Fortress.
CNY fireworks are the perfect soundtrack to Korean War revision. And UN peacekeeping and collective security.
This should have been here two days ago when it came to me, but alas, the lack of internet access in Malaysia. I wonder how can my grandparents live without this constant stream of information except the one from the morning papers? It is not the matter of losing touch on Facebook, for one clearly would not expire from the lack of contact with YOUR social network, but rather, the endless forms of entertainment just a Google away, or information, to be more pragmatic. The agrarian life might be attractive to the ecoterrorist part of me, but it rarely extends to the fondness of being cut-off. I'm too dependent on modernity, it seems. Like a parasite feeding off a seething mass of worms.
Shield and the Sword. I need to find time to watch this somehow. Especially since I have been recently inspired by this reverting piece of art. (Wishing I could draw (very very) well isn't helping. Surely such unproductive bouts would add up into an unprecedented disaster in the unfathomable future. Someday. I'll see to that.) That also means I'm yearning to see Inglourious Basterds again. And other foreign films. Local films (ie regional works) are either diamonds in the dust or plain boring crap. (Cases in point: 初恋红豆冰 and 12 Storeys. These are such rarities they deserve to be prized and praised over and over.)
What is wrong with a simple storyline? Directors/producers cannot seem to decide on whether to mess up a major CSI-esque one, or whether to dwell on something deeper; emotion is something we Asians can at least make good movies out of. Of simple things. If there comes a time for me to even deserve some words on this, it would be the safe option of eschewing ambition, and instead work on refining the meaningful. Leave large-scale police stories to the Hong Kong and Chinese filmmakers, and instead, do something heartlandish, small but intense. Something that hits like a pinprick. Something that smells of history, of old coffee houses, colonial rule, wars, cheong-sams and old streets. A modern thing which works would perhaps be a focused film on typical lives (like it always has been, but in a art-house way), and obscurity to the point of film-student snobbishness is at times annoying, since the audience (as I have always felt even through Perhaps Love when I was twelve) has no clue where anything is going, if something important is happening (rather than characters suddenly bursting into song at seemingly unplanned intervals).
I love reading friends' blogs. No matter how short are these vignettes, or rambling essays akin to my own at times, or even a documentary packed with pictures, scenic flashes or outstretched hands, or pouty lips and signs of 'victory' (ha) from a recent cam-whoring session, or reflections of life. It is a different story from anything that falls from a person's lips, like the mind and the mouth are such incompatible organs, with contrasting tales to tell. Though writing affords a second-delay of rethinking, the chance to turn back the clock in the form of the eradication of excoriating remarks, or spelling errors, or the addition of some highly witty comment, which arguably translates into, some say, superficiality and the ability to form artificial constructs brought about by non-spontaneity, I like the idea of a Second Chance. Everyone deserves to be their own architect; it's at least a necessary right. Especially at this rushed, wishy-washy time and age where the words mostly fail to come out right.
This should have been here two days ago when it came to me, but alas, the lack of internet access in Malaysia. I wonder how can my grandparents live without this constant stream of information except the one from the morning papers? It is not the matter of losing touch on Facebook, for one clearly would not expire from the lack of contact with YOUR social network, but rather, the endless forms of entertainment just a Google away, or information, to be more pragmatic. The agrarian life might be attractive to the ecoterrorist part of me, but it rarely extends to the fondness of being cut-off. I'm too dependent on modernity, it seems. Like a parasite feeding off a seething mass of worms.
Shield and the Sword. I need to find time to watch this somehow. Especially since I have been recently inspired by this reverting piece of art. (Wishing I could draw (very very) well isn't helping. Surely such unproductive bouts would add up into an unprecedented disaster in the unfathomable future. Someday. I'll see to that.) That also means I'm yearning to see Inglourious Basterds again. And other foreign films. Local films (ie regional works) are either diamonds in the dust or plain boring crap. (Cases in point: 初恋红豆冰 and 12 Storeys. These are such rarities they deserve to be prized and praised over and over.)
What is wrong with a simple storyline? Directors/producers cannot seem to decide on whether to mess up a major CSI-esque one, or whether to dwell on something deeper; emotion is something we Asians can at least make good movies out of. Of simple things. If there comes a time for me to even deserve some words on this, it would be the safe option of eschewing ambition, and instead work on refining the meaningful. Leave large-scale police stories to the Hong Kong and Chinese filmmakers, and instead, do something heartlandish, small but intense. Something that hits like a pinprick. Something that smells of history, of old coffee houses, colonial rule, wars, cheong-sams and old streets. A modern thing which works would perhaps be a focused film on typical lives (like it always has been, but in a art-house way), and obscurity to the point of film-student snobbishness is at times annoying, since the audience (as I have always felt even through Perhaps Love when I was twelve) has no clue where anything is going, if something important is happening (rather than characters suddenly bursting into song at seemingly unplanned intervals).
I love reading friends' blogs. No matter how short are these vignettes, or rambling essays akin to my own at times, or even a documentary packed with pictures, scenic flashes or outstretched hands, or pouty lips and signs of 'victory' (ha) from a recent cam-whoring session, or reflections of life. It is a different story from anything that falls from a person's lips, like the mind and the mouth are such incompatible organs, with contrasting tales to tell. Though writing affords a second-delay of rethinking, the chance to turn back the clock in the form of the eradication of excoriating remarks, or spelling errors, or the addition of some highly witty comment, which arguably translates into, some say, superficiality and the ability to form artificial constructs brought about by non-spontaneity, I like the idea of a Second Chance. Everyone deserves to be their own architect; it's at least a necessary right. Especially at this rushed, wishy-washy time and age where the words mostly fail to come out right.