Taken from http://snarkerati.com

Coming-of-age road-trip movies are always fun to watch, especially when it involves dork boys trying to become men (think American Pie) . In The Inbetweeners,  the 4 main characters Will, Simon, Jay, and Neil spend two weeks in Malia, Crete after their A Levels. Their trip was not without hiccups – plane delays, paltry accommodation (the landlord fished a dead dog out of the well), being duped into a dead club where they were the only patrons, being ostracized by the hip crowd … and as with all coming of age movie they all learn and gain something at the end of the movie. In this case, each gained a girlfriend and learned something new.

The Inbetweeners is an award-winning British TV sitcom that got turned in to a movie this year. The motley crew of characters and gnarly non-RP British accent makes this an interesting movie different from the overdone American ones. The plot and issues remain the same – guys trying to get laid, guys acting stupid and guys being stupid. This movie is rated M18 for nudity and general crudeness. The narration is done by Will’s character (the nerdy one with glasses). The humour is just so right up my alley it cracked me up. But I guess this movie has humour that suits every palate – the wedgie-someone sort of humour as well as the pun sort of humour. It’s a great holiday laugh-out-loud movie.

By the way, Wikipedia gives a very detailed blow-by-blow description of the movie if you are interested in that sort of things.

Watch the trailer here:

All these shots were taken at 200mm on a 1.6 cropped sensor. These pictures are cropped. I experimented with aperture and exposure

This shot is my favourite; I think I overexposed the light part and it gave this glow that’s like a special effect. I am totally printing this out and sticking it on my wall or something.

Note: All these pictures are protected by copyright. You are free to share provided you do not crop my watermark and you MUST attribute it to me.

On This Emerald Hill is a one-actor play by Jonathan Lim. It mashes Stella Kon’s Emily of Emerald Hill with Kuo Pao Kun’s The coffin is too big for the hole. The play starts with Emily arranging a high-tea session over the phone after paying respect to the graves of her husband and son. At the cemetery she comes across Liao, who is trying to get his father’s coffin into a standard size grave. The play them proceeds to Emily trying to help Liao coerce the authorities into bending the rules. Within the play, Lim makes reference to many of Kuo’s famous plays by mention; not a true homage to Kuo but enough to tickle the Kuo fans in the audience.

Jonathan Lim exhibits his strong acting skills in this play, playing four separate roles that transition from second to second at some juncture. Through simple “costume change” which really is the use of cell phones and a little yellow hanky, and the change in posture and voice, Lim channels each character convincingly. In such instances, exaggeration, unfortunately, is key. Jonathan’s Emily is sufficiently bitchy but not losing the stubbornness and underlying vulnerability Kon intended. What tickled me most was watching Ivan Heng watch this version – I believe Emily Gan is the singular character than most male thespian has played.

The production was held in the Chambers at the Arts House; I have never been in the Chambers and this was very interesting for me. The audience was seated in the MP seats, and Jonathan paced about in the middle. It is an interesting space; on one hand it is like a black box, on the other hand it is a historically charged venue not without blame. Nonetheless it is always delightful to explore new theatre spaces in Singapore.

Overall I really enjoyed this production.

(Image taken from Flicksandbits.com)

Contagion is a film about an epidemic, basically. It starts with an American woman bringing the highly deadly disease back from Hong Kong and spreading the disease – on the plane, to her son and his school, her town… in different corners of the world the disease spread like wildfire.

The premise is certainly not new, reminiscent of past epidemic movies like Outbreak. Comparing Contagion with the other epidemic films, it make seem lacking in action. What it seemingly lacks in action and excitement, it makes up with a star-studded cast – Lawrence Fishburne, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Gwenyth Paltrow and even our own Ng Chin Han. (Frankly, the cast is what drew me to this movie.) The film, to me, projects a highly probable future for us; we are not far from a global pandemic. The film is down to earth in representing the probable and not the typical Hollywood dramatic. The character development is interesting at points and I liked the ending.

