It reminds me of one of my favourite songs — one of the saddest songs ever written.

Sufjan Stevens – The Upper Peninisula

I live in America
With a pair of Payless shoes
The upper penisula
And the television news
And I’ve seen my wife
At the K-Mart
In strange ideas
We live apart

I live in a trailer home
With a snow mobile, my car
The window is broken out
And the interstate is far
I drove all night
To find my child
In strange ideas
He’s been reviled

In strange ideas
In stranger times
I’ve no idea
What’s right sometimes
I lost my mind
I lost my life
I lost my job
I lost my wife

I’ve always thought that the last line sounds like “I lost my art”.

你吸收咁多 arts，share 咁多條超靚超形超勁超有創意 YouTube 片又為咗啲乜？睇戲又為咗啲乜？
我有陣時好討厭 d 藝術仔(包括扮晒嘢嘅自己）不停咁吸收。好似不停咁鉋一支鉛筆咁。 鉋呀鉋，鉋呀鉋，有一日就鉋到無晒。

但係鉛筆係用來寫字同畫畫的。

* * * * *

朋友借了一套叫《東京奏鳴曲》的電影給我。故事是講述一個日本家庭內，因爸爸失業而所帶出的各種問題。

其實戲整體上無俾我太大感覺，佢只令我諗到類似的其他“mid-life crisis”電影。但係電影令到我想到其實很多時藝術嘅目標係要照明(highlight)一啲社會上嘅問題。《東京奏鳴曲》的頭一段就對日本嘅失業就描述得好好。帶出那是日本面對全球一體化、社會年輕化、和傳統思想所帶出的 conflict 。

就好像畢家索的 Guernica，是一份有思考的藝術。

* * * * *

當然，藝術不一定要有社會性的思考。也可以是其他反省。但作為 audience，我覺得要知道發生什麼事。我討厭做一個 hea 爆的 consumer。吃過就算。右腦刺激過一番以後就繼續再找刺激。今年聽了幾十隻碟，下年再來過，但是我 iTunes 已經有 40 Gig。

夠了。我討厭這種感覺到死。我不想再吸收。我的靈魂像似飽到嘔。鉛筆鉋尖了就不要再鉋。

在一個 media overloadad 的時代裡成長，我們要學習的是 the art of silence 。
從吃過的 media 中，消化，化成力量和一套價值觀。要在生活中活出來，去做一個好的未來。

* * * * *

Okkervil River – “Singer Songwriter”

Your great-grandfather was a great lawyer
And his kid made a mint off the war
Your father shot stills and then directed films
That your mom did publicity for

I saw your older sis on the year’s best book list
And your brother, he manages bands
And you’re keen to down play but you’re quick to betray
With one welt and that wave of your hand

You come from wealth, yeah, you got wealth
What a bitch, they didn’t give you much else

I heard Cuss by The Kinks on your speakers
I saw Poe and Artaud on your shelves
While The Last Laugh’s first scene on your flat panel screen
Lit Chanel that you’ve wrapped around yourself

You’ve got outsider art by an artist
Who arguably kidnapped a kid on the wall
Your designers have slyly directed the eye down
Pink lines here and your well lit pawn

You’ve got taste, you’ve got taste
What a waste that that’s all that you have

Oh, you wrote your thesis on the gospel of Thomas
You shot some reversal film in Angkor Wat
And this book you once read said there’s less people dead
At this point now than those who are not

And this film we once saw was reviled for it’s flaws
But it’s flaws were what made us have fun
And the life some folks have might have made us feel bad
Why feel bad? Man, it’s nothing you’ve done

It’s all in your hand, it’s all in your hand
Like a gun, like a glove, like a grand

And this thing you once said disappeared from my head
In the time that it took to be amazed
And this thing you once did might have dazzled the kids
But the kids once grown up are gonna walk away

And your world is gonna change nothing
And your world is gonna change nothing
And our world is gonna change nothing
And our world is gonna change nothing
And our world is gonna change nothing

Change something.

我覺得這套戲是西方社會的《麥兜》。

雖然它沒有《麥兜》的攪笑，社會角度和集體回憶，但其實兩套戲的靈魂都有點相似。

On paper, this ritual sounds quite meaningless: why would it matter where you face? But I found the action very moving. It’s as if our choices of good and evil are not mere rational, moral, and spiritual choices. It’s physical too. It’s what we do, where we face, and where we go as well. You turn around, and you feel your peers turning with you in unison. You look up. And you can’t help but notice a bit of light peeking out from the East.

* * *

I saw The Dark Knight at IMAX last week, and I guess I was impressed as everyone else, but I couldn’t help but feel an unexplainable sense of disappointment with it.
Perhaps it was the hype? Or perhaps it was my high expectations?

Sure, the Dark Knight does a great job of exploring the nature of evil:
Is evil in the Joker’s bestial appetite for chaos? Is evil in Harvey Dent’s hopeless, perverted sense of justice? Or perhaps evil is when we say that our lives are worth more than others’? The movie is full of questions like that – plus it’s well-acted, and the action scenes are gee-golly awesome. So I guess I’m supposed to love it.

