The Inconsequential Post

I've recently gotten into the habit of jotting down little notes in Blogger on stuff I want to blog about and saving them as drafts, so I can flesh them out later when I'm in the mood to write. This probably started from transposing my notes on the US trip, and has continued since then.

So now I find I have two drafts sitting there. There's a more serious one where I try to take a Cold Hard Look at what the fuck I'm doing with myself, and one with more trivial, inconsequential stuff. Guess which one this is?

I went to a lecture and a part of a symposium on Hou Hsiao Hsien last week. The lecture by The Man himself was really enjoyable, because even though he's pretty old, he's still damned cool and laid back. The lecture really gave an insight into his personality and what he finds important in his movies - truth. Everything has to be truthful to the situation and the times, down to the dialects used. The actors have to be true to the moment, and he has no qualms about changing his script around to enable them to give better performances, eg. removing one actor's dialogue altogether, which I think is pretty bold.

I also liked the way he subtly gave the finger to egghead academics by digressing constantly from the lecture topic he was given (The Importance of Dialects in His Films), and making jokes about the whole thing. He clearly wasn't entirely comfortable with "lecturing", and his easygoing manner made the whole affair seem very informal and more like a chat, which was perfect, in my opinion.

Talking about egghead academics, have I mentioned how much they disgust me? I never was one for film academia, and opted out of so many film theory courses because I couldn't stand to over-analyze everything. A little bit is fine, but in so many classes you're made to read these self-important masturbatory essays written with the sole objective of showing off the author's solid grasp of a thesaurus. Ugh. And I like reading meanings into films, but you don't have to overdo it by looking at every little detail and seeing loads of hidden meaning behind everything. They often see much more than what was originally intended, or more laughably, an accident on set or a compromise the director had to make is viewed with dead seriousness and pages and pages devoted to it without knowing anything of the circumstances. With a film, I think you have to look at the larger picture, what the film is as a complete entity, or you're just missing the forest for the trees.

This is not to diss #1 or anything though, I know you love film theory, and I think your interpretations are pretty cool, because they're different. These people though... they can fill a whole book with bullshit.

Anyway, I've decided to stop writing on every movie I see. So often I just don't feel anything much after a movie anymore, and what's the point of writing unless I feel strongly about it?

The Hidden Blade is pretty good though. An old-fashioned, classic feel samurai flick about Honor, Dignity, Integrity, Courage and all these Themes. It's by the guy who did The Twilight Samurai, and while it's not as good as the latter, it's still pretty damn good. I mean, he did set the bar pretty high for himself.

I finally got some attachment lenses for my Powershot G5 - a wide-angle attachment and a telephoto one. I remember being pissed in the US because I didn't have a telephoto (very often) or a wide-angle lens (only in the Grand Canyon). Now I have them. They were a very impulsive buy, and set me back quite a bit, but hey, I wanted to be sure I got decent pictures at the David Tao mini-concert.

Which was kind of a letdown. A late start is expected, but to only perform four or five songs is pretty lame. Silly games are a waste of time too. I dunno, they might be entertaining to little screamy teenage girls, but they're just tiresome to me. Also, the telephoto attachment wasn't as powerful as I thought, the improvement was rather mild.







Yes, there are more pictures of the opening act (Wild - what a lame name for a girl group) than of David Tao. But then they're scantily-clad ladies playing instruments, which is way hotter than he is.