What sort of a retard comes up with a headline like Tsunamis shatter celebrity holidays?
Archive for December, 2004
The music lists still aren’t going well, and it’s really not helping that Music Junction at Parkway Parade is having a 3 for $10 sale which actually features decent albums. So I bought 9.
- Bjork: Vespertine
- Daft Punk: Discovery
- Ladytron: Light And Magic
- Mos Def and Talib Kweli: Black Star
- Bubba Sparxxx: Dark Days, Bright Nights
- Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach: Painted From Memory
- Philip Glass: Songs From The Trilogy
- The Essential Sibelius (2 CDs)
- Gabriel Fauré: Requiem / Cantique de Jean Racine / Messe Basse (Arte Nova recording)
Yay. :)
I’ve been meaning to do year-end lists ever since I started this blog way back in 2000, but never get round to it before because I was busy having, like, fun, at the end of the year. This year, however, I have a job.
First up, my top 5 films, because the music lists are just killing me.
- Before Sunset:
It would have been terrifyingly easy to fall short of what a worthy sequel demanded, but nothing in this movie squandered the promise of the first film, or sidestepped any of the questions that they knew people would want answered. In just 80 masterfully-directed minutes of great scripting, acting, editing and direction, they (Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) made good film-making look effortless. On a personal level, it amazed me to realize that in the most romantic movie I’ve ever seen, there was nothing in its romance that I envied or did not already have.
[My review] [Metacritic] - The Return:
Although one of my pet peeves in a film is sloppy editing, this doesn’t mean I have ADD. I’m perfectly happy to sit through a slow-moving film as long as it makes good use of every moment, and this one really did. Every scene was there for a reason, whether it was starkly beautiful cinematography, or the play of muscles on the face of one of the amazing child actors. I still can’t believe this was Andrei Zvyagintsev’s first film, because it exudes the assurance and maturity of a grizzled veteran at the peak of his powers.
[My review] [Metacritic] - Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind:
I’m not the biggest Charlie Kaufman fan around but the premise of this film struck a huge chord with me, and Michel Gondry, Ellen Kuras (his cinematographer) and Jon Brion (who always makes lovely music) executed it with some of the most stunningly original film sequences I’ve ever seen. I can’t actually write much more about this film. It’s too indescribable.
[Metacritic] - Shaun Of The Dead:
Not a film for people who don’t get British comedy, but it’s side-splittingly funny if you do. After the first ten minutes I gave up keeping track of all the great lines, all the little digs at London life and English society, and all the hilarious subversions of the usual zombie movie scenes. Also, best use of “Whassup niggaz?”, a repeated fart joke (and bear in mind that I normally hate fart jokes), and a Queen song (all used separately) in a film ever. Why oh why did I not watch more of Spaced when I was still in England?
[Metacritic] - Big Fish:
I never thought Tim Burton would have made my happy feelgood heartwarming tearjerker of the year, but there you go. Of course, being a Tim Burton film it still had evil trees and grotesquely deformed people in it, and was all the better for that. Wonderful acting from Albert Finney and Jessica Lange (loved the bathtub scene), and an ending so perfect it nearly made me cry, which doesn’t usually happen to me in movies unless they remind me of London.
[Metacritic]
After the ang moh food overload of Christmas, we headed to Joo Chiat today for belachan chicken, claypot seafood beancurd, sweet potato leaves, and, my favourite, fried lard with a bit of tau chio fish on the side. There’s been a lot of talk lately about Geylang spreading its Tentacles of Vice into Joo Chiat, but I didn’t really notice any more sleazy KTV bars and massage parlours there than there always have been.
However, the shop across the street from Joo Heng was called “Purplish Trading”, which made me happy.
Apart from when I saw Nick Cave sing The Mercy Seat live, the music that has made me battle tears in public most often has always been sacred music. (Okay, also God Only Knows at the end of Love, Actually, but that’s kind of sacred too.) It’s the same with weddings – in church weddings I often feel like I’m about to cry when the couple is pronounced man and wife, but in the first secular wedding I attended I was shocked to realize that it didn’t touch me anywhere as much, or feel as meaningful. (To me, that is, of course I know it was deeply meaningful to the couple.)
Today in Mass during O Come All Ye Faithful, as the organ arpeggioed up towards “Glory to God! Glory in the highest!” and as the music softened down again for “O come let us adore Him” I had to close my eyes and stop singing. There’s no cool way to say this, and I guess some of you would rather I get back to talking about stuff like how I start every day with Satan, or my gay-soaked childhood, but at that moment I felt stunned by His glory, without which I really am nothing. Despite more than a year of feeling almost completely disconnected from Mass in Singapore, I imagined my life if I continued to keep God out of it, and it felt empty.
That’s all. Merry Christmas, everyone. We now return you to this site’s regularly scheduled blips of indie music blathering, frivolous vulgarity and cat pictures.
On one of the first few pages of the latest edition of Street on Torts: This book is dedicated to Lukas, though I hope he never gets the urge to read it.
Some mornings I just don’t know what I’d do without Satan.
It takes a special sort of person to appreciate the Mitre Hotel, which is why the only people I’ve ever taken there have been the Orgers and Alec. Last week a second Orger outing was organized by Don and Yen, who hadn’t had the “Mitre experience” yet but were determined to before the place either got a) more popular or b) razed to the ground by order of the public safety powers that be. And of course, as we knew they would, they loved it. (Read Yen’s love here.)
We perched on the dusty couches, sipped our sub-$4 beers, and talked about ghosts. (Terry and Don had just seen Shutter and were impressed.) At first we were the only ones there. Later, a couple swam into view, apparitions emerging from the black deeps beyond the porch lights. At some point a dog started howling in the distance.
I forgot to bring my camera this time, so these pictures are from when I took Alec there. They’ve been left fairly dark and dingy rather than sexed up too much in Photoshop, but still don’t even come close to evoking the atmosphere of the place – they lack the creepy walk up the driveway, the smell of musty decay, the feel of the brittle upholstery crunching beneath you as you sit down and crane your neck at the gaping holes in the ceiling.
From the bar, looking towards the door
On the wall next to the bar
A close-up of the door grill, including the pack of stray chairs which lurk outside
My two oldest guy friends are Ken and Roy. (Well, I had a good friend called Cavan Wee in kindergarten, but we lost touch once we entered primary school. Email me if you ever read this, Cavan!) We all lived in the same condo. I spent countless hours of my childhood with them.
Last night, the following exchange of text messages took place:
Ken (Think I deleted this message, so I’m paraphrasing): Am at Mox now and you’ll never guess who I’ve just run into. Roy! He’s gay and out!
Me: My childhood just got a lot weirder.
Ken: He says you’ve been a fag hag since five.
Me: When we were kids I was totally more manly than you guys.
Ken: We agree.
Me: Our repeated viewings of Ms Universe are easily understood now. Less easy are our SMALL METAL PLANE MODEL BEAUTY PAGEANTS…ask him to explain.
(You can read Ken’s account here.)
It is somewhat ironic, in hindsight, that at our condo playground neither of them dared to slide down the pole.
