BOOKED

i love buskers... and i have recorded (on my crappy digital camera) some quite fascinating performances by all kinds of buskers from some great cities of the world ( london, chicago, NY, Beijing etc) and one of my fav is this one by an old chinese man playing some old folk song on that stringed chinese instrument which i don't know what the name is somewhere on wang fu jing a couple of years ago...i'll post it on youtube one of these days ...

and my fave local blog bibliobibuli mentioned a great story about busking in this great washington post story and i didn't know anything about this violinist Joshua Bell until i read this fascinating episode in the subway and it piqued my interest and i recalled ( is it from another article or the same washington post one?) this one movie 'the red violin' featuring him playing violin solo soundtrack in this film.

and so happened that i was at bao kanh street in the old quarter of hanoi again several days ago and was checking the pirated dvds at the best pirated dvd shop in the whole wide world called 'fox music and dvd shop' ...and you tell me where else can you get pirated werner herzog 'nosferatu the vampyre' the greatest adaptation of bram stoker's dracula that ever is and with that memorable first scene of grotesque mummified corpses accompanied by the morbid and grim wagner's famous 'the ring' or coen brother's first film 'blood simple' (both of which incidentally obtained the rare 100% approval rating in rottentomatoes or roman polanski's 'knife in the water' or 'repulsion' or passolini's 'the cantebury tales' or 'padre padroni' or all those iranian movies (perhaps with the exception of that one - tom's dvd - near holiday inn just a few short miles away from beijing airport which is frequented by the same type of film buffs ) ...

and it makes sense too (that this store is such a good one) as the husband of the owner of this little store - who is a petit vietnamese that has hair that looked like that girl in one of my all time favorite movies 'the big leibowski'- has occassional small roles in vietnamese movies and a real film buff ...

and as i was saying i was here (the fox store) and bought the red violin and get to watch it last night in a surprisingly good but cheap resort on the saigon riverbank and what a marvellous film it was and yes, joshua bell's violin solos in this film is amazing...

but as the washington post's article above mentioned, he didn't get too much attention or recognition when he /washington post did that caper having him performing as a busker in the subway...but i saw this guy giving an incredible performance somewhere in new york subway a couple of months ago which i recorded and you can see here...

and by the way i noticed that that fox dvd store in hanoi has 12 storeys by that singaporean film maker eric khoo but i didn't see any of amir's....