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Current Entries 05/20/2005 fake identitiesthe funniest thing ever happened to me today. I sometimes go to this Chinese tabloid/web forum website http://www.wenxuecity.com and posted my photo. Nobody would believe that it was me. Apparently I was talking (writing) a bit too un-American to have a website such as this one. I figured, let's play this game along, and told them that I were actually not that guy. I was just some imposter playing a joke on him. That one was really easy to buy for all these digital Mandarins.. I don't know if I should revel in me being a deceptively good bilingual chameleon, or point to this as me passing a potential "Turing Test" of cultures (if you will). But mostly it's sort of sad. And mad funny at the same time! I was laughing non-stop for like 20 minutes. At someone else's expense, I do realize. --------- Concerning other tabloid related news, Saddam Hussein in underwear was apparently caught by one of Rupert Murdoch's paparazzi. Just yet piece of evidence of how this world has turned into one big muddle of technologically-enhanced, po-mo/The Matrix-predictions-saturated reality show. Can you imagine Hitler in his underwear being seen by everybody? I actually think of this as a rather positive thing. Sure S-H has "committed crimes" against humanity. But he's also...hairy? And needs laser hair removal? And...it just brings up the inevitable, Clinton trademark of "boxer or briefs?" rhetoric. This collapse of personal supremacy kicks ass. This "borderlessness" between the good and the evil, this meta-cultural drift that defies Samuel Huntington and Osama Bin-Ladin alike, how utterly beautiful! What's next? Slobodan Milosevic's stand-up show? Kim Jong Il's favorite Korean recipes? I can't wait. _________________________________________________________________ 05/18/2005 synaptic misfiresfavism (glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, a.k.a. Fava Bean syndrome) -> Fauvism (Matisse, Renault, etc.) PID (pelvic inflammatory disease, from Chlamydia) -> PID (principle ideal domain, from abstract algebra) also check this out: http://www.dna-in-concert.de/ _________________________________________________________________ 05/14/2005 the magic of foodi've been preparing this one for this ages. Food, like architecture, is an art that has a lot to do with science. In fact, it's sort of like molecular biology, except that even in the worst case scenario it still is filling and contributory to your temporary well being. My old boss told me that if he has a student today asking him if one ought to go into molecular biology, he'd ask him/her, "do you like cooking?" Well, I like cooking, but I don't particularly care for wet lab at this point anymore. Pity me! Meanwhile, wasting as much time as ever even during boards studying ... here's my new collection of gourmet home cooked delicacies. This is really for the purposes of far away future dinner parties. But yeah, let me know if you like it. _________________________________________________________________ 04/26/2005 a tribute to xenakisventuring further into the pretentious land of electro-acoustics, I decided to give La legende d'Eer a try. The CD started off with a sound that can only be properly attributed to mosquitoes, then calmly metamorphosed into a repeating pattern of tremors and flickers of reverberations. As Zen-like as any steeple top Catholic chants, it was well suited as background for a long, emotional chat about past relationships with boys and girls. There are definitely patterns to be found, but honest to god, they seem a bit too whimsical, like they are always on the edge of something and then suddenly slipping away. This has been quite the gold standard experience in doing experimental science (say patch clamping), when I often see one cell that looked just so good and then have the pipette tip kissing its membrane just about right only to find it pop like a fragile bubble of love in spring. I find more frustration than art in this sort of projection. He has a great website, particularly if you can survive, without cheating, the paragraphs after paragraphs of French. He died in 2001, just a while back. I wonder if the fans of Moby ought to be a bit more conscious about this guy, but they clearly aren't usually. Talking about pushing high art to its bitter end. _________________________________________________________________ 04/15/2005 closerfinally saw this buster. It was thoroughly underwhelming. Perhaps this is why despite numerous nominations it garnered none. (Although I STILL refuse to see Million Dollar Baby no matter what.) It was way way melodramatic. it pales in comparison to Woody Allen's classic talkies. Though I have to say I can sympathize with the characters a little better now and I understand why some people (who shall remain unnamed, no I didn't steal your life. I borrowed it. ) liked it. It was very shallow in a wanna-be profound sort of a way. Although I suppose the volatility in love/life is precisely what some people are looking for. And sometimes lies are indeed more beautiful than the truth. And sometimes the truth sounds as ridiculous as a Friends episode. When all the fiery dirty talks got going the audience snickered. So did I, because it reminded me of David Schwimmer saying "vulva". _________________________________________________________________ 04/03/2005 suburban doldrums
