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October 26, 2004
Is shape-shifting acting?
Fantastic observation about how Hollywood seems to think that losing and gaining weight is a sure sign of dedicated, and therefore, fantastic award-winning acting.
Also, importantly, what about the health of these actors? And what messages are they sending out to young, impressionable minds?
Posted by lainey at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2004
In Remembrance
I first noticed Sarah Kane when one of my friends, who was doing theatre in Melbourne, made me read her script. I was captured by her powerful angst. Like skilful punches, each word hit me hard and made me sit up more to read her the better.
A true artist beautifies pain into a masterpiece. That was something I felt the director of the movie, Lilja-4-ever failed to do, but that's a post for another time.
However, like what I do with most auteurs of art, I never care what lies beneath those words. I never want a personal story to affect the work of art. I've always felt that such biased perception is an insult to creations of beauty from a human's mind.
Today, NYT has a fabulous article on Sarah Kane and one of her plays showing in NY. (SHWANG, you gotta go catch her, I KNOW YOU WILL LOVE HER. TRUST ME YOU WILL.) I never knew about her history of depression or her suicide until now. But I guess it makes so much sense, it's not even affecting. Instead, I only feel this quiet acceptance and acknowledgement.
What I like was the issue Jesse McKinley brought to attention. She asked if Sarah Kane's increasing popularity is due to the allure of her pain and death, or if it is truly based on the mastery of her works.
Sylvia Plath and a gazillion other artists, who have been heralded by their deaths and have their works overshadowed because of their lifestyles, come to mind. But the truth is, I was enchanted by Sarah Kane's words, even before knowing that the pain in them was real and that she killed herself.
That must mean for something.
Posted by lainey at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)
Watch me vanish, watch me
Watch me vanish, watch me vanish, watch me, watch me, watch."
-Sarah Kane
Posted by lainey at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)
What more of humans
"Under the influence of the weather, even the gods run mad. A voice came shouting from within the clouds, "Kill men. Let loose the hungry dogs."
- The Heredity of Taste, Soseki Natsume
If so, under the influence of this weather, kill me then.
Posted by lainey at 04:19 PM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2004
And the winner is...
Gay novel wins the Man Booker Prize.
Posted by lainey at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)
Memories of you That i
Memories of you
That i just don't have right now
I'll make them up
One cup of wanting you
Two cups of hoping somehow
These things come true
While I'm staring at pictures of you
While I'm staring at pictures of you
Yearning longing
Making up memories of you
Making up memories of you
For now your picture will do
Dialing you up in my sleep when the nights wearing thin
Won't make it right
My reasons to want to
And 100 reasons to lie
When i don't want to
While I'm staring at pictures of you
-Ryan Adams
Posted by lainey at 01:10 AM | Comments (0)
The Age of Innocence
I would say this is one of the best film adapations of books I've seen in quite a while. Scorsese's version of Edith Wharton's New York is very beautiful and apt indeed. But what caught me most was the achingly beautiful screenplay.
It made me fall in love and fall out of love unwillingly.
It made me feel again.
"I can't love you unless I give you up."
My heart broke.
"You happened to me all over again..."
Then I smiled. And wished I could cry. After a while, I couldn't decide how I feel, except the heart feels alot of pain. Like a knife cutting itself slowly across...
It's funny how words affect one so much.
Would I rather be Madame Olenska, and to quote an earlier DVD I watched, be Newland Archer's Radha? Or be May Welland, who had his company, his faithfulness and his family?
I used to be so sure. Nowadays, I'm never sure of my hypothetical decisions anymore. I've done too much to shock and appall even myself.
But yea, wonderful, wonderful movie.
Posted by lainey at 01:10 AM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2004
Food for the Soul
I've been all busy and so didn't have the time to blog about the movies I've seen. But the wonderful thing about life is that it's an exponential effect. Activities and thought build up in a flurry before you can even notice it.
So, busy as I've been, I've had the chance to read and catch some very splendid movies. So let's do this hurriedly.
Movies caught were:
1) Evil - It's Dead Poet's Society with the oomph and without the mush and sentimentally. But it's all very inspiring. Build-up to climax was very well-done and character development and tension was handled masterfully. The lead was intense and perfect for his role. It shows how one can triumph evil, and not by turning to evil but to strength.
2) Distant Lights - Depressing movie about lives of various people from Germany/Poland and how the 1 mile river that separates the two nations separates more them more than just geographically. It shows teh disparities in life and how desperation can bring out the worst in people and how good intentions are not always well-appreciated. The movie was marred by direction with a hand-held camera. Gave me motion sickness.
3) Pandamonium - Perfect. This movie made me ecstatic! Based LOOSELY on the friendship of Coleridge and Wordsworth, it shows how their friendship deteriorated as Coleridge's brilliance and addiction to opium escalated. What enthralled me about the movie was how the characters were so stoked by their passions and by beautifully crafted words. Also, Coleridge's poetry seared the screen with the movie's intense visualisation of it. Splendid. A must-see.
