WOE WOE WOE!

i feel like this: A TERRIBLE MESS.

2 hours of trying to upload to SINA.COM makes me feel like a slut. ROARSSSSS!!!






and this is the ultimate dirty song.

On Hindsight

"As we grow older, life's dangers grow more imminent. We're no longer sheltered by our parents, protected by cots and playgrounds, fed by home-cooked healthy food, fetched by maids and chauffeured by parents. We're no longer in school, where life revolves around the afternoon nap, followed by homework and meals and tv, where the people we know are the characters that were either heroes or villains. It's a safe routine where little can go wrong, except maybe not doing your homework, or mixing with bad company.
We now see life in the face. We confront dangers, right on, sometimes without us knowing, helplessly, some fearlessly. Death comes in many forms, accidents with many identities. We get our hearts broken, we fix it back up, only for it to get trampled again. We face the realities of the race, the mundane and the routines, the backlash of the mistakes, the responsibilities. We face life, head on and without life buoy.

Face it - strongly, and with dignity."


I wrote this about 2 years back. For once I'm kinda slightly impressed by my own writing. I think I'm coming into my own, getting used to my style and trying to improve upon it, and being more confident in the meantime. That's good, I guess.

The Social Network

When we look back, The Social Network will probably go down as the movie that will best represent what it means to live vacariously through the internet over the past 2 decades, leading up to the culmination of arguably the biggest invention of our generation.

Perhaps it was the recent dry spell of not catching too many movies, but i highly doubt my senses were that numb or deprived to overrate a movie when i see one. This is one of the best movies I've seen all year.

The Social Network unveiled like a 2 hour tele-movie, in part due to Aaron Sorkin’s style of writing that has proved to be familiar in shows like The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip – dialogue intensive scenes filled with long witty repartee, with plenty of dramatic punch, leading to dramatic twist of events.

If you’re not used to fast-talking actors rambling on and on like a bullet train, and if you’ve not seen an Aaron Sorkin show in your life, TSN might be hard to swallow initially, but if you stick with it, the rewards are tremendous. Aaron’s script is gripping and crafted in perfect timing, going between flash backs and flash forwards. This non-linear narrative, together with the smart script, had me holding my breath for more throughout the movie. I would say long takes like they do in The West Wing will be impressive, but David Fincher’s way of re-doing a take over and over again to the point of perfection might be very exhaustive for the actors. I’ve also read that Fincher is contractually bound to keep this movie under 2 hours. (haha)

There is so much rave going on for the 3 lead actors – Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield, and Jesse Eisenberg – that I went in with much expectations, knowing that both JT and AG have been touted to be competent for next year’s supporting actor Oscar race. In the end it was really Jesse who shone the brightest IMO, and whose performance I was most impressed with.

Justin Timberlake plays Napster founder Sean Parker, the douchebag that will expand Facebook beyond Zuckerberg’s imagination - a smooth-talking slime-ball, one of those businessmen so great with PR he will tell you the world is ending tomorrow and you will believe him. As smooth as he is on stage, Justin Timberlake seemed like a natural on screen. It wasn’t a breakthrough role for him, and there wasn’t much to test his versatility, so even though I thought it was believable, it wasn’t impressive.

Andrew Garfield’s role is incredible likeable. As Eduardo Saverin, Andrew Garfield played the role with immense earnestness. Eduardo formed the emotional aspect of the back story, and it is through him that issues of trust, friendship, loyalty and honesty were unveiled. In contrast, the twins’ narrative explored the violation of intellectual property and the blurring boundaries of what constitutes theft, and provided an insight into the Harvard’s code of conduct. Their meeting with Harvard president Larry Summers was an interesting scene, not entirely necessary and did not add to the pace, but it highlighted the Harvard community and its exclusivity, as well as the seemingly notoriety of the recently scandal-laden Harvard. One of the earlier scenes when Mark first created Facemash was brilliantly edited with the initiation into a Harvard sorority, building a correlation and an undercurrent early in the film, which will later prove to be one of Mark’s motivations for creating Facebook.

