Joyeux Noel

I know very well that Christmas is over but I really can’t wait till this year’s Christmas to review this movie.  So…

Some of you might be aware of the World War Christmas truce of 1914 when many widespread unofficial ceasefires took place along the Western Front.  It is not a myth, and truly something amazing that took place – there are many survivors who could attest to that, and many letters sent home to show proof that it indeed took place.  Of course, back then the soldiers involved in this weird and unprecedented move were not seen as heroes, but more as errant soliders who defied their superiors’ orders.  Most of them were deemed to have commited high treason and were duly punished with forfeited visits to their families or sent to harsher frontiers etc.

I learnt about this historical event some months back when I was researching for this past trip and what we could do on Christmas Eve.  What I didn’t expect was that it had been made into a film!  It was indeed fortunate that I could catch this movie on our flight home from Paris.

I never liked movies showing scenes of war.  I couldn’t sleep well for days after watching ‘Saving Private Ryan’.  ’Blackhawk Down’ was only a little worse.  As a general rule, I don’t watch movies of such genre because they disturb me profoundly.  But ‘Joyeux Noel’, which is a French movie by the way, is not just about World War I.  It’s about humanity, and how even our enemy is as human as we are, with family and loved ones.  We tend to forget this little truth when we get so caught up in our own passionate disdain.

Somehow this movie reminds me a little of what Atticus Finch told his children in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ – that we never really know a man until we stand in his shoes and walk around in them.  In the book, that sentence stemmed from Atticus’ attempt at trying to teach Jem and Scout about prejudice.  This movie is no different, really.  It was made easier to kill the ‘enemies’ because propaganda had pictured the enemies as barbaric and inhumane.  This was especially highlighted when Father Palmer rebutted the bishop about the true meaning of Christmas, and how the bishop swiftly went on to preach an anti-German sermon to the new troop taking over Father Palmer’s disgraced troop.

I could think of one reason why the superiors were upset with the troops that practiced the Christmas truce, because fact is, it makes it a lot harder to kill the other person along the enemies’ lines when you know who they are, how they missed their loved ones, and how they, like you, had no choice but to be conscripted to go to war.  These young men realised it didn’t matter what nationality they were, or what language they spoke, because they were in actual fact no different.  This is the one true sign of humanity.

I like this movie.  In fact I like it so much that I have bought it over iTunes and am now downloading it to re-watch it.

10/250

3rd Movie of 2011

This is my 3rd movie of the year, following Norwegian Wood and The Deathly Hallows Part 2.  And the honour goes to… Super Junior Supershow 3 movie, screening only for a limited time in Singapore.

The hubby wasn’t amused by the end of the movie screening, for several reasons:

• At S$30 per ticket, it is 3 times the price of normal movie tickets;
• It ran for only about 80 minutes;
• It featured the SS3 concert in Seoul last year, and we attended both the concerts so it was nothing new to us;
• It was a late Friday night movie and he was sleepy.

So I was fighting for a lost cause – he was destined to be in a bad mood by the end of the movie.  Still, I appreciated that he allowed me to indulge in my obsession and even tagged along when he knew he wouldn’t much enjoy it.  He has been a terrific husband in this respect.

Thank you, my sweetheart.

Beginning of an End

Two significant events just took place within the last 6 hours – I watched the final installment of Harry Potter film series, and I got myself an iPhone.  Sounds ordinary enough and trust me to make a mountain out of a molehill eh?  Yea, that sounds like me all right.

I started reading the Harry Potter novels back in 2000 when the 4th book was still not released and never looked back since.  I also got the hubby, who was then the boyfriend, hooked on the books as well.  Naturally we were looking forward to the first of the film series which premiered in 2001.  And every time a new installment was about to premiere, I would assiduously read all the books again from Book 1 to that installment.  Gosh, I must have read Harrry Potter and The Philospher’s Stone at least 10 times!

