6AM?

Ah crap.
The hour has moved on and the sun has finally risen.
I have packed my suit in a bag and the taxi is waiting outside my door.
It is a brand new chapter.
+++.

Have you seen...

"Our spring was wonderful, but summer is over now and we missed out on autumn. And now all of a sudden, it's cold, so cold that everything is freezing over. Our love fell asleep, and the snow took it by surprise. But if you fall asleep in the snow, you don't feel death coming." - Francine

 

It seems to be the current trend lately to make movies with snippets of a common theme, much alike to those six-degrees-separation kind of films. The plot can be quite pointless, but their main focus is the human interactions and the impact the dialogues have on the audience. One false move, the film can turn out to be quite disastrous.

Scenes of a Sexual Nature
This is such a film.

There are about seven couples in this movie, all of them hanging out leisurely on Hampstead Heath in North London. And the one thing that the couples have in common is the topic of sex/love/relationship. Sure, the movie has its fair share of mystery: not revealing the true relationship between the characters until much later. It can get quite interesting at some point, but overall, it is pretty bland.

The are only two couples's stories that I like. One is of Iris (starring Eileen Atkins) and Eddie (starring Benjamin Witrow), an old couple who visit the same park bench on their individually selected day for the last 50 years until one of them screwed up the day and bumped into each other. They struck up a casual conversation and discovered not long later that they were very much in love when they were teenagers, which were the reasons why they have been visiting the park bench for the last 50 years.

Another one is of Peter Brian Maxwell (starring Adrian Lester) and Sara Louise Williams (starring Catherine Tate), a supposedly divorced couple, who share a seven-year-old daughter Eve (starring Elle Mackenzie). What I like about this couple is the caring relationship they remain in even after a divorce. They still joke the way they would as if they were still together. And they have made a point that they still love each other, but they are just two very different people to be together. As if a marriage together would destroy what is good in their relationship. And it is quite a rare thing because normally when couples break up or divorce, that is the end of everything. The friendship they used to have is more than ruined and over, and it is just a pain to be around each other. This is not so for Peter and Sara, and that is what I like about them.

 

Paris, Je T'aime
And this is a film that works.

There are 18 arrondissements - meaning 18 short films - in this movie. There is an interesting casting of Natalie Portman, Elijah Wood, Emily Mortimer, and Juliette Binoche, and directors, such as Wes Craven, the Coen Brothers, Alfonso Cuaron and Gus Van Sant.

One thing I like about short films is that they are precise and straight to the point. No beating around the bush and just going straight for the core, only because there is not much time to procrastinate about. So, it is a good thing if the execution is good. And of course, bad if it is not good.

There are a few arrondissements that I like: Loin du 16e (XVIe arrondissement) by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, Bastille (XIIe arrondissement) by Isabel Coixet, Place des fêtes (XIXe arrondissement) by Oliver Schmitz, and Quartier de la Madeleine (VIIIe arrondissement) by Vincenzo Natali. The last one is probably the most creepily romantic short film I have ever seen. Heh.

But the two of my favourites are Tour Eiffel (VIIe arrondissement) by Sylvain Chomet and Faubourg Saint-Denis (Xe arrondissement) by Tom Tykwer. The former is of a mime artists couple (starring Paul Putner and Yolande Moreau), and it is the more adorable and hilarious one. The latter is quite a heartwarming and sad one, about a young blind man, Thomas (starring Melchior Beslon) and a theatre actress, Francine (starring Natalie Portman). When he receives a phone call from her saying she is going to break up with him, he relives their relationship from the moment they met. I specifically like this one because the montage is great and how can you ever go wrong with someone like Natalie Portman in the film?

 

Credits: Wikipedia, IMDB, QuickFlix.

Lesson #11

Life Comes Rushing at You
Lucas Scott

When life comes rushing at you from
  out of the darkness
Who will you choose to face it with
Will it be someone you trust
Will they be wise
And will their love for you help them
  to guide you into the light
Or will they lose their way in the darkness
Will they make noble choices
Or will that be
  someone untested
  someone new

Life comes rushing at you from
  out of the darkness
When it does
Is there someone in your life you can count on
Someone who will watch over you when you
  stumble and fall
And in that moment
  give you the strength to
  face your fears
  alone

Have you seen...

