Ray Bradbury is one of the true greats. If anyone could be said to have lifted the field of science fiction into the realm of literature, it's him. If he had written Fahrenheit 451 alone, he'd still be considered a master. Thankfully, though, that's not the not the case. His body of work is voluminous and impressive. I've recently been reading his book "Zen in the Art of Writing"- a collection of eleven essays on the topic of, you guessed it, writing. I'm glad I picked it up from the library because it's really quite inspirational. The man has boundless enthusiasm for writing, which stems, no doubt from a similar enthusiasm for life itself. And he communicates this with style and panache. The essays crackle with energy, they're positively infectious.
I'll let the man speak for himself. Here's a choice quote:
"Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer's make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto."
One of the coolest things about living on the 44th floor of a building in the middle of Singapore's business district is being able to observe the flow of human traffic on the streets down below. When I was 6 years old, I'd sit by my window after waking up in the morning and count the cars that drove along Robinson Road. Yeah, everything was exciting back then. On a weekday I'd count upwards of a 100 cars in 10 minutes, easy. On a weekend I'd be lucky to hit 50 on in half an hour.
Today's a public holiday (Happy Chinese New Year, one and all! It's the year of the dawg!) so there's even less traffic in this area than usual. Chinese New Year is one of the few public holidays in Singapore when most (not all, but most) shops are gonna be closed so it's more or less a sit-at-home-and-relax kinda day for me. Well, actually, I'd go out and watch a movie with my sister normally, but she flew off to the UK early this morning- she's gonna be there for the next two and a half months for a training thing- so I took the opportunity to go through all the RSS feeds I subscribe to on my Rojo account.
I'm currently listening to Gackt's new single Redemption- it's the theme song for the FFVII spin-off game Dirge of Cerberus (both the song and the game came recommended by the mildly-infamous-on-the-Internet gonzo journalist Tim Rogers). The song's pretty damn good! I'm surprised. I really enjoyed his songs with his old band, Malice Mizer, but nothing the man's done in his solo career seemed very interesting. Gackt's last album Diabolos, in particular, was pretty awful. It's cool to see him finally on-form. I wonder if he can keep this momentum? Well, seeing as how the man is a 400+ year old vampire (I kid you not, go read his Wikipedia entry :p), time is on his side ey?
Speaking of music, I've been meaning to integrate my Last.fm account with my blog and it looks like there's finally a way to do that! Must be a new feature. Coolness. So I've added a Last.fm chart of my most-played artists of the week to my sidebar. As you can see, I've been listening to The Strokes a lot lately. I bought their new album First Impressions Of Earth last week. It's got some great tracks, like opener "You Only Live Once," "Heart in a Cage," "On The Other Side," "Killing Lies," and "Ize Of The World." Though I think their last album, "Room on Fire," was more consistent overall, I really like that the band experiments with their signature sound a bit here instead of just doing the same thing over and over (randomize songs from "Room on Fire" and their first album "Is This It" and you wouldn't be able to tell which song came from which album. They're that similar.).
Back to my Last.fm chart- if you click on it, you can go to my Last.fm page and see what songs I listen to the most every week and also what artists and songs I've played the most overall. Last.fm's nifty, but the charts aren't perfect- the site's software plugin only checks what I've been listening to on my iTunes, but not my iPod. And apparently it doesn't count repeated plays of the same song. Oh well.
I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds. So many, in fact, that it can take me more than an hour to go through them all once every 2 days. Well I haven't checked my Rojo for a week so I've ended up with a mountain of unread entries. But I read em all anyway because I never know what gems I'll find in there.
Like these really cool pictures of upcoming Batman Lego figures and sets. The 8 year old me, who was equally obsessed with both Batman and Lego, would have fainted on the spot upon seeing this Batcave playset. Isn't it awesome? I may actually have to buy some of these when they come out (apparently in April).
