In Continuum.

His name, is Mas Selamat bin Kastar, Singapore's most wanted man right now. The former terrorist was arrested by the Indonesian police on the island of Bintan in January 2006 I believe, and was later transferred to Singapore after being charged for planning a terrorist attack on Singapore Changi Airport, as reported in the papers. Just your average terrorist, trying to make a point by killing a whole lot of innocent people, claiming to be on a holy war but really on a glorious trip to prove his stupidity. He looks like any other terrorist really, in fact any random guy you can pick off the streets, and the idea of that is a little scary to be honest. I mean, it makes anybody a possible terrorist, since there isn't a template for those group of extremists. Anybody then becomes a time bomb, anybody can be do a detrimental blow to the country's security. So you can imagine just how glad and relieved the Singaporean government when he was arrested, and so was the rest of the world I am sure. I mean, one terrorist caught is one terrorist less, though new ones are recruited on a daily basis. We like to ignore that fact, I like to ignore that fact. I guess, we all like to think that with every arrest, the world is changing into a better place an arrested terrorist at a time.

So things were fine an dandy for two years, with him locked up in a detention camp up in Whitley, which is just down the road from my house. Somehow, he managed to sneak out of the detention center during a bathroom break, though the word 'sneaking' would be exaggerating it a little bit. This terrorist dude simply walked out of the detention center, then disappeared into the crowd without the guards finding out until it was too late. Well, to be fair, he didn't actually walk out of the place - he limped. His picture is plastered all across the front page over every newspaper and every website, the government working like ants on a pan over this case, and using a euphemism like a "security lapse" to describe this case, when it really should be "a joke of biblical proportions". Here is a man who has been locked up in a supposedly maximum security detention center, with the elites guarding him for twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. He limped out of the place without any resistance, and here you are wondering where did all the money of the tax-payers go off to.

I mean, Singapore has advanced to a stage whereby it is no longer worried about hardcore economical developments. Of course, the government here is still an avid fan of money, every government around the world is. But we are not so concerned about building a country as we were forty years ago, but focusing our cash flow on things like building a casino, building more expressways, building more MRT stations, bid for the Youth Olympics and the F1 Race, stuff like that. It is a natural step to take when you have advanced this far, to focus on ways to boost your international status. A lot of money has gone into the pockets of our government officials, considering the fact that our prime minister earns even more than the president of the United States annually, to other countries it might seem rather absurd. Still, I don't suppose there is anything wrong, considering how well this country is being moving forward, I guess it hardly matters if our officials have higher salaries or not. 

However, the least we demand for in a society, in fact in any society, is the sense of security. It is the safety that counts in the foundation of every civilization, and you cannot move forward to anything else if you do not have that brick placed into the wall. When we have these "security lapses" going on in our country, it's just very disappointing as a tax-payer to see that our money has not been put to good use, such as building a more secure detention center to house the most dangerous criminal in Singapore, for example. When detention centers no longer serve their purposes in keeping the criminals inside, the security in the country is gone, and nothing should move forward after that. 

I mean, this terrorist didn't even put up a fight to get out of the place. He did not stab the guards with a pen he smuggled out of somebody's pocket, neither did his terrorist friends try to help him escape through a tunnel dug underneath his cell. He certainly did not smash the head of the guards with a baton, or rip the guard's face off and then pretend to be an injured so as to be sent off in the back of am ambulance. He did not tie the dead body of the guard up on the bars of his cell, and he certainly did not do anything else that resembled Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs. He, very simply, limped out of the place. I remember looking over the metal fences and the barb wires in the perimeter of my army camp, and wondered how would somebody escape from a camp like that? I have thought of a few escape routes, but only because I was bored out of my mind doing those dreadful guard duties. I couldn't have walked out of the camp despite not being a prisoner, but here we have a prisoner who limped out of the detention center like an ordinary man visiting his friend. This news is all over the front pages of major newspapers overseas, and the government is frantic.

I can imagine those poor army boys in the national service right now, or those police officers forced to work overtime for this terrorist dude. This is the part the government calls "situation containment". I call this part the "ass wiping", because they are trying to clean up the mess. A mad man, though unarmed, running about the streets of Singapore with the knowledge and ability to make bombs out of normal everyday items. Here is a man who should have been locked up in a prison for the rest of his life, not making bombs in a shady corner of the island with a bottle of shampoo, a deodorant, and a few fire-starters and sparklers (I highly doubt that these are the ingredients for a bomb, though). Army boys and police officers are roaming the streets for yet another island-wide manhunt after that David incident, the guy that ran away from camp with a rifle and a few rounds he stole. They never learned from their mistakes, and this time it has gotten out of hands.

It's just a little ironic to see such a crisis happening in the country, when they have been talking so much about being a supporter for the war against terror, and how they have always been a front-runner in the region to help eradicate terrorist organizations. Here we have, though, such a thing happening that really shouldn't have occurred. This must have been an incident of lazy guards, falling asleep on their jobs or simply disappearing from their posts for a bite at the canteen, whatever. It is a human error we are dealing with here, and somebody needs to be fired for this 'security lapse'. I am not exactly afraid that my bus to school would be hijacked tomorrow morning, since I do not suppose this man to be stupid enough to do such a thing. I believe that those guys out there on the streets now are going to catch this guy, since Singapore really doesn't have a lot of places to hide. It isn't a very big island to begin with, and you are monitoring every single possible escape routes - what are the odds of him swimming to Indonesia anyway? 

It's just that this whole incident is somewhat of a joke, a joke that should not be tolerated by the people who paid good money to have our lives secured. We need a safe environment to live in, not one with terrorists running about because they were given the opportunity during a toilet break. The perfect prison break this time around, a modern-day Houtini should not be tolerated in the vicinity of a prison. I think we deserve to have our safety guaranteed, judging from the amount of tax we pay to the government each year. A detention center with thicker bars and more guards really isn't a lot to ask for, is it? I do hope, for the sake of the government, that this guy is still on the island of Singapore. Because if he has already successfully escaped to another country, it would then turn into an even greater joke than it already is.  

Down upon my knees

You have broken me all the way now

You'll be the last, you'll see.

And some fight you gave

When I pushed you away from me

In the morning, when you turn in

I'll be far to sea

You have broken me all the way down

You'll be the last, you'll see

And what chance have we got

When you missed every shot from me?

And in the morning when you turn in

I'll be out of reach

And in the darkness when you find this

I'll be far to sea

And you have broken me all the way down

You'll be the last, you'll see

The film got me thinking about a lot of things, a lot of possibilities in specific, and none of them are very optimistic ones. The film provided a peak into my possible future, or anybody's possible future really. A kind of future ruled by a single mistake you made in the past, and you are stuck in a position, wondering if what you are doing is the right thing at all. Mid-life crisis, quarter-life crisis, I am approaching the latter at an alarming rate. You know, the kind of blind fear that comes along with not knowing what to do, or being unsure of what you did. It is comfortable to be where you are right now, to be where I am currently, but then it is always a petrifying to think about whether or not this path is the right path, if this road is the correct road. It is a thought that keeps me up at night at times, a thought that probably caused the characters of the film to lose much of their sleep as well. The difference, though, seems to be the fact that I do not have a beautiful girl in a foreign land and sharing the same predicament as myself. It'd be nice though, to drink rice wine late into the night and watch classic old Hollywood movies on television, or to wander the streets of Tokyo after a whole night singing karaoke and running through mazes of pachinko machines. Sounds like a plan, sounds like a poetry. 

It makes you question yourself, and your marriage if you are in one at my age, if you are making the right decisions here, if marriage wasn't just the result of a moment's urge, a stupid decision after a night of heavy drinking. The scariest thought is, perhaps, the fact that you might have been sober when you said "Yes", and that you cannot reverse the process of life anymore. That is not to mention the fear of giving birth, the fear of having a family, the fear of living beyond that...like Charlotte, like myself, I cannot seem to fathom that idea at all. The rest of my life just seems so far away right now, though the rest of my life is really just happening a second at a time. I feel stuck at times, sort of in between things, unsure and in doubt of my actions right now. She graduated from Yale, tried to write but hated her writings, tried photography but thought everything she took to be mediocre. Sounds like an adaptation of my story, perhaps too faithful and honest for comfort. Only, she is married to a man she isn't even sure of, as if the fear of having a family isn't already terrified enough.

