LOVE SUICIDES write-up on Twitch

Being a long-time reader of Twitch, I, was more than surprised and delighted when Todd did a write-up on my Yasunari Kawabata-inspired short film, LOVE SUICIDES.

There's coverage from a Spanish site too!

Thanks, guys!

CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY goes to Greece (Naoussa International Film Festival)

Dad (Chye Yang) pesters the Boy (Lim Ming Wei) into playing the PS2 with him in Chicken Rice Mystery


I actually received this email a couple of days earlier, and had posted it on Twitter (and Facebook) as well, about my short film CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY getting invited for screening at the Naoussa International Short Film and Video Festival.

It's the first festival screening of the film since last December's Dubai Film Fest. Here's the trailer of my short, if you haven't seen it before.

THAT DAY WE WOKE UP, a short film by Woo Ming Jin

I've actually put aside WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER in the past two days to finish up my editing on an earlier short film by Ming Jin called THAT DAY WE WOKE UP.

WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER shoot has ended

The two pictures above are screencaps from the film's raw footage, haven't done any colour correcting or anything



Wow, it's been a while since I've updated this blog. Despite having Internet access at Kuala Selangor, it was hard to really write about anything during a film shoot. Somehow, I just didn't seem to have the mood for it since all my attention's placed upon the film itself.

The 12-day shoot took place mostly in Kuala Selangor (except the last day, when we went to the famed waterfalls at Ulu Yam instead) and was an emotional roller coaster, and an intense physical exercise. We went to the jungle, to the river, to the middle of the sea, to shoot, then we shot at a salted fish factory and also a cockle factory. I was constantly assaulted by mosquitos during mornings and evenings (insect repellants can only help that much), and was also sunburnt.

It's all worth it though.

Ming Jin had gone off to Tokyo last night to attend his sister-in-law's wedding, so it's now up to me to edit the film.

Hopefully this will be considered as a worthy follow-up to Ming Jin's previous film, the award-winning THE ELEPHANT AND THE SEA.

WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER shoot begins, tentative Chinese title

Well, today's my dad's birthday, so happy birthday, dad. Too bad he's KO'd by a bad case of flu and had been sleeping the whole time in his room.

I'm heading off to Kuala Selangor in a few hours for the WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKING FOR WATER shoot. The shoot will begin tomorrow, and will last until the 30th. However, there will be 2-3 days of break, so I'm looking at a 10 to 11-day shoot instead of a non-stop 14-day one. I'm quite excited, but I feel a little regretful that I have to, once again, miss ANOTHER local screening of CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY (well, if they're still screening it despite my absence) I'm not THAT elusive, but it's just unfortunate that all these tend to happen while I'm not in Malaysia, or when I have something else to deal with, like this film.

I've posted on Twitter and Facebook asking for help with translating the film title, WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKING FOR WATER, into Chinese... because it is, after all, a Chinese-language film. Most friends translated it literally and I got some really amusing titles, like:

欲女止渴记 (sounds like a Hong Kong Category 3 film)
火烧女郎寻觅水 (totally literal translation, funny)
火女求水记 (also a cute and literal translation)
猛女灭火 (feels like another Hong Kong exploitative film, like Chicks in prison or something)

So, ah, noticing that most Chinese film titles aren't literal translation of the English titles, I eventually settled for something simpler and more relevant to the story. So the film's Chinese title, for now will be called 遗情.

The pain of replacing an actor

An excerpt from the journal I wrote in 2006 during the making of GIRL DISCONNECTED, my student short film.

20th Century Boys: Chapter 2 - The Last Hope 20世紀少年＜第2章＞ 最後の希望

I made sure I was able to catch a film in Tokyo when I went back, and I ended up seeing 20TH CENTURY BOYS: CHAPTER 2 - THE LAST HOPE, the second film of the planned trilogy directed by Yukihiko Tsutsumi. I saw the first film last September, which I rather enjoyed despite its flaws (read my review).

Set 15 years after the events in the first film, the protagonist of this film is the now-adult Kanna, played by Taira Airi, whose hairstyle in the film made me gape in awe.

Why did you bring your kid to the WATCHMEN film?

To the woman sitting behind me with her kid when I saw WATCHMEN two days ago:

Normally, I don't give a crap about the Malaysian rating system. Films that are rated 18 and above in Malaysia are mostly heavily-butchered, and tamer than most films that are rated PG in other countries. So I'm unsurprised that you overlooked the fact that this film is rated 18-PL (for overseas audience, this rating is reserved for films contain more than one element, either violence, sex or political/ religious content) and brought your kid along to see the film with you.

A quarter of a century

I've lived that.

Happy birthday to me.

Introducing 'WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER'

I've returned to Malaysia last night. The postproduction of my Japanese film, KINGYO, has to be postponed until April.

The main reason why I'm in Malaysia right now is because I'm producing Ming Jin's new feature film, WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER (good title huh?). This is his official feature film since THE ELEPHANT AND THE SEA (KURUS and CINTA TIGA SEGI were TV movies).