But I don’t. At the end of the day, for all of its ruminations on evil and terror, it’s still just a comic book adventure. Sure, it dives down further than other comic book movies, but it does not lift up. Batman is not the light to Gotham’s tunnel.

Exiting the theatre, I felt a knot in my chest. I had gone for an exciting ride, and I saw some semblance of a hero in action, but the victory felt cheap, incomplete, temporary… Hopeless.

My friend looked over to me and said: “Oh, that was pretty good. I wonder how they will do the next one?”

Extended reading:
[Wikipedia] Batman: The Killing Joke
[Becoming] Darker than The Dark Knight
[Ben Witherington] The Dark Knight’s Dark Night of the Soul

In the English language, there are these things called “loanwords” – words taken from other languages without the word being translated. The German word “Zeitgeist” is an example of a loanword. It’s a word that means “the spirit of the age”, or the intellectual and cultural climate of an era. When we’re talking our lovely decade, with the purveyance of our iPods, our glorious Web 2.0, and our Inconvenient Truths, some of the major ideas in our current zeitgeist must have to do with technology, the environment, connectivity and consumerism. Watching Pixar/Disney’s latest movie – Wall•E – I was utterly blown away by how a mainstream animation was able to talk about these big ideas beautifully and tap into our current zeitgeist.

The film tackles all these by being bold and making different choices. In movies like Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life or last year’s Ratatouille, they open with happy green pastures; but in Wall•E, the movie opens with desolation. The opening scene looks like a mix between Hong Kong and a desert, with garbage cubes replacing the IFC building. It is a harsh and scary preview at our unchecked consumerism. And it is against this backdrop that we meet Wall•E. Wall•E is the last remaining clean-up robot on Earth, and he has somehow developed a personality. He’s curious but very lonely, constantly watching old human musicals when he returns home each night. Very soon, he meets up with EVE, a sleek life-seeking robot, and the audience is then presented with a quite mute, but expertly animated first half – contrasting and interplaying between the two characters.

As the film moves forward, Wall•E catches a ride with EVE and arrives at the human colony Axiom, and we are soon introduced to talking humans… except, in an audacious stroke of commentary, these futuristic humans are presented as fat blobs that are glued to their holographic robots. Sure, they have power and abundance, but their choices are illusions – they are shown to be slaves to their consumerism. They can choose to buy new and prettier clothes at any time, but the definition of “pretty” is defined in billboards. They see each other, but only via holographic screens.

There is no danger, no hunger, no boredom, and no loneliness – but yet it is inhuman. It is a different kind of hell.

I won’t dive further into the movie’s plot details, but by the end of the movie, Wall•E’s unintentionally throws a wrench (figuratively) into the Axiom and changes all of their lives. The Axiom’s residents witness the beauty and choices that they had given up, and they return to Earth to try to start a new life.

I think one thing that is so great about Wall•E was that it is an unabashedly “message” film. It does not hide the fact that it has a world view. It is unhinged in its delivery – but it never forgets about visual beauty and strong storytelling. It’s impressive at the macro level – by addressing big themes and showing that consumerism can dehumanize us (and visually, that having big fat blobs rolling around is kind of disgusting); but it is also poignant at the micro, personal level. Wall•E is an inferior robot to EVE in every way, yet he has perseverance, and has hope. He does not understand, nor bow to the system. He also has a unique skill that that the humans do not know – that when things break, you can repair it. When his goggles broke, he can replace them, and when his chips fry, you just plug in another logic board.

And in the end, isn’t that one way of resisting consumerism? In the face of buying new things as they break, throwing away when it’s no longer in fashion, we learn to appreciate inner beauty, and learn to repair. When we have hurt the Earth or other people in our relationships, we don’t simply throw them away. We take the long, difficult, non-conforming road, and we repair it.

Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?

事情是否真實其實我們永遠都不會知道的. 因為就算你去問個明白, 就算你去調查真相, 你也不會知道最後你找到的答案到底是不是真的. 到最後你找到了, 你也要相信那個答案才行的. 所以關鍵並不在於找不找出事實的真相, 因為最算你再怎麼樣去找出真相, 也無法知道到底那個所謂的「真相」是不是真的.
相信就是相信, 如果你相信那個人, 你就不會在意找不找出真相這一回事了.
因為就算找出「真相」, 你也要相信那個人, 來相信那個真相.

也就是說, 很多時候我們執著的去問個究竟, 去找出真相, 但其實那並不實重點, 因為就算找到了, 你真的問到了真相,你也不會知道那是不是真的.

