Tarkovsky's Solaris

Just watched Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, a very mind provoking film...although it contains a lot of sci-fi elements, but somehow it just looks more like a love story, or at least a story about humanity, rather than anything sci-fi related..

i have read quite a lot of interpretations about the meaning of this film, but i guess what captures me most is the idea that human's mind is v...Read more

The Puppetmaster 戲夢人生 - Can history be told?

I recently rewatched Hou Hsiao-hsien's Puppetmaster, it is really a good film that i highly recommend, even though it is more than 2 hours long and there are only less than 100 shots..so yeah, each shot is in average more than 1 minute long and you can tell the pacing is really very very slow...(hard to imagine how a 80~ year old man, Akira Kurosawa, could see it four times)

StarCraft II

http://www.starcraft2.com/index.xml?rhtml=y

Shit, I can't believe they are actually making starcraft 2.... starcraft used to be my favorite computer game and i still remember how obsessed i was with the game at that time...

i remember playing sc was like a daily routine at that time, it was so much fun teaming with friends and fighting on the battle net...and sure all those "glorious" winning records.... :)

not sure if anyone here'...Read more

toys

just uploaded some pics of my toy collections (check the photo album above), some old, some new..  most are star wars figures (my favorite), old star wars are from the 70s and 80s, while the new ones are from 90s to present...and some are moc (mint on card), while some are already opened..you know sometimes you just couldn't resist to open them.. .:)

actually i already stopped collecting toys for a while after i changed my habit to dvd collecting... but somehow when i walk by places like toys'r'us or target and when i spotted somethi...Read more

collector's nightmare

The problem of collecting stuff is that once you begin, you just couldn't stop. I still remember all the comics, figures (g.i. joe, star wars, marvels, dc..) and trading cards I accumulated (in fact they are still in my garage now) when i was a kid..

and now I am getting obsessed with dvd... it is like, everytime when u see something great or a new disc coming out, it's just so hard to control yourself..

in the past few months, some of the stuff i got:

seven samurai 3discs (criterion collection)

a little more babbling about life...

reading the comment about the previous entry, it just makes me again wonder the question of  "life".. I am just thinking how people see the meaning of life?

I always agree with the analogy that life is like a little tree branch flowing down a river. As the tree branch, we have to follow the flow of this river, the tree branch may get stuck by rocks or whatever in the middle, just like the obstacles we are facing in our life, sometimes the tree branch will eventually get pass the obstacle and continue fl...Read more

The Butterfly Dream

I went to see a japanese animation called Paprika yesterday, its directed by kon satoshi ( tokyo godfather,Millennium actress, etc..) and an official entry of venice last year..

i think its a very nice film, perhaps the premise of the story isn't that much innovative (adapted from a sci-fi novel), the way it depicts the imaginary world is still very interesting...

the story, about the blending of reality and dream, just kinda reminds me of the taoist story of the "butterfly dream", which i am sure the matr...Read more

24 eyes

I just watched an old japanese film - 24 eyes 24隻眼睛 by Keisuke Kinoshita on DVD last night... it is more than 2 hrs long but really absorbing and engaging...

What is good about this film is that it succeeds in capturing the tragedy of life without intensifying or turning it into some cheap melodrama.

There is no judgement or direct criticism but just presentation... life is bad but there is nothing you can change, the only thing you can do is to let it be... so cruel yet realistic.

Another nice thing is certainly the female ...Read more

電影節奏簡論

嘗試出一篇中文的﹐看看有沒有問題...

想談一談"其後"這部戲的節奏問題。

很多人都說這部片的節奏很慢﹐有異於一般的劇情片﹐很容易令觀眾覺得沉悶﹐所以我想講一講我對”悶”的意義。

看過影片的人﹐或許都會覺得這部片的節奏是比較鬆弛的﹐好些場次都好像被拖得很長而無戲劇目的﹐但這於我來說﹐是非常合理。因為﹐生活本身就是不規則的﹐不通順的﹐這是生活的節奏。如果整部片的劇情發展太過順暢﹐如行雲流水般一場接一場地順流而下﹐反而會令人覺得很人工化﹐完全失去了生命本身的質感﹐而慘變成了一個典型的主流格局。所以﹐我們不講求緊密而以敘事遞進的戲劇結構﹐就是要表達我們對生活本身的自然秩序的一種尊重。

“悶”的另一個原因是人物動作的不明顯和對白的貧乏。有好些場面﹐表面看來都沒什麼事情發生﹐所以容易讓觀眾質疑其存在價值。從一個西方的傳統戲劇價值觀來看﹐這是正常的。不過﹐從一開始我們就已經把目光放到另一個角度去。一反西方文化(源於希臘文化)以人為本的看法﹐我們中國的傳統思想是以群體為主的﹐尤其著重人與環境的配合﹐表現其同時存在的價值。人和環境都是我們的主角﹐都是我們要捕捉的焦點。如果明白此道理﹐就會明白本身看似空白平凡﹐但實際著重情緒的鋪設﹐...Read more

Jeon Do-yeon at Cannes

Its good to hear that Jeon Do-yeon just won the best actress award at cannes..if anyone has seen her films before, he'll definitely agree that she totally deserves the recognition...

i still remember how i was amazed by her performance in h armonium in my memory, in which she plays a 16 year old naive girl convincingly, while at that time she was already 26.... also not to mention happ...Read more