Kobe > MJ

Both of them are incredible basketball players. Their style is so similar that one can't help but to compare them, which one is the best. The truth is, they are equally good in my opinion. The only reason Kobe > MJ in my mind simply because Kobe is the icon I saw the making-of. When I started watching NBA games, MJ was already history. 

I have never seen MJ playing live. To me, he is basically a god. Epic stories surrounded him, praises and worships clouded him. He is an enigmatic figure, very distant, almost omnipotent. He and basketball are inseparable. He had inspired many basketball players including Kobe. Kobe himself even said so during many occasions. MJ is no doubt a legend.

On the other hand, Kobe is very real to me. I saw him and Shaq, the dynamic duo, three peats; I saw Lakers's fall after Shaq left; I saw Kobe's MVP season; I saw him becoming the scoring machine and the 81 points game; and I saw him winning his fourth and fifth rings. I saw him through the ups and downs, especially the downs. When Shaq left and Lakers performed terribly, I really thought Kobe was nothing without Shaq. Plus the sexual assault case, his career plummeted into the abyss. But he came back and proved everybody wrong. It is exactly his growth as a player, the bounce back, that makes him my favorite.

Like I said, people always compare him with MJ. It is truly unfair for Kobe. The thing is MJ became a legend first. While standing under MJ's shadow, the shadow of a giant, trying to shine is tough. In my opinion, Kobe had long out-shone and became a giant himself. Kobe had proved himself as a legend. Even so, he still plays with the kind of fire and hunger of 18 year-old Kobe. But now age is becoming the raising factor. It is just sad to see Kobe haunted by injuries in recent years.   

So Kobe or MJ? It doesn't matter. Making comparison is stupid. MJ is the legend of 1990's, Kobe is the legend of 2000's. For now, I can't see anybody able to carry on the torch. Nobody in the field now has the same kind of passion and fire as MJ's and Kobe's. Although Kobe's retirement hasn't been announced yet, it feels like it is coming soon. And when it happens, part of me will probably die. 

Amélie - Yann Tiersen - Piano

Ever since I watched Amélie, I have always been a big fan of Yann Tiersen. Amélie always has a special place in my heart. With washout colours, the entire movie seems like a collection of old photos. It is artsy, bizarre, surreal, and lovely at the same time. It sprinkles magic on Paris and makes me want to visit Paris again and again. It doesn't present Paris as a one dimensional romantic place, a place where love is always in the air. Instead, it brings audiences' attention to the seemingly mundane and renders it glamourous.  

To match such a peculiar movie, making the soundtrack is a difficult task. Yann Tiersen pull it off very well. The soundtrack of Amélie is what I would say to be perfect. It has all the qualities of the storyline, a slight touch of melancholy is also added into it. This movie and its soundtrack were the drive and the starting point for me to learn piano. They even give me the impulse to buy an accordion and learn it everytime I watch Amélie or listen to the soundtrack. 

Now, I have almost learnt every songs in the Amélie soundtrack on piano. From experience, I can say that Yann's music isn't hard to remember all the notes since it is always quite repetitive. But to play those songs well, it demands long practice. For exemple, Comptine d'un aurte été, I learnt it a few years ago but still can't get the final part right. I can play it without omit a note but the emphasis on some notes is always off for me since I tend to slam on the notes when there are many eigth or sixteenth notes in a row. 

Besides Amélie soundtrack, my second favorite album from Yann is La Traversée. Actually I have so many favorites songs of his. Rue des Cascades, Le Matin, Atlantique Nord, just to name a few. Recently I just found out a fan-made video for the song Les Deux Pianos. I find it so damn beautiful. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iazYkQmscY4)   

How to rebellion 101 - Get a Marianne

There are no hunger games in Mockingjay, neither do actions. But surprisingly, it isn't that bad as a movie. At least I didn't fell asleep during the movie, at least I learnt something, that something isn't new, but it is something I've seen for the first time on big screen. It is about how to start a rebellion. So how? You need a Marianne.

Marianne, the symbol of liberty, the symbol of France. She is not a real person, but she is on every single French euro coin, every single French official document, and she is featured on one of the most famous paintings of all time : La Liberté guidant le peuple, by Eugène Delacroix. The author of Hunger Games was partly influenced by the most well known revolution in the history - the French revolution, and Katniss is derived from Marianne.

The political propaganda stuff is nice and all, but comparing to Catching Fire, it is rather underwhelming. Or may be it is because of the stupid trend of dividing the final book into two parts. I sincerely hope that this trend stops soon. After the movie, I just couldn't stand the cliff-hanger. So I checked out the the rest of the plot online. (Spoiler alert) And I knew it! President Coin seemed evil and I was right. She's gonna show her true colour in Part 2.

    

The majestic Fall

Before Lee Pace became the Ronan or Thranduil, He was the Black Bandit in the movie The Fall. Before this movie, the only Indian director I know is M. Night Shyamalan. Only after watching it that I realized it was directed by the same director for the movie The Cell starring J. Lo, and the shitty movie Mirror Mirror starring Julia Roberts. The man I am talking about is Tarsem. 

Some say it is pretentious, The Cell is just an OK movie for me. Undeniably, some images had disturbed me while watching it when I was only 14. However The Fall is totally a different story. It is truly the magnum opus of Tarsem. I first knew about this movie through a video talking about Satoshi Kon, from the channel called Every Frame a Painting. 

The Fall is the very definition of every frame a painting. The entire movie is done with little to no CGI, that is reason enough to check it out. Movies we get nowadays are so overly depended on CGI, I am just glad that movie of this scale is still being made. It is the only movie I feel able to match the epic vibe Beethoven's works give out and put them into good use. The opening scene is showing exactly that.   

The following would be a spoiler. Almost everyone dies at the end. Each death scene is tragic but beautifully tragic. It is how I would imagine when people talking about Greek or Shakespearean tragedy although I know nothing much about either of them. Plus the ending is set in Jodhpur, a magical place I'd visited, which gives me another reason to love this movie even more. 

The only flaw I found is the little girl's accent. It is sometimes difficult to understand what she said which prevents me from being totally immersed into the movie. Apart from that, I love this movie. It is one hell of a majestic piece of art.