Prince of Tennis is a faithful adaptation of the popular manga and anime series. When I said faithful, I meant to say that characters perform superhero feats in tennis games, levitating thirty feet into the sky to return a serve, causing stormy clouds to gather above the stadium (darkening the skies, covering the sun) when one decides to concentrate, performing mid-air acrobatics, unleashing devastating serves that could engulf a tennis ball with flames, or creating some kind of vortex or force field which causes the ball to fly towards his direction no matter where the opponent was aiming.
Justin: I've pretty much given up on anime; the combination of no time to invest in long series combined with the loss of the initial luster at having seen all the really necessary stuff means it's hard for me to get excited by it anymore. Throw in the tendency for new series to be incredibly derivative and it's not surprising I haven't watched anything in months.
Shooting of Girl Disconnected wrapped on the 12th of October November, 2006, two nights ago, and I pulled an all-nighter to piece the entire film together. Things are looking well, I'm doing sound recording and everything to finish this up, submission is on 16th of October November, Thursday. A day before my mom's birthday (and the world premiere of the latest Bond flick, Casino Royale)
I generally edit the footages not long after a shoot, for the sake of lessening my post-production work, but because of this, I am incapable of doing my shoots in consecutive days (two back-to-back days is fine, but anything more will kill me... but then, since we've been a 3-men crew, it's a miracle that I'm still alive). Anyway, I'm excited that everything's going to be finished soon. For the time being, I'll share with some of you more screenshots of my film. (these scenes, from the last few shoots, definitely display Brian the Cinematographer's mastery with lighting)
There were lots of frustration involved in this production. Desperation leading to creativity. People bailing out and not honouring their verbal promises. A supposed big production where costume design and special effects teams were expected turned into yet another indie guerilla filmmaking endeavour with the support of volunteers and friends. I look at other groups and marvel at the amount of money they pour into their films, some nearly a thousand, some nearly two thousand, with a major crew and the help of outside professionals. They raise the stakes, and they are good motivation to ensure that despite the limitations we face, Girl Disconnected can still remain a work of quality (otherwise, it'll suck if this film does not accompany my previous film, Vertical Distance, to compete at the end year Murdoch University Film Festival). But I would never have achieved this if I hadn't had a great cast and crew that helped me realize this dream project (well, contrary to most dream projects, this one was just something that I had been working on for a few months, I rarely have anything that I spend years working on, having a short attention span and all)
Anyway, enough with that. Will go back to editing after finishing this entry.
I'll give everyone a proper shoutout when everything's really done.
Have I ever spoken about my personal interest of the British Royal Family? Especially those of the early 20th century, a generation before Queen Elizabeth 2, we have the Abdication of King Edward VIII (for a commoner woman he loved, Wallis Simpson, how romantic and dramatic! ... of course, there were more than that, with her having Nazi connections and all, but that's a tale you should go read on Wikipedia, not here) King George VI (father of Elizabeth II) taking over reluctantly and then with World War 2 taking a toll on his health, indirectly causing him to die at the age of 56 (similar to how King George V's health was affected by World War 1). I'm even kinda intrigued by Prince George, Duke of Kent (younger brother of King George VI), who died in a mysterious plane accident and had a colourful personal life (long string of affairs with both men and women before his marriage... good-looking guy, he), or the youngest Prince John, who died from epilepsy when he was only 14, and since then, no members of the royal family will ever be named John because it's bad luck.
Mishima is a writer associated with scale and grand gestures. Apart from his colorful life and the obviously theatrical nature of his public suicide, his novels are full of, to put it bluntly, action - in a 'literary fiction' genre often filled with tepid introspection and obsessive minimalism, that Mishima's books are full of swordfighting, arson, suicide, and desperate tragedy is definitely part of his appeal. Although his writing is capable of great subtlety, restraint, and delicate beauty, these qualities usually form one half of a chiaroscuric contrast, shadowing the dense psychological monologues and eruptions of violence.
Alfonso Cuaron's dystopic, post-apocalyptical sci-fi Children of Men, starring Clive Owen and Julianne Moore, is unlike most sci-fi films. While it takes place in 2027, the world in that film is very much like ours right now, just perhaps with larger LCD screens, and well, more chaotic, with London city itself becoming a warzone. No flying cars, no fancy technology gadgets, no holographic images, or skyscrapers that reach the skies, thus making the film disturbingly realistic, and plausible.
I'll be honest: most everything I know about Japanese music has come as a result of the tireless efforts of Taka. If it wasn't for his more-euphony-than-James-Joyce command of the English language and his unquenchable passion for "80' electorical dance sounds", I'd probably still be listening exclusively to mid-90's NYC metallic hardcore (Orange 9MM, Helmet, Quicksand, etc.).
