Watched Kill Bill Vols. 1 and 2, back to back on Friday night/Saturday morning. Took the first train home. Am still suffering from sleep deprivation.

But it was worth it. Every minute. Vol. 1 looked better the second time 'round, somehow. Vol. 2 is very different. Not as zany. More a homage to '60's and '70's Westerns. The Pai Mei scenes were hilarious and closer to Vol. 1. Gordon Liu plays Pai Mei (a distillation of eccentric, grumpy, funny and amazingly-skilled curmudgeonly kungfu masters) to a T. Tarantino's knack for dialogue comes to the fore here and the uncanny fusion of violence and the mundane, a sense of poetic justice and more fine acting from Uma Thurman make Vol. 2 every bit as good as the first.

My Saturday was spent in a sleep-deprived funk.

More film on Sunday afternoon. Ai Nu (lit. "Love Slave" but somehow the film got saddled with the burdensome "Intimate Confessions Of A Chinese Courtesan" for an English title.) was screened as part of the Film Fest, under a series of erotic Shaw films from the 1970s. Very little character development, fight scenes were a nice touch but the main focus was the revenge theme that have been lifted right out of a pulp novel. The sex and S&M was mostly implied which led to some cheesy (by our standards today) transitions and abrupt cuts. What was shown however, was probably shocking for its time. Some female frontal nudity and lesbians kissing and so on.

Reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl blew up on this day 18 years ago, in 1986.

A biker travels through what is left: a photo journey.

Gnocchi Sauton! #61





"I don't want a toaster."

Generally, things (like this quiz) tend to tick you off. You have contemplated doing grievous bodily harm to door-to-door salesmen.

Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Vitamin F was underwhelming. Some intriguing scenarios and few cliches, but almost no drama at all and mostly amateur acting. Even Yakusho Koji can't rescue the episode he's in (Setchan), although his character will become somewhat of a role model for all otaku ^_^

Neurosurgeon, Writer, Activist, Singaporean

Gopal Baratham passed away two years ago today.

Overview

A Retrospective

And while we are on the subject of helplessness in the face of unprecedented masses and masses of people thronging and crowding and getting in our damn way everyday and everywhere in our lives --

Vibrator wasn't bad at all, but not fantastic. Terashima Shinobu gave a convincing performance as a lonely woman confused to the point of terror by human communication, while Ohmori Nao's truck driver was slightly goofy and sweet. The music wasn't very appropriate: mostly Sheryl Crow-wannabes. I think it's a good film, but there's something about it that I can't place but that stops it from being great. Like someone put saccharine in my tea.

Finished You Shall Know Our Velocity yesterday.

We run to escape ourselves, because we don't know what else to do.

I love the way the title trips off the tongue so easily -- "YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY!" It should be said in so many different ways.

Kill Bill 2: A Bluffer's Guide

Zatoichi is great. It's not meant to be traditional chambara so don't see it that way. Excellent fight sequences, good characterisation and best of all the film never takes itself too seriously. The sub-plot with the siblings drags for a bit though. You can spot the shoddy CGI too -- all the blood-spatter is CGI! -- a mile away. That's probably the most obvious flaw.

I remember when I found out about chemistry
It was a long, long way from here
I was old enough to want it but younger than I wanted to be
Suddenly my mission was clear

So for awhile I conducted experiments
And I was amazed by the things I learned
From a fine fine girl with nothing but good intentions and a
Bad tendency to get burned

All about chemistry
Won't you show me everything you know
Ah wonder what you do to me
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh

--- Supersonic, Chemistry

Was busy, so no time to blog about Sunday on Monday. Another half-day of volunteering at the Film Fest on Sunday.

The Corporation: Slick production examining the excesses of corporations. It was fun to show by the WHO's criteria, corporations would be complete psychopaths if they were real people. What I liked most was that the documentary took pains to show that the roots of most of the problems about corporations can be found in the way they have been defined by man-made laws. No crude moralising here, but did get polemic towards the end. Propaganda for my side. If you liked Naomi Klein's No Logo, you will enjoy this.

Watched some of Fallon, Nevada. Dead boring.

Final Solution was banned at the last minute. Award-winning, controversial, banned.

Shame on our censors for taking the easy way out. Clearly the only racial conflict people can think about are the ones sanctioned by MOE. Shame

-------------------------------------------

Before that, I wandered around Clarke Quay. Picked up a brand-new paperback copy of Oryx and Crake for $10, and a 2nd hand copy of the Jackie Brown OST. The CD's a Japanese edition, and there's an insert with all the song lyrics and dialogue snippets transcribed (sweet!) and a commentary on all the tracks, in Japanese. Will sit down one day and figure all that out.

My first ever day of volunteering at the Singapore Int'l Film Festival. A Saturday with scorching sunshine spent mostly indoors at the Singapore History Museum. I need sleep. Will be brief.

KAFA Animations: My favourite was The Letter. Surreal and quietly humourous. The unnamed male narrator sends letters to his ex-girlfriend, pouring his feelings out in the hope that she'll return to him. The local post office is staffed by only one person, and all Ami does is stamp envelopes. Actually, she's been opening the narrator's letters, reading them, and falling in love with him. Then their little unnamed town is suddenly infested with benevolent, mail-eating dinosaurs.

Cosmic Tree was also excellently drawn and animated.

Fear Factor (Star Galaxy): One in a series of documentary shorts that focus on the recent Indonesian elections. Star Galaxy focuses on the activities of a dangdut group that performs for all the major parties. This short was screened as part of the launch of a book about the work of Indonesian New Wave director Garin Nugroho. Nugroho is actively nurturing a new generation of directors through projects like Fear Factor (which he produced), and he talked about his experiences in dealing with film censorship and oppression during the Suharto years.

Parasite Dolls: I took off in the afternoon to catch this with David. Too bad it was a dud. Mediocre plots, quality of animation above average but I expected nothing less. Hope the filmfest people get a better anime offering next year!

Morning Sun: 2 hour documentary about the Cultural Revolution. Nothing that I didn't know from classes, but I loved the extensive media footage used throughout the film. I also liked that the interviews with leaders who were persecuted during that period and with their children, which helps to reinforces the film's thesis of misguided, uncontrolled youthful fanaticism. The sense of religious fervour mixed with rock-star idolatry that fueled the excesses of the Cultural Revolution is crystal-clear in this polished effort.

The New York Times, April 13, 2004

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Solitude and the Fortresses of Youth

By MICHAEL CHABON

SAN FRANCISCO � Earlier this month my local paper, The San Francisco Chronicle, reported that a college student had been expelled from art school here for submitting a story "rife with gruesome details about sexual torture, dismemberment and bloodlust" to his creative writing class. The instructor, a poet named Jan Richman, subsequently found herself out of a job. The university chose not to explain its failure to renew Ms. Richman's contract, but she intimated that she was being punished for having set the tone for the class by assigning a well-regarded if disturbing short story by the MacArthur-winning novelist David Foster Wallace, "Girl with Curious Hair." Ms. Richman had been troubled enough by the student's work to report it to her superiors in the first place, in spite of the fact that it was not, according to the Chronicle, "the first serial-killer story she had read in her six semesters on the faculty at the Academy of Art University."

Homicide inspectors were called in; a criminal profiler went to work on the student. The officers found no evidence of wrongdoing. The unnamed student had made no threat; his behavior was not considered suspicious. In the end, no criminal charges were brought.

In this regard, the San Francisco case differs from other incidents in California, and around the country, in which students, unlucky enough to have as literary precursor the Columbine mass-murderer Dylan Klebold, have found themselves expelled, even prosecuted and convicted on criminal charges, because of the violence depicted in their stories and poems. The threat posed by these prosecutions to civil liberties, to the First Amendment rights of our young people, is grave enough. But as a writer, a parent and a former teenager, I see the workings of something more iniquitous: not merely the denial of teenagers' rights in the name of their own protection, but the denial of their humanity in the name of preserving their innocence.

It is in the nature of a teenager to want to destroy. The destructive impulse is universal among children of all ages, rises to a peak of vividness, ingenuity and fascination in adolescence, and thereafter never entirely goes away. Violence and hatred, and the fear of our own inability to control them in ourselves, are a fundamental part of our birthright, along with altruism, creativity, tenderness, pity and love. It therefore requires an immense act of hypocrisy to stigmatize our young adults and teenagers as agents of deviance and disorder. It requires a policy of dishonesty about and blindness to our own histories, as a species, as a nation, and as individuals who were troubled as teenagers, and who will always be troubled, by the same dark impulses. It also requires that favorite tool of the hypocritical, dishonest and fearful: the suppression of constitutional rights.

