dandruff
Eternal bad hair days.
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September 2003
September 30, 2003
So ...
... which of you dear people added me to the
BlogsCanada directory, but didn't tell me about it, hmm? :)
Posted by sniffles at 11:50 AM
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September 29, 2003
Temporary arrangements
Early in the morning, the wind was ghastly cold and the unrelenting rain which hit the asphalt seemed to land in waves, making the roads looked like textured mirrors. Standing on the street corner waiting for the bus, my jeans were beginning to get uncomfortably wet. The cafe behind me was still closed — being much too early — though a few dim lights were on. Waiters preparing for the day, I guessed.
I was counting taxis as they passed, wondering how many I should let go before I should give up waiting, when suddenly the door of the cafe opened and one of the waiters stepped out. He made a face at the weather, and I recognised him as the soft-spoken guy who'd served me some Sunday breakfasts ago, where on one occasion, I'd written down the author and the title of the book I was reading for him on a convenient piece of napkin.
To my surprise, he headed straight towards me. "Here, have some green tea," he said, and pulled out from nowhere a polystyrene cup with an ill-fitting lid and a dangling green tag on the side. Shoving it into my hand, barely giving me time to say thanks, he disappeared back inside.
I stared at the expectant white cup in my hand, grappling the umbrella with the other, as if it were magic. I tried to look for the waiter through muddy reflections of the cafe's windows, if only to be able to flash a smile of thanks, but saw nothing and no one. In my hand, the cup felt warm. At that moment, it was as if the contents it willingly carried returned everything that had been taken from me.
Posted by sniffles at 01:08 AM
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September 28, 2003
Featured
When
Dan said yesterday, "Hey! You appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald!", I thought "Uh-oh, this is another blog thing, right?"
And so it was, a listing of
"World's Best Blogs". It's all very flattering and everything — wow, I'm on the same page as
Slashdot,
BoingBoing and
Kuro5hin — but believe me, I'm trying terribly hard to contain my cynicism here. It's been over a year since I
was mentioned in The Melbourne Age, so isn't it about time that journalists find something else to write about about from blogs? Blogs like mine are such stale news already :)
And not meaning to be the least ungrateful, of course, but shouldn't the World's Best Blogs contain blogs in languages other than English too? I'm sorry to have to say that the article is a little out of date — I've taken the
Morning Paper off because I just couldn't get back in the swing of things after all the inconveniences that have happened to me in recent months. However, I might just revive it one of these days, when it feels right again.
Thank you all for the kind messages about my (now gone) PowerBook. I suppose I've been lucky for a good part of my life and it's all slapping back at me right now, or something :)
Posted by sniffles at 11:33 PM
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September 27, 2003
Lost in non-translation
There exists a conspiracy, I'm sure, that serves to repeatedly disrupt my already sketchy relationship with the blogosphere. I haven't blogged for a week because I really didn't want to have to say that someone stole my PowerBook (the very one that took forever to fix) and that it makes me feel like I'd lost half my brain. But that they did, and did so by breaking into my apartment through my balcony window — and if you know where I live, you'll know how unlikely and improbable this is.
Anyway, life goes on and I wasn't feeling like writing anything until the discussion with Patrick last night about the much-celebrated "Lost in Translation", which he liked very much. My reaction, on the other hand, was probably more around lukewarm. For me, whether it was brilliant or not depended on Sofia Coppola's intentions. Given the long-standing love affair between North America and Japan, a film set in Tokyo is set to draw crowds from the word "go". In the words of Peter Brunette over at Indiewire:
In the hands of a more experienced director, this confrontation with a very foreign culture could have been a chance for some deep thinking about American naivete and innocence, but Coppola seems to be as much at sea in this foreign land as her characters.
