Squander

As Skunk Anansie sings,

Why take everything you see?
You have nothing left to squander
If you keep pushing me away
You have no one left to love

You throw it all away
those ties you went and suffered for
you cause disaster
and flouder flouder flouder flouder

Why take everything you see?
You have nothing left to squander
If you keep pushing me away
You have no one left to do love

your less than you should be
why run so hard to finish last
you caused contendement
and i wonder wonder wonder wonder

Why take everything you see?
You have nothing left to squander
If you keep pushing me away
You have no one left to looooove, looooove
Why squander squander squander squander

Why take everything you see?
You have nothing left to squander
If you keep pushing me away
You'll have no one left to, no one left to love

Koop Island Blues

I love this video very much. It captures the emotions just right. Can you feel it? Quoting the info from Youtube profile. So, you read it yourself.

Koop is Oscar Simonsson & Magnus Zingmark.

When listening to Koops music it's somehow easy to believe that it's played by a small orchestra, but in fact the music is based on samples. Thousands of small clips from records puzzled together into new songs. All the drums, strings, horn sections and choires are actually sampled! This is a very time consuming way to make music (it's one of the reasons it takes such long time to make a koop album), but it's the only way to create the surreal Koop sound. One thing though, that for sure aren't sampled, is the vocals. Many singers has blessed the Koop albums with their talent, and on Koop Islands the singers are : Ane Brun, Yukimi Nagano, Hilde Louise Asbjornsen, Earl Zinger and Mikael Sundin. Koop Island Blues is sung by Ane Brun and it's taken from the album "Koop Islands".

The video was shot in Paris by J.F. Julian (director) and is starring french actor Mia Jacob.

Lyrics:
Hello my love
It's getting cold on this island
I'm sad alone
I'm so sad on my own
The truth is
We were much too young
Now I'm looking for you
Or anyone like you

We said goodbye
With a smile on our faces
Now you're alone
You're so sad on your own
The truth is
We run out of time
Now youre looking for me
Or anyone like me

Na na na na

Hello my love
It's getting cold on this island
I'm sad alone
I'm so sad on my own
The truth is
We were much too young
Now I'm looking for you
Or anyone like you

25" h

Kids

I'm still not over this song.

Julia/Julie

I was wondering what the hell is Julia/Julie thing since it was featured by a foodie blog. Then, when Meryl Streep's name appears, I decided to click on the link and I never regretted since.

The trailer for the upcoming Julie & Julia movie is out! Meryl Streep plays the venerable Julia Child and Amy Adams, the blogger Julie Powell who chronicled cooking through Julia's Mastering The Art of French Cooking through her Julie/Julia Project blog. The film is based on Julie Powell's book of the same name, as well as Julia Child's My Life in France.

( via SimpleRecipe )

And, yes, I'm keen to watch this. To see someone attempting to change her life though a single inspirational source that didn't seem to convince the people around her at all, that's the spirit I need to keep me going now !

Miss Dior Chérie

Have I posted this before? If I have not, here you go. If I have, here you go again.



Sofia Coppola's Miss Dior Chérie ad. Utterly beautiful and adorable :)

10 great years.

Yasmin's work. This got me laughing for a long while.

Crazy Sexy Beautiful

“ ...I refused to be saddled with the isolating stigma associated with cancer. Just because it had changed my life forever, didn't mean that I had changed...
-Kris Carr ”


Having felt the start of dry season for tv series, I have seek alternatives in movie sources as usual. One day, I bumped into RLSLOG's post regarding VoMiT's release. It's about fighting cancer that turned out to be crazy and sexy, as the title "Crazy Sexy Cancer" says. That is quite true as how the main character presented it.

On Valentines Day in 2003, Kris Carr was diagnosed with a rare cancer which was in critical last stage with signs of deterioration. What lied ahead was knowledge of a time bomb being paused but with the possibility of being resumed into ticking in time. Weeks later, she began filming her journey seeking of cure, in medicine, homeopathy and inner peace. In this true-story-turned-documentary, Kris shares her wild and inspirational journey with exuberance and humor.

This documentary is about strength and growth in life, love and friendship, courage and wisdom. I love the editing of the story that really made me wonder how Kris could have faced this hardship alone, and then slowly, other characters such as family, friends and lover were introduced. Now, Kris has founded My Crazy Sexy Life!, a social networking site for the supporters of holistic medicine; Crazy Sexy Blog! that keeps those that concern updated. It's all about WEB 2.0!

In all, she had all my respect and admiration when she just laughed off certain difficult moments and decisions facing death. This is the spirit.

And that is what I do facing inflation. Go NGV!

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.