"When you make a move out of stress or anger, it always ends in catastrophe." - John Casey

 

Elephant
For someone like Gus Van Sant, a director who is famous in his films portraying the mundaneness of human interactions, you would expect something better - something like Good Will Hunting perhaps.

This movie is awfully slow as we follow a few "ordinary" students through their "ordinary" day in an "ordinary" school. Maybe it got a little too "ordinary" because I found myself following the back of heads and going through a particular scene for maybe three times but from different perspectives. Sure, he is trying to convey everyone's point of view, but it got too redundant when I am seeing the same thing again and again. At one point, I am watching this kid going through his photo developing process, really thoroughly. And it made me think what is the purpose of this all. I do not know if that is point of it all, but I could not really remember all the characters vividly and some even popped out out of nowhere with no sense of purpose or reason, and before I knew it, he's cut off from the film already, ie. this Benny character (starring Bennie Dixon); I thought when he appeared at the very end of the film he would put up a fight with the shooters before going down, but instead he just merely got shot straight away. So, what is the point of bringing him into the movie anyway. The movie did not worked for me until the last ten minutes when the shootings started abruptly. Things got slightly interesting from there, but not yet desirable.

It is one of those movies about "what were you doing when it happened" kinds of events that reshape the rest of people's lives. It is unmistakable that this film got the inspiration from the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. And maybe I need to be in the middle of it all to know what it is all about. To know the normality of it all before something so tragic happened. To know the expectation of nothing in particular before it all unfolds. Then, I remember another fictional portrayal of a school shooting in one of the episodes of One Tree Hill, and the reaction I got from the latter was definitely more emotional and heart-wrenching than this film.

Well, if Gus Van Sant was planning to bring forth the originality of a boring school life, he had hit it spot on, but we are talking about a movie after all, a form of entertainment, so perhaps a little bit of drama or suspense will not hurt. If not, I might as well just reminisce my high school day and be done with it.

 

Bobby
Another "what were you doing when it happened" movie, but at least this one works better for me than the previous film. With an all-star cast, it tells the story of the days before Robert Francis Kennedy's presidential win and eventual assassination from the perspectives of the staffs and customers in the Ambassador Hotel.

A quiet Latino kitchen staff (starring Freddy Rodríguez) has to give up his tickets to the anticipated Dodgers game before he is working a double shift during the election party that night. A young black man (starring Nick Cannon) working in the Kennedy candidacy staff who have put all his hopes on Senator Kennedy for a better world for him and communities like him after the loss of Dr Martin Luther King. Two boys (starring Shia LaBeouf and Brian Geraghty) from the same candidacy staff who forwent their promotion duties to get high in a hotel room worries if they had done enough for Senator Kennedy to win the election. A young girl (starring Lindsay Lohan) married a boy (starring Elijah Wood) from her school so that he could be spared going to war in the front lines in Vietnam. And so on. Their day before the presidential announcement was all tied together by one man and one hope, and how the assassination would undo everyone in one single blow.

I was not born during that time of the year, nor am I familiar with the desperation for the kind of hope they were looking for: one that would bring them home from war, one that would better the communities of minorities, one that would dawn on a country a new ray of sunlight, before everything was taken away with a bullet through the head. I cannot really connect with these characters - heck, I even wondered if he was John F Kennedy's son or nephew or brother, and if it had died before JFK or after - but it showed me the kind of mess they were in, how they looked up to Robert Kennedy like a saviour, and how their dreams just shattered when the news of RFK's death hit them. It just made me realised that I was quite fortunate to not have been in their shoes, and wondered if we children of today were taking it all for granted.

 

Credits: QuickFlix, IMDB

Have you seen...

"My characters will have, after a little trouble, all that they desire." - Jane Austen

 

Becoming Jane
I have only known Jane Austen by name, and have not read any of her books before. I do not think I am one to like a movie of Old England times. But I find it quite impressive how this movie can draw me in. Perhaps it is because it has so much to do with myself; I have always liked a movie that I can relate to. Although the movie is fictional, but it has, after all, been brought together based on researched facts of Jane Austen's life, so it cannot be that far from the truth.

