Category: My Opinion

Categories
Book Reviews Non-Fiction

Neon Angel, A Memoir Of A Runaway By Cherie Currie – A Reread

I read this book ... again.

Very recently, I have imported a new Kindle from Amazon.  I looked through the Kindle eBooks on sales (I always love a good discount be it as video games via Steam or books).  I saw Neon Angel selling at a very reasonable price.  Somehow, I have a feeling that this is going to be a good book.  So I bought it online in a heartbeat.

Of course it is a good book.  I have read it three years ago.  A library copy it was.  I should have checked my website first before buying any books.  Since I have already started rereading it, why not finish the book and see how I feel about it without reading what I wrote three years ago?  Our perception is often affected by our maturity and experiences.  Would I read this any differently?

You may have watched the movie The Runaways.  If you haven’t, here is a quick introduction.

The Runaways was an American all-girl rock band formed in the 70’s.  In 1975, Cherie Curries was recruited into the band at the age of 15 as the lead vocalist.  While Cherie’s involvement with The Runaways lasted only 2 years, it would appear that she has played an important role in the band’s breakthrough and success.  Upon Cherie’s departure, guitarist Joan Jett continued to be the driving force behind the band, together with Sandy West the drummer and Lita Ford the lead guitarist.  But by 1979, the band was officially dissolved.  All four core members continued their solo careers with Sandy died of cancer in 2005.

Neon Angel is a self-biography written by Cherie Currie.  Like most autobiographies, it is hard to tell facts from fictions.  However, the emotion as described in the book appears to be genuine.  There is no bar held on the high’s and low’s that Cherie has experienced in her two years with The Runaways and the decade thereafter, dealing with the aftermath of stardom.

Raped at the age of 15 by her twin sister’s ex-boyfriend, Cherie was acted as an outcast in school, brought up in a dysfunctional family with her beloved daddy moving to another state, and later, her mother remarried and migrated to Indonesia.  Just imagine taking all these in as a 15 years old.  It would not have been easy.  Back in the 70’s – in the era of sex, drug, and rock & roll – David Bowie was Cherie’s idol.  His music was her salvation.  There was so much angst inside so much so that she was the perfect fit for a all-girl rock band as the embodiment of rage and rebellion.  She was the Cherie Bomb, the sex symbol.

The drama escalated after Cherie has joined the band.  There was constantly in-fighting within the band.  The tension between Cherie and her twin sister Marie was getting higher and higher.  Their alcoholic father did not help the situation.  There were early signs of drug use and substance abused.  And then another rape, which was much brutal than the previous one.  It seems to me that throughout her 2 years career with The Runaways and the few years after, Cherie has suffered much as a teenager.  Here are some excerpts from the book.

Something turned off inside of me that day.  Something inside of me snapped, and I stopped caring.  I never wanted to feel like that again, and so I began to learn how to shove those feeling deep, deep down inside of myself to a place where they could not hurt me anymore.  ~ After Cherie’s mother left the country refused to turn around and say goodbye.  Cherie was pinned down by a guard in the airport trying to cross the gate and catch up with her mother for one last time.

Last night I’d discovered what it felt like to be a rock star.  This morning I knew what it felt like to be a whore.  ~ Cherie’s band manager pimped her to a famous teenage idol for sex after her first big concert so as to generate publicity.  She was having a period that night.

Maybe [the doctor] was trying to be kind.  Maybe he didn’t want me to know [the sex of the unborn baby].  I knew for certain that a part of me was gone along with my unborn child.  I’d lost some vital part of myself in that hospital, and I felt instinctively that I would never get it back.  ~ This was after her abortion.  She was three months into her pregnancy while recording her album without even knowing it.

Funny, isn’t it?  After all the things that went on in the band, one of my strongest memories was such a small, quiet moment.  ~ The band was full of internal drama.  In one rare moment, lead guitarist Lita Ford complemented Cherie’s vocal performance during a recording session.

This nightmare went on for six hours.  I can’t even begin to explain what I went through.  It’s hard to tell another person some of the things that man did to me.  What I will say is that the terror, the horror, and the humiliation that he inflicted upon me were even worse than what I imagine hell to be like.  He hurt me with his fists, and with his body.  he did it again, and again, and again.  He thought nothing of hurting me.  Every time I screamed, and I cried, and I begged for mercy, and I bled or I passed out, he seemed to grow stronger, more hateful, more crazed by the lust and the sadism that fueled him.  As the night dragged on and my hellish ordeal continued into the breaking dawn, I came to the realization that this man was going to murder me as soon as he was finished torturing me.  ~ Cherie was kidnapped and brutally assaulted and raped by a man for six hours.  Eventually, the rapist was caught, trialed, and sentenced for one year in jail.

While most of the external events were out of Cherie’s control, the biggest demon turns out to be the one living within her – drug and alcohol abuse.  It has slowly destroyed her, destroyed everything that she has.  Majority of the book is a tragic recollection of a once upon a time rock & roll star and the price she has paid to get there.