「我想做回自己． 很多年前，有個人叫我去做，但是我做不到．最近我遇到另外一個人，她說我可以的，所以我想試試看．」

「師父，你談戀愛嗎?你說話很像張小嫻．不過看你樣子也不會追到的」

「就算我喜歡她, 也不代表我要去追求她. 她需要的生活, 我並沒有能力給她. 沒有了我, 她會比較快樂」(阿強)

「這是我們在一起那一年我的生日時他送給我的生日卡．他說我永遠都是他的最愛，但是其實他的最愛根本就有很多．就好像電腦一樣，喜歡的時候就看一下我，不喜歡的時候就delete．根本就是騙人的」(阿寶)

Iron Man is a great movie for 15-year-old boys.

Yup, that’s my review.

Strangely, it makes me think about Greek mythology and Shakespeare, though.

All of these superheros are the modern mythical figures, with their archetypal flaws and falls. These stories are big stories with broad strokes, but together they’re avatars representing different aspects of life.

I find it interesting that the person with some ability concept can be told in so many ways: the psychology/revenge/torture of Batman, the young and poor Spider-man, the powerful and narcissistic Iron Man, the oppressed X-men, and then there’s Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Hellboy, Superman, Hulk… Each of them have their own sense of justice, and yet each of them have their own flaws and internal struggles.

What do you think? Which superhero is your favourite and appeals to you? Can you identify with any of them?

I do think the movie is flawed, though, as the story is skewed by centering on Juno. And I think they traded some charm at the expense of reality. I’ve read somewhere that the movie is remarkable because Juno’s character is not a stereotype. I’m not too sure about that, since it’s as if she’s the opposite kind of stereotype: Indie, sarcastic, sounds-like-she’s-30-years-old. And in trying to be light-hearted and focused, they skip out on some of the painful realities of pregnancy. I also think that the film avoided details about the supporting cast, and it seems that it’s an effort from allowing us to identifying too much with them. Was that a deliberate effort to cut us off, or a simple edit for a stronger narrative? I don’t know – but what is clear that there is a world view that emerged from this movie as a result of this skew. As light and delightful as the movie was, I think this is a pattern that is worth our consideration.

It was just a normal, lazy school day, when Makoto fell in the school’s science lab and realized that she can go back in time by making big jumps. At first, she used the ability for small things: gain better grades, avoid accidents in Home Ec class, and eat a dessert before her sister does. But pretty soon she is using the ability to avoid situations that might affect her friendships with Chiaki Mamiya and Kōsuke Tsuda. Instead of making choices, she goes back in time and prevents the event from happening. Sure, others might find her acting a little weird, and there are some unexpected results (like matchmaking Chiaki with her classmate), but at least she is able to keep her life relatively the same… Right?

Yet her choices begin to catch up to her, and she sees that some choices must be made, or she will risk losing her friends forever. Unfortunately, that is also when she realizes that she only has limited trips back in time. With only a few leaps left, can she go back and make the correct decisions to save everyone?

Poignant and bittersweet, The Girl Who Leapt through Time deals with growing up and facing life’s responsibilities. Although this was an animated science fiction, you can feel the film was carefully directed to highlight Makoto’s youth and growth. I especially like one sustained shot, late in the movie, that shows Makoto just running and panting and running and panting. It was a long and boring shot, but it’s great because it screams about the movie’s theme, and “hey! this is important to her”. It’s attention to that sort of rhythm, and the hopeful/regretful tone that made me enjoy this. I recommend for you to go see it.

“It has less dialogue than a lot of our past films, but it’s still really fantastic. After all, the art of animation is about what the character does, not what it says. It all depends on how you tell the story, whether it has a lot of dialogue or not.” – John Lasserter (executive producer)

Show of hands, how many of you love movies by Pixar Animation Studios? Whether it is their characters, designs, visuals, technology, or layered screenplays, there is something in every Pixar film has enabled them to receive acclaim and box office numbers alike.

But with continued success, a creative group runs the risk of repeating itself. If you look at their past movies, you might notice some similarities: items being cutely personified, rescue missions, and stories about coming of age… Luckily, Pixar realized this, and on recent films such as The Incredibles and Ratatouille, they took the riskier approach, and explored new themes.

And they are going to try more new things this summer with WALL•E. For starters, its setting is darker: through rampant consumerism, Earth has been used up and has been abandoned by humans, and a robot (WALL•E) is left alone for 700 years to clean it up. But somehow, WALL•E has developed a personality and falls in love with a space drone.

Yes, consumerism, environmentalism, dystopian future, and learning to love – these are all big themes for Pixar. But perhaps even more surprising is the choice that WALL•E won’t contain much spoken dialogue. Instead, most of it will be told through animation and various robotic sound effects. In a way, this is different and jarring (can you imagine Toy Story without dialogue?), but the early trailers are captivating. WALL•E the robot is emotive and funny.

But while it sounds nice for a short film, can Pixar keep the audience engaged for an entire feature? Will the animation deliver? Will film audiences fall in love with this unconventional hero? We will find out on June 27.

Further reading:
Ain’t It Cool News – Interview with Andrew Stanton
Apple.com – WALL•E Trailers