I'm near the ending stages of my film, Girl Disconnected, which is due on the 14th of November. (I have to finish it in time for the uni film festival) So there won't be much time for me to post here.
Will be spending my time editing, planning the last shoots, and more editing. For the time being, here are some screenshots. Shot the scene at Fremantle Beach. Click thumbnail for bigger versions.
Two days ago, I found out about Japan Probe's Delicious cats! entry via BoingBoing, which has some rather, ah, disturbing photos of a cute Japanese girl pretending to eat her cat.
We have since dubbed her 'the guilty, cat-eating wench' thanks to a comment at Japan Probe's entry.
[1:10:01 AM]Swifty says: by the way, guilty cat-eating wench is an idoru [1:10:08 AM]Justin says: Who? [1:10:18 AM]Swifty says: that guilty, cat-eating wench
Little Miss Sunshine was a film I watched just a few days after The Devil Wears Prada (my Anne Hathaway-centric review here). A charming gem of a film (... charming gem of a film? Man, I sound like those middle-aged critics now!) that was this summer's surprise hit, I was unable to write a review for it because, well, seriously, there's nothing much for me to say. I liked it very much, I enjoyed it greatly, both moving and funny, the film wasn't a life-altering experience, but there's really no flaws I can point out.
I picked up Ian McEwan's Saturday after I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (check out my review) two weeks ago, eager for another quick read. As mentioned in my previous book review, I bought this in a '3 books for the price of 2' deal, along with Never Let Me Go and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love In The Time Of Cholera (*sigh* the mere mention of this book makes me want to swoon like a lovelorn virginal teen girl), so I had no prior expectations of it at all, and neither have I actually read anything by Ian McEwan.
After the sense of hopelessness and resigned helplessness I felt from reading Never Let Me Go, I was desperate for some fastpaced action, some intensity, something to neutralize that lingering feeling. Knowing that the entire novel takes place in the span of a Saturday, I decided to read Saturday, praying for some explosions and humour that can appease the uncultured bloodmonger in me, well, not really, but that, along with Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale were the thinnest unread books I had lying on my shelf, I chose the former over the latter because it seemed like a lighter read.
I've always been secretly in love with Anne Hathaway after watching The Princess Diaries. Those big doe-like eyes, so mesmerizing, so hypnotizing! That smile, so dazzling that the radiance of the afternoon sun would've paled in comparison, that beauty, so indescribably great that watching something like The Princess Diaries was like a life-altering experience, albeit a life-altering experience kept a secret until this very day. I was 17 then, but I would remain bewitched for nearly half a decade.
Sometime during 2002 (or was it 2003?), disillusioned with annoyingly underaged pop groups and still dealing with the heartbreaking disband of his much beloved SPEED, the Great Swifty, who suffered from Erotomania, lost faith in mainstream Japanese pop, and experimented with the non-mainstream, into what is generally referred to as Contemporary Japanese Groove Music (their jazz stuff).
Enough has been said and written about Jorge Luis Borges that you don't need to take it from me. Whatever I can possibly say about Borges's writing will automatically be swept under in the mass of history and commentary attached to him; in the same way that I'd hesitate to directly review Joyce, Faulkner, Nabokov, or Proust, (except perhaps to offer the heresy of a negative critique) so Borges presents something of a problem: writing this review almost feels superfluous; you probably already know and love his writing. Or maybe not; maybe I'm being falsely modest; maybe this review will be the one that convinces you to run out and buy his books as soon as possible.I hope so, since this is the only reason I'm writing it: to whore out Borges so he can give you the same intensely beautiful mindfuck he just gave me.
It had always been embarrassing back then, to admit to people that I've never seen a single Stanley Kubrick film before (Artificial Intelligence: A.I doesn't count). Harbouring such a shameful secret, how can I even call myself a lifelong film buff, let alone a filmmaker?
Can't write much, I'm in the midst of a Stanley Kubrick marathon (just watched A Clockwork Orange, currently watching Barry Lyndon while typing out this post) as the professor of my Advanced Screen Production unit said last week that referencing his films would be useful when directing my own Girl Disconnected. (Yes, surprisingly, I haven't seen a single Kubrick film before, except for three quarters of Eyes Wide Shut few weeks ago on television)
Therefore, I'll be posting photos of Fremantle beach that I took on the 9th of October, when I was doing my location hunting. A nice-looking beach was crucial for my film, and I wrote my script with the Fremantle beach in mind after visiting it for the very first time few months ago (check out the video here, I went there with Justin and a bunch of cute Japanese girls... and guy, from Himeji, Japan).
