Thus Far...

My last post was back in 4 June 2016 (Saturday). It has been way more than a month since. So I'll just sum up some of the things I have been doing and hopefully get back to them in retrospect.

June

1. Watched TV Series Fargo (2014-Ongoing), 2 Seasons done and hopefully will get back to how I felt about this series.

2. Finished Book, Veronica Mars: Mr Kiss and Tell by Rob Thomas, which was surprisingly awesome.  (Will have to get back to this soon)

3. Sadly, I can't remember much from the month of June, I should start blogging at the end of each month to log my progress.

July

1. Watched Bakemono Ko (2015) and Summer Wars (2009)

2. Bought a Ton of Books from Kinokuniya

- Finished Corridor (12 Short Stories) By Alfian Sa'at

- Finished Freakanomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner 

3. Watched Apprentice (2016) by Boo Junfeng

4. Watching Veronica Mars (2004-2007)

5. Ongoing dread of NDP trainings.

My next post will be something more constructive, be back soon!

Cheers

Sman

Everything Before Us (2015)

From: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/everythingbeforeus

Synopsis: The Department of Emotional Integrity (DEI) documents all relationship activity. A 'relationship score' is given to keep people accountable for their choices. The score is public for all to see, and affects various aspects of daily life. Two couples, teenagers and early 30s, face different but intersecting challenges in their relationships within the rules of the DEI. (From IMDb)

At different stages of our lives, our perception of relationships and idea of love changes. We grow up, gain new insights. From these experiences we learn to ultimately become better versions of ourselves.

There are two main relationships. The "love is all we need" teenagers, Seth (Brandon Soo Hoo) and Haley (Victoria Park). The separated adults, Ben (Aaron Yoo) and Sara (Brittany Ishibashi).

I'm 21 years old, and I have not really been in a committed relationship before. I'm in the middle of being a teenager and an adult. Personally, I can relate more to the teenagers, although I enjoyed the relationship of the adults more. 

Haley is moving to another state for college, away from Seth. They impulsively sign up for the DEI together, believing that their long distance relationship will work somehow. Their interactions in the beginning were rather cringe inducing, with the scene of Seth giving Haley only one glove because her other hand fits perfectly with his. Their  relationship is not really established at all, the only interactions I see are through a montage of them hanging out together doing mundane couple activities (walking in the park, kissing). The reason for them being together seems very superficial. I find myself not caring about the state of these teenagers. When they had conflicts, it didn't really bother me. I see Seth and Haley's relationship as a representation of "blind love", they are only together because of their over-preaching declaration of love for each other.

Ben wants to get into this design firm "Origin", but due to his break up with Sara his DEI score is too low. Sara on the other hand, has a high DEI score and has no problems getting a loan to open her very own bakery. Ben has to get help from Sara, thus giving him a reason to meet up with her and possibly rekindle their relationship. Their history is slowly revealed throughout the film, and we find out that they broke up due to the lack of time spent with each other. They slowly grew apart and in a moment of weakness, Sara kissed a co-worker. This comes back full circle when Ben kisses Sara, while he was dating Anna (Joanna Sotomura). Anna is quite inconsistent as a character, in the beginning she seems to be only concerned about socialising with people who have high DEI points. She is then concerned about Ben spending too much time with Sara, which is reasonable. When Anna finally decides to break up with Ben, she somehow immediately feels remorse for causing him to lose his job and tries to give him a second chance. I felt that Anna was a wasted chance at being a great antagonist for the couple.

The story of Ben and Sara is clearly more flushed out, being the main focus in the film. This in turn really overshadows the story of the teenagers. In fact I feel that if the teenagers were removed from the film entirely, more time could be used to develop the characters of Ben and Sara even more. I felt that Wong Fu Productions might be a little over-ambitious in trying to appeal to larger range of demographic by essentially telling the story of two relationships of different ages.  

Despite the fact that most of the plot were predictable, there was a sense of realness in the character's interactions, more so with Ben and Sara. Wong Fu Productions manages to capture relatable emotions of two couples in different stages of their lives. 

MY RATING: 3/4

Cheers
Sman

Coming of Age

I have recently started to re-watch and find new coming of age movies (The Spectacular Now, The Way Way Back, Perks of Being a Wallflower etc.) I hope to one day write a coming of age movie or short film that inspires people or at least have them relate to some aspects.

Out of all the coming of age movies I have watched so far, my favourite has to be The Spectacular Now (2013). What makes it stand out from the rest is the way that the characters are written, everyone is a flawed individual in some way and they stumble their way through life not really knowing what to expect. There is a sense of realness in their conversations/reactions towards each other.