We justly celebrate the ideals enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but it is also a profoundly disillusioned document, in the best sense of that adjective. It stipulates all the worst impulses of humanity: toward repression, brutality, intolerance and fear. It couples an unbridled faith in the individual human being, redeemed time and again by his or her singular capacity for tenderness, pity and all the rest, with a profound disenchantment about groups of human beings acting as governments, court systems, armies, state religions and bureaucracies, unchecked by the sting of individual conscience and only belatedly if ever capable of anything resembling redemption.

In this light the Bill of Rights can be read as a classic expression of the teenage spirit: a powerful imagination reacting to a history of overwhelming institutional repression, hypocrisy, chicanery and weakness. It is a document written by men who, like teenagers, knew their enemy intimately, and saw in themselves all the potential they possessed to one day become him. We tend to view idealism and cynicism as opposites, when in fact neither possesses any merit or power unless tempered by, fused with, the other. The Bill of Rights is the fruit of that kind of fusion; so is the teenage imagination.

The imagination of teenagers is often � I'm tempted to say always � the only sure capital they possess apart from the love of their parents, which is a force far beyond their capacity to comprehend or control. During my own adolescence, my imagination, the kingdom inside my own skull, was my sole source of refuge, my fortress of solitude, at times my prison. But a fortress requires a constant line of supply; those who take refuge in attics and cellars require the unceasing aid of confederates; prisoners need advocates, escape plans, or simply a window that gives onto the sky.

Like all teenagers, I provisioned my garrison with art: books, movies, music, comic books, television, role-playing games. My secret confederates were the works of Monty Python, H. P. Lovecraft, the cartoonist Vaughan Bod�, and the Ramones, among many others; they kept me watered and fed. They baked files into cakes and, on occasion, for a wondrous moment, made the walls of my prison disappear. Given their nature as human creations, as artifacts and devices of human nature, some of the provisions I consumed were bound to be of a dark, violent, even bloody and horrifying nature; otherwise I would not have cared for them. Tales and displays of violence, blood and horror rang true, answered a need, on some deep, angry level that maybe only those with scant power or capital, regardless of their age, can understand.

It was not long before I began to write: stories, poems, snatches of autobiographical jazz. Often I imitated the work of my confederates: stories of human beings in the most extreme situations and states of emotion � horror stories; accounts of madness and despair. In part � let's say in large part, if that's what it takes to entitle the writings of teenagers to unqualified protection under the First Amendment � this was about expression. I was writing what I felt, what I believed, wished for, raged against, hoped and dreaded. But the main reason I wrote stories � and the reason that I keep on writing them today � was not to express myself. I started to write because once it had been nourished, stoked and liberated by those secret confederates, I could not hold back the force of my imagination. I had been freed, and I felt that it was now up to me to do the same for somebody else, somewhere, trapped in his or her own lonely tower.

We don't want teenagers to write violent poems, horrifying stories, explicit lyrics and rhymes; they're ugly, in precisely the way that we are ugly, and out of protectiveness and hypocrisy, even out of pity and love and tenderness, we try to force young people to be innocent of everything but the effects of that ugliness. And so we censor the art they consume and produce, and prosecute and suspend and expel them, and when, once in a great while, a teenager reaches for an easy gun and shoots somebody or himself, we tell ourselves that if we had only censored his journals and curtailed his music and video games, that awful burst of final ugliness could surely have been prevented. As if art caused the ugliness, when of course all it can ever do is reflect and, perhaps, attempt to explain it.

Let teenagers languish, therefore, in their sense of isolation, without outlet or nourishment, bereft of the only thing that makes it all bearable: knowing that somebody else has felt the way that you feel, has faced it, run from it, rued it, lamented it and transformed it into art; has been there, and returned, and lived, for the only good reason we have: to tell the tale. How confident we shall be, once we have done this, of never encountering the ugliness again! How happy our children will be, and how brave, and how safe!

Michael Chabon is the author of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2001.

Added Diesel Sweeties to the sidebar.

I know I will never bear the white-hot intensity of your love for music, Vaya.

In my case, out of the blue I'll start humming or singing a song in my head (or out loud when I'm in the shower -- doesn't everyone?), and then my conscious mind catches up and realises that the same song is playing on the radio or the PA system. Just somewhere in the background.

The corollary of this is that I get irritated whenever a riff or a sequence will set off a song, but then my conscious mind runs up and tells me that no, it's really another one. One of those hip-hop songs that oh-so-cleverly grafts new words onto an older song, or another lacklustre cover out to milk adolescents for money.

What I like most about Gus van Sant's Elephant were the use of tracking shots throughout and the multiple character plots converging and diverging. In addition, it was pretty smart to depict the killers entering the school early in the movie. Suddenly the rest of the movie's banality is tinged uneasily with foreboding.

Just don't expect the film to have any answers. Gus van Sant's point is that there aren't any, and he does this by presenting all the characters except for the killers, in all their banality to the point of near-stereotyping. As for the killers, van Sant does play around with audience preconceptions, letting some apply but not all.

His point? Things happen for no reason whatsoever. Metaphysically depressing, technically excellent.

Better Living Through Online Personality Quizzes #27


You are Professor X!

You are a very effective teacher, and you are very
committed to those who learn from you. You put
your all into everything you do, to some extent
because you fear failure more than anything
else. You are always seeking self-improvement,
even in areas where there is nothing you can do
to improve.


Which X-Men character are you most like?
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I used to keep detailed records of all my daily expenditures back in JC. Perhaps it's time I started again.

Picked up Dave Egger's You Shall Know Our Velocity at the local library. It feels good to fill my hours with fiction again.

Better Living Through Online Personality Quizzes #281

I am Kung Fu Master. I like to be in control of myself. I dislike crowds, especially crowds containing people trying to kill me. Even though I always win, I prefer to avoid fights if possible. What Video Game Character Are You?

The Pink Panther is 40 years old this year. As part of the celebrations, Virgin has just released a compilation including remixes of Mancini's classic Pink Panther theme and chock full of lounge and bossa nova grooves from the likes of Fantastic Plastic Machine, Pizzicato Five, Fatboy Slim, Dimitri from Paris and Les Hommes. Take a listen: The Pink Panther's Penthouse Party.

Happy Belated Easter!

Went shopping for clothes yesterday, with Amanda and David tagging along (Thanks both of you, although I think the laughter you had at my expense was worth the time you spent :p).

The haul:

1) Shine OST. From a store that sells/rents CDs new and used. The OST was supposedly new but I suspect it's been used. Nice price anyway, and I like the movie a lot.

2) A t-shirt with the Kenninji Fujin and Raijin on it. Bargain!

3) Khaki cargo pants that were on sale. Was given a hideous F4 shopping bag to put it in. Fortunately I managed to trash that bag later after buying

4) A Graniph t-shirt.

I learnt two things:

1) My taste in clothes is more boring than I thought it was and

2) Retail therapy really does not work for me.

I prevaricate over every purchase and if sufficiently large, I will agonise over it for days afterwards. I don't know how I managed to build up this guilt complex over shopping, but it's there. And with all the horror stories about my peers asphyxiating under credit card debts, unpaid loans and low bank balances in a depressed economy, that may not necessarily be such a bad thing after all.

This is what Episode II should've been like.

Attack of the Clones: The Abriged Script

Anyone remember The Rocketeer? The movie wasn't bad at all, but for some reason audiences couldn't be bothered with the Golden Age, 1930s-40s setting. Disney let it die out.

This mini-bout of nostalgia was triggered by the little Kubrick figure of The Rocketeer I bought last night. Good detailing on the rocketpack, the jacket and especially the helmet which unfortunately is not removable.

Medicom also made a limited edition 12" Rocketeer figure. Quite interesting how the Japanese pick up on cool things that Americans neglect, and then some. ^_^

The last time I had a mini bout of The Rocketeer nostalgia was back in Chicago. I was browsing at Powell's and flipped through the graphic novel. Up till then, I didn't know the movie was based on the work of Dave Stevens. I didn't buy the book, but after I got home I wished I had. When I went back the next day it was gone.

Watched Hellboy last night with my bro. He'd called me at the last minute and I wanted to sleep more than 5 hours a night for a change. But I really wanted to see the movie and I'm glad I did. In any case I managed to make it to work on time.