Neon Angel is not without a moment of triumph.  Eventually, through persistence, Cherie Currie has emerged clean from drug.  She has constantly reinvent herself from a rock star to an actress, drug counselor for addicted teens and as a personal fitness trainer, and now a chainsaw craving artist who has her art gallery.  Looking back, would she want to change a thing?  This is answered in her afterword written years after the book was published.

Looking back on my life since that fateful day with my niece Cristina, I really see how truly blessed I am.  Many years have passed, we have orbited the sun more than 7,500 times and I have seen such extraordinary things, and had so many profound experiences that I could easily fill the pages of another book.  In the years since the Runaways I have lost some of my dearest friends, and I have reinvented myself time and time again.  But through it all, the wonderment and personal triumph that emerges from the emotional depths I have experienced leave me knowing I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

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Now that you have read the book summary written in 2013, you may wish to click here to read the one that was written in 2010.

Categories
Animation Foreign Movie Reviews

One Piece Film: Z

A film originated from manga.

I have not heard of the manga One Piece until I watched a movie adaptation of the manga.  Naturally, I love anything that is Japanese.  When I first saw the gigantic promotional poster displayed at one of our beloved cinemas, I said to our buddy TK, “Let’s watch this!”  To that he replied, “On!”

Apparently, One Piece is a very popular manga series in Japan, for a very long time.  In this particular movie One Piece Film: Z, there are pirates the supposedly protagonists (I think).  There are the marines who hunt down the pirates.  And there is Commander Z who was a marine, went rogue, and now rages war against the pirates as well as the marines that get into his way.  Each pirate, meanwhile, seems to possess at least one unique power (think X-Men).  As you can imagine, there are tons of combat scenes between the characters.  More or less like a video game.

Unlike other more artistic Japanese animations Cynthia and I have seen, One Piece Film: Z does not require too much thinking.  Just sit back and enjoy the humor and the action.  I am not entirely convinced that the English subtitles convey the original essence well.  I wish there were Chinese subtitles as well.  Usually, for Japanese animation, Chinese subtitles work better than the English ones.

One Piece Film: Z is not a story exploring the abstractness of nature or the emotional vulnerability of character.  It is a film with a decent amount of humor and action that entertains.

Categories
Book Reviews Fiction

Rebecca By Daphne Du Maurier – An Exceptional Read

What an exceptional read.  Reading Rebecca is like reading My Cousin Rachel all over again.  Because I know Du Maurier’s writing style, that she was capable in destroying or even killing off main characters that readers grow to love, it was quite a nerve wrecking experience reading Rebecca.  On top of that, Du Maurier was gifted in writing suspense novels as well as breathing life to her characters.  This makes Rebecca a thrilling read, from start to finish.

I read Rebecca on our trip to Hong Kong

One year ago, after reading the library copy of My Cousin Rachel, I love the book so much that I bought a copy for my keeping.  While I was at it, I bought a copy of Rebecca too.  I have been wanting to read Rebecca for quite some time.  Haven’t got around to.  On our recent trip to Hong Kong, I brought it along as my reading companion.

Although Rebecca was first published in 1938, I found it as entertaining as some of the modern literature published today.  There are four major components in this book.  Manderley, which is an estate dominating the entire story, with a west wing facing the sea and an east wing facing a rose garden.  Max de Winter, who owns and lives in Manderley.  Rebecca – Max’s first wife and is dead.  The narrator – Max’s current wife and remains nameless throughout the book.

Rebecca is intriguing in a couple of ways.  Rebecca is dead, since the beginning of the book.  Yet, under the hands of Du Maurier, this character has come alive through the recollections of others, the metaphors that represent her, the legacy Rebecca has left behind, even the drama that still continues.  It is as though her presence and physical dominance is felt strongly throughout the book, as a dead character.  It is only fitting that the book is titled as such.

The narrator – also presence throughout the book – on the other hand, is very different from the Rebecca character.  She is shy and young.  Coming from a humble background, the narrator is socially awkward and unsophisticated.  She is the opposite of Rebecca, and without a name.  She is the living Mrs de Winter but with an identity slowly dissolved away, what good is her existence?  The dualism of Rebecca and the narrator is striking, best to be explained by Sally Beauman in her afterword.

Shy, and socially reclusive, [Daphne Du Maurier] detested the small talk and the endless receptions she was expected to attend and give, in her capacity of commanding officer’s wife [in Egypt].  This homesickness and her resentment of wifely duties, together with the guilty sense of her own ineptitude when performing them, were to surface in Rebecca: they cluster around the two famale antagonists of the novel, the living and obedient second wife, Mrs de Winter, and the dead, rebellious and indestructible first wife Rebecca.  Both women reflect aspects of du Maurier’s own complex personality: she divided herself between them, and the splitting, doubling, and mirroring devices she uses throughout the text destabilise it but give it resonance.  With Rebecca we enter a world of dreams and daydreams, but they always threaten to tip over into nightmare.

The way this story is narrated is worth a mention too.  It starts with a dream by the narrator, on the house Manderley.  It then transits to a present day narration that gives hints to what the ending of the story may be.  The narrator reading a story aloud to a nameless partner that brought her back in time years ago when she was the paid companion for a Mrs Van Hopper doing similar things.  What a full circle.  The flow in time is so smooth that it took me several repeated reading of those pages in order to fully appreciate it.  The story ends with a dream – the only two true dreams in Rebecca – that wraps it back to the beginning.  The ending is so abrupt that left me speechless.

I am torn between My Cousin Rachel and Rebecca.  Till now, I am still unable to decide which one is my favorite.

*     *     *     *     *

An excerpt below demonstrates how Du Maurier brings Rebecca to life literally through the narrator.

[Maxim] did not look at me, he went on reading his paper, contented, comfortable, having assumed his way of living, the master of his house.  And as I sat there, brooding, my chin in my hands, fondling the soft ears of one of the spaniels, it came to me that I was not the first one to lounge there in possession of the chair; someone had been before me, and surely left an imprint of her person on the cushions, and on the arm where her hand had rested.  Another one had poured the coffee from that same silver coffee pot, and placed the cup to her lips, had bent down to the dog, even as I was doing.

Unconsciously, I shivered as though someone had opened the door behind me and let a draught into the room.  I was sitting in Rebecca’s chair, I was leaning against Rebecca’s cushion, and the dog had come to me and laid his head upon my knee because that had been his custom, and he remembered, in the past, she had given sugar to him there.

And as in her previous book My Cousin Rachel, there is some interesting observations that may still ring truth today.

‘You have qualities that are just as important, far more so, in fact.  […]  … but I should say that kindness, and sincerity, and – if I may say so – modesty are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world.’

Categories
Fantasy & Sci-fi Movie Reviews

Upside Down – Weirdest, The Most Fascinating Sci-Fi Film Of Late

What a sci-fi movie!

This movie UPSIDE NMOⱭ is so weird, in a good way.  If you have decided to watch this at a cinema, it is of vital importance that you don’t miss the beginning of the show.  Otherwise, you would end up clueless all the way till the end.  Before I write more on the movie, here is a little story of how Cynthia and I were nearly late for Upside Down.

Our buddy TK has bought the tickets, on a Sunday morning, while Cynthia and I were doing housework.  Such great friend he is.  The Google+ event invite said 7.20 pm.  4.43 pm, TK messaged us saying that he has parked the car at the cinema.  I replied, “So early?!”  Then he told us that oops, the show was going to start at 5.20 pm instead of 7.20 pm.  No time to argue.  I quickly jumped out of my computer chair, dashed into the toilet, and changed.  By the time I reached our condo lobby, it was 4.58 pm.  We have 22 minutes to run to our car, drive into Orchard – which is 15 km away from our home – find a parking lot, take a lift from basement to level 1, switch to another lift in order to reach level 5, pop into the toilets for a quick release, take the escalator from level 5 to level 6, and run into the movie theater.

We missed it by 1 minute.  It was all good.  The movie was not started.  Certainly the most exciting thing we have done in the entire weekend.  Maybe the entire 2013 thus far.

Now, back to the movie, in case you may miss the first couple of minutes of the show, in this alternative reality of one moon and two worlds, here are the three rules.  Yep.  Like all good sci-fi stories, there are three rules.

  1. All matter is pulled by the gravity of the world that it comes from, and not the other.
  2. An object’s weight can be offset by matter from the opposite world (inverse matter).
  3. After some time in contact, matter in contact with inverse matter burns.

Because the two worlds co-exist in an upside down fashion, the entire movie is – for lack of better word – weird.  People from either world interact in an upside manner.  From the presentation point of view, some clips are shot upside down.  It may sound strangely uncomfortable.  But it works surprisingly well on screen.

The two worlds are not equal.  As an analogy, think of the age of colonization.  The ‘down’ world supplies the resource to the ‘up’ world to value-add and the products are sold back to the ‘down’ world.  Hence, the ‘up’ world is rich while the ‘down’ world is not.  People from either world do not visit the world they do not belong (see rule #1).  They may interact at mid points.  Like the mid-floor of a tall building that connect between the two worlds.

With this setup, it seems impossible for people from different worlds to fall in love.  But, the forbidden love affair is the essence of the story.  Jim Sturgess plays the Adam character who comes from the ‘down’ world while Kristen Dunst plays the ‘up’ world Eden character.  Jim Sturgess, I must say, is very charming on screen.  His narration though, is utterly lifeless to me.  That is my only complain to this movie.  Interestingly, almost too coincidentally, Kristen Dunst has outdone her signature-upside-down-Spiderman-kiss with an … even better upside-down kiss in this movie.

The chemistry between Adam and Eden is convincing.  Such a joy to watch.  I would say, some of the kissing scenes rival those from … Twilight.  And because I was so much drawn by the romance bits, some of the sci-fi bits might have been overlooked until I walked out from the theater.  For example, can two persons from either world be in contact with one another for long?  Wouldn’t they catch fire?  Can a person from the ‘down’ world consume food from the ‘up’ world?  Wouldn’t that person’s stomach burn?  Is it possible that two planets maintain a consistent distance so much so that a building that connects the two planets does not get torn apart?  How do people from different worlds procreate?  Wouldn’t the womb … burn?

Even more strangely, the film starts with a Chinese production company logo and ends with a song in Chinese.  Perhaps I am thinking too much.  There seems to be a sequel though.  We shall see.  I enjoy watching UPSIDE NMOⱭ.  It is likely to be a sci-fi story that blows your mind away.

Categories
Drama Foreign Movie Reviews

A Royal Affair – A Danish Film Of A Mad King, A Lonely Queen, And A Visionary Physician

A Danish movie

The title says it all.  Set in the 18th century, Danish King Christian VII was mentally unwell.  Caroline Mathilde from Great Britain was married to Christian at the age of 15 and became queen.  German physician Johann Friedrich Struensee had attended the king’s sickness.  In the mist of it, he had become the king’s trusted friend and later on, an affair with the young and lonely queen.  As the king’s close friend, the physician played an essential part in shaping the country’s policies, which until now, had been mostly ruled by the Council due to the king’s sickness.  As the queen’s lover, the physician risked throwing away the political progress he had gained, which was ultimately the progress of the country.

I love watching European films inspired by historical events.  The plot is less formulaic than, say, a Hollywood movie.  European filmmakers tend to take their time in giving the film a treatment it deserves.  A Royal Affair is a 137 minutes long movie.  The story is engaging so much so that I wish the ending could have been expanded in some ways, rather than a paragraph of words or two on the screen.  The cinematography is beautiful.  Each frame’s composition is an art.  The music score is good too.  It goes well with the plot’s development.

Mads Mikkelsen’s role and the fact that he can act is a surprise to me.  He is often seen in Western movies as a villain (like many foreign artists come to think on it).  In A Royal Affair, he could well be a hero of the country.  He has a set of visionary policies based on his freethinking ideals.  Unfortunately, he was ahead of his time.  His policies were  implemented only by the next generation.  This prompted TK and I to reflect upon our local political atmosphere. We joked that the reason why A Royal Affair is being rated M18 in Singapore  is due to its anti-establishment sentiment.  There is very little blood and gore, equally little sex.  The most I would rate is a NC16.

Swedish actress Alicia Vikander looks really young in this movie.  Having read the history, I can understand why.  It is pretty hard to act mentally unstable.  All credit to Mikkel Følsgaard’s boyish performance.  He is funny to watch but not without inducing a sense of pity from the audience.  At times, I could feel the king’s internal struggle as he threaded between the line that separate sanity from insanity.

Royal affair is a messy business.  But at least, for this historical story, there was something good coming out from it.

Categories
Book Reviews Non-Fiction

Jerusalem: The Biography By Simon Sebag Montefiore

A biography on Jerusalem from 160 BC till modern day.

I did not think that I could finish reading Jerusalem: The Biography – a history book thick as a dictionary.  But I did.  All thanks to the author’s entertaining writing style in presenting the history of Jerusalem from 160 BC to present time.  For majority part of the book, it reads like George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.  History is so full of blood and gore, scandalous sex and money, politics and betrayal, and bribery of all sorts.  It is hard to imagine that within a tiny city called Jerusalem, so many times she has fallen to different rulers, her people have been massacred for so many centuries.  At times I wonder: What would God think of all these?  Religions can be such a torment to our human race.

I have always been intrigued by the history of the three monotheistic religions namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as the history of Israel and her people.  I have read books written by Karen Armstrong.  My immense interest to this topic perhaps leads to my UK blogger friend Jo’s personal recommendation of this book to me.  Her review of Jerusalem: The Biography can be found in here.  As always, her write-up is not to be missed.

Reading Montefiore’s Jerusalem, in parts, very much like reading Armstrong’s Holy War.  In Karen Armstrong’s Holy War, she wrote about the crusades and their impact on today’s world.  It is a book with a history encompassing the three religions stretches from 1095 AD to present time.  From the historical viewpoint, these two books overlap.  Armstrong tackles the topic in a much greater depth and analysis while Montefiore’s ‘page-turner’ easy-to-read approach makes it more accessible to mortal readers like me.  Maybe that is the reason why I manage to finish reading Montefiore’s Jerusalem and not Armstrong’s Holy War.  Now that I have a better grasp of the history of Jerusalem, I may give Holy War another go.

Montefiore divides his book into nine parts, with a prologue and an epilogue.  On average, each chapter is no more than 10 pages in length.  There are page-turner worthy hooks built onto each chapter that lead the readers onto the following chapters.  The book starts with Judaism and Paganism that leads to Christianity and Islam – two-fifth of the book’s volume covering a time period of 160 BC to 1099.  Then the Crusade, Mamluk, Ottoman, and Empire – another two-fifth of the book until the year 1905.  The rest of the book is devoted to Zionism.

The challenge of reading a history book – to me – is that it is hard to relate to a character born and died so many years ago.  I may have a mental recollection of what Yasser Arafat or Ariel Sharon’s behavior like.  But not for most of the pivoted figures in the history of Jerusalem.  To that extend, Montefiore has done a meticulous job in supplying the readers a physical description of a character if possible – from paintings or literature – as well as juicy gossips from the past.  On top of that, the author often adds his share of opinions especially when he speculates that the written history or documentations may have been distorted or exaggerated.

Here lies the challenge.  Shall we – the readers – take in all that the author writes and accept this book as the biography of Jerusalem?  Should a biography be challenged, especially when it touches onto the materials from the Holy Books such as The Bible?

My background is only limited to Christianity.  The following excerpt intrigues me.

Pilate toyed with releasing one of these prisoners.  Some of the crowd called for Barabbas.  According to the Gospels, Barabbas was released.  The story sounds unlikely: the Romans usually executed murderous rebels.  Jesus was sentenced to crucifixion while, according to Matthew, Pilate ‘took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person’.

‘His blood be upon us and our children,’ replied the crowd.

Far from being a mealy-mouthed vacillator, the violent and obstinate Pilate had never previously felt the need to wash his hands before his blood-letting.

I am unsure if my friends of the Islam faith would too find similar debates within the book.  Fortunately, I am pretty open-minded about my religion.  I read some of these debates as alternative views with only slight discomfort at times.  All in all, Montefiore has stayed out of many sensitive topics such as the resurrection of Jesus with a simple sentence: For those who do not share this faith, the facts are impossible to verify.

The last part of the book – Zionism – that takes up one-fifth of the book’s volume is pretty dry to read.  A similar dryness that prompted me to stop reading Karen Armstrong’s Holy War.  It appears to me that as we have more means to record history, history becomes less colorful.  Or perhaps, the way of life in the past is always intriguing to look at while modern day history is more like the current affair that we read everyday.

Entertainment value aside, Jerusalem has depicted a complex background that opens up my eyes.  I enjoy reading the epilogue’s This Morning the most.  It is a vivid recount of how each of the three monotheistic religions start the day in Jerusalem.  The rabbi and the Wall, Nusseibeh and the opening of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Ansari and the gates of the Haram, and Qazaz and al-Aqsa.  It is this complex heritage that shapes Jerusalem – and by and large the world – today.  If there is one thing that I have learned from the history of this Holy City, there will be no peace till the end of time and our religious beliefs will continue to fragment drawing out more conflicts as our civilization progresses. The fact that Jerusalem is a physical location with historical sites shared by the three monotheistic religions (as well as the sects fragmented within) forces us to come face-to-face with this seemingly impossible task of reconciliation.

It is now one hour before dawn on a day in Jerusalem.  The Dome of the Rock is open: Muslims are praying.  The Wall is always open: the Jews are praying.  The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is open: the Christians are praying in several languages.  The sun is rising over Jerusalem, its rays marking the light Herodian stones of the Wall almost snowy – just as Josephus described it two thousand years ago – and then catching the glorious gold of the Dome of the Rock that glints back at the sun.  The divine esplanade where Heaven and Earth meet, where God meets man, is still in a realm beyond human cartography.  Only the rays of the sun can do it and finally the light falls on the most exquisite and mysterious edifice in Jerusalem.  Bathing in glowing in the sunlight, it earns it auric name.  But The Gold Gate remains locked, until the coming of the Last Days.

Publisher: Vintage
ISBN-10: 0307280500
ISBN-13: 978-0307280503

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The following excerpts have left a strong impression to me and I wish to share them with you here.  Maybe too much Shakespeare I have read in the past.  Also, these excerpts I hope can illustrate the writing style of the author.

The first excerpt is a colorful prelude of Antony and Cleopatra and the war for the world.

The Egyptian queen progressed home to Alexandria.  There Antony, in a spectacular ceremony, raised Cleopatra to ‘Queen of Kings’.  Caesarion, her son by Caesar, now thirteen years old, became her co-pharaoh, while her three children by Antony became kings of Armenia, Phoenicia and Cyrene.  In Rome, this Oriental posing appeared unRoman, unmanly and unwise.  Antony tried to justify his Eastern wassails by writing his only known work of literature titled ‘On His Drinking’ – and he wrote to Octavian, ‘Why have you changed?  Is it because I’m screwing the queen?  Does it really matter where or in whom you dip your wike?’  But it did matter.  Cleopatra was seen as fatale monstrum.  Octavian was becoming ever stronger as their partnership fell apart.  In 32 BC, the Senate revoked Antony’s imperium.  Next Octavian declared war on Cleopatra.  The two sides met in Greece: Antony and Cleopatra mustered his army and her Egyptian-Phoenician fleet.  It was a war for the world.

The second excerpt recounts the clever politics played by Herod and it has an artistic touch to Antony and Cleopatra’s demises.

Herod again prepared for death, leaving his brother Pheroras in charge and, just to be safe, having old Hyrcanus strangled.  He placed his mother and sister in Masada while Mariamme [his wife] and Alexandra [his wife’s mother] were kept in Alexandrium, another mountain fortress.  If anything happened to him, he again ordered that Mariamme was to die.  Then he sailed for the most important meeting of his life.

Octavian received him in Rhodes.  Herod handled the meeting shrewdly and frankly.  He humbly laid his diadem crown at Octavian’s feet.  Then instead of disowning Antony, he asked Octavian not to consider whose friend he had been but ‘what sort of friend I am’.  Octavian restored his crown.  Herod returned to Jerusalem in triumph, then followed Octavian down to Egypt, arriving in Alexandria just after Antony and Cleopatra had committed suicide, he by blade, she by asp.

The third excerpt Justinian and the Showgirl Empress introduces Theodora, queen to the last Latin-speaking emperor of the east.

[Justinian] did not come to power alone: his mistress Theodora was the daughter of the Blue chariot-racing team’s bear-trainer, raised among the sweaty charioteers, louche bathhouses and bloody bearpits of the Constantinople hippodrome.  Starting as a pre-pubescent burlesque showgirl, she was said to be a gymnastically gifted orgiast whose specialty was to offer all three orifices to her clients simultaneously.  Her nympho-maniacal party piece was to spread-eagle herself on stage while geese pecked grains of barley from ‘the calyx of this passion flower’.  The sexual details were no doubt exaggerated by their court historian, who must secretly have resented the sycophancy of his day job.  Whatever the truth, Justinian found her life-force irresistible and changed the law so that he could marry her.

The last excerpt illustrates one of the many bloody conflicts we have seen in the history of time.  Key words are ‘lamb stew’ and ‘hot dry air’.

Abu al-Abbas declared himself caliph and invited the Umayyads to a banquet to declare his peaceful intentions.  In the midst of the feast, the waiters drew out clubs and swords and butchered the entire family, tossing the bodies into the lamb stew.  The Slaughterer himself died soon afterwards but his brother Mansur, the Victorious, systematically murdered the Alid family and then liquidated the overmighty Abu Muslim too.  His perfumier, Jamra, later told how Mansur kept the keys of a secret storeroom which was to be open only on his death.  There his son later found a vaulted chamber filled with the bodies, each meticulously labelled, of the family of Ali from old men to infants, whom Mansur had killed, all preserved in the hot dry air.

Categories
Drama Foreign Movie Reviews

The Grandmaster – A Film On The Life Stories Of Yip Man And Gong Er

An art house type of movie

To fully appreciate this Chinese movie, you probably need to understand the language, the culture, as well as the martial arts within.  It is not unusual for the olden day Chinese to speak in metaphors.  My dad still does too.  The English subtitles can be quite misleading at times.  What if you don’t understand Chinese but you are curious about The Grandmaster?  I suppose even if you can only get the essence of it, it may still be worthwhile provided that you enjoy watching art house type of movies or you are a fan of the leading actor and actress.

The backdrop is enticing.  A story told from Yip Man’s perspective (he who was Bruce Lee’s teacher).  From Yip Man’s age of 40 till his old age.  Upon the then-grandmaster’s retirement, while the northern China’s grandmaster title was given to Ma San, it was of the old grandmaster’s wish to pass the southern China title to a southerner.  Hence the introduction of Yip Man.

Tony Leung is quite possible one of the best actors I have seen.  He truly can act with just his eyes.  That heighten alertness in face of a real challenge, confidence with a hint of playfulness during a friendly duet, that moment of being mesmerized by the opposite sex, pain and despair, heartache and resignation, or simply that pair of weary eyes having seen too much in life.  It is a real treat to see him act as Yip Man.  This movie has provided him much opportunity to shine.

Zhang Ziyi plays the role of Gong Er, the daughter of the then-grandmaster.  While the range of emotion given is not as wide as Yip Man’s role, Zhang Ziyi has certainly chilled me with her coldness, pained me with her rare tenderness.  Her acting too is convincing.

The martial art scenes are pretty impressive.  With modern technology and the extreme slow motion close-up playback, the action is exciting to watch.  But here lies the problem.  The director Wong Kar-wai has cast this film in an art house setting (like his last movie My Blueberry Nights).  Take away the breathtaking action and the engaging acting is a series of artistic shots such as water peddles and street scenery, Buddha statues and candles.  The gaps can be extremely slow.  I found myself wanting to see the next action or acting scene and skip the excessive artistic frames.

One good example is the character Yixiantian “The Razor”.  The film has devoted quite a bit of airtime to develop The Rezor.  He has absolutely zero contribution to the main story except that one interaction he has with Gong Er on a train.  Even that does not materialize into anything.  The story goes on telling more about The Razor – humorous I must say – whereby taking all in, I wouldn’t miss a thing if the director has decided to cut this character away.  Maybe I am missing something significant here.  I don’t know.

Also, the resolution between Yip Man and his wife (played by a Korean actress Song Hye-kyo) appears to be fuzzy.  Is it because there is a lack of real life documentation of his marriage?  Or is it the director’s intention to have us thinking?  I thought for a bit.  Then I gave up.

Another of his movie that is low in entertainment but probably high in artistic value.

Categories
Fantasy & Sci-fi Movie Reviews

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters – It Gets Better Towards The End

A much better role for the leading female actress.

For the record, Cynthia and I did not pick this one.  Our friend TK did.  Because he wanted to see his “flower vase” a.k.a. Gemma Arterton – his words, not mine.  If TK was not impressed with her performance in Clash of the Titans and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, why would he pick Hansel and Gretel?  I suppose there are female qualities that not even a mortal man can resist.

Again, I have not read the original fairy tale.  Cynthia tried hard to give me a quick run down of the original story on our way to the theater.  All I got was that Hansel and Gretel were siblings.  They got lost, entered a house made by biscuits.  And the boy was going to be eaten by the witch.

