Cinematic Concerns

Suggested List Of 2012 Oscar Nominations [as of Jan 2012]

2012-01-04T23:09:00.000+08:00

Updated Jan 26.

Oscar-potential films yet to see

War Horse ... ... In The Land Of Blood And Honey ... ... The Lady

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close ... ... My Week With Marilyn

J. Edgar ... ... The Iron Lady ... ... Hugo ... ... Shame ... ... The Deep Blue Sea

A Dangerous Method ... ... The Conspirator ... ... Albert Nobbs

Take Shelter ... ... Coriolanus ... ... Martha Marcy May Marlene ... ... Miral

BEST PICTURE

Anonymous
Limitless

Midnight In Paris

The Help

Water For Elephants

BEST DIRECTING
David Fincher – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Tate Taylor – The Help

Woody Allen – Midnight In Paris

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Dominic Cooper – The Devil's Double
Jean Dujardin – The Artist

Owen Wilson – Midnight In Paris

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Bérénice Bejo – The Artist
Rooney Mara – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Tilda Swinton – We Need To Talk About Kevin

Viola Davis – The Help

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Corey Stoll – Midnight In Paris

Ryan Gosling – Crazy, Stupid, Love.

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Allison Janney – The Help

Charlotte Gainsbourg – Melancholia

Elle Fanning – Super 8

Jessica Chastain – The Tree Of Life

Octavia Spencer – The Help

BEST WRITING, ORIGINAL

Anonymous
Bridesmaids
Contagion

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Midnight In Paris

BEST WRITING, ADAPTED

Limitless

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

The Help

The Ides Of March

Water For Elephants

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Limitless

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Tree Of Life

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Anonymous
Immortals

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

The Three Musketeers

The Help

BEST ART DIRECTION

Anonymous
Cowboys And Aliens

Immortals

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

Super 8

BEST MAKEUP

Anonymous
Midnight In Paris

X-Men: First Class

BEST FILM EDITING

Limitless

Midnight In Paris

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Help

BEST SOUND

Kung Fu Panda 2

The Eagle

The Tree Of Life

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

We Need To Talk About Kevin

BEST SOUND EDITING

Captain America – The First Avenger

Kung Fu Panda 2

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

The Tree Of Life

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Cowboys And Aliens

Captain America – The First Avenger

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

Super 8

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Kung Fu Panda 2
The Artist

The Eagle

The Help

Water For Elephants

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

"A Thousand Years", The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1

"Iridescent", Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

"When We Were Young", The Three Musketeers

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Kung Fu Panda 2

Puss In Boots

The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn

BEST SHORT FILM, ANIMATED

Dead Island Trailer

Slimtime

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Let The Bullets Fly (China)

Best Teasers Or Trailers Released In 2011

2011-12-14T11:03:00.000+08:00

It's very simple really. The more the trailer makes me want to watch the movie, the higher it's ranked.

THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

SUPER 8

WAR HORSE

WEEKEND

THE IRON LADY

THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN

CHRONICLE

PREMIUM RUSH

THE HUNGER GAMES

ACT OF VALOR

REVIEW: "Klue, Doh!"

2011-12-04T23:58:00.001+08:00

... And Malaysian theatre continues to inspire hope.

Well, this one's a collaboration between "theatre makers from Australia and Malaysia", but that does not diminish at all the creative contribution of the Malaysian talents, who supply at least the writing team and the entire cast. I shan't spoil the story because you really must see it if you can (the play runs until 17th December), but suffice to say it involves a deeply dysfunctional family with truly messed up characters causing all kinds of mayhem when the PDRM drops by to investigate the case – as usual, it consists of the pair of the oblivious senior officer and the hapless junior. I'd venture to guess that there's a hint of influence from Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" somewhere there.

That it's a murder mystery set in a rich mansion in Ipoh makes it very interesting, that it chose to present it as a comedy (and a successfully manic and witty one at that) made perfect sense, but even that wasn't enough – the play is presented twice to the audience, who are split into two equal groups and placed into two separate auditoriums that faces two separate but connected rooms in the house: the study hall which is also the scene of the crime, and the living room. In effect, you get half the information (and sometimes, half the joke) watching one side of the play, then get a complete understanding (and sometimes, laugh-out-louds) after the intermission when you switch to the other room. It is an immensely brilliant idea, and the way it was done was not in the least bit tacky or contrived. (Though not surprisingly, a certain amount of improv is required from the actors to keep the proceedings on both sides in sync.)

Another interesting choice was to have every single major vernacular language in Malaysia represented here – while the play is primarily done in English and Bahasa Melayu, on occasion the characters break into Cantonese or Tamil, so as a result, you the audience won't get all the facts. Unless you happen to speak all four languages (rare indeed). At any case it won't prevent you from understanding who actually dunnit.

The roles were perfectly casted, and it was a truly ensemble cast. Perhaps the characters are a bit stereotypical – Davina Goh is typecasted as the ditzy, sexy girl who happens to be an unrepentant gold digger while Jon Chew is typecasted as the effeminate guy who happens to be a consummate wedding planner – but that works for a comedy of errors like this. Anne James excels as the spurned ex-wife, JD Menon channels Hishamuddin Rais in his portrayal of the brother-in-law who is also a filmmaker, Terence Conrad is breathlessly hapless as the son, Nabihan Yaacob emanates a quiet, almost dangerous anger with her role as the maid with a secret (she starts the play for half the audience in a placidly absurd scene), and last but not least, Iqmal Shafiq and Ley Shahrwind embodied the archetypes of their characters (the senior officer and the junior) very well, and served as vehicles to poke harmless fun at the boys in blue as well as a certain, very recent sport event.

In short, there wasn't a single false note in the acting, or indeed, the whole play. (Okay, there probably were, but that's going beyond nitpicking.)

Shan't say much more. It's entertaining, hilarious, and unless you're offended by vulgar language and some scenes of a sexual nature, go watch it. It's well worth the price of the ticket.

P.S. - Yet another example of the production's attention to detail ...

The media launch for its latest theatrical production, an original whodunit titled Klue, Doh! took the form of a mock engagement party for two of the characters — business tycoon and toilet hygiene magnet, DatukJackson Mo Les Ting, and [his fiancee and former GRO from Jinjang,] Charity Ho Mun Mun.From the get-go, the company showed attention to detail. The media invite came with a soft-copy of an engagement invitation card.Upon arrival, we signed the guest book, received our door gift (a miniature wedding cake) and were ushered to our seats and a buffet spread by Gangbang Sukajolo, the Indonesian maid sportingly played by actress Nabihan Yaacob.

Notes On 2011 BMW Shorties Finalists

2011-11-24T13:45:00.001+08:00

[Reminder: All opinions are subjective. They always are.]

Just watch one. Forget the others. (Okay, that's not a very democratic suggestion. Watch them all to make up your own mind about them. But if you want to save time, then yeah, take this recommendation.)

Just watch Quek Shio Chuan's GUANG.

You see, for years in Malaysia we've been suffering through (mostly, but certainly not entirely) purportedly symbolic or metaphorical arthouse short films that are pretentious in a muddle-headed manner, or else moralistic and didactical short films that shallowly portray what (the filmmaker thinks) is good and what is bad without a serious attempt in actually telling an engaging story. Repeat finalist Tan Ce Ding's short film "How To Say I Love You" is one such example.

Or, as you can find in themed short film competitions like BMW Shorties, contestants often produce not a narrative short film but what is really a visual essay that addresses a theme – they often consist of monologues laid over some images, or have lots of title cards that try to be poetic. Repeat finalist Moh Chee Leong's "Let The Plastic Fly" is one such example. (Malaysian Chinese filmmakers love doing this, to my disappointment. It's an import from HK and Taiwanese filmmaking. "Bringing others joy is the happiest thing in life." "Finding happiness is more important in life than chasing after money." Siiiiiiiigh.)

Is there a story? A little bit, perhaps. Nothing that would satisfy me though; I look for stuff like setups and payoffs, conflict, rising stakes, etc. (Not these elements by themselves, but working together to tell the story.) And these are inevitably absent when directors look at the theme, "Joy", and simply think of what words or what images can be associated with it and just added those things together as if it's arithmetic, with less emphasis on character and plot.

Which is why GUANG pleased me so much – I've been waiting for a short film like this to emerge from Malaysia for so long.

GUANG basically takes what I think of as the Hollywood approach – a balanced and synthetical marrying of theme and storytelling (without making it on the nose; you certainly don't go through the short film thinking about "Joy", it's just inherent in the scenes). Watch the film till the end - did you notice the editing and the sound editing? I didn't. Now watch it again, see how smoothly it transitions from shot to shot, from one scene to the next? Pacing is just nice, not too indulgent, not too rushed. Did you notice the cinematography? It looks beautiful at places, when it counts, but it doesn't try to look stylistic in every shot. You would've noticed the rainbow colours in certain shots – there, that's the director inducing a theme into his film without having to comment on it. The camera movement isn't flashy, but unlike so many Malaysian short films they are also not static.

And of course, the story touches your heart. A very good reason for that is because it's the director's own story – that old adage, start with what you know. But he didn't make the easy mistake of making it too autobiographical, or at least, it didn't feel like it. It's not a diary, it's a story.

Quek Shio Chuan will go far in his career if he keeps this up, even if he doesn't win this thing. But, if he and his team don't sweep all the awards à la Titanic or Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King (except for the actress category which it wasn't nominated for) then it's a travesty. I've seen all the nominated short films (disclaimer: some I only skimmed through because they were just too blah to sit through), and almost without contest this was the best film in all the categories – Actor (my, so naturalistic, so buried into the role), Cinematography (more than the other nominees, it was all about telling the story through the camera ... how on earth did "Come Home" get nominated here?), Editing (didn't notice it, unlike the other nominees), Sound Design (didn't notice it, unlike the other nominees), Production Design (just works), and Screenplay (tells a narrative tale and uses many film storytelling tools to great effect, right down to details like the setup of the 'retarded brother' line; how on earth did "Come Home" get nominated here?).

I would be very interested to see what Quek does with the RM75,000 when he wins that. And I hope, for once, that it's a short film that improves on the winner's entry sent in for BMW Shorties and that it looks like RM75,000 was spent on it.

Alright, now, to be fair, of the remaining nominees THE LONG DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP was a reasonably well-made short film as well, so after watching GUANG do check that out. Can't say the same about most of the other ones; I'm sorry to say that I felt that this year's crop of nominees were not as interesting or engaging as last year's.

And, of course, clearly some of the cast and crew behind GUANG were experienced industry people (the DP for this was also the DP for Yeo Joon Han's Sell Out! for example), which almost all the other productions probably did not have access to and are thusly disadvantaged. But you work with what you have.

And to give credit to BMW Shorties, their format for the nominations where not just the top 10 finalists but any of the 107 entries can potentially be nominated for the smaller categories makes a lot of sense, makes it a bit more Oscar-like. They should stick to it next year.

REVIEW: The Adventures Of Tintin - The Secret Of The Unicorn

2011-11-03T13:20:00.000+08:00

I just love how the title sounds in the other languages:

L'aventures des Tintin et Milou

De Avonturen van Kuifje en Bobbie

Die Abenteuer von Tim und Struppi

Anyway, on the movie itself, Tintin fans worldwide will definitely get the film, thanks to the copious references to all things Tintin, like the random appearances of the tin can with the crab with the golden claws, the unexpected appearance of the Milanese Nightingale, wall plaques on Tintin's flat displaying his articles on adventures past, which for non-Tintin-fans would just register as "oh, he's a reporter", but for ardent Tintin fans each of those wall plaques are an entire 62-page comic book adventure in itself. Then there's the very affectionate cameo of Herge in the beginning. I hope the late Monsieur Remi is pleased.

Which leads to the point that I'm not entirely convinced that non-Tintin-fans will necessarily enjoy the film. In fact, the film is 50% Herge's Tintin and 50% Spielberg, with his trademark style of progression storytelling (this happens, so protags need to get this from there, then that happens, then that happens, then that happens, then that happens, etc) and John Williams score. So the Spielberg part, those audiences might enjoy. The rest of it, I have a feeling that they wouldn't be able to see what the fuss is all about this oddly-named boyish European reporter (who never seems to file a report nor report to any newspaper editor for his work).

They might come out saying that the main character is bland. That the story lacks emotional connection.

Totally agree. It's one of the reasons that I don't seem particularly elated or enthusiastic after having watched the movie, which, mind you, is the only comic book adaptation I can ever get excited about since the bookshelf of my childhood comic-reading days consists only of one single comic book series. Strangely enough, that's fine. It's fine that my mind isn't blown away by the film adaptation.

If there's any disappointment at all, however slight, it's that there's too much Spielberg in it. I know, sacrilegious, eh?

The obvious problem with being a Tintin fan, of course, is that you've been reading the comics all your life and you have a set of voices assigned to each of the characters already, which is ingrained and hard to dissociate from the Tintin that you feel you know so well. Certainly, on paper, the decision to cast Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost can't be faulted, excellent choices in fact. But then as soon as they start speaking, even though some (not too many) of the dialogue were lifted straight off the speech bubbles in the Tintin comics ("Here! ... I'm downstairs already!"), I couldn't help but nitpick -- that's not how Thomson and Thompson should sound like!

Or take Captain Haddock's swearing. One of the most enjoyable parts of Tintin for me was when Haddock is greatly frustrated and irritated and launches into extended tirades that includes "Pithecanthropus! Diplodocus!" or "Sea gherkin!" or "Thundering typhoons!" or "Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!" I've always heard them in my head as a continuous stream, without stopping for a pause (not quite comparable to Stephen Chow but that comes to mind), whereas here Serkis delivers it slowly and with pauses in between each one.

Or take Bianca Castafiore. I have always wondered how her Jewel Song from 'Faust' actually sounded like. "Ah! My beauty past compare ... These jewels bright I wear ... Margharitaaaa!" In my head I imagined it as a descending tune before exploding into a high-pitch, ear-shattering blast. Unfortunately, she sings here but doesn't sing the Jewel Song.

Which illuminates this little insight: perhaps everyone imagines the Tintin characters a little differently from everyone else. Which means that there is no way Spielberg and team could've created a film that satisfies everyone, or even just a significant minority. But I also think, Tintin lovers generally being sensible, considerate, knowledgeable and more matured types, they've been rather forgiving with the film, as I was. Hence Tintin fans have, by and large, embraced the film, whether they felt the Tintin they saw was a good replica of what they had in mind or not (at least, that's my impression).

Crucially, the problem with the Tintin characters having actual eyes is no longer a problem.

As for Spielberg, now that the shackles and constraints of live action filmmaking have been taken away, he gleefully went into overdrive mode with his sweeping motion camera moves. He's always been good with those but used them sparingly, partly because it's difficult to do them in the real world without encountering problems like shuddering, or figuring out a good (or at least possible) way to lay the dolly tracks.

The best thing he did here, though, is the soon-to-be much-talked-about 5-minute long uninterrupted shot of an insane action setpiece that, in 3D, comes closer than any film I can remember in simulating the amusement park ride sensation in a cinema, as well as outdoing Alfonso Cuaron's then-mindblowing long tracking shots from Children Of Men by a friggin' mile ... just coz he can. (Performance capture with full CGI, fuck yeah!) That sequence more than anything makes me want to go back and watch the movie again. In 3D again.

John Williams' music does nothing for me, except that the intro music reminded me of Catch Me If You Can. Felt a bit rarefied.

In the end, not the glorious adventure with the romantic, nostalgic European feel that one hopes for when one wished for a Tintin film, but not a terrible adaptation either. Given that Peter Jackson will be pre-occupied with The Hobbit, I don't know how many years will pass before we get to see the next one. (Don't forget, the performance capture work for this was done back in April 2009. That's how long it takes.)

Suggested List Of 2012 Oscar Nominations [as of Nov 2011]

2011-11-03T00:26:00.000+08:00

Oscar-potential films yet to see

In The Land Of Blood And Honey

The Artist ... ... Hugo ... ... Shame ... ... The Deep Blue Sea

The Lady ... ... The Iron Lady ... ... Moneyball ... ... The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

War Horse ... ... J. Edgar ... ... A Dangerous Method

The Conspirator ... ... Anonymous ... ... Albert Nobbs

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close ... ... Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Take Shelter ... ... My Week With Marilyn

Martha Marcy May Marlene ... ... Coriolanus ... ... Miral

BEST PICTURE

Limitless
Midnight In Paris
The Help
Water For Elephants

BEST DIRECTING
Tate Taylor – The Help

Woody Allen – Midnight In Paris

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Dominic Cooper – The Devil's Double
Owen Wilson – Midnight In Paris

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Tilda Swinton – We Need To Talk About Kevin
Viola Davis – The Help

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Corey Stoll – Midnight In Paris

Ryan Gosling – Crazy, Stupid, Love.

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Allison Janney – The Help
Charlotte Gainsbourg – Melancholia

Elle Fanning – Super 8

Jessica Chastain – The Tree Of Life
Octavia Spencer – The Help

BEST WRITING, ORIGINAL

Contagion

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Midnight In Paris

Source Code

BEST WRITING, ADAPTED

Limitless
Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows
The Help
The Ides Of March

Water For Elephants

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Limitless

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

The Tree Of Life

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Immortals
Midnight In Paris
Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

The Three Musketeers
The Help

BEST ART DIRECTION

Cowboys And Aliens
Immortals

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows
Super 8

The Three Musketeers

BEST MAKEUP

Midnight In Paris

X-Men: First Class

BEST FILM EDITING

Limitless

Midnight In Paris
Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows
The Help

BEST SOUND

Kung Fu Panda 2
The Eagle

The Tree Of Life

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon
We Need To Talk About Kevin

BEST SOUND EDITING

Captain America – The First Avenger

Kung Fu Panda 2
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

The Tree Of Life

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Cowboys And Aliens

Captain America – The First Avenger

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

Super 8

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Kung Fu Panda 2

The Eagle
The Help

Warrior

Water For Elephants

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
"A Thousand Years", The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1

"Iridescent", Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

"When We Were Young", The Three Musketeers

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss In Boots
The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn

BEST SHORT FILM, ANIMATED

Dead Island Trailer
Slimtime

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Let The Bullets Fly (China)

REVIEW: "Short + Sweet Theatre Gala Night"

2011-10-31T00:15:00.000+08:00

The title's a lie. This is not a review.

No, I'm not kidding. There's nothing resembling a review here.

No, it's a demonstration of how I now have to
EAT. MY. WORDS.

[Sorry, I don't have an image of that. I don't know how someone eating his words looks like, alphabet soup jokes aside.]

