Corporate raider Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) is in Los Angeles to buy up a shipbuilding company and sell it off for parts (something that was done in the 80's when the economy was not great). Getting lost on the way to the hotel he hires an escort, Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts), to give him directions and spend the night with him.

Vivian is a charming free spirit who didn't graduate high school and got stuck in Los Angeles after her boyfriend dumped her. Edward finds her refreshing and because he needs a presentable girlfriend for a week he hires Vivian to be his +1 in various social functions. It's during this week that they start falling for each other and she starts changing his outlook on work and on what he does for a living (basically destroying companies)...

I haven't watched Pretty Woman since maybe it came out in theaters back in 1990. Maybe watched it again the mid 90's before I started my web site. Rewatching it again it's still a great romantic comedy though if made today would be significantly different but you can say that for many films.

Great soundtrack, which I own, though all the songs are played for 15 seconds to maybe a minute. This movie would look so great in HD but as a 1990 film it has a quaint graininess. Great supporting cast with Jason Alexander playing a bad guy role as Edward's lawyer/partner, Héctor Elizondo as the fatherly hotel manager who helps out Vivian, and Laura San Giacomo as Vivian's roommate.

As I said, still a great film.

The Room Two+ is Apple Arcade's version of The Room Two. This is a puzzle game where you are stuck in a room with various locations, e.g. a table with a map, a shelf with a sailing ship model, a dresser with stuff on it. Double tap to go to a location where you can usually look around a bit or move the object a bit. Double tap to zoom in on a particular feature which allows you to see clues or manipulate buttons or solve a small puzzle.

As you push buttons or solve the small puzzles you find items or reveal new puzzles/locations. Every item is used -- and some items you have to examine and manipulate -- and when you are done with an item it's removed from your inventory (and I think I had a max of three items in inventory).

You also have an eyepiece that lets you see hidden things in red. Sometimes there are clues in red and sometimes even items have red clues so you use the eyepiece often even though it's a bit of hassle turning it on and off (because on it also makes everything a bit blurry).

It's a very gated puzzle sequence and you rarely work on multiple puzzles at a time. There is a hint system which waits a bit before allowing you to get the next hint. Each step has several hints going from vague until finally telling you what to do. I used the hints a few times and usually the first hint is good enough telling you where to focus for the next step (e.g. a hint like "maybe you should examine that key you found" or "take a closer look at the map").

There is a bit of eerie music in the background. There are notes to find telling a story of a previous person trapped in the rooms (when you solve a room you go to the next room with new puzzles). There are a couple of minor scary surprise reveals but no monsters appear.

I think there were like half a dozen rooms each taking half an hour or more. Probably something like a 5-hour game and there Room games that you can buy for a few bucks each. Overall this was a fun game.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) [/] Aquaman (Jason Momoa) needs the help of his imprisoned brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) in order to defeat Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who wants to free the ancient Atlantean Kordax (Pilou Asbæk) and his undead legions... It's kind of a fun underwater romp action movie. I guess because so much of it is underwater the special effects are a bit campy. Overall a better film than I expected.

Slow Horses s3 (2023) [-] In this season the slow horses are tangled up in a scheme to find a specific document in cold storage, a document that will bring down the head of MI5 who is in turn willing to have all the slow horses killed to protect her secret. This season is not as good as previous ones though maybe because the show lost its newness factor. I was kind of going through the motions watching it, i.e. it was on but wasn't really paying attention much too often.

SongPop Party (2021) [/] A muti-player song trivia game on Apple Arcade. Choose a category for the game, e.g. Essential 90's or Best of 1998 (I think other decades open up as you complete more games. Part of a song starts playing. There are four choices of either all song names or all bands. Choose the right one faster to get more points. After 10 rounds there is a winner. Has a wide variety of songs and you can play with people on other devices.

Crepevine, Burlingame [/] We had delivery from here and there are several locations in the Bay Area. It was a while ago but I think I had the San Francisco crepe and remember it was both good and bigger than I thought. Comes with french fries so quite a filling meal for $19.

Shadow in the Cloud is a WWII bomber horror/action movie.

New Zealand, 1943. Maude (Chloë Grace Moretz) talks her way onto a midnight-departing bomber. She has mission orders and a secret package that must not be opened. During take-off they put her in the empty belly turret where she spends about 2/3rds of the movie talking with the crew, who become suspicious of who she is, and sees a man-sized bat/rat gremlin slowly tearing the ship apart. The bomber is also attacked by Japanese fighters and Maude ends up making her way underneath the flying bomber in order to retrieve her package from the grasps of the gremlin.

The first part of the movie is mystery because from the opening credits you have a pretty good idea that she wrote up her mission orders. So what is in the package and why must it not be opened? Meanwhile there's lots of cloud cover and it's dark with moonlight so what is that creature out there, or is she imagining it? Meanwhile she's in the ball turret trying to talk her way through with the crew. First she wants out then she has to block their attempts to get her out and there's a gremlin menacing her.

It's a pretty well done film and engrossing. I watched it one sitting. Seems fairly small budget but the internals of the bomber are just fine and there is enough darkness that the gremlin and Japanese fighter CGI bears up well. And actually even when we see the full gremlin for quite a bit it's fairly good CGI.

Overall an excellent film and Moretz is so good and believable as a tough pilot who has her emotional side.

