Happy Hallowe'en!

[booooooo!]

Keeping in spirit of this festival, Y and I went to see Saw (**) yesterday. creepy, thickly plotted, darkly flashed back, it kept us guessing until the end. it was enjoyable, though not very frightening, and it had its excitable moments. seeing cary elwes over-act in the last act was probably the scariest thing I've ever seen from the former prince of The Princess Bride. as a sweet treat, we went to see Team America: World Police (**1/2) today. funny, very profane, biting and silly. not as good as vintage South Park, but the puppets were just fab. and no, the king of all puppets did not have a cameo.

I don't usually do too much during Hallowe'en, but it is still one of my favourite holidays, -- thematically at least. I like the celebratory idea that the dead comes back for a feast with their loved ones on the day when the walls between the spirit world and the living is thinnest. I'm not a big believer of the occult, just a little bit of a skeptic, but I also subscribe to the notion that there are just some things you cannot know and should not tempt by dismissing it outright.

back when we were living at brucebruce's apartment (when brucebruce was working in St. Louis), Y and I had a temporary guest. it was just after we moved back from Vancouver, getting settled into the apartment, when we noticed a very feminine flowery smell, like a combination of fresh roses and lilacs. neither Y nor I wore perfume or cologne and we didn't have anything that would smell like that. we smelled it sometimes in the bedroom, sometimes in the hallway, sometimes in the living room, but always just for a brief few seconds. the smell would disappear, like someone passing through.

we searched the apartment for the elusive smell, and I even tried to sniff out what the smell could possibly be or come from. but it never lasted long enough and we could never trace its origin. since we never felt any coldness, we eventually assumed it was coming from someone just passing through and observing, checking us out as it were. sure it was creepy, but we got used to it. and then some months later, we noticed she never came back.

sometimes when I was in the mood, I used to walk through my friends' home or apartment and just feel the place out. I just open myself up a little and let my senses and skin become as sensitive as possible. I try to notice the things that would cause artificial coldness, like bad lighting or damp surroundings, and block them out. sometimes, I would feel that some parts of an older house had more activities in its past than other rooms. some rooms would seem to me empty, devoid of any character and then the adjacent room would seem to be heavy and occupied, as if having something that wouldn't or couldn't move.

Y used to be quite skeptical of my doing this, but eventually I got him to do it too. I think anyone can, it's really just a matter of letting go and feel out the room. it's like finding out a character of a place. I don't recommend doing it anywhere, mind you, because somethings are better left unfound. and while I don't go and feel places out anymore, I still sometimes cannot resist. so if you have a place and you want to know if something's there, invite Y & I over for dinner. just make sure we have something sweet for dessert, in case we find something bitter!

Wish everyone has a ghoulishly good Hallowe'en!

parallel || icicles

[my parallelogram]

Saturday, I'm walking out of McD's, guiltily clutching breakfast combo #3 to my chest and a coffee in hand, thinking what was it that I read about hash browns in Fast Food Nation? I push the door and head down the street, when I hear, "Vincent!"

I turn and look anyway. I stare stupidly at this tall blond guy in biking gear who's heading into McD's. In a matter of seconds, I'm thinking I don't know him, I don't recognize him, he's kinda cute but he looks like he's wearing geeky glasses, oh but maybe I'm too far to see clearly, and then I snap out of it. my name isn't Vincent!

the blond guy pauses realizing a mistake and then seeing me staring at him says, "Are you okay?" before I can say "i'm lovin' it™", he disappears into the golden arches. I turn away and continue to head to the office.