I just saw Eric Bogosian's play "subUrbia" produced by the Redstar Theatre Group at the Producer's Club Theater in Midtown Manhattan. It was, cheap, for $10; could have rightfully deserved to charge for more. It was solidly executed and well written. Apparently the play was adapted into a movie a while ago. The story's simple enough. A bunch of high school drop-outs hang out at the corner parking lot with a minimart operated by an Indian guy. The girlfriend of the philosopher in the gang is struggling to leave the small town to go to New York to become an artist. The drunk was a no good marine. An old friend of theirs who became a rock star came back and hooked up with the girlfriend and his publicist hooked up with the token dorky jock in the gang. The ex-marine told the philosopher that he killed the publicist because she was trying to seduce him. Someone else died in the end. The fact that I remember these characters is telltale of the fact that they were fairly rich, despite a bit of overacting. I would have preferred a more prosaic ending where nothing happens and all things stay the same and will continue to stay the same, but I suppose the playwright wanted to get a message across--his hatred. It's a bit hard to sympathize with angst so utterly explicit. Yet it is understandable as one's internal monologue. The art of looking at artists and evolution of art itself from sterility is by all means self-reflective. And outside the theater one cannot but realize that just with a small amount of that sympathy, disbelief was temporarily suspended. _________________________________________________________________ 03/25/2005 some updatesI wrote an article in Chinese (finally) titled "I'm Globalization's Child". The link can be found in Brain Puke. This article is primarily for people who can read Chinese. The gist of the article has been repeated elsewhere (it's mostly just another spiel on postmodern cultural convergences etc), so I'm not in a hurry to write out the English translation. _________________________________________________________________ 03/18/2005 i hate bono
Paul Wolfowitz: bachelor's degree in mathematics, cornell, 1965; doctorate, political science, university of chicago, 1972. Bono: didn't graduate high school. The fact that Wolfowitz looks to Bono for approval is just a reflection of what is so utterly wrong with the world as it is. Bono would be a horrible policy maker: ignorant, dilettantish, mind-numbingly arrogant. His music sucks: derivative, commercialized, robotically emotionless. He can't even inform the art world in any insightful way. He's good with publicizing himself though, campaigning everywhere and brandishing his ego on a flagpole to the dumb suburban white kids who are so brimming with privilege that they're naive enough to actually believe, oh yes, you can be a rock star and save the world at the same time. I don't understand why so many people even take him seriously. I mean, I sort of understand, there are hundreds of millions of dollars of record sales and an plethora of 18-45 y o key demographics involved. But, come the hell on! _________________________________________________________________ 03/08/2005 my new song (in the spirit of Charles Bukowski)music is in the process of being worked out. 4/4 in C Minor, Lent Little Girl I know a little girl She sometimes dies in my dreams (Chorus?) Sometimes I know a little girl (Chorus?) _________________________________________________________________ 02/28/2005 the gates and me
so I finally resorted to go to "The Gates" at the urges of the newspapers and my jealous friends in San Diego. It seems that a lot of people in the tri-state area and beyond have crowded the park. Now that it's finally over and I can write about it. my impression of it was mostly positive. Forget the ontological question of whether this piece of thing is actually art (or a "happening") or not for a minute. When you go there and see at sunrise and sunset, it was actually really pretty. And the fact that it was done in the middle of the winter helped a lot as well, as there were no competing greens around. It was an Orange revolution (albeit not in Ukraine). You get lost quickly in this orange maze and start to follow random people around (all the way to the east side, which was unfortunate because I had to walk pass the entire museum mile to get back to a place where I know where I was.) I saw oodles of photographers, both amateur and professional, lovers, old couples with kids, foreigners etc. It was very communal. So, if that's part of the art, then I indeed appreciated the aesthetics. but, the day after that it snowed and rained and everything got murky and wet and disgusting. Thankfully I've already seen it and I know I wasn't going back again on time. Though this also made me realize that I don't know Central Park