The PEN Story

And Paul showed me a very interesting video. =)

Literally Now

Ok. Clara my favourite funny girl lived up to her name by introducing me this video. I thought it was damn funny! hahaha.

80s video with their bad hair and all.

Madonna - Celebration

This song is like STUCK IN MY HEAD!
Madge's latest boytoy plays a DJ in this vid. In the middle portion, she strips him and does some horny humping-gyrating action(alone), then pushes him away.
Prophetic, you say?

Singapore Idol boo hoo

Great! As if there's not enough wannabes on a talent-search show, Singapore Idol's first "Spectacular" Show's theme is a chart-topper night, and the promotional advertisement sees them channelling 13 chart-topping acts. And if that's not bad enough, there's always the matching outfit (the horrors that is a Lady Gaga blonde wig! and a Tina Turner gold mini-skirt!)to complete the imitation! whoopee!

Flipping through the 8-DAYS cover story, it seems quite a few of them have music background and talents. So come on! Don't ruin the talents and reduce them to imitations!

And buck up on song arrangements. They still suck after 3 years.


To adapt and modify Jade's golden words from ANTM:
This is Singapore Idol, not Singapore Copycat!

溏心风暴 Heart Of Greed

In the first minute, during the opening theme song, it's not hard to figure out what's going to happen: who is going to cry, who is going to fall down and get hurt, who will get slapped, who will meet with a car accident, who will die and how, who will be kissing who. The editor had put these images together, and we anticipate what will pan out. The excitement is in how they happen (how they cry, why one slap someone, how one dies), because in HK dramas, so much can happen within 1 episode.

There are no silent moments in most HK drama series. 97% of the time, someone is talking. 1% belong to recollections of past memories played to background music, 1% to having soup or dessert with family members, the other 1% to images of characters crying. Yet, the script is so well written and filled with meaningful lessons and playful banter. The romance between 程亮, 常在心 and 唐至安 is more romantic, heart-breaking, and utterly sweeter than anything on Fann-Christopher's phony milking-the-marriage tv show. On top of the script, credits go to the actors, who can cry as easily as freely whenever they please; and those huge chunks of lines they have to memorise!

In spite of its lack of subtlety, smooth editing, and smooth transition, the best thing about the show, or watching any show, is what you learn or bring away with you. Everytime 大契 speaks, and everything she said, is full of meaning and truth, so much that it made me cry sometimes. I learnt about values like kinship and respect, sacrifice and how to be a good friend.

It's all drama of course. Everything is staged and exaggerated, fictional, and nothing that happened in shows sometimes can happen in real life. Well, who's to say that. Say even if it's true, I'm glad that when I watch them, it gave me hope. Those laughter and tears were real though.

"甜的吃, 苦的也要吃"

AR 1 : Whitney Houston - I Look To You

There was a time when I thought Whitney has the best voice in the entire world. The ferocity with which she tackles the power ballads, the flexibility and fluidity with which she changes from singing voice to falsetto, the poise and elegance in her performances, the improvisations (though it bordered on terrible at times), and those big long notes (!) made her one of the most popular female singers of the 80s and 90s. "I Will Always Love You" stayed on the Billboard charts for a record 14 (I think) weeks at number one, until Mariah Carey broke the record with "One Sweet Day". Till today, The Bodyguard remains the best-selling movie soundtrack of all time.

So the hype was high when she returns with her touted-comeback album in seven years, free from Bobby Brown and crack coccaine, more candid and open and willing to succeed. Sadly, this comeback was not the kind I had hoped for.

Though brimming with the current crop of chart-topping producers and some old-favourites, the album cannot help but sound dated and languid in most parts. Alicia Key's opening track, Million Dollar Bill, sounds promising, and has a distinct Alicia-Keys signature ring to it. Unlike Whitney and Akon's collaboration, I'm glad she did not cheapen this song by guest-starring in it. Akon's now signature, though slightly off-putting, clanging-of-jail-cell sound just proves Whitney and her producers' desperation for a hit single by jumping on the Akon bandwagon.

One would assume that the singer of I Have Nothing, Greatest Love of All, and I Will Always Love You, arguably the biggest and greatest ballad of all, would be a master at it. Unfortunately, this album just proves that you need not only a big voice, but good songs to succeed. Title track I Look To You, an R. Kelly-penned ballad, is anti-climatic, and never did rise above the monotony at all. What a disappointment. I Didnt Know My Own Strength, by the mother of all ballad-composers, Dianne Warren herself, was slightly better. In both songs, Whitney's voice barely had the strength to carry them. She sounds inconfident and doubtful on both tracks, floundering as she could barely contain the huge notes, and limiting her falsetto to the minimum. So is the case on the other songs, missing the drive of her glory days, heck, of her previous album from 2001 even.