I don't think I have a common looking face, but this isn't the first time a complete stranger had thought I was someone else. once in uni, a girl sat right next to me in chemistry lecture and proceeded to talk to me like we were just interrupted, just carrying on babbling about something. I looked at her stunned and then she realized I wasn't her friend. she swore I looked like someone else and she couldn't get over it. in high school, Mike, our temp english teacher, looked at me surprised and said, "Charles! How have you been?" I said he was mistaken, but he shook his head and was convinced that I was one of his old students. since it was my first day meeting Mike, all I could think of was that this Charles dude better be someone decent, because I didn't want to be confused with an idiot.

in a crowd, I often want to stay out of the spotlight. I'd rather melt into the background and observe. other times I want to stand up and shout to the world that I needed to be heard. and so I rush onto the stage not knowing what I was getting myself into. being mistaken for someone else is like being in between this anonymity and the rush of fleeting fame. it's confusing and it sets me off thinking what is this other person like, this other person who looks like me? does this happen to other people? and I don't mean just a simple mistake. these people can't believe I'm a stranger and are adamant that I have some twin out there in the same city.

later, when the confusion dissipates and the stranger and I carry on with our own lives, I wonder what it would've been like if I had pretended to be their friend.

some things are unexplainable

[creep]

when i started this blog, I made a mental note not to mention work. we spend enough time at the office, the store, the workplace, the 5th ring of hell, and so why spend more time at home thinking about work? I do expect to mention work in passing, like saying that cute (but straight) boy who works on my floor has such lovely teeth, so white and pearly that I wonder if he's a whitening toothpaste model by night. but I don't want this to happen: you're fired! She made the news, poor girl. I am bound by my confidentiality agreement, like most people working in the corporate world, so I don't really want to talk about work... and there isn't really anything to say about it anyway... until now.

we had a freaky day yesterday working on a couple of cases. we expect to see some unique circumstances from time to time - due to the nature of the work and for the fact that we get stuck with the problems no one else wants to figure out. and I've seen enough to not be surprised at all when we discover that some people just aren't nice people. but yesterday we came across a double murder-suicide and a woman on trial for the murder of her missing husband. and so here we were at the office wondering what legal and financial options were available for all parties, including us poor office drones. and what do you say? I'm sorry to hear about the trial, but you'll need to obtain a court order before we'll comply with your request?

sometimes I shake my head and wonder how people can do the things they do. the whys of their motives fascinate me.

and then we also found out one of our colleagues had passed away last week; probably just before momo and her friends went to the funeral of an acquaintance this past weekend in Québec. and then the sister of momo's friend also dies right after the funeral.

and to top it all off, Y woke up Sunday morning and told me about his crazy dream about a Sisters of Mercy concert where the entire roomful of fans gets killed. he said it was freaky. and then all of these things happened. it was sure freaky.

the postman rings twice

[lost & found]

out from the depth of the Net, Jei sent an email declaring that he had found me. he found me from a profile I left on some gay meeting site. I didn’t think much of the site, but I thought it’ll be kinda goofy to leave a profile for anyone who might be interested in sending me a note. I’m glad I did that, as Jei sent me that note and we are now reconnecting after a few years of silence. he was in Leeds (hometown of the Sisters of Mercy) and had moved to London UK to pursue making films. once he moved, I hadn’t heard back from him, and not having anyway to contact him, I feared the worst: some nutty London gay boy must’ve eaten him alive.

and so years passed us by, both of us independently searching for each other on google and other sites, but failing to find one another. when I saw his email, I was totally surprised. it’s like I’ve reconnected with a long lost relative or something. I wonder if this was how my grandmother felt when my dadBOT and my aunt found our long lost uncle in China.

roughly around the time when the Nationalist army was losing the Chinese civil war, my father’s parents were fleeing China. Grandma had gathered up the children and went on separate trips to retrieve belongings. she had left the youngest son behind with the nanny, to be picked up later. when she finally returned for him, they discovered that the nanny had fled with the child.

throughout the years, my father and my aunt had tried finding him without letting my grandmother know what they were doing. they didn’t want her to suffer from their failure. they posted ads in the papers in Hong Kong hoping that someone would know of him. it seemed like a miracle when they found him, when someone had read the ad and passed it on, eventually finding its way to my uncle in China.

finding Jei reminded me of this story. and while I cannot imagine having lost my own child during a war and then reconnecting with him, I now have a very tiny inkling on what Grandma must have felt when dadBOT told her that they found him. send me a note if you think you know me. I may be a long lost cousin you never had.

the font weight is blue

[update/0.2]