I've spent the better part of the last few years thinking that almost none of the plays and musicals written by local playwrights are worth watching; I've seen a few of those and they have all disappointed to some degree, even the better ones. The only plays that I can thoroughly enjoy are those written by Western playwrights and performed by local talents; those disappoint occasionally but I'd still go for them.

Tonight throws that perception out of the window.

Short + Sweet Theatre consists of twenty-four 10-minute plays written, directed and acted by amateurs and professionals alike (there's also a Musical and Dance segment to S+S), played out over two weeks before ending with a bang with the twelve plays surviving the first-round votes being played out on the Gala Night, which was what I attended.

I won't go into what I thought about each of the plays. I can't, they were simply all good. Sure, there's some difference in the quality between the different plays, but the differences felt so marginal that when in the end they asked the audience to each vote for just one play out of the twelve I felt like voting for just one out of any of them is unfair; it crossed my mind to tick all of them, but that's breaking the rules.

I feel very jealous of these guys – performers, playwrights, directors alike. People who know me know that that's very, very high praise from me.

And [self-pity wallowing commencing; avoid next two paragraphs if cringing hurts your cheeks] I also feel rather ashamed of myself throughout the whole show (stole some of my concentration from the show unfortunately). There I was this past year (and these past years) perpetually drowning in that void known as writer's block, while suddenly here a kaleidoscope of talents burst out right in front of my eyes, unexpectedly, undeniably ... shockingly. And some of these people are amateurs! (Which I am, incidentally, but that's beside the point.) It really proves the point my encouraging friends tried to tell me: that I could've written stuff, gotten stuff directed, done something anyway.

I still couldn't have. Even in hindsight. I am who I am. I wallow in self-pity, sometimes wear that as a badge, not proudly, just prominent enough that kind friends would come to provide reassuring sessions (suckers ...). I mope. I am held down by Newton's first law of motion. Tonight made me feel like I should give up. Give. The. Fuck. Right. Up. (You hack you, all critic and no substance ...)

Of course, that's just despondent talk, just more talk to snag the suckers. Don't fall for it.

I repeat, I shan't write about what I thought about the mini-plays, but I shall list down the plays and the players for my future reference.

1. Because The World Needs Unicorns
Director: Jude James
Performers: Redza Minhat, Brana Aruljothi, Farah Rani

2. Failing Elijah
Playwright: Alex Chua
Director: Dinesh Kumar
Performers: Aminda Faradilla, Priyadashini a/p Maganathan

3. Life Decisions
Playwright: BB Ostella Adam
Director: Nicole Ann Thomas
Performers: Alvin Looi Wan Su, Nor Hazlin Nor Salam

4. Who Moved My Donut?
Playwright: Tita Wariss
Director: Megat Sharizal
Performers: Sani Zainal Abidin, Tuan Faisal, Marina Tan

5. The Rice Of The Kaiser
Playwright: Cheah Ui Hua
Director: Yusuf Amin
Performers: Lee Zhi Li, Belinda Hon, Nabillah 'Billy' Aimi

6. Boleh Saya Bantu?
Playwright: Ashraf Zain
Director: Ooi Kee How
Performers: Morgan Ramanchandram, Maria

7. Cargone
Playwright: John Newman
Director: Amir Yunos
Performers: Ariff Faisal, Aidan Salman, Clarence Kuna, Shakier Shukor

8. Rupert And The Seven Russian Email Brides
Director: Kelvin Wong
Performers: Will Quah, Jon Chew, Michael Chen, Matthew Ong, Dominic Luk, Ashwin Gobinath, Alex Chua, Joe Pagnelli, Jade Presley Lewis

9. When You Can't Stop Running (不停奔跑暴走记)
Playwright: Freddy Tan
Director: Erna Mahyuni
Performers: Calvin Tan, Jeremy Ooi, Joanna Van, Jack Lua

10. Thank God We're Italians!
Playwright: Catherine Ooi
Director: Karanbir Hundal
Performers: Dennis Yeap, Emina Aliyyah, Merissa A, Sani Zainal Abidin

11. Cast Adrift
Playwright: Patrick Christopher Lee
Director: Freddy Tan
Performers: Tung Jit Yang, Lim Kok Tong, Kelvin Wong, Cheah Ui Hua, Umesh Logandran, Shern Chong

12. The Joy Of Solitude
Director: Mark Beau De Silva
Performers: Roax Tan, Douglas Wong

Songs Of The Moment [Late 2011]

2011-10-15T01:13:00.000+08:00

"See No More", Joe Jonas

"The Sandpit", Human

"Kings & Queens", 30 Seconds To Mars

"Firework", Mike Tompkins / Katy Perry

"Good Life", OneRepublic

"Wait", Alexi Murdoch

An Investigation Of Self

2011-09-12T21:41:00.003+08:00

[This was written when I was, I guess, 24, thereabouts. Again, this was never previously posted. That the same questions are still being asked today meant that I had not progressed beyond this phase.]

Back when I was small, my mind was simpler – I knew things and was sure of it. Subconsciously, I think what I craved to do was to know enough about the world to anticipate things – before people even knew them. To know before someone would do something, from the mundane stuff (how long it takes for that girl in the corner to finish her meal) to the dramatic (when someone would die).

Or, to know before a disaster happens; e.g. I was always proud to know that when one sees the waters on a beach recede and recede and recede and don't return – run.

Consequently, I was constantly learning things. I wouldn't say I was curious, I'm not one of those fucking annoying kids who ask "why?" all the time. No, I just read. I read encyclopaedia in the toilet. For fun. (Probably since I was six.) Which brings me to the next thing that I know – I was smarter and more knowledgeable than most other kids. And I was good at school. I was superior.

I remember at some point when I was twelve, I woke up one day feeling troubled. Meaning I felt severely sad and cried but didn't know why. My mom said then that it was stress - I didn't know what that word meant then and didn't recognise it. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. What I do know is that since then life has appeared to be complicated, not the way I want it most of the time, troublesome, often uninteresting = often unexciting, difficult. I was usually near the top of the class throughout my school years, but I arrived at university and got my first poor results in an exam; that gradually revealed itself to be a persistent phenomenon, and not temporary as I had assumed it would be. It will not go away, it is – I will always get poorer results than when I was young.

Somehow, by remaining in the status quo, my outcomes have changed.

My friends would say stuff like "university is different from primary school" or something similar; i.e. I have stayed static for too long. Since those university days, I have been concerned – jealous – about the fact that my friends knew stuff I don't. A lot of stuff, it seems. I stayed in denial for as long as I could, but now it seems that by denying it for so long, I have lost something.

Something I had in childhood. Something abstract and not easily articulated.

For it has to be something that I lost that made it impossible for me to write nowadays.

Writing stories used to be so easy. I would see a connection between two completely unrelated things - UFOs and Titanic, being unlucky and ESP, economics and astronomy, etc.

I came back to the question today – why do I want to be a filmmaker?

Simple. To make films.

Why make films?

To tell stories.

Why tell stories in films? Why not novels or songs or plays?

Because films are more compelling and engaging, more absorbing than any other forms of storytelling. While there have been occasions when songs or books hold me in an inescapable trance for hours or days, films do it far more often, and in the most intense experiences are more intense than the other storytelling forms.

Why tell stories?

Pause.

I don't know. That's where the line of questioning ends.

A Treatise For Malaysians

2011-09-12T15:30:00.002+08:00

[Wrote this exactly two years ago. Didn't post it up then, don't remember why, maybe was scared ... definitely because it was rambling and incoherent.]

I was reading a book today by Joshua Cooper Ramo titled The Age Of The Unthinkable when I had these thoughts. Consider them.

Before I continue let me spell out where I stand on certain things. It may shock you. First of all, at this point I think Malaysia is beyond hope. I see the progressives fighting a losing battle. Because there are too little of us. By progressives, I mean a certain quality of which its divisive line isn't determined by race, language, education and class (though definitely influenced by those two), party affiliation, occupation, sexuality, and so on. I guess I'll say they are people I agree with - that is the most accurate way to put it, but also very vague. Sorry. I will say it includes people from both BN and PR.

I said, a losing battle. In other words, I mean that we will forever be stuck in this quagmire of racial-related issues. It should have been dead, a long time ago, but it is propped up by our government. Our government is a system, its basic instinct is to survive and propagate, like any living organism, and so it is doing what is natural to it. And I believe that despite what both BN and PR are saying, and despite the fact that at this point I am pro-PR, Malaysia's energy and talents will forever be leaking towards these unproductive arguments, and that we will not progress further, and possibly even be eaten up by some future global crisis. I believe that we do not have the capacity to change - I have not seen changes, barring the BERSIH rally, and the March 8 elections. Beyond that, all that has happened is copy cat; creativity seemed to have disappeared after those two changes, and no longer drive the engine that generates societal change.

And there will be people who will disagree. In fact, I believe many of you will. Certainly other commentators will. See what they write. It's always positive. It's always, Malaysia is having such a such issue or problem ... but hey, we have the capacity to get out of it. What I write will strike them as defeatist. And that's fine - it's not like I'm disputing them. Actually, deep down, maybe I do. At some level I do think they are deluding themselves. But then, maybe I will change my mind a year hence. Maybe some other change will happen, hopefully something unpredictable, not just something boring like Pakatan winning the next general election. In fact, maybe I will change my mind next week.

Why such an uncertainty-laden, contradictory prologue? Because it is the truth. And the sooner you readers realise that every single person, every single event, and everything is as hypocritical and conflicting like that at most levels of reality, the sooner you break out of your complacency and stubbornness.

That Malaysians are being shortsighted when we argue with each other about ideologies, about racial equality (of the more-equal-than-others type), about self-interests above other concerns, especially when you have hit the sweet spot of being under the media spotlight (that refers to you, Kg Buah Pala residents), about religion, particularly under the guise of religious tolerance while the words used are still soaked in the exact opposite ...

For the truth is, we may be arguing over sand. While we were arguing about all these things over the past few decades, the Soviet Union has asserted itself and then disappeared. Meanwhile, Idi Amin was eating people in Uganda. Meanwhile, corporations have risen and taken over sovereign decisions ... Consider the image of three men, hands clasped over each others', grappling and struggling to retrieve that macguffin for god knows how many years, until the macguffin has turned to sand, and while the men are still fighting over it, pieces of it are leaking away. What was the macguffin? I doubt the men even remember.

In this context, can you see how petty it is that certain Malays are fighting for so-called Malay rights? Are you really that different, that separate from the world? Why waste so much energy to break yourself from others? This need to separate, rather than to identify and emphathise, is suicidal and insane. And at the same time, it appears sane to them.

What am I suggesting Malaysians to do?

I am suggesting Malaysians stop being Malaysians. If you can get out of the country, for the love of God please do. But don't be like the simple-minded Cina who emigrated where it is easy. You know, the ones who run off to Australia and New Zealand. Sure, they have their personal, logical reasons to do so - there always is, and I'm not saying it doesn't make sense. What I'm promoting though, is to make the entire world your living space. Malaysians need to begin decoupling themselves from the idea that there is no other choice than to remain permanently feet-planted stuck in Malaysia, mentally as well as physically.

Wales. Kenya. Antarctica. Mexico. Bosnia Herzegovina. South Korea. The Maldives. Exactly - wherever. Malaysians are already everywhere - we are not quite as ubiquitous as the Chinese or the Indians in that regard, but on the other hand neither are we as insular as them.

The world is your oyster. You see, you don't have to be Malaysian, or Singaporean because it's close enough, or Chinese because that is the next America, or whatever. You can be a global citizen in a true sense. And still come back home to Malaysia.

Come back. For it is home. It is your base, your HQ.

But at the same time, you are no longer obligated to fight for whatever it is those pro-BN or pro-Pakatan or pro-PPSMI or pro-Chinese-education or pro-Malaysia-untuk-Melayu-sahaja people are fighting for. Fight where you can - don't just abandon it.

But the act of going overseas, what it affords, is that you see what every other country is going through. You realise, that Malaysia is lucky in some ways, pathetic in others. You realise, that we have almost nothing to shout about. Really. Our government seems to revel in the whole Malaysia Boleh thing to the point of blindness - it wants to be blind, or rather, it wants us to be blind. Truth is, Malaysia Boleh, tapi belum lagi. It's like George Bush declaring 'mission accomplished'. Notice that we observe that declaration not with admiration but with derision. Let me say it again - Malaysians have very few things to be proud of.

And please vote during elections. From now on, please don't just vote because someone is from Pakatan, as I believe most of you who read this will be anti-BN. Instead, in your constituency, if your MP has done well, and hasn't done anything stupid like insinuate that Malays own the country or that the people can't control their appetite for porn or used doublespeak to imply that ISA is still needed as a tool to strike at dissent and protest against government and its interests, please vote for the person, whether he or she is a BN or PR candidate.

The reason why the people are so discontent, is because our racial-related problems could mostly be solved in a flash, just like that. It's just a matter of adopting a mental attitude, then all so-called complicated problems would disappear. The people are ready to discard the veil of racism, and have been waiting for the government for so long. The government just needs to be ruthless. Declare that anyone could be Prime Minister of the country. Declare a free-for-all in business, in university entrances. Let it go.

Screw Ketuanan Melayu. There is no such thing - if there ever was such a thing, it is no more. There is also no Chinese power to worry about, nor Indian power, nor Orang Asli power. You laugh, but it's a serious point. There are only Malaysians now. And the thing is, while we are fighting over race, race, race, the country is facing the same problem all countries in the world are facing - an aging population, shortage of drinking water, food crisis, global warming. Our energy could have been expended to solve these problems, and zoom ahead of every other country in the world. Instead, we are wasting our time in pointless squabbles, both social and political - behaving like a messy Central African country.

The way ahead -- you decide. You have to decide.

REVIEW: "A Darker Shade Of Red"

2011-08-27T00:33:00.006+08:00

This is (if I understand correctly) young stage actor Marvin Wong's first foray into stage directing, which consists of six mini-plays or sketches.

Jumping right into it, the first three pre-intermission plays were rather meh. The Kopitiam On Jalan Sehala features characters talking cryptically – partly because one character spends the sketch being confused – and, one feels, with dialogue that doesn't really go anywhere. Battleship is one of those plays about mother issues which I love to hate. Confessionals is a bit more fun; it's more straightforward (or more "literal", as one of my companions to the play put it), and this time the dialogue generates laughs at a few points. The third act coincidence leading to the moral resolution is a bit too tidy ... but it's okay.

It's only after the intermission that the mini-plays really engage the audience, and it seems that the director has adhered to that stageplay adage that says "audiences will forgive a lousy beginning but they will not forgive a lousy ending".

The Gift Of Mercy is a sci-fi monologue which I could easily have read myself and it would be good, but I guess there is something to being told the story through auditory means. The words do lead you in and I felt drawn to paying attention to everything that is said, as the plot, involving observations of an alien civilisation on planet Earth and the actions those observations inspire, turns tragic, before ending with an unexpected but entirely appropriate punchline. Unfortunately the actress may have been miscast, as her voice and enunciation is not the most suitable one to tell this tale; certainly the audience were restless, and I suspect few of them liked this one. I guess what I felt is that the sci-fi vibe is missing in the recitation.

The Story Of The Wanderer – now, there's a fun one. An attempt at a Western, this one features nearly a dozen actors and has fights and gunshots and is about a one-woman army who, when her timid younger sister is kidnapped by local mobsters, tears her way into the scene to save her, killing everyone who represents an obstacle to that end. In particular, my companions enjoyed the performance of Omar Ali as the archetypal bartender of the local tavern, who was given one of those characteristic smug but witty lines that are familiar to the genre but are not easy to pull off, especially by Malaysian actors, because it's so incongruent an image to see an Asian say lines like that. (He's not perfect, but it really is not bad.) It also has the best last line of any of the six plays ... or, having said that, perhaps just as good as the last one.

Enough starts off civilly, a domestic conversational scene between a husband and wife as they arrive home from a dinner with the wife's family, from which we gradually pick up on details about their most damaging current problem just from their dialogue, before the scene culminates in a crescendo of arguments and an unexpected display of anger when the seemingly submissive character takes over control and becomes the dominant one. Suffice to say, the way the story ends shocked my companions (in a good way) – and this, after I described to them how sex scenes in theatre are often not so literal but usually more symbolic or metaphorical, which we found ironic after the play. Actor Morten Stender Christensen seemed to have problems with his lines, but actress Sandee Chew nailed her performance, not just because the role demands audacity but because emotionally she was there.

I would say that the three post-intermission mini-plays saved the night. I don't hold a high regard for locally written plays (so far they've disappointed without fail), and while I don't think what I saw here was extraordinary or compares well against Western-originated plays (and I will argue that that is the benchmark we should measure ourselves against), for a young director and his troupe of writers and performers who are new to the scene, it's a considerable enough achievement that deserves encouragement.

BERSIH 2.0 - Apakah yang diucapkan oleh kedua-dua pihak sebelum perhimpunan haram 9hb Julai?

2011-07-23T11:00:00.000+08:00

This Seems Important

2011-07-18T14:36:00.002+08:00

BERSIH 2.0 – A Soulful Rally

2011-07-16T22:25:00.002+08:00

BERSIH 2.0 - Malaysians March Together

2011-07-12T11:26:00.005+08:00

At A Crossroads, by MD

2011-05-28T18:05:00.001+08:00

MAY 28 — My wife and I met while we were studying overseas. After graduating, I returned to Malaysia while she completed her studies and eventually returned two years later. We started our careers and eventually got married and started our family. It never crossed our minds to settle anywhere else other than Malaysia. In university, I was active in the students’ movement and was determined that when I returned I would make a difference in my country.

That was 20 years ago.

Five years later, my brother decided to migrate. Deep inside I was angry and thought that he was foolish. He was an engineer with two degrees and an MBA, and he was seeking greener pastures? Well, he can leave… but no sir, I will stay and make this place I grew up a better place.

Another 12 years passed, and this time it was my sister’s family who was leaving. What? A family of medical professionals leaving? Even a specialist within their midst who won international awards and accolades for research papers, and they are turning their backs on us here? They earn tonnes more than me and they are worried they cannot afford their children’s education? Why don’t they stay here and together we will change the system and make this a better place? There are already so few of us left here to change the system and THEY ARE LEAVING!!?? Well they can go, but I will stay and soldier on…

Another three years passed; last week my wife downloaded an application form for migration. My hands trembled even as I held the form. Is this finally going to be the path I take? The form states that if I am over 45 I will not qualify! This is my final year!

This is my family’s last call… after this, we will not be welcomed even if we want to go. My heart sank. My wife and I had a heart-to-heart talk. We are middle-class professionals with no big businesses or wealth of any significance to be inherited by our children.