Hellboy was great fun, even if the movie loses a bit of cohesion towards the end. Smart, snappy dialogue. Didn't dissolve into self-angst or over-sentimentality. Loved Ron Perlman's wry humour and one-liners, and Selma Blair is hot (brunette, long hair, bangs? /sigh). Lovecraftian monsters and generous Cthulu references. Interesting, if unimaginative villains.

I only wish I'd read the comics earlier :/ Damn my well-spent youth.

The Chemical Brothers have a new single out: Get Yourself High. The music video is awesomely funny:

"... the video is composed entirely of footage gleaned from the 1978 Chinese martial arts film Shaolin yu Wu Dang (�Two Champions of Death�) except that the material has been altered so that, in addition to swords and knives, the characters wield vinyl records, microphones and headphones as weapons and appear to be singing the lyrics of the song..."

You must watch it. Watch it now.

Watched The Passion of the Christ last night. I entered the cinema with hangups because I don't agree with Mel Gibson's very traditionalist view of Catholicism and I detest the methods by which the film was promoted here. Then after a while I realised that most of my fellow patrons might not be Christian and so to them this would be just another film. Reality check: The film is not the Gospel, and Jim Caviezel is no Jesus. No point getting angsty. I relaxed :)

The film is best seen as an adaptation of the Passion found in the real Gospels, and a bit of a loose one at that. A lot of it is fairly modern reasoning along the lines of: "Yeah, Jesus really loved his mum so he must have done this, she must have done that, Pontius must have did this etc etc." This explains in part the heavy emphasis on the mother-son relationship between Mary and Jesus, and the insertion of elements like Pontius's wife Claudia (shades of Julius Caesar here), the Devil skulking around, and the philosophical whitewashing of Pontius Pilate. I suppose these had to be in there to keep the movie interesting for modern moviegoers. Spiritual texts don't really translate well into crowd-pleasing blockbusters.

The film wasn't that anti-Semitic imho -- some effort was made to insert dissenting Jewish characters and give them some screen time, but Caiphas resembled a sneering WWF wrestler more than a High Priest. Good two-dimensionality there.

The digitally-altered hazel eyes were uncanny. Weirded me out. Having one of Jesus's eyes swollen shut early on was quite clever 'cos it forced the audience to focus on that one eye for the rest of the movie. And yes, it also paves the way for lots of looking scenes.

Add to the mix melodramatic acting (Judas gets lots of time to agonise over his betrayal), flashbacks with modern touches (an adult Jesus being playful with Mother Mary?), slow-mo overkill (pun intended!), a ponderous music score that has an erhu pop up when the Devil's onscreen and also morphs into a military march at the end, and did I mention the gratuitous slow-motion?

What I really want to know is: what does the Lord think of the movie?

Better Living Through Online Personality Quizzes #001

w00t! :D


:: how jedi are you? ::

Billie Holliday's birthday today.

...... Money, you�ve got lots of friends
Crowding round the door
When it's gone, spending ends
They don�t come no more......

Why did I post that article? On the one hand it's sobering to know that no matter how horrible I feel, someone younger than I am is going through a finer meat-grinder. On the other hand, reading that article left me feeling helpless.

Sunday's edition of the Straits Times carried a feature on depressed teens. The writing is slightly alarmist but well-intentioned. I wish I could link it, but chances are by the time you come across this (if you ever do) the link will be broken.

Here it is anyway: Gen D: Depressed , deviant , disconnected

Probably the most important part of the article:

"... Most disconcertingly, the behavioural problems which used to beset a minority of 'youths on the fringe' or 'youths at risk' have today invaded the 'so-called moral majority' too.

Psychiatrists say a growing number of youths today suffer from one of the three Ds - depression, deviant behaviour or disconnectedness.

According to Dr Yeo, no longer are three-D sufferers predominantly from poorer or broken families without a father figure. In fact, many come from intact families with concerned, well-to-do parents.

Psychologist Felix Lim, who specialises in teen issues, says that a good number are 'rich but deprived children', the upgraded version of yesterday's latch-key kids. They return home daily to an empty bungalow, dog, chauffeur, maid and other paid employees of their parents, who are too busy earning big bucks outside.

He notes that many dual-income parents practise the 'token economy' at home: They try to buy their way into their children's good books, or incentivise good behaviour by giving them a 'cash bonus', the latest gadget or track shoes if they meet pre-set Key Performance Indicators.

'Just because it works for them at work, they think it will work at home. But the problem is a lack of consistent parenting. You need plenty of contact time to cultivate attitudes, values, beliefs in children. There is just no shortcut,' he says.

What is clear is that money, love and good intentions no longer buy immunity against a troubled adolescence. Even those who ace their studies or are school leaders are not exempt.

Mr Lim notes that achievement-focused top students become a target group for anorexia or bulimia, because they tend to displace their need for significance onto leadership roles, sports trophies or good grades.

The better they do, the poorer they tend to be at handling the 'loss of face' of failure when it happens. 'After all, this is a place where a person's worth is measured by his grades, the house he lives in or the cellphone he uses. Upkeeping standards is a very real pressure,' says Ms Chew.

And teen society today is an unforgivingly class-conscious one, as the recent hoo-ha over a Raffles Girls' School girl dating a neighbourhood school boy shows.

It does not help that many Singaporean parents are so protective that their children acquire a 'learnt helplessness' and fail to develop their own coping resources or a healthy adversity quotient, says Mr Lim.

That is one of the reasons why teen suicide rates are spiralling today, especially among young females aged 15 to 24 here.

According to psychiatrist and suicidologist Chia Boon Hock, youths take their own lives because of a combination of relationship problems and family, financial, social and school stresses.

Depression is also becoming as commonplace a malady as the common cold, notes Ms Chew. Having done profiling exercises on hundreds of secondary school students, she says a disturbing picture of Singapore's youth has emerged.

'Many are highly emotional, extroverted, open to trying anything new, hence very vulnerable. Despite being very high in anger, they have low focus, low motivation and a low sense of achievement. This combination is very scary, because if anything snaps, they cut or kill themselves,' she notes with a shudder.

According to Mr Lim, this outward expression of aggression, angst and apathy is symptomatic of an adolescent's emotionally fraught and highly distracted world. He has patients who come to his clinic declaring 'I hate my parents' or 'My mother is a bitch'.

But such defiant bravado, says Dr Yeo, is just a 'brittle front'. 'Deep down, they still desire parental approval but feel that they cannot be seen to need it. And family size being so small these days, they have no siblings to turn to,' he says.

So many 'cope' by hurting themselves through self-mutilation, starving, multiple suicide attempts and numbing themselves with drugs and alcohol.

Others, who crave emotional fulfilment in this mechanical age, desperately seek connections in sexual escapades or gangs.

Even among the 'good kids', school counsellors note a growing disconnectedness and disenchantment.

'For many of them, all that innate fire and spirit has been snuffed out in power struggles with overbearing adults. They end up disillusioned,' says Mr Lim.

These days, he and other psychologists are seeing more cases of dysthymia, a chronic low-mood disorder that persists for two years or more. Despite not having suffered any major depressive episodes, these youths appear listless, down and out, have low self-esteem and difficulty making decisions, and function below the base line.

Right into their 30s, they find it hard to hold on to jobs or relationships.

Mr Lim is candid that such stunted self-image and distorted self-identity problems take years of medication and therapy to fix. It is not easy to go back in time to get them re-attuned to society and in tune with themselves.

So he does not buy the cavalier theories that the three Ds are 'just a phase' which most teenagers will 'eventually grow out' of.

With more permanent scars and the high stakes of today's adolescent minefield, his question is: 'Will they grow out of all these well-adjusted, or mal-adaptive?'"

Better Living Through Online Personality Quizzes #493




Take the What Should Your New Year's Resolution Be? Quiz

Better Living Through Online Personality Quizzes #149

It's a little pathetic, how I need a cup o' black liquid before I can be productive in the real world. Before that, my mind is in a near-catatonic state.

Was out late with Amanda and her friends last night. Dinner first at Billy Bomber's and then we all adjourned to Max Brenner's for chocolate chocolate chocolate.

I wonder if the staff there will let us in again. /chuckle

Amanda! Hope you had a good birthday!

Hey! HMV loves Kill Bill. And admit it -- you do too.

Why do the Japanese get all the cool merchandise? Check out that t-shirt!

And why are the Japanese plugging Kill Bill Vol. 2 as a "love story"?

Happened across a Sembawang Music clearing stock sale on Friday evening while looking for wrapping paper. I hadn't seen a laserdisc for while before then. Wow -- does anyone still have LD players?