I stumbled into a social gathering yesterday, hosted by a mutual friend of a close friend of mine. Being the socially inapt being that I am, my first instinct was to embarrassingly hide in the washroom and come up with a game plan. I eventually got out and met with some people from a Photography Club, I made small talk and had a chance to find out a little about them. All of them were younger than me, although I believe that age doesn't define a person, being the eldest in the group, the "young adult", I felt small with the fact that I'm incapable of having some form of social skills at this point of time in my life.

In a way I feel that I am still coming of age, finding a way to define myself as a person and learning to speak to strangers with more confidence.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be after all.

The Kings of Summer (2013)

From: http://www.thefastpictureshow.com/2013/10/the-kings-of-summer-jordan-vogt-roberts.html

Logline: THE KINGS OF SUMMER is a unique coming-of-age comedy about three teenage friends – Joe (Nick Robinson), Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and the eccentric and unpredictable Biaggio (Moises Arias) - who, in the ultimate act of independence, decide to spend their summer building a house in the woods and living off the land.

- from the official The Kings of Summer Preliminary Productions notes  

"We are our own men" is the main motivation of our protagonist Joe as he goes through the transformation from a teenager with a pretentious perception of what it means to be a man/adult to a more perceptive person, knowing that there's so much more to the learn about being a man/adult.

At the start of the film we find out that Joe is living with his widowed father Frank (Nick Offerman). Their relationship is on the rocks, as Frank is unable to truly get over the death of his late wife, emoting his sadness through sarcasm and tough love towards his son. 

One instance being a game of monopoly during family game night, in which Frank disregards the rules of the game by just trading properties with another player to spite Joe for an earlier embarrassing anecdote about him. This eye for an eye exchange between father and son continues until Joe has finally had enough, deciding to leave his father for an independent life with two other friends.

Patrick, Joe's best friend is much more calm, seemingly more confident with himself. However, he does have his own problems with his parents, his overly intrusive parents causes him to have hives and be eternally embarrassed at everything they have to say. Being less of an actual problem in comparison to Joe's more toxic relationship.  

Biaggio is basically a comic relief character with one-liners and eccentric behaviours. He is one of the underdeveloped characters who is basically there for the sake of lightening the mood, albeit some contributions felt forced. 

The trio goes on an adventure to build a pretty impressive looking house in the woods. While Joe and Biaggio go on a failed attempt to hunt for animals, Patrick finds a snake's skin. Patrick's warnings against littering in the woods is dismissed over a dinner of chickens they "found" in the woods. Joe immediately breaks the rules by inviting his crush Kelly (Erin Moriarty) to the house. 

She comes over for dinner and brings along a few friends. Kelly compliments Joe about being very talented for coming up with this whole idea in the first place. This gives Joe hope, he is almost a fully fledged man living independently and now by getting the girl his transformation should be complete. Over the campfire, Patrick and Kelly bonds in the background as Joe and Biaggio talk. I understand that the writers are probably trying to show us the perspective of Joe as Kelly ends up with his best friend Patrick by placing their interaction in the background. But by leaving the interaction unheard, they are under-developing yet another character, Kelly. It seems like she is just there to be a love interest to be fought over, between the Joe and Patrick, resulting in having no real depth or personality of her own. 

During a very similar monopoly game, Joe teams up with Biaggio to spite Patrick mirroring the behaviours of his father. This ends in a solidly acted confrontation scene between Joe and Patrick. Joe blaming Kelly for the reason for the whole group falling apart calling her a "bitch" and a "cancer". Ultimately resulting in everyone leaving Joe alone to fend for himself. 

The scene before this confrontation was my favourite in this movie. Frank asks Joe's sister, Heather (Alison Brie), if he's a bastard. She replies with "No dad, a bastard would make everyone around him miserable just because he is." Which flows very nicely to the way Joe acts out.

The film ends with Joe taking responsibility by acting fast to save Biaggio's life after he hilariously tries to kill a poisonous snake, in the presence of Kelly and Frank. Joe has taken his first step to being responsible. 

This film was really well acted, I believed all of the actors performances. Although I did feel that something was missing in this film, perhaps it was the excessive callbacks to the theme of what is means to truly become a man from the eyes of Joe. 

MY RATING: 2/4

Note: I edited video shortening The Kings of Summer into less than 10 minutes. Although I hope to make something better in the future, along the lines of a story analysis of a movie. 

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob1DPuucHkk 

Cheers

Sman         

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

From: http://comicbook.com/category/captain-america-civil-war

Two main sides team Cap and team Ironman. One wants to be able to act alone without authority/restrictions while the other wants to be kept in check to gain the trust of the government.

