Miki Nakatani's tour-de-force performance in Memories of Matsuko 嫌われ松子の一生

I just finished watching MEMORIES OF MATSUKO on DVD earlier this morning (was prompted to do it after reading Grady Hendrix's gripes about the film's lack of US distribution).

And all I can say is...

Attending the 25th Torino Film Festival!

Hi,
This is the filmmaker Woo Ming Jin, guest blogging for swifty. I just returned from the Torino Film Festival in Turin, Italy where my film 'THE ELEPHANT AND THE SEA' was in the competition lineup, or as the festival calls it the 'Torino 25', since this is the festival's 25th yr, but its first under the Italian director Nanni Moretti, a director whose films i'd watch when i was a film student and who won the Palme d'Or in Cannes some years back.

Mad Detective 神探

In MAD DETECTIVE, the second film I saw yesterday, my director hero, Johnnie To reunites with co-director Wai Ka Fai and Lau Ching Wan in a cop thriller that sort of revisits genre conventions and previous Johnnie To/ Milkyway Image films.

This film has some of the 'missing gun' plot we saw in PTU (2003), and a quirky misunderstood tragic hero who sees things that others cannot see like RUNNING ON KARMA (2003), insane shootouts in a room of mirrors like THE LONGEST NITE (1998), and some nihilism of the ELECTION films (2005 and 2006). But instead of feeling that the filmmakers were recycling their tricks ala John Woo, the original concept is executed so flawlessly that it's totally mindblowing and compelling to watch.

More visual wizardry from Julie Taymor in ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (the soundtrack's good too)

Seriously, this will not be a very in-depth film review. My lack of familiarity with all Beatles' songs meant that I can only enjoy and judge the film as any other musicals when watching ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. The emotional depth of which Beatles song being used in the film is mostly lost to me, I think.

KURUS Production Diary - Sleepless night of editing

29th of November. I have reached the fourth day of post-production for the film, KURUS. The past three days were spent on editing its rough cut, while today's spent on subtitling. I can only work on this until tomorrow afternoon, then I'll have to submit this film to the Rotterdam Film Festival.

ENCHANTED

Back in Sunday, I had a choice between ENCHANTED and HITMAN, and I chose the former instead. A normal angstful hot-blooded male would've gone for the latter, since ENCHANTED seems more like a Disney chick flick for little girls. But hey, while I don't usually let film critics sway my film choices, I still feel that watching the 93% ENCHANTED would be a much better bet than the 11% HITMAN, which seemed to have a long history of problems during its production.

Married For A Quarter Of A Century

28th of November, today's the 25th Wedding Anniversary of my parents. As usual, they will celebrate this in a low-key manner with relatively little fanfare tonight. This year, like every year, will be a nice little family dinner. Well darn, let's hope we'll throw something bigger during the 50th Anniversary.

Hooray, I have a cameo role in a NTV7 telemovie

KERAMAT, a telemovie directed by Kannan Thiagarajan that I was involved in back in April will be aired tonight on NTV7 at the ungodly hour of 10:45pm.

If you want to see me in my first screen acting role as the boss of a car repair center, please don't miss my cameo appearance during the first 15 minutes of the film and laugh at my god-awful Malay-speaking skills! (I'm dressed in a grey T-shirt)

Recent Pusan Film Festival award-winning filmmaker Liew Seng Tat and documentary filmmaker/ SURF Magazine writer Zan Azlee also have cameos in this film.

... I served as assistant director for the film too.

KURUS Production Diary - 'Carmen Soo Day 2'

By the time I was writing this post, I've already completed the shoot for KURUS (24th of November, one day ahead of schedule) and gone home. I'm going to start work on the editing rather soon.

Before I move on, here are more photos from 'Carmen Soo Day 1' (20th of Nov) that was taken with a digital SLR:

KURUS Production Diary - 'Carmen Soo Day 1'

(Sorry about the lack of updates in the past few days, am usually too tired to do anything with the blog when in the middle of a production shoot, tried to write this post two days ago but always ended up falling asleep halfway through it)

Carmen Soo didn't confirm her attachment to the KURUS film as Miss Carol until three days before the shoot. Miss Carol is an English teacher in protagonist Ali's class, and also the object of Ali's crush.

Due to her tight schedule, we can only have her for two days of the shoot. And when working out a shooting schedule for the film, we came to dub these 2 days the 'Carmen Soo days', meaning that we had to quickly push ourselves to finish her scenes. No easy feat, considering her scenes were rather complex to shoot.

Just a few photos of the first Carmen Soo day (20/11/07):

17th of November. Mom's Birthday. A Memorable Day!

17th of November is my mother's birthday. I haven't celebrated birthday with her for three years since my days in Perth. As the KURUS shoot had begun on the 16th, and I'm now living at Ming Jin's place (it makes traveling to Semenyih easier), I'd expected this year to be no different, and that the streak would extend to four years.

I received a SMS from my sister asking me to drop by for a surprise party on the night of my mom's birthday cos' she had bought mom a cake.