Another thing I've noticed while reading all my feeds is that everybody's talking about Chuck Norris these days. I hadn't heard anything about the guy since Walker, Texas Ranger (reruns of which are actually showing on TV these days!) which I never really watched anyway. The only thing I knew about the man was that he fought with Bruce Lee, which is actually really cool. But late last year he exploded onto the Internet as a sort of thought-virus. As far as I know, it all started with this page of "facts" about the man, compiled from a thread on the Something Awful forums. Well, the guys who hang out on those forums are nothing if not bizarrely creative, which is why we get gems like "Chuck Norris does not hunt because the word hunting infers the probability of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing." Or "If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris you may be only seconds away from death." Or "The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain."
OK I'll stop now. After this one! "The original theme song to the Transformers was actually "Chuck Norris--more than meets the eye, Chuck Norris--robot in disguise," and starred Chuck Norris as a Texas Ranger who defended the earth from drug-dealing Decepticons and could turn into a pick-up. This was far too much awesome for a single show, however, so it was divided." Yep. I'm done with the quotes. But that's not all the Chuck Norris stuff I've seen online lately.
It seems Conan O'Brien's gone Chuck-crazy- he's been playing random clips of Walker: Texas Ranger on his show. But the culmination of all this Chuck-related madness (which includes people digging up old Chuck toys, comics , a cartoon series... What? Even Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't have a cartoon show and he was the toughest dude alive in the 80s! Not to mention the 2nd toughest robot, after Optimus Prime, of course.) has got to be this SNL skit about the young Chuck Norris:
It's actually pretty funny, though far inferior to the SNL Narnia rap skit which made the rounds on the Net last year. Both these skits, by the way, were made by these guys. Wow. Saturday Night Live's actually funny again. Anything's possible in TV Land I guess.
There's just one last marginally-related-to-Chuck thing I've got to write about: this video, titled The Ultimate Showdown, on the Flash portal Newgrounds.com. It's a surreal flash animation where Godzilla, Batman, a zombie Abraham Lincoln, Optimus Prime and several other characters/celebrities (including everybody's favourite Chuck Norris) fight to prove... err.. who's the baddest. Or something like that. Yeah, it makes no sense at all. But it's decently-animated (in a South Park sorta way) and all the carnage is set to a really catchy-song! Ok now I've gotta go away from my PC before my brain leaks out my head because of all this rampant weirdness.
Infinite Matrix is, or rather, was, one of the most exciting science fiction webzines around. Published periodically from August 2001 to January 2006, it featured short stories by authors including Cory Doctorow, Robert Sheckley (now sadly deceased) and Michael Swanwick. David Langford, who runs the most excellent science-fiction newsletter Ansible , wrote a weekly column for the site, cunningly named the Runcible Ansible (if you don't know what a runcible is, go here to find out!). And before Bruce Sterling started blogging over at Wired, he ran a blog called Schism Matrix on Infinite Matrix for two years.
Yep, there's a lot of good stuff on Infinite Matrix, so it's sad to see the site go. But it's final, January 2006 issue's chock-full of great content. Highlights for me included an essay by William Gibson on how he discovered history and science fiction in his youth (and how the two may be the same thing!) and a new novella (or novelette, as the site describes it) by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross calledAppeals Court. The site's going out with a bang, that's for sure.
So it's finally happened. Disney's gone and bought Pixar. It's a no-brainer move for Disney. Pixar's made 6 movies and each of them was a smash hit. Nobody else in Hollywood comes even close to that level of consistency. But what's really interesting about this deal is that Steve Jobs will become the largest stockholder at Disney and a member of it's board of directors and that John Lasseter (director of both Toy Story movies and A Bug's Life) will serve as chief creative officer of the combined Disney-Pixar studios.
This is the best possible thing that could happen to Disney, in my opinion. Last year's stunningly mediocre Chicken Little showed a Disney at it's creative nadir. They haven't made a truly great movie in over a decade. They need a major shake-up to return to their former glory, and this looks like just that shake-up.
I believe under John Lasseter's guidance, Disney's animation division can be a force to be reckoned with once again. I look forward to seeing the Disney that confidently turned out the smash hits The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King; the animated works that defined my youth. And so I eagerly anticipate the next move by the New Disney.
