Up (2009)
Director: Pete Docter

By now, we have everyone raving about it, so I shall just skip to the parts that really moved me, beside that 10 minute tear-jerking prelude, which I’d consider a major (animation) feat.

The hoisting of the rickety house by the 20,000 coloured balloons is a powerful surreal image (even in animation) that will remain fresh in our minds for years to come. It is at once the beginning of an adventure: a bold far-fetched imagination only feasible in the minds of children, a kind of other-world that is to be lost with coming-of-age and worldliness and an alternate universe irreconcilable with real life, rejection of conventions, grounded logic and norms.

It is also a timely reminder of the monsters that exist in our world, swallowing cultural heritage and memories of the past.

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Architecture nerdery alert: I’ve started 2 new tumblelogs (and thinking of 2 others) as a collection of architecture / urbanism representational drawings I find in my daily web stumbles - axo and parti diagrams. Sure, I could just combine them all into one location, but then with the convenience of creating multiple tumblelogs in Tumblr and being a purist, why not?

Parti diagrams. I’ve been deeply fascinated with it since being introduced the term (The portfolio and the diagram by Hyungmin Pai provides a good definition of the term. See Google books preview here.) and concept in Architecture school. It’s a brilliant answer to: how does one start to design something as complex (and complicated) as a building? All one needs is a pencil and a sketchbook.

For me, a parti diagram is always the best way to devise the big idea, drawing relations (spatial, cultural, what have you) in an abstract 2-dimensional representation that could inspire further through its inherent loose multiple readings. Not to mention it’s easy to fall in love with your own abstract doodles.

Axo. A 2-dimensional representation of a 3-dimensional object (wiki). Perspectives do that too but they can be (and are often) deceiving. I love especially exploded axonometric drawings, like an instructional diagram to show you exactly how to piece a building together you’d a toy model.

Of course, you don’t get these as often you like as say, wiggly 3-D photos. Therefore, these tumblelogs are low-volume and low-frequency that will be pretty to look at, one day.

Rak haeng Siam (2007)
Director: Chukiat Sakveerakul

“If we can love someone so much how will we be able to handle it the one day when we are separated? […] Is it possible […] that we can love someone and never be afraid of losing them? […] Is it possible that we can live our entire life without loving anyone at all?”

I had my misgivings about watching Love of Siam. A Thai film that deals with teenager homosexuality? Two cringey predecessors come to mind: the horrible Taiwanese formulaic (sic) Formula 17 and horrible horrible sensationalism-over-actual story Bangkok Love Story.

Fortunately for Love of Siam, it suffers neither the happily-ever-after fairy-tale of the former nor the excessive melodramatic histronics of the latter. Instead, it’s grounded on believable everyday realities, without exploitation of the controversial subject matter.

Homosexuality forms merely part of the thread of the everyday struggles this film tries to weave. The universal theme that echoed through the 3 hour long film (that didn’t feel a minute too long) is loss/separation from loved ones and the long self-healing from it. The myriad characters deal with loss each in their own way: for some a helpless reluctant acceptance, others self-defeating escapism.

The eventual coming to terms with loss, melancholic as it may be, moved me to tears. It has been a long while a film did, and any that does so deserves a full 5 star rating from me. The superb soundtrack by in-film fictional band August helped too.

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Narayama bushiko (1958)
Director: Keisuke Kinoshita

In a food-scarce village with falling annual rice harvest, reinforced by local customaries and extreme poverties, the elderly beyond the age of 70 must make his/her way up to the peaks of Mount Narayama (with the aid of a family member), where he/she would await death in a make-believe ‘paradise’. It’s taboo for one to possess a good set of teeth at old age or to live to see one’s great-grandchildren, as this signifies good health and longevity, meaning there’d be less food to go around.

This is a touching, deeply humane tale of one such elder who, despite her often unreciprocated kindness for the people around her, would be making such an inevitable self-sacrificial journey. The eventual cruel passage is nothing short of heart-wrenching, the reluctant son torn between piety and social obligation.

One day, Yuan Gu’s father and mother decided that his grandfather was too old to be useful, so they decided to get rid of him. Yuan followed his father, who used a litter to carry his grandfather to the mountains. After the father abandoned the old man, Yuan grabbed the litter and brought it home. When his father asked him why, he replied, “Perhaps later you too would become too old and will not be able to work again. Merely in order to do the right thing, I have retrieved it.” Terrified and ashamed, his father realised the error of his ways, retrieved the old man, and treated him in a filial manner.