Her voice, once what I imagined to be a shining beakon of bright light, has now become one so hoarse that it only serves to remind you of Whitney-the-addict. While Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, even Joni Mitchell, made career breakthroughs with their change in tonal quality, it remains to be seen what Whitney can do with hers. This album sees her trying to regain the glorious days of the 80s, while being relevant to the present-day generation of Alicia-Akon listeners. A wild thought ran across my mind: why not work with Timbaland, he whom is responsible for many a career re-route? Look no further to Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake for successful examples. Whitney needs good materials and to regain her confidence. If breaking away from Clive Davis is the way to go, then do it. But if the recent Good Morning America concert, in which she performed 4 songs, were anything to go by, it might be a long long time before she makes a world tour. It was obvious she cracked, cant sustain, and couldnt reach the notes on most occasions (of which she blamed it on talking to much during interviews the day before). A singer should be responsible for the gift with which she makes money from. Those glory days I do hope they come.

In the meantime, I can only rely on youtube for hopes on that. Revisit the heydays of impossibly big ballads with huge arrangements, yet her voice still shone through, below.




Did't We Almost Have It All
Whitney was seldom this tender.


All At Once
This sounds very close to the album version, which is always a hard feat to follow. This was around 1985/6, after the release of her debut album.


All The Man That I Need
This ballad is SO HUGE it's crazy to imagine singing.

I've been wanting to do a mini-revamp to this site: from now on, I'm going to write album reviews, proper ones, in an effort to improve my English and critical appreciation for albums.

My intended maiden entry will be Whitney's new album, which I have tons to say but have put it off till now as a draft due to procrastination.


In tuition on Monday, student A hit student B on the head, which brought the parents from both sides to the tuition centre for a show-down. My very paparazzi (them probably Lady Gaga-inspired even, if not they might not even understand the word) students started a discussion the "abuse" and "violence" they've suffered under A, how when they play block-catching they will end up with finger marks on their arms, and how A will bully the boys in her class. In a very witty reply, my favourite Indian student Rohit Vij said this wonderfully funny line:

"She has no nervous system, cannot control her hand."




OK I thought that was really funny. hahahaha

Bjork - All Is Full Of Love

you'll be given love
you'll be taken care of
you'll be given love
you have to trust it
maybe not from the sources
you have poured yours
maybe not from the directions
you are staring at

trust your head around
it's all around you
all is full of love
all around you

all is full of love
you just aint receiving
all is full of love
your phone is off the hook
all is full of love
your doors are all shut
all is full of love!

all is full of love




Listening to Bat For Lashes, who sounds like a cross between Bjork and Sarah McLachlan, reminded me of this song. I believe I've posted this before; let us all be reminded that all, is full of love, even in the places you're not looking at.

One of the best MTVs I've ever seen.

NEW MOON!

SUPPOSEDLY to premiere at MTV VMA awards today. AWESOME!

Ellen as fourth judge: is this the end of 'American Idol' as we know it?

"Chalk me up as one of those people who greeted the news that Ellen DeGeneres is joining the judging panel for season 9 of American Idol with the sudden urge to drive a fork into my thigh and wake up from a strange and horrible nightmare. (Side note: We all do dream about Idol on a regular basis, right? Right.)

Now don’t get me wrong. I adore Ellen DeGeneres. As a comedian, that is. I’ve seen her live in concert twice. I watched every episode of The Ellen Show (her short-lived 2001 series with Cloris Leachman, not to be confused with the groundbreaking sitcom Ellen, which I also loved). Heck, I’d even tune in to something as hein as the People’s Choice Awards if they brought her in as host. But as a permanent replacement for Paula Abdul as the fourth judge on my very most favorite television show? Can I get a “hell to the no” up in here?

If you caught Ellen sitting in as a guest panelist a couple months ago on So You Think You Can Dance, then you probably understand my dismay. Ellen treated the gig like an extended (and extremely strained) standup routine, essentially making the focus all about herself while failing to provide even an Abdullian level of critical feedback. By ignoring her dismal, one-episode track record as a reality-show judge, Idol’s producers once again expose three deadly blind spots that continue to put at risk the short- and long-term health of television’s top-rated show.

1) American Idol is, always has been, and always will be about the contestants. The day the show stops churning out future Carrie Underwoods, Fantasia Barrinos, and Chris Daughtrys — performers who’ve reached superstar status in concert, on Broadway, and on radio — then it simply becomes another cog in the low-stakes reality-television wheel. So why have a fourth judge at all? Why take away precious screen time from the true stars of the show? I don’t know about you guys, but I’d have traded a thousand of Randy’s “for me, for yous” last season for just a few more seconds of singing from Kris, Adam, and Allison. Those kids — the ones who you’d never heard of in January, but whose music you can’t wait to buy in November — are the only A-list talents Idol should be worried about pimping.