very well at all. There shall be another excursion at another time. _________________________________________________________________ 02/08/2005 v-day blues"Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day) was May 8, 1945, the date when the Allies during the Second World War formally celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Reich. On that date, massive celebrations took place, notably in London, where over a million people celebrated in a carnival atmosphere the end of the European war, though rationing of food and clothing was to continue for a number of years. In London crowds massed in particular in Trafalgar Square and up the Mall to Buckingham Palace, where King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, appeared on the balcony of the Palace to cheering crowds. Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth II) and her sister, Princess Margaret were allowed to wander anonymously among the crowds and take part in the celebrations in London. In the United States, President Harry Truman, who celebrated his 61st birthday that day, dedicated the victory to the memory of his predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died less than a month earlier, on April 12, because he was committed towards ending the war." --Wikipedia is that the v-day that's in your mind's eye, WWII veterans be praised and all? mostly not, as yours is probably one of chocolate and flowers and little chit chat and pecks here and there and saccharine fuzzy warm feelings of "asking me 'what are you going to do for Valentine's day?' is like asking a retard bastard child of a crack ho who got hit in the head by a mac truck 'what did you get on your calculus test?'" -- Tomo I love the V-day (or V-E day more accurately). It makes me think about all the amazing things that could have happened but didn't, like, freedom and liberty to all mankind and etc etc, and how much more we can do. On a separate note, Bill Clinton has a fake Blog! With all its expected maudlin parody emotions, it's actually fairly engaging. Read it and savor the (imagined) poor old man's good words. He's my (constructed) idol, with all his coolness and tackiness and anti-heroisms, as Warholian and Derrida-esque as an ex-politician can be. He's the quintessential postmodern president. _________________________________________________________________ 01/28/2005 pork chop soup belongs to mankindthese days it's rare an occasion that my cultural root shines through. Suffice is it to say that I have ne'er so pleased with being a Chink than today for a long time. There are things to be said about the philosophy and the art and what not, but it's just like, say, the Mesopotamian kind. But pork chop soup, i.e., the soup that you make from buying a $2 worth of pork neck bone at the supermarket, add some red radish or tulip blocks and ginger and scallion and salt. And cook for several hours. No strange ethnic powders and sauces. No funny looking cooking instruments. No creeping me out chill down the spine exotic ingredients. It was freezing out. And a hot bowl of soup with just a tiny bit of flesh on the bone to be sifted into my mouth. It's like breast milk or something. It's not just art. It's minimalism. It's transcendentalism. It's one of those rare things that I can point to the cultural relativists and say, "See! Universality does exist in life! Beauty and truth are not lost causes! Subjective and Objective can be unified!" my life, my darlings, my pork chop soup _________________________________________________________________ 01/10/2005 the magic of upper west sidei was in North Carolina for about two weeks counting thanksgiving. I gatta say, I was much enamored with the way people talk there. I was at a home gym store and I inquired about the lack of a "Bowflex" on their demo rack, and I got a gush of the most awe-inspiring Souterness, and needless to say I couldn't help but to emulate a little. though, the city still makes me happy. I'm not an UWSer, for sure, only an honorary one. (My neighborhood has been referred to by some as the "upper-upper west side".) but when I went down there for a brunch on Sunday to greet a friend of mine, as I walk around the familiar, beautiful buildings and looking at all the Jewish/Italian looking peeps sauntering periodically interjected by a couple of Asians or Blacks. Yes, North Carolinian Anglo German blonde blue does look better, but this sure as hell look much more authentic to me. And, guess what, the waiter, this scruffy big guy with a beard who just moved from Colorado with his wife, remembered me. me, known by a waiter, at a restaurant that I really like and have been to before this starts to sound like something I have never expected: am I more settled than I realized? The dazed about nothing part of Jerry Seinfeld's cosmos...am I now part of it all...the pretty buildings makes me happy. _________________________________________________________________ 12/21/2004 demented waysHow many ways can one get dementias? D egenerative (AD, PD, Lewy Body) E ndocrine (how about a little thyroid action) M atabolic (Wernicke-Korsakoff, Wilsons, mitochondrial) E