This common Chinese cautionary tale of filial piety we were told as children immediately came to mind as I was viewing the film. Of course, the similarities between the two stops at the act of abandonment - the piety as illustrated in the Chinese tale is an insincere guarding of self-interest, of a “do unto others what you’d others unto you”, or a fear of retribution/karma.

The Ballad of Narayama, on the other hand, is closer to Ozu Yasujiro’s inevitable passage of time and one’s helplessness against it. Despite our unspoken reluctance, things will come to pass and to an end.

I am a stranger to Japanese kabuki theatre but the theatrical treatment in the film brilliantly conveyed the swift change in moods and passage of time, through masterful and fluid control of lighting and change of stage sets, like you’d an actual play. Despite the obviousness in the stage set-ups, the mise-en-scene is gorgeously and lushly adorned and richly detailed, blurring the real and the fake, film and theatre.

This is highly impressive considering this is way pre-CGI. Almost like what one could imagine if Moulin Rouge was to be made in the mid of last century.

I can’t wait to see the 1983 remake by Shohei Imamura, also a Cannes Palme d’Or winner.

Masterpiece.

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Ssang-hwa-jeom (2008)
Director: Ha Yu

Predictability, an undercooked background subplot and excessive sex of all positions and across genders muddle this otherwise provocative piece on the grey areas between love, lust and obligation. Quite obviously all out to cause a stir (all pun intended) in its audiences not just in the film’s graphic sexual sequences but also brazenly and openly addressing taboo subject matters (like homosexuality) and of a certain uncomfortable-to-watch dismembering.

What’s also memorable and well handled are the shifting tensions (physical, sexual and what not) within the doomed-from-start love triangle (the King - the bodyguard - the Queen). Regardless of which side of the triangle you feel for, it’s equally tragic and the film’s inevitable tumbling towards a clichéd ending made everyone a victim in his/her own way.

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Just finished the wafer-thin novella, The Lemur by Benjamin Black and for a while couldn’t believe this limp suspense coming from the same person who authored the Man Booker winner The Sea (one of my favourite reads). Well even if this is under a different pen name.

I’d admit I was more seduced by its cover - a somewhat poetic mugshot of a man masked by a cloud of smoke, presumably cigarette smoke. Never judge a book by its cover hasn’t been more true - the barely-there run-of-the-mill plot is as thin as the number of pages (132) could offer, the unlikeable characters flat as the book. Despite the skimpiness, the story proceeds at turtle pace and all the frustratingly slow build-up culminates in a whimper.

The novella suffers from the limitations from its original format - a New York Times Magazine’s serialization (you can read it online!). And undoubtedly, it worked better in that format or better still, like what the NYT Mag’s illustrations suggest, a graphic novel. But as a full fledged novel, disappointing.

Last month, having needed a long overdue break and further egged on by cheap airfare from Tiger Airways, I made an impromptu decision to visit Hainan - the Southern most territory of China and geographically next to Vietnam, as tropical as Southeast Asia.

We spent some 9 days covering Qionghai, beach destination Sanya and capital city Haikou. There isn’t exactly a lot to do in Hainan and 9 days indeed proved to be a tad too long, so by day 5 or so I was already getting bored. The itinerary could have been easily under 4 days, 3 days in Sanya and a day in Haikou, skipping Qionghai altogether.

Sanya is what I believed to be the main reason people visit this island. Although lined with seemingly endless stretches of beaches - some pristine, others not so - it is an atypical choice for a beach destination. Most people would be flocking towards Tioman, Pattaya and the likes, where the water is much clearer.

Sanya is potentially headed towards either a beach paradise or a kitschy tourist trap, and it hasn’t decided which. The southern coast is prime real estate, where endless private developments and hotels sprout sporadically fronting its own quiet stretch of beach, effectively rendering it almost private. The masses would be seen elsewhere at Dadonghai beach.

Haikou is only mention-worth of its vibrant shopping street that is Jiefangxilu, and more so nearby, some supposedly ‘century-old’ labyrinthine wet and filthy streets with hawkers selling all sorts of animals for food, from chickens to turtles, quails to even domestic cats - still alive in their cramped and unhygienic cages. An exhilarating living museum to just walk through, this is.

The air reeks of decadence, where its hedonistic youths - especially the sun-baked and weathered males - are often seen idling the streets without a shirt from dawn till past midnight.

See my Flickr photoset here.

Here (2009)
Director: Ho Tzu Nyen

It’s a friday night and we’re sitting in Picturehouse screening a limited 4-day run of Here, a Singaporean film that competed for the Caméra d’Or at Cannes Film Festival 2009. The already-small-to-begin-with cinema is less than half-filled, of which more than half of those filled squealed sporadically with much delight throughout the film - tell-tale signs of film extras (or related) watching themselves.