Production stills from my Japanese film, KINGYO

I've spent the last two days editing my Japanese film, Kingyo, which I finished shooting end of January a day before flying back to Malaysia for Chinese New Year, I have posted some stills from the dailies few weeks ago ('dailies' is the term used to describe raw, unedited film footage, it's known as 'rushes' in UK and Aus, I normally call it 'rushes' too). I only have two more nights left in Tokyo, so am trying to do as much as possible. It took me a while to familiarize myself with Final Cut Pro, and also the Mac, since all these while, everything I've done have been edited on Adobe Premiere Pro. Thankfully, it didn't really take that long for me to get used to things.

Progress is smooth, although I'm unlikely to finish anything until I return to Tokyo again in April. For the time being, I'll just share some production stills taken by Chou-san (he's from China, the surname 张 'Zhang' is read as Chou in Japan, which is what everyone calls him). My last post only had a single picture of my lead actress, Rukino Fukisaki ("Hellevator: Bottled Fools"), so I'll put some here.

An odd, unexpected dream

On the first night I returned to Tokyo, I dreamed of someone I never thought I would dream of again. The last time I dreamed of her was two years ago, which I had chronicled in painstaking detail to my friend Sebastian during a melancholic rant in Valentine's Day 2008.

In my dream, she and I were both in some sort of a bare living room adorned with illogically minimalistic decoration and furnitures, bathed in ethereal white glow. Even though it had been nearly three years since I've last seen her, when she had seemingly vanished from my life with inevitable finality, and I myself never making any effort to find out where she was, meeting the dream-her again made me joyous, a joy mirrored by the smile on her face that I have seldom seen on the face of her real-life counterpart.

Together we spoke, about many things, all kinds of things, but none of them I can really remember. Perhaps we spoke about nothing, yet because we were merely speaking, nothing felt like many things, or everything, or anything. Her voice from my memories used to sound like a lilting whisper, yet the voice of the dream-her was boisterous and snappy.

Flight Fright

I'm in Tokyo again, but only for a week. Had to settle some things before flying back to Malaysia next Tuesday to continue preparations for Ming Jin's new film, WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER (I'm producing and editing).

Running into Hong Kong actor Nick Cheung and director Dante Lam

This happened on the 9th of February, the day before I saw snow for the very first time in Berlin. I was hanging out with the Singaporean filmmaker Michael Kam.



We were walking around at the main area of the Berlin Film Fest, Michael wanted to buy some souvenirs. But as we walked towards the Berlin Palast, I noticed a very familiar face.

My short film FLEETING IMAGES showing at HELP University tomorrow night

My short film FLEETING IMAGES will be making a premiere of sorts at HELP UNIVERSITY's Theaterette tomorrow (that's Thursday, 19th of February). It's one of the ten shorts at the Asiapromote Power and Grace Competition Screenings. The screening begins at 8pm.

Footsteps in the Snow

Returned to Malaysia just a few hours ago.

The past few days had been great. It's unfortunate that I didn't take a single photo during my brief trip in London. Three nights were too short for me, especially when I had such a hectic schedule. I saw a play starring Richard Dreyfuss called Complicity at the Old Vic, then I met up with a number of old friends from secondary school whom I've never seen since... secondary school, and after that, I went to do some hardcore book-hunting at the numerous antique bookshops in Charing Cross Road. So no, definitely not that much time to take photos.

But I'll rewind a little to the morning of 10th of February.

A Conversation With Quentin S. Crisp

Justin Isis has interviewed Quentin S. Crisp before, and that interview is probably the best place to start for general information on Crisp's writing and clothing style. The purpose of the following interview is to whore out Shrike, Crisp's soon to be released novella from PS Publishing. Before reading this you should order Shrike, especially the jacketed hardcover version. Shrike is one of Quentin S. Crisp's most exciting works to date, and by 'exciting' I mean 'tenser than injecting Red Bull directly into your blood stream'. Brief responses to Crisp's statements are given in [ ] brackets.

Arriving at the Berlin Film Festival

The flight to Berlin was a long one, but I needed to transit in Amsterdam first for 3 hours. I slept through most of the flight, so I was fine.

This is Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. I arrived at 5am in the morning.

NTV7's The Breakfast Show thought I was a headcrab zombie

As I waited to enter the studio to talk about videoblogging on NTV's The Breakfast Show in Monday morning, three thoughts were in my mind:

I'll be on tomorrow morning's NTV7 The Breakfast Show

It happened on Friday morning.

I woke up and saw a Facebook message and an email waiting for me, inviting me to appear on the 2nd of February's (that's tomorrow morning) edition of NTV7's The Breakfast Show. I'm supposed to talk mostly about videoblogging (that's why I posted this tweet on Friday, and got some interesting links in return), and also (hopefully) some stuff about my filmmaking.

I'll be arriving at the studio around 7:30am tomorrow morning, so I think I might appear around 8 to 9am? Quite early, I hope I won't be yawning repeatedly (or worse, dozing off) during the show! The chances of me embarrassing myself will be quite high, due to my personal discomfort with the camera (despite my acting aspirations!) I think it also had to do with... self-consciousness and vanity, I always worry that I don't look pretty enough, and the fact that I'm going to be on national TV will make things more complicated!