tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-102799422012-02-16T02:21:36.449-08:00I Rant, Therefore I Am<br> <br> "...the books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us thought we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation - a book should serve as the axe for the frozen sea within us. "<br> - Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924), in a letter to a friendYKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.comBlogger281100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-45303679097625253272007-10-09T20:17:00.001-07:002007-10-10T19:16:50.033-07:00

I'm allergic to hype, so I approached "Lust, Caution" with caution, of course (not to mention I've never been a fan of Eileen Chang). And time and again, my cautious attitude has proven me right. The first half of the film, especially the flashback, is dull and boring. The foolhardiness of the students and the pathos of their failed assassination attempt/spy game are not affecting at all, much of

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-54499298748487970922007-09-17T21:07:00.000-07:002007-10-10T01:37:36.923-07:00

Heroes sucks! It certainly has its moments, but the overall quality isn't what the hype machine preaches it to be.First the storyline is silly. Gene mutation can't possibly allow you to do all those amazing acts, can it? Besides, we do use our whole brain! That crap about using only 10% of it is so out of fashion. I'd rather the writer goes with Marvel/DC's traditions: touched by some sort of

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-91015972807967990572007-09-07T02:21:00.000-07:002007-10-10T01:35:31.901-07:00

I'm not overly impressed with Inland Empire. Granted, I was not exactly in my best mental and physical state when I watched it (have been losing sleep over the last few months). Besides, I hate movies shot with HD camera, which's lifeless and doesn't register light very well (or maybe too well). Guess Lynch's inclination to HD has a lot to do with budget. He's not a box-office wonderboy in the

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-69405454972659496442007-07-30T08:54:00.000-07:002007-07-30T18:10:50.482-07:00

Ingmar Bergman, the world of cinema doesn't see the likes of you so often. May you RIP...

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-55003722609606402762007-04-01T18:45:00.000-07:002007-10-10T02:24:37.326-07:00

The Lost Room is a six-part Sci-fi Channel mini-series. It's what you'd expect to come straight out of a scriptwriting workshop: let's say there are a key, a clock, a comb, a cop, a pawn shop owner and a couple religious cults, now give me a story. The idea is quite refreshing but the scripwriters haven't done the premise justice or they haven't fully explored the potential of their original

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-46508648625188458402007-02-23T19:11:00.000-08:002007-02-23T22:31:39.572-08:00

Time to look into my crystal ball:Best Picture: Letter From Iwo JimaThe Departed is a decent film but we have certainly seen better, especially from Scorsese. Babel is a sham. I won't be too surprised if the award eventually goes to Little Miss Sunshine or The Queen, but my money is on Eastwood.Best Director: Clint EastwoodMany people will go for Scorsese in this category. But let's face it,

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-20844375703113406752007-02-16T07:54:00.000-08:002007-02-16T08:00:06.780-08:00

Lady in the Water is a fairytale through and through. Sorry, no more startling plot twists - what you see is exacty what you get. The story defies logic, it's unreal, and it's absoultely otherworldly or just plain goofy. A savior of the purest intend is here to rescue humanity from utter destruction by inspiring a prophet? A guild, a guardian, a healer and a symbolist are aligned to assist her?

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1165939044987607832006-12-12T07:56:00.000-08:002007-02-16T21:28:10.578-08:00

After This Our Exile is a piece of junk. I hate to be a wet blanket, but the geyserlike bursts of enthusiasm for this film, exemplified by the local media, makes my stomach turn. Those who laud this movie as a successful "comeback" of director Patrick Tam are either in awe of his fame as one of the progenitors of HK's new wave movement (which was a long time ago and why do people still care and

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1165823545783008582006-12-10T23:44:00.000-08:002007-02-16T21:29:47.208-08:00

Watched Elizabeth I over the weekend, an HBO two-part mini-series. Helen Mirren deserves all the accolades showered on her in the past year. She gives a definitive portray of the most popular monarch of Britain over the centuries. The indecisive and temperamental nature of Elizabeth I, as well as her legendary (or notoriously known) affairs with the Earl of Leicester and subsequently the Earl of

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1164769561657135242006-11-28T18:56:00.000-08:002007-10-10T01:38:51.346-07:00

Among the books I've recently finished is Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl. His sophomore effort is again a period novel like his debut - The Dante Club, which i enjoyed a great deal and won't hestitate to recommend to anyone interested in mystery wrapped in a period setting and featured real-life literate luminaries such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Wendell Holems. Poe Shadow, in much the same

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1157345411735096192006-09-03T21:47:00.000-07:002007-10-10T01:42:47.157-07:00