That is the amount of reception Singaporeans have for our local ‘breakthrough’ works outside the domains of Jack Neo and Royston Tan. For the benefit for our less-than-discerning nation, whom we’ve known rather blast their eardrums at Transformers next door, it’d be better to remain outside the door. Here’s lack of a logical sequence and abstractness will be too much for most to stomach. My viewing partner was brimming of frustration towards the end of the 86 minutes.

For many years now, we have seen many local films struggle with the Singaporean context, repressed Singaporeans being a commonality, almost a cliché. Here, however, is largely context-less. Set in a fictitious hospital, the entire set-up and rehearsed acting - meticulously orchestrated right down to matching colours for aesthetic effects - reeks of artificiality.

That said, the location at which the film was shot, of which Google searches only reveal to be a “former mental hospital” (Woodbridge?), is an arresting archive of our abandoned spaces, which will prove to be valuable in time when the defunct building goes under the wrecking ball.

It is not hard to see where the director is coming from, given his background in visual arts. The film, an investigation of the human mind through acceptable social norms, is at many junctures more a work of visual art with sounds than an art film.

There are many pretty (as in beautiful) long takes, such as that of leaves waving gently in the wind against the blue sky, in a desaturated film stock and accompanied by a disconnected soundtrack of random sounds to conjure different moods and feels, depending on the viewer. Almost like the disconnection between what the eye sees and the random soundtrack the mind conjures at any point in time, depending on the recent playlist on one’s iPod.

These longs takes, unlike those made famous by Tsai Ming Liang - wildly copied and thus diluted for effect, are more poetic quiet contemplations than prolonged frustrations.

The film is laudable for the amount of control over how it looks, despite coming across as unnatural. It’s a very pretty picture to see, and not without depths for further discussions and explorations of themes - like can you undo a ‘wrong’ by conditioning to think the otherwise?

At the same time, I would also like to see how the director moves from a minimalistic and very clean Here to the dirty reality, one more contemporary of our times. Besides, we only have that many isolated and disused locations.

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Kurutta kajitsu (1956)
Director: Kô Nakahira

A refreshing classic Japanese post-war flick unlike its contemporaries, with its bold and brazen protrayal of sex and the casual attitude towards it (obviously not by today’s standards), otherwise still an untrodden territory. This film adds to a different dimension the survivors of a post-war Japan, a ‘Sun Tribe’ generation of pleasure-seekers reeking of decadence, victims whom are still subtly suffering the after-effects of war.

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Dokfa nai meuman (2000)
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

The premise is simple: Interview unsuspecting ordinary people and get them to contribute to an on-going narration of a story à la Exquisite Corpse. The story begins beautifully but gets messed up and inconclusive along the way.

But the story wasn’t the point. It was merely a means to an end, a tool to unveil the subtleties of ordinary lives. Contribution to the story, imagination of the people and the way it was delivered varied vastly as the film proceeds from people to people, noticeably a startling difference as the film crew moves from the rural to the urban.

It’s a fluid transition from documentary to drama to documentary. And this is where, despite how loose the film ended up to be, the beauty lies. And Apichatpong Weerasethakul remains my favourite Thai director.

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Mou ye chi sing (2008)
Directors: Lawrence Ah Mon, Scud

The Hong Kong’s baseball team is unheard of, let alone celebrated. City Without Baseball is loosely based on true stories provided by the team itself who are also the amateur actors - uninhibited in their virgin screen appearance and numerous full frontal nudity sequences.

Set in 2004 against the backdrop of the regional SARS pandemic and further reinforced by interludes of songs from various late contemporary singers - especially that of Leslie Cheung (a scene in the film would mirror the late artiste’s famed 2003 suicide), the film is nothing short of gloominess.

This is an atypical sports flick. There is nothing feel-good about it, but instead grapples with the everyday struggles of the team members, who are torn between relationships / internal conflicts / day jobs and their after hours passion for baseball. The largely anonymous team plays to virtually no audience, their only hope amidst the bleakness is a chance of scoring at the Asian Baseball Cup.

The film mirrors the Hong Kong society at large, having brought to its knees by the economic downturn in the late 90s and a deadly virus outbreak (this of course is repeated some 5 years later), lost momentarily in its tracks and (still) looking eargerly to move out of it.

City Without Baseball is not just about underdogs trying to make their mark, but also the everyday man, shrouded by grim realities trying to make sense of the world around him.

