Found a partner-in-crime for Blogathon!

Yes, I have decided to participate in Blogathon as well, and I've dragged a partner to suffer through this with me. The charity organization we want to blog for will be Book Aid because both of us love reading, and we feel that more people around the world should be given the chance to read as well. According to the Blogathon website, 'Book Aid International works in partnership with organisations in developing countries to support local initiatives in literacy, education, training and publishing. We provide relevant books and information to those in greatest need–to enable people to realise their potential and contribute to the development of their communities.'

Filmmaking Dilemma, Suggestions needed

Right. This is a complicated little situation. I made a short film last semester, from February until May called 'Forced Labour' with the intention of submitting it to film festivals and the like. Now, the first version I edited during the end of April (early May) was 18 minute long, which is way TOO long for a short film with such a simple story, besides, more than half of this is dedicated to the fighting scenes, which feature characters not originally in the script.

Realizing that the fighting scenes are way too long, and take too much attention away from the main plot and the theme. I decided to re-edit the whole damned thing (I've already mentioned that few weeks ago, actually). And re-edit, or remade the film I did, snipping it down to nearly a third of its original length (ideally, this new short film will be between 5-6 minutes, I think), lots of scenes were sped up, most of the fighting scenes were removed, and the characters not originally in the script did not make it past this version either (thus any scene with them in it are gone).

The results thus far had been stellar, and it's totally something that can be sent to film festivals (if they look past the fact that I'm using a cheap-ass camera, and that the film's sooooo low budget). I've reached near the ending, all I have to do is reshoot one more scene with my main actress and things will be completely done.

Now, I feel pretty guilty that the five characters didn't make it past the final cut, and wanted to make it up to them by including them in the credits. For example, I shall do what the Farrelly brothers did with 'Me, Myself and Irene', and inform viewers that 'some characters and scenes were removed due to time constraints', and then show snippets of scenes featuring these characters and then give them credit.

Wonderful solution, right?

HOWEVER, this is best used for a jolly little comedy... what if the ending of my short film is meant to be pretty dark and angsty (bittersweet, kinda), and I try to toss that in during the credits? Wouldn't that mess things up?

So, what do you guys think? Any suggestions? It was suggested to me that I shall put them in the 'Special Thanks' section during the credits, which is something I will most likely do.

Console RPGs I Completed Throughout The Past Decade (1994-2005). (Part 2)

I was rewarded with a Sony Playstation in 1996 (I was 12 then) due my flawless results for the UPSR (a government exam you have to take in Malaysia during the end of primary/elementary school), and thus my long love affair with it began.

Console RPGs I Completed Throughout The Past Decade (1994-2005). (Part 1)

I have wanted to write this since early last year, when it was exactly a decade since I started playing console RPGs (role-playing games, to the uninitiated), but I decided to let the year went by first so that my list of completed RPGs in 2004 can be complete as well. Note that this feature is only for console RPGs, and not the PC ones (or I'll have to elaborate on the months and months I've spent on Morrowind, my god). For Part 1, I shall focus only on the 1994-1996 period, when I was only 10-12, and was just starting to play console RPGs. Young and idealistic, it was this very period where I fell in love with console RPGs.

Nora Ephron's BEWITCHED

I went off to see Bewitched last night, which was based on an old TV series of the same name.

I've never watched a single episode of the Bewitched TV series, I'm not even sure whether reruns of Bewitched were shown in Malaysia before or not. But from what I know, Bewitched is about some normal guy marrying a witch, and goofiness ensues during their married life.

SEPET by Yasmin Ahmad, an important film in the Malaysian New Wave

One of the movies I heard most of when I returned to Malaysia had, strangely, been a local film, which is something unheard of considering that at this time of the year, summer Hollywood blockbusters are the ones that rule the box-office. This local film is Yasmin Ahmad's 'Sepet' which had been making waves at some foreign film festivals, and became quite a subject of discussion among Malaysians, not just the Malays, but also many of the Chinese I know. Finally got to watch it during my flight from Malaysia to Perth.

'Sepet' depicts an interracial romance between a Chinese guy and a Malay gal. And being an interracial romance, it obviously shows the complications involved in interracial romance, like the clashing of cultures, the condemnation of narrow-minded friends, the inability of acceptance by parents. Can true love transcend all these barriers?

Michael Bay's THE ISLAND

In the not-too-distant future, the world had became so polluted that many of its surviving inhabitants have to stay in a facility monitored by kindly scientists and doctors, and all of these inhabitants with weird names, Lincoln Six-Echo(McGregor) and Jordan Two-Delta (Johansson), are waiting to go to 'The Island', said to be the only uncontaminated spot on the planet.

PREMONITION 予言 by Tsurata Norio

I haven't heard anything about this Japanese film until I went to the cineplexes today. Saw the poster when dad called and asked me to buy the tickets for tonight's show and immediately had my reservations.

"Oh god, not another Japanese horror flick." I whined, seeing the creepy pale-faced bald guy on the poster.

Of course, dad maintained that it wasn't a horror flick, thus I bought the tickets in the end.