Extraordinaire

There is ordinary landscape portrait macro whatever genre that I commonly recognize. Somehow, creativity is really the key towards extraordinaire. From simplest factors as photography objects and lighting, some are able to create their own signature photography style e.g.

Instead of referring her works as animal photography, I think Sharon Montrose will best be identified as life photographer or as her website title says "Dog Photographer". Other than animals, she also photographs babies, however, what strikes me will be how she captures the moment - which is also the key criteria to be a good photographer and for most of the time, easily said than done.

Then, I also came across Mark Rubenstein's work that expresses such depth of fantasy and dreamlike elements. I know photoshop helps but I always believe in the fundament of photography that comes with hardwork and originality. I did not read on further if Mark's work is digitalized or scanned from full frame photograph. But, do let me know what you feel.

I have so much to share with tonnes of hits in my G.Reader being "Starred" but not having the time to post here. I'll try, even if no one's reading.

Note: No pictures today since my photobucket is loaded unbearably slow. Hopefully, weekend will be much better for my network to chill off for a bit.

Pacemaker

Whenever someone mentions Sweden, I always think of the amazing creativity of Swedish designers. Don't believe me? You should view an interesting trailer about the product "Pacemaker" by Swedish animator Kristofer Ström and Martin Ottosson. Production by Björn Wahlström.

( via )

Note: Just realize it's a bit difficult to find the trailer on Pacemaker site. Here's the clip embedded below.


Pacemaker - this is how it works from ljudbilden on Vimeo.

<3 is lame

Quoting a friend's favourite line - "Love is lame". How interesting.

A post long drafted and overdue.

David Kassan

Brooklyn-based artist David Kassan produced lifelike portraits that practically leap off the canvas. As quoted from his website: "As an expression of his own calculated observation and visual consumption of surrounding environment, introspective glimpses of reality imbue the art of David Kassan. By immersing himself into his subject matter, Kassan is able to infuse his painting with life and realism."

Sometimes, painting seems just like photography and vice versa.

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

As a start, I can squeeze out tonnes of positive review from the vast internet sources. Or, I could also refer to the humanity or impeccable courage the main character in the movie has. So many cheesy reasons that could support
my drive of hunting down the English subtitles with such determination. Finally, Terence shed me a light when I already left this thought behind. I can factor the determination into 3 simple reasons.

Strike #1 - The poster looks stunning. There's something about it that attracts me. Maybe the smile on Jean-Do's face or how the summer glare makes her gaze so dreamy that I wish I am at the beach. There's just something about it.



This looks simple but beautiful, no?


Strike #2 - It's a French movie, or I'll say it falls into my general category - anything European. I know I know. It's not a language to be fully comprehended by a Penang-born Chinese that assumed mastering English will make understanding French easy as well. But, there's just something appealing about the way European movies are being directed and filmed. Usually, the end result turned out to be a beautiful painting with great dialogues that I cannot understand. But, subtitles help to convey part of the context for most of the time. With that and my own added imagination, I often amplified all the punch lines the director intended.

Strike #3 - I'm a lazy student so I refer to film festivals as a guidebook to my film hunting journey. You should know that since I have mentioned how I found Dedication from Sundance festival. Well, since this film did great in Cannes, why not.

I do not know a thing about baseball. But three strikes are convincing enough for me to jump at this gem, which I do not regret spending 1:47 hour feeling my left eye has gone blind too.

The director insists on using the cinematography that allows audience to experience vision with only a left eye. So, more than half of the movie which involves Jean-Do's monologue, is presented in a close left-aligned angle as if we are seeing the world from his only vision left. At first, it was a bit disturbing but that makes us all agree as what makes the cinematography successful in influencing the cinema experience.

Before I write further, you should know that the plot is known by all, prior to watching the film. The editor of French Elle - Jean-Dominique Bauby a.k.a Jean-Do, had a stroke and went into vegetation state that left him only with his left eye. With that blinking motion, he dictated his memoir and died 10 days after its publication.

Of so many touching scenes accompanied by magnificent soundtrack, I like the scene where the doctor cruelly sutured up Jean-Do's paralyzed right eye. My instinct understands that the main objective consists largely of preventing the stationary eye ball from haunting all of them that have to stay around him. Maybe, it will also prevent infection to an eye without moisture from movement. Well, maybe.

Also, there's another beautiful scene where the wind by the beach gently blows his wife's dress and his vision pursues the waves of the dresses as it reveals the intimate flesh of his wife.

Nonetheless, there are heaps of humour projected by Jean-Do's monologue which got me laughing at times, and sarcasm that drove the bitterness in me to grow.

So, in all, at the end of the movie, I was deeply moved by his determination to write a memoir in such beautiful words and imagination, through such difficult process. Perhaps,it's no longer complicated when that's all you can do from then on.

Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon or The Diving Bell and The Butterfly is a thumbs-up recommendation to all sensitive souls. I'll definitely watch this again should it ever be screened locally.

P/S: The soundtrack is awesome. Read this line with American teenage footballer's accent. Charles Trénet's La Mer kept on playing in my mine. What a beautiful summer.

Dedicated to "Dedication"

Sundance festival just ended a few weeks back and it got me into the mood of digging into rare indie movies. "Juno" was one of the rare finds. But it was an easy discovery since it was widely loved by mainstream market. I can't recall how I found this movie. Most probably I was looking through NT.info's list as usual, and user reviews in imdb.com that claimed Mandy Moore's role - Lucy - is actually quite good too. I was convinced by vanity of polished public review.