So that's the quarter-life crisis, how about the mid-life crisis? I wonder if that is what my parents are going through right now, and worse for the fact that they are not showing any signs of it. Sometimes, I'd rather my parents to breakdown, to scream in anger and frustration that they have had enough of this life, the life they have gotten used to for so long. It'd be a change, it'd be a welcoming sight, but they always seem so controlled and so sure of themselves. It's not pride, or arrogance, and certainly not ignorance. Perhaps, it is a form of contentment, knowing that they have done a great job to raise their children, to put food on their plates, to live a relatively wealthy life in a foreign country where they started from scratch almost seventeen years ago. Then you start to wonder, what you are going to do in thirty years' time, when you are out there on a long business trip and away from your own family, if you are going to not feel the need and want to go back to the bitter life that you lead back home.

It's a sad thing, to not have a home to go back to. To be with a bunch of people and feel lonely at the same time, that is probably the worst feeling in the world. I fear responsibilities, I fear the day that I'd have to carry them upon my shoulders. I fear, even more, for the day to come whereby my loved ones are not going to love me in return, anymore. It is a wild thought, but it is a very real possibility. I am sure there are a lot of Bob Harris out there right now, people with incredible amount of wealth and yet, unable to enjoy their lives as they should be. His wife calls him to talk about which color of carpet she should get, or about trivial matters about their children. His children miss him, but they got used to him not being around on the time, and couldn't be bothered to talk to him on the phone either. It's a sad scene in the movie, after Bob Harris hung up the phone with his wife and then submerged himself into the bathtub, all alone and dejected from the life he's supposed to be responsible for. All of a sudden, the fact that he then slept with the lounge singer isn't very wrong of him any longer. There seems to be a reason behind it, a very real reason, a reason that we are all probably going to experience sooner or later.

Are we all going to end up at fifty years old in a foreign land, that lonely man in the bar alone with his cigar, that lonely man swimming alone in the pool, that lonely man in the sauna eavesdropping on other people's conversation,  the lonely man in the gym on an out-of-controlled brisk walk machine - that lonely man? It's kind of frightening to consider the possibility, but it is very real isn't it. Especially when you find a bond with somebody, that connection with someone else too late in life, when you are too far down the road, you become obliged to say "No", to tear yourself away. Responsibilities, we all are supposed to have responsibilities, becomes life tells us that we have to have those. To keep us in check, to give us a sense of, well, responsibility. I guess, I am just afraid to turn into somebody who is going to make a decision, later on in life, between what is right and what is easy. I wouldn't want to turn into another Bob Harris, but do we have a choice? Do we have a choice?  

During the four years of high school, I shared two of them with a guy whose nickname was 'Cuboid'. For a while, everybody called him by his name, and that lasted well until I came into the picture and gave him that nickname, a terminology I learned from one of our geometry classes. The nickname came about because of his somewhat squarish head, and it wasn't helped that his angular skull was further amplified by his hairstyle. With both sides of his hair shaved off, he looked somewhat like a marine of sorts, only with a much softer face and none of that toughened look. He was the target of all our jokes, though he did have a few friends in class whom he'd play Chinese chess with during recess and after school just to kill time. But even those friends of his never gave up the opportunity to poke fun at him when it does arise, and none of us were remotely threatened by the fact that he knew Taekwondo as well as he knew how to breathe. He was a harmless guy, in retrospect, but everybody just disliked him for some reason. 

It is a cruel society in a high school, you are either the predator or the prey. Everybody had to take sides, it was a day to day struggle for the fittest. The food chain extended from the very top of the pyramid to the very bottom, with the latter filled with people with strange hair cuts, accents, looks, dirty uniforms, or those who were exceptionally smart. Cuboid was incredibly smart, and maybe that was why he was the butt of all our jokes, and it wasn't helped by the fact that he was not the best looking person around at all. His facial features were flat as a chopping board, teeth arranged in a fashion to mimic that of a train-wreck, and he had a high-pitched laughter that sounded somewhat like a mating goose. Underneath our jokes and all our pranks, most of us felt a deep sense of guilt. Guilt, for putting him on our chopping boards, but then it's not like most of us had much of a choice back then. It was either with the predators, or against them, and none of us were willing to hang our necks out there for someone like him. 

I remember there was this one time when the class decided to do that pencil case joke they pulled on me when it was my turn to be the human sandbag a long time before. Someone took his pencil case and started throwing it around, but nobody wanted to be the one to give it back to him, nobody wanted to be the wet blanket. The wet blanket always ended up being sucked dry and burned at the end of the day, which was why nobody ever gave the pencil case back to the poor victims. It was tossed around over our heads and kicked around under our feet, the people in my class treated it like a soccer ball when it most obviously did not look like one at all. He'd be doing his flying Taekwondo kicks along the aisles, but it only provoked even more laughter amongst the bullies of the class. In the end, he managed to get his pencil case back, with half his stationery broken, and the bottle of oil he uses to wake himself up in class, shattered into a dozen pieces. It was a bad day for him, and an even worse day for all those with a guilty conscience. But we kept our silence, remained in the corner of the classroom while we watched. It was the best we could do, it was the best that anybody could do. Until one day, Cuboid decided to stand up for himself.

It was when a teasing went overboard, and he decided that it was time to start playing offense on the ball court. He started hopping around on the spot, moving about with his arms raised before his face in a defense position, and his eyes transfixed on the class bully at the other end of the aisle who had the pencil case in his hands. He charged up towards the bully at full speed, took off from the ground halfway down the aisle and performed his flying kick towards the chest with eagle-eye precision. The bully was knocked back, flew towards the cupboard at the back of the class and slapped into the metal doors with a loud bang, the pencil case rolled out of his palms and Cuboid was not Cuboid, anymore. He returned back to the name that people used to call him, with his respect earned and reputation restored. That was the day, when the guilt-ridden lot of us went up to him to apologize for our past deeds, for we were also victims long before it was his turn. We were also scared, too afraid to stand up for ourselves, too weak.

He forgave the lot of us, and we became good friends afterwards. The chess games resumed, his pens and pencils never got broken again. He bought a new bottle of those oil you put around your nose to wake yourself up, the kind that smells like an expired bottle of vinegar. It was amazing how friendships could be rebuilt by a single word like 'Sorry', or 'I didn't mean it' in the past when everything was much less complicated. Maybe it was the environment we were in, how boys tend to have an easier way of dealing with things. You can always kick somebody in the balls and still be friends tomorrow if you offer him to join your team in a friendly basketball game. It was possible in the past, but I guess it is one of those trade-offs you get as you grow older. Things become more complicated, more subtle, and the simplicity in human relationships is gone forever.

I don't know why I suddenly thought of my friend, Cuboid. Perhaps it is the distance I have been feeling from everyone, a strange urge and need to distance myself perhaps. It is one of those self-defense mechanisms that kick in automatically, and you can't help but wonder in times like these, where have all the good times gone? The kind of simplicity involved in making friends even after kicking each other in the nuts, the kind of bonds created even after nasty words were thrown in the air about one another. It is true that as we grow older, we are more equipped to handle our troubles even if they grow to become more complicated with time. Still, nostalgia sets in at times, and you just look back into the past and long for the simplicity in everything. Not just in conflicts in between friends, but life as a whole. When everything was about going to school and trying to survive it, none of the other issues we have to face as the so-called young adults. I wonder how Cuboid is right now, if he is still looking at life and relationships the same way as he used to, the kind of simplicity and benevolence he possessed. So many of us lost that part of our innocence, I wonder if he, still, holds it true to himself despite all the growing up that he has went through - what we've all went through.  