Our next generation will need a strong education foundation to start them off. They are doing well enough in school, not geniuses, but still in the best class and with good prospects for good careers if given a fair chance.

We have heard stories from friends and neighbours of children getting 9As and were asked to do geography when they wanted to be engineers. Were offered history when they wanted to do law. They had to go private. We are resigned to the fact that we will likely have to privately fund our own children’s education.

I looked at my bank account. Have I saved enough to put my children through private education? Not really… maybe partially. Will my children be able to get full A+s to get scholarships? Unlikely. Is my income low enough to be considered poor so that my children will qualify for underprivileged scholarships? I don’t think so. Is my skin “brown” enough for my children to get a “Bumi” quota? Sorry, wrong place.

Today I look into the mirror and I see grey hairs. My vision is beginning to blur. I have to change to a presbyopia specs soon. I switched on the computer and clicked on The Malaysian Insider — I see the face of Ibrahim Ali shouting. I looked out of the window, I see people queuing up in a petrol station nearby. I see Makcik Som selling nasi lemak, just as she has always done for so many years. Twenty years have passed.

I am tired. The prickly durian spirit of yesteryear has been worn down to a smooth watermelon. No longer prickly, no longer pungent. Am I giving up? No! Definitely not. But what about my children? Must they also sacrifice for my cause?

Yes, I have decided to put in my application, to give my children a fair chance. But I will stay, because I have a dream. A 20-year-old dream. I will settle my children overseas and I will return to make that difference that I dreamt of… If I don’t realise that dream at least my children won’t have to dream that same dream for their children. Ibrahim Ali may not like my children, but I do … enough to stop dreaming for a while.

Call me a traitor, pengkhianat, pendatang, pengkhayal or whatever. Maybe I don’t have enough faith in what I am doing. But I will leave for little while and I’ll be back. I am thankful that my great-grandfather came to Malaya for his children. Perhaps my generation will be the last generation here, but I will stay as long as I can.

Recently, I read an article about socialism that gave an analogy of an economics professor and his class. The class insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be too rich or too poor in such a system.

So the professor proposed that they experiment socialism in the class. All grades in their next test would be averaged so that no one would fail and no one would do extremely well.

After the next test, the entire class achieved an average of “B”. The students who studied were a little unhappy while those who did not were elated. By and large everyone accepted the situation because they passed.

As the second test approached, those who had studied previously worked a little less, while those who previously did not study did not see why they should study, afterall they still passed. So by the second test the average results was a “D”. Everyone was unhappy now.

By the third test, the average was an “F”. The scores never increased and everyone started bickering, name-calling and this resulted in animosity towards one another. Classes were disrupted and studies affected.

To their surprise, everyone failed in the next test. The professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that. You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

I believe our country is now at a crossroads. My father’s generation was at point “B” where everyone passed and managed an average score of “B” like in the professor’s class — by and large it was tolerable and everyone accepted the situation.

Today we are probably at an average score “D”. Things are not going that well and our country is not doing as well as it should. We are losing out to our neighbours. A lot of people are unhappy. People are starting to bicker. So where do we move from here? Point “F”?

I still hold on to my 20-year-old dream, so I will stay… but if I turn out to be a daydreamer then at least my children don’t have to live in their father’s daydream.

Here Is Why I Stayed, John Rahman

2011-05-28T18:04:00.002+08:00

MAY 28 — I shall start with a story of hope.

Two, actually.

I had an ex-colleague who runs a car wash business in one of the most ulu places in Peninsular Malaysia. It’s a simple business, so simple that his wife just sits under a tree all day long collecting money and supervising some school kids they employ to do the dirty work. He keeps his day job while earning a cool RM7,000 side income every month.

In my skyscraper of an office now, an old makcik pushes around a shopping cart (probably nicked while the guards at the nearby hypermarket weren’t looking!) filled to the brim with knick-knacks, kacang, muruku and stuff. She comes by once a week and without fail, my colleagues and I will stock up on junk food to munch on while working. Based on sales on our floor alone — okay, maybe we are gluttons! — but we estimate she profits around RM50 per floor, and with well over 50 floors in the building, she must earn at least RM2,000 a week (tax free!).

We can complain about spiralling cost of living, but these are ordinary people taking full advantage of the abundance of opportunities in Malaysia to earn a living. This is the land of opportunity. If an illegal immigrant can come here and earn a living, justly or not, there is no reason why a person like me, born and bred in this environment, with ample knowledge of how things work — for better or for worse — cannot make it big.

I shall say this, whether or not people choose to leave the country is entirely up to them. Everybody has their own dreams and ambitions, and if migrating overseas takes you closer to those dreams, so be it. But do not give excuses to justify you leaving. You don’t need an excuse, certainly not a bad one, to pursue your life-long goals.

You do not need to blame the crummy education system — it is crummy, but it is an education system we all grew up with and I would like to think that a lot of us turned out fine.

You can’t blame racism or glass ceilings because everyone honest enough to admit will tell you that glass ceilings exist EVERYWHERE. The current debate over the “tradition” of Europeans as the de facto head of the IMF should tell you more than you need to know about glass ceilings.

All those crummy reasons don’t hold up because while Malaysians are busy flocking to Singapore, Singaporeans are busy flocking elsewhere too. That is where the whole argument falls apart. Do we see some green pasture across the straits that the Singaporeans don’t see? And do the Indonesians see something green about KL that we don’t?

My friends, this is the age of globalisation. Borders between countries are blurring. This is not like the time where miners came to Malaya from China with the sole purpose of better economic prospects. Today, there are Malaysians working in Sudan, Dutchmen working in Nigeria, Americans working in Siberia. Do you think these people are where they are because of some misguided notion that these places are better than their homeland? No, people work where they work and people build a home where they do because this is where life takes them.

When addressing his own country’s emigrant issue, Rajiv Ghandi once said: “A brain drain is better than a brain in the drain.” That we, as Malaysians, are deemed capable enough to be able to work anywhere in the world is a clear indication of our talents. And whether the people migrating will choose to admit it or not, these are talents nourished by the foundations we built for ourselves while growing up on the streets of KL, Ipoh and JB.

I can go on and on about how I want to change this country, how I want to make a difference. That is all true, but that is also secondary. People can claim that they are leaving because of better prospects, a more comfortable life. That is probably true as well, but still a secondary issue.

I propose a simpler explanation. I stay because I want to. People leave because they want to.

We go where life takes us.

I Am Malaysia, by Zhin

2011-05-26T13:28:00.000+08:00

MAY 25 — I choose to stay in Malaysia because I cannot “escape” the Malaysia that is in me. Malaysia is what I make of it, so staying put when everything looks like it is going against my interests has required me to internalise my Malaysian experience rather than hinge on public opinion to see where this “fictional” malaise is taking us. So here is my take on it.

I say that this malaise is fictional because, I think it is very important that I take charge of my Malaysian citizenry. I refuse to indulge in a pessimistic attitude which is apparently “realistic.”

For many of “us” who have left out of sheer lack of hope, even to the extent of blaming an “other”, I find this predicament to be the absolute centre of what is wrong with this country. I am determined not to allow the state of affairs or opinions or statistics invest its authority into my mindspace. I may blame the authorities, people, races, religions or any group for discrimination, but suffering is something we do to ourselves.

I am sick and tired that the only roadmap we have to fix ourselves in this country is by asking that the system changes. But what about our own reform? Malaysians are downright lazy, incompetent and cowardly because most of us do not stand up for any Value. We do not believe in a Cause.

There is a way out of “this” Malaysia that we grumble about. I believe it lies within us when we ask ourselves what kind of values we can attach to our own Malaysia that is above and beyond what the statistics require and is beyond a ringgit equivalent.

I am horrified by the self-righteousness of every Malaysian who imputes so much guilt on a government that “governs” us when we have been blessing it time and time again with our common consent. We deserve the government we put into power.

But the average Malaysian does not stop there. He blames every plague, every injustice, every lack — to an “other.” It is appalling how so many of us are paralysed by the system when it is we who have persisted in nurturing this very system. This system is called, it’s not me, it’s the SYSTEM, the SYSTEM, the SYSTEM. But we are that system in our head, even before we relate to others in that system.

I wake up proudly each day, without needing to externalise my inadequacies on a corrupt system, without the need to suffer and make others suffer because I am obsessed with demonising something else.

I wake up with a sense of purpose in this country, ready to accept the struggle because Malaysia is not something or some place out of my body or mind, but is the very fabric of my soul. And the only person that can change that is me.

The state (now that I’m at it) can take away everything but they cannot take away the truth, that I am Malaysia and Malaysia is me. We are Malaysia and Malaysia is us. No amount of corruption and despondency should change that. And if we do indeed believe that it can, well, that’s precisely why we are in this sinking boat in the first place. Because you give “them” the authority to do so unto you.

I choose to stay because I have to. This is why I am a Malaysian.

The Migrant's Eye

2011-05-05T21:57:00.001+08:00

This article is long, but I implore every visitor to this site – particularly if you're Malaysian – to read it, and think about it. It doesn't say anything you don't already know, but it says it more starkly, with such great clarity, that you just can't help but go "... wow."

The World Bank 2011 Essay Competition finalist – Shaun Tan from Malaysia on brain drain.
By Shaun Tan

‘Our young people represent the future of our country’. This phrase has been echoed by almost every politician in almost every country in modern history. However the changes instigated by the increasing ease of migration are such that not even this time-honored cliché holds the weight it once did. Young people still represent the future, but it is the future of whichever country they decide to settle in or impact, which may or may not be their country of origin. As with most changes, there are new benefits and drawbacks, and new winners and losers. Among the most pressing questions countries now face are how to prevent their young people from migrating, and how far they should go in providing for the migrants residing within their borders.

***

Exodus

Smart Indians go to med school,
Smart Chinese go to investment banks,
Smart Malaysians go to Singapore.
- Anonymous

My first brush with migration was in 2002. My father came home one day in a state of great excitement. My father is an excitable guy. He is also an alumnus of a university in New Zealand, and he had just learned that, because of this, our family was entitled to permanent residency (PR) status in New Zealand upon fulfillment of a few (relatively minor requirements). One of the requirements was that we reside in New Zealand for at least three months over the next two years. We discussed it and decided it might be fun. We packed for summer.

Within a few weeks I was bored. New Zealand was charming enough in its own way, but it didn’t have the vibrancy of my home city of Kuala Lumpur, and I couldn’t imagine us choosing to live in this land of sheep and five o’clock closing times instead. And yet I understood why my father pushed for PR status so eagerly. He remembered the Indonesian racial riots of 1998, and he kept the pulse of rising extremism in Malaysia. If violence ever broke out in Malaysia my family would have a back door, a way out.

Later on I saw that most of my Malaysian friends who could afford it went abroad for at least part of their education. Some went to boarding schools in Singapore, Australia, and the UK. When it came to university, almost all my Malaysian friends went to Australia, the UK, or the US. The reasons they (and their parents) gave for wanting a foreign education were the same: the racial quotas in Malaysian universities, the skewed syllabi, the controls on free expression, the low standard of the Malaysian education system (apart from a few private university colleges), and the relative quality and prestige of foreign schools and universities.

At university this trend continues. Many of my Malaysian friends plan to remain overseas after graduation, or to work in Singapore. ‘Everything in Malaysia is on such a small scale,’ one of them said, ‘it can’t compare with the training you get overseas’. Some of them hope to return to Malaysia later, but only in the distant future, after earning enough money and establishing themselves in their industries. I know the power of inertia, and every year that goes by makes it less and less likely that they will return.

Asian societies have very tight family bonds. Most of my friends have parents who miss them very much, and who dislike them living far away. However, far from meeting with parental opposition, these plans have full approval: the message my Malaysian friends get from their parents and relatives is, ‘Don’t come home’.

No Brain, No Gain

Malaysia faces a brain drain crisis. Recent decades have seen the migration of many ethnic Chinese (comprising 26% of Malaysia’s population)¹ and Indians (8%)², as well as considerable numbers of Malays, the majority ethnic group (53%)³. Shamsuddin Bardan, executive director of the Malaysian Employers Federation, reported that there are 785,000 Malaysians working overseas.⁴ Unofficially, the figure is thought to be over a million.⁵ According to the World Bank the number of Malaysian emigrants has increased almost a hundred-fold in the past fifty years, from 9,576 in 1960, to almost 1.5 million in 2005.⁶ A parliamentary report revealed that 140,000 Malaysians emigrated in 2007.⁷ According to Deputy Foreign Minister Kohilan Pillay, the figure between 2008 and 2009 was 304,000.⁸ As of 2007, 106,000 Malaysians had renounced their citizenship.⁹

Many of these Malaysians go to Australia, the UK, and the US.¹⁰ About half of them go to Singapore,¹¹ which has a GDP per capita almost four times larger than Malaysia’s¹². The portion of the Malaysians who return is minimal (Prime Minister Najib Razak reported the figure to be less than 1%)¹³ prompting former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to suggest that other countries should pay Malaysia for having seduced them to stay ‘since by right, the graduates’ training and knowledge should be called intellectual property.’¹⁴. Prominent writer Mariam Mokhtar outlines the reasons given by emigrants: ‘improved employment and business prospects, higher salaries, better working environments, greater chances of promotion and a relatively superior quality of life.’¹⁵.

This has severely retarded Malaysia’s development. Malaysia continues to be the poor cousin of the Asian Tigers – Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Malaysia’s growth rate dropped from 9% a year, from 1991 to 1997, to 5.5% a year, from 2000 to 2008.¹⁶ Stewart Forbes, the executive director of the Malaysian International Chamber of Commerce and Industry, explained that many of Malaysia’s lost investment opportunities stem from the brain drain – because international companies had trouble finding skilled employees in Malaysia.¹⁷ ‘People have left, growth prospects have dimmed, and then more people continue to leave,’¹⁸ said Danny Quah, an economics professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Council Member on Malaysia’s National Economic Advisory Council, ‘It’s a vicious cycle that the economy has had to confront for the last decade or longer.’¹⁹. The increasing ease of migration has produced new winners – countries like Singapore, Australia, the UK, and the US, who get to cherry-pick from a global talent pool. It has also produced new losers. Malaysia is certainly one of them.

***

The Malaysian Dilemma

As there are new winners and losers from migration, so too are there new benefits and drawbacks. A classroom discussion threw this debate into stark relief.

It was last year. The date was the 27th of September, the country was America, and I was in my International Relations class. We were discussing globalization, and having gone through some of its benefits, we moved on to its drawbacks.

‘Well,’ said one of my classmates, ‘one drawback is that it increases the brain drain effect and leads to greater inequality between countries. Developing countries lose a lot of the talent that they badly need.’. This received a general nodding of assent.

I raised my hand. ‘Actually,’ I asked, ‘is greater inequality necessarily a bad thing?’.

My class, accustomed by now to my mannerisms, still looked at me strangely.

‘I mean, it’s true that many developing countries end up losing their talent, but really, some of these countries bloody well deserve to lose them.’.

This created a small firestorm. From my classmates’ reactions you’d have thought I’d asked what was wrong with genocide. There were gasps. Before I could finish, a forest of hands shot up to respond. One of my classmates burst out angrily; ‘Now you’re just being facetious!’.

My professor moved to restore order. He was a kindly old man who usually let our discussions run their course. He did however step in whenever our discussions threatened to turn into a pseudo-intellectual brawl.

He turned to me. ‘I assume you said that to be deliberately provocative’ he said gently; a teacher reasoning with a difficult student.

‘No,’ I said, ‘not at all.’.

I looked at the rest of my class who now whispered amongst themselves and eyed me warily, apparently taken aback to see their (I hope) usually charming and amiable classmate say such callous things.

But to me my statement seemed as normal as breathing. And said to any reasonably informed Malaysians, it wouldn’t even have raised an eyebrow. I realized then that there were perspectives on this issue that are unique to Malaysians, and to those who have experienced similar circumstances.

Push and Pull

I’ve left a few unanswered questions over the course of this essay. Like why do loving parents tell their children not to come home? And why do many Malaysians think Malaysia deserves to lose its talented young people? Now at last is the time to answer them.

Malaysia has a lot going for it. It has much untapped potential. It is devoid of natural disasters and rich in natural resources. It is a country with warm weather, amazing food, and hot women. Its people are generally warm, friendly, and (with certain exceptions like yours truly) humble. Pull-factors like these would require considerable push-factors to trigger mass emigration.

But there’s a darker side. A side behind the strained tranquility and Malaysia Truly Asia adverts. Since its independence in 1957, Malaysia has been run by the Barisan National (BN) party, and its regime is an autocracy that institutionalizes racism. Non-Malays, including the ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities, are discriminated against in favor of the majority Malays, whose support BN depends on. Malaysian laws make non-Malays pay higher prices for certain goods and services, allocate them only a small percentage of places in public universities, and impose significant barriers against their advancement in the military, police force, civil service, and in government-owned companies. The BN government persecutes minority religions, and major Malay politicians often refer to Chinese and Indian Malaysians as pendatang (immigrants), of inferior status, while the current Prime Minister Najib Razak is alleged to have threatened to ‘bathe a keris dagger with Chinese blood’.

The BN government is also very protectionist, making it even more difficult for international companies to set up business there, for example, international law firms can only operate in Malaysia by acting in partnership with a local firm. Furthermore, the BN government is both grossly incompetent and highly corrupt. Billions of dollars in public funds are squandered on cronyism²⁰ and ill-conceived mega-projects²¹, instead of being properly used to develop the country. The judiciary is largely comprised of underqualified yes-men, the police force is unreliable, and the public schools and universities are of low standard, such that even Malaysia’s top university, University Malaya, has dropped out of the top 200 universities in the world on all major rankings.²²

This is why loving parents tell their children not to come home. They don’t want their children to live as second-class citizens in Malaysia, where their ambitions will be limited by institutional inefficiency, where they will be passed over for promotion in favor of others, not for any lack of skill, but for the color of their skin. ‘Money does have a significant role but the most important factor…is opportunity,’ outlined Wan Saiful Wan Jan, Founding Chief Executive Member of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, ‘Malaysia is too politicized and opportunities are not evenly available to everyone,’²³.

This is why Malaysians flock to Singapore, not because Singapore’s government is less despotic (it is even more so), but because the Singaporean government at least prizes efficiency, and recognizes merit regardless of race. When a Malaysian renounces his citizenship, he doesn’t see it as an unpatriotic betrayal, he sees it as washing his hands off a regime that has marginalized and persecuted him. As one Malaysian, Wan Jon Yew, explained: ‘I’m not proud of being a Malaysian because I think the government doesn’t treat me as a Malaysian.’²⁴. Migration is beneficial because it increases efficiency; it allows young Malaysians to move to take their best offers, to move to where their ability is truly valued. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and migration helps to reduce this wastage.

