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Showing posts from June, 2017

Edward Yang. 10 Years later + Brighter Summer Day cast reunion

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The great filmmaker Edward Yang passed away exactly 10 years ago. That was 2007. I remember it most for being the year I got into the film industry. It was that one year between my return from Perth (late 2006) and my subsequent relocation to Tokyo (April Fool 2008). 5 years ago, to mark the 5th anniversary of his passing, I wrote this post about his films. In that post, I remembered and chronicled my experiences of watching four of his films. (in this order) YI YI, THE TERRORIZERS, BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY and A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION. On the first time I saw YI YI: In the course of the film's 3-hour running time, I found myself mesmerized and amazed by the novelistic scope of the film, which seemed to cover every single aspect of humanity in the film. It was an absolutely rich experience, that the film would follow the lives of a typical Taiwanese family in the span of a year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a death, and the middle of it, we see the Father reminis

Remembering Auntie Tan

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Exactly a week ago, I was taking a plane to Langkawi for a wedding. A few hours before I flew off, I paid my respects to Auntie Tan, a dear family friend who passed away the night before. While I was flying I wrote a post to remember her. I am writing this while I’m flying to Langkawi for a wedding. It’s one of those pleasant flights where I’m fortunate enough to have an entire row for myself. Too bad the flight is so short. Right now, I want to write about a very dear family friend who had just passed away yesterday. All these years, I’ve called her “Auntie Tan”. A great friend of my mom’s, a person our entire family had been very fond of. This morning before going to the aiport, I went to her house to pay my last respects. That was the least I could do. I was going to miss her funeral for a wedding, it almost felt like a dark cosmic twist. “Always cheerful, always smiling and always laughing, this is how I will always remember you. Thank you.” I said in my heart as