutely loved it, I can’t help but compare this remake to the original.  What changed?  Wow, where do I start…

Here’s the trailer to the remake.  I’ll make references to certain parts later on in this entry:

The movie generally follows the same storyline as the original, except it has been Americanized.  The “Girl” has an actual name in this movie and is played by Elisha Cuthbert (24, The Girl Next Door), who is quite pretty in the movie, but I personally prefer Jun Ji-hyun still.  I wasn’t expecting her to be that good based on the trailer, but I’ll admit that she was alright playing the part of the sassy girl.  Compared to Jun, however, she is no where near as sassy in this movie.  She laughed too much and showed too much affection for the main guy throughout the movie.  She also didn’t say “Wanna die”, not even a version of it!  That was definitely one of the more memorable parts from the originial. 

The main guy was play by Jesse Bradford (Swimfan).  I’ve always kinda liked him from past movies, and he’s acceptable here as well.  Ah but again, after seeing the original you can’t help but compare him to Cha Tae-hyun.  The character that Jesse plays is not the same character as the original.  Both character are too nice for their own good, but this new version is not timid nor bumbling enough.  He also has a recurring best friend (guy at :39) and is striving to get this one job that wasn’t in the original.  Those two things never really add much to the story, especially since the friend is not really funny nor that likable.

Generally, the movie didn’t feel…smooth.  Transitions were quick and the pacing was totally off.  The movie is only about 90 minute long, compared to the over 2 hour original movie.  Thus,  many scenes felt very rushed and made the movie lose a lot of the depth of the original.

The original story was hilarious.  Even though it was so long, I would laugh throughout the whole thing.  This new movie did not do it for me.  There were a few scenes that were funny (i.e. the scene playing during the 1:00 mark in the trailer), but the remake was overall just kinda amusing because of the pacing problem and slight changes to scenes from the original that don’t work in this remake because of cultural differences.

Alright, I’m gonna make a series of quick comments on scenes from the movie (some spoilers):

• This initial meeting was not hysterical like it was in the original.  They cut out the part where the girl throws up on the old man!  Instead they replace that with her yelling “you’re welcome!” to him after shooing away the kid sitting in a seat.
• The hotel scenes were totally cut out.  The jail scene was barely referenced.  Way to brief.

• The main guy’s mother has a totally different personality.  No son beatings!  Bummer.
• You remember the slap game?  Yea, that was really bad in this movie (check it out at 1:31).  The guy slaps back and the girl is laughing too much.  Her crazy speech was also omitted!  Booo.
• The girl’s dead fiance commits suicide in this movie, when in the original he died from an illness.  Why change that?  It doesn’t make much sense for him to have killed himself.
• The soldier scene was much shorter.  This is actually good because I didn’t like that part in the original too much.
• No freakin’ school uniform scene!  Although I’m not sure how they would have implemented that in this remake due to cultural differences.

• I understand this movie had a low budget, but seriously those short stories reenactments were so horrible to watch.  Not good.
• Instead of yelling across mountains, they yell across a big park!  I know it’s set in New York, but it really made that scene lose a lot of its effect.

Ehh.

• The part where they read each other’s letters towards the end was pretty good and probably the only slightly emotional part.
• No UFO!
• No frog in time capsule!
• Way too many hints to the “surprise” twist at the end.  The way they shot the ending made it not as sweet as the original

Summary
Overall, the remake isn’t horrible.  The story is still a good one to watch and it stays mostly faithful to the original.  However, this new movie is no where near as good as the original.  A lot of what made the original movie so great is lost in this one due to cultural differences and shortening of this new movie, which causes a lot of pacing issues and makes the movie lose depth. 

For someone who saw the original, I would rate this a 2 out of 5.  If you never watched the original this movie will be okay, but if you have then expect to be disappointed.

I also remember a lot dreams when I wake up, but then I forget about them after a day or so.  Last night I had a pretty long and detailed dream that I can still remember.  It was very interesting and I feel like putting it down somewhere.  I think from now on I’m gonna start writing down my dreams on here, sorta like a dream journal, just for funsies.  Hmm how should I start..

I start off walking in a city I think.  I’m figure I was just visiting because I’m constantly looking around trying to find something.  I walk by a coffee shop when something catches my eye on the TV in there.  I take a closer look and I see someone very familiar, someone I know personally.  (Note:  In my dreams I “remember” previous memories that are real to me in the dream, but aren’t actually real…you know what I mean?  Yea it’s odd I know.) 

I try to remember who this girl is and I come to the conclusion that it’s someone I used to love, but have since broken up with.  She looked so beautiful on screen, kinda the same but kinda different from what I remembered.  She looked skinnier and her skin was pale but beautiful.  She also apparently dyed her hair a reddish color and it’s long, like it was in high school.  Nonetheless she was gorgeous in my eyes.  She actually made it as a tv star, just like she always wanted, I thought to myself, and I was very happy for her at that moment.