pilepsy N eoplasm T rauma (dementia pugilistica) I nfection (syphilis, Lyme, HIV, prion) A rterial vascular S tructural (normal pressure hydrocephaly) and, by far the most important cause of dementia? An utter disregard of intelligence...let's call it "volitional" dementia...when one becomes increasingly dazed in front of a TV, with the skimpy commercials flashing by, when time and space become meaningless. One was asked the questions: "What is the date today? And who is the president? And, Can you memorize three words for me, 'orange, books and liberation'?" One answers: "It is a point on which Jakobson disagrees with Saussure decisively delegating akoes to logos and deploying hypomnesia and dialectics...both presuppose the possibility of repetition, imitation and representation." _________________________________________________________________ 12/04/2004 the faithful geneI was consumed by Thomas Insel's lecture the whole week. Yes, I suppose it is a rare thing, a single gene (indeed, a single promoter region) that could determine the monogamous nature of prairie voles. The first demonstration that there is a definitive link between molecules and social behavior. Long before Australopithecus, conserved and beautiful? molecules (genes and proteins) <-> cells <-> networks <-> cognitive systems (vision, memory) <-> individual behavior <-> social behavior Each of these influencing each other, every time a new experience becomes ingrained into our psyche, smell, albeit measurable change of the CREB proteins leads to an startling event, a torrent of hurricane, or the last drop of rain before the rainbow. A novel representation of the brain is henceforth imparted. Later, when we see the one we love, when we make love, and fight, and die, that representation becomes activated again, pressuring us into a state of strange bliss. Every node in this living breathing organism that we call society brightens, flashes, spontaneously combusts into new and exciting illusions. While to and fro, the escalation eventually cools down to the patina of haze. A energy valley, a stable conformation that leads invariably to the fatalism of genetic determination. Molecular biology of social neuroscience marches on. The thicket of nature vs. nurture lies in our way, and the egos is high above, plainly in sight. _________________________________________________________________ 12/02/2004 night of friendsso I was invited by someone to attend a Christian fellowship meeting. And I went. I know, it's pretty bad, I mean who would've thought me, of all people, to go to such a meeting. I used to curse at the Asian Christians who keeps accosting people, "wanna study bible?" at the Morningside campus. But curiosity is the darnest thing. The whole thing started out with singing songs (harrowing country music) and then went on to a discussion of a section of the Bible. The interpretation was decidedly not literalist (the reader insisted that when Jesus said "it's harder for a rich man to go to heaven than..." you know, he doesn't mean "rich" but any other earthly adjective--one must be able to prepare any sort of sacrifice for god). On the other hand it raised many questions--even though god could ask you to kill you son (see old testament) as a sacrifice, you shouldn't do that in THIS day and age because it would be contrary to the way Christ would live his life. so is God bigger or is Christ bigger? anyhow, that was a big mess. My friend (a Columbia med student, who went to Princeton) who is very nice and I can honestly say is not dumb (indeed probably pretty smart) told me later that he believed that the earth is 6000 years old. And he even agreed with me that it was a lot of inconsistencies. boy...I'm so going to hell... _________________________________________________________________ 12/01/2004 New paintings updated in Brain Puke camel and sugargod is man is fish is gray goose is samurai osmotic stomach. the old, the avoidance of conflict. sleeping, indulging in the love most tribal... --but, but...I say, I don't need this much food. Gluttony is quite enough of a virtue to plaster all over my pathetic self the fish's bubble is like lemming chewing on zebra finches, eliciting the felicitous, prodding the ambidextrous, like a walnut sized testicle, completed with smitten honey, ready, licking Clarice! but ick, ick, I, I, particular neologisms can't do much hawking _________________________________________________________________ 11/13/2004 generalizing transracials and the advocacy of somatic gene manipulationA recent lecture that I had dealing with gay/lesbian/transgender population health care prompted a particularly interesting thought on my part. In this entry I want to use some of the deductive/inductive reasoning to hypothesize some of the bio-sociological determinants of human behavior. Let's first look at transgenedered individuals. They are normally born to be of a particular sex, generally with no clearly discernable abnormalities, meaning that if they chose to behave in a particular fashion, they are perfectly physiologically capable of having insertive sex, disseminating