And this is a nice design from Threadless. I don't think it's getting printed anytime soon though, majority of Threadless buyers are english speaking and wouldn't get the pun.
Omnia mutantur
9:59 AM
Sunday, November 29, 2009
YAY I love nice graphic novel artwork. I've been rereading Identity Crisis. Funny how Wonder Woman has been parodied so much in other media, when she's a really wise and deep character. I guess graphic novel characters have more space (literally) to develop the character a bit more.
Then again, it's hard to give a 3D portrayal of a cartoon character if good and evil are clearly defined.
This is such a nice picture from Identity Crisis! Well I like what is shown anyway. The original picture was much darker than this, they must have brightened it up. I like how glow from the Lasso of Truth serves as the light in the darkness.
Anyway my 2 students did very well in their PSLE! I am very pleased. Anyway, since I'm going on about Wonder Woman, I may as well quote her:
A new journey to be started. A new promise to be fulfilled. A new page to be written. Go forth unto this waiting world with pen in hand, all you young scribes, the open book awaits. Be creative. Be adventurous. Be original. And above all else, be young. For youth is your greatest weapon, your greatest tool. Use it wisely.
–Wonder Woman # 62 by George Perez
Omnia mutantur
4:11 PM
Friday, November 27, 2009
In French with English Subtitles Genre: Drama/Thriller Director: Marina de Van Cast: Monica Bellucci, Sophie Marceau, Andrea Di Stefano, Thierry Neuvic, Brigitte Catillon, Sylvie Granotier, Augusto Zucchi, Giovanni Franzoni RunTime: 1 hr 51 mins Released By: Encore Films & Cathay-Keris Films Rating: M18 Official Website: http://encorefilms.com/dontlookback.html
Opening Day: 3 December 2009
Synopsis:
Two of Europe’s hottest actresses – Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci, literally combine in NE TE RETOURNE PAS (DON’T LOOK BACK). Unveiled in the Official Selection of Festival de Cannes 2009, this film is a psychological-thriller about a woman who starts to see unsettling changes to her home, life and physical appearance.
Jeanne (Sophie Marceau) is a successful biographer, who, against the advice of her publisher, decides to write a novel based on her own life experiences. As she becomes consumed by her work, she starts to uncover a series of disturbing changes happening to her life.
The world around her – her home, her family, her life – are beginning to transform into something beyond her recognition. Then she realizes that she too is changing... her body is beginning to change, and her physical features are slowly morphing into that of another woman (Monica Bellucci)! Yet, no one around her seems to notice.
Her family dismisses these fears as the result of the stress of her having to finish her next book, but Jeanne suspects that something far deeper, far more disturbing is taking place. Is it all in her mind, or is there something sinister at work?
Movie Review:
You know you're in for a hellish time when it's a movie made or acted by the zombie-looking French provocateur, Marina de Van. For the uninitiated, she made that fingers-over-your-eyes shocker "In My Skin" and starred in Francois Ozon's incest comedy Sitcom among others.
This time, it's a relatively bloodless affair, but nonetheless, thought provocative.
Kierkegaard. Nietzsche. Kafka. They probably don't ring a bell unless you're into the kind of stuff called 'existentialism'.
The concept is made accessible in Don't Look Back. And it is appealingly packaged and sleekly marketed with two of Europe's hottest actresses, Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci, headlining and sharing screen time literally as one person (more on that later).
Philosophical it is not. Daft and thrilling it is. Don't Look Back dumbs it down for mainstream viewing. Now I beg to differ that it is an 'arthouse movie' because it is really just a mainstream movie made in an alien language.
Don't Look Back probes the repressed trauma of an unsuspecting female multi-hyphenate, Jeanne. She is a loving mother, wife, photographer and a budding author. Her seemingly perfect world comes crumbling down when she starts seeing her loved ones metamorphise into strangers. Soon, she turns into another woman. Questions abound. Is something supernatural at work? Is she going crazy? Thankfully, the movie doesn't take the easy way out by ending with one of those cut-and-dry denouements.
Under de Van's distinct brand of hocus-pocus, the thriller takes on a metaphysical turn, much like that French thriller, Lemming.
What the movie does right is placing us in the shoes of Jeanne. We experience her paranoia and hysteria from her point of view. The uncertainty over where this movie and Jeanne's sanity are headed largely makes the movie such a gripping affair even if some of its tactics of surrealism are over-the-top.
Jeanne's rapid descent isn't subtle; it is unflinchingly explicit. And much of the scary bits are effective mainly because of the ominous sound design and exceptional special effects. The gradual physical change of Jeanne from one with Marceau's features to Bellucci's has to be seen to be believed. To me, witnessing this freaky transmogrification is worth the price of admission alone.
