I watched this mini movie before the movie Promised Land started, in cinema. At first, I wasn't paying attention to it until my friend asked me to. He said he couldn't understand this mini movie. So here I am to give my own interpretation about it. First time watching it, it may seem like a total nonsense. In cinema, what I watched is actually one of the whole three-part movie. The full version can be found on Youtube.
First of all, it reminds me of one particular episode of HIMYM, episode 13, Drumroll, Please. Victoria suggested that the magical moment before the first kiss, is the best part of kissing. Warm breathe from two lovers touching gently on each other's cheek, closer and closer, but never touch each other. The anticipation and all. The Drumroll.
The movie may seem like about a love triangle, but my guess is more about the moment of falling in love itself, the moment before the cruel reality kicks in and before the responsibility of engaging in a relationship with another person. Until the end of the mini movie, Léa stays in a indeterminably vague relationship with two charming guys. I had a very beautiful word in Chinese to describe this moment, 暧昧. It means a special state in between men and women, between friends but slightly more than friendship. Too bad I can't find a proper English translation of it.
I personally haven't smell that perfume yet. But I guess it would smell joyful and sweet, like the unreal yet simple sweetness of pure affection regardless the responsibility and the reality of a relationship. The perfume would be a bit sour too, because of the jealousy between the two guys trying to win over the girl.
暧昧 is hard to maintain in our real world, but the perfume would keep the moment, forever.
I am scientifically educated, so I can't help myself from finding scientific analogy to this situation. All above, kinda reminds me of Schrodinger's Cat, the state superposition. Before opening the box, before knowing the cat is dead or alive, all the possible outcomes stay in superposition. So, the cat is both dead and alive. It contradicts the reality, but this is exactly the magical state, of superposition, which is attempted to be preserved in this perfume.
Anyway, another interpretation as well can be made, which is, the girl is a total bitch, playing with the feelings of two best friends. But if watched closely, in the end, both guys are OK with the situation. If they are OK, then I guess there is no problem at all. If they are happy about it, then we shouldn't bother them.
Waiting for Ironman 3, but still craving for some cinema experience, so I ended up watching the Promised Land. Well it is a little bit boring, I have to admit that. But it has a better than average storyline. Let's just say it is a potential contender for Oscar.
The movie brings out an issue about the effects of fracking, a method of extracting natural gas. There is a video from scishow explaining fracking quite well. It seems like a problematic and pollutive method.
I said it is a rather boring movie, most probably because the main character played by Matt Damon isn't very relatable at the beginning. He started the movie as the "bad guy", working for a natural gas company, trying to convince the people to sell their land to the company for natural gas extraction.
The movie shows also how easily an innocent, less educated mind can be tricked and taken advantage of. There is this scene in the movie where a guy blinded by the money offered by the company, sold his land and used the money to buy a fancy car, something useless in long term. This is exactly what my father always tell me, tell me to reading more, get more knowledge, to be wiser and not easily tricked. Because there are always people in this world who are going to take advantage of the innocent.
In the middle of the movie, Matt Damon, helped by some locals, were setting up a funfair to promote his company in the small town. There is one scene I love the most, a scene when at the end of the preparation of the funfair, he and the others sat at the back of a truck, chit-chatting and chilling. Everyone on the truck was tired but satisfying, content. I could feel their contentment, their joy to be a part of something. Their joy isn't come from money, they volunteered. But this is what an honest hard work would do to men, and working the land is the one of the honest hard works. To quote Tolstoy,
One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Men and Nature shall not be broken.
Work the land gives you a special connection with the nature. I grew up in the city. Personally I don't have many chances to work the land. However, I did some gardening with my grandpa a few times and everytime was very rewarding. It let me connect to the land I stood on, and also gave me a chance to connect with my grandpa.
I wanted to do a review on The Great Gatsby, but I don't think I would be able to do a better job than John Green. In fact, I got interested in reading the book, partly, because of him. I watched the series Crash Course Literature on Youtube, he really has a way of talking people into reading and learning new knowledge, and he got me. In my opinion, he is the most interesting Youtube celebrity that I have known so far. He is also an author. His books will soon be my next choices after The Catcher In The Rye, which also is one of the books discussed on his channels, vlogbrothers and crashcourse.
