it's a good time to be a singaporean. the united nations of singapore (and nigeria. and england.)won us the tiger cup (emphatically), local music is on the rise (thanks electrico, the observatory, and er, taufik), and the censors aren't even censoring, let alone banning, a locally produced short film lampooning the censorship board and its policies.
they're just limiting its screening to a 10pm screening at zouk, where all of probably 50 people will be able to watch it. lucky bastards.
the film in question (or issit questionable film? works either way i guess) was royston tan's 'cut', and fortunately, i managed to be one of those lucky bastards. i wouldn't even had heard of the event otherwise, if i hadn't paid my weekly pilgrimage to the news section of theobservatory.com.sg, where they were hyping (then again, 'hype' is a word rarely used in association with the observatory) their first gig of the year at zouk's bi-annual showcase of local arts, 'localized'.
if you hadn't figured out yet, i'm a huge fan of the observatory, so go click on the link on your right once your done with this blog so you can see what i'm raving about.
but i digress.
so the night started with a showcase of local film-making talent, starting with the cg work of some guy, surname Tong or sth like that, which looked painfully similar to a typical 3dmark tech demo (you know, typical golden cg man floating through typical cg rotating geometry patterns in typical cg 3d abstract backgrounds set to typical videogame-like choral soundtrack) or one of those pet shop boys videos when they had just discovered the magic of computer animation (think go west). even more painful was the fact that according to the copyright notice at the end, that was 7 long years in the works. note to mr. tong - based on this showing, you've either got to get faster, better workstations, or don't quit your day job.
anyway, what followed was much better, as they showed that navy advert where this photo-realistic ship lying docked at a saf naval base turns into a huge rad robot and fires an awesome torpedo at the screen, further encouraging all young men and women who haven't yet decided to join the navy to do so, because after all, wouldn't it be so cool to captain an saf autobot? kudos to mr. tong for redeeming himself with this one, supposedly done in a year or so. go figure.
of all the films shown though, 'cut' had to be the highlight of the night, if only for it's pointed too-funny-to-be-true-ohwait it is true- criticism fired at top speed with maximum venom towards the local censorship board. if you listened hard, you could have almost heard royston spit out the words in the script as he wrote them. for the uninitiated, 'cut' was hugely controversial, as it was royston tan's reaction to the 27 cuts the board had inflicted on his previous, critically acclaimed, film, 15. for the most part, it features some guy who's name i forgot who's supposed to be the biggest fan of the censorship board, who haggles neo swee lin (in a wig and glasses, lookin very similar to the head censor of the board -unintentional and purely coincidental, of course-) for the entire film, thanking her in rapid-fire fashion for all the cuts and the snips, saving singapore society from the evils of violence and sex -what would we ever do without you?- hilariously, he goes on to thank her for their sacrifice in the name of society - "sure, you protect us from emulating serial killers and drug addicts and homosexuals, but who protects you? or do you have some kind of special talisman?" admittedly, its not as much a showcase for the director (production values are roughly akin to one of those ra-ra show skits from eons ago, complete with backup dancers and confetti), as it is the work of a director and his crew (robin leong was spotted at one stage) just having a laugh. but damn, is the writing sharp. come to think of it, given the brevity of the film (about 10 minutes) and the laugh quotient, it would be perfect for showing on tvmobile. that'll be the day...
oh, and the observatory rocked. which is strange, because that's not usually how one would describe them. think it's the new drummer. even the old unreleased stuff which was so slow and thoughtful before seems more jazzed up and funky this time around. not sure if i like the new direction yet though. altho the drummer looks a lot like the guy from the hives. anyway, new album in 4 months... so the wait begins.
so much for not blogging for the rest of the sem then.
scary zouk story of the day:
me (wearing that shirt with the big embroidered red 5 on the front, stops at front door to be checked)
bouncer at the front door (while grabbing assorted bits of my pants and ass): "heheh, nice shirt mr. 5.... so should i rate you a 5 or a ten?
then he grins.
me: errrrrrrrr......whatever....*runs away*
posted by crapshoot @ 3:28:00 AM
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