Jane Austen (starring Anne Hathaway) has a mother (starring Julie Walters) like my own. Someone who seeks only the best for her own daughter, but seems to have conveyed her best interest in desperate ways that may have wounded the daughter's heart. "I could live by my pen, Jane said meekly. "Pen?" Mrs Austen repeated, sounding rather offensive. "Let's knock that notion out of the head once and for all." Not to say that she is a bad mother, because when it comes down to it, in practicality, she is right. She just underestimates the uncommon path her daughter is heading down.

And a father (starring James Cromwell), much like my own. Someone who will always put her daughter's own desires above the rest, no matter how impossible or childish it may seem. Yet, at the end of the day, it was his wife that he sided. Out of fear or out of concern, a daughter may not know. Deep down, he did not want her daughter to suffer the way he did most of his life. Deep down, he knew that his wife is right, as much as it hurt him that it contradicted her daughter's well-wishes. "Nothing destroys spirit like poverty," her father had told her.

Not much has changed since the 18th century. Most authors still do not have the best life. Never mind the famous JK Rowling, or Dan Brown, or John Grisham, or Stephen King. Beneath the few that hogged the New York Times Bestseller list, are the many trampled bodies of unsuccessfully emerging writers. So, the chances of gaining fortune from merely writing books are slim, if not none.

Surely enough, Jane Austen did not marry, keeping true to her word to not wed without affection. But how many writers out there have already succumb to dependence to a significant other of higher income, and how many writers followed her footsteps, remaining in her clouds of romance and succeeded in doing so.

 

Hunting and Gathering
Compare to Audrey Tautou's earliest works - Amelie and A Very Long Engagement - I do not like this movie much. Probably because it is just like any other romance movie out there: girl hates boy, they started harbouring likeness to each other, like grows to love, yada yada. It does not have the unique plots and characteristics in the previous movies she was in. But I have to give credit to Françoise Bertin (Paulette), for her acting struck a core in me that I never knew still existed.

I have always felt a pang of envy whenever my friends talk about their grandparents with such love in their stories. How well they get along with them elderlies and how much they miss them when they are away studying overseas. I cannot really chip that of my own grandparents because they are not around anymore. And to be honest, I have not been the best granddaughter when they were around either. Which is something I regret, I suppose. Not really something that makes me loose sleep at night, but definitely something that dwells at the back of my head unconsciously.

My heart feels alright when I see old folks walking down the streets around me, or when I see grandmothers fooling around with their grandchildren. I was a rebellious little teenager when I was young, and I often ask myself, would I have gone on alright with my grandmother if she were still around. Would I have learned to love her more. Maybe I will go ask her when I make a trip to her grave at the cemetery. I have a feeling it gets quite lonely up there, regardless of the swelling number of graves spilling out onto the narrow lanes.

Albums for 2007

This is a year of downloading albums, instead of buying them. This is a year of soundtracks, lots and lots of them. This is a year of instrumentalism, not much of lyricism. This year I bring you album artworks too, and much much more to say for the help I have gotten musically to recuperate from the year before.

The Loves
Fires by Nerina Pallot
Damien Rice had just released 9 Crimes and it was only available for listening at 14th Floor Records. I found her folded neatly next to his new album, and one can never go wrong with a new musician when she shares the same home as Damien Rice. There is a stillness in her voice that is quite unlike Lisa Hannigan's, at a league of her own. I have always liked a singer with a beautiful and distinguishable voice. It is hard not to like her, when she is singing about things that are relative to me. You could say this is the album for me that year. Something about the frustration in life, about the realisation of loss innocence, about the ambition of running away, about the imagination of coming home.
- Idaho.m4a

 

Welcome to Reality by Ross Copperman
When there is a girl, there is a boy.
I first heard Ross Copperman on One Tree Hill and he just hit all the right notes for me. Granted, he is not the most thoughtful artiste out there. He is pretty much along the lines of James Morrison and The Fray. But he came to me on a night of the greatest despair and that is how he came to earn a spot in my heart. He is one of those male singers with a lovable voice that makes me want to listen to him a little longer and sing along with him. There is a tint of pain in his voice, which he used to his advantage, singing about hope and faith. He just makes my world alright again. And that is what I like about him. Maybe he is just a ghost of a good thing, and I am drawn to him in false pretenses. But he knows what the world will never know. He leaves me dreaming for another day and to wish it all away on January, March, December and May. He reignited my hope for a getaway. He gave me faith for a lucky day. He is not just supernaturalistic, artificial's cup of tea, but he believes in me.
- Believe.mp3