Let's talk about what I feel about The Great Gatsby. There are so many new vocab for me. Eventhough the book is barely 200 pages, it took me ages to finish it. Honestly, if it wasn't John Green's video, I would probably drop the book after the first 5 chapters. And like many others who had read the book, I agree that all the characters are not very likable, even Jay Gatsby himself. I don't really like Jay Gatsby may because of a part of myself I found in Gatsby, the part of myself that I hate the most, the part that Jay Gatsby still cannot forget the girl he fell in love with five years ago, Daisy, still cannot put aside the past and move on.
In fact, I had read a few works of Scott Fitzgerald before The Great Gatsby, without knowing who was the author beforehand. I had read one of his short story collections, Babylon Revisited and Other Stories, in translated Chinese version though. I actually bought the book because the bookstore was doing promotion, with 3 or more books bought, every each of the book would be 8 Ringgit Malaysia. I took this book randomly just to make the target of 3 books. What a big surprise. After reading The Great Gatsby, it all suddenly makes sense now. There are so many similarities in between this short story collection and Gatsby. I am lazy to review every single short story in the collection here. But to quote Scott Fitzgerald himself,
Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.
This quote basically sums up all his works in the collection. And yes, most of the short stories are about human relationship. But there won't be any Twilight romance, no living happily ever after, and depressing ending most of the time. Each of the stories are so true and would probably be so relatable to many people. In fact, so true that somehow I found the short stories and also The Great Gatsby, brutal.
I still remember Tom Hiddleston's interpretation of Scott Fitzgerald in the movie, Midnight in Paris, by Woody Allen. This is yet another great movie, in my opinion. Woody Allen explains very well how I feel about Paris in the movie.
If anyone remember the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, this is also adapted from one of Fitzgerald's short stories. However, the screenplay differs greatly from the short story, as to quote Wikipedia. Personally, I haven't read the original story yet.
So, his works are not meant for those teenage girls with fancy dream of prince charming. If you are depressed, don't read them too. A deep sense of sorrow is what I found in his books. The movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby is coming soon. I am looking forward for Leonardo Dicaprio's interpretation of Gatsby. I am really excited for yet another chance to be depressed by the story again.
On the 8 April, I went for the interview with Kent Meyers in Phelma, Grenoble, discussing a little bit about his latest published book, Twisted Tree. I am really honoured to be able to meet an author, who I read his work. There was a strange sensation at first when meeting someone who I read so much about online and after all those videos I watched about him. For the following, I would only touch a little bit about his book, and more focused on the interview and his talk.
Uncertain about the future
Surprisingly, he hadn't been involved in literature until he was around 23 or 24, when he suffered educational crisis. He had been in the field of science and maths before that and nearly quit school. Soon he changed his major into English, and graduated with a Master degree in English. I feel so related to him when he talked about this, since I am having a more or less similar dilemma now. I am not sure whether science is the right path for me, eventhough I consider myself quite good at it.
Secrets occupy a big part of our life
As he talked about the book, he mentioned that secret is a way to enrich our life, unless it moves to another level when the secret itself is going to hurt another people. For me, learning to keep secrets has somehow becomes a step to be an adult. Sharing a secret to someone, basically telling the person indirectly : I trust you, as if the secret is a gift. As we read through the Twisted Tree, we are also learning the darkest secrets of the characters. Most of the secrets might seem insignificant to us, but certainly it is a big deal for the person concerned. A secret is called secret for a reason or another, and for that reason, people won't tell their secret easily.
Why only classics and not contemporary?
When he graduated from university, he said he was still not into writing yet. He was kinda stuck when trying to come out with something to write. His friend then suggested him to read some contemporary literature. It was this time, that his mind was opened. He was introduced to different new ways to write, different formats for a novel, etc.. In fact, all he had learnt in university was all classical literature. So he said, why schools teach only classics while we are living in the modern times, constantly immersed in contemporary works. I think many subjects taught in schools have the same problem. Even for science and maths, we must learn the classical physics, Newton's three laws, Maxwell's classical electromagnetism, etc. in primary and secondary schools, without anyone telling us that these laws aren't quite true, that they are simply approximated laws to describe the real world. Most of us would have thought that those classics are the truest and the truest they can ever be, until university level, when quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativity are taught and shatter all the truths that we had learnt before. There are videos from minutephysics explaining many misconceptions we learnt since we were young. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGL22PTIOAM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM630Z8lho8)
Creativity = Imagination and Discipline
This is perhaps what I consider as the most important point he said during the talk. He said many people think creativity is equal to imagination. But wrong! Creativity involves an crucial word - create. It must involve the actual making and creating, from nothing to something, which takes a huge amount of self discipline to do so. Kent's routine is very rigourous, as a university lecturer, he wakes up at five everyday to write until nine, before he goes to work. Yes, everyone can write and everyone has some awesome ideas, but not many have the discipline to make it really happens. And so not everyone of us is an author.