Rashina Jones looks like a Jessica Alba. Always lovely to see her on screen.

I thought the best performance, and undeniably the trickiest, came from Jesse Eisenberg. Jesse’s Mark is one constantly in thoughts; even when he is not speaking he seemed like someone who is going through a lot in his mind. There is a certain punk attitude, a contempt for rules, and an impenetrable quality about Jesse’s portrayal, all of which unbeknownst and belied when you look at a picture of the real Mark Zuckerberg. The kind of attitude that pays no attention to the superficiality and the farce around him, but instead has total devotion for what he believes to be the next best thing on campus, and his ticket to the girls he desires. So much of what he was going through was conveyed in Jesse’s restraint acting, and his facial expressions say it all. To say Michael Cera or Shia Labouf can replace Jesse is undermining what he has done, and I do not think neither of them can convey the depth and complexity of the character the way Jesse anchored it in vulnerability, and a delicate balance between conniving and determined. Well, maybe Shia can do it, but he doesn’t look like Mark Zuckerberg the way Jesse’s wide-eyed demeanor does. And Michael Cera is too kiddish for the role.

David Fincher has a great eye for detail and irony. I especially loved the subtle difference in the scene where Eduardo’s girlfriend almost set fire to his bed, and Mark was on the other end of the phone line, talking in front of a pool. The casting of Justin Timberlake as the person who “brought the music industry down” was ironic, given he is part of the music industry in reality. The one part I didn’t like was when the twins were competing in rowing and lost, played to blurry dreamy cinematography and chariots-of-fire-esque music in the background. I thought that portion was redundant and lingered for too long, and though I get a sense that Fincher might be mocking the standard jock-type, still it was a little overkill. Trent Reznor’s score together with another person whose name I can’t remember turns out to be pretty interesting, a few simple piano notes over a constant undercurrent of imminent buzzing, a perfect blend of pathos and anticipation.

The significance of movies based on reality has seldom lasted long. Think of all the movies that were deemed important in our generation: with the exception of Titanic, the technological and cultural significance of Star Wars, Jurassic Park, The Lord of the Rings, and many more, far outweigh the impact and social importance that reality-based movies have. Movies that directly depict or retell an important milestone in history – rather than one that represents it through fictional characters or genres – seemed to have lesser success. I doubt a decade later, we will look back at “United 93” or “World Trade Center” for insight into 9/11’s tragic happenings, neither will we revisit “Frost / Nixon” for that important interview, nor biopic “Che” for a sense of what it feels like to know Che Guevera.

Then comes TSN, a movie that in my opinion might not be timeless (because we can never know what the rapid rate of advancement in technology has in store for us), but it definitely represented a whole generation who grew up under the influence of the internet, where the boundaries of privacy are blurred and the voyeuristic nature of humans never more exposed.

I wished the film had more ambition though. Granted the film-makers have mentioned that this is not a film about the internet, but had the experience of the internet and its impact on modern life been explored more, this will definitely be a movie that will speak to the 550 million people on Facebook, and perhaps go on to become the movie of our generation.

Instead of having our Avatar and its constant droning of environmental preservation, its didactic and almost preachy manner of narration, the profuse display of the advancement in 3D technology, as well as the awe-inducing grandeur, TSN will go down in my books as one of the most important films of the last decade over Avatar, simply because the social-networking experience and the themes it highlights represents what each of us is going through, whether you’re 6 or 60.

Perhaps the final scene says it all – Jesse Eisenberg adding the ex-girlfriend as a friend on Facebook, the person that in the first scene somehow triggered the chain of events that led him to become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. And he kept refreshing the page, over and over again, until the scene fades. Our infatuation with the site, at one point or another, is no different. We take action and we ponder, we wait and we can’t keep our eyes off it, eagerly waiting for something to happen. It is a meditation on what it means to be on Facebook – an addiction. In the end, Jesse became one of those 500 million members who can’t get enough of it, and can’t get what he wants out of it.

anticipating

[THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT]
Julianne Moore and Annette Bening, front-runners at the Oscar race next yr. it might be a little too early to tell, but the reviews for this film have been spectacular. they play a couple, with a teenage son and daughter. when their kids found their sperm-donor father, played by Mark Ruffalo with manly charisma, their lives are turned upside down.
i love JM. and i cant wait for this film in Jan.