This year, the nominations are pretty interesting, although very predictable. I used the word 'predictable', because though it was a very good year for the films, there were only so many films that qualified for the major categories. However, I also used the word 'interesting', and that is because most of the fact that there were a lot of discrepancy in the predictions of the winners, personally. My mind would tell me which film would win, the other part of my mind would tell me which film should win, then there was my heart which told me which was actually my own favorite nominee, and there were times when the three of them were completely different films from each other - like the Original Screenplay, for example.

Let's begin with a summary of my thoughts on the smaller categories. I am not going to spend a lot of time on the animated short films, the live action short films, or even the documentaries because I haven't seen them, and I bet more than half of the viewers out there haven't seen most of them either. Every year, those smaller categories were there for us to make random guesses, to make wild shots in the dark just hoping for us to gain a point or two more than our fellow gamblers in the Oscar pool. This year was no exception, as I randomly picked the films that seemed nice because they have catchy name and predicted them to win. And as for the technical awards, I certainly did not expect The Bourne Ultimatum to win three awards out there - even more than Atonement. It was a good film and all, but I certainly did not see it winning Best Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing. I am an alien when it comes to these categories, but I didn't even hit any of them - very sad. That is not to mention how Transformers was snubbed at the Best Visual Effects category, losing out to The Golden Compass. Seriously, transforming robots from outer space versus talking polar bears? Seriously. Also, the Best Animated Feature category going to Ratatouille, though I did expect it to win. It was a very good film, but come on! There is so little life left in 3D Animation, give some hope to 2D Animation, the film with the heart - Persepolis! I knew Ratatouille would take it, but I secretly hoped for Persepolis to emerge as the black horse. Well, guess not. Oh, and may I, once again, stress how upset I am that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly were not even nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film category? The latter didn't even win - anything. There is some devilry at work here.

Then there are the few winners whom I thought, "Well, they deserved it". Achievement in Makeup went to the creative artists behind La Vie En Rose, which I predicted correctly simply because they did a stunning job to turn Marion Cotillard into Edith Piaf of a dozen different ages. Part of Marion Cotillard's praises should be owed to those makeup artist behind the scenes, and they certainly deserved those awards, most definitely. For the Achievement in Costume Design, you only have to look at the photographs from the film to know who was bound to win. Elizabeth: The Golden Age stood out as being mind-boggling, and it was amazing how the costume designers even managed to pull off those outrageous designs. Atonement became this year's Babel, the movie that was nominated for a bunch of major awards but went home with just a Best Score, but then it was very well deserved in my opinion. Combining classical composition with the sounds of typewriters and umbrella being banged on the hood of a car, who would have thought? The score told half the story in Atonement, and it was definitely something that left a lasting impression in my mind when I saw it. Then there was my favorite winners of the night, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova winning for their performance of "Falling Slowly" in Once. It was so nice to see two previously unknown singers, not trained to act in any films, to win such a prestigious award. When their names were announced, I had goosebumps running down my whole body, and seeing them happy made me even happier. I guess, nobody managed to break the curse of the "Three Nominations". Both Dreamgirls last year and Enchanted this year were nominated for three songs in the same category, and both films went home with zero - nothing.

Let's go on to the major categories, shall we. Best Adapted Screenplay, the first of the many categories that the movies that won, the movies that should have won, and the ones that I loved were completely different altogether. In this category, everybody knew that No Country for Old Men was going to win, and it certainly did. But I personally thought that Atonement should have won, since readers of No Country for Old Men reported how the Coen Brothers simply lifted chunks of scenes and dialogues from the book. Nothing against that, but it just makes the job so much easier if everybody does that, plus it is more like a translation than an adaptation, if that is the case. Personally, I liked Away from Her so much better, then again it was probably because it touched me more than the other films nominated in the category, so there you go.

Best Original Screenplay - I knew that Diablo Cody's script for Juno was a shoo-in. The audience loved it, the experts agreed on it, but I simply didn't like the movie enough to concur. The script was a drama, but not really. It was a comedy, but not completely. Nothing worked in the script for me, though there was a strong sense of effort being put into polishing and making the lines sound nice and sharp. But it all seemed way too fabricated for my taste, as if the film was trying way too hard to be funny as I have mentioned in my own review. The jokes didn't work for me, the story felt incredibly distant, and the idea of an ex-stripper winning the award is just a little...well, call me old fashioned. The film that should have won is Michael Clayton, the film that dealt with corporate conspiracies and choked with smart snappy lines that slapped at the audience's faces without even trying. The film was quick, witty, smart, and none of those quirky little jokes that Juno tried so hard to put forth. However, my heart truly belonged to Lars and the Real Girl, the script that got to me and threw me down to the ground. A story about a man falling in love with a blow up doll, who would have known! Such a brilliant idea and such a great execution in the scripting.

For the actor in the Best Supporting Role, everybody knew Javier Bardem was going to win. Because seriously, unless the Academy decided to award an old-timer like Hal Holbrook, everybody knew Javier Bardem's performance as the killer in No Country for Old Men was one of the best, and creepiest, performance in Hollywood history. Politically speaking, Philip Seymour Hoffman wouldn't have won, since he already won for Best Actor in Capote a few years ago. Casey Afflect is still too new and too young, and thus not very possible. I love Tom Wilkinson, but then he wasn't nearly as good, or as creepy, or as anything as Javier Bardem. A very predictable winner, but still well-deserved.

Best Supporting Actress, to me, was an upset. Don't get me wrong, I love Tilda Swinton. I love her in almost anything she has ever been in, but then there is just something wrong with her beating the likes of Cate Blanchett and Amy Ryan in this category. I didn't think too much about Amy Ryan's performance in Gone Baby Gone, though very good, but Cate Blanchett was in a completely different league altogether. She was the only reason why I sat through the very strange, very warped, very unconventional I'm Not There because of her awesome portrayal of Bob Dylan. When I saw Michael Clayton, what struck me other than the script and the awesome ending was probably the performance of Tom Wilkinson, definitely not Tilda Swinton's performance as the troubled owner of the drug company. She was good, but just good isn't good enough to win you an award, but apparently the Academy disagreed. The fact that she was nominated was confusing for me, the fact that she won left me in utter puzzlement.

The Best Actor was rather predictable to me, but like Javier Bardem still very well deserved. Daniel-Day Lewis has been the actor rooted by fans and critics alike to win this award ever since the nomination came out. Though I have yet to watch There Will Be Blood myself, it isn't even difficult to realize that the other nominated actors don't stand a single chance against this talented actor. I mean, let's look at the other nominees. George Clooney for Michael Clayton, well he was OK, but like I said the performance that really stood out was his co-star instead of him. He was good, but then just good. Viggo Mortensen, I've never really liked him as an actor, but more like an artist. He doesn't come across to me as a great actor to be honest, and his performance in Eastern Promises was, well, a little dull to me to be honest. Tommy Lee Jones for his role in In the Valley of Elah, nobody expected the nomination, and very little people rooted for him at all. To me, he's sort of the same in every role, of every movie. He should have won for something other than his supporting role in The Fugitive though, but certainly not this year, not against Daniel-Day Lewis. And let's face it ladies, Johnny Depp's nomination was really quite a joke. His acting was good, but then his singing destroyed his acting in the film. Oh, and James McAvoy should have been nominated for Atonement. So, so, so good.

Best Actress, a little upset here but not great. I like Marion Cotillard, in fact I love Marion Cotillard. I think she is one of those very genuine actress out there, both with the books and the talents, and the ability to stay grounded in the industry. I rooted for her after I saw her performance as Edith Piaf, and knew that she was going to win the award no matter what - until I saw Julie Christie's performance in Away from Her. Oh my God, it was so good that it made me tear! Every inch of her face exploded with emotions, it was just so moving and touching that it caused me to turn my back on Marion Cotillard. I'm sorry Marion, but Julie Christie's just too good. She was amazing in Away from Her, everything that a best actress should be. But, well, the Academy - disagreed.