A decade and 8 movies later, I’ve finally closed a chapter on this aspect of my life.  (By the way, I’ve always knew that Severus Snape is a good guy and Neville Longbottom has always been my favourite character.)  There’s a sense of… loss?  I can’t quite place it, but it’s strange that there isn’t another Harry Potter book or movie to look forward to next summer.  After all, it has been such a large part of our lives in the past decade.

All I have to do now is to wait for the DVD series to be released.  But, life will never be the same again.

And on top of that, I decided to make yesterday even more memorable with the acquisition of my first iPhone.  It’s not a happy decision but my Blackberry Bold has been failing me repeatedly of late.  The problem all started when I was ‘forced’ to update the operating software on my ‘Whiteberry’ when I sync-ed with my iMac.  Then the phone started behaving real wonky – WhatsApp stopped working properly, I kept getting the alert that the phone is running short on memory whenever I updated application software, I missed many calls because no one could reach me, and the phone was getting sluggish because it was low on memory.  And I abhor the new Calendar display.  I think the people at RIM forgot that not everyone with a BB have a full screen display.

As a consequence, I deleted some applications including WordPress, Universal Converter and Player for YouTube.  And the performance only improved slightly.  It doesn’t make any sense to me at all – I updated the OS and the BB started mal-functioning?!  Sure, I could always revert to the older version of the OS, but I’m not going to risk losing all my information and be at the mercy of SingTel’s BB technical support.

Deciding to acquire the iPhone was a momentous decision for me, especially when I have been holding out for so long and I still detest typing on a touchscreen very much.  I vacillated numerous times but the constant lagging from my ‘Whiteberry’ was getting to me.  There are other cell phones out there including Androids and the good old Nokias, but if I need to move away from BB, the clear choice for me is an iPhone.

I have a thing for white cell phones – my past 4 cell phones are all white.  I know the iPhone doesn’t look white but that’s because I chose the privacy film so it turned out looking black – might change it back to the normal kind since the sales assistant didn’t do a good job applying it on anyway.  Now I need to decide whether to retire my NEC N08A or my Whiteberry.  Ya, with just two cell phone numbers, I really don’t need 3 active cell phones.

With the collection of an iPod, iPod Mini, iPod Touch, MacBook Pro, iMac, iPad and iPhone (all still fully functional, by the way), my iFamily is now truly complete.  Now, I just need to concentrate on growing 3 more pairs of ears and 2 more pairs of hands.

Norway’s Forest

I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me…
She showed me her room, isn’t it good, norwegian wood?

She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere,
So I looked around and I noticed there wasn’t a chair.

I sat on a rug, biding my time, drinking her wine
We talked until two and then she said, “It’s time for bed”

She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh.
I told her I didn’t and crawled off to sleep in the bath

And when I awoke, I was alone, this bird had flown
So I lit a fire, isn’t it good, norwegian wood.

- The Beatles

ノルウェイの森 (literally translated as Norway’s Forest), is the official Japanese title for the movie adapted from Haruki Murakami’s novel “Norwegian Wood”.  I’ve waited with bated breath for the movie to open in Singapore, and it just did a couple of days ago.  So strong was my curiosity I decided against my better judgement to catch the midnight run on a Friday, after a long day at work and a 3-hour language class following that.

Bad idea.  ”Norwegian Wood” is one of the slowest-moving movie I’ve ever watched in my entire life.  I have not lived for very long, but long enough to remember watching the premiere screening of E.T. as a very young girl, so go figure.

I knew the movie was going to be different from others I’ve watched – after reading the novel twice, that much I could surmise.  But nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared me for the draggy plot – way too draggy to sustain my interest.  It didn’t help that I had such a long day.  I started dozing off.

Granted, the movie has great cinematography and music which I, on a good day if I were less fatigued, would have enjoyed and appreciated much better.  And the acting was just… superb.  Kenichi Matsuyama as Toru Watanabe and Rinko Kikuchi as Naoko were absolutely stellar in their renditions.

But, great literature works being what they are, are seldom ever well-depicted on screen.  I find myself picking up the novel from my bookshelf again after watching the movie.  And when I have reached a certain level of proficiency in Japanese, I am going to the bookstore to pick up the novel in its original Japanese language form.