Wikipedia turned 5 two days ago on January 15th. I don't remember exactly when I started using the online encyclopedia myself, but it's become an invaluable resource to me over the past few years. Given that all the articles are peer-written, I do take them with a grain of salt but Wikipedia is an excellent starting point in looking up information about various topics. Furthermore, well-written articles often provide links to academic sources about the topic at hand.
Defying the expectations of it's naysayers, Wikipedia has become one of the most reliable sources of information on the Internet. In fact, it has been favourably compared to the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica itself by the scientific journal Nature. That's pretty impressive. Perhaps the greatest proof of the site's rising importance is that the Chinese government has blocked access to it since October 2005- much to the chagrin of Chinese scientists and students!
Oh boy am I out of the loop on this one! Cubix International, a local film company, has completed their (and Singapore's) first feature-length animated movie, Zodiac- The Race Begins, and it's releasing at the end of this month (nicely timed to coincide with the Chinese New Year break). The movie's about the titular Zodiac Race which would decide the order of precedence of the 12 animals in the calendar. Getting this movie out is a nice accomplishment for Cubix, though the quality of the CGI-work, from the looks of the official site, is pretty bad!
Compared to this, Egg Story's work on Kung Fu Gecko looks brilliant. Not surprising as Kung Fu Gecko's visuals are top-quality even by Hollywood standards. But we won't see Kung Fu Gecko for a long time as it's slated for a 2008 release. Curiously enough, 2008's the same year in which Dreamworks will release it's own similarly-monikered animated movie- "Kung Fu Panda." Gee, Is there an animal Kung Fu craze going on in the animation community or something?
Oh but back to Zodiac. Well, despite looking kinda crappy, the movie's been pre-sold to over 22 countries based on a 10-minute trailer. That's impressive! Not so impressive is the fact that they made it with the help of the MDA. Not that there's anything wrong with that, per say, I just don't see how the animation industry can grow creatively (as opposed to commercially) if the government has to be backing up industry players all the way. Creativity flourishes under pressure and these guys certainly aren't under any. So I'd be very surprised if "Zodiac- The Race Begins" turns out to be anything but humourous, mildly entertaining and completely forgettable.
And who can blame Singapore for making such a movie? Dreamworks (with Shark Tale) and Disney (with Chicken Little, a movie SO forgettable I couldn't tell my sister the plotline not half an hour after I saw it. It's VANISHED from my mind) have set the precedent- you can make a totally vapid animated movie and people will line up to throw money at you. Still, all isn't lost. If there's justice in this world, everyone'll go watch Wallace & Gromit, a truely excellent animated movie in every single way, instead of this one. I'm not even going to give it the benefit of doubt. I smell money all over this production. Nobody made this movie because they love animation or wanted to tell a good story- they wanted to make a good "Intellectual Property" and then make money off merchandising and licensing. So I'm waiting til 2008 to see a GOOD (or at least pretty- last year's trailer didn't fully convince me on the story but hey, it's only the 1st trailer and the movie's 2 years down the pipeline...) animated movie come out of Singapore.
I haven't been keeping up with the recent works of popular thriller author Michael Crichton, but when I saw his new book, State of Fear, mentioned on this entry of Hideo Kojima(creator of the Metal Gear series of games)'s blog, I knew I had to find out more about it. I gathered from aforementioned blog entry that Mr Crichton's taken it upon himself to *ahem* debunk the Global Warming theory. Mr Kojima, who I respect greatly as a games designer, appears to have bought Crichton's view- hook, line and sinker.
Personally, I find the whole anti-Global Warming faction to be dubious, especially given that several of the scientists and "scientific" organisations in said faction are sponsored by- you guessed it!- the oil industry. Whoop-dee-doo! No surprise then that most anti-Global Warming sentiment comes from the USA!