sperms (in case of a biological male.) However, sociologically, they tend to behave in a culturally defined way that is of the other sex. In fact they carry out medical procedures that would transform their gender identity physically. The two theories that have been proposed were nature vs. nurture. The more popular model in gender studies (though still experimentally controversial: There has been some postmortem studies of anatomical differences in some parts of the brain and differential fMRI activation patterns of transsexuals that are distinct, but other, sometimes almost identical studies have failed to find such evidence.) was nature: that there is some yet unidentified gene that predisposes an individual to behave like a male or female, and they are not necessarily co-segregated genetically with the actual physical sex gene (i.e. the sex determining segment of the Y chromosome). Therefore, an individual should have essentially little choice in becoming a transsexual (much as, say, getting some highly non sex linked genetic disease such as type I diabetes, though it's not immediately clear that transsexuality is maladaptive, and thus cannot be classified as a disease.) The argument is, as the gender studies scholars propounded, if being a transsexual itself is a genetic trait, then as one should not be forced into fitting into a different genetic trait, we ought to recognize the adopted gender of a transsexual (as well as the fact that this person IS a transsexual). People cannot be simply classified as being male or female. The other side of the argument (nurture) is that behavior is largely a plastic process (i.e. largely not genetic). And we can emphasize "free agency" and "good vs. bad" behavior and so forth. Because of the complexity here, we'll ignore this argument for the moment. Let's assume the gender scholars are right for the moment. Race, another socio-biological trait, is clearly defined by some yet undefined genetic combination. Now, it is unclear whether there are genetically determined behavior phenotypes co-segregate to specific races. If it were true, then we can take this argument a bit further, implicating cultural differences as being tailored to the biological differences of the different races. An example is the differentiation in languages...do whites generally have an genetic advantage using the phonetic alphabet over Mongoloids, whereas the Mongoloids have a genetic advantage using a combination alphabet, such as that of Chinese? This may apply to blacks as well, but unfortunately my knowledge of African linguistics is even more limited. Furthermore, would this affect the mores of society? Are whites genetically more predisposed to monotheism? or are Asians more genetically predisposed to polytheism? Democracy/Theocracy? Clearly this gets more tricky as we push further, and starts to sound more like fascism/racism, simply because behavior, but not genetics, can be judged to be superior or inferior, right or wrong. These aforementioned specific traits are probably due to some historical accidents (cultural drifts and other "punctualisms") more than selection based cultural evolution. But this is somewhat irrelevant, because what we are interested in is the opposite of the above phenomenon. According to the gender theories, we can equate genetics with behavior for at least a very small subset of behaviors. These behavior genes are not necessarily co-segregated with the race genes. (even though they largely are, just as most "male" associated behavior, probably, co-segregate with the male determining gene.) To generalize, then, we can reasonably say, at least a small subset of mostly yet unidentified behavior phenotypes would not co-segregate with physical racial phenotypes in some individuals. (such as, skin color.) Therefore, there are, at least, putatively, racially ambiguous individuals who may behave in a stereotyped fashion of another race. These individuals are then "transracials". This shift in this small subset of behaviors is nevertheless determined genetically, just as transsexual behaviors. These behavior genes, however, failed to co-segregate with the race genes for one reason or another. We, therefore, should not force people into a particular set of behavior phenotypes. For instance, there is no genetic reason for an Japanese to be particularly drawn to "Japanese" behavior (yet unidentified, or even not clearly defined) or identity. In fact, there may be genetic reason for this particular Japanese to gravitate toward another culturally linked, genetically determined behavior, one which would be more reflective of his genotype. In that sense, it makes much more sense to identify himself as the race of his choice (much as we identify transgendered males as females), than identify his biological race. If this is true, then the problem with racial disparity, ultimately, cannot possibly be discrimination. What we need to do is investigate ways people can change their physical race to suit their global behavior genotypes, which is, presumably, less genetic. Somatic gene manipulation is obviously one way of doing so that is