Aphrodite IX: The Complete Series is an omnibus collection of the following comics:

Aphrodite IX #1-11 - Cyborg hunter-killer Aphrodite IX wakes up a thousand years in the future after Earth has been devastated. She is an amnesiac caught between two warring factions which represent genetically-engineered humans and technologically-enhanced humans.

Aphrodite IX/Cyberforce #1 - a one-shot continuation that answers questions and ties the thousand-year future to today's Cyberforce (which has an earlier Aphrodite version in its team).

Aphrodite IX: Time Out of Mind #0-4 - In New Chicago (home to the tech-enhanced humans) Aphrodite IX keeps waking up with no memories because after every assassination mission she forgets everything. She needs to find out what's going on before the police figure out she's the killer. I suppose this series is set a few years after A/C 1.

The series is intended to be science-fiction in the old sense of being scientifically/technologically accurate and the primary science is genetic manipulation and cybertech. Stjepan Sejic is the artist and I like his works. Not a bad read though many too many unanswered questions left for the future, which is fine for a comic book but not so for a work of literature.

Damsel (2024) [/] In this Netflix fantasy film Elodie (Millie Bobby Brown) -- the oldest daughter of a small lord with a struggling holding -- is married to the prince of the neighboring rich kingdom. But turns out they do that in order to sacrifice royal princesses to a dragon (Shohreh Aghdashloo) that lives in the mountain. The story is mostly Elodie evading the dragon, trying to escape the mountain, and discovering the background story of why the dragon demands such specific sacrifices... It's an interesting fantasy (well, the dragon is the only fantasy element) story wherein the princess is the one who has to save herself from danger.

Company of Heroes (2013) [-] Direct to video action film. During late 1944 a squad of American soldiers ends up having to go behind enemy lines to Stuttgart to stop the Nazis from deploying an atomic weapon... I watched an hour and it's a bit boring. The first combat scene is well done for small budget but then it's a lot of mist, darkness and closeups though maybe the final combat has more effort.

Simon's Cat - Story Time (2021) [/] This is a match 3 puzzle game in the Simon's Cat franchise. The theme is actually pretty good in that there's a story where characters talk and the cats do things and each puzzle advances the story a bit. The puzzles start out easy and get more challenging since you only have a certain number of moves and there are blocks and obstacles. But doing bigger matches unlocks power-ups so there is thinking involved trying to setup a big match for a good power-up. Not my type of game but was entertaining for an hour or so.

Sama Coffee Shop, San Mateo [/] This is a small family owned coffee place that also has Thai tea and various Turkish Delight desserts. We visited Saturday night after dinner and it was full (most/all seats taken the half hour we were there) though not packed. I had a Toffee Ginger Blast ($7, 16 oz) - caramel, ginger, espresso. It was pretty good though as indicated did take a while to make as they have one espresso machine.

Love O2O is a Chinese romance-drama. Bei Weiwei (Zheng Shuang) is a 2nd year computer science student and known as the department belle (and 2nd prettiest girl on campus). She plays the MMO A Chinese Ghost Story as a kick-ass female who is the 6th best duelist on her server, though since she's never revealed any personal details there are some who think she's a male player.

Anyway, after getting dumped by her current in-game husband -- marriage being a part of the game for game bonuses mostly and not really romantic for most players -- she is pursued by the best player on the server. It's only about a third of the way through the series that they finally meet and she finds out he's campus hottie and computer whiz Xiao Nai (Yang Yang) who she and every other girl on campus have been pining over. On the other hand Nai knew Weiwei's MMO character earlier having accidentally seen her playing in a computer cafe.

The series revolves around their budding relationship, Nai's startup with his computer buddies, and how Weiwei interacts with his friends and his company. There's a rival for Nai, campus belle Meng Yiran (Ma Chunrui) who kind of indirectly has schemes against Weiwei (it's mostly Yiran's friends doing it as it turns out she is not really that mean). There's top foreign language department student Cao Guang (Bai Yu) who views for Weiwei's affections though that's very one-sided as she has no interest in him.

It's a pleasant story with a very photogenic lead couple but ultimately it's a miss. I like the MMO stuff, which reminds me of Falling Into Your Smile's use of League of Legends, but with Smile the LoL competition is throughout the series whereas here the MMO stuff tapers off after a few episodes and you rarely see gameplay after -- though I did like how they did the MMO gameplay by using the actors in the game costumes doing stuff on CGI game backgrounds that made it obvious it's a computer game.

The lows weren't that low and the highs not that high. It's a rather subdued story where the drama is not extreme and the emotions are blunted. I think I'm starting to prefer Korean dramas which do have more emotion and more extreme drama to the point of nearing soap opera scenarios.

Which reminds one thing K-dramas I've seen do much better is flashbacks that show how the lead characters have known each other all along but had forgotten or had not mentioned it. The last scene in LoveO2O has a slight flashback to when Nai saw Weiwei playing the MMO but it didn't reveal anything new. For some reason that scene reminded of how lackluster Love O2O ran throughout.

Overall I wouldn't watch this one again and feel Falling Into Your Smile is a better implementation of a love story revolving around a computer game.

2024-05-6: Forgot to mention one of the subplots involves this vaguely gay attraction between two characters. It goes on for several episodes appearing every now and then. But at the end it's left unresolved and without saying whether that's what it was about. I guess for a China mainland show that was already a bold subplot.