Not all Malaysians mass-emigrating are Chinese and Indians. Many Malays are emigrating too. Although they do not face racial persecution, many of their reasons for doing so are the same as those of non-Malays: the corrupt and inefficient system, the lack of security and religious freedom, the quashing of free expression, human rights abuses. Furthermore, Malays face a different form of religious persecution – forced piety by the overzealous Islamic moral police. Non-Muslim Malays and Malay homosexuals are jailed or sent to ‘reeducation centers’²⁵, and earlier this year 80 Malays were arrested for celebrating Valentine’s Day²⁶. In light of this, Malaysia deserves to lose the talents of its young people. It doesn’t appreciate these talents; it punishes its best citizens – those brave enough to stand up for themselves, or those too principled to fake devotion to a religion they don’t believe in – and instead it rewards its worst elements – the religious extremist, the racist, the sniveling sycophant. In a sense, we as Malaysian citizens deserve to lose the benefits those talents would have brought, because through our participation or collective inaction we allow this wretched state of affairs to continue. Migration is beneficial because it allows Malaysians to leave, and to live in a country that accords them the dignity commensurate with their status as a human being.

The Open Door

The ability to migrate presents young Malaysians with an open door to the rest of the world. This is not without its drawbacks. Many of the Malaysian émigrés leave not because they are weak or cowardly, but because they are ambitious, or because they are uncompromising – they refused to take orders from those who are their inferiors, or to remain party to a system that is morally indefensible. One cannot help but imagine how much good such spirit could have done if they had no choice but to remain in Malaysia. Not necessarily by engaging in overtly political activities, but by simple apolitical acts – by living their lives in their own way, free from compromise, and refusing to curb their ambitions. As Vaclav Havel explained in his book The Power of the Powerless, such simple acts are often the most potent weapons against oppressive regimes. Thus, migration has its drawbacks – it makes it harder for Malaysia to achieve real change because it takes away some of its most spirited people.

However there are also many young Malaysians who choose to return, and who seek to bring real change to the country. People like Nathaniel Tan – a Harvard graduate, who writes books exposing the abuses of the BN regime, even if his efforts meet with harassment and detention. Or Alea Nasihin – a friend of mine, and a student at Nottingham University, who resolves to return to work as a human rights lawyer.²⁷ Or myself. For us the open door is comforting. It gives us the courage to say or do things we might otherwise be wary of. Because it reminds us that there are limits to what an oppressive government can do. Because we know that even if our efforts harm our careers in Malaysia, even if the BN government hounds us and bars us from getting a job at any major company in Malaysia, there will always be many other places eager for our talents. It allows us to take more risks and dare greater things. The open door presented by migration therefore simultaneously hinders and helps the process of change in Malaysia.

***

Point of Origin

From a Malaysian perspective, good measures for broadening opportunities for young migrants in their countries of origin are relatively straightforward. The most obvious one is to increase meritocracy, to distinguish merit instead of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. When each citizen is judged solely on the basis of his ability, when high standards are promoted, when the most innovative people are rewarded and encouraged, the whole country progresses and develops, creating greater opportunities for all. Nepotism and cronyism should be prohibited in all industries, so that positions and promotions go to the most able candidates. This policy should be pursued in conjunction with scholarships and financial aid for poor youths to attend schools and universities, again awarded on the basis of merit.

The other obvious measure is to liberalize. A liberal society that respects human rights provides the broadest opportunities for free expression and the free practice of religion simply because fewer things are prohibited. Laws should be enacted against the interference with an individual’s expression or religious practice, unless he harms or grossly misrepresents another person in doing so. The judiciary should be allowed to become strong and independent, so that everyone has the opportunity for a fair trial.

Meanwhile, opportunities should be given to migrants who consider returning to their country of origin. Those living overseas, but with vital skills in various fields should be invited back and offered senior positions, with PR status or citizenship offered to their families.

A fair, liberal government that rewards merit provides the broadest opportunities for its people. Measures like the Malaysian government’s Returning Export and Brain Gain Malaysia programs fail to attract young people because they make only cosmetic changes, refusing to give effect to the principles of fairness, liberalism, and meritocracy, that are the essence of true improvement of opportunity.

Destination

Good measures for broadening opportunities for young migrants in their countries of destination are relatively straightforward too. They largely consist of refraining from the policies these migrants were fleeing from in the first place. Other than some free basic language-training programs, no special privileges should be given to these immigrants, and no affirmative action policies should be implemented. Instead, these immigrants should be allowed to compete for (generally) the same opportunities as everyone else, judged on the basis of their merit, rather than race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. They should be given equal opportunity to exercise their civil rights, like the rights to free speech, association, and religious practice. Their right to marry should be recognized regardless of sexual orientation, and the continued ban on gay marriage is an instance where the US has fallen short of this standard.

However governments should be conscious of where granting formal rights in fact restricts opportunities. In Beyond Liberal Democracy, Daniel Bell contrasted Western and East Asian approaches to dealing with migrant workers. He described how migrant workers in East Asia are denied citizenship (and thus full legal protection) no matter how long they stay, while those in Western countries are able to obtain it much more easily. The result of this is that East Asian countries are able to officially admit many more temporary contract workers. Comparatively, Western countries can officially admit few migrant workers, although many more work there illegally, without any legal protections at all. ‘In the West,’ Bell explained, ‘the liberal political culture places higher priority on the justice of legal forms…In East Asia, by contrast, the authorities prefer to enact…laws that allow for large numbers of migrant domestic workers to engage temporarily in legally protected work in their territories.’²⁸. Governments therefore should not dogmatically pursue form over substance, but should be pragmatic in their measures to achieve the best results for immigrants.

Ich bin ein Inmigrante

‘Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that immigrants
were America.’
- Oscar Handlin

America is not without shortcomings in providing for its immigrants. True equality of opportunity can only be achieved with the shattering of glass ceilings, and there are numerous social barriers that still need to be overcome. To this date, the highest office in the country, that of the President of the United States, can only be held by someone born on American soil. And yet America remains the land of opportunity for so many people. The immigrants in America are integrated far better than those in Europe, because Americans are conscious of the fact that they were all immigrants once. And America has benefitted greatly from this. It gets physics from Einstein, political theory from Arendt, movies from Ang Lee, eye-candy from Maggie Q, and literature from Junot Diaz. The fact that Irish-Catholic immigrants like the Kennedys could become America’s most prominent family, that an Austrian immigrant like Arnold Schwarzenegger could become Governor of California, and that a black man born in Hawaii and raised in Indonesia could become President, is a testament to this tradition.

I am the product of migration. It was through migration that my ancestors from Fujian province in China came to live in Malaysia. It is through migration that I have been able to grow up in Malaysia and study in Britain and America, and it is through migration that I have had the privilege of learning from people from all over the world. My accent is a bastard mix of British, American, and Malaysian. My upbringing was a schizophrenic blend of liberalism and Asian Tiger Mom style parenting. I revel in living in a mixed-up world and having a mixed-up self.²⁹ I have tried to live consistently with the principles advocated in this essay. Where in my life I have failed I have accepted it and tried to learn from my mistakes. Where I have succeeded, I have taken pride in the knowledge of having done so myself, not needing any legal crutch to prop me up. The only right I have demanded is the right to a fair contest. I think that the right to fair competition is the only thing we can and should expect.

Footnote:
¹ US Department of State Background Notes: Malaysia –http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2777.htm
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Mariam Mokhtar, ‘Malaysia’s Brain Drain’, Asia Sentinel, Feb 2010 –http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2308&Itemid=199
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ James Chow, ‘Malaysia Countering ‘Brain Drain’ Immigration Conflicts’, The Epoch Times, July 2010 – http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/39453/
⁷ Mariam Mokhtar, ‘Malaysia’s Brain Drain’, Asia Sentinel, Feb 2010 –http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2308&Itemid=199
⁸ James Chow, ‘Malaysia Countering ‘Brain Drain’ Immigration Conflicts’, The Epoch Times, July 2010 – http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/39453/
⁹ V Vasudevan, ‘106,000 give up citizenship’, New Straits Times, Nov 2007 –http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/new-straits-times/mi_8016/is_20071122/106000-citizenship/ai_n44378958/
¹⁰ ‘Najib kickstarts bid to reverse brain drain’, The Malaysian Insider, Oct 2010 –http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/najib-kickstarts-bid-to-reverse-brain-drain/
¹¹ Ibid.
¹² The CIA World Factbook: Singapore and Malaysia –https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook/geos/sn.html
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/my.html
¹³ Edwin Yapp, ‘The brain drain issue revisited’, The Malaysian Insider, March 2011 –http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/opinion/article/the-brain-drain-issue-revisited/
¹⁴ Mariam Mokhtar, ‘Malaysia’s Brain Drain’, Asia Sentinel, Feb 2010 –http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2308&Itemid=199
¹⁵ Ibid.
¹⁶ Liz Gooch, ‘Loss of Young Talent Thwarts Malaysia’s Growth’, The New York Times, Oct 2010 – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/business/global/02brain.html?_r=1
¹⁷ Ibid.
¹⁸ Ibid.
¹⁹ Ibid.
²⁰ ‘MACC hauls up Khir Toyo over Mickey Mouse, Bali house’, Sin Chew Daily, Sept 2009 – http://www.mysinchew.com/node/29264
²¹ http://www.petronastwintowers.com.my/internet/pett/pettweb.nsf/frm_home_hi?OpenFrameset
²² Karen Chapman, ‘UM drops from top 200 list of world ranking’, The Star, Sept 2010 – http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/9/8/nation/6999421&sec=nation
²³ Beh Lih Yi, ‘Malaysia struggles to stem ‘brain drain’’, Agence France Presse, Dec 2010 –http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gTSUzIQFE9P3yjqnUPc1aEyEA2kA?docId=CNG.59093f18282e8696a978af9849d18ab8.3f1
²⁴ Ibid.
²⁵ Jonathan Kent, ‘Malaysian ‘convert’ claims cruelty’, BBC, July 2007 –http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asiapacific/6278568.stm
²⁶ ‘Malaysia Valentine’s Day raids lead to mass arrests’, BBC, Feb 2011 –http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12466875
²⁷ Alea Nasihin, ‘Dilemmas of a young Malaysian abroad’, The Malaysian Insider, Feb 2011 – http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/breakingviews/article/dilemmas-of-a-young-malaysian-abroad-aleanasihin-loyarburok.com/
²⁸ Daniel A Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context, 2006, p 17 – http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8305.pdf
²⁹ This phrase comes from Jeremy Waldron, in ‘Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan Alternative’, 25 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 751, 1992.

End

Bibliography

Alea Nasihin, ‘Dilemmas of a young Malaysian abroad’, The Malaysian Insider, Feb 2011 – http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/breakingviews/article/dilemmas-of-a-youngmalaysian-abroad-alea-nasihin-loyarburok.com/

Beh Lih Yi, ‘Malaysia struggles to stem ‘brain drain’’, Agence France Presse, Dec 2010 –http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gTSUzIQFE9P3yjqnUPc1aEyEA2kA?docId=CNG.59093f18282e8696a978af9849d18ab8.3f1

The CIA World Factbook: Singapore and Malaysia –
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sn.html
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/my.html

Daniel A Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context, 2006, p 17 – http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8305.pdf

Edwin Yapp, ‘The brain drain issue revisited’, The Malaysian Insider, March 2011 –http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/opinion/article/the-brain-drain-issue-revisited/

http://www.petronastwintowers.com.my/internet/pett/pettweb.nsf/frm_home_hi?OpenFrameset

James Chow, ‘Malaysia Countering ‘Brain Drain’ Immigration Conflicts’, The Epoch Times, July 2010 – http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/39453/

Jeremy Waldron, in ‘Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan Alternative’, 25 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 751, 1992.

Jonathan Kent, ‘Malaysian ‘convert’ claims cruelty’, BBC, July 2007 –http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6278568.stm

Karen Chapman, ‘UM drops from top 200 list of world ranking’, The Star, Sept 2010 –http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/9/8/nation/6999421&sec=nation

Liz Gooch, ‘Loss of Young Talent Thwarts Malaysia’s Growth’, The New York Times, Oct 2010 – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/business/global/02brain.html?_r=1

‘MACC hauls up Khir Toyo over Mickey Mouse, Bali house’, Sin Chew Daily, Sept 2009 –http://www.mysinchew.com/node/29264

‘Malaysia Valentine’s Day raids lead to mass arrests’, BBC, Feb 2011 –http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12466875

Mariam Mokhtar, ‘Malaysia’s Brain Drain’, Asia Sentinel, Feb 2010 –http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2308&Itemid=199

‘Najib kickstarts bid to reverse brain drain’, The Malaysian Insider, Oct 2010 –http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/najib-kickstarts-bid-to-reversebrain-drain/

US Department of State Background Notes: Malaysia –http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2777.htm

V Vasudevan, ‘106,000 give up citizenship’, New Straits Times, Nov 2007 –http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/new-straitstimes/mi_8016/is_20071122/106000-citizenship/ai_n44378958/

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REVIEW: Water For Elephants

2011-05-04T23:07:00.001+08:00

I had not cried at a cinema in 6 years.

I certainly wasn't expecting to for this one. And I still don't know why I did. If you read reviews from other film critics, you'll get the impression that this is a good (that is, not necessarily excellent) period drama where the elephant upstaged the human characters, and that the central romance lacked spark. I suppose I was watching a different film.

It wasn't the most promising of stories. The tale of an unlucky young veterinarian undergraduate who stumbles into a circus and his life there as he balances trying to protect his charge, a performing elephant from the cruel and mercurial circus manager and keeping himself from falling in love with the most beautiful woman in the circus – who happens to be said circus manager's wife. Under the careful direction of Francis Lawrence, a director I pay attention to despite misgivings from critics and audiences due to his previous films (because I see that he has a certain je ne sais quoi that makes his movies just a little unexpected, a little less obvious), Water For Elephants is a thoroughly engaging, at times suspenseful, nobly passionate film that knows how to carry the audience's emotions and expectations and play it to its advantage.

In saying that I mean I was completely sold on the love story and the love triangle, I understood why the woman wouldn't leave her abusive-prone husband out of loyalty and yet torn to unwise feelings for the younger kid, I enjoyed the camaraderie of the circus troupe (and I don't give a damn about circuses), found the way the dialogue was handled brilliant (they play a little with having characters confuse song titles with what they are actually saying, which is a pretty old trick, but so well played that I didn't see it coming and misunderstood along with the characters), genuinely cared for the protagonists' trials and triumphs, and sure, was amused and laughed at the clever elephant's antics.

I partly came to see the movie to see whether Robert Pattinson can act – you can't hold Twilight as a proving ground for an actor's abilities, I would imagine. And I think the answer is yes. But of course, his is not the most challenging role: that would be Christoph Waltz's as the circus manager, and he definitely proved that his Oscar accolade wasn't a fluke. The man frightens us as much as he repulses us, and yet when you see his temperament change within moments, you buy it, you don't think he's lying, but you think that he really is fickle to his emotions and can't control himself ... which, of course, makes him more dangerous. Then there's Reese Witherspoon, who's beautiful in this, and imbues her character with a dignified maturity that tries to do right in all situations, though sometimes it's not clear any more what is right.

Bit parts are played by Hal Holbrook, who's effective in his role, and Paul Schneider and James Frain in tiny roles that I was a little surprised to see them in (Frain was there for barely 2 minutes).

Circling back to the beginning: why did I cry then? I can't really discuss it without spoiling it, so suffice to say that by the end, I wanted so much for the characters to end up together despite the odds, and the events that transpired, well ... caused a reaction in me. In other words, it's a mystery.

I didn't read the book but I thought the adaptation was great - in that it felt like a film, and a good one. The editing was just nice – the pacing wasn't the fastest but I did not feel that it was slow. Music was effective, Depression-era art direction works. A good movie.

PS - I also went to see Thor and Fast Five. Thor was meh, rather pointless since it wasn't particularly enjoyable and I couldn't understand why Natalie Portman picked such a shallow role to play, and the visual effects were faulty. Fast Five, on the other hand, which locals insist on calling "Fast And Furious 5" so the distributor helpfully slapped the subtitle "Rio Heist", has a satisfyingly destructive (and, more importantly, extended) climactic car chase sequence with a twist, but otherwise I couldn't remember the rest of it despite it containing a decent amount of action scenes.

REVIEWS: Source Code + Limitless

2011-04-17T20:55:00.003+08:00

Or, two science fiction thrillers that play with experiential perception (putting the audience in the shoes, nay, minds of the protagonists and making them feel what they feel) and starring two of the hottest young male stars in Hollywood today. They're also both really awesome sci-fi thrillers, which is rare these days. Let's start.

SOURCE CODE

Readers who've encountered previous posts on this blog would know it, but for the record I'm coming into this film having read the screenplay. Which means I know how the story goes and how it ends (well, it was a few years ago so thankfully I don't remember everything), so my input is more in terms of how every cast and crew member after the writer interpreted the film onto the screen.

The short of it was that director Duncan Jones kept most of the script intact, and did the story justice. There were certain things that clearly came from him rather than from the script, certain scenes that enhanced that moment of the story.

Upon hearing the premise, some people I know instinctively referred to Vantage Point as a comparison. Which immediately sounded false to me. I felt Vantage Point was a good idea but it was also severely repetitive, despite the fact that we learn new information at every new chapter that shows the events from a different character's POV. Source Code, however, marries that replaying with the central character's dilemma and frustrations. Capt. Colter Stevens has to solve a massacre mystery by being inserted into the source code multiple times, and each time he has a limited 8 minutes to discover new information, but unlike Groundhog Day (which probably a lot of Malaysians didn't see so that reference didn't pop up so much around me here) he doesn't have a thousand years to find the answer. He has just hours, if that.

Also, Vantage Point didn't give us anyone to focus our attention or goodwill, which is an unfortunate but inevitable nature of that story, whereas Source Code offers us such classy actors as Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan (as soon as I heard those casting choices and that the director of Moon is on it, I knew that Ben Ripley's script was in good hands) and Jeffrey Wright and Vera Farmiga (who's been getting the bulk of the praise for this film from film critics). Does Gyllenhaal and Monaghan have chemistry? Yes they do, and it's important for this story that they do. Equally important is the emotional connection between Gyllenhaal and Farmiga.

This is the kind of story I myself love to write, not just the almost-realistic sci-fi stuff and placing characters in such situations and seeing how that plays out, but also the way in which the story delivers information to the audience: slowly, bit by bit, not all at once. Throw the audience headlong into an unfamiliar situation without any explanation, thus confusing them, but slowly let them catch on to facts and info, and they learn as the protagonist(s) learn.

