Last year, I listed ten great films to watch on Mother's Day (... eight actually, two titles were meant as jokes)

This year, I'll need your suggestions on what are great films to watch on Mother's Day.

Please list whatever film titles you can think of.

Now, see lots of cute Japanese actresses wishing their moms Happy Mother's Day.



P.S. Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

Two days ago (well, three, since it's already past midnight) I screened CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY to fellow film students of Waseda University. It was an all-day private screening for all film students doing their Masters to display their works.

Although it was the second film to be screened that day, I felt encouraged and flattered that it remained in people's minds until the night, when quite a few approached me to talk about it. (But then, being the only non-Japanese film in the line-up, it's impossible not to leave an impression, haha.) Many liked the Pasar Malam (night market) scenes, especially because of the vibrant colours (and I assume also because of its exoticism). And they also remarked on how different the Hainanese Chicken Rice is compared to their everyday Japanese chicken and rice dishes.

I often believe that filmmaking should transcend cultural barriers, that one should never stereotype films from a particular country. Chinese films aren't just about the martial arts epics. Japanese films aren't just about the horror films. Hollywood films aren't just about the big-budget soulless blockbusters. That's why I'm often against the idea of deliberately exoticizing your own culture just for the sake of encouraging these stereotypical views or conforming to what people like to see. It's a little insincere. And sometimes, I thought it's lazy filmmaking, it's like being pardoned for having sub-par technical or artistic values for the film 'merely because it's exotic'.

Different filmmakers should have different sensibilities based on their own cultural beliefs and upbringing, they technically should be able to make something culturally unique without trying too hard. It's the self-conscious need to flaunt one's culture and tradition that appalls me.

Nonetheless, having said that, I also disagree with the creative decision to distort reality so much for the sake of fitting genre requirements that the film ends up feeling like a pale imitation of other greater works from foreign countries. For example: When I see suit-wearing triad members prancing around in a (supposedly serious) local production, I tend to grimace because the portrayal of gangsters felt more like something referenced from a Tarantino film and (most likely) Hong Kong films. I just can't feel convinced at all.

I'm sure even Jack Neo had injected something 'Singaporean' into Fann Wong's character in AH LONG LIMITED instead of going for a shot-for-shot imitation of MY WIFE IS A GANGSTER. After all, why choose to be an inferior knock-off product anyway? Or, why compete against someone in doing what they're better at doing?

I was also curious to see what the Japanese film students in my uni are capable of doing. Their influences, their styles, the film vocabulary they use etc. So I remained in the auditorium from 11 in the morning to 7 at night (there's a lunch break and a few 10-minute breaks). I watced other works that ranged from 5 minutes to nearly an hour. Narrative shorts, non-narrative experimental stuff and a documentary. Some, unfortunately, had no English subtitles, and I found myself drifting in and out of sleep (my flu was also getting increasingly worse then) because they were dialogue-driven.

At an event like this, most were definitely determined to show their best stuff, and in terms of technical values, I have to say that everything I saw that day were at least above average. There's nothing that felt appallingly like a home video, nothing that made me go "Whaaaat? How can he be proud of this?"

It was an eclectic bunch. One put up three short trailers of a feature-length film made by a Spanish guy in Tokyo that she helped produced. Another did a making-of feature of a film that stars Eita. Then there's this directing duo who presented two of their works, which were both fantastical and effects-heavy, complete with snazzy animated interludes. I later heard that they work in an animation company, thus having the manpower to pull of what they did. There's also a half-hour fully animated short that looks just as good as any anime episode I've seen (on TV, not comparing this to the Ghibli stuff, obviously).

The last film shown was called Sketchbook. 53 minutes long. a tale of nostalgia and high school unrequited love. I spotted some heavy Shunji Iwai influences. Its director, Taka, gave out DVDs for free, and also surveys for us to fill (our thoughts on the storyline, themes etc) I asked him whether the film was autobiographical, he sheepishly said yes.





Anyway, I instantly made a decision that my thesis film here should have such cool DVD packaging as well.

After the screening ended, there was a welcome party where everyone could mingle and chat.





I was amazed by how quickly everyone cleaned things up after the party ended. In mere minutes, the long table was empty.





Nice events like this make me eager to keep my creative juices running again.

I was finding a place to have lunch in the afternoon when I saw that the main entrance of the university was packed with people with banners, and members of the media, and the police. Apparently, China's president, was coming over to Waseda University. I was mildly surprised because, while I heard of his arrival to Tokyo on TV last night and heard of his possible Waseda visit, I didn't know he was coming to Waseda today.