2) Until (or unless) Ellen drops the “nice gal” persona, then she will not be representing the “people’s point of view,” which is how she described her Idol role while taping an episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show that will air today. People love Simon Cowell not for his taste in Hanes v-neck undershirts, but because he often has the courage to express on national television the exact — and not always polite — thoughts they’re having on their couches at home. Simon Cowell is the voice of the people. And my deepest fear is that in her new role, Ellen DeGeneres will be the voice of a beloved talk-show host and comedian who’s too concerned about damaging her public image to provide the kind of niceties-free feedback that the audience — and yes, the contestants themselves — need and deserve.

3) Credibility counts — or at least it ought to — when it comes to the judges panel. Which isn’t to say that Randy or Paula (or at this point Kara) necessarily represented a dream team of stimulating, high-minded feedback. Nor is it to say that an Idol judge needs to bandy about terms like legato or crescendo or “package artist” to do his or her job well. But look at the panel on Project Runway, for example. Even when I vehemently disagree with Nina Garcia, Michael Kors, and Heidi Klum, I never stop respecting them, nor do I find myself questioning their credentials, or their ability to spot a shoddy seam or bunky tailoring or an insane crotch. Is it possible Ellen has the ability to separate the Ramiele Malubays from the David Cooks, the Jorge Nuñezes from the Kris Allens? I sure hope so. But based on her SYTYCD performance, I can’t shake the deep fear that American Idol is adding creampuff to the menu when we really need some bitter lemon.

Of course, only time will tell how (and how much) Ellen’s presence on the panel will affect Idol. At the very least, I’m hoping that Simon and Ryan will once and for all ditch their regularly scheduled homophobic banter now that they’ve got a (powerful) lesbian colleague in their presence. And even if Ellen’s Idol tenure yields little more than corny punch lines — “Are you two carpenters? ‘Cause you nailed it!” she blathered during her SYTYCD run — perhaps it’ll awaken a dormant-yet-skilled critic deep inside Randy or Kara. Hey, maybe that’s crazily optimistic, but the alternative — that my very most favorite television show is standing at the edge of a gasoline lake with lit matches beneath its toenails — is simply too much for me to contemplate."
-- Michael Slezak, ew.com

Ellen DeGeneres joins 'American Idol' as fourth judge

"Ellen DeGeneres will serve as the fourth judge on American Idol in season 9, Fox announced this afternoon. The talk show host/comedian will sit on the judges’ panel with Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, and Kara DioGuardia after the auditions, effectively replacing Paula Abdul. DeGeneres revealed the news today to studio audience members while taping an installment of Ellen that will air tomorrow; she also reassured them she is keeping her day job. “This is so exciting for me,” DeGeneres told the audience. “We’ve been dealing with this for the last couple of weeks and I’ve been dying to tell everyone. It’s just been so hard to keep it a secret and we just finally got the okay and I’m so excited. It is going to be so much fun. I don’t know how it happened myself but I have not missed one episode of that show. I’ve watched every single thing. I love everything about it and I love music, as you know. Hopefully I’m the people’s point of view because I’m just like you…I’m not looking at it in a critical way from the producer’s mind. I’m looking at it as a person who is going to buy the music and is going to relate to that person. So I’m hopefully going to be that voice of what we’re all doing at home.”

Guest judges for the audition phase of the competition include Victoria Beckham, Mary J. Blige, Shania Twain, Avril Lavigne, Neil Patrick Harris, Katy Perry, and Joe Jonas. Season 9 debuts on Fox in January 2010."
--Dan Snierson, ew.com



I am happy! goodbye Paula hangover! Hello Ellen desperation!

*dances in sneakers*

古巨基 - 大師作品

古巨基 - 大师作品
作词：林夕 作曲：雷颂德

没有剧本 因一句对白捱尽责备
没有自己 因一眼对望而喘气
没有程度 没有睿智来迎合你
悲中带喜 高深的意味 我怎去入戏
如步伐未配配乐 随你去再找主角
宁愿当观众 就当上学
为别人幸运快乐
遗憾在我是人 只够演技做凡人
你是神 可以指导情分
声色光影 你的感情像作品
要完美过命运
遗憾未够道行 跟那轰烈没缘分
世俗人真爱不够像真
有血有肉我这小人物
哪堪破坏戏份
离别后定有雪落 得凄美未算佳作
而我这观众 未到角落
未赚完热泪过后 当做娱乐
遗憾在我是人 只够演技做凡人
你是神 摆布指导情分
删删剪剪 你的感情像作品
有瑕疵怎可忍
遗憾未够道行 跟那轰烈没缘分
世俗人真爱不够像真 肤浅天真
我的表情没美感 你自然换了人
换个人 壮观得 未染尘



Trey Lee. Fantastic.

