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Sunday, November 01, 2015

Goodbye, Grantland

A favourite site of mine, Grantland, just got closed down yesterday.

Urgh. ESPN is closing Grantland. I'm depressed. It's usually one of the first sites I go to everyday. For its great articles on films, music and sports.
Posted by Edmund Yeo on Friday, October 30, 2015


After a day, things started sinking in. Its absence more strongly felt. Overwhelmed by a feeling of numbness, I tried to eulogize it on Facebook while sharing a link which listed a number of great Grantland articles that had accompanied me over the past few years.

Grantland just got shut down yesterday. It's been long time since I felt so much sadness for the closing of a website,...
Posted by Edmund Yeo on Sunday, November 1, 2015

This was what I wrote:

Grantland just got shut down yesterday. It's been long time since I felt so much sadness for the closing of a website, therefore I feel that I should be writing more about it...

When I was reminded that it started in 2011, I was couldn't believe it. Has it only been 4 years? It felt so much longer, maybe because I've been visiting the site everyday. At first, I was there for the sports stuff, the NBA articles were great. But gradually, the great film, television and other pop culture articles begin to appear. The writing is exquisite, and being in longform, it was absolutely a pleasure to go through them, immersing myself in the fine writing, the great content. Zach Lowe's intricate coverage of the NBA, Brian Phillip's almost-mythical tennis articles (his "Sea of Crises", which covers sumo, Mishima Yukio's seppuku during a trip in Japan is a delicious piece of writing which is as good as any literary work I've read), Wesley Morris' wonderful film reviews (I found myself nodding happily last year when he lauded Lav Diaz's NORTE as an "honest-to-goodness masterpiece"), Rembert Browne's coverage of Ferguson, Molly Lambert's illuminating album and TV reviews etc. Reading them had given me so much joy, it's probably the website that I visit most daily (aside from Facebook). Because it is exciting whenever they have new articles online.

And now it's all gone. Since then, numerous websites have shared their list of all-time favourite Grantland articles, and rereading them is giving me such a bittersweet feeling. The NBA season had just started, and sadly, strangely, I find myself at a loss.

What do I do now? Finish the last few pages of Murakami's WILD SHEEP CHASE, go through another few stories from Italo Calvino's ITALIAN FOLKTALES. Start my writing. Finish my editing. Perhaps make a longer list of things to do, just to distract myself from the growing void.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

A 3-minute excerpt from Woo Ming Jin's THE SECOND LIFE OF THIEVES

While I'm hanging out at the Tokyo International Film Festival, Ming Jin is in Taipei for the Taiwanese premiere of THE SECOND LIFE OF THIEVES tonight at the Taiwan International Queer Film Festival.

To commemorate that, we have uploaded a 3-minute excerpt from the film, which shows the beginning of Lai and Mrs Tan's steamy love affair.



More related videos of THE SECOND LIFE OF THIEVES can be found on this playlist.


Friday, October 23, 2015

Remaining notes and photos from Busan International Film Festival 2015

All right, I'm so lagging behind that even though I'm already in Tokyo for the Tokyo International Film Festival, I'm still trying to wrap up my Busan Film Fest experience.

Okay, this will be my last post about this year's Busan Film Fest!

Sunday, October 18, 2015

[VIDEOS] Buskers in Tokyo

During my time in Tokyo from 2008 to 2013, I had enjoyed walking about at night, and stopping to watch and listen to buskers performing at the streets. I have shot a few videos, and posted all of them on this blog back then. Sadly, I've not shot any videos of them since 2011, I think. I guess once I picked up the habit of wearing my earphones all the time outside, I ended up walking past these performances without noticing. And mostly because I stopped carrying my Canon 7D with me all the time.

My Youtube account had been abandoned for quite a while, but nevertheless, looking through it a few days ago, I had a lot of fondness of these busker videos that I shot, so I decided to compile them into a playlist. Some of these musicians are still active, and it's worth rediscovering them.