This production is experiential theatre at its best; I shall not divulge much for fear of spoiling the show for everyone, but the show started before we were seated. It was a very moving experience, one that made me question myself even days after watching. I delayed writing this post because I wanted to sort out my feelings towards theatre, and towards censorship. Too many what-ifs cloud my judgement. Overall, I really enjoyed this production.

We started the session with a short presentation on the theory portion; what is the best lighting, what different kinds of composition there is, there dos and don’ts of food photography. We then proceeded on with a practical session.

This is our set up, and fortunately BMPL has a large space with large windows for natural lighting.

And that is the photographer instructor Bene (pronounce Benny)! There were about 18 -20 of us, and we all took turns to take pictures of fruits and food. Below I shall show some of the pictures I took.

Green apples.

More green apples.

Tarts.

Strawberries.

kueh.

The lighting was so fantastically set up it was a surreal moment for me when I reviewed my photos. Let’s just say I now know what I need to get better pictures of my baked goodies and all. I really enjoyed myself this session, and got to talk to some photography aficionados. It’s certainly fun to throw terms like stops and metering around without feeling like a total jackass or a total fool.

Now, you may ask me, how and where do I look for and sign up for free workshops offered by the libraries? Simple, go to GoLibrary and browse through the selection of upcoming events and sign up online!

This post is overdue – blame it on my reluctance to choose blogging over reading and The Sims 3. I watched a Thursday evening show of Cooling Off Day, alongside a motley crowd of theatre people (e.g. Robin Goh), frequent theatergoers and fresh never-gone-to-theatre-before virgins (you can totally tell these lot from their brimming excitement in the foyer). Successful publicity then, I’d say.

Written by Alfian Sa’at based on interviews, blog posts and newspaper articles of the time around the 2011 General Election, Cooling Off Day is a play made up of multiple narratives and voices. Every race and creed seems to be represented in the play, and some misrepresented, which I assume is the effect to be achieved. There is the Chinese masseurs praising our governance, the Malay pakai tudong macik subverting racial stereotypes, and the reproduction of Mr Brown’s Teochew mee skit.

The play strikes to me as trying to find a balance between the serious politics of ISA detainees, and the laugh-out-loud funny antics. Some of the audience hated the politics, claiming it was dry and dragged out. Others, praised the bold move of this production. Me? I didn’t understand the point behind certain things, for example the East-West dialectic (in the sense of East side Singapore versus West Side Singapore) that keeps resurfacing throughout the play.

But I enjoyed the play, definitely. The funny moments were funny, the serious moments were serious. Some things I didn’t like, the rest I adored. I wish they would restage this so more people can catch it.

Charged is a play by Teater Ekamatra, as part of the Man Singapore Theatre Festival. The play starts off with the death of two NSmen on Chinese New Year Eve- one Chinese, the other one Malay. The coroners report that a single gunshot killed the Malay boy, while the Chinese boy committed suicide with his own rifle kneeling down. The play then proceeds with a series of increasingly postmodernist testimonies of the other three NSmen in camp, and also the involvement of the mothers of the two boys.

Clearly, the issue at hand is racism and identity in Singapore. What I liked was how they highlight the fractal recursivity of racism and nationalism in Singapore – on one level it’s Chinese vs Malay, on the other level it’s Chinese Chinese vs Singaporean Chinese. I also liked how they subvert the idea of the Malay cliche. It’s rare to see outward portrayal of racism in plays – the incessant mention of Chinese babi and the likes. It’s bold, and I like it.

However, I didn’t like the fact there is no value-addedness. There’s not much point rehashing what we already know – I want to know how to strike that balance between being colour-blind and being racially sensitive. To me it’s always mutually exclusive, these two. The play has done nothing to help me figure out how to place myself racially in Singapore – while I am always Singaporean first I am made to remember there are others unlike me. There is no excuse for ignorance, and blatant disregard in the name of colour-blindedness is clearly not enough. How do we place ourselves here in Singapore?