Twilight

"If the droolingly awaited big-screen version of Twilight is any indication, sanpaku eyes are the new cheekbones. Marilyn Monroe and JFK both had sexy sanpakus (in which the white of the orb is strikingly visible below the iris), and so does Robert Pattinson, the young British heartthrob who plays Edward Cullen, Twilight's dreamy, sculpted hunk of a teenage vampire. With pasty skin, red lips, and those peepers that pop open wide with a touch of madness, Pattinson has a look so broodingly unearthly it's no wonder he doesn't sprout fangs. His creepy bedroom stare is a special effect all its own.

Here, as in Stephenie Meyer's 2005 novel, Edward is Romeo, Heathcliff, James Dean, and Brad Pitt all rolled into one: a scruffy-gorgeous bloodsucker pinup who is really an angelic protector. When Bella (Kristen Stewart), who has come to Forks, Wash., to live with her police-chief dad, sits next to Edward in biology class, he acts like he's suffering a seizure (or an attack of bad Mexican food). But it's only because he can barely control himself around her. It's no surprise that Bella tunes out the other kids, even as they try to befriend her. They don't make her tingle with the fear of her own desire. Edward, like any good vampire, has a predatory glamour. As Bella gets to know him, what's irresistible to her is that he promises not a blood consummation but its very opposite: a refusal to give in to the hunger that tempts him most.

For girls, the intense, ego-stroking appeal of Meyer's novel was the way that Bella becomes this undead Byronic stud's soul mate without quite knowing why she's worthy. She's a Kewl Generation damsel waiting to be rescued from her jaded heart. Stewart is an ideal casting choice — she conveys Bella's detachment, as well as her need to bust through it. And getting Catherine Hardwicke to direct Twilight was a shrewd move, because the youthquake specialist of Thirteen treats teen confusion without a trace of condescension: She gets their grand passions and prickly defense mechanisms. She has reconjured Meyer's novel as a cloudburst mood piece filled with stormy skies, rippling hormones, and understated visual effects. What Hardwicke can't quite triumph over is the book's lackluster plot. On screen, Twilight is repetitive and a tad sodden, too prosaic to really soar. But Hardwicke stirs this teen pulp to a pleasing simmer."
--Owen Gliberman, www.ew.com. Review: B










Ok. I am officially a convert, a believer of the hype, and a fan. The cinematography was beautiful, I want to throw a baseball while looking freaking chio (I mean, SHUAI) like Alice, climb trees and walk at lightning speed, and creep into people's bedrooms and watch them sleep, and read their minds.
You know, if all vampires look that good (besides, you have all the time in the world since you're immortal!), I really wouldn't mind being one!
I can see how every teenage girl is going gaga over this right now. Young girls want to feel protected like Bella, knowing that there will always be someone there to protect them. The feeling of being an insider, leading a secret life, might prove more exciting for their (our) current mundane school routine, like a fantasy(too cool for prom! Even though they did attend, they were alone most of the time!). And with a guy like Robert Pattinson, who needs anyone else?!

Fair skin had never looked this good. It's a crime.

Idol countdown.

guest judges on Idol will include Neil Patrick Harris, Katy Perry, Mary J. Blige, Shania Twain, Kristin Chenoweth, Joe Jonas, Victoria Beckham, and Avril Lavigne.



Can we all, especially fans of How I Met Your Mother, say this together: NEIL PATRICK HARRIS ON AMERICAN IDOL!!!

AMERICAN FREAKIN IDOL! HELLO!

let's hope he can critic singers as well as he makes us laugh. I. CAN'T. WAIT.






In other related Idol news, I shall endeavour to make it my life mission to ruin Ken Lim and get him off the already-horror that is Singapore Idol. From now on I shall have a iquotekenlim blog entry every week after the show's telecast, and you shall have the pleasure of laughing at his idioctic, rude, and sometimes-irrelevant comments.

Simon Cowell was spot-on, but seldom rude. Even when he was, he would apologize sometimes. Ken Lim doesnt. He needs to be shot.

The September Issue

"September is the January of fashion."



Anna Wintour, the woman whom Meryl Streep's wickedly delicious character in The Devil Wears Prada was apparently modelled after. Fierce.
In fashion, either you're in, or you're out. THIS IS IN!