[I AM LOVE]
Tilda Swinton looks gorgeous in this. the trailer doesnt say much about the movie at all, except that Tilda is speaking in Italian. but the score, editing, and rave comments make this film desirable.
i'm killing myself for missing it when it's being shown in Spore last mth. oh well.







[BLUE VALENTINE]
so the trailer doesnt say much. here's the synopsis:
"The film centers on a contemporary married couple, charting their evolution over a span of years by cross-cutting between time periods."
but the star-power of Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams is enough to give me goosebumps. i love it when Ryan does indie films. cant wait.







[RABBIT HOLE]
Touted as Nicole Kidman's return to good films. The Best Actress curse has befallen many - Halle Berry's dramas didnt do so well after her win for Monster's Ball, and her highest grossing film was X-Men, which was not a film she anchored. Nicole Kidman's said to be a similar box office poison, after Fur-Golden Compass-Birth-Bewitched failed to give her the creds nor the box office success. it didnt help that these films werent that great either. Her role here is fast gaining Oscar buzz, and i cant wait for her to put some gold on this Pulitzer winning script. The Hour's a Pulitzer-winning book, so if it's any indication, 2nd time's the charm.

watching this trailer sorta makes my heart sink a little.

王菲

I love this song. i think it's so poignant, how you yearn to love, yet fear the many outcomes. I love how it comes right after 为非作歹，which is a total contrast in both theme and mood, yet fits beautifully.

it always almost makes my heart sink a little deeper.





This is finally up on youtube. IMO it's quite underrated. i love 周禮茂's lyrics； 天不變地變 - a theme which echoes in many of Faye's songs. "没有什么会永垂不朽”


作詞：周禮茂　作曲：黃舒駿

天空不變短　地為何變暫　海水不變枯　　為何石變爛
一去的你未返　一切帶走然而留下冀盼
不變的思念中　感覺浮進眼
溫馨的記憶　漫燃流滿面　仍走不出作天　跟過去糾纏
想我的生命中　只有你手從來是最暖　不要潻黑夜深　冰冷如永遠
這一分我在變　這一刻我在變
這一天我在變　　去不變地為你生存
天它不變地變　海它不變地變
心它不變地變　　卻又還未變　未能令你改變
天空不變短　地為何變暫　當初不變的　竟也要改變
海水不變枯　為何石變爛　當初不變的　終也要改變





here, i find my peace of mind. and through whatever i face in life, i know i'll always have these songs.

Eyes On Me

it's as if i'm seeing her for the first time. There's something different about her, a twinkle in the eyes, more expressive than usual.

Wow.

Brandon Flowers - Only The Young

This is shaping up to be my anthem of the year. I cant seem to get enough！ and the MV is GORGEOUSSSSS. froth in mouth kinda beautiful.

all time low

i think i've hit an all time low =(
true, there's no where left but up.
hopefully this period will serve as a humbling reminder

Eat Pray Love

i've not seen the movie yet (sigh), but reading the interview made me fall for Julia Roberts. I now understand why she is the best-paid actress in Hollywood. Few actresses nowadays can command the screen the way she does, without saying a word. that's star power, her whole being, and it's a throwback to the classic leading lady.



"EW: Have you ever been in such a dark and sad place as liz finds herself in the movie?
Roberts: As a younger person, (with) problems that are more unformed and immature, I'm sure. There's a moment where you're hitting the compass and it's just not giving you the way to go.

EW: When was that for you exactly?