Picked up an old 2 CD compilation of music from films for cheap. It's by the BBC, so it has some class versus your generic, vanilla compilation. Specifically, it's music from films featured in Film 2000 with Jonathan Ross.

The annoying bit is: I can't play the damn CDs on my PC. Both CDs are supposed to come with their own CD player -- some form of rudimentary copy control measure I think -- but for some reason the software's not on either disc. All you get is an error message when you click on the button labelled: "Launch CD Player".

Ah well. It cost 5 dollars anyway.

I was typing a long rant about how the National Library branch at Stamford Road should not be closed down, when my computer crashed. And of course the rant has vanished into the fucking digital aether. I'm on medical leave for two days and the combination of fever, cough, medicine and intense irritation is getting to me.

My country hates nostalgia. We do not value social or collective memory. We are tearing down a well-used library to make room for a road. The road is to ease the traffic congestion expected when the university campus opposite the library opens. It's the kind of logic that only appeals to city planners and construction companies.

Thanks to Pui Kwan (Hi! *wave*), I was able to watch Good Morning, Night (Buongiorno, notte) last night. So far every review I've managed to dig up on the net has been negative, with most harping upon the film's lack of drama or human emotion. To some extent these criticisms are justified and I agree that the film is more about ideas and symbols than straight up human drama or historical documentary.

There's still plenty going for the film. For instance good acting, excellent use of light and contrast, the watching motif, layers in shots e.g. multiple rooms visible through doorways, Chiara's surreal imagination (interspersed with, of all things, film footage!) contrasted with the (il)logic of her male comrades, the abstraction of state power and most of all the omnipresence of television. Ah! Mass entertainment is the true opiate of the masses.

Ok, so my weekend wasn't that great.

My father's oldest sister passed away. The cremation was on Friday. Gu Ma, rest in peace.

Watched The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) by the Australian cast. Thoroughly entertaining.

Instead of going to Elevation and catching Jazzanova and The Funky Lowlives, I went to watch screenings of Eric Khoo's early short films -- Pain and Symphony 92.4 FM -- and his Mee Pok Man. The discussion in between was cancelled at the last minute -- apparently his birthday was on Saturday so he probably had some family dinner to attend. This was probably lucky for him because I think the audience (especially Amanda, Justin and Weimei) was ready to rip his work to shreds. Pain wasn't bad, but Symphony was atrocious. In all fairness, those films were Khoo's early works so you can't expect greatness right off the bat. As a pioneer he deserves recognition, but he is certainly overrated in other aspects.

btw, Mee Pok Man is watchable up to the point when the woman dies. After that it all goes downhill......

We went for midnight curry rice in Hougang. It was great comfort food, but I'm not willing to shell out $20+ for a cab ride home in the near future...

Sunday was spent in a funk. I woke up feeling crappy for no reason whatsoever, and promptly forgot the rest of my schedule for the day. Forgot about helping my SVDP group in the afternoon. Forgot about Twilight Samurai. >_< At least I got a decent haircut for a change.

Went to the Arts House in the evening to meet Amanda and watch the slam poetry competition. Got roped in to be a judge, which turned out to be rather fun. Each participating team comprised tertiary level students and a (relatively) well-known literary figure here. Was amused to see Stella Kon and Richard Yeo on stage. Amanda hates Richard Lord and I can't say I liked his performance very much either.

I still don't like slam poetry very much.

I still feel like crap this morning btw. But I haven't had my coffee yet either.

Better Living Through Online Personality Quizzes #263



Which Guilty Gear X character are you?

Amanda and I have begun a serial writing blog. The same idea behind Yeats is Dead. Someone writes a chapter, and someone else continues, then a third person picks up from there and so on until some kind of resolution (if any) is reached. We're doing this purely for the fun of it. She started off the project, and I uploaded part 2 a few days ago.

We're still looking for someone to do Chapter 3, so if you know us and are interested don't hesitate to let us know. You'll be able to take the plot in any direction you choose, so long as you leave lots of loose ends dangling for others to pick up.

See what we have so far here. http://writersimpromptu.blogspot.com. A permanent link will go up on the side menu too.

Watched Noi Albinoi (Noi the Albino) yesterday. Coming out of the little screening room of The Arts House, I couldn't unequivocally say that I liked the film. I still can't now and feel no need to, but the film has definitely left little patches of rosy afterglow in my memory. The quirky characters. The bleak, stark Icelandic landscape. The near perfect combination of restlessness and helplessness of Tomas Lemarquis's Noi, awkward and trapped in a little village where no one cares very much about him. And the ending where Noi eventually does escape in a sense, but with his intense physical and mental isolation magnified some more.

Oh how true, how true...

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ST Life! MARCH 23, 2004

Arts glut

SO MANY CENTRES, BUT ARE THERE ENOUGH STAFF, TALENT AND ART WORKS?

By Clarissa Oon

OF LATE, there has been an explosion of arts centres in Singapore to serve a population of four million.

This Friday, Old Parliament House reopens as an elegant Arts House for music, dance, theatre and other forms after a $15 million restoration paid for by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts.

If you prefer edgier forms from kabuki to new media, the International Centre of Asian Arts (ICAA) is slated to open in April next year in a converted Mohamed Sultan Road warehouse. It is the brainchild of drama company TheatreWorks.

They join two older arts centres: the 1 1/2-year-old Esplanade for large- and small-scale performances, and the 13-year-old The Substation whose art gallery and black-box theatre show offbeat, experimental works.

The diversity of spaces is a good thing for audiences as well as local and foreign artists who now have more platforms for their works.

But the rash of arts centres is also symptomatic of hardware-happy Singapore.

After years of high-profile lobbying turned the durian-domed Esplanade into a reality, it now seems easier to invest in shiny new buildings than in the talent and artwork to fill them.

At least $619 million has been or will be spent on the four arts centres, with money going to renovation or building from scratch, as in the case of the $600 million Esplanade.

As more arts centres and performance venues are built or proposed here, one cannot help but feel the country is spreading its resources too thin even as the cash-strapped woes of older venues persist.

At least $50 million a year is required to keep the four arts centres running, with money coming from the Government, corporate sponsorship, rental and ticket sales.

With cost-cutting in a climate of economic uncertainty, both the Esplanade and The Substation have said they are under-staffed and facing a budget deficit.

Among the factors leading to this were fewer hirers of its venues last year, as well as a 12.3 per cent cut in the National Arts Council's (NAC) operating budget last year.

The Esplanade, which houses a 2,000-seat Theatre and 1,600-seat Concert Hall, has about 150 full-time employees.

This is a stretch considering other similar-sized international arts centres such as the Sydney Opera House and London's Barbican Centre have about 250 full-time staff each.

The Substation has only 12 full-time staff, including eight administrators and two technicians. To be a really dynamic venue, it should ideally have at least three more full-timers.

WHITHER SPONSORS

AND then there is the problem of corporate sponsorship which every arts organisation must tap to supplement funding from the Government.

This is especially critical now that the NAC has stressed that the arts should leverage on business as well as technology in order to grow.

But for The Substation, with its experimental focus and a black box theatre which seats only 120, corporate sponsorship is hard to come by.

As Ms Audrey Wong, its co-artistic director, notes: 'We cannot promise companies that we'll help them reach out to tens of thousands of people.'

The Arts House is targeting a more yuppie audience base for survival, with help from three in-house restaurants and its genteel yet intimate setting.

As part of what general manager Colin Goh calls a 'business model that engages the tripartite relationship between the artistic community, audience at large and the business community', it plans to have corporate nights where companies host clients by buying up tickets for an entire show.

In addition to competing for funding and sponsorship, these arts centres also face the task of developing audiences for their programmes.

The most recent arts survey conducted by the NAC has shown that in 2002, 27 per cent of Singaporeans had attended at least one arts event throughout the year.

This figure is low in comparison with neighbouring cities like Hong Kong, which registered 30 per cent in 2000, and Melbourne, which ranged from 30 to 35 per cent in 1999.

Still, the arts centres can take heart from the proposed setting up of a new high school for the arts, as well as the slew of measures announced in Parliament last week to encourage students strong in non-academic subjects like sports and arts.

These measures will help expand the pie of arts-going audiences here. It is still too early to pass a verdict on The Arts House or the ICAA, especially as it is not known how much funding these and other institutions will be allocated by the NAC for the new financial year, beginning next month.

Hopefully, the arts centres will benefit from the 21.6 per cent increase to the NAC's operating budget this year, to $34.62 million.