Anyway, after reading Mr. Kojima's blog entry I delved deep into the web and found a rather good site that takes a long, hard look at the book in question and finds it, unsurprisingly to me, to be of questionable scientific merit. The site in question is RealClimate and here is the article which analyses the book. The site itself is run by working climate scientists and, to my layman's eye, appears to give a well-balanced, scientific view on matters regarding climate change. So here's the score as I see it: Climate Scientists- 1. Michael Crichton- 0.
So even if the man is wrong, why am I so hard on Mr Crichton? I mean, he just wrote a novel right? Who's gonna take him seriously? Two things: First off, if Global Warming, like Mr Crichton claims, isn't real, then that's just swell- we're in no trouble at all. But if it IS real- and there's a heckuva lot of evidence to suggest that it is- then it's amazingly irresponsible to dismiss the theory offhand and just pretend like we- and by we I mean the collective global community, or EVERYONE- don't need to do anything at all to stop this situation from getting any worse. I think this is a clear case where erring on the side of caution is not a bad thing at all. That Mr Crichton doesn't see things this way is just bizarre, to say the least.
Secondly, Mr Crichton isn't just putting this pseudo-science (like all the science in all his books, actually!) in his book for kicks, he actually seems to think that he, a layman, is qualified to TELL OTHER PEOPLE what to believe with regards to climate change and the Global Warming theory. And people will believe him because there are LOADS of people out there who will believe a man like Mr Crichton because he can use big words and he's somewhat of a celebrity. So since the release of the book in late 2004, he's been going around giving speeches, including one in front of the United States Senate (whatever happened to getting ACTUAL SCIENTISTS to give speeches to government officials about stuff like this?) Using your celebrity status to put forth a view as dangerous as his (the danger is that other people will actually start believing it) is amazingly irresponsible.
But all's not lost! Despite the fact that kooks like Mr Crichton persist in denying the existence and impact of Global Warming, the US government has shifted their official stance on Global Warming from one that downplays it's significance to one that acknowledges that it IS indeed a problem that needs to be fixed. Though the USA still won't ratify the Kyoto Protocol (partly due to political reasons *cough*India*cough*China*cough*), they signed another agreement in 2005, the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, in which 6 countries (China, India, USA, Australia, Japan and South Korea) agreed to collaborate on the development of technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is a 'softer' treaty than the Kyoto Protocol in that it does not require any of the countries to limit their emissions by a set amount, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.
It's been raining every single day since I got back to Singapore on Sunday morning. The sky out my window's been a dreary grey colour every day. In fact, here's what they look like right now:
Today's Straits Times shed some light as to why this is happening- seems there's a cold wave hitting many parts of Asia and the constant rain we've been experiencing over here is just part of that. Other countries like India, China and Japan have been hit far worse so a little extra rain over here doesn't look like such a bad thing in comparison. Wow... the weather's just getting weirder and weirder every single year.
1. M.I.A.- Arular 2. Sambomaster- Sambomaster wa kimi ni katarikakeru 3. The New Pornographers- Twin Cinema 4. Gorillaz- Demon Days 5. Super Furry Animals- Love Kraft 6. The Decemberists- Picaresque 7. Sigur Rós- Takk... 8. Kupek- Awkward Songz 9. Franz Ferdinand- You Could Have It So Much Better 10. Madonna- Confessions on the Dance Floor
The following are my favourite movies of 2005- the numbers do indicate preference, to a degree:
1. Mindgame Mindgame is easily the best feature-length animation made in any country for the past 5 years. Wildly innovative, creative and overflowing with energy, this is animation like you've never seen it before. Here's a rather good review that just about sums up what I feel about the movie.
2. King Kong A justification for $200 million dollar movie budgets- a blockbuster with heart and soul.
3. Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit The long-awaited full length Wallace and Gromit lives up to the weighty expectations set by its predecessors. It put a smile on my face from start to end.
4. A History of Violence David Cronenberg's latest movie would be much higher on my list had I actually seen the whole movie- as it is, I walked into the movie and missed the first 15 or so minutes. What I did see, though, was most of one of the boldest and yet most thoughtful examinations of the effects of violence on people that I've ever seen.
