Scene 13

The night I saw two movies last week was Saturday. And I found no creation in that arrangement. But the titles of the movies were quite to my own surprise. "Kill Bill vol 1" and "Monster". I will have a specific chapter for expressing gratitude for this software called emule, and all those eager users reaching for films and passing them around. I mean we simply don't want to see more Blockbuster stores with the same posters and different promotions. Something, something just different...

While eating my dinner I had a really hard time deciding which one to watch first. They were both there on my hardrive, but the order will definitely make a difference. And even though "saving the best for last" was kind of elusive, it got me at the last minute. I had more expectation for "Monster" and it could possibly be so good that I won't want to watch anything else for the night. And all this pondering made me eat a lot of delicious food that I had to exercise a little to feel alright. Which made me walk and kick around when I started the bloody killing movie volume 1.

Not too bad, not too bad, I thought, as I started to feel the martial dignity and pose out for my after-dinner exercises. Ah, this will be a violent night. All the video game scenes gave me the impulse to move and knock. And I thought about this impact on kids, if not for the movie ratings. And I thought about this impact on adults, even after the movie ratings. Tough decision.

When I started "Monster" it was 1AM in the morning. And after all the rousing of violence I didn't feel sleepy at all. Too many films are narcotics these days and that wasn't one of them. Maybe all the theatres should provide an all-standing cinema for viewers to move around. That'll make the experience even more worthwhile. Anyways this next film already has a weird weighting on my mind because of that documentary I watched beforehand. And I'm not deleting that post, I'm not, but I'm taking back something I said. After all many thoughts are accumulated and interacting, we all learn from our past don't we.

This film is so close to reality in depiction that on first sight you would wonder which one is more documentary-like. They sure worked hard on making Charlize look like Aileen. But it's the inner part of her that provoked my flood of acclaims. It's been long since I saw someone so much disappeared into a role. And Charlize deserves every gram of the awards she won. But a little deviation from these composed analysis would drove me into the sea of being moved and infuriated and shaken and all that. At the end of it I couldn't come back into my own life. When her little girlfriend pointed her index finger to Aileen, it felt like my own climax of destruction. And that "Keep Believin'", that journey song conspired with them all.

I sat in my lazyboy for a rather long time before I could supress my chokes and go to bed. I did the thinking at exactly the same spot after I watched "The Hours" in theater a year ago. Superficial eyes will easily seem them in the same L-category, but not mine. I appreciated them for their individual values. And while "Aileen-life and death of a serial killer" did have all the shocks by having the truth all in front of you, "Monster" did a greater job in creating the utmost intimate and humane scenes to have the viewer make up truth fot themselves, exaggerated at times, but definitely superior than trying to judge or believe. I melted in the swirls of concerns, hatred, frustrations, and all that was more than from the doc. You see how I'm taking back things I said before but not blatently. That I learned by surviving in this world.

And the weekend passed by, it's another weekend. Weekends are meant for sabbath. But I get so many more things on my mind on weekends and so much more tired.

This blog is turning into a movie review collections. It's not how I planned. And mind you, I didn't relate it to movies at all when I thought of "Shooter" as part of the title. For some reasons things just come around from your head and hands. That's a bliss, and I'm indulged.

Scene 12

I’ve never seen “Monster”, not even after the dazzling awardee’s various speeches. And after I watched “Aileen-Life and Death of a Serial Killer” today I still didn’t make any connection with my past memories, until someone mentioned “Monster” was the SOLD story of the same person and case. Well, doesn’t everybody believe that films based on true stories are so meant to alert and provoke the public? Then why are people making documentaries?

The truth, the truth. What is the cause of one single event or project? Aileen said to put a big question mark on the screen for her last interview, and she was so damn conscious. Then who was the psycho? “Waking Life” even attempts to join dreams with reality, quantum mechanics with life styles. After all we are existing and our probability of everything forms tons of wave functions without a given Hamiltonian. Where does the energy come and go?

I skipped the director Q&A session and walked out JBT. I always tried to escape this type of formalities for fear that the interviewee didn’t even reach the depth the film presents to me. After all what I assume was the film convolved with my perceptions, and that result is beyond the control of the director. They direct the films and the viewer directs the feelings. There were too many unsettling anxieties in my head. I wanted to precipitate them but they tend to evaporate. (And this is no scientific jargon game.) Aileen was a feedback from the civilization to the world. Just one among many, positive or negative. And the other thoughts are yet to be probed. I listened to Cassandra Wilson’s New Moon Daughter walking back. Withdrawing vocal with sensual percussions. Relieved. If this reaction towards a mentally and emotionally disturbing film is to be blamed, then I’m even ready for crucifixion. But what about those sitting around distributing commercial adaptations?

And she mentioned Christ, every minute, even and especially before her execution. Was she saved?…which brings me to another film I liked very much, “Chocolat”, despite its outrageously misleading poster and so on. Yes man can believe whatever he wants to, but forget about the formalities. Waste of time.

Maybe I said too much.

Noi Albinoi

Palm Pictures is proud to present "Noi," opening this Friday, April 9th at Laemmle's Sunset 5 Theater!

The Movie.

Scene 11

I'm in the dark again. Isn't it nice sometimes when life repeats itself. We are all lazy aren't we.