In the Best Directing category, everybody knew the Coen Brothers were going to take it home. They won, and everybody knew it months before this award show even happened. It's quite a crime, I feel, that Joe Wright of Atonement wasn't even nominated for this category, which doomed the nomination in the Best Picture category almost instantly. I have never been a fan of Paul Thomas Anderson, so it was hard for me to root for him in the Best Director category. I thought Jason Reitman's direction for Juno was not impressive at all, and Tony Gilroy's direction for Michael Clayton was great, though not exceptional or outstanding. To me, it was a toss up between the Coen Brothers for No Country for Old Men, or Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Admittedly, though, I think the Coen Brothers did a much better job than the latter, and I must say that I am rather satisfied with the winner of this category. Nonetheless, though, Julian Schnabel did craft a film that touched me on a level different from a lot of films out there. But Joe Wright's snub, simply an injustice.

Best Picture, the award of all awards, the award to rule them all. In the end, it went to No Country for Old Men, not a lot of surprises here. This category, according to my friends at the forums, is interesting because any film in this category winning would satisfy a lot of people. They are all very good films, and all of them somehow deserves the title as Best Picture. I knew that No Country for Old Men would win, simply because of the praises as well as the fact that Fargo, another Coen Brothers film, was robbed in the past. It is a good time to reward this film, but my heart was certainly with Atonement. It is probably my favorite film of 2007, and it is just too bad that the lack of a nomination in the Best Director category doomed it from the very beginning. Nonetheless, I am satisfied, since Juno did not come out of the blues to claim the title. That'd be the day, for me, to be honest.

So, that's that, my review of this year at the Oscars. Poor predictions once again, on my part. But it was still great fun to review the films and to wait for the results. Can't wait for the kind of movies we'd get this year for next year's Oscars! Till then.

Falling Slowly, by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova at the Oscars.

As a child, my fascination with superheroes can be likened to my enthusiasm to seeing my German Shepherd run around and chase its own tail in the front lawn. Somehow, the whole interest of having superpowers and saving the world was never part of my ambitions. The only superhero that came close to being my ultimate idol was probably the giant robot called Voltron, and I was a fan of both the animal version as well as the vehicular one. Even then, saving the world was up to the task of a few individuals, and never just one person trying to do everything in the world. Superman is super, but then it just makes him rather unbelievable, and I was perhaps too rational a child for my own good, back then. Anyway, though my interest in saving the world was never to strong, I had the habit of having superpowers unlike the ones we read about in comic books or see in cartoons. I've always wanted the power to talk to animals when I was younger, to know what the hell my dog was trying to do when it followed me around with his nose up between my butt cheeks. Seriously, that'd be a cool power to possess, in my opinion.

Sitting in the middle of Carl's Jr. that other day after watching Juno, the bunch of us were talking about superpowers after I told the rest that MJ is, in secret, not human. MJ has the strange superhuman ability to not exercise for months, and then do ten pull-ups without breaking a sweat. That is not to mention scaling three different difficulty levels from 6A to 6C at rock-climbing, despite being the first time at it. Nobody should forget his powers to swallow large amount of food and still maintain the same weight for some unknown reasons that a lot of women might feel envious about. Anyway, since our topic revolved around superpowers, we started talking about the kind of powers we'd like to have, if we were to be living in the world of the X-Men, or maybe Heroes if possible. I don't suppose I'd want a power that is very, well, powerful though. I don't suppose I'd want superpowers that are responsible to save the world though. I mean, teleportation is nice, invisibility would be cool, the ability to fly would be awesome. But like Peter Parker's uncle said to him just before he got mugged, with great powers come great responsibilities. I hate responsibilities, and I certainly hate the idea of having a cliche name, fighting crimes in a cliche costume, trying to prevent a cliche villain from ruling the world who happens to be wearing a cliche costume as well. 

So around the table, we started talking about the kind of pointless superpowers we'd imagine ourselves to have. Naz claims that he can levitate birds, and I don't suppose useless powers can be more useless than that. Fx wants to have the ability of turning the world into cartoon for some reason, with or without our consent. As the rest of us didn't want to be part of her cartoon, she became the villain in our "World of Lame Powers". MJ's ability would be to remain forever as a normal guy, and my powers would be to listen to other people's iPods through my own on the buses and the trains. But here's the thing, MJ's power is the key to rescuing mankind, because it neutralizes Fx's abilities to turn the world into cartoon. Being turned into cartoon would oppose to his powers as being a normal guy, which is why it'd deflect any attempts by Fx to rule the world. He cannot be murdered either, because murder is an unnatural death, which also makes him 'abnormal' in the process - not possible. Take that, Fx! Or should I say, Captain Hobo? 

I've always wanted the ability to know what somebody else on the train is listening to on their MP3 players. I suppose, it is the easiest way to get to know somebody without actually speaking with that person, which may turn out to have many adverse effects. You know how the type of music you enjoy is also related to the kind of person that you are, and it is always interesting to know what someone else enjoys in his or her life, even if the paths are only going to cross for the duration of the journey for the most part. Then there is also the ability to read lips, though that really isn't a superpower in the most conventional sense. I mean, there are already people out there who can read lips very well, and I just feel that it is a pretty awesome talent to have. By knowing how to read lips, you cross a lot of physical barriers such as distance and loudness. You can converse with somebody through a thick pane of glass, isn't that awesome? 

Right now, though, I'd like to have the power to endure. To endure everything thrown upon me from life and live through it, I think that's the kind of superpower that everybody needs, though not everyone of us can claim that we have. Endurance is such a vital aspect of survival in the society that we live in, you just have to bite down on life and bash your head through the wall if you want to be a step further than everybody else. Nobody said that you need to be number one in everything you do, but then society never said that you can be number two either. It is this hard-headed, fast-forwarded, post-modern way of thinking that I am the most uncomfortable of. So, endurance, probably what I need right now. Perhaps I should come up with my own professional title, like Mr. Endurance or something like that, though it does sound strangely like a brand of rechargeable batteries. Forget Superman, Mr. Endurance is in town to save the world - well, at least my own.  

This famous piece of music, 4'33", is John Cage most important work, according to himself of course. One of the reasons for it is probably because of how flexible the piece of music is, having the ability to be played by any possible instrument in the world using the exact same score he wrote in 1952 after his visit to the anechoic chamber of the Harvard University in the 1940s. An anechoic chamber is designed in such a way that the walls and the ceiling cannot reflect sound as a normal room would when a sound is being produced. Instead, it absorbs the sound produced, much like a room with soundproofing abilities, and these rooms are usually used to measure acoustic properties of instruments and microphones, and for performing psychoacoustic experiments. Standing in the middle of the room, John Cage noticed two sounds in the air despite there being no instruments played at that time. It was a very high-pitched sound an the other, a very low-pitched one. 

Intrigued, he asked the sound engineer at the anechoic chamber about the sounds he was hearing, and the sound engineer explained that the higher pitch was the sound of his nervous system operating, while the lower pitch was the sound of his blood circulating around his body. From then on, John Cage became infinitely fascinated with the sounds that a human body can produce, and as a result gave birth to his most important composition - the 4'33". There has been a lot of argument as to whether or not the above account is true or not, but there is no question than John Cage's famous piece became the center of attention in the musical world. Four minutes and thirty-three seconds can be translated into two hundred and seventy-three seconds, which can also in turn be translated to minus two hundred and seventy-three degrees, or what we commonly known as the "absolute zero" in terms of the temperatures. I'm sure that little clue gave you guys an idea of what 4'33" really is. Yes, 4'33" is really four minutes and thirty-three seconds of complete silence, and this complete silence is John Cage's most important work in his career. Believe it, or not.