right now technically impossible. And people should never be forced into a culture simply because they are of a particular race. There is nothing wrong with an Asian wanting to be white, for instance, unless you claim that such behavior genotype is intrinsically inferior. (This renders you a racist/or at least a genetic supremacist, claiming one genetic combination superior to another.) The behavior itself is very possibly genetically determined, and he couldn't change his transracial tendencies any more than the transsexual on the street. I don't think it's reasonable to tell the transsexual that she ought to be a happy with what she was born with: a couple of testicles. She just couldn't help hating them. _________________________________________________________________ 10/29/2004 New painting updated in Brain Puke american hero get well soon
I was looking through the pictures that I have taken recently and I saw this one and was quite fascinated. Not simply the political message in this predominantly lower middle class Hispanic neighborhood--that is the easy part. But the intriguing art historical aspect--it is a form of propaganda art, akin to the communist posters of USSR or the McDonald's commercials. It's this simplest, black and white depiction that made Clinton looked like both a ritualistic symbol as well a semiotic symbol: that signals a certain method of communication, like the drawing of a Santa Clause, etc. The poster on the side with the hero sandwich is so apropos, a clever word play and a way to signal the desirability of Clintonian popularity. They say all art is contextual. This one definitely works much better here than on a denuded wall of a lofty museum. _________________________________________________________________ 10/25/2004 rereading the analectsI occasionally get these bouts of fits of existential crises. And the attacks have gotten more frequent lately. Until last night I have taken a decade long hiatus of looking through Confucianism. The problem is that the Western (that is, Greek and beyond) ethical theories, which I have spent my energy almost on exclusively, don't really implore. They explain a lot, and more on the abstract, but sometimes I feel dumb and I just need someone to tell me how to live my life. There is someone else, namely Jesus, that tells you how to live your life. But that invokes too much of "you live so that you can go to heaven afterward" hypothesis, which is not entirely appealing. Then there is Mr. Confucius. He sorta just say things. And if you go over the ancient Chinese literature, some of the sentences are literally 10 or less syllabus (letters) long. There is very rarely any justification to his often very practical teachings (Socrates overdrawn analysis doesn't tell you what is the right way of doing anything: this mode is useful for creating your own method, but useless when you (I) am dumb), yet somehow they make some insidious sort of sense. For instance, there was one where when his disciple asked for "one word" that should be the principle to live by. The master answered, "perhaps 'pity' (or, alternately translates to 'forgiveness'): that which you do not wish happens to you, should not be wished upon others." This strikes me as a combination of the Kantian golden rule, Jesus's treatment of the sinners, and Rousseau's primitive social consciousness. There are a lot of common things about the world intellectual traditions indeed. The intellectuals must by definition admire erudition and probity and virtue regardless of where they were from. Some the other stuff such as how Confucius takes rich and poor students etc., I can definitely see Voltaire's admiration on these early egalitarian nature of attainment of knowledge per se. Then I took a cursory re-scan of Mencius. This guy tried to apply individual principles to the state, which almost never works. I've decided that Mencius, and the Chinese literati after him have hopelessly corrupted Confucianism. What a familiar story. _________________________________________________________________ 10/23/2004 sox 'emMy theory on the recent dramatic result of the baseball playoffs is simple: it's a matter of chance. The ridiculous dynastic streak of the Yanks not withstanding (George S. = superman), when it comes down to rationalizing what's going to happen, it might just happen one of these days. The difference in the actual quality of the teams is pretty minute, and we have a one out of 2^7=128 possibility for such an outcome. It was bound to happen at some point in history. It's not a matter curses and political conspiracies and it is NOT a divine prophetic sign that Kerry's going to win next Month (though it might have been more telltale if it were a world series of Boston vs. Houston.) etc etc I was somewhat depressed though as I have been telling others. I'm not really a Yankee's fan (at least not out there in the open). But I have been a Clemens fan ever since I got into baseball (which was at the height of his reign, when I remembered an SI special comparing The Rocket to Air Jordan), as he sort of represented the type of pure hillbilly energy that is ever so deficient in our delirious metrosexual era. I was happy that he retired from the Yankees, figuring that he was going to go out with a bang. Then I heard that he was going to pull an MJ. I was stunned though not shocked. And he did really well this year. I was really hoping for a Clemens vs. The Yankees world series with Astros winning out. Alas, dreams remain dreams. It looks like the only perfect sports hero of my time is going to be Pete Sampras. _________________________________________________________________ 09/18/2004 the will to survive