But with another multi-purpose arts venue coming up in the form of Capitol, there may be little point in dedicating yet another new building to the 'arts', in a generic, catch-all sense.

The Capitol, which will reopen as a performing arts centre, is being handled by the Singapore Tourism Board, which is expected to announce more details soon.

What is needed is not only a bold, clear-sighted vision for each arts centre as to the kind of art it serves, but also the resources to back that up.

Watched Samira Makhmalbaf's Blackboards (Takte Siah) last night with Justin and Shing Yi.

Makhmalbaf claims in this interview with IndieWire that she did not have a specific agenda beyond being anti-war, and that she wanted to just show things. Just don't watch it sleep-starved like I did.

Finished Moonrise, Sunset, by the late Gopal Baratham. I had wanted to borrow his first and most well-known novel A Candle or the Sun, but no copies were to be found when I was at the local library.

Baratham was a better social activist than writer. The dialogue is clunky -- horribly so when he tries to write Singlish. He has a penchant for off-the-wall characters here, but treats most of them like caricatures. The writing is brash, almost vindictive at times. All these are better suited to political commentary and satire (i.e. A Candle or the Sun) than the metaphysics and drama he tried to tackle in Moonrise, Sunset.

Scenes from a Weekend #7363

Exploring a cluttered, messy little used bookstore and walking out with a guide to Volkswagen Beetles and a decades-old Malay learning guide. (Thanks Teck Loon!)

Singing Yatta! and Fish Fight! at Japanese karaoke.

Browsing at Tower Records with Amanda. Bought Mondo Grosso's Next Wave

Finishing my Rokugan D20 RPG campaign (for now), with a character that was alive for the ending.

The thing I miss the most? Sleep.

A good weekend to usher in a great week. Don't touch that dial!

I never expected to find a Pizzicato Five CD for sale in Singapore. Was at Gramophone yesterday with Amanda when I saw Happy End of the World. It's the US release, but beggars can't be choosers.

Gramophone also has P5's first US release Made in USA. Since I already have that album, I can safely say that it is one of the two coolest CDs on the shelf. The other is Happy End of the World, naturally.

Also picked up Gotan Project's La Revancha Del Tango:

"La Revancha del Tango" by Franco-Argentine outfit Gotan Project takes tango away from the ballroom, the floorshow and the heavy nostalgia that lingers in every step of the dance. Acoustic guitar, piano, double bass and bandone�n (the plaintive button accordion vital to tango) are overlaid with dub treatments, screeching violins, fast trancey beats and speech samples. They are clearly on a mission to get tango into clubland......."

I first heard them on Verve Remixed 2, and fell in love with their tart, saucy remix of Sarah Vaughan's Whatever Lola Wants.

I finished Chua Beng Huat's Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore on Monday. Chua attempts to unmask the ideology of the PAP, some means by which the ideology is perpetuated, and more interestingly (to me anyway, seeing as I actually paid attention during my Social Studies and National Education classes) argues that the PAP is attempting to pursue a new communitarian ideology to replace the old one that had "survival" as its theoretical linchpin.

The book is about a decade old by now, but is still an invaluable aid to non-Singaporeans (or locals even) who really want to learn about our political system. Too many observers don't bother looking beyond the "Cowboy-vs-Indians" version.

An updated version that examines developments since 1995 in light of Chua's muted suggestions and Marxist analytical framework would very tantalising indeed :)

As much lighter fare, Yeats is Dead is perfect (shout out to Amanda for the recommendation!).

The writing suffers from lack of characterisation but that's understandable given that each chapter is written by a different person. A sense of fun permeates the work(s) though -- especially in the way that the writers appear to undermine the premises of those before, and throw in little jokes about one anothers' work. Expect to be blindsided by all sorts of funny and incongruous revelations.

A small contribution is made to Amnesty International for every copy bought. I didn't know that until I took mine out of the library and glanced at the back cover, and it tickled me a bit to think that the National Library Board here might have contributed a few pounds to one of the PAP's staunchest (but not very sophisticated nor discerning) critics.

The Guardian Unlimited asks: How well do you know Japanese Cinema?

Too... many... movies... to watch. Gah! x_x

I see that The Trials of Henry Kissinger is in the lineup. I've seen it before, and recommend it to anyone who's interested in Political Science / International Relations / U.S. history / Current Affairs / Government / Public Policy / Statecraft -- aw heck, just go.

It'll be screened on 25th April, at 7pm. Here's the relevant film fest webpage.

Tickets for this year's Singapore International Film Festival go on sale today.

From Samurai Cinema 101:

"First we saw that Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi was a surprise hit both in Japan and around the world, cleaning up at international film festivals. Then the Fall of 2003 brought the releases of Quentin Tarantino's love letter to Japanese chanbara film, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, and Tom Cruise starring in the US produced The Last Samurai. Further bolstering samurai cinema's profile, the awards season saw Yoji Yamada's Twilight Samurai receiving an Oscar nomination for best foreign film and, concurrent with this, there were a slew of samurai cinema DVDs released. Put these facts together and we find that now, more than ever, is the time to be getting into this genre......."

One of the features of this year's Australian Film Festival was the Geoffrey Rush showcase on Saturday. It was rather tiny showcase, lasting, as it did, only one day. It did, however, provide the opportunity to watch Shine, Rush's very first film. Thankfully he's made all the right career moves since then. His Oscar may have made the American-centric audience go into a bit of a tizzy, but there is no doubt regarding his versatility and talent.

Director Hicks (Snow Falling on Cedars, Hearts in Atlantis) has done well for himself too, both in his Hollywood and documentary careers. He was at the screening, accompanied by SFS President Kenneth Tan, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he would be giving a talk after the film. Hick regaled us all with stories and snippets about the making of the film. From funding troubles to encounters with Harvey Weinstein (co-founder of Miramax) to actor idiosyncracies (Noah Taylor who plays the young Helfgott had a piano phobia) and more. I stayed for as long as I could and was almost sorry to leave. But I had to meet Amanda and David.

We eventually ended up at a faux-Norwegian eatery called Skal, 'cos it was the only place nearby that didn't required standing in line for an hour. Prices were ok and the decor tried its best to look upmarket but the food portions could be larger. We weren't expecting too much however, since the management was the same people behind cheap conveyor-belt sushi chain Sakae Sushi. Amanda and David's friend May-ann joined us (Hi May-ann! *wave*) too.

Hey! Those MPs who call for a return to Asian family values may have a point after all!

Let's bring back child marriages! Old men who take wives a third their age! In fact, let's all learn from:

The recent debates in Parliament over our falling birth rate have thrown up several lucid and sensible suggestions from many MPs. More flexible maternity leave, forcing employers to rehire mothers, paternity leave for fathers, making men realise that they must share equally in household burdens, and so on.

And then, you get comments like these:

The Straits Times, 10 Mar 2004

It's your 'duty' to procreate

Carrots alone won't work; it's time for the stick, say several MPs, who want pressure put on married couples who don't want babies

By Tee Hun Ching

HAVING babies is a duty. Make that a duty to self, society and country.

Alarmed? You should be, if you are married and have no desire to procreate.

MPs like Dr Ong Seh Hong (Aljunied GRC) want to pump up the social pressure on such people whom he described as 'irresponsible'.

Yesterday, even as their counterparts continued pushing for carrots such as a five-day work week and cash incentives, Dr Ong and several MPs suggested it was also time to use the stick.

Indeed, the MPs argued passionately that procreation was a responsibility that people should fulfil regardless of sweeteners.

Adopting the most hardline stance among them all, Dr Ong emphasised traditional Asian values as he dismissed the common refrain that family planning is a personal decision.

Declared the father of three: 'Procreation is not only the duty of everyone, but also the responsibility of every citizen towards his family, parents, society and country.'

Those 'irresponsible' people who shun the stork, he said, should realise they would become a liability to the society in future.

To prevent this, he suggested making this group bear the costs of their old age by having them contribute to an account he called the 'Preventive Eldercare Account'.

The money in this account would then provide for their needs when they are old.

He said he believed that Chinese philosopher Mencius' words on filial piety - 'bu xiao you san, wu hou wei da' - still has relevance today. Translated, it means that 'of the three instances of unfilial behaviour, not having descendants is the worst'.

Mr Gan Kim Yong (Holland-Bukit Panjang GRC) also held out a Chinese phrase for those naysayers against children to ponder over - ai qing the jie jing. It means a baby is the product of love.

Marriage and having children came naturally to people of his generation without too much cost-benefit analysis, noted the 45-year-old father of two.

