Tuesday, June 19, 2007

 

british borges

it has been a particularly bad month for me this month...i've been spending way too much on books and pirated dvds and the month is only just into the third week... several days back the pirate sent an sms 'new **** stock has arrived'... and i ended up spending about RM300 on movies which i could easily get from my fav beijing dvd store near holiday inn lido for less then half the price...and i'll be going there again this october too but no, i can't wait... so i ended up with ok let me count them here... (among others).

1: Satantango - the hungarian bela tarr's seven and a half hour masterpiece (so they say).

2:Ma mere - bought this solely because it is based on a novel by that pornographer georges bataille

3:Lacombe Lucien - an old louis malle film which has been in my little list since i was in school days yonks ago

4: schindler's list - missed this one out when it first came out and my interest was reignited after reading tom keneally's piece in GRANTA on how he discovered the story; Watched it and what a harrowing story it was. Well deserved the oscar for an amazing potrayal of oskar(schindler) and his jews

5: Ivan the terrible - sergei eisenstein's masterpiece (so they say)

6: The Tin Drum - the great adaptation of gunther grass novel by volker schlondorff. I've bought this TWICE already. Once from Hanoi and another from Beijing. both times it got stuck half way....and what pissed me off further was that i also downloaded from the internet but it didn't have english subtitle!...so hope this fourth try will be ok. i would be much better off buying the original but where can i get it? (one reason why informed pirates are neccessary)

7: No direction home Bob dylan - a film by martin scorsese

8: the name of the rose - adaptation of umberto eco's novel by jean jaques annaud

9: boccaccio '70 -4 segments from de sica, fellini, monicelli and visconti

10: sid and nancy - an old film on the notorious (and dead) sid vicious of the sex pistol and his gal nancy spungen

11: the mission - the film that won the palme d'Or at cannes in 1986 dir by roland joffe - about those pests... the missionaries in the brazillian jungle

12: the conformist - Bernado bertolucci adaptation of alberto moravia's novel

13: hara kiri - a film by masaki kobayashi which i never heard off but highly recommended by the pirate . apparently also won an award at cannes in 1963

14: the big lebowski.- what can i say. coen brothers!
i've seen this film several times already but my prev copy was so crappy i hope this one is a lot better.

15: an inconvenient truth- al gore's documentary about global warming....but in truth i don't give a fuck about global warming... the way we're hating and killing each other it's about time human species gets extinct i say...

but anyway, here's a surprise (to me). the pirate has a collection of all the films by , shall we say the brat pack of the new generation film makers of malaysia...all yasmin ahmad's films are there, amir muhammad's the last communist is there, so are James lee's 'the beautiful washing machine', yuhuang's rain dogs etc. and so i bought james lee's and amir's communist and rain dogs.

i've watched the washing maschine and i must say although the film moved like a turtle the cinematography is very good and it had , what's the word...yes, atmosphere. reminds me a bit of wong kar wai's in the mood for love...and also finally get to see amir's communist. and my verdict? ok, there're little glimpses of amir's trademark humor which is er amirisque, but it looked so damned amateurish and reminds me of RTM1 or TV3 documentary . cinematograpy is terrible...i give it a D.


and books...

oh my...i think i've spent over RM 400 already. and today i came across anthony burgess's autobiography "little wilson and big god" at payless. now, i've never been interested in this writer before. but lately we get to hear quite a bit about him in some book buff circles so it kind of rub on to me too and when i read the preface and read ...as far as acknowledgements of help are concerned , i have none to make... i immediately know that he's my kind of writer. i mean he's certainly no sophie fucking kinsella...

and so i bought the book and when i came back home i did some serious research on him, which basically means i do the google and as always ended up with wiki...and my, what interesting infor i uncovered...

don't know that after he was kicked out of MCKK - the eton of the east- he ended up teaching inthe teacher's training college in KB which is actually only 1.5 miles from my home. will now go and hunt for his first novel the long day wanes the so called malayan trilogy comprising of times for a tiger, the enemy in the blanket (which is of course a direct translation of the welknown malay proverb musuh dalam selimut) and beds in the east.

a few interesting exerpts from the great wiki..

well that moved me to check my newly bought book and so there it was and i flipped to earlier page 385 and here's a little excerpt...

i was deeply sorry for rahimah who had a small wage, scant tips, and a small son named mat to look after (mat being malay short form of mohamad). i gave her what money i could , and we made love in her tiny cell that smelt of curry and himalayan bouquet while mat was at the junior koran school.

and this...

...a malay female body , musky, shapely , golden-brown, was always a delight. malay women rarely ran to fat, which was reserved to the wives of chinese towkays and was an index of prosperity...

or this (page 386)

my experience with chinese girls was mostly, alas, commercial....

it's going to be a good read.....


Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

<$BlogItemTitle$>