You may wonder about the science behind it, whether it's plausible. After all, it was pretty flippant about explaining the workings of the source code, with just a couple of throwaway sciencey sounding terms like 'parabolic calculus' and quantum mechanics. Well, probably not, but compared to most such movies it's rather more sophisticated with its scientific base: it makes use of the idea of multiverses (so that an audience thinking in terms of time travel is as outdated as a student espousing creationism in a class about the theory of evolution).

At 93 minutes, Source Code's pacing is just nice: tautly edited but with breathing space in between, and not annoying when it cuts back to the beginning of Colter's entry into the source code which necessarily begins in the same place every time (because it knows when to dispense with showing the whole thing again and just cuts to quick montages).

The denouement is a nice touch and, if I remember correctly, wasn't in the draft of the screenplay I read. It is also, again, a gentle reminder of the effectiveness of setups and payoffs.

LIMITLESS

The movie begins with a newly-designed film technique that we'll call infinite zoom. Okay, the camera can do one of two things: it can zoom, or it can dolly in ... or it can do both at the same time, but each of those camera movements have different effects. Now, you can have your camera on a track and keep pushing in, and that'll be a kind of long-tracking shot ... possibly a boring one. What they did here is to have the camera zoom in, and keep zooming, and keep zooming, for hundreds of yards ...

Which is impossible. Read here on how they use visual effects to make this technique work. It's a pretty nifty trick, and it's an effect that does something to your visual perception, feeling like it's too much to take in, which ties in to the title. (It'd be nicer if the opening credits weren't so huge ... in fact, it'd be nicer if they weren't there at all.)

The movie posits a drug that can increase human brain power orders of magnitude higher than most people. Such a premise is what we would call a high concept, and it's one that can very easily be wasted if it lands on the hands of an apathetic Hollywood screenwriter. I mean, you write in a smart character, and that character must do or say things that are mindblowing, right? Well, yes and no. A smart person isn't all wise, and sometimes misses things; but quite often what Hollywood offers is a so-called smart protagonist who is suddenly all stupid and making bad choices during most of Act II that his smart brain would have sounded warning bells to if he really is that smart (just so that he can learn a lesson about humility, or how he needs to pay more attention to loved ones, etc).

Not so here. I'm genuinely impressed with the writing, with what the plot puts the characters through, and how the plot plays out, and the fact that the central character, Eddie, is consistently believable when he is in the zone as a guy whose brain is firing on all cylinders. Nothing here seems implausible, and the most farfetched idea you have to accept is that a pill can do that to a person – not much of a suspension of disbelief.

But of course, the major theme in this movie is the side effects brought about by the drug – and not just physiological effects. As with most drugs, at first the side effects are not apparent. And then they hit, and then you see what that does to the character. And that is simply an illustration of the equilibrium-tending nature of reality. (On the other hand, there's entropy ...) As King Philip says in the movie Alexander, "No man or woman can be too powerful or too beautiful without disaster befalling." And the consequences on Eddie's life and the lives of those around him are so well-written that in some cases they're essentially plot twists; in other words, the film wasn't predictable and kept my attention throughout the film.

I'll say it: the Academy continues to stubbornly neglect science fiction films, but if it didn't, this one deserves a spot among the Oscar nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay.

I would also praise the performances. Bradley Cooper has come a long way since he played the scumbag in Wedding Crashers (arguably, his star status is currently shining brighter than Vaughn or Wilson at this moment), and puts in a spot-on performance of a down on his luck writer given a new lease of life that takes him into the fast lane, and zooming through it. The support players Abbie Cornish, Robert De Niro, and Anna Friel (lovely Anna Friel) sunk into their roles so well that I didn't notice them. A couple of times some of these characters face a life and death situation, which in most movies would be par-for-the-course since we're so used to them in the world of movies now, but thanks to the actors' performances in particular it felt pretty suspenseful to a moviegoer who rarely experiences suspense in the theatres. In particular, Friel's role, though small, left an impression on me.

There are lots of stylish camera and editing techniques lavished on the film, which seems to be trying very hard to get the audience to experience what Eddie is experiencing, but without being too gimmicky to the point of jolting them off the trajectory of the story. (Applied to another film they probably are gimmicky.) Come to think of it, the film deserves an Oscar nomination for Editing as well.

A well-paced, well-made film. It'll be interesting to see whether I like it as much at the end of the year.

REVIEW: The Eagle

2011-04-03T20:14:00.003+08:00

The last time I drove to e@Curve to watch a movie at Cineleisure, it was for an utterly forgettable Channing Tatum movie titled Fighting that I only went because I was tasked to review it, and I badly dented the car I was driving.

I'm happy to report that this time, first time driving there since then, the car was fine, the movie was fine. And would you believe it, Channing Tatum is one fine actor in this one. I even liked Jamie Bell in this one.

In both cases, I consider it their best acting performances in their young careers so far; well, for Mr Bell, since his debut.

Credit should of course go to director Kevin Macdonald as well, who was already a director within my radar sights since I saw Touching The Void, my favourite documentary feature film to date. (I had the great fortune of meeting Mr Macdonald very briefly once at the 2007 Telluride Film Festival; if he's reading this – as if – he might remember me as the Chinese fellow who unhelpfully detained him with questions about his movies while his kids were demanding to go off somewhere.)

Delving into the movie itself: prior to watching it I did fear that it would be another pedestrian entry to the swords and sandals genre (and I use that term with a grimace). Though earlier I was excited that Macdonald was to do this Roman Britain story, and that it was to star Tatum (surprising choice) and Bell (who in past roles irritated me more than anything), nothing in the trailer seemed to indicate that the movie would be anything groundbreaking.

It would be a disappointment if that turned out to be the case; there's scarcely any movie made about Roman Britain (though Centurion was released not too long ago and covers similar ground with a cast that includes Michael Fassbender and Olga Kurylenko), and how many of them are good? Other than King Arthur stories, it's not easy to entertain a mass audience with this niche genre.

You might question why I'm interested in this era, in this location. Simple, it's different from what you might normally associate with the Roman Empire. The outposts of empires, places at or beyond the borders, those kinds of places interest me; it speaks of isolation, of loneliness, of the strange and unknown, of survival and relying on oneself, away from help, of the solitude, the dark nights, the vast landscape with nary a soul in it. (Correct me if I'm wrong but some or all of these are themes of Romanticism.) This is the Roman Empire with living populations measured in dozens and hundreds, and the same with its scale of battles. Here, the glory of Rome as you saw it in movies like Gladiator are only heard, through the recollections of other people, never seen – the Celtic tribes might have thought the Romans to be boasting hyperbolae when the Romans describe the grandeur of their homeland. Yet, there is a surprising parity between the invading Romans and the indigenous tribes; despite the assumed technological and cultural superiority of the Romans, the incident alluded to in the backstory of this film (5,000 Roman soldiers disappeared without a trace in the lands of Alba) so frightened the Romans that they built what would later be called Hadrian's Wall as a way of keeping the tribes out. (It's not as imposing as the Great Wall of China, but that's not the point.)

The movie itself focuses on Marcus Flavius Aquila, a Roman centurion leading a legion in Britannia whose actions are constantly driven by his father's uncertain involvement in the disappearance of the Eagle of the Ninth, a symbol of Roman military might, and Esca, a Briton slave whose courage impresses Marcus. Between them they embody a very Roman flavour of the virtues Bravery and Loyalty, and this is depicted in a way that does not seem lame or inconsequential, perhaps largely because Tatum and Bell are actors with earnest-looking faces, playing earnest characters. Theirs is a master-slave relationship that became something more platonic, which I really felt and very much enjoyed. There's a scene when a surgery has to be performed on Marcus and Esca is to hold him down, which should invite more comment but which I won't get into. :p

The cinematography by the Academy Award-winning DP of Slumdog Millionaire alternates between shakycam and more classical shots (especially when depicting the expansive, desolate landscapes of the Scottish Highlands) and is expertly edited such that we don't notice them. The action scenes were a little blurry, hard-to-see, but I'm fine with it.

I've never taken much notice of Atli Örvarsson's music in previous films, but I was rather captivated by some of the motifs he used here; among them the exoticism in the Celtic bits and the quiet heroism in the Roman parts of it. By the way, this marks the first time Macdonald isn't working with his usual choice of composer, Alex Heffes.

Another thing worth commenting about: watch this film for a lesson in sound design. It is a very atmospheric film, which makes sense when you consider, for example, that there's fog in a lot of the scenes, and the ritualistic nature of the tribes, and the psychological terror that the tribes often successfully put the Roman soldiers through. The film should (though it won't) be considered for the Sound Mixing Oscar when that comes along. In particular I was impressed with the simple but highly effective choice during the climactic fight between Marcus and the Seal Warrior prince (played by Tahar Rahim of Un Prophète fame) to mute all sounds and leave only the harsh and intense clanging of the swords – one feels as if the stakes of each sword-strike and dodge are raised at that point.

I didn't mind the accents. What seemed to be the choice here is to have the Americans play the Romans and the British play the Britons, which is no better and no worse than the stereotypical choice of having British accents for the Romans. Film critics made too much out of this non-issue. Also, for those who are expecting Gladiator: again, population and army sizes in this part of the world of that time are too small for grand battles, and to expect that would be as realistic as to expect a child to score 120 in his exams when the maximum score is 100.

Some slow moments in the second half of the second act, but I shan't complain; after all, the movie depicts many aspects of Roman Britain society (and does so reasonably accurately for a film adaptation, though I don't know for sure), and how often does one get to see that?

Interesting Article From A Former Malaysian Chinese Now Living In Washington DC

2011-03-22T22:30:00.000+08:00

Stumbled upon the following lamentations. Note that this letter has nothing to offer to you if you're one of the majority of Malaysians who agree that our system has been jerry-rigged, and then showcased to the public with a most misleading packaging (possibly deserving of the Cannes Lions awards for advertising). It's probably intended for those people who unquestionably agree with the entirety of the current administration's policies and politics. (Though the third last paragraph was a bit of a 'huh?')

A Malaysian speaks up ...
by Hooi Chin Gian

I am a female Chinese Malaysian, living in the Washington DC area in the United States. I have read many of the letters that often talk about foreign countries when the writers have no real knowledge of actually living in those countries.

Many draw conclusions about what those countries are like after hearing from someone else or by reading and hearing about them in the media or after four years in a college town in those countries.

I finished STPM with outstanding results from the prestigious St George's Girls School in Penang. Did I get a university place from the Malaysian government? Nothing. With near perfect scores, I had nothing, while my Malay friends were getting offers to go overseas.

Even those with 2As got into university. I was so depressed. I was my parents' last hope for getting the family out of poverty and at 18, I thought I had failed my parents.

Today, I understand it was the Malaysian Government that had failed me and my family because of its discriminatory policies.

Fortunately, I did not give up and immediately did research at the Malaysian American Commission on Education Exchange (MACEE) to find a university in the US that would accept me and provide all the finances. My family and friends thought I was crazy, being the youngest of nine children of a very poor carpenter. Anything that required a fee was out of our reach.

Based on merit and my extracurricular activities of community service in secondary school, I received full tuition scholarship, work study, and grants to cover the four years at a highly competitive US university.

Often, I took 21 credits each semester, 15 credits each term while working 20 hours each week and maintaining a 3.5 CGPA. A couple of semesters, I also received division scholarships and worked as a TA (teaching assistant) on top of everything else.

For the work study, I worked as a custodian (yes, cleaning toilets), carpet layer, computer lab assistant, grounds keeping, librarian, painter, tour guide, etc. If you understand the US credit system, you will understand this is a heavy load.

Why did I do it? This is because I learnt as a young child from my parents that hard work is an opportunity, to give my best in everything, and to take pride in the work I do. I walked away with a double major and a minor with honours but most of all a great lesson in humility and a great respect for those who are forced to labour in so-called `blue collar' positions.

Those of you who think you know all about Australia, US, or the West, think again. Unless you have really lived in these countries, i.e. paid a mortgage, paid taxes, taken part in elections, you do not understand the level of commitment and hard work it takes to be successful in these countries, not just for immigrants but for people who have lived here for generations.

These people are where they are today because of hard work. (Of course, I am not saying everyone in the US is hardworking ... There is always the lazy lot that lives off of someone else's hard work. Fortunately, they are the minority.)

Every single person, anywhere, should have the opportunity to succeed if they want to put in the effort and be accountable for their own actions. In the end, they should be able to reap what they sow.

It is bearable that opportunities are limited depending on how well-off financially one's family is but when higher education opportunities are race-based, like it is in Malaysia, it is downright cruel for those who see education as the only way out of poverty.

If you want to say discrimination is here in the US, yes, of course it is. Can you name a country where it doesn't happen? But let me tell you one thing – if you go looking for it, you will find it.

But in Malaysia, you don't have to go look for it because it seeks you out, slaps you in your face every which way you turn, and is sanctioned by law!

Here in the US, my children have the same opportunity to go to school and learn just like their black, white, and immigrant friends. At school, they eat the same food, play the same games, are taught the same classes and when they are 18, they will still have the same opportunities. Would I want to bring my children back to Malaysia? So they can suffer the state-sanctioned discrimination as the non-malays have had for over 50 years?

The injustice the non-Malay have to suffer in frightening silence is the most damaging problem one has to face throughout one's life. You just have to look at the mighty govt structures which completely favours only one 'race', the UMNO Malay. The Chinese and Indians are treated no better than the illegal Indonesians. Racism and corruption are openly practised by the Malay politicians everywhere, Courts, schools/uni, police, govt offices, contracts, GLC, NEP, ISA, local govt.

It's so powerful and intimidating that you walk with fear and keep your mouth shut on anything and everything political. Religion is taboo unless you talk good about Islam.

As for being a slave in the foreign country, I am a happy 'slave' earning a good income as an IT project manager.

I work five days a week; can talk bad about the president when I want to; argue about politics, race and religion openly; gather with more than 50 friends and family when I want (no permit needed) and I don't worry about the police pulling me over because they say I ran the light when I didn't.

Have we seen the light at the end of the tunnel yet (Anwar Ibrahim)?
Or is it the head light of an oncoming Umno train ?
Lets hope its the former for the sake of all fair-minded Malaysians.

The dream of a Malaysian 'race' in the future is nowhere in sight with the present BN govt.

Where is Negara-Ku???

REVIEW: "The Last 5 Years"

2011-03-16T23:36:00.002+08:00

I went to see yet another play with Jon Chew in it – though this time it's a musical play.

Written by Jason Robert Brown, "The Last 5 Years" is an American musical drama about a couple, who could be any couple in the world, who have a first date, fall in love, get married, get jaded, and then break apart. What's interesting is how the writer chose to present the story: using parallel but directionally-opposite timelines, which a friend who saw the play with me said reminded her of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.

What makes the play as it is staged at KLPAC even more interesting, is the set design, which impacts the layout of the auditorium. Basically, the stage area bisects the audience, with one end of the set being the room of the about-to-leave-the-house singleton, and the other end that of the marriage home, and we see both players, Jamie and Cathy, start at opposite ends of the stage, crossover in the middle and end up in the other side of the stage by the end. This diametric feature of the set design is brilliant, I thought, and mirrors the symmetrical structure of the play itself (its effect on the audience can be described as schizophrenic, which is of course interesting). I don't know whether this was an idea from director Christopher Ling, or it was inherent in the play as it was written, though when I checked a Youtube video of one of the Chicago stagings with Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott it didn't seem that that was how it was staged ... it was hard to tell at any case. Never mind that, but this is worth pointing out because rarely do the set design of a play comes in so strongly in telling the story.

Which is sung out, of course, and the actors did a pretty good job here. I read somewhere that Tabitha Kong was experienced in singing and it really shows here; she has some of the toughest parts to sing – also some of the most interesting parts, including my favourites from the list of songs, "See I'm Smiling" and "Climbing Uphill/Audition Sequence" – and boy did she pull them off! Jon Chew I've never seen singing, but in the past two plays I happen to see him in I thought his acting abilities were good; here he was able to portray the wide-eyed delight of first falling in love as well as the guilt and anger in the breaking-up, and though he sometimes eats up certain words in the lyrics or goes too soft until they disappear into the music, for the most part his voice was pretty good.

All in all it was an enjoyable play, definitely worth a watch.

REVIEW: Fair Game

2011-03-09T00:28:00.001+08:00

I missed this film when it played in cinemas here in Malaysia – slightly surprising it did, by the way, considering it is an under-the-radar movie even in the States with serious political and nearly-current affairs content (meaning difficult-to-penetrate dialogue that is full of specific jargon and references) that would've glazed over the mushy brains of most Malaysians ... except for the fact that the movie opens in Kuala Lumpur. Obviously that's reason enough. Except Malaysians probably didn't bother to come out to watch the movie either, coz it's only in the newspaper reviews that you find out this little fact. And how many people read those? (If you do, please don't anymore.)

For the fact is, this is an IMPORTANT film. With caps.

What is it about? The film explains it all, so I shan't tell you. If you're a learned Malaysian, you would at least have heard the names, had a very vague idea of this scandal, and didn't much care about it. Well I'm speaking for myself anyway. Otherwise, the name Valerie Plame will light up as much of a lightbulb on your head as the name Altantuya would beyond Malaysia.

But follow the film (and I'll warn you that it won't be easy unless you put on your brain and – for once in your damn life – listen to the dialogue), and you'll get a very close-up look at the details of this case, involving the American government and the CIA and Iraq and the fucked-up conservative American media.

And if you're anything like me, you'd be angry.

Angry at the injustices committed, with such wide-ranging repercussions involving the life and death of innocents. Heartbreakingly so.

At one point in the film, the film conjures up the polarisation between the conservatives and the liberals when an irate reporter messes up a lunch meeting of one of the protagonists by calling him names, and I feel like I would love to see the conservative media with all their stupidity and obsequiousness put away for the sake of humanity.

Meanwhile, there are some important (that is, righteous) speeches buried within the film. One of them:

The responsibility of a country is not in the hands of a privileged few. We are strong and we are free from tyranny, as long as each one of us remembers his or her duty as a citizen, whether it's to report a pothole at the top of your street, or lies in the State of the Union address. Speak out! Ask those questions! Demand that truth!

This is where we live. And if we do our job, this is where our children will live.

And may you think of your own country when you read that.

One more point to mention. The film was directed by Doug Liman, who directed the first of the Bourne films, and this is interesting because Paul Greengrass, who directed the next two Bourne films, came up with Green Zone last year, which shares a similar theme about exposing US government wrongdoing in setting up the case for war, the difference of course being that one is set in the battlefield and the other in home ground. Both also share the same composer, John Powell, though his music is a bit more low-key in Fair Game.