Writing = translating life?
He mentioned this point when talking about translated version of his book. To my surprise, Twisted Tree is his first book to ever be translated into other language, and the first language to be translated into is French. This point he mentioned is quite interesting. In fact, I think not just writers, many artists are trying to do so also, translating life with different forms of art. However, it is more obvious in his case though, as most of his works are focused on capturing people's daily lives.
The power of a mustache
After reading the first chapter of Twisted Tree, the most creepy chapter of all, and seeing the photo of him at the back cover of the book, with his mustache, I expected him to be someone with deep voice and super serious. But it is totally the opposite. He has a lovely voice, and humourous at the same time. It is someone I want to sit down and listen to for hours. I think the mustache is all that made me think that he is a serious person. I wonder how he would look like without the mustache.
An index for chaos
A word of mine about Twisted Tree : puzzle, a criss cross puzzle more precisely. While reading, I lost track of characters and events for so many times. For this kind of work, Kent Meyers did say that he has an index for himself just to keep track of what seemingly called a chaos. However, among all the books I had read before, Twisted Tree is still not as complicated as The Golden Notebook from Doris Lessing. I am not trying to say which is better. They are both good, just that the puzzle feeling of Twisted Tree reminds me of The Golden Notebook.
At the end of the talk, everybody with his book lined up for his signature. When it was my turn, I asked him a question about the book : Why in some chapters we read the stories as the third person, while in the other as the first person? He was puzzled for a while, and gave me a blurred answer. Blurred may be because it was such a thrilling experience for me to be so up closed with an author, and I couldn't focus myself at all. But i did catch a sentence from him : It is a clever question. And that sentence from him basically made my day.
However, I did think about my question afterwards. I think, for some characters, Kent Meyers subconsciously want to be him or her, or he found some relatable characteristics between himself and the character, and so he used the first person. The other time, he used the third. Like the first chapter about the murderer, he used the third person, as I assume that it is just too hard for any sane mind to put himself in the shoes of a serial killer.
And here is the introduction to Twisted Tree, by Kent Meyers himself.
"The Grandmasters", yet another movie about Ip Man. But this time no more Donnie Yen but Tony Leung. Less focus on Ip Man his own life, but great kung fu masters he met during his life time. The style also different. It takes an artsy and philosophic angle. I say philosophic, because everything said in the movie is so deep, so deep I can't see them anymore :P
But seriously, I think the movie is well filmed. If you pause at any moment during the film, the shot can be a painting on it's own. Recently I have been learning a little bit about art, somehow I want to say the movie is so baroque-styled. Everything is so exaggerated. Raindrops and snowflakes were used to make this happen. And of course dust, just like any other kung fu movie, their clothes are always so dusty.
A lot of close-up shots and slow-mo too. I think the close-ups were partly to cover up the fact Tony Leung doesn't have much kung fu basis. Because whole-body shot can reveal how good his stance is. For me, from what I know, the most important things in kung fu is the stance, the posture, and the power of core. The stance and the posture can easily differentiate a noob from a pro.
Exaggerated kung fu fighting scenes, including those defying-gravity-without-any-particular-reason scenes, have became a trend since "The Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" by Ang Lee. I don't know what Ang Lee wanted to achieve in his movie, but I personally don't really like it. In "The Grandmasters", there are still some get-kicked-and-fly-10metres-away scene, but more realistic, which I prefer.
In the end, I like "The Grandmasters" but not as much as the first "Ip Man". Among all movies about Ip Man, the first, Donnie Yen's Ip Man is the best, the sequel is not even as good either. I wonder why Donnie Yen didn't get picked as Ip Man again in this movie. No doubt, Tony Leung is a great actor and can totally convey the role. However I expected more Cung Le in this movie though. The first time I saw him in action was in the movie "Bodyguards and Assassins", fighting with Donnie Yen. He was tailored as an unstoppable force and a perfect match-up against Donnie, and looked like Batman's Bane but with even more movement speed. After this movie, and some google time, surprisingly, Cung Le is a real life MMA fighter, competing in UFC.
