This morning I walked into Cold Storage, they were playing Christmas carols and suddenly this festive season has a new attached meaning, readings mixed with Santas mounted on glass windows. Things seem to be on a standstill for now, the days have become incredibly dry. This is a period of monotony, of waiting for days to go by quickly, for exams to be over, for this bland coven to be gone.
It is not that I don’t enjoy school, I am happy that for the first time in my life I feel that I am finally getting a real education that makes sense, that is purposeful, and that I can look forward to everyday but I dislike the intensity of formal education that impedes all other kinds of learning. How a book has to be kept away, a film delayed, productions that I can only read reviews of, enticing events listed in Arts Beat that remains in that form, text on magazine paper.
I rented Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 today because this restlessness has become stifling and I think I am searching for something moving, endearing, evocative, -to create emotions of some sort.
Work-in-Progress
[Hunting for a good quote]
Thursday, November 8, 2007
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13 comments:
2046... ZZY!
do tell me what u think, and how you feel, after watchin it...
Depressingly accurate portrayal, I must say. It's almost impossible to get any leisurely reading done because of the copious amount of readings for the curricula. I understand your wrenching agony!
Perhaps when you step out of Singapore for, say, six months (hint hint) and experience something other than this stifling encumbrance of a rigid system, you'll finally be able to enjoy what they call life-long learning: that learning and doing it at a pace of your choosing and liking need not be trade-offs. The system is merely one constructed for the sake of giving quantitative value to academic achievements, and arguably to instill traits like scholarly discipline and meticulousness as social scientists.
Unfortunately, the system here is very much focused on the quantitative, and so have our mindsets - attuned by the ingrained ideology of academic-centric learning and social mobility in Singapore. Where can creativity and innovation in the disciplines we partake, indulge and immerse find a safe haven? The US, Europe and the Aussies must be doing something right: the top universities in the world are disproportionately from these areas.
Warchild is worth watching - though the emotional aspect was rather muted as it kind of abstracted the sensitivities of war from the story. Still, how's 2046?
i've not watched 2046. i just JUST finished Singapore Dreaming...gosh it is hauntingly good. i was thinking today, the more movies/films/books/experiences one has, the more difficult it is to touch a person because the next movie has to be even better in order for one to be moved. and this movie...is brilliant.i am quite overwhelmed right now. have you watched it? 12 storeys used to be my all-time fav but this movie-i think it is the best local film ever made.
well...it seems that our edu system has it flaws...nicely detailed as above...
BUT - my point bein - i feel S'pore Dreamin's an awesome film, and guess wat...i caught it becoz i was part of this imperfect system spatialized as N.U.S. More specifically, it was a film i had the opportunity of watchin while in the Sociology of Emotion module... =)
I wonder...is it wat the system does to us or wat we do in it that matters... is it 'What happens' OR 'How we React to what happens' that really matters...
p.s. 2046 w/o ZZY would be sorry sight... ;)
True, the benchmarks just keep rising as we view more and more films - our tastes narrow and we become very discerning consumers as we hone in on what aspects of films we love and which we don't. And I totally agree that it's getting more and more difficult to be moved because of the repertoire of material we already have been exposed to.
Still, I believe that this process of familiarisation and discernment is beneficial to us: we develop our own individual unique tastes and demand more and more from the films. There's always the occasional fluffy Hollywood fare to indulge in if we don't want to be moved, but simply entertained. But for "evocative" films like Singapore Dreaming, or Rendition, or 12 Storeys - we should still demand more. That separates the good directors from the great ones - not simply how to tell a story, but how to tell it such that the viewer can identify with it.
I haven't watched Singapore Dreaming yet, though. You rented it? Perhaps I'll go scout and see who has the DVD.
With regard to the system, it represents a duality - the system affects and is affected by the way we operate in it. Tutors, professors and deans have to accommodate the changing needs of education that students implicitly demand, while the external environment (education on the global scale) exerts pressure for reform. We, as students, have to work with the system and obviously meet the prerequisites in order to be rewarded by it.
To say that the system is immutable and we are merely passive vessels waiting to be affected by it - that is fatalistic.
haha what you said sounds like critical moments vs. fateful moments. and of course i believe 'How we React to what happens' matters, if not one might just past a boy on a swing and miss their fateful moment,right?; )
anyway, i am sooooo not watching 2046 for ZZY ok. it'd be a sorry sight without TL.
i really want to watch 2046!:) ml
mk we can watch it tog! i've not seen it either. i have the disc but i gotta return it on thurs though:/
Joshua the original hugger says:
I have been shushed, shooed and chased away recently!
In protest! i am commenting here
ABOUT!
nothing!!!!
*Silence as resistance*
Yours,
Joshua, leader of the Men and Roses.
:)
I might be heading back soon. will let u know ya hegemonic female?
I did manage to catch Tea Dance, or 茶舞. I would recommend it partly because the style of cinematography is rather unique - or at least it tries to be - and the structuring of scenes isn't chronologically linear. It's like Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but the setting is the seedy underworld of Hong Kong triads.
Plus, Francis Wu is one heck of an actor.
harrison, stop recommending me good movies! u'll send me off to video ezy when time's running out..
joshua, u're full of rubbish. may your fixation on all things "cute" disappear.
Joshua the original hugger says:
:(
But its like an addiction... i mean u know...u know how its like when u take one potato chip and tell urself u'll only take one..? THATS HOW IS LIKE!
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