Shaking things up are the amply endowed femmes. They are here to elevate this to a psychosexual thriller. When placed side-by-side, it is clear that Marceau is the stronger actress of the two. The first half, which is also the best part of the movie, is ably anchored by her. Her gradual descent into insanity is believable and compelling. Bellucci is less successful as her alter-ego. All she does is mope around and shed unconvincing tears. Her best scene involves some rough man-handling. Enough said.
Normally movies of such offer weak payoffs. But fret not, Don't Look Back doesn't not offer an explanation for its spooky going-ons. Although rash, its twist is satisfying. If the conclusion is disappointingly chirpy, it may be fairer to say that it'll be hard for the rest of this movie to live up to its brilliant first half.
This movie has been slapped upon, left, right and centre by critics. But it has found an appreciative audience in me.
(from moviexclusive.com)
I AM DYING TO WATCH THIS.
Omnia mutantur
3:26 PM
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Yet another conversation with my sister:
J: Hey do you want to watch a movie together? K: Okay. J: What movie do you want to watch? K: Er- J: No V for Vendetta, no 300, no Phantom of the Opera, no... K: -_- J: In fact I'll just choose my own VCDs to watch. HAHA! I've gotta pre-empt you, sista!
And that was how I ended up watching some Japanese cutesy drama for the afternoon.
Omnia mutantur
4:26 PM
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
I watched the Fantastic Mr. Fox today. It was a really good stop motion animated film! Despite not having all the high-tech 3D animation tools (which is probably why I like it), they managed to come together very nicely. It's a very peculiar film style. And the book-to-screen translation was really good. Then again, Roald Dahl always wrote books that translated very well to screen. Except maybe Matilda.
Towards the end of the movie, I got to thinking about how a real life fox would never be able to escape such a dogged chase by 3 humans wielding powerful technology. Oh well, the dream world of the silver screen. It's like watching Anastasia - the reality is so different, even though we want the movie to have been real.
And I like how they added the bit about Mr. Fox's phobia of wolves. He isn't really afraid of them, he's just never seen one, and he knows they're wilder than he'll ever be, even though he continuously tells himself 'we're wild animals'. At the end of the day, his livelihood is subject to the forces of human-controlled livestock supplies and the small little countryside-animal community that he lives in. Whereas the wolf is free, solitary and has unbridled freedom ie truly 'wild'. It's a nice spin.
SO anyway right after that post about consumerism, I'm going to post some pictures of what I bought recently from VS!
Anyway, it's beginning to look like christmas! ...probably because all the malls are decked out in christmas decorations by November! You can always tell when the economy is really bad. When they decorate more than a month before christmas, the economy is in an awful state. At least they didn't start decorating in April or something.
I'm going to be calling up our Ministry of Manpower tomorrow morning and roast them. Their webpage is seriously bad for anybody with a weak heart and high blood pressure. I tried using their iReport interface to fill up the form for accident reporting last week and I lost my temper. Which is rare. I had to try EIGHT times before I successfully submitted the report. And there were still cockups after the submission.
Their webpage's search engine for corporations does not support Firefox browsers (ie it opens up into a blank). After trying about 3 times I switched to IE.
Whenever I try open a separate tab to navigate a separate part of the webpage, it opens RIGHT ONTO THE FORM I WAS FILLING UP instead of in another window. My data got wiped out 2 times because of this
So after my info got wiped out roughly 5-6 times due to one technological blunder after another, I copied and pasted EVERYTHING I wrote into MS word before submitting which was a good move because...
After I submitted the form, I needed to save the PDF form for my dad to submit to his company, and when I clicked the "save to PDF" button, IE asked me to click the taskbar to allow popups and when I did, EVERYTHING WAS WIPED OUT.
So now I've submitted the form, but thanks to their stupid webpage, I don't have the reference number for the submission, and they do not send out auto-replies to indicate they have received the report, so my dad cannot prove that he's done his task to the company.
Which means I'll have to call them up tomorrow morning to request for the reference number.
I HATE government agencies. So many X-inefficiencies. Just because they've got an 'iron ricebowl' they think they can perform at minimum capacity.
Isn't the government supposed to have better quality website moderators than what these current ones are doing?
I'm slowly discovering Taylor Swift, after having listened to the song being replayed at my gym on loop several times. I'm not really a pop music person, but I thought this one captured the spirit of Romeo & Juliet so well that it's hard not to smile at the music video. And Taylor Swift is beautiful and talented!
