The City Never Sleeps

How i wish i could be in Paris for a week, not two days.

Ever after watchig Before Sunrise and Before Sunset featuring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, i am just deeply falling in love with Delpy and her movie!!!

And watching her latest release, 2 Days in Paris aka Deux Jour A Paris, brings me down back to the memory lane during my TP days...but somehow, 2 Days has a very different touch, compared to Sunrise and Sunset.

Here, instead of having Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater (the director of School of Rock, Fast Food Nation, and the man that pairs up Hawke and Delpy in Sunrise and Sunset) telling us the 3rd part of the story, Delpy scripts, acts and directs the movie herself. Adam Goldberg becomes the leading man of the film, where we have both Goldberg and Delpy making a visit to Paris (Delpy's hometown) for a short vacation. He meets her family (special apperance of Delpy's parents) and they talk about sex, ex-boyfriends, hippies, sex, ex-bf, art, culture, art, sex, ex-bf, racism, art, sex, art, sex, art, sex...and endless art and sex, and ex-bf.

Not much of a sightseeing tour, but more rather, a day in a life of a Parisian.

How i wish Alen and i could do the same thing in KL and Singapore. :)

Nah, this is not about the movie based on Nick Honrby's novel of the same title, which stars Hugh Grant as a inmatured young man who learns the values of growing up from a young boy. Here, i am introducing you Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros, or Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros.

Balikan ang ganda, tamis, at pait ng unang pag-ibig.
(Return to the beauty, sweetness, and bitterness of first love.)

Sad to say, did not catch the run of the coming out of age drama when it was released in July. But finally, i got to catch the special run at The Picturehouse, and it leaves a bitter sweet taste of the show at The Picturehouse, after watching the pretty disappointing Becoming Royston at Picturehouse.

The Philippine independent drama was a hit in 2005, but it arrives rather late here. But, it was worth the wait. The movie won several awards at various film festival, including the Teddy Award at Berlin Film Festival, where Teddy Awards are given to films discussing homosexual issues. You can tell from the poster that we have a effiminate boy and a hunky policeman. In the first place, i was fooled by the poster featuring a young girl in love with a policeman.

Here, we have the leading lady (oops, should be the leading boy) Maxi, a 12 year old gay boy living in the slums of Philippines, where his family is working as petty theives selling stolen handphones. He quits school and was well known in his neighbourhood for being a sissy, where he took over the role of housewife at home. Live goes on a usual until Victor, a hunky policeman moves into the neighbourhood.

It was love at first sight for Maxi, where Victor came to his rescue as Maxi was bullied by 2 boys from the neighbourhood. They become best friends, and shares some intimate thoughts on love, relationships and dreams. One night, Maxi's brother, Kuya Bogs, killed someone in the neighbourhood. Victor knows about the murder and wants Maxi to assist him in catching the murderer. Torn between love for Victor and loyalty to the family, Maxi has to choose either side, which he didn't realise that somoething will happen to not only him, but Victor and Maxi's family.

Victor might be an eye candy to the girls, but it was Maxi who is the main focus of the show. We do see sissy guys in several movies. But a 12 year old gay boy falling in love with a policeman? That is something new. And it gives us a slice of lives in the slums by seeing how the poor lives happily in the neighbourhood.

Doesn't one gets to see something different from your year end popcorn blockbusters ?

For the first time in my life, i get the opportunity to visit Shaw Preview Centre, which is located at Shaw House Level 13. The purpose of going there? To catch a free screening of In the Valley of Elah, 2 hours before the sneak preview on Friday.

The theatre was pretty dim when taking this picture, so it looks dark to you.

My first impression of the theatre when visiting the theatre: Very small. Yeah, very small. And it was so small, that it could only house 50 audience at a go, with special sofa liked seats instead of your usual foldable seats in theatres. And the speakers are so small, that my first impression was: a screening theatre which looks more like a home theatre, where home theatre speaker are fixed on it. Sound system wise, it comes with 2 large speakers fixed below the screen.

The 2 hour drama directed by Paul Haggis, the man behind the Oscar winning drama Crash, stars Tommy Lee Jones as Hank, a retired 1st Sergeant from the army, and Charlize Theron as Sanders, a police detective. Story? The Army infomed 1st Sergeant Hanks that his son Mike has gone AWOL (Absent Without Official Leave), which later was discovered missing. Hanks track down his son, which he reports missing person to civilian police, with Detective Sanders investigating the case. A young man was found chopped into pieces and burnt badly was found in a field, which turns out to be Mike's body. A grieving Hank investigates the death of Mike with Mike's camera phone, which reveals the secrets behind his platoon mates during the Iraq War in 2004.

And the 2 hour was simply torturous. Everyone mumbles instead of talking, and theories overloaded. And the movie just simply ends with Annie Lennox's Lost, a song featured in her latest album, Songs of Mass Destruction.

Unsurprisingly, there are people who left immediately the credits start to roll.

Loved the mini theatre, which is best for personal entertainment, but don't really like a 2 hour boring drama that goes really well with the sofa, where it simply puts one into the lalaland.

Happened to came across the cute little cat from Japan, which was featured in Animation Nation 2007, held in National Museum.

Well, it was a full house event and because i bought the tix late, i could only get myself the last seat on the 4th row from the screen.

Komaneko is an 1hour animation, about a cat named Komaneko who wants to made a short film. She starts everyting from scratch, right from making her own doll, writing the storyboard, design the set to taking the pictures, she take pictures of her own doll frame by frame, which mades it into a short film.

How lovely it is! Komaneko is so cute. And yes, part of the story is touching too. It is sad to see Komaneko cried when one of her precious doll was stolen by a gorilla, which was in fact, a dog in disguise.

It drove me to tears in the end. I cried, even though this is not some melodrama or weepy soap drama, but it touches my heart. Sad to say, it is not easy to get the DVD here due to the very limited demand in Singapore. Why not release the DVD and the merchandise here?

The cute little kitten has sweeten up lonely Saturday morning.

The next day, went to watch 30 Days of Night, a horror film based on graphic novel of the same title. FYI, you got a pretty good director (David Slade of Hard Candy fame), a average actor (Josh Harnett) and some unknown actors and actresses and well known producer (Sam Raimi, the man behind Spiderman trilogy.) and what you get is a pretty bad show.

Perhaps i pinned my hopes high on Slade, since Hard Candy was highly recommended by critics.

Set in Burrow, a small town in Alaska, it is about the town is facing a heavy snowstorm, which the town will be in 30 days of darkness. A sheriff (Harnett) and his wife decided to give each other a break from their marriage for 30 days. The wife was trapped in Burrow when she missed her flight. Horro attacks the town when a group of zombies came into the town and eat up the people there. Survivors has to get themselves out of the town under the heavy snowstorm, where they could avoid being eaten up by the zombies. It ends up survivors being attacked by zombies when getting ration from supermart. The only way to survive is to hide themselves for 30 days, when zombies could not survive when the sun rises.

Many details were not explained in the film. More rather, it starts with dull dialogues, and tonnes of gore and violence. (Think the young girl devouring human head in supermart.) In someway, it reminds me of watching Planet Terror, but it has no way looked like Planet Terror. Rather, think Dawn of the Dead in Alaska instead of a shopping mall.

Hollywood desperately needs some fresh creative juice soaked in the scriptwriter's brain.