Roberts: Well, my whole 20s was like that: trying out this idea of things, working a lot, and moving away from home at 17 and being away from my mom. So there are times when you're figuring out those puzzles where you really do feel lost. "Do I really want to be an actor? Is it really going to work out?" You want to talk about a series of breakdowns? Talk to any actors in their 20s. You just never know if it's going to click.
.
.
.
EW: it's hard to believe, but this year marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Pretty Woman. What advice would you give to your younger self if you could?Roberts: Nothing. The funny thing is, I'm still so much that same person, really. I think that you're born that person - becoming famous doesnt make tou crazy. I just dont believe any of that crap. Twenty years is, first of all, a drop of water. It's all still kind of hilarious and unbelievable to me. And I have so many places to put the big weight of identity of my life that movies just will never have that. They just fulfill me in a different place.

EW: Do you obsess over your appearance? Do you like the way you look today?

Roberts: I'm human. Sometimes I, like anybody, wake up in the morning and go, "F---, Really? THIS is the starting point?" Havent you ever picked up a picture of yourself from, like, five years ago, and you look at yourself and you go, "And I had no appreciation for how lovely I looked, how fit and healthy I looked." So now I say, "Now listen. Ten years from now, you're really going to think you should have appreciated yourself more." And I', raising a daughter, and I really want to empower her by example.

EW: At the end of the movie, your character comes up with one word to sum up where she is in her life. I'm sure you've been asked this dozens of times already, but what's your word?
Roberts: What is my word? Has anybody asked me that? I dont think so. What do you think it is? If someone said "What is Julia Roberts' word? You just spent an hour with her."

EW: Balance?

Roberts: Balance is good. You know, I probably would say happy. Just happy. It's so easy to be really, truly happy, and so easy to forget that and get grumpy. I know it's a shock, but I can be grumpy." - Entertainment Weekly #1114, August 6, 2010

Bionic

i should be writing about other things, but as usual music dominates.
i really like Christina Aguilera's latest album Bionic. 'Not Myself Tonight', 'WooHoo', and 'Elastic Love' are just crazy catchy, and i almost forgot that MIA helped her on this album. WooHoo is a cheeky reference to the, erm, groin area, and all expletives and anatomical references were replaced with a very ambiguous WooHoo. niceeeee =)

i love how in 'Not Myself Tonight', the MV is racy and raunchy, with a look and set that resembles Madonna in Express Yourself. Since the song is about one night of fun that is against who she is entirely, the sexy vid is rather ironic, cos we've all seen Xtina play dirrty before. (maybe she IS a convent girl afterall). and was she trying to break away from the Madge reference (ie: this is not me. not myself tonight) by pulling out that look? hmmmmm

'I am', 'You Lost Me' and 'Lift Me Up' are gorgeous ballads that i have on replay now. and with the recent news of her divorce, it only becomes more timely as i try to connect the dots with these songs. so there's plenty of ways to interpret the divorce.

i just found the ballads very very suitable for my mood these few days.

'I Am'


'I am' stripped


'You Lost Me'



'Lift Me Up', from the Hope For Haiti concert. Linda Perry on the piano. Beautiful

Synecdoche New York

"As the people who adored you stop adoring you
as they die
as they move on
as you shed them
as you shed your beauty
your youth
as the world forgets you
as you recognise your transcience
as you begin to lose your characteristics
one by one
as you learnt there is no one watching you
and there never was,
you think only about driving
not coming from any place
not arriving any place
just driving
counting off time:
now you're here at 7.43
now you're here at 7.44
now you're gone."



Synecdoche New York is one of the most depressing and revelatory films i've seen all year. deep. very deep.

Inglourious Basterds

"Quentin Tarantino's fevered fantasia Inglourious Basterds makes
 the delirious assertion that World War II was won through a combination of the power of movies and the prowess of a band of renegades led by Brad Pitt as a twanging moonshine-maker. So it's perhaps unnecessary to point out that the blithe misspellings 
 in the movie's title are a delirious touch of nonsense too — 
the whim of a filmmaker who's a bit of a renegade himself.