After spending the weekend haphazardly learning CSS, HTML and blogger templates, I've managed to make a few minor changes to my weblog. With my hobbyist dabbling, I now appreciate the skills involved in webdesign and progamming. I can figure out some of the coding after a few dazed looks and coffees, but I had a hell of a time trying to figure out what colours go with what. Like interior designing, it's a real skill to understand how different elements fit together and how they are built. I have such a greater appreciation of anyone who can do web design from the ground up and who understand and execute design principles. Unfortunately, there are plenty of hacks out there too. At the film fest, Y met detective charlie chan in the line up. In conversation, he had offered some web designing for Y's website. So for the heck of it, Y let charlie have a go. But charlie appeared to have dumped Y's content into a pre-made template. Y muttered that he could do that without help, thank you very much. On the bright side of things, Y is now learning ColdFusion and working through Dreamweaver. His website will be ready before Christmas, hopefully! And when that happends, I might migrate my own blog to my own website, and learn how to use Movable Type. Or not. Looks really hard.

So, here is the current version. Let me know if anyone finds it difficult to read or if there are any suggestions. It’s definitely harder than I thought! We are all such modern creatures of the visual, but I feel like I have two stumped hands when I try to make something look pretty. Kinda feel that way too when staring in the mirror in the morning with hair gel & goo in my hands.

I have archived the old movie ratings and links on another blog, which I plan to launch some time soon. I needed another place to keep all my reviews for easy searching. Also, I've added a Postcard sidebar section. I've added some photos taken by friends, and hope to convince more friends to send me some of their pics! :) Always more changes planned, but for now enjoy.

monkey brand glue

[cuts & pasting]

my comments are gone. *sniff* but that doesn't mean you can't leave new comments! I've changed over to HaloScan for easier use and so that you don't have to sign up with blogger to leave a comment. and I've added Blogrolling finally! I meant to add a brief description to each one, and there's a few more I want to add too. but I'm also working on a few more little changes too, so when I have a moment, I'll write up a more detail post of why I travel to these blogs. I hope no one's going to mind me linking their blogs.

by end of this week, I hope to launch another update :)

the origin of species

[dates/evolution]

the last film reviewed! whew! I started writing them quickly, intending to make them small. but the more I wrote, the more I wanted to make them a bit more perfect. finding official websites are also harder than I thought. so no more film reviews for awhile, let me catch up on my blog visits and lets get back to regular blog posts.

beingboring and the love interest have evolved beyond the limbo stage and onto to the lets-date-seriously stage. this was consummated by a lovely commitment ring, romantically presented while they were at the Ex. Y and I had this image of the love interest dangling from the ferris wheel and making beingboring promise to date him. but I don’t think they saw The Notebook (nor have I), so apparently it wasn’t as excitingly presented. the ring was a bit too big for one thing and needed to be returned for a resizing. but oh what a lovely ring it is. so the love interest is no longer just an interest, he’s now the love commitment.

and so our parental units and DKB, met the love commitment for dinner last weekend. it’s so hard to predict how the units would react. we know DKB would probably be fine, he’s pretty easy going about this sort of thing. but the units? who knows... will the momBOT bash him with prickly comments that stabs you cold in the heart (like what happened to beingboring bf#2)? or will dadBOT smirk and give a “I think you’re really stupid, but I won’t say it to your face” look (like he does that to all our friends)?

well, if their blinding smile didn’t give it away, then it’s momBOT’s invite for roast beef at the homestead that did. the love commitment passed stage one of the vetting process. oh, it didn’t hurt that he’s a dentist, drives a nice car and has good taste in rings. the bling blinged.

our dual citizen lost American friend eL has a new dating interest. he’s a semi-famous right-ring pundit, whose private life must remain private, and so we will simply call him he-who-cannot-be-named. now eL is a left-wing intellectual, so we all expected to see fireworks (both good and bad) when she gave us an update at the opera on Monday. the opera, by the way, was a totally fabulous production of the Handmaid’s Tale. I didn’t fall asleep once! the sets were so cool. it’s too bad we were hit with such horrible modern classical music with such monotonous opera screeching. why must all things modern that is good for you be so inexplicably bitter?