I have to say though, the scene is so unrealistic but still fun to watch.
Just half way finishing the book "Eleven", a collection of short stories by Patricia Highsmith, and I had already read two of the short stories are about snails killing people. I really didn't expect the book to be so creepy. I bought the book expecting they are love stories, because I had read one of her short stories a few years ago, so called "The Birds Poised to Fly".
It is about a guy named Don, proposed to a girl. He carefully wrote down his proposal in a letter and sent to her. The awaited reply from his love one is taking so long, and drives him crazy. Meanwhile, he stumbles upon a letter from another girl, expressing her love to his neighbour. Don has a strong sense of empathy to this girl, because his neighbour doesn't seem to bother to reply her. So Don reply her, in the name of his neighbour. While there is still no reply from his love, and after a few letters between Don and this mysterious girl, he asks the girl out in his neighbour's name. But in the end, the girl shows up as expected, but Don walks to her and says sorry to her and walks away, with a deep sense of guilt.
After reading a few more short stories in the book, I think this one fits just fine with her style. And like what the teaser at the back cover of the book says : "Unsuspecting victims are devoured by their own obsessions in this perfectly chilling collection".
Back to people killed by snails. The first one I read is called "The Snail-Watcher", a man devoted to his pet snails and drown by millions of his collection of snails in his room. And the second one, "The Quest for Blank Claveringi", a zoologist searching for a mythical giant snails on a remote island, he finds them but also eaten alive by them. Now I really want to ask Patricia whether she hates snails? And why snails, in these 2 short stories? Why not other creatures?
The idea of man-eating giant snails really haunts me. It reminds me of a scene in the movie "King Kong" (2005), when people are dropped into a deep pit filled with all kinds of super-sized insects (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTWYQhTT388). That scene is just so creepy to think about. I mean I would rather be ripped half by King Kong than eaten by these insects.
Luckily real life insects are relatively small in size. But why aren't there giant insects? In fact scientist still don't have a clear answer. This question is discussed more in details in a video from Scishow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l79FuGuk1qE). Apparently the percentage of oxygen in the oxygen is one of the factors affecting their size. Lower the percentage is, smaller their size is. So I guest we should be grateful that we had cut down so many trees to have the oxygen percentage lowered :P
Since snails are such a delicacy in France, I just hope that nobody is doing some genetic engineering on snails to make them bigger, juicier, and grow faster. I do enjoy snails as food, but I don't want to be their food. The following pictures of snails are just some random shots taken during a rainy summer evening, when the moisture so high that even snails came out on the paved roads and on the poles of bus stop.
Both festivals, their dates are not fixed in Gregorian calendar, but both normally fall on somewhere between the end of March and April. This year, both fall quite closed together. Both deals in some measure with the Death. One is to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And the other one is tomb sweeping day, the graves of our relatives who had departed.
I don't remember if Qing Ming is a public holiday in Malaysia. But Easter is certainly a significant festival in countries with majority Christians. So I just glad I can have some free time today, and to be able to write this passage.
Death is always a big question for human. Fear and grief is almost always linked to Death, because regardless the notion of heaven and hell exists or not, and whether the dying person is going back to the nature or whatever religion have told us, wherever the person is going, he is leaving our world. Sometimes that's reason enough to mourn.
I am thinking now, of what is the best answer if a child ask me the questions about the Death. I simply don't know how to answer. I tried to search my memory, the part of memory when I first became aware of the existence of Death.
Well I think it happened when my grandfather, my mother side, died when I was 3 years old. I remember I was sent to my godmother's house, so that my mom can have time to arrange to funeral. Then my godmom took me to the funeral to see mom. My sister was still in my mom's belly at that time. It is so vivid most probably because emotions were involved or something novel was learnt, in this case, the notion of Death.
And then a question floating in my head, what if I was there on spot, witnessing the resurrection of Jesus? Or in broader sense, what if I see someone comes back from Death? Put aside the science for the moment, I think I would probably freaked out. The first thing I would have suspected is zombie apocalypse. No offense to Jesus or and Christians though, just thought it might be a funny question to ponder upon.