The Double life of Veronique is showing in cinema again, as part of a programme to commemorate the death of Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski who died ten years ago of a heart attack. Sadly to say, the movie isn't anyting close to great. It's beautifully shot, the score is absolutely haunting, but other than that, it's empty. The void is so vast that it verges on being pretentious. Kieslowski

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1154318853645995552006-07-30T21:01:00.001-07:002007-10-10T01:45:01.304-07:00

Mrs Henderson's (Judy Dench) husband has recently deceased. Mourning though she is, she can't help blaming her late husband for his "inconsideration" to leave her in the boredom of widowhood. After some painful soul searching and experiments, the restless Mrs Henderson spots a desolated theatre in West End and decides to restore it to its past glory. Oblivious to the theatre business, she

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1150682465336330762006-06-18T18:59:00.000-07:002007-10-10T01:46:35.382-07:00

Malick is a past master of celluloid poetry. Whoever tries to argue the otherwise should go back to watch The Fast and the Furious. What perfect imagery in this poem of love! His lens bring us claustrophobically close to Mother Nature that our pabulum and quotidian existences seem awfully trifling in comparison. The New World reminds me of Wender's Wings of Desire, only this time the narrators

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1147057667831978832006-05-07T20:01:00.000-07:002007-10-10T01:48:27.685-07:00

North Country is based on a true event in which a group of female miners filed a sexual harrasment class action and won. It's THE lawsuit that gets the whole world busy at plugging holes in company regulations. North Country has all the trappings one can expect from a courtroom drama - the oppressors plunge their claws into the oppressed and the great injustice is not righted until the very end

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1140677100254616782006-02-22T22:28:00.000-08:002007-10-10T01:49:00.178-07:00

Munich is inspired by the notorious Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympics and the ensuing aftermath. Avner, deftly played by Eric Bana, was appointed by Golda Meir, the Iron Lady of Israel, the grave task of leading an unofficial death squad on a mission to take out 11 Palestinians condemned by the Mossad as the architects of Munich. Avner started off as an inexperienced assassin who had a hard

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1140411564272588882006-02-19T20:45:00.000-08:002006-02-19T23:00:15.623-08:00

Matthew Kneale's Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance is a collection of 12 short stories about ordinary people like you and me drifting in a morally-ambiguous world while being tormented by senses of paranoid, despondency and defeat. The pace of these stories is crisp but never haste, the narrative straightforward but never simple. If you like Kneale's English Passenger, you probably would enjoy

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1136260467769282542006-01-02T19:53:00.000-08:002007-10-10T01:50:53.266-07:00

《如果．愛》寫情真摯，試問多少人真的明白愛情的底蘊？愛是方是圓，是悲是喜，沒人可以說個肯定，充其量只能是明心見性。片中三角戀的契機，開場不久便由聶文向監製說的一番話透露了端倪：三人之間的關係，算是一般定義下的愛情嗎？孫納之於聶文，是一種感情的附庸和寄託，但久而久之， 卻窒礙了他的藝術創作，聶文放手是因為太愛孫納，還是不想再被變成了包袱的愛情所支配？對聶文來說，或許愛情既是一種存放和提取情感的器皿，也是靈感的泉源和墓地－他以戲劇手法終結與孫納的關係，創造力亦隨之從墓地中翻土而出，吃酸辣麵去了。聶文之於孫納，最初是以情感投資達至互利互用的商業瓜葛，帳面回報一如所料隨時間消逝逐漸見底，本是一單操作純熟的交易，但這次她赫然發覺自己難於抽身，時間長了，共生關係竟派生出真感情來。對孫納來說，或許愛情不只是一種投資；或許愛情，真的存在過，活在那拍不成的青海戀曲中。林見東之於孫納，是一個大大的心結－

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1128495183848703302005-10-04T23:51:00.000-07:002007-10-10T01:51:26.714-07:00

周慕雲與蘇麗珍的戀情是時空的一次錯摸，周慕雲自始被困在2046號房間，那裡有他與蘇麗珍最精彩的時光，也有他最深藏的秘密；可以說，周慕雲的心從來沒有離開過2046。為了維繫自己與現實世界的紐帶，他塑造出半自傳式的小說人物木村，讓他帶著周慕雲的秘密離開2046，以謎般笑容睥睨天下間沉淪在潮濕的回憶世界的眾生(包括現實世界中的自己)。但是，這個充滿自嘲意味的人物卻是個不中用的傢伙，他雖然離開了，卻忍不住一次又一次地回去，重複著希臘神話中Sisyphus的輪迴惡夢。「你願意跟我走嗎？」木村一次又一次地追問機械人王菲，明知道她不會有答案、她的沉默也不是一種答案，而更重要的是，這個機械人並不是他所追求的對象！他問的已不再是一條實質的問題，而是一條rhetorical question，因為這條問題的真正對象，也就是《花樣年華》中的蘇麗珍，已經從周慕雲的世界中徹底抹消。