Still, I start with the title, since so too does Tarantino. His orthographic choices seem to say, Love me, love my idiosyncrasies — fun with words is only a hint of the coming attractions. (Trivia experts in the QT movie clubhouse know that Inglorious Bastards, properly spelled, is the American title of a 1978 B-minus Italian war movie with only the loosest of plot connections to this loopy homage.) Few young-to-middle-aged American filmmakers have the nerd-centric depth of movie knowledge and technique that Tarantino brings to his high-flying projects, and fewer still have the confidence to simultaneously glorify and deconstruct genre as he can, whether the genre is blaxploitation, Hong Kong action, '70s grindhouse fare, or, in this case, war movies and '40s noir. But Tarantino's gleefully assembled spectacles are
 inextricable from his frustrating emotional limitations: Everything is 
a game. And here the game includes spelling and the actorly imitation of ''people'' in ''trouble.'' And Nazis.

Or should I say, ''NAH-zeees''? That's what Lieut. Aldo Raine (Pitt) calls them, as he handpicks a team 
of cocky malcontents — most of them Jewish — to join him in accumulating Nah-zee scalps. (Literally: Each man is assigned a quota of 100.) Pitt, in a '40s-style toothbrush-bristle mustache, undertakes Raine's preposterous speechifying in an accent just east of a George W. Bush drawl; he also pulls his lower lip up in a cornpone approximation of Monty Python's Mr. Gumby. Among those who cowboy up for Raine's regiment is Hostel 
director Eli Roth as "the bear Jew," a baseball-bat-wielding lug who smashes his enemies' heads to a pulp. You can watch, since QT is always up for a lavishly designed shot of brain splatter.

As is his preference, Tarantino builds his movie as a collage of interlocking set piece — cinematically dazzling, to be sure, 
 enhanced by an meticulously chosen retro soundtrack — rather than a linear progression. As a result, it's easy enough to tune out the Basterds while they scalp up a storm, and drop in instead on other colorful players. As Bridget, a German actress and undercover agent with exquisite taste in footwear, Diane Kruger presides over a conversation-rich scene in a pub populated with good guys and bad. As French-Jewish Shosanna, who witnesses the slaughter of her family, forges a new identity, opens a movie theater, and plots revenge, Mélanie Laurent presides over a climactic blowout — literally — in her Cinema Paradiso of a movie palace. (At the Cannes premiere, this line 
of Shosanna's killed: ''We're French. We respect directors in our country.'')

And as Nazi colonel Hans Landa, nicknamed ''the Jew hunter'' for obvious and terrible 
 reasons, Austrian actor Christoph Waltz 
 triumphs, heroically, over Tarantino's brash, cine-drunk tall tale. His Landa makes a 
 magnetic entrance in the movie's first (and very best) scene, terrifying a French farmer suspected of hiding Jews simply by requesting a glass of milk. Waltz, who easily won the 2009 Cannes prize for best actor, centers Inglourious Basterds with the welcome subtlety of his performance. In Tarantino's besotted historical reverie, real-life villains Adolf Hitler and 
Joseph Goebbels are played as grotesque jokes. The Basterds are played as exaggeratedly tough Jews. The women are femmes fatales.
 In such a cartoon world, the appearance of one stereotype-resistant protagonist — a Nazi, no less — counts as something glorious indeed."
- Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly. grade: B





I wanted to write a review about Inglourious Basterds, but Lisa's review was so succint i thought anything i wrote will put me in shame, so here.

i've seen some other great great movies this past week: Monga, Mother (Korean, with Won Bin), and The Hurt Locker. if i can stop bumming, and curb my enthusiasm in reading other critics, perhaps i'll put them down in writing. it's been a long time since i did a full-blown review anw. yeaaa.

what do you want to do?

