S Rajaratnam

February 23rd, 2006 Obituaries

There is a very complimentary obituary on CNA on Mr Rajaratnam. Not to put a fine point on it but it so much more complimentary than what was written about Mr Wee.

Old Guards going down one by one.

Ain’t heavy.

February 17th, 2006 Uncategorized

I was already asleep with the television on when my brother C., arrived in dirty neon orange shirt and jeans and whinged about the ticket prices from Proserpine to Melbourne, looking lean and dark. “More expensive than from Singapore to Melbourne,” he said.
“What’s with the neon shirt?” I said.
“Work wear,”
“Forgot to wash?”
“It’s magnitide,” he said. “it doesn’t get off.”
C introduced me to wonders of pay TV. I dozed off and he complained later on that I slept through the movie of my choosing.

We walked up and down the Melbourne City Grid and ate a lot of Chinese, squabbling to pay for the bill. In the uncertain weather I was dressed alternately too light or too warm but Melbourne city and its spring was sweetly crisp, sharp with the metallic smell of cold and cheap pizza. I was broke but still swiped a credit card for the plane ticket and hotel because 5 months to Chinese New Year can be a long time to wait to talk about how work was shit, how family can be bloody meddling, how that Mr Engineer I am keen on is attached and getting married. We spent time together and separately, walking up and down Melbourne City Grid.

Saturday morning we both awoke when the alarm clock rang. We took turns in the toilet and he shoved his arms into the neon orange shirt and slipped into shoes with so many holes I once told him to give it to the mice for a home. He said, alright bye. I said, see you. The door slammed and then Melbourne City stopped being beautiful and I wanted with all my heart to leave.

Brokeback Mountain

February 12th, 2006 screen

It was surprising that the film was based on a short story by Annie Proulx of the same title: I, prejudiced against film adaptations, had imagined the novel to be much better. Lee Ang and cast did extremely well in showing the tenderness in the love affair between the two men – not neccessarily queer – and the slow but sure decay of their lives and loved ones when they pretend it was a one shot affair and try to conform to social norms: get married, beget children. One imagines they could get along: there is marriage, there is children, there is love all around. Then you see Ennis bonks his wife from behind and the wife clearly doesn’t appreciate it. When he gets a postcard from Jake, everything unravels. They sneak off a few times in a year to Brokeback mountain. Then one day, he finds his post card returned as “DECEASED”. They were planning for another sneak off.

Forbidden love is a fantastic, explosive stuff but drama is not something Lee Ang likes to make. He doesn’t like big scenes. His touch is restrained and for this movie with all its threat of violence it seems lacking in bite. These two cowboys will die a horrible tortured death if other men found them out. It seems to me that Lee Ang doesn’t worry as much about that as Annie Proulx did in the story. I would, if I had seen a bloodied man in a valley when I was nine. Annie Proulx made that very clear that this scared Ennis del Mar not that he didn’t want to go live on a home in the ranch where the deer and antelope played. At least with the sneaking around, Jake was alive, not dead like his parents. So bringing that threat right out in the open would have given this movie more edge, rather than the soft sad tragedy it is.

Memoirs of A Geisha

February 5th, 2006 screen

Escaping from the usual bothers of festive occassions, I got a ticket for the movie. Golden’s book came out 1999 and I didn’t think the book worth my time. After the film, I thought the book was being done injustice, I picked it up, feeling at once both indignant and also guilty. Indignant because I’m of the belief that adaptations always make the book look bad. Guilty because I laughed at a friend who said the book was good. 8 hours later, I heaved a sigh and finally closed the book. Quietly, I opened the dumpster and dropped it into the cockroach and rat infested hell earth. My initial baseless conclusion is correct.

The film is beautifully made: stunning location, lovely shots and beautiful actors. The director has done an outstanding job. All these beauty hampered by its uninteresting plot. A lot of it is Sayuri telling us the process of being a geisha – sometimes it is that she tells us herself or another tells it to her. I think the crux of the problem is that the sense of Japanese seems lost in translation at the moment Golden put his pen on paper and made it his story. A writer can put his characters in any location he wishes but he must tell the story from the point of view he knows best else the story would have a false ring to it. Golden is writing from the point of view of a Japanese Geisha and a popular one at that. I’m not saying he has to be a popular Japanese Geisha or even a woman but he has to have something to grab on to to be able to enter the mind of this person. Knowing that it has a funny ring to it, he started the story with a translater’s note and the author’s thank you note at the end to strengthen the sense that it is a memoir and it is true.

I put in Shanghai Flowers upon my return. This is a story of an expensive brothel house in Shanghai. The sense of drama is strong yet not obvious which is Hou’s style. Hou is fond of showing the impact of politics. He shows the various machinations used by the girls to buy freedom and how the patrons – who are outsiders of the brothels – get themselves twisted in these plots. Hou is not a woman, nor is he a prostitute or a brothel owner but what worked is that he grabbed on a point of view that is his and therefore allows the audience to enter the story. Memoirs of a Geisha sucked. Golden should have just chucked away the novel even though he had been at it for 7 years and write a new one.

Memoirs of A Geisha

February 5th, 2006 screen

Escaping from the usual bothers of festive occassions, I got a ticket for the movie. Golden’s book came out 1999 and I didn’t think the book worth my time. After the film, I thought the book was being done injustice, I picked it up, feeling at once both indignant and also guilty. Indignant because I’m of the belief that adaptations always make the book look bad. Guilty because I laughed at a friend who said the book was good. 8 hours later, I heaved a sigh and finally closed the book. Quietly, I opened the dumpster and dropped it into the cockroach and rat infested hell earth. My initial baseless conclusion is correct.

The film is beautifully made: stunning location, lovely shots and beautiful actors. The director has done an outstanding job. All these beauty hampered by its uninteresting plot. A lot of it is Sayuri telling us the process of being a geisha – sometimes it is that she tells us herself or another tells it to her. I think the crux of the problem is that the sense of Japanese seems lost in translation at the moment Golden put his pen on paper and made it his story. A writer can put his characters in any location he wishes but he must tell the story from the point of view he knows best else the story would have a false ring to it. Golden is writing from the point of view of a Japanese Geisha and a popular one at that. I’m not saying he has to be a popular Japanese Geisha or even a woman but he has to have something to grab on to to be able to enter the mind of this person. Knowing that it has a funny ring to it, he started the story with a translater’s note and the author’s thank you note at the end to strengthen the sense that it is a memoir and it is true.

I put in Shanghai Flowers upon my return. This is a story of an expensive brothel house in Shanghai. The sense of drama is strong yet not obvious which is Hou’s style. Hou is fond of showing the impact of politics. He shows the various machinations used by the girls to buy freedom and how the patrons – who are outsiders of the brothels – get themselves twisted in these plots. Hou is not a woman, nor is he a prostitute or a brothel owner but what worked is that he grabbed on a point of view that is his and therefore allows the audience to enter the story. Memoirs of a Geisha sucked. Golden should have just chucked away the novel even though he had been at it for 7 years and write a new one.