So I did, taking the long 45-min train ride home from Bangi, dropping a line saying that I want to have dinner to celebrate mom's birthday. The train ride was made bearable thanks to the company of Mislina (yes, the actress Mislina Mustapha, she has a major role in KURUS. plays Mukhsin's aunt in MUKHSIN, and plays Ayu's mom in FLOWER IN THE POCKET. Awesome actress!)

My little sister completely engineered and masterminded this surprise party for mom, she went off to buy the birthday cake with dad a day earlier, and then ensured that everyone who were to visit my mom would not bring any birthday cakes.

I don't think I've done anything similar all these years. For me, I remembered giving presents, flowers, dinner, but not doing something as simple as buying a birthday cake in secret and then take it out for my mom, singing loudly 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY'.

Maybe all these years during my absence, my sister had been doing all these. Or maybe this was the first time she had done it. I didn't ask. There was no need to.

First time, fourth time, it doesn't really matter. It was a wonderful night.

Because we had 'guests'.

Annoyed By Ex-High Schoolmates Who Work In The Same Industry (Part 2)

This is the continuation of what I chronicled in my last post where an ex-schoolmate who works in a website owned by a mega media corporation had earned my ire.

I am now 3 hours away from the shooting of KURUS (English title: DAYS OF THE TURQUOISE SKY), we have employed the services of a wonderful actress whose name I shall not divulge (for now) but she was nice enough to agree to appear in the film just a day after finishing a rather exhausting musical. Being the vindictive bastard I was, I called my ex-schoolmate shortly after the confirmation of her participation yesterday (yes, she confirmed her participation 3 days before the shoot begins!) because I initially requested for people of his team to cover the KURUS shoot if possible (to do a 'making of' project), and he asked me to call him only if she is truly attached to the project.

Conversation below (I don't think there's any need to point out who is who) It's originally in Mandarin, and happened in rapid pace:

Annoyed By Ex-High Schoolmates Who Work In The Same Industry

(The 'industry' referred in the title is the media industry, which includes film, tv, new media etc.)

A couple of weeks ago, I managed to run into two people from my former high school during separate occasions, one works now in a New Media company, the other works in a video-sharing site owned by a huge corporation that owns a couple of television channels. I'm not going to name names.

Through a stroke of coincidence, I was suddenly contacted by both for similar reasons, they were asking for both my short films and Greenlight Pictures' (which are Ming Jin's). The former to provide mobile phones as a platform to exhibit these short films, the latter to offer the website he's working on as a platform to exhibit these short films.

So I had an appointment with the one who works in the new media company at Starbucks.

... and was subjected to wait for nearly 45 minutes before she arrived, something that would have annoyed me less if she weren't the one who chose the appointment time. I sat and waited, nearly emptying my ice-blended mocha, taking the opportunity to start writing notes for a short film I intend to work on.

KURUS Production Diary - English Title Confirmed. DAYS OF THE TURQUOISE SKY

Photos taken at Semenyih from the second location scouting last week, it's the same pond from this entry, but this time, I use an actual camera instead of my mobile phone for photographing:

Rainbow Song 虹の女神 by Naoto Kumazawa, written and produced by Shunji Iwai

There's only one reason why I immediately wanted to see this film when I saw its poster in Taiwan.

VIDEO: CONTROVERSY! Wiping butt with Malay textbook and censored little puppy in 'Flower In The Pocket'

While watching Seng Tat's Flower In The Pocket at its press screening on Wednesday, what stood out to me were two censored scenes in the film.

In The Middle Of The Road, A Taxi Driver Died.

I just had dinner with Dad and Uncle Dan, dad's classmate who had just returned briefly from San Franciso. After dinner, we had to send Uncle Dan home.

On our way to Cheras, while waiting for the traffic light, I saw a motorcyclist walking towards a taxi in the middle of the road.

The traffic light had turned green, the other cars were moving slowly, but the taxi didn't move from its place.

"Hey, bro, wake up!" The motorcyclist yelled in Malay.

The taxi driver, a middle-aged Indian man, didn't react. His eyes were closed, his mouth agape and his head slumped forward.

The motorcyclist shook the driver's shoulder, still yelling, but to no avail.

Is he unconscious or dead? Uncle Dan and dad looked with concern.

But the cars never stopped moving, and gradually, the motorcyclist, the taxi driver and the taxi were left behind, disappearing from my sight and into the night.

Liew Seng Tat's Flower In The Pocket 口袋里的花

I have posted about Seng Tat's victory for FLOWER IN THE POCKET at the PUSAN FILM FESTIVAL last month, and I finally got to catch the film at its press screening yesterday. It's hard to review a film properly when you know the filmmaker personally, lauding it too much will make it seem as if you're being nice to a friend, dissing it will mean that you are self-consciously trying to avoid the former.

Had the desks and chairs of primary schools always been so small?

Tried to secure a primary school in Semenyih for the KURUS shoot yesterday.

Tokyo Friends: The Movie starring Ai Otsuka and Eita

TOKYO FRIENDS: THE MOVIE is best enjoyed by two groups of people: