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| Fine whine |
| 03.31.04 (7:07 pm) [edit] |
My mom called tonight to check and see if I'm feeling better. Within ten minutes, I thought I was listening to myself on the other line:
"Oh God, why is this happening to me? At this age?? I can't believe we're moving to a new home and I'm doing it all by myself! Your dad can't help cause he can't see anything. I'm not getting any younger! My body's aching! Oh dear, oh my..."
Her poor-me went on for a while. I got frustrated and told her to put a lid on it. Then I hung up and wanted to laugh.
Yes, I inherited this from her, and her from my gramps. This dark cloud that's been on me all this week - I put it above myself, and I made it rain with thunder.
I should put a lid on it too.
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| Toxic! |
| 03.30.04 (8:54 am) [edit] |
A couple of reasons for my absence in blogging lately. I was down with a nasty case of fever, and while I was sweating my illness out all weekend, I was also spewing the most vicious, poisonous thoughts in my head, mainly revolving around my limitations as a filmmaker and if I should seriously consider quitting.
In other words, I was so negative I could barely stand myself.
I visited with [url=http://www.road-dog-productio...]David[/url] last night to work on applying Daniel's new score to my segment. I felt neither confident nor constructive by the time we were done. Unsure if it's just that the music didn't fit my scene or my scene was sucky enough that no music could salvage it. I may have to sit in with David again with a clearer (and less pessimistic) state of mind.
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| Illness, part 3 |
| 03.22.04 (7:39 pm) [edit] |
Shucks...I'm coming down with the same shit I had three weeks ago: coughing, sore throat, and soreness in my joints. I've already seen the doctor, and I'm supposedly fine, so what else is there?
I was sitting in my office today and I went through the same routine of being busy but feeling unaccomplished. I'm impatient as usual, increasingly so as the days go by. What will happen to [url=http://www.deadroommovie.com]"DEADROOM"? [/url] Will it finally be the break we all have been waiting for? Should I think about submitting to the [url=http://institute.sundance.org...]Sundance Lab[/url] this year? When should I seriously consider moving out from big D? And where to? NY? LA? Toronto?
Be patient. Be unassuming. Be hopeful.
[i]Please.[/i]
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| Sum Thai Luv |
| 03.18.04 (5:02 pm) [edit] |
A generally boring day at work was rewarded upon my return with a neatly packaged box from Bangkok. I forgot about my order of the $5 soundtrack of [url=http://www.lastlifeintheunive...]"Last Life in the Universe."[/url]
I really liked its score, which mainly consist of subdue ambient synth stuff with slight keyboard accents. It's the perfect driving music - visionary and introspective.
The extra bonus was the little CD booklet, which in true [url=http://www.wongkarwai.net/]Wong Kar-Wai[/url] fashion, contained stylized [url=http://www.scoutgallery.com/d...]Christopher Doyle[/url] stills. God bless him for the ability to make a cluttered house look so charming.
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| Feeling masochistic |
| 03.17.04 (6:40 pm) [edit] |
Boy, talkabout not taking any criticisms to heart, it's alarming to see some of the user reviews I've gotten for [url=http://yentan.moonfruit.com]"Happy Birthday"[/url] on both [url=http://www.amazon.com]Amazon[/url] and [url=http://www.netflix.com]Netflix.[/url]
Let the attacks begin...
[i]"The last thing I'd like to mention is that the subject matter tried too hard to be deeply dramatic, but left me feeling empty. Not draining... ...just empty like I invested my life savings to purchase a happy meal. Additionally, the situations potrayed in this movie seem a little outdated (unless you're in the midwest)."[/i]
[i]"The film is in white and black, I think the director thought this would make the movie more artsy and sophisticated but there's just no hiding the terrible bad acting job of all the characters. The camara work is also incredibly bad.The "director" with his cheap camara focuses on the faces of the actors like a bad home video. The background music, if you can call it that, consists of five bars of bad melancholic piano music which it's supposed to get us in the mood of how dramatic these stories are. And there's the stories. Sappy, badly written, and you just don't care about this people and their problems, partly for the bad acting but also becasue you just don't get to know the characters."[/i]
[i]"This is a very nice try at movie making. Unfortunately, it's more amateurish in execution than can be overlooked. It’s not like I hated it, it’s just that it’s very unmoving. I give it two stars only because I reserve the lowest one-star rating for movies I actively hate (wouldn't a zero-stars option be nice?). This movie I certainly didn’t hate, but it’s just so pointless, boring, and cheap."[/i]
[i]"Oh, what is that smell. It must be rotten Happy Birthday Cake. This is a BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"[/i]
There were two other considerately positive remarks, but it's hard to take those to heart when you get all the harsh shit above. Funny how I've also conveniently forgotten the jury awards I won, the successful festival screenings I had, and some favorable reviews I've received from the press.