Even worse, she loads the dice. She knows who her audience is, and knows that this audience will find a lot to identify with in Charlotte's lost, dissatisfied philosophy major. The bad people in the film, whom her audience will be predisposed to dislike, are her husband John (a shamefully wasted Giovanni Ribisi), an ambitious photographer who is neglectful of his gorgeous, sensitive wife in the most facile, clichéd ways, and, especially, a starlet named Kelly (Anna Faris) who is all southern California airhead bimbo and nothing else. It is a well-known fact that all us indie film folk prefer philosophy majors (especially from Yale) to airhead bimbos.
For me, this film was much too comfortable, and did not push the boundaries which were very obviously there — not only the confrontation with the sheer overwhelming atmosphere of Tokyo (which is not the same as Japan!), but also social status quo. "Does marriage get easier?" Charlotte had asked the night they didn't sleep together. And Bob goes on to talk about the joy of having kids. I'm sorry, but kids and marriage are different issues.
I think in the end, I'd class "Lost in Translation" the same way I did "Amelie" — highly polished films that are put together to please their audiences, shallow shells of appeal, but hardly more than that. The photography in "Lost in Translation" isn't particularly special either, though the one thing I did like a lot was the music.
Ahh, and Ginza isn't Tokyo. I appreciate that Coppola might be intentionally trying to present a shallow experience of Tokyo, but I don't think it really meant that her characters needed to be shallow too.
Posted by sniffles at 01:57 PM
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September 19, 2003
Avast!
It's
Talk Like A Pirate Day today! Arrrrr!
Posted by sniffles at 09:02 AM
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September 18, 2003
Kissing
Fresh Antipasto:
Coffee Ballad #2.
Posted by sniffles at 10:05 PM
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The myth of the curry
I don't remember exactly when, or how, but I'd argued with a couple of Brits on separate occasions about the origin of the curry — they believed the English invented it, I thought that was just plain ridiculous. Pity I don't remember the discussions having progressed, because all of us could have been somewhat right. Perhaps, the English did in a sense invent the curry — they invented the name, but of course, not the cuisine — at least, according to
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
Curries didn't exist until the British decided to invent them. On arriving in India and sticking their flags in the ground, the British decided to investigate the local cuisine, and on discovering that the Indians had far more dishes and culinary skill than the entire United Kingdom, the British decided to hide this fact by calling every dish ever created by an Indian "curry". In this way the Victorians could perpetrate the myth that the Indians weren't as cultured as they were because they only had one national meal, the curry, where the British had two, namely roast beef and fish 'n' chips.
Now that is quite a likely story, frills aside. However, the Brits did invent curry powder:
Curry powder is a British invention to imitate the flavour of Indian cooking with minimal effort.
Hehehe. Check out The Curry House FAQ too.
Posted by sniffles at 07:44 PM
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September 17, 2003
Morning
Autumn is almost here — the light is changing, it is just that little bit chillier in the morning when I set foot into the street. The trees know it too, they aren't fooled by the humidity. The writing voice inside my head has been silent for days now. It's funny how the more self-absorbed I feel, the less I am inclined to talk about myself.
Today, I walk on the other side of the road. For months, I virtually took the same way to work, crossing at the same lights, taking the same turns, the same side of the junction. These days, I randomly decide which side of the road to take. Sometimes, I meet the creaky old Asian man with a brown hat. He doesn't appear to be able to move around very well, taking very small steps very slowly with the aid of his wooden walking stick. He would smile at me in a most conspiratorial way without actually turning his head so that it would look like he is secretly smiling to me from just one side of his face. And there was a time when I would run into this woman who stops to look at the books in the window of the bookstore every morning, just like me. She would exclaim something over a classic, going "Oh my!" over titles she hasn't yet read. She'd laughed when I told her I make a point of walking on the other side of the street in the afternoon when the bookstore is open so that I wouldn't be tempted to buy more books.
I make it to work on time — just. I'd have to learn to leave earlier when it begins to snow.
The
technoLAHgist asks me: "What do you usually have for breakfast?"
I reply, "Changes from time to time. Lately it's two slices of bread. What about you?"