Movie Marathon

As promised, here's my list of selected titles for my weekend marathon:

1. Charlie Wilson's War
2. He Was A Quiet Man
3. Le Scaphandre Et Le Papillon
4. Mr Brooks
5. Persepolis
6. Rocket Science
7. Suburban Girl
8. The Tattooist
9. Across The Universe
10. Gone Baby Gone
11. Before The Devil Knows Your Dead
12. Elizabeth The Golden Age, that I think I will skip.
13. Four Months Three Weeks and Two Days
14. The Assassination of Jesse James
15. Summer Rain
16. Ensemble C'est Tout

I know the list looks long. But, I'm ambitious.

Calling for Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon English Subtitles!

Have you ever come across a movie you know can make a difference to your life? Well, there is none because you answer to the calling of your life and you make all the decisions where you are accountable to your own actions. So, stop depending on 120 minutes to change the many minutes that have yet to come. I'm just saying that to myself as I do think the story of a successful editor at Elle's turning paralyzed and still could write a book by blinking only one eye.

Here it goes. I've acquired a copy of The Diving Bell & The Butterfly WITHOUT SUBTITLES. With total confession to the fact that my understanding in French is too limited the first 5 minutes of the whole movie ( since the story has not even started yet !!).

So, please help me out if you can dig the English subtitles for Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon 1 CD. I must watch this movie. And, yes, I must stick to this copy since I refuse to resort to RMVB version with mere Chinese subtitles that will totally degrade the anesthetic element of the whole movie! All exotic accents should play in its original voice, period.

Please leave me a comment if you have it, or even know this movie. At least, I can talk to someone about this.

More about my weekly movie marathon later.

Watch Documentaries Online

Watch great documentaries online.

You'll see more that you should.
You'll know more that you do.

Wow, that sounds catchy.

Click #3 - The Home Song Stories

Fellow Chinese reader, please welcome Joan Chen, the "diva" in Chinese film industry context. With so many awards in hand, I'm pleased to see her taking on a role, without famous Chinese directors, or the many stories about war epic that we see amass nowadays. Just a little simple storyline, few characters, portraying the core values keeping a family together, or not really.

The Home Song Stories is one of my accidental discoveries of hidden gems because right from the beginning, I wasn't really keen about watching this movie until I read the line below in IMDB.com

"Australia's official submission in the Foreign Language Film category for the 80th Academy Awards"

Right after that, I headed off to a wild dig for this movie and I watched it immediate after I found it. And 103 minutes later, I was left gasping for air, not because the storyline was suffocating but the details in the scenes, the delicate lines to bring out the characters, and the emotions that were immense enough to keep me gripping tight so that I missed nothing.

In all, the director, Tony Ayres has done a great job of bringing his life story to the big screen and escaping the result of many boring and disastrous autobiographical films ended up as. The movie is about what Ayres remembers about his mother, a songstress who uprooted her children and migrated from Hong Kong to Australia after marrying an Australian sailor, and their struggles to etch a living surviving in a stranger's land. The intensity starts when we see Rose ( the songstress ) succumbed to her weakness for men quite easily, falling fast and hard, switching from man to man, being unlucky in love, and causing embarrassment for her children, who do not know what to make out of the “Uncles” that come through the door or a suicidal mother after each heartbreak.

IMHO, Joan Chen captures the complexity of Rose’s character superbly, one character that I've heard about so frequent since childhood, from gossips, rumours or speculations on certain people you met in the neighbourhood. You just see characters you once heard so much about, being casted on screen alive. The feeling is really immense. Meanwhile, Joel Lok gives a watchful and intelligent performance, as the son, Tom, who worships his mother and must witness her pain, even when blocking his ears and shutting his eyes. It's amazing & surprising that both Joel Lok & Irene Chen are just newcomers, yet able to show such level of maturity and natural flair of acting skills in portraying Tom & May, even as fantastic as the actual Tony Ayres and his sister, Mei.

At its core, The Home Song Stories evokes painful memories, but also brings about the notion of forgiveness, remembering and honouring those memories. A mother’s love knows no bounds, even if she behaves in a manner you cannot quite grasp at the moment.

The one line that moved me was in almost the last few scenes:

“It is extraordinary,” as grown up Tom says about himself and his sister, “that we ended up perfectly ordinary people.”

Note: The trailer might not move you much, but it's definitely a movie I'll purchase the DVD for collection or watch when it's in local cinemas.

Movie Spree of 2 :: Loving Juno

From the remaining few movies I have, my urge of sharing my thoughts on this movie tops the rest of them. Yes, it's the minimal-budget-but-maximum-attention very much anticipated ( at least, I did ) Juno!