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1128479150427119002005-10-04T19:22:00.000-07:002007-10-10T01:53:12.845-07:00

Although lauded for her journalistic integrity during the Watergate fallout, the late Katharine Graham is in fact not much of a hero, or for that matters, someone with particularly admirable traits. In her autobiography, she reminiscences the life of a daughter, a wife, a mother and a businesswoman overshadowed by and overly depended on the men surrounding her. She is constantly looking for a

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1122024266481318782005-07-22T02:23:00.000-07:002007-10-10T01:55:34.131-07:00

I let out a long exhale after I finish The Historian, not out of the excitement of an enthralling experience but a "thank God I waded it through" kind of relief. The book is dense, plodding, slow, constructed and, the deadliest of all flaws for a counter-factual fiction, far-fetched. Writing in the epistolary style is no easy feat and Ms Kostovo is simply not up to the challenge. All the letters

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1121674795469786232005-07-18T01:08:00.000-07:002007-10-10T02:07:43.743-07:00

I was drumming my figures when I started writing this blog ten minutes ago. Do I like Batman Begins? Sure, I'm entertained, to a certain extent, but frankly, I don't like it...or maybe just a little. Yes I'm a nit-picking bastard, but there're too many problems for me to turn a blind eye to. David Goyer's screenplay is weak if not downright bad. All the silly pap about the nature of fear in the

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1119342426177223662005-06-19T01:25:00.000-07:002007-10-10T02:17:54.014-07:00

It's Sunday and I'm feeling lazy. So I switch on Cable and see what's on the movie channel. And there's Danny DeVito's Duplex, starring Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore. I'm not a fan of the duo, but a few chuckles to tide me in till Monday-morning syndromes kick in is not such a bad idea. It turns out to be a dreadful, dreadful experience. I think it's meant to be a satire about how rent control

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1118309027981566152005-06-09T02:21:00.000-07:002007-10-10T02:13:13.001-07:00

It doesn't take a Jedi to sense a great disturbance in the Force. Star Wars III: The Revenge of the Sith crash lands in the theatre as yet another dumb movie, albeit having a somewhat richer (not better) story than the previous prequels. The first ten minutes of it is an orgy of CG effects as the lousy story struggles to set the stage for Anakin's ultimate transformation. But instead of being

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1114398524565212292005-04-24T20:03:00.000-07:002007-10-10T02:15:57.732-07:00

Blade rides on the good ole theme we never grow tired of - Good vs Evil. But it warrants a different reading. Blade is both a vampire and a human, and he drifts between the human world and the vampire world. Being both at once makes him neither of them. He is a stain in the picture, and it's that very stain that maintains the balance and wholeness of the world. That's the charm of Blade and what

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1110165817220387932005-03-06T19:18:00.000-08:002007-10-10T02:13:55.181-07:00

Lars von Trier is known for his peculiarity and as a die-hard experimentalist of modern cinema. Dogville brings to the plate just that. It is disturbing, the kind of film you either love it or hate it. Nicole Kidman, in one of her more stellar performances, portrays Grace, a ravishingly beautiful blonde doggedly pursued by mobsters. She bumps her way into a dead-end town under the Rocky Mt. named

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1108692593822298782005-02-17T18:08:00.000-08:002007-10-10T02:21:22.928-07:00

Ryu Murakami's "Kingdom of Hope" is a tale of decadence, destruction and just possibly, hope. It's my second encounter with Murakami since "Coin Locker Babies". Told from the point of view of a magazine reporter, the story spins around a group of junior high dropouts with a concrete plan to turn the game of adults on its head- innovatively making use of modern day inventions (i.e. the Internet,

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1106638258579664082005-01-24T23:30:00.000-08:002007-10-10T02:09:09.877-07:00

Closer is a complete mess. There's nothing so clever about the contrived plot, the characters are abhorrently inconsistent and histrionic, and the transitions are as abrupt as they are unexpected, not to mention the emotions are all wrong. Characters burst into heartrending tears or fall madly in love or give up hopes they so dear at overly dramatized moments that even the most forgiving part of

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10279942.post-1106236012437557472005-01-20T07:11:00.000-08:002007-10-10T02:08:33.695-07:00

Is Stone's Alexander as pathetic as many said so? I think not. For one, he scores rather high on historical accuracy. There're alternations that I think he does it purposefully and are well within artistic license (e.g. Darius III's family was captured in the battle of Issus not Gaugamela; Alexander got his arrow wound when laying siege to an Indian town not from the battle with prince Porus; and

YKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06007595591762523425noreply@blogger.com0