In a way, Cynthia is right.  Witch Hunters is unique because the main characters are siblings.  Though, I must say, since both characters are attractive in their own ways and there aren’t many character development opportunities in the beginning, it took me quite some time not to look at them as romantically linked.

In this alternative dark fantasy, Hansel and Gretel are witch hunters.  And the witches in this movie look monstrous, like straight out from a horror movies.  In fact, there is enough blood and gore that would qualify Hansel and Gretel as a part-horror-part-fantasy movie.  Heads explode.  Bodies torn into pieces.  If this film was to be infused with a good sense of humor, that would have suited me better.  The plot is by and large predictable.  I was pretty bored in the beginning.  But it does get more entertaining towards the end.  Cynthia seems to really like this one.  TK thinks it is so-so.  Anything – be it as movies or video games – with girls kicking butts wins my heart.  Gemma Arterton just have that something I want to see.

Categories
Book Reviews Fiction

Carry The One By Carol Anshaw

Having read a beautifully written review by one of my blogger friends, I had been keeping a look out at my local libraries to see when a copy would be available.  I was in joy when I finally borrowed Carry the One by Carol Anshaw, from a library outlet that I had not visited before, saved a buck or so of reservation fee while I was at it.

I took a picture of the book right outside the library.

The plot is tantalizing.  It was the wedding night of Carmen the bride who was pregnant with Matt’s child.  Carmen’s sister Jean was a musician, who was blindly in love with Tom the married man – also a musician.  Nick was Carmen’s brother.  A smart graduate with one bad habit – drug usage.  Nick has a girlfriend called Olivia who worked in a mail room and like Nick, Olivia too was into drug.  Alice – sister of Carmen, Jean, and Nick – was a gifted painter, as well as a lesbian.  She fell in love with Matt’s sister Maude who studied nursing while doing part-time job as a model.

The night was getting late so Matt and Carmen sent the last of their guests to the road.  Jean and Tom, Alice and Maude got into one car with Nick in the front and Olivia at the driver’s seat.  Both Nick and Olivia were high in drug.  The car had no light, saved for the fog light.  In such wee hours, who would have thought a little girl would cross the road?  It was almost an instant death.  The girl had no chance to survive.  Carry the One documents those who have to live through this painful memory for the next decade and more, how their lives were impacted by this incident.

Each blames himself or herself on what could have been, should have been.  Carmen should have asked the guests to stay, because it was getting real late.  Alice should have volunteered to drive, but she was so into Maude and wanted to get into the backseat with Maude.  Maude should have paid more attention to her nursery course.  At least she might have a better chance to save the little girl.  Olivia was at the driver seat, clearly the guilty one.  But it was Nick who saw the little girl, thinking that she was magical, surreal.  Nick could move the wheel and the little girl would not have died.

As what I have expected, Carry the One is about forgiveness and atonement.  Each character finds his or her own way to atone to the mistake.  Some are constructive.  Others are more destructive.  Through jail time, divorce, heartbreak, career breakthroughs, facing hope and despair, death and more death, Carol Anshaw draws me into her haunted story of what makes flaw characters so attractive to read: realism.  These are real life dramas come alive.  People with real emotions, likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses.  It is one successful story that makes you fall in love with all the main characters, despite how flawed they are.

While reading this book, I could not help but to hope that Carry the One would tackle the question of: Why do bad things happen to innocent people?  Indeed, the plot does seem to head to that direction when Nick was trying to solve where this ‘equation’ led.  Through the routines that the characters lived and breath, I too was looking for the answer.  Unsatisfied as it may sound, God works in a mysterious way.  Whether or not there is an answer, the characters bounded by this accident would have to carry the little girl with them.  In a way, the deceased still lived through them decades down the road.

“Here’s what I hate.  I hate that it doesn’t matter if we see each other.  There’s still this connection, between me and him because we were both in the car.  Like in arithmetic.  Because of the accident, we’re not just separate numbers.  When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.”

“I think we altered what was supposed to happen.  And we can’t go back and make it happen right.  So we’re stuck in some kind of endless loop, trying to improve the past.  Which, as you might notice, is resistant to revision.”

Engaging plot aside, Carol Anshaw has an unique way of telling a story.  It does not read linear.  Timeline may jump ahead.  Crucial part of the plot may be casually revealed through one person’s conversation, or one simple sentence.  The emotional distance between the characters can be easily felt.  It always put a smile to my face when I read how two siblings love each other while putting up with one another’s nuisances.  When it comes to romance, the wordings are intense.  Below is one of my favorite parts that so vividly describes the disappointment and frustration of searching for love.