What was James Franco thinking?

2011-03-02T21:33:00.000+08:00

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Bored. Not taking it seriously. Tweeting all night throughout the show. Stoner-look. Seemingly looking over your shoulder and not paying attention.

Some of the descriptive phrases used in mention of James Franco's hosting style at this year's Academy Awards ceremony. It was a fairly disappointing night, not just because the choice of award winners sucked (I'm looking at you, Best Animated Feature, Best Picture, Best Original Song, Best Director ...), but also because the choice of programmes seemed to have indicated that the choice of hiring Franco and Hathaway in order to stoke the interest of the younger generation for the Oscars had merely been a pretense. Why else have them if you're gonna spend the whole time harkening back to the so-called glorious black and white, golden classic film era, talking about the history of sound and music in cinema, bringing up Bob Hope, then calling up Billy Crystal (love havin' ya Billy, btw)?

And then there's Franco. It looked as if he really wasn't enjoying much being there, and pundits were calling it out majorly.

And then it occurred to me. Perhaps someone has written this already in some newspaper or blog somewhere – in fact, someone must have.

Franco was being young and hip. By choosing to reveal the younger generation's uncensored attitudes and feelings towards Oscar shows nowadays.

REVIEW: I Am Number Four

2011-02-27T17:50:00.006+08:00

An unusual title. And apparently it was a novel, too. Mostly I wanted to watch it because I was captivated by the imagery in the trailer, especially that shot where John Smith somersaults acrobatically across the school cafeteria; seemed to me that it would be an intense, alluring portrayal of the young adult coming to terms with his supernormal powers and trying to fit in in the normal world. I guess it's the magic realism aspect of it that I was attracted to.

In the end the movie wasn't quite that. It's an okay movie, made for its target audience (which, ultimately, didn't come out in droves for it) without being more ambitious in its storytelling. And what's with the choice of not using widescreen format? I was surprised by that.

I never liked having sci-fi villains that are more fantastical than the protagonists; for whatever reason, I could buy the alien boy and his guardian looking and behaving exactly like normal humans (though that is already stretching that thin membrane of my suspension of disbelief to breaking point), but having bad guy aliens with gills and horrible teeth and all of them looking dumb-headed? That just pushed it right off the edge. I couldn't engage with the story anymore. Worse was what happens when the alien characters die. Never mind that turning into ash is totally cheesy, but the effects just looked fake.In short, I felt like the movie didn't really do much to try to be realistic, when it could have.

The thin romance plot John Smith has with Dianna Agron's photographer girl is okay, nothing to shout about but serviceable for the movie's purposes. It was nice too that the movie gave substantial time to John Smith's relationship with his guardian, and with his new friend at school (played by good-looking young actor Callan McAuliffe, who was last seen in Rob Reiner's Flipped, check it out). The antagonism between John Smith and the bullying ex-boyfriend character played by Jake Abel was sometimes cliched and sometimes well-played, but one of the worst things about the movie was how the antagonism disappears suddenly in the end and the bully just helps out the aliens without comment. It was all rather awkward.

Alex Pettyfer, all of 20 years old, is at times gooey-eyed about the normal human life he wanted to live, which felt awkward and a little out-of-place for some reason, and other times intense, especially during action scenes, which is what I'd have expected. I think he has the potential to do very well in this kind of genre, but needed a better director to help him break hearts and sell the story better to the audience. Which I thought was odd, as DJ Caruso directed a very mature-looking Shia LaBeouf to an excellent acting performance in Eagle Eye. You could say it's just coz LaBeouf is a better actor than Pettyfer. Anyways, I look forward to more from the British kid.

The climactic fight scene was superb, pretty high on the destruction quotient, though sometimes the action isn't clear when they used close-ups and fast-cuts, and the defeat of the final villain – as is typical with action movies these days – is rather unsatisfying. Having villains talk a whole bunch of stuff just to let the protagonists gather enough energy/strength/weapons to defeat them is such a serious turn-off now.

Should there be a sequel? Wikipedia says that the next book (not yet released) is about Number Seven. That says to me that the authors are thinking creatively about how to proceed with the story. So maybe. (Box office numbers are not encouraging the studio though. On the other hand, this movie only cost 60 million.)

Listen To ... The 5 Oscar-Nominated Original Scores Of 2010 Films (Mashup)

2011-02-17T20:47:00.004+08:00

FIRST HALF

SECOND HALF

My Top 5 Films Of 2010

2011-01-30T00:54:00.003+08:00

Every year I do a top 10 list. 2010 being the kind of year it is, I was not able to muster ten. It's not that there weren't other films that I enjoyed watching; for example I thought Kick-Ass, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Little Big Soldier, Reign Of Assassins, She's Out Of My League, Shutter Island and Salt were entertaining movies, some that I enjoyed immensely, maybe even stellar examples of filmmaking and acting. But it would also not be much of a loss to me if I don't recall them in the future - that's why they don't make it here.

So here goes this year's top five:

1A
INCEPTION
Review

1B
HOW TO TRAIN
YOUR DRAGON
Review

3
THE SOCIAL
NETWORK

4
DESPICABLE ME
Review

5
AGORA
Review

REVIEWS: 新少林寺 + The Green Hornet

2011-01-29T20:50:00.005+08:00

SHAOLIN | 新少林寺

I read reviews criticising the film for being too preachy and melodramatic, plus I glanced through some reviews in Mandarin, which (as I've seen before) slices and dices petty aspects of the movie in order to criticise it to death, mistaking priggish nitpicking for film criticism.

Turns out they were wrong. It's an excellent film, with good acting from Andy Lau as usual but also, dare I say it, from Nicholas Tse, whom I haven't really cared much for previously. In fact he's just slightly over the top here, but it's what he does in the end that I was impressed with – and a crucial scene too, as it informs the film's main theme of redemption.

Which is a rather yucky theme to go for, when you think about it for even a second. Films about redemption (you almost have to say it reverently) tend to be melodramatic; which Shaolin definitely is, and definitely went eye-rollingly overboard on a few occasions (a dead kid has to have a small daisy on his chubby little hand ... puh-leeeze). And this being a very Buddhist sort of movie, there's lots of idiomatic expressions doled out by the chief monk, and sometimes by the other monks, which no one in the audience can understand unless they read the subtitles (both the English and the Chinese) and sounds so hopelessly pretentious that it doesn't quite befit the tone of the scenes. But it's unavoidable. It's Shaolin, it has to be a movie about Buddhism and martial arts. No choice.

The monks are played by, among others, Shi Xing Yu, who seemed awfully familiar to me, and then I checked and realised he was the Shaolin-trained actor Stephen Chow discovered for Kung Fu Hustle and recently appeared in such films as Bodyguards And Assassins and Ip Man; and Wu Jing, who exudes noble charisma in his scenes here, was previously in Sha Po Lang and City Under Siege.

The fight scenes were alright, the explosion scenes were spectacular, Jackie Chan's appearance in the film isn't just a cameo, there is genuine suspense to some of the scenes due to deft arrangement of plot and circumstance that increases the stakes and makes the audience feel it, a few heroic deaths were had. I was wrong to prejudge it – worth watching for its entertainment value.

THE GREEN HORNET

Jay. Chou. Is. Awesome.

Sure, you may not understand every word he said. Sure, you may be prejudiced with him either because of his mumbling singing or his lesser acting performances in previous movies. Sure, you might think he just looks too 'chuen'. But he's a good actor. I contend that we've seen glimpses of it under Zhang Yimou with Curse Of The Golden Flower (he was almost the best thing in it). And this is a very different type of movie of course, but he's definitely the best thing in it. The fellow kicks-ass (aided by stylish visuals that accentuate the action scenes from director Michel Gondry), and thanks to the cool production design he gets to play with cool guns and cool cars and squint his squinty eyes while at it.

Maybe Gong Li knows what she's saying after all when she said in an interview that Jay Chou is so talented that she's jealous.

The film was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, which is probably why it is so Seth Rogen, to the point that when people mentioned that they found the main character obnoxious and annoying ... Yeah, he is. I can only hope that what Rogen was going for was for the character to be truly annoying, muddling about in complete obliviousness to his rich-ass but incompetent arrogance, and then later realising his error and repenting ... well, the 'later ...' part barely happens, unfortunately. The thing is Rogen and Goldberg tipped the scales too far – I mean, come on, with Kato kicking ass like that, how can Britt Reid still think he was actually the hero of any of the action scenes they involved themselves in? (Unless he is a ...)

Still, the writing is good for one thing at least: dialogue. The scene introducing Christoph Waltz as the villain in his encounter with [surprise cameo that made me laugh simply because he appeared] was lol-funny ... and surprisingly, the writers still manage to make it relate to the plot. Other scenes with Britt verbally bullying Kato (and in the rarely effective vice versa) contain some chuckling zingers as well. (Bit mean-spirited, though.)

There are subtle jokes about homoeroticism sprinkled throughout the movie, probably the most subtle thing about the movie (certainly I doubt the mostly unsophisticated Malaysian viewers around me detected it). It's not funny because it is suggesting that Britt and Kato are gay, it's funny because their interactions can, in a different movie, be interpreted as budding romantic scenes. Come to think of it, most of that stuff comes from what Britt says ... must be a Seth Rogen thing.

Cameron Diaz didn't appear all that much but was charming whenever she's in it, Christoph Waltz hams it up but didn't go so OTT as to screw it up the way Jason Patric did in The Losers; the character actor David Harbour appears in yet another major Hollywood movie undetected; and you couldn't have guessed which character Edward Furlong played. (You dunno who ...? John Connor, dude.)

And the action-heavy score by James Newton Howard is awesome, man! I was half-thinking it might be a John Powell score at first ... except that it wasn't Powell enough, but it sounded intense and awesome and JNH's the only other composer I can think of who does cool action music in this manner. I want the soundtrack! (Oh, stay for the end credits. The song, heh.)

The movie's without its flaws – primary one being that its titular hero is an ass for at least half the movie; and also that sometimes the plot doesn't make sense – but its entertainment factor is so high that at some point you just don't care.

And who would've thought the director of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind could direct a major Hollywood action movie? Gondry does these visually interesting stuff which produces an effect to the viewer reminiscent to optical illusions; what I mean is that you see it but sometimes you're not quite sure you saw it. He did it to poignant effect in Eternal Sunshine, and then there's the whimsical La Science Des Rêves. Here he does a few of those stylish, playing with time and space kind of things, zooming into the action without going to a close-up ... och, I'm not describing it well, just go see it.

One effect that is deceptively simple is a kind of montage sequence where a mobster spreads a message and we see that message travel as it passes to two, then four, then more people via split screens. I say 'deceptively' because the screen splits and suddenly there's two separate cameras following two people ... then those cameras split ... Well, how do you shoot that? Think about it. I'm not suggesting it's impossible, but I don't think I've seen it before and it's definitely one of those Gondry tricks that works under your skin.

One more thing I should say – I regret watching this on 3D. Definitely a 2D movie. Also, you know what else doesn't work on 3D? They screened the trailer to the James Cameron-stamped Sanctum, and immediately it was obvious the film won't work. As it is the dialogue is on-the-nose and the predictability of the plot seeps right off the screen, so its only saving grace would've been the stereoscopy; but the fatal mistake is that most of the movie is in dark spaces, which is bound to be made darker in most 3D halls that will screen the movie, so there is now no reason to go watch the film. So there.

PS - I just found out that The Green Hornet is actually critically panned, and Ebert gave it only one star ... oops. Still, there's Maryann Johansson, whose reviews I agree with more often than not, particularly with the more unconventional ones (like when we both decided that Toy Story 3 is inferior to Despicable Me). Well, I agree with her review on The Green Hornet completely, and she says it better than I do.

2011 Oscar Selections

2011-01-26T14:01:00.001+08:00

Considering the Academy has collectively decided to make really odd choices, ones that to be honest kowtows too much to the speculations of the bloggers and tabloid media of the past few weeks (in other words, forgetting that they are the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and are not supposed to be led on by the deceptively valid viewpoints of nominal media), this is what I would've vote for if I was in a position to do so:

Best Motion Picture of the Year
Inception (2010): Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Colin Firth for The King's Speech (2010)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Natalie Portman for Black Swan (2010)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech (2010)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit (2010)

Best Achievement in Directing
Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan (2010)

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen
Inception (2010): Christopher Nolan

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published
The Social Network (2010): Aaron Sorkin

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
How to Train Your Dragon (2010): Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders

Best Foreign Language Film of the Year
None from this list.

Best Achievement in Cinematography
Black Swan (2010): Matthew Libatique

Best Achievement in Editing
The Social Network (2010): Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall

Best Achievement in Art Direction
Inception (2010): Guy Hendrix Dyas, Larry Dias, Douglas A. Mowat

Best Achievement in Costume Design
The King's Speech (2010): Jenny Beavan

Best Achievement in Makeup
The Way Back (2010): Edouard F. Henriques, Greg Funk, Yolanda Toussieng

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score
How to Train Your Dragon (2010): John Powell

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song
127 Hours (2010): A.R. Rahman, Rollo Armstrong, Dido("If I Rise")

Best Achievement in Sound Mixing
Inception (2010): Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo, Ed Novick

Best Achievement in Sound Editing
TRON: Legacy (2010): Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Addison Teague

Best Achievement in Visual Effects
Inception (2010): Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley, Pete Bebb, Paul J. Franklin

Best Documentary, Features
Restrepo (2010): Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger

Best Documentary, Short Subjects

Best Short Film, Animated

Best Short Film, Live Action

REVIEW: The Way Back

2011-01-22T16:50:00.000+08:00

I mentioned this in an earlier post but to summarise: I almost had a chance to be part of the inception of this movie, if only I had been more daring. I had read the book "The Long Walk" by Slawomir Rawicz back in 2007, had tried to pitch it with the help of one of the executives there to the CEO of the production company in Hollywood where I was interning, but it didn't impress and so that was that ... until I saw the trailer of this movie. Talk about missed opportunities. (Disclaimer: doesn't mean that if I did manage to push the movie through, it would've been produced, or would've been successful, or that I would've gotten some sort of credit on the film ... even if I do think about that last one.)

Suffice to say, obviously I can't be objective about the movie in its current incarnation.

Now I haven't read the book since 3-4 years ago so I can't fully remember all the details (though I do have the book on my work desk now), but I do remember the broad strokes of that story, and in this case the movie stuck to it mostly faithfully – except the very beginning and the very end, which I'll get to later.

The story itself is about a group of prisoners, who each have personal stories of how they were unjustly arrested by the Soviet authorities in a Communist society that is increasingly hungry to chew up and dispose of elements that sway more than a few degrees from the designated way of life, made a daring escape from a Siberian gulag and walked 4,000 miles to India – that is, across wintry steppes, wet forests, harsh deserts and through challenging mountain passes. That is a remarkable story in itself, and the fact that it's populated by interesting characters, and not all of them make it, means the story, the plot is solid, even before the first word is penned for the screenplay.

Peter Weir is, of course, a dependable director – he of Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show and Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World. The film that resulted under him is a technically excellent one, but unfortunately, not a memorable one.

They had casted excellent actors – from Jim Sturgess to Saoirse Ronan to Colin Farrell to Ed Harris to the other less-known Baltic and Scandinavian actors – and they did exactly what the story needed them to do, that is, look dirty and skinny and demoralised and like they're about to die of starvation and exhaustion half the time.

The pacing, however, didn't fare so well. There is often a slight sensation that the movie dragged, which is odd considering we are constantly looking at beautifully captured, awe-inspiring landscapes – whether it's to the characters' benefit or not – as the ragtag runaways traverse one landscape upon another. It's perhaps due to the rather episodic nature of the story; there are a lot of scenes in the movie, more so than even the average adventure movie, but they don't really affect each other. Something happens here, they move on; then something happens there, they deal with it and move on. Do we get to know the characters better? Sure, but I think not enough, and so we don't sympathise enough. One particular death in the movie was rather underwhelming emotionally, when I had imagined while reading the book that it would've easily wrenched the guts out of the audience. Perhaps my expectations were too high.

Obviously one couldn't transfer everything that was described in the book onto the screen, but one glaring omission was the escape from the gulag itself. When I was reading the book, the few pages describing their stealthy, suspenseful crawl to the edge of the prison, and then having to cut their way out without the dangling icicles from the barb wire making a noise, all that stuff, was the thing that I still remember today. That could easily have been the emotional highlight of the film – I had imagined a 10-minute, terrifyingly tense sequence, which would then provide the rest 70% of the movie with that quality of cathartic denouement that usually lasts the last five minutes of a typical movie, as if the long walk to India, however terrible will be and whatever tragedies struck, is the relief itself. That, to me, was an interesting idea that would make this adventure story different from the others; though, I admit it's definitely not an easy thing to pull off, as it is such a precise thing to aim for.

[Spoilers here.] Then there's the framing device that Weir and his co-writer chose to use: the wife. To begin with they changed the names of some of the characters, including that of the autobiographer of this story who instead goes by Janusz, indicating that they meant to diverge from the story told by Slawomir Rawicz – though again, they did stick closer than the average Hollywood film would've to their original or true stories because this story is already so incredible. Which is fine. But what I thought didn't work enough was having the wife betray Janusz and so make her the reason why he is a political prisoner, but having him be such a kind soul that he is not angry with her and making this journey about him travelling home so that he can forgive her ... well, I didn't buy it. The film didn't really touch upon this theme much, except for one conversation between Janusz and Mister Smith (Ed Harris) – and this is supposedly a major theme, because the ending has Janusz going back to Poland to find his wife four decades later after the fall of Communism. Again, I could be biased, because in fact Rawicz never made it back to Poland, but ended up in England after the war where he married an Englishwoman and raised a family of his own there, though the demons from the torture and the trek never left him until the day he died. The way the film had Janusz returning to his wife in the end just smells to me like it was groping for a false happy ending and felt too sentimental for my taste. I would've preferred the movie to stay a bit longer in India, and end there. [Spoilers end.]

Worth watching once.

REVIEW: "Birdy"

2011-01-22T15:01:00.002+08:00

Saw this at KLPAC a month ago. The highlight of the play, I think, is Calvin Tan Han Jin's performance as the younger version of the titular Birdy. That the actor is just eighteen-years-old is all the more remarkable; definitely a promising talent that had the good fortune of being offered a role that he's probably quite suitable for (as long as he is daring enough to grab it by the horns and give it everything he's got, which it looks like he did) this early in his career, and probably also due to the direction of experienced KLPAC and T4YP director Christopher Ling.