 

The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place by Explosions in the Sky
I was going through Shaun Tan's graphic novel The Arrival when I was listening to their 13-minute long It is Natural to be Afraid, and I am surprised myself to see how the change of tone in the song coincided with every page I turn and every mood portrayed in the pages. It is quite creepy, to say the least. If they did not get my attention back when I heard them on Friday Night Lights, they certainly got my attention then. Their music is something I have never encountered before in my entire music loving life. They are a breath of fresh air. Instrumental, ambient and technological. all mashed into one. With their haunting guitar and piano, with their catchy bass and percussions, they created a whole new world of emotions you cannot string words together to say. Try staying up late in the night without the lights on and listen to them with your headphones/earphones to get the full closure. You might actually see salvation.
- The Only Moment We Were Alone.mp3

 

Stay soundtrack by Asche and Spencer
If Explosions in the Sky were the immaculate moon, Asche and Spencer is the dark side of the moon. Taking my recent favoritism of ambient instrumental music to the next level, I decided to track down the soundtrack to the most peculiar movie I have seen. Unlike the former band, the tracks barely made it to the 5-minute length. Short and bittersweet, they delved deep into the most painful memory you hide at the back of your mind, stole them out into broad daylight and made you face all the fear you have been trying to hide from. The songs played their part in the music, making the movie, like so many movie soundtracks out there, complete. They took random noises of wails and squeaks, mixed them with the conventional pianos and strings and guitars and cymbals, and made them into the most aching music one would find to suit one's nightmares. Creepy, yet comforting, at the same time. Comforting sounds.
- I'm Never Gonna Sleep Tonight.mp3

 

Christmas Eve and Other Stories by Trans-Siberian Orchestra
A different kind of Christmas. The 3306 unit is stifling hot that day and we were playing another round of Mahjong. Shawn had his laptop out in the living room, going through Christmas songs by this particular orchestral band. I have always liked it when two different genres of music get together and create the most mind-blowing hybrid. There are the classical violins that raise goosebumps on your arms with that seasonal serenade. There is the heavy-metallic guitar that makes your toes curl with that soaring whine of a solo. When there are vocals, they remind me strangely of Meat Loaf, the same kind of majesty in the music and the voice. So what they are songs about Christmas. They are worth checking out any day of the year, and don't tell me you have never sneaked into the attic and thrash out your Christmas records to listen in the middle of July.
- Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24.mp3

 

Becoming Jane soundtrack by Adrian Johnston
I end my year with a blast back to the past. To the very beginning of my musical days when I had loved - and still do - the orchestra. Back to the basics. The bellowing oboe in A Game of Cricket reminds me of the evening before a performance, when a tutor paced around the backstage playing the Swan Lake Suite to calm his nerves. The fumbling flute in To The Ball reminds me of the days when I was still a skilled flutist, and how it aches my heart - like in the song - that I could never have those days back. The quiet pianos in Rose Garden reminds me of the days when I still aspired to be a musician. My fingers itch to touch the yellowing ivory keys at home. Sometimes, they just make it so simple to rekindle a fondness that had grown stale in you, make it seem like anything is possible again.
- To The Ball.mp3

 

The Likes

 

The Honorable Mentions

 

The Et Ceteras

Credits: Amazon.com, YouSendIt.com.

22 things I did when I am 22

#1 - Went snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef.
#2 - Went white water rafting.
#3 - Danced on a massive anthill.
#4 - Went on, not one, but two roadtrips.
#5 - Spent the majority of my 22nd birthday in a car ride.
#6 - Finished University.
#7 - Baked cookies, and...
#8 - Set off the fire detector.
#9 - Spent Christmas in Brisbane.
#10 - Saw Damien Rice in concert.
#11 - Forwent two concerts after getting the tickets.
#12 - Moved into an apartment in the city.
#13 - Spent my birthday in Australia.
#14 - Learned to play Mahjong.
#15 - Made a photography portfolio of a fallen angel.
#16 - Read a novel a week for thirteen weeks.
#17 - Saw a chiropractor.
#18 - Met Glen Hansard in person.
#19 - Confessed to my family of my spiritual fallout.
#20 - Went for a picnic.
#21 - Attended the Boxing Day shopping extravaganza.
#22 - Fell down embarrassingly in public.