Suddenly the scene changes and I’m at somebody’s mansion.  It’s huge and it even had it own restaurant, which was where I was sitting.  That girl appears out of the shadows out of nowhere, surprising me.  While I was still trying to figure out what emotion to feel, the girl already had an upset expression on her face. 

“Why are you still thinking of me?  Why are you still sad?”  she half asked and yelled at me.

I’m really confused on why she just asked me that, but figured I somehow wrote something about her somewhere and she was not happy that after all this time, she was still somewhat on my mind.  However, she didn’t seem to realized that even though she may be on my mind, I have gotten over her a while ago.  I was speechless for a long time before I made a emotional remark back to her. 

“Look, I don’t know why alright?  Maybe it’s because you were able to fall in love so quickly after we broke up that bothered me so much!  How is it that you could move on so easily?”

Her face suddenly changed from anger to sad, and she excused herself as she walked out the room.  I’m standing there for some time thinking about how I got here, when I hear a phone ring.  It’s not my phone, but her phone that she had accidentally left on a desk near me.  I picked it up and the person on the line asked for Claire (Yea, apparently the girl’s name is Claire.  I don’t even know a Claire in real life…too much Heroes me think haha).

I wander around the mansion trying to find Claire and after a while I manage to finally find her room.  She sitting in the middle of her king size bed with her arms wrapped around her knees weeping.  “Hey Claire, someone called you” was all I could say.  She suddenly notices me and quickly wiped away her tears.  She faked a smile as I hand her the phone.  It was very awkward being in her room.  I really don’t want to see any pictures of her and her new love, I thought, so I tried to hurry out of the room when a picture frame catches my eye.  It was a small picture, but it was a picture of someone I wasn’t expecting; me.  I put the picture frame down and, after a bit of a hesitation (and with what I thought was a Lifehouse song playing in the background, oddly enough), I walked away from the room, and her, without looking back.  I just kept walking and walking away for the longest time…

And then I woke up.  As I turned on the tv to energize myself enough to get out of bed, guess what music video is playing on VH1?

Me and my weird dreams.

I.  Can’t.  Stop.  Watching.  Romantic.  Comedies.  Help.  Me.

I’ve gotten so put off by the results of my job hunting as of late that over the past week I was strongly considering going to graduate school in the fall instead of dealing with all this hassle.  I figured that I could just work part-time until graduate school starts up in the fall of 09.  Over the weekend I’ve even started to look up area graduate schools that I could go to.  I was leaning towards getting a masters in I/O psychology at UMBC, although I would have to go to the Shady Grove campus in order to do so.

Now all of the sudden I’m back to square one.  Remember a while back I was looking into working for USTA?  I got so close but didn’t get it?  Well, looks like I got a possible second chance to work for USTA.  The thing is…it would be the Middle States office, which is located in PA.  If I’m lucky enough to get this job, I wouldn’t be able to commute there so I have to move there.

Working for the USTA is one of my dream jobs, so I wouldn’t mind it if I have to move in order to work for them.  It’s not terribly far (it’s about 2 and a half hours away) but far enough that commuting would not be logical. 

I thought about this all day.  On one hand I’ll miss being away from family and friends.  On the other hand, it would be refreshing to start over somewhere new. 

So yea, first I need to get this position before I think about the details (I learned my lesson from the first time haha).  Until I’m absolutely sure I’ve been hired, I’m gonna continue looking for graduate schools.  Just wanted to give people a heads up in case I disappear from MD all of sudden .  Ah crossroads…love them and hate them at the very same time.

Wanna hear a funny story about my job interview today?

So today I had an interview scheduled at 9am.  My arrival time was at 8:30am, but they told me I should arrive 45 minutes before my arrival time to check in.  By the time I got through the check in process it was 8am, so I had an hour before my interview time.

Time past and it’s 9:45am before my interviewer arrive.  Apparently he had just moved to a new office and got his schedule messed up, which was why he was late.  We begin talking about my application when he asked me if I was still working on my masters.  Huh? 

I take a look at the resume he had and we discover that the resume belongs to ANOTHER Alex Chan.  The interviewer couldn’t interview me since he’s in the technical field, so I couldn’t do my interview today.  I talked with HR to figure out another time to interview me, but I’m not entirely optimistic about what’s gonna happen for me next.

That was my lovely day.  Woke up at 6am, left the house at 7:30am, waited in the waiting room for my interview from 8am-10am only to hear I won’t be having my interview today.  Knowing my luck as of late I’ll probably won’t even have the interview anymore.

Anyone got some spare luck or optimism to give to me?  I would appreciate some if you do

Obama:   “I think your husband was attempting to kiss
you.”
Clinton:  “I know.”
Obama:  (Looking away now…)

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I would write about what I’ve been up to this week, but its just the same as last week; job searching and watching US Open obsessively.  Hoping for a Roddick/Nadal final!

Edit*

…and Roddick disappointed me yet again.  Sigh.