their first date consisted of cocktails/drink and then dinner, which he had scheduled in that day. he-who-cannot-be-named, cheesily enough, scheduled some other meeting (presumably a non-date meeting) at 9 PM, so an escape hatch I’d guess. but they hit it off. and so plans are now afoot for another date as eL told us at the opera. beingboring, Y and I all thought about what she should wear at the PJ Harvey concert. quite frankly, I couldn’t imagine he-who-cannot-be-named going to that concert. if you’ve read anything he had written or maybe you’ve seen him on tv, you may think he's the spawn of some unspeakable... um.. oh but that would give him away. nothing wrong being right-wing, mind you, and in fact some of my best friends are right-wing, but he-who-cannot-be-named is just a bit over the top. on the plus side, he's highly entertaining. what does this have to do with PJ Harvey? I dunno.

I can’t imagine dating someone famous, semi-famous or just infamous. I wonder what it would be like to be touched by his world, and how would I feel to be such a nobody next to him? other people’s fame never really interests me, the novelty wears off pretty fast when I do meet the famous, and it’s such a fleeting artificial thing. on the other hand, being famous is something I’d like to be, but through my words and stories. I confess that this whole blogging thing appeals to that side of me which wants to be immortal. anyway, the next opera is La Bohème in February, but we hope to get an update before then. maybe it'll evolve into something beautiful. I hope eL is ambidextrous.

moving along: I went to see the Motorcycle Diaries (***) two Fridays ago with this guy I’ve been chatting with on the Net. I’ve actually stopped this Net dating thing for many months now, but he was just one of the few people I’ve kept in some sort of touch. way back when, we had been meaning to go to a movie, but we just never seemed to actually go. out of the blue, he asked me again, and so I made sure we did as he seems like a nice guy. but was it a date? I dunno. this was only the second time I’ve actually met him to do something. if two guys went out to see a movie and no one was around to say it was a date, does it still count as a date?

prior to the movie starting, we made the usual small talk. while waiting for me, he had purchased a copy of the Origin of Species @ Chapters. he was going to read Darwin after he finished reading Dante’s the Divine Comedy. he’s quite well read to begin with, so I kinda felt dumb. how do you make small talk about Darwin? afterall, I skipped the whole bloody Darwin thing when doing my zoology degree, because I’d rather read Jane Austen’s Emma. 19th century literature was way more relevant than 19th century science. so I babbled about Thomas More’s Utopia, because that came up in the conversation too. I think he should go back to school, and do a graduate degree in some kind of liberal study program. at least that’s what I do if I won a billion dollars. but he works in accounting.

the movie was wonderful, and Gael García Bernal was super cute. I didn’t think much of him in Y Tu Mamá También, but he was such a hottie in this one. or maybe it’s because he was playing Che Guevara. it was a very romantic portrayal of Che, played as someone you can go to anti-war rallies with or bring home to your leftist marxist bohemian family for dinner. he wasn't the hardened revolutionary yet. to be fair, it's a movie meant to show a small part of his life; and for that, it did a beautiful job of touching our idealistic sides for a better, selfless world.

after the movie, I had mentioned that I was hungry, but A said he had a big lunch. again not quite deciding if this was a date or not, I was both annoyed that he wasn’t gracious enough to suggest eating anyway and annoyed that I was judging him under my dating standards. instead of just confronting this non-dating status of our non-dateness, I just started steering our conversation in a direction where if there was any dating potential on my part, it was being hijacked off road into icy territory:

I began to ask in the light din of a Starbuck’s, “So... have you been on any dates recently?”

He laughed and said, “No, I haven’t been on a date in a long time.”

“Oh!” I looked suddenly surprised. “Oh, but there must’ve been some cute boys calling you up on your cell.”

“No,” he chuckled. I suspected he might be getting uncomfortable, but surprisingly, he went on, “I haven’t really dated anyone since I broke up with my boyfriend a year ago.”

“What happened?” I asked, nosy parker that I am.

“He was just too busy to date. He had three jobs. But we are still very good friends.”