'Sure, there were problems and difficulties, but they add colour and richness to life. If you ask parents today, few of them would regret having babies despite all the difficulties,' he said.

He suggested an annual Love Campaign to add spark to the lives of young couples and help them appreciate the joy and fulfilment of having a family.

'It is like driving a car. We have the best engine, the lubricant is new and the tank is full. But when we turn the key, the engine does not come on because there is no spark in the chamber,' he said.

Dr Ong went a step further and proposed an all-out media blitz to promote family values.

Such messages, he said, could be transmitted through TV dramas 'highlighting the sorry plight of a childless old couple and the great problems faced by an ageing society'.

Joining in the chorus of MPs who lamented the erosion of values that led to having children being viewed less as a duty than a personal choice was Ms Penny Low (Pasir Ris-Punggol), who is single.

She said while children were a status symbol of sorts in the past, the reverse is true today.

The MP, who admitted she faced pressures to get married especially during Chinese New Year from well-meaning relatives, said: 'In the not-so-distant past, we had less to eat and wear, but we had more children to show. Today, we analyse and analyse the cost until we become paralysed by it.'

Given the heavy anti-left leanings of the PAP, I am baffled at how Acting Minister for Education Tharman Shanmugaratnam came to be where he is now. The introduction to an interview with him published in The Sunday Times reads:

At Anglo-Chinese School, he used to be 'totally uninterested' in his studies, enjoyed needling his teachers and always occupied the last row in class. His best friends were troublemakers and dropouts, he freely admits.

Most of his learning was 'extra-curricular'. He poured his energies into hockey, football, cricket and athletics, playing a match or practising almost every day - until he developed severe iron-deficiency anaemia and a heart abnormality when he was 17.

Afterwards, he immersed himself in leftist literature, student activism, exploring 'alternative' political and economic models, and at one point, even formed a study group with Tan Wah Piow, the University of Singapore student radical who exiled himself to Britain to avoid arrest.

At the London School of Economics, he eschewed the university's standard economic course and crafted and pursued his own degree programme: combining the economics of socialist economies with the sociology of developing countries.

Upon his return to Singapore in 1982, his passport was impounded at the airport and he was hauled up for questioning by the Internal Security Department. But that was no bar to his subsequent career in the civil service: He was managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore before he entered politics in 2001. Since that election, he has swiftly risen through the ranks - as Senior Minister of State for Education and Trade and Industry, then Acting Education Minister. By the end of this year, he is expected to become a full minister.

The link should expire in a couple of days, but there's no harm in posting it here.

I sympathise with the unenviable position he's in -- education has always been a grave concern of parents here and hence a hot political potato. Moreover, with the recent scandals involving schools -- police called in to investigate porn VCDs being passed among students in school, teachers allowing students to perform oral sex on them, and most recently a boy who committed suicide after his teacher said she was going to call his parents down to school to discuss the romance he was having with a girl -- Mr Shanmugaratnam's got his hands full. On the one hand he's can't be fire-fighting all the time. On the other he can't look like he's divorced from the masses in pursuing his large-scale education reforms.

Well, he makes all the right noises in that interview. That's a good start.

This month's University of Chicago Magazine has an article on the UofC Japanese Animation Society. The article isn't very flattering at all, and fails to give enough credit to Japanese animation genre.

Anime glows in Harper's halls

But reading that article brings back so many wonderful memories!

There are so many things that I wish I could change or could have done differently while at the UofC. But if I, were a freshman again, fidgeting in one of those awkward seats unique to Harper 130, gazing at the opening credits while my eyes adjust to the abrupt cut of the room lights, knew full well the trajectory my life would take once caught in the pull of people I would meet and the sheer effort that would be demanded of me......

...... I would do it all over again. In a technicolour heartbeat, in the imperceptible flicker between cels.

Trix are for kids...

Kill Bill Vol. 1 Collector's Set, Japanese Edition.

It's... it's... undescribably cool... And that Be@rbrick is awesome.

/heartbreak... with blood everywhere, mochiron.

The BBC Drama Unit Does Holland

My first movie as a member of the Singapore Film Society was Girl With a Pearl Earring. It's a visually flawless period drama, and thanks to Eduardo Serra's skillful cinematography every frame literally looks like a Dutch 16-17th century painting. It gets uncanny very quickly.

The lacklustre characterisation helps reinforce the impression that the film is really a succession of paintings with some commentary on the side -- kind of like a play in a museum. Colin Firth's Vermeer spends all his time looking dark, brooding and angsty like a frustrated pirate. Tom Wilkinson tries really hard not to let Van Ruijven slide into Taiwanese-drama-serial villainy. Johansson in the lead role acquits herself well, and I liked Essie Davis treading a fine neurotic line as the high-strung Catharina.

For more information on the real painting, here's an in-depth study with lots of links.

Though the mountains divide...

Discovered the day before that Amanda is good friends with an old classmate of mine, David Lok.

... and the oceans are wide...

We had gotten along quite well back in SJI, but I lost touch with him after that. We went to the same JC, but were in different faculties and our paths just diverged from there.

... it's a small world after aaaaaaaaaaaaall!!!

Hey! When are we all meeting for kopi? :D

Ah, there we go.

Added Haloscan. Trying to figure out how to add a Tagboard as well without screwing up my layout...

Had the afternoon off yesterday, and went to see Monster. I can see why they gave the Best Actress Oscar to Charlize Theron. Christina Ricci's performance here shouldn't be overlooked either.

I don't know how much of the film is true. I wasn't expecting a documentary of course, but Hollywood has never been known for factual accuracy when it comes to history and Monster is no exception. Even so, director Patty Jenkins doesn't allow the film to become bogged down in any moralising or social criticism. Her depiction of Wuornos focuses intensely on personal tragedy, letting it unfold in working-class suburban America, without sentimentality nor judgement.

This has been turning mainly into a book and movie column.

I tried keeping a diary once but could never get into the habit of making daily entries. In my defence, I would like to say that in primary school each day is pretty much like the one before.

Big Fish is a wonderful movie. A tribute to the power of imagination and the endurance of fables, constructed under Tim Burton's uncanny, surreal direction. Loved every minute, and the end made me cry.

(I will imagine an end like that. Everyone I've ever known, smiling and waving at me, glad not that I'm leaving, but glad for me in my leaving.)

Give me surreal. Soak me in the uncanny. Overload my imagination.

Rewind: Last week

Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.

Moore and Gibbon's Watchmen.

Last Saturday.

I attended the Wee Li Lin retrospective, one of the events in the six-month-long Short Cuts. Good stuff. I hope to see more of her films, especially since she seems to be getting better at fleshing out her characters and making her narratives more complex without losing the imaginative sense of humour in her work.

Came out of the screening late. Got interviewed by an Arts Central crew for a new programme, then agonised over my replies on my way to Orchard to meet Justin. How is it I can only think of the right things to say after the opportunities have passed? I f**king hate myself.

I took the train in the wrong direction when I changed trains. Both times.

While waiting for the correct train, I met a former JC mate. As is the case with people who have nothing much in common, we started talking about people we used to know in JC. So I asked about Vera, a mutual acquaintance.

She had committed suicide two weeks ago -- the Saturday before last (this last bit I found out after rummaging through old newspapers back at home).

Vera, you were good-looking, a practising Christian and you were actively involved in social work. Dammit woman. I pray you rest in peace -- it's all I can do now.
------------------------------

I really liked Last Life In The Universe. Subtle, quirky, sensitive.

We are all fundamentally lonely. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that loneliness is fundamental to the human condition. But I already believe all that.

It took me only a few days to finish Eric Schlosser's latest -- Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. Compared to his earlier Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal however, Reefer Madness is lighter, fluffier. After all, he only dedicates 100+ pages to each problem. The book relatively well-written and makes a great introduction for the layperson. If you're expecting something more scholarly and in-depth, you may want to just photocopy the extensive notes and bibliography and dig deeper.

This blog is a year old.

100 Bullets is thoroughly engrossing. The premise sounds like a warped episode of Touched by an Angel. Imagine that an old man in a black suit and tie, sporting a military GI cut ("My name is Agent Graves") came up to you and offered you an attache case filled with a gun, 100 rounds of ammo and unrefutable proof that someone has wronged you, made your life the living hell it is now. The gun and the ammo are all untraceable. You can use them anyway you want; no cop can arrest you for doing so.

As you might expect, the series does a good job of handling moral dilemmas, but the real meat of the series is found in the conspiracy element. You will soon realise that what look like totally unrelated events and people, aren't.