"I had bread as well this morning, just looking at other examples haha ..."
"What do you have with bread?"
"Just butter and blueberry jam," he confesses.
I'd been addicted to peanut butter recently, but I haven't told him that. Oh, and vegemite ...
Posted by sniffles at 10:01 AM
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September 16, 2003
Door to love
Marmalade’s from Scotland, Rugs from Pakistan
Mexico has jumping beans and cars are from Japan
Clowns are from the circus, barking comes from dogs
Eggs come from a chicken and log cabins come from logs
But where…?
Where do they make balloons?
-- "Where Do They Make Balloons", They Might Be Giants.
It seems to be the season for coincidence. Karl has taken a photo of this same door, as did Aaron.
Posted by sniffles at 01:38 PM
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September 12, 2003
The kiosk
Chris told me that someone burned down the beautiful old kiosk on the St Kilda Pier. I think I have only been to that end of the Pier once (I don't seem to have a photo of it). It's a popular spot so I tend to avoid it, preferring the smaller jetty to the side. The Herald Sun reports that it will be rebuilt, at least.
Sad though :/
Posted by sniffles at 09:43 AM
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September 11, 2003
The Big Long Film Report (part 2)
I know this entry is kinda overdue, but my life is a bit upside-down lately, so here it is — late. :)
Last Saturday we'd walked from Côte-des-Neiges back downtown via Westmount, a little charred by the sun whilst admiring the view and being flabbergasted by the size of the houses there. The odd thing is, you can get used to looking at big houses after a while. I slept two thirds of Sunday — I guess I needed it.
In short, we kept away from cinemas, eventhough the festival didn't end until Sunday. I saw 5 more films between the last film report and the end of Friday. These are:
"The Legend of the Sky Kingdom" was by all means an excellent animation, although the video quality was a bit poor and I'm not expert enough in the medium to know why. Visually very creative, good music, but ... the Christian undertone was much too obvious. Why bother to use the name "Ariel" when "Jesus" would have sufficed? "The road to the Sky Kingdom is a person"? Kinda a bit clumsy. "Valley of Death"? That's straight out of Psalm 23. I came out of the cinema thinking about its similarity to "The Pilgrim's Progress" (which I haven't read in its entirety, but have read Enid Blyton's retelling of the story many moons ago). Eventhough the art work was great, I think it lacked solid originality in its treatment of the subject.
"Mosku" is ... somewhat long-winded. It is a big long saga that doesn't want to end, but it was interesting to see the portrayal of the particular life style of Finnish reindeer farmers of the time.
"Les Marins Perdus" features one of the last screen appearances of Marie Trintignant. A film that attempts to suffocate you, but not quite stifling enough for my liking. Some brilliant photography, but it was the music that had more of my attention, having been co-written by Gabriel Yared, who also wrote for "City of Angels" (the re-make with Nicolas Cage).
Now, I am not a home movie fan. I'm hopeless at sitting in front of the TV for any length of time unless I get suitably psyched up before hand, or unless I'd randomly flicked on the TV and something good was on. My lack of TV-watching habit probably came from too many years being deprived control of the TV remote, hence at some point, I must have given up completely. :) So ... for me to say that I'd get something on DVD — meaning that I have the intention to watch it again at home — it really says something about how much I liked the movie. Currently, I own a grand total of one DVD ("Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise") which was a gift; there are five others which I would consider owning, two of which I saw at the end of this film festival.
"Man Watching Video" was originally called "Rewind", but the title was apparently changed because it would have made little sense to the majority of Koreans. It has the most beautiful opening sequence I'd seen in any film recently, a delicate story line littered with small, seemingly unconnected and insignificant events, which duly reminded me of Haruki Murakami's novels. The hunt begins for the book upon which this film was based. After watching "Mosku" on the Friday, we spotted the movie director of this film in the cinema foyer and were able to ask him to write down the name of the author. However, I suspect that the book by Lim Young-tae has not been translated into English.