Some may feel skeptical whether this will turn out as just another teenage comedy that once flooded our movie screens. The answer is definitely a big NO! Imagine a toned down Katherine Heigl's Knocked Up, blended with a tint of artsy directorial skills, very amusing lines for Ellen Page, and folky soundtrack. In all, that sums up to a consludion: Juno is quite movie of its kind, and definitely not even close to Knocked Up, talking about a quirky-geeky-cool teenage girl experimenting sex and getting pregnant. Skip the disastrous aftermath and drop-dead shock scenes because these did not happen. The storyline could be quite expected since with the word "pregnancy", you can either get a life is killed or saved. However the spotlight of this story is that , but the characters that are very amusing instead. Juno and his open-minded parents with a sense of humour, then her cheerleader friend that is not close to typical dumb-blonde at all: why should you miss this. Last but not least, Juno is played by Ellen Page, the creepy little girl from Hard Candy. You know, "that" girl!

Since this movie is from the director of Thank You For Smoking, we can very much expect nothing less than a good movie, and this time, with a good soundtrack.



Instead of the ordinary Juno's poster, I would rather use this poster that really gives me a laugh.

Let me know if you have watched it. If not, get a taste of it with the trailer here.

Weekly Screenings - American Gangster

I'm in the mood to do some movie screenings this week. Crapping about 5 movies in a week is an underestimation of the actual visual load that comes through my pipeline. And yes, you're lucky. You'll get the fresh stash before you head to the cinemas.

Here's the first click on American Gangster.



I could never have expected Denzel Washington to be playing the villain. And here he is, playing the role of a mafia leader's driver cum apprentice in Harlem. After the death of the man everyone in Harlem looked up to, the underground kingdom crashed. Then, Denzel Washington inherited his mentor's teachings and built his own "company" from scratch. This is quite amazing for a true story and Denzel has done a great job playing the man crashing someone else's head into a grand piano. That is, literally, a cold-blooded man.

Somehow, Russell Crowe's sloppy cop look does not impress me very much. Period. It's enjoyable for 2.5 hours. Then, it's the end of story and nothing much came along. I enjoy myself even more watching the movies I pick at home. Yes, I'm that bit hard to please.

Next in line will be... I have not decided yet.

Thievery Corporation

Thievery Corporation or wiki them.

Wikipedia.org says,

Thievery Corporation is a Washington, D.C.-based production and DJ duo consisting of Rob Garza and Eric Hilton and their supporting artists. Their music style is dub, acid jazz, Indian classical and Brazilian (such as bossa nova) fused together with a lounge aesthetic. Thievery Corporation is on the Eighteenth Street Lounge Music record label named after the swank DCEPs appear on the 4AD and !K7 labels. lounge partly owned by Eric Hilton, but several of their singles and

In 2002, they released The Richest Man in Babylon on their ESL label. This fifteen track album is similar in sound and timbre to their earlier 2000 release, The Mirror Conspiracy, and features performances by vocalists Emiliana Torrini, Pam Bricker, and Lou-Lou.

In 2005 they released The Cosmic Game, which has a darker, more psychedelic sound than The Richest Man in Babylon. The album also featured more high-profile guest singers on it, including Perry Farrell, David Byrne and Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips.

In 2006, the group released Versions, a selection of remixes done by Thievery Corporation for other artists and toured the United States, playing at Lollapalooza.

The language of the group's lyrics are as diverse as English, Spanish, French, Persian, Portuguese, Romanian and Hindi. This reflects the group's global feel and collaborative structure.

This should sounds familiar if you've watched Vanilla Sky/Garden State. The title goes like this - "Lebanese Blonde"


"Rich Man in Babylon" - the title caught my attention as it resembles the title of a book I received as a present a year ago. There were rich men in Babylon, I truly believe so.

Scissor Sisters

The Fray, Augustana, Snow Patrol, Grey Anatomy's Soundtrack. They all sound the same and are built on the same remedy which seems to be targetting the soft hearts of the mellow people that need emotional songs to feel touched and resonant with the cold world.

It's time to quit that. So, here's my latest favourite - Scissor Sisters - that tops my Top-10 list from the usual No 9 position.



This is part of the lyrics. O Sweet vanity!

Every day and every night the people they say to me,
'miss ana thank you for the beautiful work that you be doing for our people, because everytime you get out of your corvette stingray in your white pumps and your pink acid wash jeans with the matching pink rabbit fur coat... we say miss thang you got it going on you is gorgeous.'

And i say,
'i am so proud to serve you people, because i know that with my looks i can achieve anything in this world yes ive got that revlon contract, and oh yes i'll take that record contract too because you know what im gorgeous and my job with my gorgeousness is to serve the people serve and i serve some more yes thank you ladies and gentlemen for letting me do my beautiful work in beautifying this beautiful world that is already already so pretty.'


Here's another track - "I Don't Feel Like Dancing"



Another one - Comfortably Numb, that got me very addicted to Scissor Sisters.



Sakra! Now, I can't stop pasting Youtube tags.