Azzarello's writing is hard-boiled, and the dialogue is subtle but hard-hitting (even though he tries a little too hard sometimes to mimic ethnic voices). Risso's art is dramatic, gritty and completely unlike standard American comic art. Both Azzarello and Risso continue to compliment each other excellently in bringing the neglected underbelly of American society to life -- now in graphic novel form. Easily worth every dollar.

Reading old strips of the sublime Ozy and Millie.

Hey, Singapore's mentioned.

It's really a nice place to visit.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Added a link to the excellent Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive in the side menu. Enjoy.

T'ain't no big thing
To wait for the bell to ring
T'ain't no big thing
The toll of the bell

Aggravated - spare for days
I troll downtown the red light place
Jump up bubble up - what's in store
Love is the drug and I need to score
Showing out, showing out, hit and run
Boy meets girl where beat goes on
Stitched up tight, can't shake free
Love is the drug, got a hook on me

Oh oh catch that buzz
Love is the drug I'm thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Love is the drug for me

Late that night I park my car
Stake my place in the singles bar
Face to face, toe to toe
Heart to heart as we hit the floor
Lumber up, limbo down
The locked embrace, the stumble round
I say go, she say yes
Dim the lights, you can guess the rest

Oh oh catch that buzz
Love is the drug I'm thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Love is the drug, got a hook in me
Oh oh catch that buzz
Love is the drug I'm thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Love is the drug for me

"...... Is this a second-best life? Maybe. I don't know. It seems to me that the really tragic lives, the really cautionary ones, are not the ones marked by obvious dramas such as being paralysed, or losing a child in an accident, but the ones marked by the slow, corrosive drip of failure, the diminishing of horizons. You can see them on the train every morning -- men, less often women, who've given up hoping for very much out of life. They're not poor, not starving, they're decent, ordinary people. It's simply that the paucity of their expectations has hobbled them in some way. You see it in their clothes, the wrinkles in their shirt sleeves, the scuff marks on the shoes, the uncombed hair, the briefcase they've had for years and can't see the point of changing. They fill me with an unreasoning revulsion. I think -- that could be my fate yet......"

Life ain't fair. Hwee Hwee Tan gets published by Penguin (Ok, so Michael Joseph is a small subsidiary of Penguin but nonetheless) while Claire Tham has to make do with Times Books International (Singapore . Kuala Lumpur).

I am enjoying Skimming now.

What was Mammon Inc. like? Bridget Jones meets Lonely Planet.

What irked me the most about the book was the thinly-veiled haranguing of Singaporeans. The way Hwee Hwee Tan describes the English makes them look good-naturedly eccentric, and she also takes great pains to differentiate the snotty Oxford upper crust from the rest of (kinder?) English society.

No such subtlety for Singaporeans. Readers would think that we were all without exception stupid, wilfully ignorant, racist and Chinese. Her descriptions are spiked with malice and barbed with cruelty.

Reading Mammon Inc is like reading Bridget Jones's Diary, except that the latter is more sincere. Fielding doesn't throw conclusions in your face either.

I admit that my knowledge of Singaporean literature is forlorn. Like a worn rope bridge over a river than no-one ever uses. So I'm glad some of Justin's passion for reading and critiquing local literature has rubbed off on me.

Claire Tham's latest is The Gunpowder Trail and Other Stories. I browsed through it at MPH on Sunday, and I'm sorry I failed to read her work earlier. In atonement, I went to the neighbourhood library and checked out every Claire Tham book that branch had. Saving the Rainforest and Other Stories went by pretty quickly -- short in quantity, not quality. I am looking forward to Skimming, and if I ask nicely maybe Justin will let me have Gunpowder Trail for a bit.

The reason why Skimming is still sitting on my desk (keeping my Secrets of the Scorpion company), is that I've just started Hwee Hwee Tan's (Or Tan Hwee Hwee's? :p) Mammon Inc. I checked that book out of the library too; was thinking of comparing the two authors.

I think Claire Tham is a much better writer than Miss Tan. I wasn't impressed much by the latter's debut Foreign Bodies, and the first 2 chapters of Mammon Inc. are a little... underwhelming.

I wonder how not-so-good writers can get their work published and reviewed in international publications like The Economist while better writers go unnoticed outside Singapore. I have my suspicions, and they're actually quite obvious ones.

Watched Lost in Translation on Saturday. I think enough has been said about this movie to make you want to watch it, and I'm definitely adding my drop to the sea of approval this movie had accumulated thus far. Even more than Sofia Coppola's debut The Virgin Suicides. Justin over at his blog has (or will have) far more to say -- nay, gush -- about Miss Coppola's work. No harm taking a look :)

I liked it. It's a meaningful, sensitive film about the intimate nature of loneliness. I think the ending went a little too far into the realm of crowd-pleasing, and some bits are just rude towards the Japanese. Otherwise, it's a nuanced film with strong performances from the leads. Bill Murray is perfectly cast here -- makes me want to watch Groundhog Day now.

Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days, and makes a documentary about it. Unfortunately, I doubt Super Size Me will be seeing Singapore shores anytime soon. More like never.

I miss Doc :/

Kudos to the director for that insane, revolting stunt. His film's not really scientific, and its popularity probably has more to do with controversy than good film-making (maybe even a cheap shot at an easy target?). Still, I don't think enough people care about how unhealthy fast food is no matter how much scientific data is thrown in their faces. Maybe this film might help.

Wow... it's been more than a week since I last blogged... Time flies when every day seems like the one before and the hours slip like sand through fingers but a lot less fun.

I've just bought Neverwinter Nights: Gold Edition. Not that I will have the time to finish playing the original Neverwinter Nights and the expansion Shadows of Undrentide, but I've always wanted to play the former.

Closing Time was finished last week. It's filled with bittersweet ruminations on aging and death in the late 20th century -- y'know, the one defined by two World Wars (particularly number two, and you could say they were both one big horrid conflict), the development of global capitalism, and the ability to blow ourselves up a few thousand times over and reduce our lush planet to a barren dustball.

Not very uplifting, you might guess. But at least it's witty.

"... Yet thanks to a complacent media, the President has managed to hide behind a carefully constructed "compassionate" image. As the 2004 election nears, it's crucial that voters understand what President Bush's policies really mean for our country. And to do that, we need creative new ads that clearly show what's at stake.

That�s why we decided to launch Bush in 30 Seconds, an ad contest that�s intended to bring new talent and new messages into the world of mainstream political advertising. We're looking for the ad that best explains what this President and his policies are really about -- in only 30 seconds."

Watched The Last Samurai on Fri night. Standard Hollywood fare; albeit very pretty Hollywood fare. Gorgeous panoramas of lush mountain slopes and cloud-filled skies. Rousing mass battles. 2-D villains and an emperor that�s only � more. Cool, heroic heroes in a rose-tinted conception of pre-industrial Japan � the one that too many Americans think Japanese culture should have been like.

I liked the camerawork and the high level of detail on the armour and costumes. The ninja attack on the village was excellently done imho. Of course, the heroes could not die halfway through the movie, but the ninja were silent, swift, deadly and coordinated.

Irreversible, on Sat evening, was completely different from the Oscar-grist above. Certainly more thought provoking and disturbing. The reverse narrative brings to mind the well-crafted Memento, but Irreversible has no mystery, no suspense. Instead it throws violence in your face for the first half, with the infamous rape in real-time scene becoming the frame of reference for the rest of the movie. The second half milks irony a little too much (for instance, Alex dreams the night before the rape that she�s walking in a red tunnel and it breaks in half. Her rape occurred in a red underpass), but provides valuable background and a glimpse into the sexual undercurrents just under the ties between Alex, her ex-lover Pierre and her present squeeze Marcus. These ties are placed under much scrutiny after we have seen what happens shortly after, especially with regards to the connections between violence, sex, and the objectification of women.

It�s not that Irreversible has a moral message. On the contrary, there is no room for morals � not in that urban hell that ticks along a linear progression. As the ex-con at the beginning of the movie (which is really the linear, eventual end) claims, "Time destroys everything."

The 3rd season of American Idol has made it to our shores. I have never seen an episode before last night's premiere, and I have to admit that I was immensely tickled by what I did see.

Imho, the judges (Paula Abdul looks even better now than when she was singing "Hush Hush"!) all carried themselves professionally, and I fail to see what the big fuss about Simon Cowell is all about. He was harsh, true, but not unjustifiably so. At no time did he utter a personal insult, in that clipped British accent, against any hopeful. Those who received his barbs deserved them. Perhaps he gets worse later on, but I suspect that his infamy is mostly media hype. Silly Americans.