We were both young when I first saw you I close my eyes And the flashback starts I'm standing there On a balcony in summer air
See the lights See the party, the ball gowns I see you make your way through the crowd And say hello, little did I know
That you were Romeo, you were throwing pebbles And my daddy said stay away from Juliet And I was crying on the staircase Begging you please don't go, and I said
Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone I'll be waiting all there's left to do is run You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess It's a love story baby just say yes
So I sneak out to the garden to see you We keep quiet 'cause we're dead if they knew So close your eyes Escape this town for a little while
'Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter And my daddy said stay away from Juliet But you were everything to me I was begging you please don't go and I said
Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone I'll be waiting all there's left to do is run You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess It's a love story baby just say yes
Romeo save me, they try to tell me how to feel This love is difficult, but it's real Don't be afraid, we'll make it out of this mess It's a love story baby just say yes Oh oh
I got tired of waiting Wondering if you were ever coming around My faith in you is fading When I met you on the outskirts of town, and I said
Romeo save me I've been feeling so alone I keep waiting for you but you never come Is this in my head? I don't know what to think He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring
And said, marry me Juliet You'll never have to be alone I love you and that's all I really know I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress It's a love story baby just say yes
Oh, oh, oh, oh 'Cause we were both young when I first saw you
Omnia mutantur
10:25 PM
Monday, November 23, 2009
Quotes from Georges Perec's Les choses, which I studied for French 5 this semester. I thought some of the quotes were really applicable to modern asian society, particularly our times, when we are plugged with so much news and ads about opulence, affluence, and success.
To give a short summary of the entire tale:
It recounts the life of a young couple — Sylvie and Jerome, both marketing researchers — in the 1960s. At the end of the book, they depart to live in Tunisia.
The characters in the novel do not hold as much textual importance as the things (les choses) meticulously described throughout. Perec's use of the conditional tense plunges the reader into the dreams of the characters in the novel (consider, for example, the first line: "L'œil, d'abord, glisserait sur la moquette grise d'un long corridor, haut et étroit" [The eye, at first, would have glided over the grey carpet of a long hallway, tall and narrow]). The characters themselves are only introduced in the third chapter; the principle place being reserved for les choses, which are omnipresent in this novel.
This novel also explores "happiness" in a consumer society.
"But the mere prospect of work involved scared them. They would have to borrow, to save, to invest. They could not bring themselves to do it. Their hearts weren't in it: they thought only in terms of all or nothing. The bookcase would be light oak or it would not be. It was not. Books piled up on two dirty wooden shelving stacks, and, in double rows, in cupboards which should never have been used that way. For three yeras an electric point remained unrepaired, without their making up their minds to call in an electrician, whilst along almost every wall ran crudely spliced and shoddily extended leads. It took them six months to replace a curtain pulley-rope. And the slightest hold-up in regular maintenance resulted within 24 hours a mess which the beneficent presence of trees and gardens soclose at hand made even more unbearable.
"The temporary, the provisional held absolute sway. They were in wait only of a miracle. They would have summoned architects, contractors, builders, plumbers, decorators and painters. They would have gone on a cruise and on their return would have found a flat transformed, converted, refurbished, a model apartment, miraculously enlarged, full of custome-built details, removable partitions, sliding doors, an efficient and unobtrusive heating system, invisible electrical wiring, good quality furniture.
"But between these too grand daydreams in which they wallowed with strange self-indulgence, and their total lack of any actual doing, no rational plan, matching the objective necessities to their financial means, arose to fill the gap. The vastness of their desires paralysed them."
"But they were wrong all the same. They were beginning to lose their way. Already they were starting to feel they were being propelled along a path of which they knew neither the turns nor the terminus. They did on occasion feel frightened. Most often, however, all they felt was impatience: they felt ready; they were available; they were waiting to live, they were waiting for money." "People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world - Jerome and Sylvie had taken on this vast programme for themselves - such people will always be unhappy. It is true, they would admit, that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin.
"Let us take a young man who does a year or two at university, then completes his military service honourably. Around the age of 25, there he is, as naked as the day he was born, although he is also, by virtue of his education, already in virtual possession of more money than he ever wished for. That is to say, he knows with certainty that the day will come when he will have his flat in the city, his country cottage, his car, his hi-fi. It so happens, however, that these elating promises continue to evade his actual grasp. By their very nature they belong to a process which also includes, if you care to think about it, marriage, parenthood, a change in values, social attitudes and patterns of personal behaviour. In short, our young man will have to settle down, and it will take him fifteen years.
Such a prospect is not comforting. No-on embarks upon it without protest.... Impatience, thought Jerome and Sylvie, is a 20th century virtue. At 20, when they saw, or thought they saw, what life could be, the sum of bliss it held, the endless conquests it allowed, etc, they realised they would not have the strength to wait. Like anyone else, they could have made it; but all they wanted was to have it made. That is probably the sense in which they were what they are commonly called intellectuals.
For everything contradicted them, beginning with life itself. They wanted life's enjoyment, but all around them enjoyment was equated with ownership. They wanted to stay free, and virtually innocent, but time went by notwithstanding, and brought them nothing. The others ended up seeing wealth as an end in itself, but as for them, they didn't have any money at all."