Sometimes, when people ask me what do i want to do in life, the first things that come to my mind are usually the places i wana travel, the artistes i want to catch live, and the teevee shows i want to watch.

there's many shows i'd love to watch, and i feel less of a human now cos i haven seen some of these iconic productions. In celebration of the Emmys, here's a list in no particular order, sorta like a resolution list, to remind myself:

- SEX AND THE CITY. i feel like a loser for not having caught it.
- The Golden Girls. because of Betty White
- Breaking Bad. so much rave for Bryan Cranston
- Modern Family. touted to be the best comedy in states now
- BUFFY. nuff said.
- FRINGE 2
- GOSSIP GIRL 3
- ugly betty. only for Michael Urie and V. Williams
- The Wire
- The Simpsons!!!
- Battlestar Galatica
- catch up on PROJECT RUNWAY =(
- rewatch Felicity and Gilmore Girls and Alias.

disconnect

united in that moment
of music.

that when it ends,
so does our shared conscious.

the world jolts back to reality-
a reality.
a disparate and disconnected
superficiality.

it's about as much as we ever shared.
that when the party ends,
and the lights come on,
all that remains
are the spills
the leftovers
the silence.

LOST

"Most believe that what's done is done; you can't change fate, no matter how hard you try. And those who challenge what is destined will always be met with disappointment, for fate has a way of charting its own course. But before one surrenders to the hands of destiny, one might consider the power of the human spirit and the force that lies in one's own free will." - Michael Emerson, in his voice over for LOST S6ep00.





sadly, i have neither the courage to challenge destiny, nor the power of the spirit to decide my own free will.

how pathetic.

PRECIOUS

Lee Daniel's directorial debut dug many issues and laid them bare for us to examine: child abuse, incest, education, white supremacy, idolatory & celebrity, body image, illiteracy, HIV, sexuality, and even black humour.

It also leaves you with many learning points to take home: the distaste towards oily fried food with pork, a sense of security with our lifestyles, improved black vocabulary and grammar, hope for a better future, a feeling of undeserving bliss due to the geography in which we're born in, etc. but for me, the personal take-away message was how a mother's love for her children can push someone to achieve greater dreams.

There's 2 very different portrayal of motherhood in Precious. There's Mo'nique's Mary, a chain-smoking and abusive mother who lied her way through welfare aid, whose jealousy blinded her from what's right and wrong. And then there's Gabourey Sidibe's Precious, who rised above the discrimination and inner demons to chart a path of her own, "breaking through" an abusive relationship to find the strength in her to give the best that she was unable to get to her children.

Amidst all the issues that she faced, that message stood out to me the most. the undivided and selfless act of wanting to provide for her children, with no self-pity at her illness, moved me. that before her death, all she wants to do was to give them the best, struck me. How noble the cause, and how bravely she steamrolled ahead.

Gabourey Sidibe gave a pure and understated performance. despite how come have cried foul at the lack of great female characters in cinema these days, Gabourey found something that fitted her like a glove. Yet i wonder how much of this is a one-hit wonder, and she'll forever be known as the girl from Precious, stuck in that image and unable to find another role fitting for her. Her physical presence was strong. Any smaller actor would not have lend the same kind of gravitas needed for the role. but that might also limit her in her body language, which might affect the roles she get in the future. Nonetheless, Gabourey Sidibe is a tour-de-force in this movie, and sometimes, one single performance is all you need to create a legacy.

Mo'nique made a big sweep during the awards season, and true to hype, her performance was moving and raw, and she delivered those lines with emotions. you might not sympathise with her totally, but u can emphatise with the fact that she did what she thought was right.

The film played like one of them BET videos Precious wants to be in: unevenly paced, with flashbacks of fantasy, loud at times, and lots of vulgarities. I felt the film lacked a deeper connection due to the many issues it was trying to bring to light. As a result, there was no clear emotional climax until the end, which to me felt more like an anti-climax. I would have loved for a happily-ever-after, or at least some fragments of it, though it could never be possible. If anything, credit should go to the director for not sensationalising on the issues and toying with our sympathy. there was some respect for the audience for not putting things out blatently. it could have easily been overdone, but the restraint Paula Patton and Gabourey Sidibe had, Mo'Nique's brave performance, and the healthy dose of humour, brought closure.

