COSTUME PARTY - Timmy's Bday :)

Guess who I am....

Marilyn and I

Foxy Cleopatra, my long lost sister :)

Clark Kent turned evil...

Nerdiness

Figured it out yet?????

The answer is..............................................................

A friend of mine sent me this poem the other day. It was very thought provoking so I thought I'd share it with you. Every poem means something different to the person reading it, a little like the songs we listen to. Poetry/ song is like a vessel in which we each attach our own emotions to. That's why it's so beautiful, it expresses our deepest feelings, and yet at the same time, connects us to one another.

I felt almost deprived that I was not exposed to more literature as a kid. I realised the flaws of the UK education system, although we specialise more than the US system does during university, our lack of general courses reduces the breadth of knowledge we acquire. This is sad, if you ask me.

Having read this, I also felt a little sad for our generation, we live in a such a fast-pace era that little time is left for us to contemplate or to reflect. What happened to our connection to nature? Always seeking for instant gratification it seems... Pour a bucket of red paint on a canvas and we call it art, splash sex and genitalia on a melody and it's a song. What happened to the subtlety of things. I know these are generalisations... it's just I sometimes wish there were more profound things being said in art/ poetry/ music. I miss the Bob Dylan days :)

Are our lives too well-off, is there little left to fight for? Why have we become so numb...

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE by John Keats

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
    My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
    One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
    But being too happy in thine happiness, -
        That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
                In some melodious plot
    Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
        Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
    Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
    Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
    Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
        With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
                And purple-stained mouth;
    That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
        And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
    What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
    Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
    Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
        Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
                And leaden-eyed despairs,
    Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
        Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
    Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
    Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
    And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
        Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
                But here there is no light,
    Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
        Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
    Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
    Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
    White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
        Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
                And mid-May's eldest child,
    The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
        The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
    I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
    To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
    To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
        While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
                In such an ecstasy!
    Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
        To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
    No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
    In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
    Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
        She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
                The same that oft-times hath
    Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
        Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
    To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
    As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
    Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
        Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
                In the next valley-glades:
    Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
        Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?

Here are some moments for you to be entertained :)

Getting punched...

Minutes before we start shooting one of the action scenes, I was taught a combination of punches, jabs, dodges and kicks, so I practiced them over and over as much as possible hoping to create muscle memory... enough to be able to carry out the actions with speed.

Seconds before actually shooting, one of the dodges (i.e. bending forward and going under someone's punch was quickly changed to bending backward to avoid the attackers left hook)....

well you can guess the result of that, when they shouted action and the adrenaline circulated my body, muscle memory finally kicked in and I bent forward instead... landing my face in perfect contact with the attackers left hook.

Well, I can say now I've had my fair share of battle wounds! (And NO! that's not blush)

Being superman at a drunken state – Flying into Walls

You see since it's my first film and I'm neither a great actor nor a great martial artist, every little bit counts when it comes to making the film more believable... so I took the opportunity to do all the stunts myself... hm... not sure if this was such a great idea…

In one of the action sequences while I am struggling with attacker 1 to get back my gun, attacker 2 comes from behind and kicks me so I end up flying into a sofa causing it to flip and falling onto the ground behind it.

Ok... so it's not that complicated falling into a sofa to YOU because you probably grew up jumping on your bed and fighting your brother for the nicer pillow... well, I can't say my childhood was all the same.

Anyway, that's not even the interesting part, the stuntmen who demonstrated the move made it look so easy, falling onto the padded ground behind the sofa, except nobody thought of the weight difference!

Yes, you guessed it right! I flipped the sofa (after hitting my tail bone into some hard structure inside the sofa) and I fell onto the ground behind except my lighter weight meant that I would end up crashing into the wall too... As a result, a nicely sprained wrist. Can’t say that wasn't painful, especially after repeating the move a few times and hitting the wall consecutively.

The rag doll rollercoaster (...in shooting the making of)

Another scene involved me play fighting with wu jing - basically he teaches me some basic martial arts and we bond, almost like an interaction of a dance..

Before being taught/ given an idea of what EXACTLY I was in for. Wu Jing decided to practice on me. He politely asks me to come forward... so in my head I figured he was about to teach me a defense move or something.

Boy was I in for a surprise! I found myself, within seconds, facing the sky, breathing the cement ground, seeing the sky again and then back to the cement ground (kinda like being sucked into a blackhole in outter space). He was flipping me around like a rag doll in the air, except there were no safety precautions...

Yay! Finally got to see the final version of the Ponds TVCs :) So excited !!!!

Video:

Hey dear bloggers!!!

I just returned from Dalian having attended the 第17屆中國金雞百花電影節to announce the completion of the shooting of the Legendary Assassin, the team have now proceeded onto the post-production part of the movie! It's soooo exciting!!!

There are some news reports on google in case some of you are interested in reading them!

News Reports on the Legendary Assassin Press Conference

http://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2008-09-11/21472165995.shtml

http://www.m1905.com/filminfo/news/2008/9/1122372829965.html

More importantly though, I would like to share with you the trailer for this upcoming film.

INTERNATIONAL TRAILOR (CANTONESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES)

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6byXGg7iHu8

CHINESE TRAILOR (MANDARIN VERSION)

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFQPscHfzew

I will post a personal blog soon on my take on filming and interesting incidents that'll make you laugh and squint :)

Below are some photos that were sent to me via gmail this morning from the articles on google, do enjoy!

My 10min version of the synopsis

Holly (Celina Jade) is a small-time cop born and bred in an outlying island in Hong Kong. She takes pride in her job even though crime is minuscule there. Every day life as a cop comprises of dealing with the odd villager complaint, bar fights, and lost and found reports. It may seem like a boring life to some, but a responsibility she doesn’t take on lightly.  One seemingly ordinary day, she finds her cat trapped in a tree and climbs up to rescue it. One careless step and she finds herself falling through the air and into the hands of a stranger, Bruce (Wu Jing).

A typhoon unravels and Bruce alongside all the villagers are stuck on the island, he is welcomed by Holly and taken around the island until the two are disrupted by a coincidental confrontation with four convicts on the run. Meanwhile, Holly finds out that Bruce is in fact a Kung Fu Master who has yet again saved her life. He becomes the praise of the town and she is grateful as he gives her the first big break of her career, the goal of someday becoming a CID in the city is now closer to her grasp. Bruce and Holly begin to bond and a subtle yet deep connection is felt between them, although often unspoken. Bruce in his interaction with Holly starts to reflect on his life choices and contemplates the meanings of life.

As the night progresses, the unspoken truce once honored by the two sides of the law is broken. It begins with the discovery of the remains of a body that belonged to a drug lord and syndicate crime leader. It ends up in chaos as criminals ravage the once peaceful streets in a race against time to find the mysterious murderer that roams the island. The small-time cops trapped on the island by the typhoon are now forced to step up their game before help can be reached… and Bruce is nowhere to be found.

What is justice? What is love? And is love alone enough for redemption?

The Legendary Assassin

Interviews (TVB & CABLE)

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t8RDKlWDUg&feature=related