"At other times they could not stand it a moment longer. They wanted to fight, and to win. But how could they fight? Whom would they fight? What should they fight? They lived in a strange and shimmering world, the bedazzling universe of a market culture, in prisons of plenty, in the bewitching traps of comfort and happiness...
The enemy was unseen. Or, rather, the enemy was within them, it had rotted them, infected them, eaten them away. They were the hollow men, the turkey round the stuffing. Tame pets, faithfully relecting a world which taunted them. They were up to their necks in a cream cake from which they would only ever be able to nibble crumbs." "They did not despise money. Perhaps it was the opposite: that they loved it too much. They would have liked substance, certainty, a calm, clear way to the future. They were alert to all signs of permanence: they wanted to be rich. ANd if they still refused to make themselves rich, it was because they did not need a salary. Their imagination, their culture allowed them to think only in millions."
"They tried to run away.
You cannot live in a frenzy for very long. In a world which promised so much and delivered nothing, the tension was too great. They ran out of patience. They realised, one day, or so they thought, that they had to have a place to escape to.
Their lives in Paris were treading water. They had stopped advancing." "They felt neither joy, not sadness, nor even boredom, but they did wonder sometimes if they still existed, if they really existed. They drew no special satisfaction from asking this deceptive question, beyond this: on occasions it seemed to them, in a muddled and murky way, that the life they were leading was appropriate, adequate and, paradoxically, necessary. They were in the centre of a vacuum, they had settled into a no man's land of parallel streets, yellow sand, inlets and dusty palm trees, a world they did not understand, that they did not seek to understand, because, in their past lives, they had never equipped themselves to have to adapt, one day, to change, to mould themselves to a different kind of scenery, or climate, o style of living....
Their life was like an unrelinquished habit, an almost unruffled tedium: a life sans everything."
"A world without memories, without memory. More time passed, days and weeks of desert waste, which did not count. They had stopped wanting. An indifferent world. Trains came, ships docked, unloaded machine-tools, medicines, ball-bearings, took on phosphates and olive-oil. Lorries loaded with straw crossed the town on their way to the South, where there was a famine. Their life went on identically: teaching, espressos at La Régence, old films in the evening, newspapers, crosswords. They were walking in their sleep. They no longer knew what they wanted. They were dispossessed.
It now seemed to them that before - and each day, that before receded further into the past, as if their anterior life was falling slowly into the domain of legend, of the unreal, or of the shapeless - before, they had had at least a passion for possessing. Often it was wanting that had been all their existence. They had felt drawn towards the future, impatient, consumed with desire.
And then what? What had they done? What had happened?
Something resembling a quiet and very gentle tragedy was entering the heart of their decelerating lives. They were adrift in the rubble of a very ancient dream, lost amidst unrecognisable ruins.
There was nothing left. They were at the finishing line, at the terminus of hte doubtful trajectory which had been their life for 6 years, at the end of theat uncertain quest which had taken them nowhere, which had taught them nothing."
When I finished the book, I felt rather disgusted, really. It's one thing to be materialistic and have the desire to roll about in filthy lucre, it's another thing entirely to sit on your asses, refuse to take up proper work and expect to be rich.
And my lecturer says this is the thinking of an entire generation of french people in the 1960s. C'est incroyable! Next they'll be expecting to warp the laws of physics. If you don't put anything in, how're you going to expect anything to come out of it? If you don't work, how can you even BEGIN to be rich? A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
It reminds me of the time I was in Paris. I was walking past a newsstand and the headlines was about one of Sarkozy's policies. "Travaillez plus, gagnez plus!" (Work more, earn more!) Someone had scribbled over it, "Mon oeil! Which means, 'my foot!' Jean-Baptiste later elucidated this, he said, "The french want to work less, but still earn the same wages."
I've never heard more nonsense in my life.
But anyway, the parts on materialism and the consumer society are so applicable to modern Singaporeans. It's a good short story.
Omnia mutantur
7:03 PM
The end of my exams herald a new template and an archiving of all 357 posts in my previous blog. Seems I've to do this at every stage of my life. One for JC, one for uni, and now in preparation for 2010.
I've nothing much to say, I've just read through 171 slides for the exam and my brain is clouding over. Though if anyone could enlighten me on what exactly 'Fate' is in the V for Vendetta graphic novel, I will be deeply gratified. I'm completely confused why a computer program would be the lover of the nation's leader.
Edit: Alright, I realise this is a very crappy template, but my brain is too dead right now to find a colourful cheery christmas coding (it alliterates!). Will do when I get the time. Haha 'when I get the time' is a terrible excuse, especially when I keep saying it.