Their choices make so much sense too. Steve Rogers used to work under an authority "SHIELD", he fully trusted it until the events of "Winter Soldier", everything he believed in turned on him. Tony Stark tried to make the world a better place by creating Ultron, distrusting any form of authority to begin with. Until the events of "Age of Ultron" caused the death of countless people.

I was expecting the predictable endgame of common enemy to appear, causing them to put their differences aside and defeat the enemy together. (*cough* Batman V Superman *cough*) But what they did instead was so much more brilliant. 

The big bad in the movie was merely a catalyst for the feud between Tony and Steve. The movie essentially goes back to it's roots at the end, the conflict between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. Because after all, this whole movie is called Civil War for a reason.

I also appreciate the way they introduced new characters, Spiderman for example was all set up simply all in one scene, a conversation between Peter Parker and Tony Stark. The writers clearly respect the audience's intelligence enough to not give an out of place origin flashback.

Of course this movie isn't without it's flaws. The action sequences were horrible. The shot sizes were all so close, the cuts with ridiculously rapid in abundance (a character being shoved to the ground had 4 different cuts), the movement of the camera was excessively shaky. I understand that the action was edited to the fast paced music, but by doing this it really pulls you out of the scene. I cannot see what is going on clearly, which undermines the efforts of the stuntmen who worked hard on the choreography, going through years of training to be able to do so.

There should have been wider shots for the audience to breathe and have a chance to access the situation.

Captain America: Civil War is not just a mindless superhero action movie. It treats it's audiences with respect and develops the characters with realistic reasonings that lets anyone step back and go "Oh I see why Tony stands for this, and Steve does have a point too".

MY RATING 3/4

Cheers
Sman

I'm Back

Three years, well a little less than that. But none the less, it has been a long time since I had the courage to write anything online again. Well, I have achieved a few things along the way up to this very point.

1. Special Mention for ciNE65 Short Film Competition, April 2015  (aka "A" for effort, really learnt something though)

2. Diploma in Moving Images, May 2015 (aka stalling for the actual hardship that is life)

Sadly, those are the only two events I would consider notable achievements to remember. Any hopes for actually joining film competitions has to be postponed or until I can figure out an effective way to manage my precious weekends to embark on my journey of filmmaking. 

Here comes the situation that every Singaporean son gets to blame for their lack of productivity. National Service. A conscription programme that lasts for 2 years. 

I should count myself lucky, my ultimate posting is to Bedok Camp 2 as a Combat Medic of the 3rd battalion guards. The only downside of this is that I have to stay in camp for the weekdays and have occasional duties on the weekends. There will not be any mind-numbing regimentation and physical exercises. This gives me time, ALOT of time actually to start planning for my future. Being a distracted Millennial, I often have no motivation to actually start anything productive.


8 May 2016
So for this blog I will start posting thoughts, poems, movie reviews, just about anything. Even if everything starts to get out of control and messy, at least I will be doing something.

I started this post in late March 2016, and true to what I wrote, I have procrastinated publishing this post. No more, I'm going to start posting weekly starting with this.

Cheers
Sman

Improvisation

I had my first lesson of Playback Theatre today. According to the lecturer Theatre is staged, everything from the props to the set were all set up beforehand. With the addition of Playback, the actors on stage take whatever the audiences suggest and create a scene.

"Whose line is it anyway" immediately popped into my mind. I was elated, I get to finally learn something I secretly have been yearning so much for.

"The key to acting is to not act" I understand this because I have been put in front of a camera before, albeit very little times. Funny enough,  the Director of Design School gave us a talk in the morning and gave great emphasis on Embracing Contradiction.

Back to the lesson, the lecturer,  Chris, talked about what a good actor is to him. He said that a great actor compliments others, they make the other actor's role believable.  This really gave me a new insight about acting.

I was so hyped to start the improvisation. I was caught off gaurd when Chris literary asked me and another student to stand in the circle and start. All I could do was stare awkwardly at the students. I was ready to go, I was ready to have fun and let loose. But, that fear still lies in me, that fear of not getting it right or just looking daft. But this is improv there IS no right or wrong. By the time I convinced myself to go ahead, Chris stopped us and asked us to go back to our seats. I was utterly gutted .

Whenever I get into a social situation whereby I consciously knew if I were to just do something, that would result in a much better experience and not do anything,  I will feel just angry at myself.  Anyway it's just the first lesson, I was promised that each lesson will be different, which is something to really look forward to. Till next time!

Cheers
Sman