Pecious is a film for anyone who is facing a tough period in their lives. if not to make you feel awfully lucky in your own shoes, at least for the acting and the humour. It is a rare gem in a crowd of false aplomb.


"The other day, I cried. But you know what? Fuck that day. That's why God, or whoever, makes other days."

WINNER!

my first "letter of the month" is published in this month's AUGUST MAN magazine! zippeeeee! very very pleased that i won for myself a Kenneth Cole watch. =)

i really shouldnt be this happy, cos the more i read it, the less impressed i am with it. i thought the other two letter were somehow better: one had better language, while the other a more diverse viewpoint. i had a better opener i guess. or mayb i was just plain lucky. or mayb they realised tt i've been following them on facebook and twitter and wana award my new-found loyalty and keep me reading. hmmm.

in any case, the idea to write in came to me during shower, like most bright ideas. i donno whether this is some divine luck, or some great writing, but today, it made me happy and motivated. and the recent success of HCJC training brought back some confidence in me as well. so i guess, it's uphill from here i hope.

tomorrow will be the day towards progress, in which today's reward spurred.

SALT

"A lack of plausibility used to be thought of as a liability in movies. When a critic, or an audience, complained that a plot twist was too luridly far-fetched to believe, that it stretched and snapped the bonds of reality (a rather vague concept, to be sure), that would generally go down as a negative assessment. Over the past couple of decades, though, expectations have shifted. Fantasy has leaked, like an oil spill, into everything, even naturalistic thrillers, and that has changed our relationship to them. Salt, a jacked-up espionage/action machine starring Angelina Jolie as a CIA superstar who may or may not be a Russian mole, is a movie I have no trouble calling flagrantly preposterous and over-the-top — impossible to buy on any sober, adult level. It's like a John le Carré double-agent yarn compacted into comic-book pulp as if by the makers of Con Air. Yet the movie doesn't pretend to be anything other than that; to call it out for being ludicrous would be like complaining that Superman flies. Besides, Salt knows how to stay one step ahead of you in devious, if jaw-droppingly contrived, ways. The movie is fun, dammit. So who cares, really, if it's trash?" - Owen Gleiberman, in his review of the new Angelina Jolie movie, SALT


OG has a knack for succintly putting in words my thoughts. I want to write like him.

ar see wa wu ghor baa ban

2 person behind me in the queue to buy toto/4D (was buying for my mum dad -.-) was overheard talking about their plans if they won the $5 million prize. Lady A was telling Man B that she asked her family what they will do with the money if they won (now this is what i call DAY DREAMING). A's mum and dad both said they wana invest in property and buy a bungalow (don't they always want the biggest of everything?!). A told them $5 million not enough to buy bungalow, which got me wondering:

1) how much do u need to buy 3 freaking layers of roof over your head in Singapore?
2) what will i do if i win $5 million frakking dollars!?!?!

then i found the answer.

in our favourite local newspaper XIN MIN RI BAO NONETHELESS!!

Next to the very sexysaucysteamy headline of Jackie Chan's confession that he shot a R(A) blue film before (why am i not surprised? hmmm) is an article about a man who won an undisclosed huge sum of money and 坏事连连 quickly followed. what divine providence yet again!　someone is telling me to be contented instead of being a daydreamer and lust after what i did not work hard for!

and i have learnt it the hard way once that what goes around comes around, so i dun think winning $5 million will be something i want. the paranoia will kill me. my life is destined to not have any huge windfalls.

but please just let me strike 4D like $1k a yr i will be super happy and contented already thankyouverymuch higher power that be if u are reading this.


so if u find out that i won 5 frakking million bucks, pls come look for me. i will give my money away nonetheless. unless u've been a bad bad bad person to me.









i think i am harbouring a growing resentment, one that i admit is bad, but an inevitable one, at the chances that i was denied, which led me to take a different, and more difficult path. oh well.