Why a beach? I didn't grow up living near a beach, and besides some vague memories of my childhood when I last visited Penang (I couldn't be more than six), or seeing it from inside a car on the way to Singapore, I don't think I've ever actually been to a beach all my years until I came to Perth. Beach activies like, ah, playing with water, playing beach volleyball, swimming, sunbathing, etc etc. were things I've watched on television or read in books, but would never really bothered trying in real life. (getting sand in my shoes? Truly an annoyance!)
The appeal of ZONE isn't difficult to explain: girls with guitars. This simple, retardedly awesome premise lies behind much of the popularity of Shonen Knife, the 5 6 7 8's, and uh...in a different genre, Sleater-Kinney and L7. But the one thing uniting those fairly disparate bands is that they're all - to a greater or lesser extent - PUNK.*
I ranted about how people were being too negative against Hollywood remakes last week in my The Lake House review, It's absurd to see how many people have long decided that The Departed would suck despite the fact that it has Martin Scorsese directing, and having big-name cast members like Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin in it. To the asian movie lovers, this is a sign of Hollywood 'running out of ideas', and in desperation, that had to 'remake' Asian films. Like duh, as if Asian films don't 'borrow' from Hollywood films at all.
It's unfair to compare a film with its remake, just like how I usually don't review a film by comparing it to its source material. But alas this how a lot of people will review The Departed, and you'll hear things like:
I'm not a fan of Victorian fiction. I find the obsessive, minute focus on provincial social conventions to be both myopic and irrelevant, the prose ponderous, and the structures pat and formulaic. Some people like this sort of thing; they're often the same sort who think James Ivory was a significant director. I could argue that much modern interest in Victorian fiction is as much a genre-interest as something like Tolkien-derivative fantasy (and indeed, both genres in their prime rely on three-volume works, the Victorian three-decker novel and the modern-fantasy trilogy), but I'll try to stay on topic. So, I have to hand it to John Fowles - in this book, he makes the Victorian era seem interesting and exciting. True, there's the completely idle upper-class toffs, servants and 'upstairs-downstairs' drama, and depressing Anglocentrism that generally produce reader despair, but Fowles looks on all this with a cocked (if often nostalgic) eye. And, his writing is incredibly technically strong - not only in the prose itself, but in his sense of construction, the way he points at the seams of his own novel - but not to excuse any rips in them, rather to keep you paying attention.
Su-ki-da, directed by Hiroshi Ishikawa, is a slow-paced arthouse romance that I watched with Vivienne and Ayumi on the night of Justin's birthday party, we were reduced to groaning in agony as the film became too slow and, as said by Variety's review, selfishly inert.
Despite being a filmmaker myself, and yes, facing numerous snide accusations of being 'artsy fartsy', I still think of myself to be rather uncultured, I didn't 'get' Godard's 'My Life To Live' (I loved Alphaville though), and I wasn't blown (sorry) away by Antonioni's 'Blow-Up' (... despite the nudity) and his latest short film in Eros (despite even more nudity). I also didn't 'get' many Malaysian indie works that are lauded by film fests around the world. Maybe I am... slow. (but not THAT slow, since I can still enjoy Wong Kar Wai films, haha)
So, for me, sitting through Su-Ki-Da was quite tough (especially during a party!!). Especially with a film filled with jump cuts, cryptic silences, shots of various cloud formations and long takes bereft of movement.
Story's about a pair of 17-year-olds, Yosuke (Eita), who is constantly playing a plaintive, unfinished tune on his guitar, while Yu (Miyazaki Aoi) has the hots for him, but does nothing but hangs around with him, and occasionally confides in older sis (Oyamada Sayuri), who is forever stuck in the kitchen... cooking.
So, the entire first half of the film is like this.
- Yosuke sits at the grassy fields, playing that tune.
- Yu sits there and watch.
- Shots of clouds.
- Shots of scenery.
- Yu goes home and speaks to older sis.
- Shots of clouds.
- Shots of scenery.
- The next day... the cycle repeats.
It's entirely introspective, a mood piece, atmospheric, you are supposed to FEEL the poetry of nothingness, its bland listlessness should be interpreted as well-depicted realism. It is like reading a Haruki Murakami book, but without the annoying surrealism.
Anyway, nothing occurred between the two (BOOOOO!). Seventeen years later, the duo met again, Hidetoshi Nishijima plays the older Yosuke and Hiromi Nagasaku plays the older Yu. Unfortunately for us, things remain just as excruciatingly slow, with a random tragedy that struck in the end.
There is a scene in the middle of the film where there's a really long take of Miyazaki Aoi's Yu shortly after she confessed her love for Yosuke. Yosuke remained offscreen, we see a range of emotions displayed by her throughout the scene, from initial shyness, to barely concealed joy and excitement, to heartbreaking disappointment. Marvellous acting.
The scene would be replicated later by her older counter part Hiromi Nagasaku.
As much as I seem to be complaining about this film. There are moments that linger.