I read through this little intimate mag. It surely reminds me of something obsolete in my blood. Was is in elementary school or something, that I tried to start a newspaper (yes no more no less) with not even photocopy but oil painting, wax templates. It came out once or twice I think. Then the dream burst just like what I wrote in one other story, "Starry Moony Dreamy Night", at the end of which the whole publishing house burnt down. I made that ending to mock and whip myself. But that newspaper was somewhat a trace of my desire for creation, perfection. Or even fame. Later on I started to write song names and design albums. I was too naive and too lazy to have even lyrics for those titles. So what remains is the index and a bunch of ugly sleeves, with song names on the back. I did manage to have at least a cover for everything that came into my mind. But God knows how many songs lasted before they were strong enough to creep out of my mind onto papers. And as I still keep the numbering of albums and write something once in a while, or even recorded a whole demo for "Night Coming Home" last year, I start to lose the thrill I used to have even for creating a name like "Emotions of Hands".

Thus the desire goes higher and higher for creation, flat for perfection, and down to almost nothing for fame. I laugh at mainstream idiot singers. I get indulged in less well known works. I even stop buying CDs of singers I used to like, cause they sound like coins clashing. Or lack of coins.

But how I love to touch and read this little mag. "6, ah," I started to wonder whatelse went on beyond this and "5". And I wanted to write a song for that "not a poem". And I love how they cut and pasted by hands. I love that "QUIT". What's more wonderful than getting into someone's mind and getting lost there. This is music and this is my blood. And I thank them for this lovely transfusion.

I slept till 1PM and got up, cleared up my mind and my stomach, filled them with new things. The next thing I knew was I'm now sitting here in the dark again. Sceince is eating away my flesh. But it doens't touch my blood. And that feels sooooooo good.

Scene 10

April. April is a great month! This tone resembles that “Seventeen! Seventeen is a great age!” from that best-selling Auntie Qion Yao… But isn’t it a great month, 11 years ago in April I started under guidance my first escape from those torturing school systems, 5 years ago I took the numbing GRE in April, a most steady step towards today. And a year ago I experienced a tremendous burglary which I still feel funny about. In this tropical city, there’s no real spring, yet you can always fantasize. At least the day is becoming longer. What an uncreative way of telling spring. Anyway April feels good.

I can still remember the first international fool’s day I had in college. What a mess I made, given several unconventional figures, who still live vividly in my dreams, or phones. Everybody wants to mess with emotions I guess, when they are young. They die for reasons to hate, to get annoyed, to be temperable. Tears were precious yet we wanted to pump them out, love was invisible and we tried to grasp with dust. And what a thrill, to say those words of strong expressions, like they used to do on TV. And how gorgeous we were sitting in the sunset eating pineapples and talking about what kind of gentleman each one was. Now he’s married and never-heard-after. She’s married to someone else, changing jobs and life styles all the time. And the other girl, don’t ever bother to ask. And I’m sitting in my bedroom up at 2AM listening to Callas Puccini Turandot remembering all of them. Once upon a time in April. Could make it into a real sentimental film for college students. But won’t my melancholy be too pronounced to convince them?

And so he pointed out towards the other side of the globe and said, go, there’s a world waiting for you. 3 years isn’t a short time, and just to remember the storyline of my 3 years here takes some effort and courage and time. And he told me for the millionth time that living is not about the outcome, which is eternal or periodical death, but about the process. And how can I summarize this 3 years or more just as one point? What I did was so rich, and just imagine what I didn’t. Yes I told him I need to go. Just after I finish the minimum. The minimum, he laughed, as defined…? Do you become a different person? Will you? Have you? Is this minimum going to save you? Think about Warren Schmidt’s daughter. It made a plain joke when she turned out to be a receiving staff of the IT company. But even if she worked as the CEO, does it justify her negligence for her parents? I can’t say anything and he scratched his head in the mirror. “Tony,” said I, imitating the kid in “The Shining”, “I will go.”

Which brings the music to LISZT and my though to “Balseros”. I’ve always wondered without too much research why the Zeppelins got a song titled “Immigrant’s song”. What’s more perplexing is their joyful and party-ish tones in performing it. Immigrant’s song could take up to a lifetime to compose, and it certainly goes beyond crack-fellas’ imagination. It shouldn’t sound like Chopin’s nocturnes either, as is the case in the documentary feature. Chopin is too patriotic and his nocturnes too romantic. Immigration is neither. Not even close. When the woman with her six year old daughter looked out for the father from that crammed bus, my brain flooded. What is this all about. Can we comment on something that’s not right or wrong but simply human. And you bet, we can’t, since this world is reigned by people who are either too lazy, or too dumb, to figure out a voice other than right than wrong. They fuck the right and kill the wrong. And they censor the media with “R” so that people won’t figure out their scheme until it’s too late. But look at these people in “Balceros”. They are willing to give their best. They are so eager to survive than your bitching pot teens on TV. Who made your balls for you to say world-this and world-that when you don’t even see the world? I heard the sobs of the woman next to me. But I refrained. The film’s depressingly courageous. Not the other way, which could be, to a large scale, catastrophic.

Upon reflecting on my own life I realized I’m immigrating in so many ways. And that makes me shudder. It’s not all that good to be a stranger. “People are strange…” And it’s easy for Sting to sing out “Be yourself no matter what they say”, with his face and voice and talent and, most importantly, his origin. What’s tomorrow gonna be like? Though Narcissist, I can’t help thinking this over myself, again, there’s something other than right and wrong. And living is about the process, not death. So I’ll go, and I’ll be back. Like our governor.