As you might have perceived from the poster, Dedication is a romantic drama. But it comes with a wee bit of dry humour. It's definitely a good dig for those that are into "Garden State" especially a version with excess romanticism, with great soundtrack. (Nick, I'm saying this to you.)

I like the imaginary scenes whenever Billy's stressed with some problems in life, his dead writing partner for children's book, Rudy, will come alive and give him a few very wry words of wisdom that help him to overcome those problems. Billy is just a weird character with a lot of funny phobias, which he manages to face as the story progresses.

Lucy is the typical female character with charisma that overturns Billy's weird-ness. I wouldn't say it's an easy act since she manages to play the role with an amazingly natural flair and maturity.

Still, I like Billy's character - a cocky and weird introvert that breaks out of his shell in the end. In fact, I love this movie & its soundtrack ( they feature Cat Power's Metal Heart!) very much - one of the very few romance movies that get my green light.

Anyway, this might not turn up in big screens so you have to use your sources.

Counting Rambo

Other than the inaugural "Gong Xi Fa Cai" to all my readers celebrating Chinese New Year (if there is any), some people just have so much time to do the counting rainbows thing, don't you think? I mean, counting Rambo.

Don't click here!

Why using "click here" in posting links is a bad practice? I never learned the solid reasons behind it until I read this convincing page by a Finnish guy, Jukka "Yucca" Korpela. You should give it a read because the justification is very convincing!

"Click here" mistake was featured in the design mistakes review made in 2005 by Jakob Nielsen which has been maintaining this almost-yearly-updated list of Top Ten Design Mistakes since ... many years ago. "Click here" was one of the many mistakes I was tagged for. In fact, my posting habit was developed, aligning to what I’ve come across in others' blogs. Since “Click here” was used widely in websites and web logs, I just presumed it is the best practice. From now on, I will kill this word off all the links I include in my posts. I try.

FYI, Click here for the post. Opps, did I do it again?

Say, Marimo

Here's a typical tear jerker from the Japanese movie Inu no Eiga with subtle emotions and slow paced storyline.

Ghost Town

Definitely, I do not have the capacity to interpret the metaphor of the slimmest strip of sunlight creating a huge glare in most section of an image, images that are exposed multiple times to create the theme of “sense and sensibility” or that sort. Not just that, I’m, too, unequipped with slightest idea how certain pictures that look plain, will end up as critically acclaimed work. The critics play their role for a reason, which is to see what ordinary people fail to grasp. So, I’ll leave all this professional review to them while I’ll go on with my maniac ranting on things I perceive.

In all, I’m saying all this to prove that, it’s much easier to see things from ordinary being’s eyes, and take your first thought as the most honest reply to the work you’re looking at. So no more yada yada yada. I came across some impressive pictures recently from a feed I subscribed to.

The pictures below are from Richard Ehrlich that captures Namibian ghost town of Kolmanskop. The town was in bloom during 1908 when a diamond mine was discovered. German expats moved in and turned the whole town into a western settlement. 20 years later when the mine was dried, they abandoned the place, leaving shadow and silence in vain.

So here you go.


Definitely, I do not have the capacity to interpret the metaphor of the slimmest strip of sunlight creating a huge glare in most section of an image, images that are exposed multiple times to create the theme of "sense and sensibility" or that sort. Not just that, I’m, too, unequipped with slightest idea how certain pictures that look plain, will end up as critically acclaimed work. The critics play their role for a reason, which is to see what ordinary people fail to grasp. So, I’ll leave all this professional review to them while I’ll go on with my maniac ranting on things I perceive.

In all, I’m saying all this to prove that, it’s much easier to see things from ordinary being’s eyes, and take your first thought as the most honest reply to the work you’re looking at. So no more yada yada yada. I came across some impressive pictures recently from a feed I subscribed to.
The pictures below are from Richard Ehrlich that captures Namibian ghost town of Kolmanskop. The town was in bloom during 1908 when a diamond mine was discovered. German expats moved in and turned the whole town into a western settlement. 20 years later when the mine was dried, they abandoned the place, leaving shadow and silence in vain.

So here you go.
(via)

The Golden Age

In general, a lot of European films hardly made it to international block busters due to its inclusion of very localized elements that we foreigners, most of the time, do not comprehend. ( It's just like how Seinfield, The West Wings and The Sopranos are never my favorites. ) So, I can only rely on my sources, you know. Perhaps, foreign film festivals held by GSC cinema is one of the only few moments when I could watch the critically acclaimed European movies on screen, but how many more will be missing from the list? Well, let's not frown on that. The sources will save us all!

Here's a good example of a shinning European film that I'm not sure if it'll be screened here due to its sensitive theme that our beloved Censorship board will be up against. 4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile (imdb) - the winner of Palm d'Or at Cannes Festival 2007. It definitely won for a good reason. The core storyline is about the protagonist assisting her naive roommate to get an abortion which was deemed illegal in Romania during the 80s. In this movie, the cinematography is magnificent as the filming presented very raw emotions by shooting from the protagonist's perspective, the long one-take scenes, and the occasional hand held shooting. In fact, there's nothing much I can tell about this, other than "you should watch it yourself". The depression of the Romanians during the communism era was impressively portrayed throughout the film and the grayness was so immense, reaching the extent of a soft-core horror film would.

What the director intended was to capture the audience's focus on the main character - the tough protagonist. Trust me, you will feel stressed out and exhale in relief once the movie ends.

So, I need a cold drink.

Note: This movie is the first release of the director's trilogy production, titled "The Golden Age", which is about the communist era in Romania. Perhaps, it is the golden age when the Romanians portrayed such courage we human beings never know we have.