Next on, “Water for Elephants” which is slated to open in theatres on 5 May 2011.  The hubby groaned when I told him that.  He must have secretly thought that his wifey has a horrendous taste in movies titles (think: slow-moving “Norwegian Wood” which put him to sleep), and no way he is not going to sit through another 200-minute long movie to torture himself.  No Honey, listen to me.  ”Water for Elephants” is decidedly a lot more mainstream.  Trust me.  I have the novel to prove it.  In fact, I have both novels to juxtapose the difference.

Pretty please?

Shooting Star

SPOILERS ALERT!

Shooting Star, or 流れ星 (romanised as Nagareboshi) is the latest Japanese drama I watched the last weekend.  Admittedly I bought the DVDs because my favourite Japanese actor Yutaka Takenouchi was the male protagonist in this drama.  Apart from that, I had very little expectations of the drama but if his past works are of any indication, this drama is likely to be good and rather heavy-going.  You see, I have been following Takenouchi-san ever since watching his stellar performance in ‘Heaven’s Coins 2′ back in the mid-90s.  He is an extremely versatile actor who can carry off any role given to him – a beach bum in ‘Beach Boys’ to the brooding music composer in ‘With Love’ and now a responsible and heavily burdened brother in ‘Shooting Star’.

Does he have an equivalent in Hollywood?  Hmm… perhaps John Travolta?

In ‘Shooting Star’, Takenouchi-san plays Kengo, a 37 year-old aquarium employee obsessed with jellyfishes, especially moon jellyfishes.  And he was preparing to marry his long-time girlfriend at the beginning of the drama when tragedy struck – his 20-year younger sister Maria was diagnosed with liver failure, and without a transplant, she only has a year more to live.  Kengo was first to offer part of his liver but upon deeper examination, his liver was not suitable as he once suffered from liver infection when he was younger.  And their mother’s liver was found to be too small in size to be considered for transplant.

The both of them frantically sought all their relatives for help whilst the Maria was blissfully unaware of her acute medical condition while staying and recuperating in the hospital.  One night, at her wit’s end, their mother kneeled and begged his fiancée to agree to a liver transplant to save her daughter.  The fiancée was not agreeable, and guilt-stricken at her own selfishness, she initiated a break-up with him.

On his way home from work a couple of days later, Kengo spotted a girl standing on the railway tracks, in the way of an oncoming train.  He dashed over to pull her to safety, only to realise that it was Risa, the same troubled girl he talked to a few days ago at the aquarium when she stood at the tank of moon jellyfishes, mesmerised.  In his despair, Kengo proposed to pay off Risa’s debts, and in return, she would have to marry him and donate half of her liver to his younger sister, if it was assessed to be suitable.

Risa brushed him off as crazy, but after taking a few steps, and turned back and agreed.  She was tired of carrying her irresponsible elder brother’s debts, and extremely unwilling to return to work as a sex worker to repay the debts.  Both willing parties entered a marriage of convenience and the story took off from there.

Because of some copyright issues, J-drama DVDs were not available in Singapore in the early part of the last decade.  With a lack of supply, I had myself weaned off J-dramas with much difficulty and switched to watching K-dramas.  I got used to the cliché storylines frequently used in K-drama (think: melodramatic love stories that almost always end with one of them contracting cancer, leukemia etc).  They are getting better as we speak, but my first love will always remain to be J-dramas because their dramas are short (typically 10-12 episodes) and most of them usually reflect the social problems faced by the Japanese at that time.  If you remember (or know), there was a J-drama titled ‘God, Please Give Me More Time’ in the late-90s and it reflected the social problem of Japanese schoolgirls selling their bodies in order to earn money to support thier idols (either through attending concerts or buying merchandise).  In spite of reticence being highly valued in their society, the Japanese are not squeamish about being truthful.  This makes their dramas highly realistic and credible.

Organ donation is a very controversial subject but I think ‘Shooting Star’ nailed it.  This drama series is now on my list of J-drama favourites together with ‘Shotgun Marriage’ and ‘Pride’.