Books:
One Man in Havana - Graham Greene
Totally hilarious!Graham Greene is at his satirical best! This is one book that gripped me at my comedic nerves so well I was laughing non-stop while being so touched by his beautiful words at the same time. I didn't want to put down the book. But when I did, I felt satisfied by the appropriate climax which was so wonderfully portrayed. This is a MUST-READ for all espionage fans. As well as all the romantics out there. The British Secret Service has never looked more ridiculous.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Gripping good ole storytelling as usual. This gothic story wasn't quite what I expected after all the mass-culture permutations of the title characters. I must say I'm pleasantly surprised by how the story turned out and it was a great read in the wake of Stoker and Shelley. For unlike Stoker and Shelley, Stevenson's Other is not so foreign after all, it is all within ourselves and o, how true is that?
Posted by lainey at 09:03 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2004
Appeal
I will be going to Cambodia in December on a Youth Expedition.
We are doing fundraising for the orphanage we are going to by selling t shirts.
They arn't bad looking (and this comes from a girl who doesn't wear t-shirts.
They are available in black, navy blue, light blue and one erm white with blue sleeves and are priced reasonably at an affordable price of $10 per t-shirt.
If you are interested in buying, would you drop your name and/or contact in the comments. It will be greatly appreciated so please do abit to help the children. Thank you. :)
Posted by lainey at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2004
Movies Movies Movies
If I remember correctly, these are the movies I've seen of late.
1) Old Boy - Korean flick which was like an acid trip. Quite enjoyable but the climax was...to say the least...disappointing. Very interesting premise though. Could have been worked into something marvellous. Too bad the director got carried away.
2) Twin Sisters - Opening film of the European Union Film Festival. Not bad...a bit melodramatic. But it made me think of sis and love her more somehow. I'm a woman, I'm irrational. Hear me roar.
3) Evil - Swedish film based on an autobiographical account, apparantly. It was subtly marvellous. Portraying how Evil surrounds us everywhere and there's no escape. And really, the only way to deal with it, is to face it. The one that surrounds us, the one that is in us, the one that is transient. Also a good study on mob mentality and a apt metaphor to Neo-nazism which frankly, never left us. We have fascist dictators in so many different forms.
Of course, my excuse is that I'm incoherent and I'm going to bed now.
Maybe I will edit tomorrow, but probably not. ;)
Posted by lainey at 01:55 AM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2004
Proving Prayers
There is ongoing scientific research on prayer and its effect on healing diseases.
And some taxpayers are screaming foul...
Heh. :)
Posted by lainey at 12:37 AM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2004
Father of Deconstruction, Jacques Derrida,
Father of Deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, dies at the age of 74.
Here is NYT's obituary.
It's surreal, to find out that the people you wrote/read about dying. That they are as mortal as every man. I had the same feeling when Edward Said passed away last year. In fact, didn't he die at around the same time?
Hmm. But Derrida, yea. Strange to imagine him mortal.
Posted by lainey at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2004
Location, location
When I was at the Guggenheim last year, I saw this packed compactly in a single room. Apparantly, Rosenquist is being moved to MoMA for a re-moderning effort. It looks different and I betcha it brings a different experience altogether. But wunnerful, and totally intriguing.
Rosenquist, that is.
Posted by lainey at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2004
Of Happiness ( or the lack thereof)
'When I am told that a person is happy,'said Nick, 'I know that he is not. Of really happy people this is never said...'
-Iris Murdoch, The Bell
Posted by lainey at 10:26 PM | Comments (0)
Anti-Bush Sentiments
Am I glad that Stipey is anti-bush? Am I?
Hehe...Why else would I be posting this good news? ;)
REM and Bruce Springsteen kick of anti-bush concerts..
Posted by lainey at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)
Booker Prize 2004 Shortlist
Shortlist for this year's Man Booker Prize is out. Will read some of the books and see how they are. Some years, the selection is disappointing.
In other news, never attempt to eat prawn crackers for Sunday lunch.
Urghk...
Posted by lainey at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2004
Centenarian Greene
Today would be the 100th birthday of Graham Greene - one of my favouritest writers ever!
And thanks to one of my favouritest newspapers to remind me and shed light on the many different Graham Greenes and a quick tribute to his works.
If you want a novelist who can dramatise with great momentum and disillusion a time of empires and ideologies, if you want someone who can see into the heart of American foreign policy with great coldness and disdain, then the author of The Quiet American is your man. But he was, at the same time, a Catholic novelist of the more-Pascalian-than-thou variety, who dramatised the complexities of the thorny path to salvation with a convert's obsessiveness.
Posted by lainey at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)
Literary New York
The first New York I knew, I knew from Edith Wharton. Here is a precious analysis of her New York. Not quite the New York we know today, not even much of the New York of her time, just the New York her little status allowed her to know.
Posted by lainey at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)