Apart from race relations and identity, the play is political in highlighting certain observations of army policies and procedures, what most of us already know but can’t or won’t talk about it. Again, where is the value-addedness in this play? My immediate after-show Twitter comment is – I am not sure what I should be feeling. Which is right; even after a few days of stewing and reflection, I still can’t find one thing about the play that touches me. A shame, I suppose.

*Note: Charged is rated M18, the highest rating possible for theatre in Singapore. Not surprising at all.

Image taken from http://www.mansingaporetheatrefestival.com/

Haven’t gotten around to blogging about this, so here goes.

For the umpteenth time, I don’t get the title. Dark of the moon, seriously? Dark is not a noun and will never be. You might as well have said Slimy of the Moon, or Flat of the Moon. It just does not make any sense. Why couldn’t you have stuck with Dark Side of the Moon? What’s so difficult about that?

That said, this movie performs between ZOMG and FEH. ZOMG largely due to the plot and action. FEH largely due to the characters. Let’s talk about this new girlfriend. Throughout the entire show she was either a slut or a bitch; she has no real personality that makes us like her. And an impractical dresser. You get kidnapped by the villain as a trophy and you decide to wear a pair of black stiletto pumps? Seriously? Making the poor actress run around in stiletto pumps is a clear work hazard; I wonder how many pairs she broke and how many times she tripped unnecessarily. With her killer bod I’m sure she doesn’t require those heels to feel awesome. So save it, and save the feet of an actress.

I am mildly disappointed that Bumblebee isn’t given more airtime in this instalment. In fact all the autobots in this installment have no personality, unlike in the previous movies. Too much time was devoted to the action I suppose. And this is not a short movie by the way, at 157 minutes it’s considered a lengthy one. Nonetheless I enjoyed the action and sound effects and utter sense of awesomeness during the fight scenes. Those are the things definitely worth watching on a big screen.

I also uber loved how they mixed historical tapes with fictionalization in the prologue scenes; it’s daring and it worked. The conspiratorial undertone is plain awesome.

My sister won tickets in a Facebook contest for a matinee Cirque Eloize (ay-lua-z) show, titled iD, and she kindly gave me the pair of tickets and I roped KL in to go watch! I watched the trailer on Youtube, and frankly, I wasn’t stoked by the trailer.

The real show, is a different story. The stunts were at times edge-of-our-seats dangerous and outright scary, and at times funny and entertaining. Like Cirque de Soleil, Cirque Eloize is from Canada, specifically, Montreal. But unlike Soleil, Eloize is very performative. What do I mean by that? The cast is very aware of the audience, at times gesturing for claps and cheers and even asking for volunteers, whereas a Soleil show is, more distant and compact in itself. I prefer the latter. Not big on this audience inclusion thing. I suppose it’s really because Eloize is a travelling troupe; they certainly do not have the luxury of crazy sets like the permanent Soleil troupes in Vegas. It’s a same; I’d like a Soleil to come set up shop in one of the IRs in Singapore.

One of my favourite stunts, the one stunt that wow-ed me was the trampoline. I found this video, among others, from Youtube. Not the best angle to show, but I really adore it.

I like how bouncing back instantly makes it seem like you rewound a tape and reverse the action. It’s so elegant and stunning. Really liked this bit. Can’t say the same about the others, pretty run-of-the-mill circus things. They haven’t been able to integrate stunts and tricks into some overarching storyline like Soleil does, which is also why I said Eloize is more performative because each trick not built into a greater arc of some sort. I think they tried to incorporate a rival gang romance element in iD, but seriously? It’s not coming through.

And the following is the most graceful stunt, KL’s favourite.

Would I have paid for Cirque Eloize? No, definitely not. Soleil, I will.

And on a parting note – Marina Bay Sands Grand Theatre has the worse design EVER. Our tickets were stall seats, row N (presumably row 14). I was permanently blocked by heads in front of me. The gradient of the front seats are not steep enough, and it really is a bummer for people who pay good money for them.