What truly amused me was the seriousness with which many of the contestants entered the auditions. This resulted in lots of bad-tempered antics when they were told that they hadn't made it. Aside from poor self-knowledge and ego issues (one lamented that she had lost 80 pounds just for that audition), many also tried to do funny things with their voices and bodies when all the judges wanted were straight-up, no-nonsense, good singing. Indeed, one of the successful contestants was a 16-year old who did a good Dean Martin impression and when he didn't, had a Michael Buble-ish voice. There you go -- no fancy runs, no scat singing, no wiggling or contrived dance routines. Just good-ol' fashioned singing with good pitch and the ability to hold a tune.

Now if only the rest of the music industry were as discerning.

Peter Hall writes about Directing Harold Pinter's Plays.

...These three signs in the text all indicate moments of turbulence and crisis--the Three Dots, the Pause and the Silence. By their use, the unsaid becomes sometimes more terrifying and more eloquent than the said. Pinter actually writes silence, and he appropriates it as a part of his dialogue. The actor who has not decided what is going on in this gap will find that his emotional life is disrupted. The pause is as eloquent as speech and must be truthfully filled with intention if the audience is to understand. Otherwise the actor produces a non sequitur, which is absurd and makes the character ridiculous...

Am reading Joseph Heller's Closing Time:

Another prick in the White House? It would not be the first time. Another oil tanker had broken up. There was radiation. Garbage. Pesticides, toxic waste, and free enterprise. There were enemies of abortion who wished to inflict the death penalty on everyone who was not pro-life. There was mediocrity in government, and self-interest too. There was trouble in Israel. These were not mere delusions. He was not making them up. Soon they would be cloning human embryos for sale, fun, and replacement parts. Men earned millions producing nothing more substantial than changes in ownership. The cold war was over and there was still no peace on earth. Nothing made sense and neither did everything else. People did things without knowing why and then tried to find out.

I love Catch-22. Heller managed to capture the real absurdity of how people become enslaved to invisible systems, distant bureaucracies and obscure instructions. Organisations that were set up to serve people suddenly become winding traps for the unwary or more accurately, the unthinking.

Closing Time is just as wicked, if not better. It's amazing how much of it is still relevant, considering that it's almost 10 years old.

On Sunday I attended a writing workshop conducted by local poet Felix Cheong, as part of this year�s inaugural Wordfeast. Our first ever international poetry festival, if the promo materials are to be believed.

The workshop wasn�t very substantial, but at only 2 hours I wasn�t expecting anything beyond some photocopied handouts and sketches of what it truly takes to be a writer. To be honest, what really lured me all the way to Bedok Community Library where I paid $5, was the bit in the description of the event that talked about �the practicalities of being a writer.� At heart I suppose I am still a pragmatist.

Most of Cheong�s examples were from poetry, since he is a poet, but his attempts to distill some guidelines and principles were general enough to be useful to anyone who is seriously considering writing as more than a hobby � if not as a career. With regards to technique, it was Literary Devices 101. More substantial, for me and I suspect for most of those who attended as well, was his advice on discipline and purpose. Those are what separate those who write from the writers. The guidelines are simple things, short lines of text on a page. Everyone knows that the simplest things are the hardest to accomplish.

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I�ve been thinking about why I write. Most recently I wrote a favorable review for School of Rock and Paycheck. I realised, after some pointed questions from Amanda, that I was writing to impress and to be published. When it comes to things like that, I admit that I like to show off sarcasm and attempt wit for their own sake.

Of course, there�s nothing wrong with that. In fact wit and sarcasm are quite well recognised and rewarded. There is nothing to be ashamed when you can poke fun at someone and get him/her to laugh along with everyone else too.

The problem with such writing though, in my humble opinion anyway, is that it tends to to become too clever by half. The result is that the writing loses emotion and depth. Pare away the witty repartee and suddenly you have a skeleton. Hello Yorick! Such a silly, stupid grin.

It�s not that I don�t appreciate beauty � I just can�t find the words to hold all I want to say. Even that last sentence sounded hollow. It�s like fitting square pegs in round holes, but while blindfolded so you don�t even know where the pegs and holes are to begin with.

Singapore Short Cuts is a series of screenings of digital short films taking place at the Singapore History Museum. I really wanted to get tickets to this month's screening on Saturday, but the free tickets were snapped up faster than the raw oysters at a buffet in Singapore. If I want tickets to the other events -- one every month till June at least -- I'll have to engage in some mad rush a week before each screening. I blame the tiny size of the SHM theatre (193 only?!?). It's just not big enough for all the people here who are clearly interested in local short films!!!

So You Want To Learn Japanese

Friday evening found me in the audience at luna_id's staging of a Harold Pinter doublebill. Namely, The Lover and The Dumb Waiter. I was expecting a more engaging performance. But even without the annoying Caucasians behind us who kept whispering the obvious (What are they doing? -- They're roleplaying -- Ohhhhh, roleplaying (titter) ) the whole thing was a bit of a letdown. Technically it was excellent. I liked the innovative set design, heavy on wooden grilles for some nifty lighting effects. Heavyweights Tan Kheng Hua, Lim Yu Beng (they're a real-life married couple btw) and Gerald Chew provided competent acting, as expected.

Unfortunately, the performances were kind of flat with The Dumb Waiter lacking more. Any effect on the audience came not from the delivery but from Pinter's writing. If you had known what a Pinteresque silence was and were looking for those that evening, you would have only found the ubiquitous poor cousins -- your run-of-the-mill pauses and silences that mostly indicate time passing. The British accents felt forced as well.

I believe Justin has more to say about this and with far more eloquence. For him, the performance was indicative of the state of Singapore society and theatre. After listening to him, and talking to Amanda on Sunday, I've come to a much better understanding of the relationship between a society and its drama, with the various consequences that particular relationship implies. Sounds vague, I suppose, but if I had it all worked out already I would be a far better person than I am right now.
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Spent my Sunday afternoon rummaging through CDs at Zouk's Flea n Easy. This is a monthly flea market held inside the well-known club, and thus attracts a certain sort of seller and buyer. Lots of clubwear and street fashion stuff (mostly for women I might add), CDs, movie videotapes, magazines. I was pleased to find Fantastic Plastic Machine stuff, and I'm still a little sore at missing out on a promo t-shirt for a Blur album. Michelle and her friend joined me, but the place was swelled to almost full capacity (TIP: Go early!!!) and we were looking for completely different things so not much chance to interact.

Best of all, watched the excellent Good Bye Lenin! in the evening. More on that later.

Finished Quicksilver. Whew!

Book 3 is where everything moves along after the build up in Books 1 and 2. So if you're plodding through the latter books don't give up! :)

Have to wait for a while for The Confusion, but April's really not that far away.

Finished Book 2 of Quicksilver last night. This section moved along at a much faster pace than Book 1, and was peppered with far more of Stephenson's idiosyncratic wit.

I still can't believe I actually paid to watch Paycheck in a cinema on Sunday. In mitigation, it was a purely last-minute decision. Probably influenced by my disappointment at not being able to get seats for Goodbye Lenin! for the second weekend in a row. Ugh. Unless you're a Ben Affleck fan, don't watch it. And even then you can wait till it's available for rental.

I've been on leave since the 1st, and catching the feeder service this morning made me appreciate the fact that the bus comes around every 2 or 3 minutes. During the holidays such frequency seemed excessive, but since schools have reopened even this seems insufficient to deal with the teeming uniformed masses.

Self-packed sardines
White or yellow cans on wheels
School's started again

I finished reading Dance Dance Dance early this morning. It's the most intense and depressing of Murakami's stuff I've read so far. I'd like to go back to Quicksilver, but the gulf between Murakami and Stephenson is simply too wide... actually I can't imagine reading any other book for now.

Spent New Year's Eve at Jazz@South Bridge, where Okazaki Yoshiro was performing.

Jazz@South Bridge is quite cosy and tastefully decorated. It's more conducive to chillin' rather than performances. That's what it is -- a cosy hang-out place with class. So there we were in our spot against the wall with the plush comfy cushions -- Justin, Kong Jie, Debra, Yin Loon and I. Chatting and snacking and sipping our champagne (included in the cover just for that night) and listening to some excellent live jazz.

Justin and I traded snide remarks about the couple who'd planted themselves right smack in front of us, blocking our view. From the way they behaved, jazz was pretty far from their minds.