This piece of 'music' came to me while I was surfing through John Mayer's blog, and I have never heard of John Cage or his famous composition before, admittedly. The video at the end of this entry would give you an idea of what this piece of composition is all about, which really isn't much of a composition to begin with. Though the score sheets are standard ones used, they are just pages after pages of lines without any notes or annotations written on them. Every time this song is being performed, it is supposed to give the listeners a vastly different experience, depending on the environment in which the composition is being enjoyed. You may be in the concert hall, in the car, listening to it on your iPod on a plane, or sitting in front of the computer and stumbling upon it by accident - like myself. Wherever you are, the piece of composition is going to give you a different emotion, or feeling, because not a lot of us takes time to listen intently to silence anyway. We are always thinking about something, aren't we? Even at night, you are thinking about what time to wake up tomorrow morning for school, the assignment you have to hand up, the awful taste of the cheap dinner you and a friend of yours had in town just now, random thoughts about falling through the skies, zebras, calculators, bushes with thorns, smiley faces, rotten apples, worms and whatnot. We are always distracted by thoughts, these psychological 'noises'  as a communication theorist would conveniently term it. When was the last time we sat down and listened to nothing, anyway. 

Some might dismiss this piece of work as one of those arty-farty mumbo jumbo, at least judging from the kind of comments I have been reading on YouTube and websites related to this composition. It is inevitable I suppose, and I guess not difficult for people to dismiss this piece of work as a publicity stunt of some kind, or just a desperate effort of a composer to try something different for the sake of experiments, not exactly for the name of music. Still, you cannot deny that he made his mark as the man that came up with this brilliant idea, of having four and a half minutes of silence tagged to his name forever in musical history. We all know what silence is, but this man took a portion of silence and then gave it a name, his own name. It is like the person who sat down a few thousand years ago, the same man that dictated the names of everything around us. That man was probably very proud of the fact that he came up with those names, and how everyone from then on would be using the names he dictated in the first place. It's the same as John Cage's case, taking a piece of silence and calling it his own. 

I was rather amused at the whole idea initially, I mean the orchestra bothered to turn the pages of the scoresheets even. I have seen a lot of orchestral performance in my lifetime because of my mother's influence, but even she has never seen a performance as odd and unique as this one. We have a full orchestra on the stage, the composer just standing there in silence and not doing a thing until the time is up. Of course, he also has to keep a straight face about everything, not to burst out laughing uncontrollably in the midst of everything. So for four and a half minutes, the audience just sits there and listens to the littlest of sounds in the concert hall, everything from the beating of their hearts to the air-conditioning up above. I guess that was what John Cage wanted to convey in this piece of music, that there is sound even in the quietest of places, perhaps even in space as well. You hear your own system working, the sound around you at home, or in the bus, and it just gives you a reason to put away all kinds of thoughts and just - listen. I suppose, there is sound in silence as well, and it is somewhat like what people do during meditation I suppose. 

So let's do a little experiment right now, at least for myself. I am going to turn off the lights in my room and watch the video below with the music turned off, of course. I am going to blog about what I hear in the following paragraph, and how I am going to feel about it - of course, try not to laugh at my own stupidity at the very same time. It is going to be strangely fun, but I guess there isn't a harm in doing so for sure. So let's do it right now, and hope that my sister is not going to stroll into my bedroom and see me in a strange meditation mode with my legs crossed on my chair. Here, we go. 

I turned off the fan in my room, the music that was playing through the speakers. So I sat there on my chair with my eyes closed for exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Here's what I heard. I heard the sound of the water rolling off the edge of the glass panel at the back of the fish tank and down into the filters below. On top of that, the sound of my sister sneezing next door while typing away on her laptop. As if to hint of its presence, there was a moment or two within the span of time when the wind chime sounded for a few times, until the sound of someone splashing water over a hard surface broke my concentration. Then there's the sound of cars down below, as usual, and the occasional sound of motorbikes tearing through the night. Someone closed the door from above, and children spoke in the distance inaudibly. As the performance came to an end, I took particular notice of the sound I could hear within myself, and it was true that I could hear a high pitched and a low pitched sound that rang constantly inside my head. A very interesting experiment, that was.

I do feel that I am very open-minded when it comes to experimenting music. In fact, that is what I have been doing in the past few days, trying to look for more obscure bands on iTunes that might have slipped my attention in the past. As I looked deeper into the world of obscure music, the names of the bands inevitably became weirder and weirder, and so did the genre of music as it correlated with my exploration into the unknown. It began with Metric, then Do Make Say Think - which really doesn't mean anything, then The Most Serene Republic, then The Octopus Project. Whatever it is, I have discovered and have been moved by a lot of music that I have heard over the past few days, but none as strange as, well, silence. We have heard silence before, in fact silence is everywhere if you are willing to just stop in your tracks for a moment and listen out. It really is quite loud if you allow yourself to hear it, but most of the time we just can't be bothered with something as silly as that. To say that I was deeply moved by the performance of John Cage's famous piece would be lying, but then it was an interesting perspective for me, as it gave me an excuse to not do anything at all and clear my mind of any distractions. 

I guess that is why he considers it to be his most important work, because when we imagine how our world is like, it is probably going to be teeming with life. Like a living organism with a heart and a mind, and a body full of small little particles minding their own businesses and traveling from point A to point B, from point B to point C. At least that is what our society always tries to teach us, to make us believe that our purpose is to be constantly doing something, or be thinking about doing something. Not a lot of people are going to tell you to sit down and think about nothing, because by thinking about nothing, you are thinking about something. I guess 4'33" really is an unique take on that concept from a musical perspective. You can't be hearing silence even if you are in absolute silence, and that concept alone forces the listeners to stop - and listen. If it is possible for everybody to hear this composition at once, wouldn't it be the same as a sort of quiet revolution of sorts, where we might go against social norms and challenge the notion of doing something, all the time? Is is possible to change the world, in silence? Interesting, indeed. 

To live in neutral, it's like putting your car in that gear, or to remain in a state of equilibrium. I wonder how can anybody live with that state of mind, or if it is possible at all. I have always believed life to be a constant battle of balance, to always seek for the middle but never actually getting there. So to live in neutral, the concept of it, it's just a little far out for me perhaps. It is definitely a gift on your part, to have lived for so long and being bulletproof at the same time, at last immune to any possible attacks and to live life the way you've always wanted, instead of how others would want you to act, like in a puppet show of sorts. But then again, it is true about the way we see our past relationships, especially those that ended up in a garbage hill. How little you think about someone else is probably how little that person thinks of you, and for some reason, despite never feeling at fault, I still feel immensely guilty. It is hard to explain, and I understand that my words are disjointed and wrong, but I guess it hardly matters. The conversation with you did complicate a thing or two, and we have both fallen into the extremities of our lives. Or, maybe that was being hopeful, maybe it's just me.

I realized that I have been, in fact, living in neutral all this while, but never actually realizing it at all. Allowing various different thoughts to intrude on my neutrality must have gave birth to those words that hurt you in the past, but then don't we all fall to either side of the pivot at times? It is sad to know, how low you thought of me, how little you still think about me. Though I must say, that I haven't been thinking very highly of you either, and the reason why I have been hating you so deeply is because deeper inside, I am still madly in love with you. To hold grudges at this point in time is silly, but it somehow seems even more foolish to feel that way right now. The final threshold didn't do much for me, I am still the same person as I was a week, a month, and maybe even a year ago. I remember that day a year ago very well, surfing through the older entries of last year reminded me of a thing or two. I sat at the Starbucks and waited for you for the whole afternoon, and you refused to see me while being out with some other guy that eventually turned into your current beau. I felt dejected, unwanted, and most of all unloved. How little has changed, despite everything.