One of the better albeit unknown - like its subject matter - Hong Kong films of late, despite the scattered plot and a few subplots that got lost along the way.

4/5

Iluma, the new mall cum entertainment complex in the teenager Bugis district of Singapore, is designed by one of the top architectural firms here. The final product seems to be present a result of some kind of a struggle - that between cutting-edge chichi-ness and relating back to the pimple-sprouting adolescent plebeian. Tall order it seems.

It succeeds in being more of an architectural showpiece with all its stunning LED ‘crystal’ facade and the AutoCAD filleted curvy form(s) than actually engaging the shopper.

The attention to details and the brilliant choice of colour palette (shades of cool gray and bright orange) - although may not be the most suitable in this context - are gorgeous. The inside spaces, unfortunately, are not.

Its facade comes not without a sacrifice of ubiquitous full-height glass windows. It’s like a return to the closed box typology of 80s / 90s suburban malls, dark looming spaces with no / little relation to the outside.

Compensation comes in the form of vertically stretched floors and large empty spaces - a stark departure from the intimate spaces of its neighbouring Bugis Junction and Bugis Street. It starts to feel like typical Malaysian malls whose large scales are often justified by equally large land takes.

It’s more of an object to be seen / represented in a delicious 2D image than experienced.

(Photo via xcode)

Dive!! (2008)
Director: Naoto Kumazawa

Although diving (delving) a tad deeper into character development than its predecessors (like the rather similar Waterboys (2001) and the “help save our club from dissolution” Sumo Do, Sumo Don’t (1992)), it is still pretty much the typical feel-good sports flick, where everyone emerges the winner.

A few predictable hiccups come along the way (kiddy BGRs, old injuries, last minute sickness et al), then magically resolved and then a perfect 10.0 dive into a fairytale-like ending, making little splash as much as impressions.

2.5/5

By pure coincidence, my selection for the recent European Union Film Fest 2009 was a morbid one. All three films dealt with familial relationships (father-son, mother-son) and a death in each (mother, son, father).

Magnus (2007)
Director: Kadri Kõusaar

Magnus is a child victim of a broken family whose parents knew little about raising children. Since young, he’s been inculcated with morbid thoughts about his impending early death, however that never came. Disappointed with human relationships and life in general, he’s often playing mental games to decide the day he shall take his own life.

There was little to convince the audience what eventually drove the protagonist Magnus over the edge, even given his circumstances as a victim of bad parenting. From start till end, chain-smoking through the initially-fascinating then-tiresome artistically shot mood sequences, Magnus remained cardboard 2-dimensional.

Instead, the film revealed a whole more about the remorseful father, himself being a real-life victim of similar circumstances, working to his advantage. This film would have been more successful if retitled and repositioned as Magnus’ Father. It has its moments, but then this film feels a lot like an exercise of more style over substance.

2/5

Hard Goodbyes: My Father (2002)
Director: Penny Panayotopoulou

When a young boy suddenly loses his father to a car accident, he who has no concept of death, denies the facts and reconstructs an alternate universe where his father is still very much alive.

The film is less about the actual death per se and the often associated excess melodrama than how each family member deals with the aftermath in their vastly varying ways and methods.

Through the boy’s perspective, the heaviness of the subject matter was counter-balanced with his childishness, naivety and persistent denial. So much so that it became somewhat sadistic to watch through a good latter half of the film.

The boy’s fantasies and unfaltering belief in his father’s eventual return from an earlier promise culminate in a brilliant finale against the backdrop of the equally fantastical 1969 Neil Armstrong’s moon landing.

Heart-wrenching.

4.5/5

Pora umierac (2007)
Director: Dorota Kedzierzawska

Part of the European Union Film Festival 2009.

There is little happening around the central figure, an old lady and her loyal Collie except for constant contemplative monologues and reciprocated barks. The chemistry between her and the canine is incredible. Lensed in gorgeous black and white, the film brings dignity not just to the grand dame herself but also her dilapidated house she’s been wanting to restore to pre-war grandeur.

Through mirror reflections, old glass windows refractions and a multitude of other glasses, the film conveys the subtle everydayness surrounding the old woman, as we begin to see her moods, illusions, fantasies and memories of her past.

The restoration of the house can be seen as both a healing from the war she’s probably suffered as well as a hope for her future, her son and granddaughter. However, her son’s betrayal and her granddaughter’s ignorance beget her disappointment in human relationships.

A reflective piece on old age and loneliness, heartfelt and tender.

4.5/5