I wonder if this is an indication I'm not particularly good at making audience-friendly films. Shucks. A long, hard road faces me ahead.
I'm no good. I'm shitty. I'm worthless. I'm [i]untalented.[/i]
Oh - shut the fuck up already.
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| This certainly sounds wonderful |
| 03.17.04 (6:21 am) [edit] |
A user comment posted on imdb about Tsai Ming-Liang's latest [url=http://imdb.com/title/tt03775...]"Goodbye Dragon Inn"[/url]:
[i]Only yesterday, the last drive-in theater closed in Vancouver. The old movie palaces of my childhood where patrons paid 25 cents to watch a double bill, plus news and cartoons, while listening to the Wurlitzer organ during intermission, are now shopping malls or revivalist churches. In "Goodbye Dragon Inn," set in Taipei, Tsai Ming-liang pays tribute to an experience of cinema that is dying. The decaying Fu-Ho theatre theater is about to be torn down but still welcomes the outcasts of society: old men, gay cruisers, the crippled and the lonely, and the ghosts and spirits from a different age. With the rain coming down heavily outside, the theater still attracts few patrons, and those it does are more interested in furtive sexual contacts than watching the film -- stalking their prey through sterile corridors, looking for any shred of human comfort.
In the audience is a gay Japanese man. Only two other people watch the 1961 kung fu classic Dragon Inn by King Hu, considered one of the best martial arts films of all time. A woman with a clubbed foot runs the ticket booth and hobbles around the empty theater, hoping that the projectionist will notice her, but he makes a special point of looking the other way. We soon discover that the two older men watching the movie were the stars of Dragon Inn, basking in their glory days. It is not clear whether they are real or spirits from the past, yet now they sit in the almost empty theater watching their own movie and begin to cry. When the lights come up, there is only row upon row of empty seats.[/i]
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| So there's this explicit sex scene shot in one long take... |
| 03.16.04 (6:33 pm) [edit] |
My new gay screenplay is titled "Pit Stop." It is a meditation on lives in transition set in an unnamed small town in Texas. Gabe is a divorcee in his forties who still maintains a very close relationship with his former wife Shannon and their 5-year-old Cindy. Joel is in the midst of a break-up with Matt, his younger lover who plans on pursuing his dreams of becoming an actor in Hollywood. Gabe and Joel will meet at the end of the story, which then becomes the beginning of theirs.
I think that sums up its essentials. I feel like I've lived in the Lone Star long enough to finally write a good ol' Texan tale, although it still revisits some themes of "yenisms" - memories, longing and isolation. Not sure if it came across, the Asian me writing about blue-collar Caucasians, but I think it was a good challenge for me. Will see what my [url=http://www.road-dog-productio...]peers[/url] think when I give [url=http://www.beautifulconfusion...]them[/url] a copy.
My brother e-mailed me a card, and in it says,
[i]Please write me. It's 'bout time we start to keep in touch. I 'm dyin to hear about ya...[/i]
A part of me wants to reconnect, wants to write him and tell him exactly what I've been up. That life is good and I'm finishing up this great new [url=http://www.deadroommovie.com]film[/url] . That I'm gay and I'm [i]okay.[/i] He'll respond with words of support, and we'll pick up where we left off more than five years ago.
And my other part says: gosh, has it been that long? Has he changed? Will he be cool? Will he hang his head in shame when his friends ask about me? But most importantly, [i][i]does it even matter if we stayed in touch? [/i]
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