But it was still nice to hear about you, from you, instead of anybody else from your school. I do apologize for making you uncomfortable about the multiple reports and sightings I have received from my friends, but it's not like I hired them to spy on you or anything. Start taking care of yourself though, I mean seriously taking care of yourself. Things seem to have been changing for the worse for you, and I don't believe I have known you to be this weak and frail since I have met you. It is a little frustrating that no one, not even yourself, having been taking proper care of you ever since I left. You are still the same, still difficult to feel happy, still speaks the same as if it was just yesterday when we both broke down over the phone. So little has changed, seriously, and all of that makes this final threshold of mine so trivial all of a sudden. So much for all the persuasion in the past, all amounting to this realization that little has changed ever since. I dearly hope, that you will not turn into the nickname you have gave yourself for the better part of your life, and you do find that one reason in your life to never be in a gloom any longer. 

Despite that last conversation, I don't suppose anything is going to change for us. You are still going to live your life the way it has been, and I am still going to lead mine the way it has always been as well. I am happy, and truly grateful, of what I have right now despite the possibility of making it better. I am going to be reduced to the person that appears in the bottom right hand corner of your computer screen, the person you would least want to see on the same bus home, and probably also the person you'd least want to meet anywhere else in your life I reckon. It is kind of sad, to know that those entries I ever typed about you and for you, that thing we shared, is reduced to this - this, wreckage. You are also going to be reduced to the person with the same nickname, the only person under "Other Contacts" on my MSN list, and someone alone the lines of that. A mere existence, which is just plain sad if you ask of me. But then, don't we all begin and end in the same way in everything in life. From stardust to life, from life to death, and then back to dust all over again. I guess our stardusts were never meant to shine in the very first place. 

Favorite anime, period.

You took back that little pink card, you signed those documents and you gave that handshake. In truth, though, those were just procedures you go through on the last day of your military term, not to tell you that you've completed your time but to remind you that there are more to come for the next ten years of your life. As if the newly implemented law of shortening the reservist period from fourteen years to ten, it is going to make a difference at all. They like to reel us out and back into the ocean like cods, but never willing to let go of the line because they want to pull us back again just for the fun of it. Perhaps it is the cheap thrill of seeing the old army boys suffer all over again on a yearly basis, back in camp and doing the things that they so happily ran away from so many months ago. They call it a duty, and the most of us would suck it up and just roll along with the punches. But when they are calling you back four to five times a year just for you to stain alert and ready to sacrifice yourself for the country, the line reeled out into the ocean really hasn't been that long. As long as you are still in the vicinity, the country is not going to let go of your noose anytime soon, because they are power hungry people and they want you to be their cheap labor for the next ten years or more.

A friend of mine, Naz, received a call last night, telling him that he has two army briefings to attend, an in-camp training scheduled for May and another ops-manning in July at Amber Alert, which is basically the euphemism of "The country is almost in crisis! Be ready at anytime of the day to sacrifice for the glories nation of Singapore!" It's a very cute idea if you think about it, to color-code the national level of crisis in different color schemes. But the colors really don't matter, because the only reason why Singapore would be under the Amber alert would be if they are pretending to be under threat. That is always the case, because the Singapore Arms Forces really is just playtime with plastic knives and spoons, not to mention plastic ham and cheese sandwiches coupled with a plastic hard-boiled egg. They'd like to think that they are always ready for war, always ready to aid some other war-ridden country out in the Middle East, to show their neighbors that we are a small country, but we have the power to fight back! In truth, the actual fighting would only take about a week or two at best, because you only need human waves to defeat the kind of military power we have in Singapore. Everybody knows, especially if you have been in the army of Singapore, everything is just a joke that has been taken way too seriously.

It is supposed to be an annual thin, to be called back to the army for a week or two's training. A lot of us can handle that, because it is merely going to be a yearly thing, on top of the fact that we still have to maintain our fitness for the next ten years. It's annoying, but you kind of see where they are coming from. The question then is why is the military calling back my friend for five times a year, when he has already passed out of the army ever since 2006? It doesn't make any logical sense to keep pestering the lot of us who have already passed out of the army, the lot of us who have already signed those documents and gave our handshakes. We even swallowed the fact that we have to be called back once every year and have our ordinary lives disrupted for playtime in the military camp, and the government just can't have enough fun at doing that. They got to drag you back more often each year now, which makes you question the point of shortening the reservist period from fourteen years to ten years, when you are increasing the amount of times one has to serve the military all over again annually. It's like shortening the working hours in an office but then piling more work on your employees - it's much much worse than before. 

It doesn't help that the amber alert is going to be activated on Naz's birthday in July, and when you are roaming around in the amber zone, you are probably going to be called back into camp for sure. That's the reality of things, and it really does suck especially for people like us, who have already been through the horrors of the army, and have lived to tell about it. We were just talking about it last night after our project discussion, and it seems like the army is - in some ways - worse than a prison in so many ways. Sure, you are not forced to have a skin head in the army like the prison, you are forced to stay behind bars for a long period of time with limited family visits and stuff. I still fear the idea of being imprisoned, with those recurring nightmares in the middle of the night being the worst dreams I have had as of late, I do not welcome the idea of imprisonment at all. But still, when you are out of the prison and back into the society, you don't hear about prisoners going back to prison because the prison warden thinks that it is necessary to remind them how bad it was behind bars, to threaten them not to commit the same mistakes again. You don't hear about ex-convicts doing re-prisons, in fact there are yellow-ribbon projects to help the ex-convicts to integrate back into the society. Hire an ex-convict and you might be able to pay lower tax, that's how considerate the government here is to ex-convicts. It is a beautiful thing, it really is. 

But the ex-army boys don't have any kinds of ribbons tagged to us. Red, white, or blue, we have none of those. Just letters of various different colors to call us back when they need us for free labor all over again. We don't take buses out of the military camps to be treated like heroes on the way home, and we don't get any aid when it comes to integrating us back into the society either. When dropped to the rank of civilians, we are much higher than any generals in the army but just the same as anybody else in the real world, and we are immediately ushered to find a job, find a school, find a decent girlfriend to marry straight after the army. Not a lot of care and concern goes into what happens after we passed out of the army, we are just like old toys being tossed out of the house for some reason, thrown out because we are no fun anymore. Besides, keeping us for more than two years is going to generate a lot of unhappy parents, and the last thing the government here wants is a revolt against itself. 

For the UGC class on Friday, my group is supposed to present the English Bill of Rights. In a nutshell, the monarchy in England in the 1600s wasn't very good in the treatment of Protestants, and disregarded the importance of the Parliament. So a new king was chosen, and this Bill of Rights was basically a list of things that the current king did, and a list of other things that the new king should adhere to, and it basically gives a lot of power and authority to the Parliament, which set the standards of the monarchy and Parliament relationship in England, as well as the role of Parliaments around the world - like Singapore. One of the unfair things that the monarchy did that caused quite an uproar within the Parliament was the keeping of an active army in times of peace. The reason for this dissatisfaction was not mentioned, but a reason my group concluded was that a lot of people were forced into the army, and the presence of an army during peace time would also pose as a threat to neighboring countries, as a result. So the Parliament came up with the Bill of Rights to get rid of this system, and that is why military service is no longer mandatory in England. Only in times of war would the people be called to arms - unlike Singapore.

You see, we are still stuck in the medieval times, still keeping an army despite the obvious peace and harmony within and around the country. A war waged upon the country would be folly, as Singapore is really the economic center of Asia, which in turn means that if you intend to drop a bomb in Toa Payoh, it is more than likely that your own economy is going to bomb the next day as well. Nobody is going to be stupid enough to attack Singapore, which is why they always say that the army here is pretty much for show. I mean, we are using World War II and Vietnam war vehicles as of now, not to mention the fact that changes in the army usually takes more than ten years to come about - and that's a rather optimistic projection. Nobody in the right mind is going to attack this little country, which really defeats the purpose of dragging us back on an annual basis, especially when there are new soldiers joining the army every bloody month. 

