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.
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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.

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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.