Whatever element causes romance to flare was simply not present in the air between [Alice and Charlotte].  This was a huge relief to Alice.  Romance no longer looked like so much fun, more like a repetitive stress injury – beginning with Maude, but by now including all the failed and pathetic attempts to replicate that constellation of emotion with someone else.  She could measure this past effort in all the underwear she had left behind in apartments, all the bottles of pricey wine she had brought to dinner, all the recitations of bad childhoods and adult disappointments she had earnestly listened to.  The first list was, of course, all the women she had by now slept with.  Taken individually, they seemed, at their various times, to hold the possibility of lasting love.  As opposed to now, so far down the line, when they could only be looked at in accumulation, as one then another fool’s errand.  An offshoot list to this was the figure for how far she had gone for sex.  (Thirteen hours on a flight from Chicago to Tokyo then back to Chicago the next day has held the top spot for quite a while; she might never better this.)  Books she had to read to get into somebody or other’s bed.  (The Four-Gated City.  The Fountainhead.  Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs.  Women Who Run With the Wolves.)  Terrible music she had listened to because it was someone’s idea of a mood enhancer.  (Hall & Oates.  Holly Near.  George Winston.  The Carpenters.  Celine Dion.)  Topics in which she had feigned an interest during the short term. (Juice fasts.  Rugby.  Celtic dancing.  Bikram yoga.)  The longest list was the kinds of tea she had drunk in moments structured around the pretense that tea drinking was the reason for being in this or that café (Pergolesi.  Kopi.  Café Boost) or kitchen, or side by side on this or that futon sofa or daybed, sipping.  (Earl Grey.  Lapsang Suchoung.  Gunpowder.  Rooibos.  Sleepytime.  Morning Thunder.  Seren-i-tea.  Every possible peppermint and berry.  Plain Lipton.)  There was a stretch of time when tea became fetishized for her being so linked with sex and romance, so reliable a harbinger of one or the other.

Different readers interpret a story differently.  Here may come as a major spoiler.  The centerpiece of Carry the One appears to be the little girl who was killed in a road accident.  Rightly so that is an obvious theme.  To me, a hidden centerpiece could be Nick the drug addict instead.  Throughout the story, Nick’s condition was deteriorating.  Olivia – his wife – left him the moment Nick returned to his old habit.  His sister Jean was never close to him.  Carmen – the sister who was organized and strict – in the end gave up on him.  Only Alice, his lesbian sister, still made an effort to take care of him when he crashed, but did not seem to do enough to get him off the drug.  Like the little girl’s accident decades ago, these character could have done something to avert Nike’s eventual and premature death.  Ironically, while Nick has played a major role in causing the little girl’s death at the beginning of the book, it could be the little girl’s mother who played a major role in causing Nick’s death two decades later.

Forgiven, but not forgotten.

Not only did Nick need to carry the little girl in his memory, but also the very physical clothes that the little girl wore that night, handed by her dying mother to him more than twenty years later: I couldn’t part with these.  Couldn’t even wash them, so it’s all still there, the blood and dirt.  Anyway I want you to have them.  I just wanted you to know how much it’s meant to me.  That you never forgot.

“You’re high as a kite, aren’t you?” [said Shanna Redman, the little girl’s mother.]

“Sorry.” [said Nick]

“No, it’s all right.  I know you’re a junkie.  And I know you’ve lied to me, so we could keep talking, so I wouldn’t blame you.  But the thing is, I’ve moved beyond blaming anyone.  And she’s beyond it too.  I got that from her.  What happened that night was what was going to happen.  It’s done.  You’re forgiven.  She’s forgiven all of us.  She’s let us go.”

Categories
Action & Thriller Movie Reviews

Gangster Squad – Pretty Gruesome, But Funny Too

I watched this for Emma Stone

Cynthia and I at times can be pretty business-like with each other, when it comes to movie outing.  After crawling through the usual Orchard Saturday traffic – which TK and us always forget and regret not watching a movie on a Sunday instead – at the basement car park lift lobby, I turned to Cynthia and asked, “Give me run through of what we are going to watch, would you?”

Her immediate response was, “No idea.  You like the girl and I like the guy.  That’s about it.”

True.  She picked Gangster Squad because of Ryan Gosling.  And I Emma Stone.  TK too insisted that he wouldn’t want to give this a miss because of Emma Stone.

I did not know what to expect.  This film is inspired by a true story set in the ’40s and ’50s.  LA was run by gangsters, many police officers were bribed, and the residents seemed cool with it.  It was a way of life until Sergeant John O’Mara (played by Josh Brolin) came into the picture.  As a WWII veteran and a war hero, he has no plan to yield to the gangster boss Mickey Cohen played by Sean Penn.  Unable to strike the gang as a police officer, John – secretly supported by the Chief – recruited a squad to deal with the gang.  The approach was controversial and the results could at times be hilarious.  Mickey Cohen was ruthless.  You have got to have a strong stomach for the crime he did against others.

Gangster Squad feels authentic, as though I was transported back in time.  Those hairstyles, and costumes.  Cynthia and I cracked every time when John took out a gigantic wireless phone radio (edit: Thanks to TK for the correction).  Sean Penn has acted exceptionally well in this movie.  There were moments when he appeared as spaced out, and uninterested; there were moments when he was as sharp as a fighter, so full of energy – verbally and physically.  Josh Brolin is perfect for the role, as an honest and no-nonsense officer.  Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are charming, despite having a rather small role in Gangster Squad.

For some strange reasons, this film reminds me of Al Pacino’s 1983 film Scarface.  Sean Penn and Emma Stone would be a good fit for Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer’s roles.  One particular line struck me as quite quote worthy:

To lose everything and win the war, that is a hero.  To lose everything but lose the war, that’s a fool.