So yes, in a way, we are better off imprisoned. Every year, we are being forced to go back to an army camp just because it seems like the right thing to do. There are not a lot of countries with mandatory military service in the world of today, and most countries with mandatory army are also the ones with very real threats. The threat Singapore is facing is probably Malaysia, though Malaysia really shouldn't be considered a threat, but brothers since our economy are very much complementary of each other. It gives me yet another reason not to remain in Singapore any longer, amidst the soaring inflation rates. I might be better off in some third world country, or maybe my contingency plan of running off to Mongolia may just work out sooner than I expected. Singapore, this place feels so stifling these days. 

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly begins with Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathiew Amalric), the editor of Elle magazine, waking up in a hospital bed and completely disorientated. Doctors surrounded him from all directions, telling him to calm down and asked him a dozen questions he could hardly answer. He tried to answer some of the questions, but the doctors just kept asking the same questions until he realized one thing: he lost the ability to speak. A stroke that struck him paralyzed his whole body, causing him to be able to communicate only through the blinking patterns in his left eye, and his family and friends were completely devastated by the accident. The story tells of how Jean-Do, beaten down by a condition he cannot possibly live a normal life with, fought with his inner-demons and presented to the world with the ultimate display of human spirit, the desperate urge to live life despite the odds. This film is based on the book with the same name, that was written by Jean-Do himself as he laid there in the hospital bed. How is that even possible, you ask? That's the power of determination, and that everlasting drive to stay alive. 

A similar story has been told before, a story that also involved a paralyzed man back in 2004, called The Sea Inside. Though both films deal with the same subject, one involves a man trying desperately to kill himself, and the other about a man trying to stay desperately alive. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is about one of those horrible stories we hear only through the television or newspapers, a question to the audience that goes "What would you do?" Director Julian Schnabel was not contented in telling the story in a straightforward manner, as The Sea Inside elected to use. For the first half an hour of the film, we see the world from Jean-Do's point of view, from the point that he realizes his paralysis, to the first time he sees himself through the reflection in the windows. The director not only wanted the audience to empathize with Jean-Do, but he also wanted to immerse the audience into his hospital bed, his operating mind, and see the world through his working left eye - the right eye was sewed up because it wasn't working any longer. It reminded me somewhat of the filming technique used in the recent film Cloverfield, shooting the entire film from the point of view of the first person. But this is a completely different take on that filming style. This time, you are not feeling nauseous from all the camera movements. You are feeling claustrophobic and trapped, feeling everything that Jean-Do goes through - his Hell.

As the film progresses, with the aid of veteran cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, Julian Schnabel gradually moves away from the first person perspective into the conventional third-person point of view. The significance in this change of perspective must be of Jean-Do's change of perspective as well, as he accepted his life trapped inside his own body and learned to look upon the world from a greater perspective - a brilliant touch from the director. We are also treated to several flashback and dream sequences throughout the film, some rather confusing while others are rather fantastical in nature. They represent Jean-Do's struggle to do what a normal man would be doing. Having a nice meal with a beautiful woman, ski down the side of a snow-capped mountain, to make love to his wife. Like he said, there were two more things the stroke didn't take away other than his left eyelid: his memory and his imagination. And the film very brilliantly captured the vast landscape Jean-Do managed to create with just his mind, with him lying in bed throughout the film.

What I did not like in The Sea Inside, director Julian Schnabel eliminated and took it away. In The Sea Inside, the protagonist was lionized as this hero of sorts, seen as someone determined to make his death wish come true and we were forced to support his motives. But Jean-Do is a flawed man, and the director doesn't try to hide that at all. He has a lot of regrets, he has a lot of things that he should have done, things that he ought to have been doing to the people that took so much trouble to take care of him in his times of need, to care for him even when he can never speak to them ever again. Through the monologue in his mind, we get what he is thinking, and we find out that Jean-Do is a sad man trapped in his own body, no longer able to redeem himself in real life, but through the imaginations inside his mind. The care and concern that his friends and families showered over him throughout the film was probably the most touching aspect of it all, even if he didn't treat those friends and families very well in the past.

Because of his character, Jean-Do had a few affairs while having three children and a woman whom he calls "the mother of his children" and not "wife". Celine (Emmanuelle Seigner) took care of him most of the time, if it wasn't his speech therapist Henriette (Marie-Josee Croze). His friends would read stories to him, bring him to the beach to see the ocean, and it was one day when Jean-Do decided that he'd like to write a book about his experiences. So using an eye-blinking technique developed for him, he managed to write a book in his own words with the aid of a typist. The typist would recite all the alphabets, and he'd blink at the right alphabet before moving on to the next, and that was how the system began to work, how Jean-Do started to communicate with his loved ones. But sometimes, things just cannot be conveyed through just the piecing of different alphabets.

The most heartbreaking scenes were probably the phone calls made by his father and a love mistress. Both of them called him at the hospital, but you could see the internal struggle as he tries his very best to talk. His father, played by Max von Sydow, is an old man with his own health problems, trapped in his very own apartment - in a way, like his own son. It was gut-wrenching to see the both of them trying to express their love and regrets for one another, but can't possibly do it right over the phone because his conditions just cannot allow him to do so. You felt the agony in the both of them, the anger and the frustrations, but there was nothing they could do about it. It was so depressing, that scene when his father hung up the phone and just cried his eyes out. It was probably the scene that defined the film for me, it sort of encompassed the kind of emotions that one would feel in a situation like that. Not being able to reach out to your loved ones, not physically and not verbally. Just locked inside yourself, never being able to get out. Oh, the horrors.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly triumphs because of its honest portrayal of the human spirit, never allowing the characters to dive into the pits of self-pity, always allow them to find out reasons to live, another reason to breathe. Done differently, this film could have turned out to be just another film about a paralyzed man, but this is definitely not the case. Julian Schnabel has definitely crafted a film that is from a different realm of filmmaking altogether. This film is more than a film that reaches out to tug at your heartstrings and then leave it as that. It questions what you are doing now, and what you are not doing now. What you have done, and what you haven't done. It closely examines the human condition, where there isn't very much of a human left in the body in a conventional sense, any longer. A moving tale about a man, who never, ever, under any circumstances, gave up. 

Jean-Do," My diving bell has dragged you down to the bottom of the sea with me."
Celine," Jean-Do, I don't find it so bad that you drag me down to the bottom of the sea, because you will always be my butterfly."

10/10

In a time when technology is so advanced that it is almost rampant, even the entertainment business cannot be spared of its reaching claws. We have relied so much on technology to convey our interpersonal messages, that it is also taking over the medium of film that we grew up falling in love with. 3-D animation in the movie theaters are probably as common as popcorns and coke, and you see every cinema playing at least a movie or two every month these days, ever since hand-drawn animations officially became obsolete and unpopular. Children in the new generation seems to prefer the new 3-D animation, the ones seen in Finding Nemo, Ratatouille and Toy Story, simply because of the kind of depth and vibrance it can achieve in contrast to traditional 2-D animation. It's not that I do not welcome the new insertion of technology in the world of cinema, but it doesn't do the genre any good if you are going to overdo it. Cartoons, or what they call animation now, have been cheapened simply because of the overuse of 3-D animation. And as a result, it has lost its life in the world of cinema - but thank god, for Persepolis.

Sometimes, 2-D animations are simply better than 3-D ones. With live action, we have real actors and actresses, and in 2-D everything is just hand drawn a page at a time. Being 3-D just puts the film right on the fence, not knowing whether or not to be fake like a cartoon or real like live action. I grew up with 2-D animation, watching Little Mermaid and the likes from Disney, though my favorite film is definitely The Iron Giant - in 2-D. Persepolis is a step back to the roots of animation, and at the same time a step forward as well. By electing to tell the story in a black and white format, like the graphic novel it was adapted from, the film not only showed much depth but also a kind of style that we, as moviegoers, have been robbed for the past decade or so, ever since 3-D took over. Persepolis is a shout out to the world of cinema, that 2-D animation still exists, and it can be as good, or better, than those 3-D junkyard material we have been seeing nowadays. Happy Feet, anyone?