From Singapore came "15", a maddening but brilliant portrayal of Singaporean "pai-kia" (bad boys), teenagers who are part of gangs and their struggle with existence within a sterile, suffocating society. The treament of language in the dialogues and songs (yes! songs!) blew me away — the same which was lacking in the Malaysian "You Fang Chu Zu". This is the true tongue of South East Asians of this region — the mixing of dialects and languages. Somewhat surrealist at times, and often difficult to watch, this movie is surprisingly moving. And funnily enough, most of the swearing was in Hokkien rather than Mandarin Chinese. It was a good film to end this festival on. :)
(Incidentally, all the characters within the picture accompaning this entry took a photo each: see here, and here.)
Posted by sniffles at 10:10 PM
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September 09, 2003
She sells seashells
Fresh Antipasto: Coffee Ballad #1.
Posted by sniffles at 11:10 PM
| Comments (2)
September 04, 2003
The Big Long Film Report (part 1)
The Montreal World Film Festival has had me haunting the cinemas for the past week. Films seen to date (recommended films marked with *):
The short film "Roundabout" by Australian actor-turned-director Rachel Griffiths has simply the most effective and ingenious use of sound I have ever encountered in a film of any length. I enjoyed "Martha's New Coat", even if the story is not unusual — the story of a teenage girl looking for her father had been given the most sensitive treatment with excellent music and photography. Maybe I am biased, but there is something about the rhythm of Australian films that I love (by that I mean films written and made by Australians, not films coming out of the Warner Brothers studios in Sydney).
Dealing with existence in the most subtle way possible, "Bokunchi" is a delicate poem from beginning to end. Like other films from the region, it carries deep-set symbolism and unspoken ideas.
"You Fang Chu Zu" (I don't care how they spell the first word in the program, it's wrong) is a film shot without apparent extra lighting or any kind of tampering with the original scene. This is not one for those who can't handle having time stretched in a film; it requires certain amount of patience ;) Very subtle and delicate humour, good photography, with almost no music throughout the entire film. My only criticism is the level of Chinese that has been used in the script — it seemed to me to be too elegant, too sophisticated, too clean to be conceivably used your average Malaysian-Chinese in a real dialogue. I am apt to believe that most Malaysian-Chinese don't speak like that unless they've spent 13 years in a Chinese-medium school. Afterwards, I asked two middle-aged Malaysian men what they thought about the film — not surprisingly to me, they found it too "arty". One said, "And we don't smoke that much!" Still, I'm happy to see a film of this kind from Malaysia make the film festival here.
Now, a word about bad films. The two films from China, "The Story of Lotus" and "When Ruoma Was Seventeen" (Ruoma de shi qi sui) I found deplorable. Unfortunately films like these win audience because of the very beautiful photography — but hey, China is a beautiful country. Bad acting (the actresses are too cutesy and don't know how to cry), bad stories (completely lacking in real body), terrible music but ... breathtaking images. Here we might be seeing a new kind of tourist propaganda — selling China to potential tourists through bad films with beautiful photography. What bugs me is that people fall for it (like the woman sitting next to me in the cinema) without truly making an effort to see past the surface and learn to understand the culture.
"Three Days of Rain" is interesting, but by no means original in terms of the execution of its storyline. The word 'souffle' comes to mind. It is light, yet addresses some very true and dark issues within our society, contrasting between the "haves" and "have-nots", the fortunate and the under-priviledged.
I saw "The Man Who Wipes Mirrors" last night and loved it for its simplicity and poetry but I think half the cinema didn't share my sentiments. Nevertheless, it is an elegant film, sometimes feeling a little long but I wouldn't know how to shorten it. :)
"The Delicate Art of Parking" probably ranks as the best film I have seen so far this festival. A sensitive humorous "documentary" into the lives of parking enforcers.
So there you go ... I think you'll understand why I haven't been blogging much these days. ;)
Posted by sniffles at 11:37 AM
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