The play itself, which I later found out was based on a movie (itself based on a novel) directed by Alan Parker (Bugsy Malone, Evita) and starring Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage, is intriguing for its subject matter. I often find it a mystery how playwrights arrive at the particular plot for their plays: they're almost never obvious the way movies are, and also (for lack of a better word) rather arbitrary. The play depicts a pair of boyhood friends – one an eccentric outcast who becomes increasingly infatuated with birds, the other suffering domestic abuse but otherwise suffering from the usual teenage-boy hormonal issues – in two stages of their lives: their carefree adolescent days, and during the war after both have been scarred by their experiences.

The writing is nothing to shout about, it's fairly straightforward and it works. The problem it presented is that it is an American play that has to be delivered by Malaysian actors using neutrally international accents. Try as they might it just never quite works, as it is not easy for Malaysians who don't naturally have at least a faux-British or faux-American accent to pull it off consistently and undistractingly, and the only actor in the play who managed to do it without pulling me out of the play is Darius Taraporvala, who plays the army psychiatrist Weiss. It helped if the performance was compelling, and in this case Calvin Tan's performance does actually help reduce the disconnect caused by his slight Malaysian-tinged accent. Tung Jit Yan and Michael Chen, who play Birdy's friend Al in two different ages, didn't fare so well here – though the latter better than the former.

Michael's a friend so this may be slightly uncomfortable but it has to be said: he still needs to improve on his acting. One big positive is that at least technically he's sound: he told me himself he's got the most lines (and it's heck of a lot) but I never heard him slip up once. The thing is though, there is no variation in his performance. Granted the grown-up Al Columbato is one fucked-up, angry sonofabitch, but I doubt it warrants him speaking in the same seething tone through the entire play. In my mind his performance would've breathe and connect with the audience if he had been able to vary his intonation and delivery according to the changes of beats to the scene.

The score and sound design bears a mention. Basically they work; though with the sound design, occasionally the ambient city rumble and birdcalls overpower the dialogue (or equally, we could blame the actors who could've spoken louder), but otherwise having these diegetic sounds is a welcome supplement to the experience of the play.

Overall it wasn't a boring play, and continues to support my theory that of all plays staged in Malaysia, Western-originated plays are far, far less likely to disappoint than locally-written plays.

BAFTA Nominations

2011-01-18T22:43:00.000+08:00

... which I won't talk about, actually. They're all disappointingly dull and predictable, right down to the obligatory annual nod to anything and everything made by the Coen brothers (though I salute the nomination on young actress Hailee Steinfeld, who hasn't been nominated much this awards season, though she should be).

No, instead, I will just mention the Rising Star Award, which continues its streak as being the ONLY nominations of any category of any awards show that makes 100% perfect sense.

This year's nominees for the Rising Star Award are:

Gemma Arterton
You barely see her in Casino Royale, then suddenly she appears in two major fantasy adventure movies in quick succession – Clash Of The Titans and Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time. Which ain't much of a stretch on her acting skills, but then there's the little seen small town British comedy Tamara Drewe (which I have yet to see too).

Andrew Garfield
I've had my eye on this fellow since Lions For Lambs in 2007 (just like I had my eye on James McAvoy long before The Chronicles Of Narnia), and was surprised to find out that he's British-born - in fact he then lived in the US, so he's fluent in both accents. Then I saw Boy A, and that cemented his prestige in my mind, so I was always on the lookout for stuff he's in. Already he's playing the big stakes with likely nominations for his role in the Best Picture frontrunner and an upcoming superhero role.

Tom Hardy
Obviously this British actor struck it big this year in Inception, surprisingly making an impression despite his very much minor role. Mostly I remember him as one of the young, skinny American soldiers in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down.

Aaron Johnson
He lands the slightly talked about role as the young John Lennon in the small British film Nowhere Boy, then lands the even bigger role of Kick-Ass in the American superhero comedy Kick-Ass ... before he even turned 20. On top of that, he romanced his 40-year-old director, they get pregnant, and engaged, and is now a father ... yes, by 20.

Emma Stone
You may remember her in The House Bunny. Halfway a Mila Kunis lookalike (they should play sisters one day ... maybe they already have, since both are in Friends With Benefits with Justin Timberlake), she broke out this year with the witty comedy Easy A. Despite being the only American on this list, she's probably the least well-known name here ... but perhaps not for long.

Suggested List Of Oscar Nominations 2011

2011-01-08T13:43:00.015+08:00

As it stands on March 27, 2011 ...

Movies Seen: 127 Hours, Aftershock, Black Swan, Buried, Casino Jack And The United States Of Money, Exit Through The Gift Shop, Countdown To Zero, Fair Game, Green Zone, Harry Brown, Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Hereafter, How To Train Your Dragon, I Am Love, Inception, Inside Job, Iron Man 2, Kick-Ass, Never Let Me Go, North Face, Rabbit Hole, Restrepo, Robin Hood, Salt, Shrek Forever After, Shutter Island, Tangled, The Fighter, The Ghost Writer, The Karate Kid, The Kids Are All Right, The King's Speech, The Social Network, The Way Back, Toy Story 3, Tron Legacy, True Grit, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Movies Yet To See: Carlos, Made In Dagenham, The Illusionist, The Town

[If a movie is listed as one I've seen but doesn't appear in the list below, it means I didn't think it belongs on the list. Of course, the list of movies I've seen and yet to see are not exhaustive – it's really movies that I think have a shot at Oscar nominations, or should.]

BEST PICTURE
Black Swan
Harry Brown
How To Train Your Dragon
Inception
Never Let Me Go
Shutter Island
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3

BEST DIRECTING
Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky
Inception, Christopher Nolan
Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese
The Kids Are All Right, Lisa Cholodenko
The Social Network, David Fincher

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
127 Hours, James Franco
Harry Brown, Michael Caine
Shutter Island, Leonardo DiCaprio
The King's Speech, Colin Firth
The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Black Swan, Natalie Portman
Fair Game, Naomi Watts
Rabbit Hole, Nicole Kidman
Salt, Angelina Jolie
True Grit, Hailee Steinfeld

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Rabbit Hole, Miles Teller
The Karate Kid, Jackie Chan
The King's Speech, Geoffrey Rush
The Social Network, Andrew Garfield
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Michael Douglas

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Black Swan, Barbara Hershey
Kick-Ass, Chloë Grace Moretz
The King's Speech, Helena Bonham Carter

BEST WRITING, ORIGINAL
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The Other Guys
Toy Story 3

BEST WRITING, ADAPTED
How To Train Your Dragon
Kick-Ass
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
Shutter Island
The Social Network

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Black Swan
How To Train Your Dragon
Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga'hoole
Robin Hood
Shutter Island

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Black Swan
Kick-Ass
Robin Hood
Shutter Island

BEST ART DIRECTION
Inception
Never Let Me Go
Robin Hood
Shutter Island
The Ghost Writer

BEST MAKEUP
127 Hours
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Pt 1
The Way Back

BEST FILM EDITING
Black Swan
Inception
Shutter Island
The Social Network

BEST SOUND
Buried
Harry Brown
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Pt 1
Inception
Tron Legacy

BEST SOUND EDITING
Black Swan
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Pt 1
Inception
Tron Legacy

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Alice In Wonderland
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Pt 1
Inception
Shutter Island
Tron Legacy

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Green Zone, John Powell
How To Train Your Dragon, John Powell
Inception, Hans Zimmer
Never Let Me Go, Rachel Portman
The Social Network, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
"Coming Home", Country Strong
"If I Rise", 127 Hours
"Me And Tennessee", Country Strong
“Sticks & Stones”, How To Train Your Dragon
"To The Sky", Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga'hoole

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Despicable Me
How To Train Your Dragon
Shrek Forever After
Tangled
Toy Story 3

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Aftershock (China)
North Face (Germany)

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Inside Job
Restrepo

BEST ANIMATED SHORT
Banana

Suggested List Of Oscar Nominations 2012 [as of Nov 2011]

2010-12-31T08:42:00.045+08:00

Oscar-potential films yet to see

In The Land Of Blood And Honey ... ... The Devil's Double ... ... Melancholia

The Artist ... ... Hugo ... ... Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol ... ... Shame

The Lady ... ... The Iron Lady ... ... Moneyball ... ... The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

War Horse ... ... J. Edgar ... ... A Dangerous Method ... ... The Help ... ... Carnage

Arthur Christmas ... ... The Conspirator ... ... Kung Fu Panda 2 ... ... Anonymous

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close ... ... Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Take Shelter ... ... My Week With Marilyn ... ... We Need To Talk About Kevin

Martha Marcy May Marlene ... ... Coriolanus ... ... The Ides Of March

BEST PICTURE
Midnight In Paris

BEST DIRECTING
Woody Allen – Midnight In Paris

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Owen Wilson – Midnight In Paris

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Corey Stoll – Midnight In Paris
Ryan Gosling – Crazy, Stupid, Love.

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Elle Fanning – Super 8
Jennifer Ehle – Contagion
Jessica Chastain – The Tree Of Life

BEST WRITING, ORIGINAL
Contagion
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Midnight In Paris
Source Code

BEST WRITING, ADAPTED
Limitless
Water For Elephants

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Limitless
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
The Tree Of Life

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Midnight In Paris
The Three Musketeers

BEST ART DIRECTION
Cowboys And Aliens
Super 8
The Three Musketeers
X-Men: First Class

BEST MAKEUP
Midnight In Paris
X-Men: First Class

BEST FILM EDITING
Limitless
Midnight In Paris

BEST SOUND
The Eagle
The Tree Of Life
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

BEST SOUND EDITING
Captain America – The First Avenger
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
The Tree Of Life

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Cowboys & Aliens
Captain America – The First Avenger
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
Super 8
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
The Eagle
Warrior
Water For Elephants

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
"Iridescent", Transformers: Dark Of The Moon
"When We Were Young", The Three Musketeers

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn

BEST SHORT FILM, ANIMATED
Dead Island Trailer

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Let The Bullets Fly (China)

REVIEW: The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader

2010-12-07T00:08:00.000+08:00

I liked The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe – I recently saw it again and was surprised to find myself still capable of tearing up at the goodbye scene in the beginning of the film ... that almost never happens even for a tearjerking movie I'm watching for the first time – and I loved Prince Caspian even more, with its added maturity to the story and the characters (not drastically, just subtly sufficient).

Unfortunately, two things happened to this one.

First of all, change of director. Michael Apted is far from a terrible director, but he's definitely no Andrew Adamson, who brought a certain kind of poignance to the films which is only possible with the way he structures the plot, and the pacing which gives the movie time to breathe (though it does make the films longer than some people would like, but I thought the pacing was just perfect for those two films).

Which leads to the second thing: 20th Century Fox. They have a history of forcefully compressing movies just so they can squeeze more screenings a day (or at least that's the most obvious but not necessarily true reason), Kingdom Of Heaven being just one case in point. And this one has the markings of that; the first half of the film felt rather truncated at times, like it was impatient at jumping to the next scene, but which unfortunately accentuated the episodic nature of the story. Look, the story's episodic as it is, so what you should be doing is to let the audience connect with the characters so that it glosses over the this-happens-then-this-happens feel undetected, not highlight it.

Ultimately what you got was an okay movie, but one that, considering the story, could have been great. The ending battle scene was sufficiently epic (though this one made the mistake of ending it too fast). I still love Skandar Keynes and Georgie Henley and they continue to do alright here, but Will Poulter did impress – he was genuinely annoying to begin with, partly thanks to the whiny, poncey voice he used, and then something completely unexpected happens (I never read the books) which causes Edmund to say 'you've got to be joking' (and really, never has that phrase been more aptly used in all the movies I've seen) which eventually leads to his character's rather heroic redemption. And that poignant quality that I talked about in previous films, it's there in diminished form at the end of the film.

But again, the film could've been more. Bring back Adamson, I say!

Source Code And The Way Back, Two Upcoming Movies That Made Me Exclaim "Dammit, I Had The Same Idea Back Then ..."

2010-11-21T19:59:00.001+08:00

You know how sometimes you come across an idea which you recognised as your own, except that it was only in your head, once, or perhaps you've just mentioned it to some friends, but never got to it, and now someone else has gone along and did it, made it real, so you can't claim it as your own anymore?

SOURCE CODE

I got my hands on the screenplay when it was listed as one of the Black List scripts back in December 2007. A few pages in and I went, shit, that uses one plot element from my first written script that I had thought to be original! A few more pages and something else happens and I was like, dammit, that's another plot element from the second script that I've written! (I've only ever written two feature screenplay.) So obviously I devoured the whole screenplay in one intense read and I have to say, it's well-written, paced very tautly, and made full use of its high concept and makes for an intelligent Hollywood thriller.

In fact, if it was made into a film, it would've been the best Hollywood thriller in years.

So when it was revealed that the breakout Brit director Duncan Jones is to direct, and that the cast includes Gyllenhaal, Monaghan, Farmiga and Wright ... well, the film's all set. Definitely a must-watch when it comes out.

THE WAY BACK

I interned at a production office in West Hollywood for a few months between 2007-08. Around that time I read the amazing if controversial true story of Slavomir Rawicz, as described in the book "The Long Walk", where he recounts how he was imprisoned in a Soviet gulag because he was a Polish officer, and later escaped with a few prisoners and eventually made their way to safety after crossing thousands of miles of wintry landscape, wet forests, and unforgiving deserts. It made for a great adventure story, and I checked to make sure it wasn't made into a film yet. It was not.

So I pitched it to one of the executives at the production office, who agreed to read it. He then brought it up at the next meeting with the CEO and pitched it then, but the CEO thought it was similar to Defiance and dismissed it fairly quickly. I didn't know what else to say to defend it, and so when the executive looked at me to add to the pitch I had nothing to say and just nodded. So that was that.

And now it's a major motion picture from the director of The Truman Show and Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World starring Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan and Ed Harris.

Bugger.

Anyway, I mentioned that the story was controversial: there were some voices of concern that the story was fake and Rawicz simply made up the story. It wasn't conclusively proven either way. From a cinematic point of view though, no matter - it's a compelling story, and from the trailer it seems promising, though I don't know how many people would go for such a movie nowadays.

Notes On BMW Shorties 2010 Finalists

2010-11-18T21:42:00.004+08:00

I reviewed last year's BMW Shorties finalists, but for this year I will keep this short(er) and without ratings because:

1. Am away on holiday and am typing this on an iPod.*
2. I submitted my own short film this year (see post below) so any negative comments by me on the selected shorts can (possibly justifiably) be perceived as sourgrapes.

You can check out the films by going to the BMW Shorties website.

SUCCESS RATE is my favourite of the ten so naturally I would prefer to see it win. I've been thinking that the comedians doing That Effing Show could turn out to be competent actors and here I'm glad to see Faiq play the leading role competently. An initially unrecognisable Jerrica Lai is cute and effective as usual and of the selected actress nominees I would like to see her win. The thing I kept thinking throughout the short though, was this: Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation. June Tan, tell me if I'm reading it wrong ...

KICKSTART is rather on-the-nose and predictable with its plot, but no matter: it sufficiently generates suspense and pointedly addresses the most pressing issue that Malaysia faces today (in that, solve this problem, and all our other problems unravel a little and becomes less tangled). (Now this is in contrast with the other message film, LIKE TOY DOLLS, which uses shock value and an attempt at poetry to illustrate the media's latest choice of distraction news item - not to belittle the severity of this particular issue though - and despite fairly excellent technical craft left me feeling cold towards it.) By the way, Karnan who plays the unfortunate lead role has good screen presence and that rare actor's attribute of being able to look quite different with minimal makeup; I vote him for Best Actor.

CONFESSION OF SMILEY has an assured sense of style, and left me wondering why the guy who makes a logical case for not using condoms in the middle of the short wasn't nominated. Director Erik Moh could turn out to be one of those future Malaysian directors who specialise in HK-style Malaysian movies ... I'm guessing.

PLAN B: I knew it would be selected when I saw it before the finalists were announced, to the bafflement of my friends, despite the fact that there was no story - or, because this is Malaysia, perhaps because of it - nor, in fact, anything to do with the "0% Wastage" theme (which is also true of at least a couple of the other finalists). It managed mood very well. WHO CARES?: granted it was well-shot, and I can agree with the editing nomination, but they really could have done more with the unemployment theme. Right now, it seemed to be aiming for subtle, ironic humour, but in fact the humour is barely perceptible. So it's just flat.

PERSPECTIVES: so predictable for someone from Malaysia to come up with an idea like this, and even more so for Malaysians to applaud its brilliance. I blame our education system. It's well-meaning, no doubt. But what is the insight? If it's there I didn't see it. BAJET: to echo my friend Albert - ini pun boleh masuk ke? Apalah.

MY NEW CAR: again, well-intentioned, but cliched to the max, man. And yet somehow Malaysian Chinese audiences dig this kind of obvious, simplistic morality tale and don't seem to notice, for example, how utterly unrealistic and wtf it is for the boy to receive that gift with such pride. HOOKED: the slapstickiness is unpolished, and could benefit from tighter editing. Okaylah, but could've been more creative.

These were my thoughts after watching the shorts. So sue me.

* Took me over an hour to type the thing out with two fingers. Have since found a proper computer and refined the post a little. Sorry about the length, turns out I'm incurably verbose, and short is relative.

My BMW Shortie - Hashshashin's Revolt

2010-11-09T18:59:00.004+08:00

... So this was why I haven't updated my blog for two months:

Hashshashin's Revolt from Sebastian Ng on Vimeo.

It was a short film produced for entry into this year's BMW Shorties (2010). The results just came out and unfortunately we were not selected as one of the finalists.

However, this was a story that I strongly believed in (the first time in three years I could say that), and more importantly the cast and crew worked diligently and earnestly on this one – most of them completely inexperienced by the way, but delivered work that is generally better than can be expected from amateurs, so credit goes to them.

I hope you enjoy it.

MASS REVIEW ... 14 Movies In 3 Weekends

2010-11-07T12:22:00.000+08:00

I haven't written anything here in a long time, for reasons that will become apparent soon enough. Meanwhile, I've been busy catching up on movies in the past few weekends after seeing them pile up over a month of absence from the cinemas.

UNSTOPPABLE

Unexpectedly released a week earlier than in the US, this is an exciting enough rescue movie based on a true story. I had erroneously thought that that true story was the San Bernardino train disaster, turns out it was not. What happened there was a train travelled at great speed due to some fault, then train derails at San Bernardino; what was real unfortunate was that in the effort to clean-up the derailment, heavy machinery moving about causes the petroleum pipeline underneath the area around the track to explode, killing more people and destroying more properties.

Anyway, the film itself is okay. Decent acting (anything with Rosario Dawson in it is awesome), pacing was quick enough, and oddly enough there's less of Tony Scott's signature hyperactive editing style here.

