Chestnuts Unloaded

September 21st, 2003 theatre

Chestnuts Unloaded just wasn’t as funny as Hark the Jingle Chestnuts. There were gems: the Matrix videos, Dick Lee bits, the Andre Bocelli, Jason vs Freddy, VCD pirates. But unloaded just isn’t Hark. (I can still laugh at stuff in Hark even after hearing the joke thrice!) Unloaded featured a lot of the Matrix and it’s hard for Matrix to be funny: everyone knows Matrix 3 is plotless, the Oracle is annoying and Keanu can’t act. The Kit Chan stuff was alarmingly almost like a real musical. (That they needed a star to make money is not exactly news.) While the interview bit was great fun it wasn’t piss in your pants comedy. The gay bit was a little more interesting, as social commentry: what would others think, seeing us with gay plays left, right and center?

I hate to complain because I think Jonathan Lim is fantastic. But I am feeling a little let down because I was hoping to be blown out of my mind after a year of no Chestnuts (last year)

Turn Left Turn Right

September 20th, 2003 screen

I felt cheated by Turn Left Turn Right. The story denied itself of its arthouse character and choose instead to be cheesy. It began promisingly, with a polish poem and the billboard. Come to think of it, it wasn’t well executed. It felt tacked on. One expects the story teller to be faithful to the theme laid. They were supposed to be tricked by fate. Oh sure, you can blame everything on fate but surely, it was two jealous lovers – the viewer is suppose to identify them as false lovers – conniving that keep them apart. And if it was fate that kept them apart, why should fate let them be together? At the end , to give it a happy ending or to cut the overlong story, a deux ex machina was tacked on in a form of an earthquake, and thus the true lovers were reunited. It was unfortunate that I missed Minzhi’s public service announcement before I saw it. I resolve never to watch another movie for the sake of watching a movie.

Founding Fathers

September 17th, 2003 Uncategorized

The choice of what to teach is a political affair: a state can choose the lies it wishes to propogate. One doesn’t need to invent these lies, only to leave out certain details.

I was taught that Raffles was Singapore’s founding father. Raffles was the man who signed the papers with the Sultan’s son; Raffles planned the town; Raffles made law and schools; Raffles wanted to make Temasek a colony; Raffles this and that. Farquhar who? Oh, ya, isn’t he the chum?

These weren’t lies – not completely but there are omissions. Raffles did ‘find’ Singapore. He saw a natural port location. To get the land, he made this abjectly poor bloke the Crown Prince – the real prince was the younger brother living some where else -gave him some money and in exchange the bloke signed the treaty. This was all so that Raffles can say that he signed the treaty legitimately. He began town planning and laid down certain laws and, due to business elsewhere, he left after a few months, leaving Farquhar to take care of matters. Raffles wasn’t the most practical person in town. His town designs did not work – Farquhar had to make do. More problemetic was that the Queen of England wasn’t at all keen with Singapore so for a long time the colony was beseiged by lawlessness. When Raffles came back after a couple of years to see his baby, he was enraged to see reality mismatched with his vision and almost sacked the very good Farquhar for screwing up.

Art as a distortion of truth

September 16th, 2003 Uncategorized

Somedays ago, C and I were talking about art being the perception of fact, and that art is to provide a change in perception. I have parrotted this for some time until I came across a better and clearer understanding of it in 2blowhards.com. One of the two said that the way art changes perception is through distortion, like abstract art. This means art cannot be truth because it is by itself a distortion. Magnificant!

So, for truth seekers, art is a fat lot of good – only a trick mirror that allows humankind to pose before it.

Procrastination – some reading

September 3rd, 2003 books

Two days ago I took out Saint Jack (Paul Theorux) and Under the Frog (Tibor Fischer). I’m always fond of Theorux but fond as one might grow fond of a money plant left in the loo. Fischer is just smart alecky and makes him an annoying read. Still that did not deter me from avoiding work. Lim Tze Chien clamours to leave where I dump him: in the middle of a an endless lalang field. I hate writing. Why can’t one have the fame, riches and brilliance of a great writer without having to do the actual writing?