Persepolis is a poignant and coming-of-age story about Marjane Satrapi, the youngest daughter of an ordinary Iranian family, trying to survive the civil wars within the country itself during the Islamic Revolutions, and then running away from its oppression to get used to the life outside of Iran. Due to the constant oppression of Islamic women and the hunting of political extremists in the country, Marjane's parents thought it to be unsafe for her to remain in Iran. Only a teenager then, she was sent to Vienna for further educations, and that was where she started learning various different cultures, and how she learned to standup for her rights and her beliefs as she returns to Iran a few years later. In an attempt to document the stories that occurred back home in Teheran, or Persepolis in Greek, Marjane decided to write her story and transform it into a graphic novel with the help of artist Vincent Paronnaud, and then subsequently into this animated film that won the critics over all around the world, including the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes. 

The film's strict and consistent adherence to the style of the graphic novel is both simple and powerful to look at. The simplicity of it all ensured that the story does not become filtered, and maintained its chokehold on the attention of the audience. By choosing to present the story in this manner as oppose to making this film into a live action movie, it remained faithful to the graphic novel as well as the message of this film. This method of presentation gives the freedom of expressing various scenes that could not have been done otherwise. For example, the scene where Marjane sang to Eye of the Tiger was enjoyable, almost like a musical of sorts. That is not to mention the fantasy-like sequence that involved Marjane imagining her cheating ex-boyfriend as some kind of geek from Hell. As it is the case for most black and white films, the lack of color takes away the possibility of being distracted from the story line, and it becomes easy in a subconscious way to be completely immersed in the story, even if the most of us aren't going to understand a single word of French.

Despite portraying a political situation that happened in the 1980s, it is not difficult to relate it back to the modern day context. In fact, the resemblance between the war in Iraq can't be more striking than what we have in this film, that successfully blended the delights of an animation and the density of the reality. The film showed the horrors of war, the consequences it has on the people who dared to stand up for their rights and freedom, and also the loved ones of those brave people that perished in the war. When it comes to a war, as the film clearly portrayed, it is not merely the fight between two opposing ideals, and it's not about throwing bombs into each others' offices. It affects everybody in the nation, and that is also the case for Marjane and her family. It was also a pleasant perspective to see how an Iranian girl would try to get used to the European lifestyle. It was especially amusing in the scene when Marjane talks about her first visit to a local club and the kind of 'music' that they played. This film is not only an examination on the consequences of war and oppression, but also a cross-cultural in nature as well. This further proves that animations don't necessarily have to be for children, but also something that adults can draw a message from.

Persepolis is a great success, simply because it handled a heavy and dense topic in a graceful and delightful manner that wouldn't have been able to be put across to viewers in a better, more comfortable way. Through the simplicity of the graphics as well as the perspective from an ordinary girl in an ordinary home, the story becomes even more realistic and, in a way, disturbing because of its familiarities. Persepolis is a great and refreshing take on not only the world of animation, but it also opened the doors to the part of the world that we knew so little of, and addressed the cultural issues that we face on a day to day basis in a way that not a lot of other films could have done. A very delightful film with a lot of charms and, in some ways, heavy strokes to the heart.

8.5/10

It's very daunting, to know that the only way people can communicate and come together can also be the only way people can fall apart so easily. This human relationship thing, it's so brittle and fragile as it is, and it doesn't help if the parties involved have trust issues to begin with. It just feels like a patient in a hospital ward at times, and the doctor comes in and tells you that the medicine he has could either save my life or kill me. So you become drowned in this dilemma of whether or not you should take the risk, because you never know where it might lead you. Words are the only weapon we have against the rest of the world, the only thing every human being possesses in order to understand, to be understood. It is how we relate to others and be related to, and in turn create a kind of relationship unique only to humans - friendships. I don't suppose those Disney cartoons we have seen while growing up are very accurate depiction of friendships at all, since their characters are usually talking animals or cars. I don't suppose animals come together because they feel that they are friends, or that they have this bond that they share. They stay close probably because of their kinship, or maybe it's just safer to stay together as a group. But humans, we are complicated creatures. Why do we form relationships? That'd lead to a whole research paper if we go into details, but let's just say that humans, or at least for myself, can't stand the feeling of being alone and dejected. 

I have come across a dozen different reasons why people might have had misunderstandings with one another, with me, or myself with somebody else. It all comes down to words being passed through a third party most of the time, and they are never very pleasant to the ears. Amplified and distorted, they usually become weapons more dangerous than guns or knives, but it's not the fault of the third party involved either. I mean, as friends in a community, I do suppose it is a risk you have to take when saying a certain something to someone, a risk that involves the possibility of somebody else finding out. It is impossible to prevent, undeniably scary, and completely inevitable. So the question comes down to whether or not we should just shut ourselves in, never to let anybody come into your part of the world ever again. It is a decision that someone is making right now, and I suppose you have every right to do what is of your best interest. 

But as for me, I can never do what you have done in the past, I never had the courage. I've always felt the need, the hope to reach out to others. And I have committed a mistake, a mistake committed by a lot of people in this world. And that is, to speak more than I should have, or rather, to have used the wrong words in the wrong time. As a result, filtered through the interpretation of somebody else, it definitely worked against me, and I do feel immensely guilty and upset about things, though I still believe that it was a case of misunderstanding and words being taken out of context. In truth, I do not suppose that I meant the words that I said, and if taking it out of context harmed you in any way, I do feel obliged to apologize and most of all, feel a need to redeem myself - though I have no idea where to begin, and how this would eventually end. I do hope never to end this precious thing that we share, that something which you are only so willing to share with a handful of people. I am the most honored and the most grateful in being that other person whom you are willing to give that trust to, and the worst thing that could happen would be to have a minor misunderstanding to break apart this trust that the both of us have tried so very hard to build.

Words, and more words. I am sure that is exactly what you need right now, and that last sentence was typed with much sarcasm. Computer mediated communication does indeed has its drawbacks, you can't bring forth tones very well, and our misunderstanding was partially due to that very same reason too. It is true that I have enjoyed this thing that we have shared since day one, never have I regretted talking to you, knowing you, and for a single day doubted you. But I guess, your trust in others isn't something which I can alter, nor is it something which I can persuade you to change. It is difficult for you to trust again, and the same can be said especially for those you've had once trusted. I can't say, for certain, that we will be the same as before, but I do hope that with your sensibilities, you'd make the right decisions here. Don't let this little misunderstanding come in the way of what we have so tirelessly built in the past, I think this friendship deserves a lot more than that. 

It is my business whether or not I want to treat you as a friend from this point, henceforth. It really is, as it is your choice as to whether or not you'd want to treat me the same. But here it is, I shall not change anything about you, within me. I know, more words - you really don't need that right now. But words are all I've got to have you trust me again, to put me back into your tightly knitted circle of trust. This is all I've got, I've emptied my pockets this time around and I haven't got anything up my sleeves. This is me, stripped of anything fancy and condescending, telling you that I fear, that I am petrified by the idea of losing you. I am indeed, and very much so. I am so afraid that things might sway against my favor because of a trivial thing such as a misunderstanding, I am so afraid right now, you can't even imagine. So this is like, a plea to you right now. To make the right decision, to know what your decision may entail, and please always to keep in mind how comfortable we have been as friends, because I know that I'd regret this for life if we do not iron this out. You have been, so good, and so kind to me, and it'd be such a disaster for you to lose your trust in me, and for me to lose a friend like you. This is not me, patronizing anybody. This is me, scared out of my wits. 

Words are all I've got right now, and I wonder if you are even going to read until this far. I do hope so, though, I really do. I hope that by the time we talk again, you are going to slap me in the back and say," You worried too much". If you have reached this point in the entry, then you've probably already seen a side of me not a lot of people knows about, the side that is scared witless and with his pants soaked in piss. I might not be the perfect friend, I know I am bad and I am still learning, but accept me like you did. Like you once did, because back then everything was so, so beautiful.