5. Bittersweet Life This Korean movie works in an opposite way to A History of Violence- where that movie examines how an act of violence changes a family man's life forever, this movie looks at how an act of compassion destroys the life of a man who deals out violence as part of his job. More than just a mere revenge story, A Bittersweet Life is a fresh take on gangster movies. Lead actor Byung-hun Lee shows impressive range in his performance as Sun-woo, the coldly efficient gangster who damns himself by showing a shred of humanity. He's so good, in fact, that this movie should cement his status as a movie star in Korea- if he isn't one already.
6. Sin City Robert Rodriguez's stylish adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novels is brutally violent and yet very very sexy. This is film noir taken to its logical extreme.
7. Primer Primer stands in stark contrast to most Hollwood science fiction movies by not assume that the audience comprises of cro-magnon men. Not only that, it's also gorgeously shot and features great performances by its principal leads, who carry the film on their shoulders. That this movie was made on a budget of only US$7,000 is nothing short of remarkable. Expect to see great things from director and lead actor Shane Carruth and his equally-talented costar David Sullivan.
8. Black Sanjay Leela Bhansali's latest movie is probably his best, surpassing even his sumptuous remake of Devdas. It features the beautiful cinematography and settings (only Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar Wai come close to his careful attention to detail and arrangement of mis-en-scene) now characteristic of his movies while telling a story that is genuinely moving. It doesn't hurt that Amitabh Bachan and Rani Mukherjee turn in some of the best performances of their careers. What keeps the movie from being higher on this list is that it tries a bit too hard to elicit emotion from its viewers, straying into the realms of unabashed melodrama. If Sanjay Leela Bhansali acquires the gift of subtlety, he will become a truly fearsome director.
9. Millions & Tokyo Godfathers (tie!) Ironic that I saw these, the two most charming "Holiday Movies" that I have ever seen, in March. It is not just because of that similarity that I list them together- both movies are in part about the redemptive power of faith (be it in a higher power, or in one's fellow man) and avoid the usual traps of Holiday Movies. Millions, directed by Danny Boyle, elicits unusually great performances out of the lead child actors. Tokyo Godfathers, an animation directed by Satoshi Kon, manages to make the contrived and implausible string of events that lead to it's conclusion work because the brilliant characterizations of the main characters and the stark sense of social reality that underlies the film.
10. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Director Mike Newell has, by cutting out the fat from the voluminous book that the movie is based on and focusing on the most exciting and emotionally significant events of the book, made perhaps the overall-best movie in the Harry Potter franchise. This is going to be a tough act to follow up.
11. Batman Begins The best Batman movie. A pretty good summer blockbuster. And a harbinger of greater things to come. All in all, a very good reboot of the franchise.
12. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Danny Elfman turns in his best soundtrack in years and years. The music in this movie is so fun to listen to! And the songs! Such glee!! Oh yes, the movie itself was really good, too. Watch it while eating a big bar of your favourite chocolate. ;)
13. Corpse Bride It's an astonishing year in which we see 2 Tim Burton movies, much less 2 GOOD Tim Burton movies. Even more astonishing to consider that this is the 2nd big stop-motion animation movie released in 2005! Though it couldn't reach the heights of Tim Burton's stop-motion masterpiece The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride is beautifully animated and tells a delightful, if rather short, story.
14. Land of the Dead George Romero returns and shows everyone what a REAL zombie movie looks like. Excellent stuff. It's harkening to hear that a sequel to be green-lit.
15. Seven Swords It's a bit crazy and more than slightly incoherent but the concepts and ideas at the heart of this sword-fighting epic appeal to me greatly and also, it has one one of the best over-the-top villains ever (who goes by the totally rocking name of General Fire-Wind) and an amazing final fight scene.
Note: Not all of these were 2005 releases (Mindgame, Primer and Millions are 2004 releases and Tokyo Godfathers is actually a 2003 release!) but I saw them all at theatres this year (save Bittersweet Life, which I saw on DVD but IS a 2005 release) which I think qualifies them to be on my list.