Rivers rise and retreat. The freezing highland raindrops wink at the red crown and the yellow walls of the Cathedral in The Zocalo, in San Cristobal de Las Casas every day. Clouds cover the top of the green mountaintops like whipped cream, just as they have been, always, centuries after centuries. Beneath the sky, lived a group of people, forgotten and neglected, persecuted and oppressed, died and insurrected. Most of all, flourishing, beatific, iconoclastic. If American Indians are still alive today, they live in the Mayas... _________________________________________________________________ 09/11/2004 programmed hero
Now onto the bad things. I'll give the movie a B or B+ for effort overall. I'll give an A- for directorial. The biggest problem I see was the lack of character development. I could barely connect with "Broken Sword" or whatever that smartass guy's name was. "Nameless" was totally robotic. I find it utterly disappointing that Chinese heroes are almost stoic pantomimes that walk around as if they are pulled by strings. It probably has to do with the fact that the actors in the movies are all bad. Even Tony Leung. Bad acting. This is the all too fatal problem of Asian cinema overall. Asian actors are so badly trained. One dimensional. Lack of sense of humor. Secondly, the ending was a complete flop. I mean, there is nothing to save up for you here, you are not seeing the movie for the ending. It was completely contrived. The dialogs were kitschy, the bit about the "stages of sword" particularly plagiaristic from Kong-Fu novels. The morbidity and mortality were mawkish and not particularly sense-making under the plot circumstances (i.e. if you were any rational person under those circumstances, you simply would have never chosen to behave in such a random fashion.) Compare to endings classics like Annie Hall, or even the commercial period Braveheart and Titanic, this particular ending was really jarring. Not everybody should be dead (i.e. Rose, and Robert the Bruce). Sometimes it's much smarter and more exhilarating to keep some characters alive at the end. I felt like the director just killed the characters so as to make the movie a bit more "epic" like, a bit more serious. This made me laugh. _________________________________________________________________ 08/28/2004 five hours of bus ride
By the time the second gush of passengers poured in, I was already fast asleep. I opened my eyes and took a peak of the dude sitting next to me. Wearing a worn out earthy wife beater, with muscular arms and visible blue and red tattoos, he was lying motionless on the recliner, recuperating from a hard day’s work. The bus was almost completely full, and air-conditioning was blasting full throttle, blocking out the dripping, verdant heat of Yucatan peninsula. Mexico has its most prominent stereotypes. The sombrero wearing men sit against a wall half asleep where cacti sprawl in a landscape that is more Dali than picaresque. Yet southern Mexico is different. There is no desert. There are no sombreros (except to humor the tourists). Instead, it is a confusing smorgasbord of paragons of capitalistic (mis)adventures tinctured by some of the most remote, impoverished diaspora and its Leninist revolutionary offshoots... _________________________________________________________________ 08/26/2004 big apple in a bottle |
So
here it is. A movie I decided to see under pressure of the uncommonly
uniformly positive critical reviews. Most of the viewers who were
native speakers of Mandarin told me that the movie wasn't what it was all
hyped up to be. I had low expectations when I entered the theater.
Their consensus was that the movie lacked, among other things, a plot.
I expected a slideshow with some music. In actuality, despite the very
low progress speed of the first twenty or so minutes of the movie (my friend
fell fast asleep), the plot construction was one of the better parts of the
movie. The only problem was that various characters died too many
times and I find it disheartening that imaginary stories and real stories
were treated almost completely the same. But the structure and the
plot development had a certain element of surprise to it. The visuals,
thankfully, did not disappoint. But I found it repetitive because I've
almost seen too much of the scenery. Beautiful scenery doesn't really
make me wow much anymore. I don't know if that's a good thing.
The
former, still beautiful Sheffield Park House in East Sussex, today the UK
office of Novatec GmbH consulting services, is where Gibbon wrote most of
his greatest work. Courtesy