RED

From the director of The Time Traveler's Wife. I wanted to see this for one simple reason, and it's not Bruce Willis or Morgan Freeman. It's the sight of Helen Mirren with a determined face letting loose hundreds of bullets from, err, that big machine gun thingie. That woman is pure awesome. And also Karl Urban, love that guy.

The movie itself, I felt, was a little slow on pacing generally. It was fine in the beginning, establishing how bored Bruce Willis is with his life, but I had expected things to pick up, for the plot to become more interesting.

YOU AGAIN

It was entertaining. Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver are a joy to watch, as always. Also I'm intrigued by the two completely unknown, young, and good-looking actors Jimmy Wolk and Sean Wing here. I did think they stretched Odette Yustman's character a little too much though – they didn't quite manage to reconcile the evil bitch and the sincerely-loving girl convincingly.

MEGAMIND

Proving that Dreamworks Animation is on a roll, the film succeeds with an unusual story for an animated feature, never mind that it treads on the same ground as Despicable Me. I just wished I hadn't read the synopsis earlier. Will Ferrell's voice isn't as annoying as I had feared. How To Train Your Dragon is still better by a long shot, though I'll say this is on par with Shrek Forever After.

By the way ... WHICH STINKING GENIUS FOUND A WAY TO INSERT SUBTITLES INTO 3D MOVIES?! IT'S FREAKING ANNOYING, STOP IT! GAHHH!

DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS

I almost saw the original French version Le Dîner De Cons a few years back, which was written and directed by Francis Veber, who specialises in farce comedies. You should definitely check out his other films, such as Le Placard or La Doublure, they are surprisingly hilarious.

This film, on the other hand, well it's well casted: Paul Rudd is one of my favourites (I just love the way he walks!), Steve Carell swings between annoying and sympathetic as required by the plot skillfully, Jemaine Clement is outrageously zany, and my, Lucy Punch in an American role but playing the exact same character she's been playing in the last few movies I saw with her in it (and totally pulling off the American accent)! The problem is, the characters do get genuinely irritating, especially in the middle acts, and contrary to its purpose that is not entertaining. It doesn't help that I seriously dislike Zach Galifianakis (and couldn't understand why people love his comedy style so).

THE OTHER GUYS

My friend David calls it the funniest movie of the year (at the very least). I won't go that far, but I can see why. The dialogue is positively loony, and certainly the most enjoyable parts of the film are the argumentative banter between Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg ... especially the latter, hahaha. And Eva Mendes, my. Her character's presence in the story functions almost entirely as a plot gag, and she milked it for what it's worth. The actual plot though, involving some investigation of a robbery and embezzling of funds, is rather convoluted and not properly explained to the audience (intentional?), so when the end credits appears with infomercial graphics about Ponzi schemes it raised an eyebrow (mine). Likewise, Steve Coogan's character seemed rather bland, though he has one funny recurring joke. But no matter. One of the most entertaining movies of the year, which makes this more of a must-watch than any of the other films here. And Mark Wahlberg should keep making comedies.

REIGN OF ASSASSINS

I was surprised by how good this is. And, though I don't know exactly what his directorial contributions are here, I wished John Woo didn't butt in and inserted his name in as a co-director. Just let the younger man take the credit lah.

I thought the story was well thought-out and more plausible than most Chinese martial arts period movies, and a few of the fight sequences are some of the most spectacular I've seen lately. The weird choices were: having Michelle Yeoh's voice dubbed over ... by a more petite sounding voice and playing a 30-year-old (took an hour to get used to that one), and hiring an unknown Korean actor (well, all Korean actors are unknown to me, except maybe Jang Dong-gun) to play the male lead. The latter turned out to be a good choice, in my opinion: he had just the right kind of face for the role; and if his voice wasn't dubbed over, then I say, excellent voice work Jung Woo-sung.

The romance works, but interestingly there is a subplot involving Michelle Yeoh's character in her younger days with a monk, portrayed with a certain suaveness (if that word applies to a monk!) and poignance by Li Zonghan. It was brief, but man it was romantic – in this case, maybe because it was brief. Shawn Yue plays the most different role he's played so far (I think), and pulls it off.

EAT, PRAY, LOVE

Directed by the creator-producer of Glee. Lots of Malaysians I know didn't like it. While watching the movie, I formulated a theory why. I've always had this superiority complex when it comes to many people I see around me. (If you think less of me because of this, trust me, the inferiority complex is there as well.) And I think the reason why is because I gravitate towards people with a 'soul' – by which I do not mean in a spiritual sense, but rather, that something inarticulated that allows a person to get in touch with art, with literature, to engage in philosophy, to appreciate randomness and know how to subvert predictability (i.e. not be so straightforward all the time). Think about it, does your average Chinaman uncle, or Mat Rempit, or fellow office colleagues whose minds are entirely preoccupied with money/car/family/religion, or (in my case), the unsophisticated Chinese restaurant crowd and dumb people waiting in line to buy cinema tickets around me ... do you think they have that 'soul' in this definition?

I bring this up because I think it is the people without 'soul' who will never be able to appreciate this film, or if they like it, like it for the wrong reasons. Sure, a large argument against the film is that the book is 'better'. Unfortunately I'm the sort who always think that the film adaptation is (usually) the better experience (unless in the hands of an imbecile of a director), so I can't answer that argument.

I don't think it is a memorable film though. But it was alright for what it was. Julia Roberts does have charm.

LEGEND OF THE FIST: THE RETURN OF CHEN ZHEN

The first ten minutes? Eye-poppingly brilliant. Like, wow – portraying Chinese labour in he French army fighting German soldiers in WWI (not Nazi, not in power yet), with an intense and furious fight sequence. Unfortunately, the rest of the film sucks. And such squandered talents: Donnie Yen is in peak physical form, Shu Qi is alluring as ever, amazing set and costume designs (for HK cinema, especially). And what's with the dubbing? Can't they stick to Mandarin? Seriously! Anyway, I don't know what happened to director Andrew Lau, but the film's pacing just veered off course after the European prologue. The climax was anticlimactic.

CHARLIE ST. CLOUD

I liked the original title better: The Death And Life Of Charlie St. Cloud. Zac Efron is gearing up to be the next Leonardo DiCaprio; I don't mean he is purposefully aiming to become him, what I mean is that Efron is trying his best to shun the pretty-boy reputation and take on more adult and more challenging roles. Gradually. Not wise to plunge into a completely dark role, and this one is just far enough removed from that HSM stuff but yet could still engage his girly fanbase. Except that that backfired, and this film didn't do well in the box office.

Anyway, I thought the story was not bad, and Efron and other young, much lesser known actors Amanda Crew and Charlie Tahan all sunk into their role without messing up. The only false moment I felt in the movie was that the girl accepts the weird guy's words too easily at the very end. But okaylah.

DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME

This would have been such an awesome story, a murder mystery set in the time of Wu Ze Tian (!!!) and containing fantastical and interesting plot elements that are truly bizarre ... if only it wasn't directed by Tsui Hark. I promised myself I wouldn't watch another of his films after Seven Swords ... but I only realised this was his when I sat down in the cinema. And what is with Malaysian cinema distributors and always getting the Cantonese version of Mandarin-spoken films?!?! Can they go shoot themselves now?! It was SERIOUSLY annoying to see their mouths moving differently. Carina Lau's regal performance especially suffers. Potentially a very good film that is totally ruined.

THE SWITCH

I can relate to the Jason Bateman character. Not his neuroticism, but the way he is seen and treated by his friend, played by Jennifer Aniston, for that is how many of my friends (particularly my uni friends) see and treat me, i.e. with much exasperation. Indeed, Jason Bateman's character and I often wonder why our friends continue to be friends.

The film itself is a charming enough dramedy. I don't know why people are disparaging Aniston so much nowadays. Sure she makes bad film choices, and all her roles are basically the same – but when it works, as it does here, it works. Why complain? Jason Bateman deserves a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical. Worth watching.

LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE

I heard so much about how the visuals are breathtaking and the story's not so good. The visuals are breathtaking. But the story doesn't suck! It's actually not bad. Though somehow, owls just aren't endearing enough, unlike penguins. Chalk this as a watch-once-only – but also a must-watch.

By the way again ... WHICH STINKING GENIUS FOUND A WAY TO INSERT SUBTITLES INTO 3D MOVIES?! IT'S FREAKING ANNOYING, STOP IT!

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

I never saw the first movie, just read the script, so I have a vague recollection of the story. But I guess it doesn't matter all that much, for there are enough clues to fill you in on what you need to know coming into this one, and there isn't much that you need to know anyway. The movie mostly focuses on Shia LaBeouf's career and domestic troubles and how those intertwine, and there's more of the latter than you would expect in a movie about Wall Street. LaBeouf plays the role very earnestly and does actually cement his abilities as a dramatic actor. Michael Douglas proves that he is still an effective actor, exuding charm and making you believe it. And then there's lovely Carey Mulligan, her performance convincing you of her character's conviction even if you wished she was not like that. Frank Langella is brilliant as ever. Cameos by Oliver Stone and Charlie Sheen are completely pointless – could have done more with those, instead of using up running time. Ultimately not a very exciting film. Just okay.

Namewee Arrest Incident; Chinese Chauvinists Should Go Back To Where They Come From ... Which Is Nowhere

2010-08-31T09:54:00.002+08:00

So there were the incidents with the Malay principals. And then there was the video that Namewee posted as a form of protest. Then there was the sudden announcement on Namewee's Facebook page that three police cars were in front of his house. So far, so expected.

Then people started leaving comments on Namewee's Facebook page ...

I don't want to talk about the principals here – we've all condemned their actions, that's easy. I don't want to comment much about Namewee's video beyond saying that it's daring and it's sufficiently angry, but since its profanity is designed to insult and provoke I really don't think that it is helpful. If it had been funny (and we all know Namewee can do funny) it would've been more effective in shaming the culprits and the government's non-action.

And here I'm not going to say much on how the extremist Malays like Perkasa and the most extreme wing of UMNO-lites are beginning to sound like the Nazi Party in the 1930s. Nor am I going to comment on the Malay commenters on Namewee's Facebook page who resorted to equally abusive verbal attacks about the Chinese using generalisations.

For this time, the target are the Chinese chauvinists.

I don't know about you, but personally, even if we removed every single Malay extremists from this land ... how the fuck can you bear living with this bunch of useless, inconsiderate, self-centered, uneducated, fuckwit losers? I mean, seriously, you think the country has a shot at progressing with these people around?

To be fair, it's not just the Chinese ...

Aaron Xavier de Souza Malay curi almost everything. Ang pow, fireworks, kari, roti canai, teh tarik, nyonya kueh, tanah... even d rosary we put on our rear view mirror in d car dey copy it wid tasbih. church got bell mosque put loudspeaker, chinese burn colok malay burn kemenyan... Can kahwin 4, if other race kahwin 2 only terus kena slapped wid polygamy. Nothing is original bout malay. When dey jealous of u dey kena u wid santau.

Aaron Xavier de Souza Behind every man there is a woman. Behind every Malay there is a Chinese.

Oh really? This guy has serious jealousy issues ...

And then there are dozens upon dozens of facepalmingly inane comments such as below, throwing the word 'babi' around like monkeys throwing shit at each other:

Soon Tan ehhh,si melayu ni.....geli sangat laa.......kurang siuman.......seperti.....anjing saya laaa......sudah lewat mlm....masih bising........belanjau makan tulang babi mau kah???jng lupa.////babi is ur malay god o/////////'

Soon Tan malay.....selamat.mlm.....semoga tak serdahhhhhhhhhh........fuck....shit.....and wat??????jungle pig bless u all......

Soon Tan malayu sam.....u makan babi i anggap u setia laa.....babi punya buntut u boleh tahan kaaaa...

Kelvin Chong memang ramai cina kaya dari melayu la....tahu apa??
kerana kamu semua itu malayu babi malas macam babi!!!
babi kecil kecil...tapi suka makan lembu....sohai punya babi!!!

Sam Ho Hy Malay Cibai o0o babi la. National day need work? Fuck them la. Puasa so what maCibai babi o0o la. Tnb no need work uh? Lanciao eh. Tnb nah lanciao lanciao o0o it. Without pro chinese in this country. Malaysia equal to lanciao noob lapsap country. What they know? Lazy? Eat? Sleep? Diu la o0o o0o Fucking just know fuck born more and more babi . Lanciao o0o useless.

Bryan Soon Cb malays got use in m'sia?useless babi..allah teach malays to be rasicm?fuck it!!malays shud shut the fuck up and diam diam sit as a dog..or eat..jz like babi..babi malays..

Really, this idiot actually thinks that all Malays are useless? And the fucker had the temerity to suggest that their religion taught them to be racist?

Here's the thing, when you read of this Chinese idiot telling the Malay race to "shut the fuck up and diam diam sit as a dog", do you feel angry? Because I do.

豪呔子音乐是一种力量，死也是，如果我们华人全部都不怕死，就没有人敢欺负我们华人。华人就是因为百多年来的退缩，妥协，才被人们说成是寄居者，没半点尊严！如果你现在不站出来说清楚，就是承认那些事没发生过。。。（几年之后，马来终于发动全面侵华，展开惨无人道的排华。黄明志的牺牲虽然阻止不到日后马来侵华的历史事实，但他用自己的音乐，唤醒了沉睡了百年的华人，正如首相所说，一个黄明志并不可怕，怕的是千千万万个黄明志。）此留言献给一代武打巨星-李小龙

This guy actually thinks that the Chinese should stand up and fight to the death because the Chinese are bullied. Well he can go ahead. It's this kind of unimaginative mindset that thinks the world operates on an either-or, black-or-white basis. If you know how to read Mandarin, you might be impressed by how eloquently he expresses himself in the language. But it's nonsense, crap. He's effectively saying that he expects in the future the Malays will totally "singkirkan" the Chinese from the country, because we have been so compliant for so long. Well I don't think we have been compliant. He ends the whole thing by dedicating this to Bruce Lee. WTF?

Daniel Tpwoon all de malays didn't really know where they actually came from...their grand god father and mother and all de moyang-moyang's is came from indonesia...if they asked cina balik china then ask them balik indonesia la...

All the Malays don't know where they come from ...?

Marx Chong it is wasted when the chinese and indians join the malays for the merdeka...those malays need us when we needed,but now...they talk this kind of bullshit to us..for those malays remember that its u all need us...we dont need u even..raja shah!! we tumpang ur TANAH MELAYU we also can monopoly ur malaysia..what if malaysia is ours..u are a dead fish beside the street ok!! take a look at singapore..see those malays?!! they looks like anjing berkurap there!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....fuck us la come on!!!

Look, get this straight: it's not that the Malays need us or we need them, you peabrained imbecile, it's that the integration of our cultures creates a more potent mix, creating synergy, making us stronger, more broad-minded, etc. Why the fuck would you want to "monopoly Malaysia"? These Chinese people have got to stop thinking that the point is to take over the country so that they can do what they want.

Howard Sii Danvers sembayang 5 sekali sehari tetapi mulut busuk macam najis, apa boleh buat, Allah tak sucikan mulutnya yang busuk dan nafsunya yang hari-hari xxx dan buang bayi di merata-rata tempat. Cari Puan hajah Siti malam2, dia akan layan kamu. hahahahahaha.......

1 person

Okay now this is just wrong. These people went from attacking the principals' actions (which is just) to attacking the entire race (which is unjust) to attacking their religion (which is sheer folly). And the person who 'liked' it should be shot.

We need more people like ...

C Wong 王靖严

If you hate that racist headteacher just voice out, but please be civil. dont bash her because of her race, how about guys like Mohd Naser & a few other malay guys who supported Namewee here? They are on our side, so pls dont offend them.

Brandon Ngoh

is sad to see that the malays and chinese are fighting over a war of words in this page...can you guys just stop this childish act, if we want to put a stop to racism,we should stop this bickering as well. Aren't we not different from thosepoliticians if we were to condemn their actions and thoughts?

Sim Zee Ang i believe most malays are not like that.. namewee mentioned that he has good malay friends.. i also had good malay friends.. and i believe most of us had also good malay friends.. its only part of them who are saying bad about the chinese race.. if we are saying bad about the malay race, we are no difference with them.. unity has brought come malaysia in 1957 and then 1963.. lets hope it returns soon to bring back the malaysia we all studied in history..

Mohd Naser i have a chinese frens..always helping me with my works...gosh...so nice to me...first class minded...one day i want to buy him lunch,pizza hut..but still, he not let me paying all of that...because he knows...i also struggling like him...maybe our culture is different...but our heart is same...

Today, is Merdeka day.

Say it together: this day is not for those lowlifes from every ethnicity in Malaysia who are not prepared to share, to celebrate differences, to forgive, to love, to accept, to accommodate, to laugh with, to work alongside with ... to live next to.

Those lowlifes are the enemy.

Not the other race.

"WHO HAS CLAIM? NO ONE HAS CLAIM.

ALL HAVE CLAIM!"

Balian of Ibelin, Kingdom Of Heaven

Here's A Filmic Storytelling Conundrum ...

2010-08-12T00:22:00.001+08:00

Richard Matheson wrote a short story that was later adapted into Richard Kelly's film The Box. In the film, there is a middle-class husband and wife who find themselves in need of money, who are one day visited by a disfigured man who makes them an unusual offer: he gives them an anonymous-looking box with nothing more but a button on it, and gives them 24 hours to decide whether they want to press the button, at which point they inherit $1 million when they return the box, but someone they don't know will die at the very moment the button is pressed; or they don't press the button, nothing happens, and the man simply collects the box at the deadline. After much deliberation, the wife presses the button. The disfigured man reappears, collects the box, gives them their money and takes off. Just before he leaves, the wife asks him where the box is going to. "Someone else you don't know," he answers.

Well, now that you get a sense of his style, read the following comment about another story that Matheson wrote:

I can't help but wonder what a modern-day filmmaker could do with the Matheson short story "The Distributor." In the story, a guy moves into a neighborhood, commits a lot of strange actions that only increase tensions between people already living there, and then...

He moves.

The question is this. That right there is an effective story, despite its short length, because the punchline is so, well, effective. It couldn't fail to elicit a response from the audience/reader. You will almost certainly feel a certain feeling which is very specific and precise, and difficult for me to articulate accurately; that feeling is not dissimilar (but not identical either) to the ending in Christopher Nolan's Inception. And it works in this written form because of its simplicity. Dot dot dot, "he moves". Genius.

Now, how do you create the same thing on film?

What kind of ending scene would elicit the exact same emotional response in the audience? What do you need to do with editing and cinematography, and music (or no music)? Or do you simply give up by using the excuse "but the written form and the cinematic form are different"?

Hmm. Have a think.