LOST

The caption for the above photo reads:
"Downward dog Will we ever be able to think about this scene and not cry?"

I'm obsessed over LOST lately. 3 episodes into the final season, and i cant wait to finish them all. But i have to finish Doc Jensen's recaps and theories and Totally 'LOST' videos on s5 first before i can proceed further. and because i do not have a smart phone, i've copied exhaustively all the recaps onto Microsoft Word (a grand total of at LEAST 100 pages, font size 8), only to realise that Doc Jensen actually has LOST THEORIES articles after each episode too. By then i was too exhausted and decided i should just read the theories online, the recaps on paper while i am on the road. but all these are worthwhile.

After i've seen LOST, everything else just feels like second rate. PREDATORS' theme of strangers-dropped-on-an-island-for-greater-mission, and them discussing whether they're in purgatory or in a game just had me in cynical inside-laughs at how tired this idea is, and how badly they're writing the lines and picking the characters. they're 1D in comparison to Sun/Jin's epic star-crossed romance, or even John's faith.

While watching INCEPTION, i related the dream extractions to LOST's time-travelling stories, and wished the minds of one criminal has more intrigue and interests rather than a similar replication of the modern world, albeit the action sequences and JGL's zero-gravity scenes are to-die-for. I wished they have more dimensions than the mythologies of the LOST universe.

There's so much i can say about LOST and its tales that it's difficult to encompass all within an entry. but i can say, that i'm so emotionally invested in the show it's unbelievable. i stopped myself from reading spoilers when copy/pasting the final season's recaps. but when i saw the picture above of Jack, face defeated and hands covered in blood, a stark contrast to S1E1's opening scene, and then a dog by its side as a drastic comparison - life and imminent death, man and animal, grappling and abundant cuteness - it just did it for me. The stage is set for an imminent death, and i don't think i am ready for it.

In many case, Jack Shepard is the character i most identify with. the reluctant hero, the one trying to please everyone, the doctor always trying to fix things, the man with issues and inner demons. but above everything else, Jack is like everyone; human, and flawed.

The day i watch that scene will be a very sad day indeed.







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Sarah McLachlan - Fear

Fear.
they say that limits us from getting out of our comfort zone, to play 10/10 or more.
(but isnt 10/10 still within the comfort zone? but that's for another day)
Every chanced sight of the word, because it doesnt bloom in front me every now and then contrary to popular beliefs, reminds me of Sarah McLachlan's soprano voice, where she effortlessly and so smoothly, like caramel, lived out those notes like dew in the "morning sky", innocent and spirited, almost spiritual.
The song's atmospheric arrangement, with the backing vocals hazed out, hinted at the whispers and voices in our heads, where fear most often sprang from uncertainty and doubt, confusion and conflict.
And then at the end, because like anything else, it has to end. And then i realise, that in songs, i am exorcising myself and whatever fragments of it that needs mending.

"But I fear, I have nothing to give. I have so much to lose here in this lonely place, tangled up in our embrace. There's nothing I like better than to fall."




The Cardigans - My Favourite Game

In sec 1, I heard this song and saw the MV.
the very sight of a tatooed Nina Pearson, driving along to this song, uninhibited, with the wind blowing in her face and the smell of open air, together with that liberating sense of freedom that comes along with it, I recognise. And i worship that immunity from everything else except living in that moment.

in that mad rush there is a cathartic release of pent up emotions. The song narrates the anger and frustrations from possibly a very fresh breakup, and later in the chorus turned soft and mellow (don't we all contradict ourselves so beautifully sometimes) before that repetitive yet incredibly hooky beat explodes in your head once again.
a cautionary tale against speed driving? sure it is. But every now and then, the incredible hook resurfaces in my mind everytime i travel, or am in some high-speed drive. The feeling is incredible, and the release even better.





I wonder what songs people have in their heads, when they're walking, waiting for train, or in the middle of a conversation that they're out of. I have a song in my head most of the time. Do you?