“Friendship is good,” I declared.

this was a couple of weeks back, so my recall of our conversation isn’t 100%, but you get the gist of it.

I’m a believer in evolution, not that scientific creationism or that sneaky intelligent design bs. a part of me, however, also believe in some kind of divinity. I didn’t want to go with what fate decides, I didn’t want to see how this date/friendship/relationship will evolve without my controlling the wheel, and I didn’t want to find myself praying for some kind of divine intervention. I decided, without knowing why, where, how or even what this was, that I better not allow nature take its course.

Happy Thanksgiving!

[cheer]

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! and even to my American fans, who will be celebrating theirs next month. stay tuned for some minor cosmetic changes to my blog and I will be finally adding a blogs I read list. I want to thank you all for visiting. come again soon!

Vital

[review/touch]

Rating: * * * *
Stars: Tadanobu Asano, Nami Tsukamoto, KIKI, Ittoku Kishibe, Kazumi Kushida
Directed by: Shinya Tsukamoto
Country: Japan
Programme: Visions

Song Synopsis: "そうだねもう少し　噛み砕いてみて/伝えたなら“それ”は記憶を/ただ繋げて　並べただけって事に..." - Hamasaki Ayumi (浜崎　あゆみ), Duty

a man survives a car crash, but suffers amnesia. his girlfriend Ryoko dies from the impact. Hiroshi Takagi slowly recalls his past through his medical studies. a fellow student, looking like a darkrave goer, tries to get close to him. the body he has to dissect is Ryoko's.

Vital is directed by Shinya Tsukamoto, who has also acted in Ichi the Kiler. the description in a pre-film fest review suggested David Lynch style incomprehensibility. while the main dramatic push to the film centres around Hiroshi's attempt at reclaiming his memories with all the suffering that goes with it, the film has less to do with Lynchian absurdities and more to do with the quiet meditations of an Atom Egoyan film. but it does look like a Lynch movie, and it is an exquisite film to watch. it's a lot less horrific than the ads portray.

the central scene is the dissection table during anatomy class. slowly Hiroshi (Tadanobu Asano) re-enters his life through school, and slowly regaining bits of his memory. but when he realizes the body he is assigned to dissect is his dead girlfriend, his memories come flooding back more quickly.

because I dream so vividly, often woken up by my dreams instead of the alarm clock, I get confused, wondering if things did indeed happened in life or simply in my dreams. this film reminds me of that confusion, the indefinable lines between dreams and memories. as each layer of her body is removed and pushed aside, as each layer is examined by his dissection group, Hiroshi gets closer to his memories. and what strange memories he has of his girlfriend. the audience learns along with Hiroshi and while you feel his disconnectedness to his past through his circumstances, you really feel it through the images of the film. the abstract, disparate images, the delicate colours of the film, the unpalatable grief from uncomprehending parents. the haunting image of Ryoko's dance and Asano's remarkably restrained performance. this film was as small as Clean, not as exciting as House of Flying Daggers, not as consciously (un)clever as Zebraman, no where as ambitious as Steamboy. but this film was the best one I saw at the film fest. it’s a creepy art film, but such an exquisitely crafted creepy and moving art film.

we waited almost at the front of the line, the second group behind a cute Japanese guy and his girlfriend and their filmmaker friend. they got the time mixed up and realized they were way too early. they were straight, but they knew someone who knows someone that knows Y. the world is small, the city smaller. we talked about sushi, about film, about what we saw and we admired the girl’s portable ashtray (only in Japan she said!). it’s always cool to meet up strangers in the film fest and share our love of films. but I’m too icy to do this on my own.

there wasn’t a Q&A, no distributor hack, no producers, no film fest programmer making any pithy remarks about his love of film. just a quick and quiet intro. a very good way to end the film fest. can't wait till next year.

Zebraman

[review/boozed]

Rating: * *
Stars: Sho Aikawa, Kyoka Suzuki, Atsuro Watabe
Directed by: Takashi Miike
Country: Japan
Programme: Midnight Madness

Song Synopsis: "Even Heroes have the right to dream/It's not easy to be me." - Five for Fighting, Superman (It's Not Easy)

there were beer bottles on the floor. homeless man-odours in the air. fratboy trash talk from the jocks. no, it wasn't in the movie, it was all around us. this midnight must've been a full moon, because all the idiots came out to this one. (not including us, of course.)

while his films have yet to make it big in the US, Takashi Miike has a cult following in North America. he's also a favourite at the Toronto film fest and every year his midnight madness screening is packed. this year, the line up snaked around the building. the buzz was in the air. there's never any knowing what to expect. one year, they gave out barf bags as promo material to every person in line for the screening of Ichi the Killer. we were all so excited!

but this year, I shake my head in disappointment. Zebraman is about poor shlep Shinichi (Sho Aikawa) whose life can be described as one big capital "L" - Loser! and so to escape his loser life, he re-lives his childhood superhero dreams and makes a Zebraman costume. but once he dons the suit, he is Zebraman and then starts fighting the villains.

the movie is nicely made, fairly amusing at points and you can see some of Miike's B-Movie brilliance in between the scenes and characters. but if you've seen Ichi the Killer (gruesome sexual bloody gore!), Gozu (hysterical surreal creepy twisted yakuza!), The Happiness of the Katakuris (family fun killing!) and Audition (quiet scary horror!), then you may be disappointed with the lack of originality. we've been spoiled with Miike's abilities to push the envelope or twist open a new scare. Zebraman is just simply a family film. and so Miike did say the movie is exactly that, a family film.

which would explain why the drunken nutheads next to us guffawed at every stupid joke. and they weren't even laughing sincerely. they made a fairly mediocre film even more unbearble with their dumbass presence. I pity their offspring.

@ the intro - "...this is my masterpiece..." - Colin Geddes, programmer, sarcastically reads Miike's letter to the TO film fest audience. director no shows third year in a row. at least he knows this movie isn't his best.

Steamboy

[review/bite]

Rating: * *
Directed by: Katsuhiro Otomo
Country: Japan
Programme: Special Presentations

Song Synopsis: "Explorateurs, exploratrices/De la troisième dimension/N'ayez pas peur..." - M, Monde Virtuel

Steamboy is Katsuhiro Otomo's first feature-length anime since he directed Akira. it's also quite expensive and took 10 years to make.

the movie transported us to a Victorian England where everything appears to run on steam and all the English people speak Japanese. (ok, it's a Japanese anime, but it kinda makes me think of Disney's Mulan where all the Chinese speak American. it's perfectly fine, just funny looking!) from a family of inventors, young Ray Steam is entrusted with his father's and grandfather's powerful invention, the Steamball. the steamball is a small sphere of super-powerful source of energy, capable of delivering vast amount of power to the steam engine machines. the movie focuses on the battle between various factions over the steamball.

for the first part of the movie, it was fairly exciting with train chase, the attempted escape, the wonderment of all the wooden steam-run contraptions. and then it ground to a halt with a Disney-like plot for the pablum-fed cartoon crowd. a little harsh, but we've seen this all before. and I don't mean in other animes. I mean, what was Katsuhiro Otomo thinking?

but then you need to take a few steps back and look beyond the plot. the steamball makes you only think of the atom bomb. the main bad guys are weapons dealers. the moral conflict between the father and grandfather (à la Star Wars, sadly) centres around technology and progress and power. this is stuff to make a movie, a very good movie.

and the animation is first rate. look beyond the goofy looking bad guys and watch how each machine resemble real steam engines. look at London and peer into an animated photograph of the past. these types of details are amazing. but a pretty picture and deep subtext does not entertain. watch it for the director's amazing imagination and the eye candy... the end credits show the kids growing up and going into WW1? WW2? I hope if there's a sequel, it's going to be better.

@ the intro - "Otomo is still trying to overcome his shyness..." - a Sony Pictures producer/hack commenting on Katsuhiro Otomo's no show at the screening as he takes a photo of the audience with his cell phone. apparently, he was very busy @ the Venice film fest and Sonyhackman thought the photo would amaze him with the TO audience turnout. good thing he didn't take a photo of us after the movie.