Aside from the FREE TIBET signs, I also saw some 'NO PANDAS' and 'NO MORE POISON DUMPINGS' signs around. Couldn't snap any pictures of those though.

Hundreds of cops were already there to keep things in control, in fact, the amount of policemen may surpass the amount of protestors.

Now, an obligatory photo of myself to prove that, yes, I was there. (not to protest, just a random passerby who was just having lunch ten minutes before before being disrupted)



There were more and more people as time went on.





Then the cops, troops of them, started marching around, shepherding the people... in a rather polite way. All of them were shouting "move forward, onegai shimasu! (please)"









Of course, while this was going on, the white-haired man in the photo below bellowed in rage, his face turning bright red, his eyes seemingly bulging out.

"WHERE'S FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN THIS COUNTRY? THERE'S NO FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN JAPAN?" He screamed at a cop. Then he switched to shouting in Japanese.



"THIS is police brutality!" He said to me, pointing at the sea of police and protestors in front of him.

We all ended up standing pretty far away. In the sky, there were numerous helicopters circling around.



"Yeah." I nodded.

"This is ridiculous! What country is this?" An Irish girl nearby said to me. "It makes me miss mine even more."

"Uh huh." I nodded.

She continued. "I was supposed to come here in two years, but now, I'm not so sure! I was cycling my way around this morning, and then some people were in my way, so I said 'sumimasen', and they replied 'SORRY'. It's all because I'm white and they assume that I can't speak Japanese!"

"Right." I nodded.

"This is really nothing. I've seen worse in my country." An Argentinean woman nearby said in wry bemusement.

Twenty minutes later, realizing that Hu Jintao wasn't arriving anytime soon, and that I've been sheperded to too far a place to get a good view of things, I started feeling bored and returned to my classes. Royksopp's ONLY THIS MOMENT music video this ain't.


Only This Moment


Updated (9th of May, 2008): Here are some videos (not uploaded by me):









Videos of the China President's speech in Waseda University:


Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Videos with Japanese translation: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

Now that it’s over, I can say this with a straight face: FROM EXPERIENCE (ahem ;) ) acting isn’t easy. There’s the nerves and it gets in the way of trying to remember your lines along with the facial expressions and body gestures that go along with them. I guess it shouldn’t be a problem for professional actors. But you know the cliché of women being able to juggle a few things at one time? Well, I don’t fit into that.
- SUANIE

Suanie, would had turned in an awards-worthy cameo in my film, CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY, recounts her experience during the shoot. Fun stuff.


Suanie undergoing make-up for CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY


(The very loving and supportive Chris Tock had also plugged Suanie and Chicken Rice Mystery two weeks ago.)

Now, less on Chicken Rice Mystery and more on the 9 other BMW SHORTIES finalists. Caleb, little brother of my friend Sebastian had taken his time to watch all ten shortlisted films on BMW SHORTIES and posted his thoughts on each and every one of them. Check them out.

Chicken Rice Mystery by Edmund Yeo
Very Malaysian with the hodgepodge of chinese dialects in it. Reminds me of home. Plot-wise, well, the ending is in one ways or another expected, as in you can ALMOST guess what is going to happen but not sure how. A child's take on his mom's one of mystery chicken rice dish.
The plot keeps you guessing continuously but can't exactly place your finger on it til the end where all is revealed and you go 'cheh, should have seen that coming'. A child's take on his mom's mystery one-off delicious chicken rice dish.

- CALEB

Once again, CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY can be viewed at the BMW Shorties website.

Photos of that particular visit can be found at my Visiting Tokyo Tower post.



Not the best of videos, most of the stuff I shot there weren't exactly that stunning to begin with. I blame it on my old broken-down camcorder, haha. On the other hand, said old broken-down camcorder still amazes me sometimes, like the 800x zoom, I have no idea it could zoom in so far!

Anyway, if you missed out the video I uploaded before the Tokyo Tower one, here's the Malaysian Gathering At Chiba video:

It was shot on the 20th of April, and edited a few days later.

Nothing much, just a 2-minute video where I try to experiment more with my favoured quick jump cuts. It was a gathering of other Monbusho scholars (I presume) from Malaysia in Chiba, a place 40 km away from the center of Tokyo. Nearly an hour's worth of train ride. (because we had to switch 3-4 lines)

I forgot to charge batteries that day, so I ended up only being able to shoot 4 mins worth of footages while on the way to Chiba, and in the end, had to switch to using my camera phone to fill up the rest of the video.

It seems that today's THE STAR had another write-up on BMW SHORTIES, and I got a special mention...





... as the only guy who wasn't in the photo with the other 9 finalists. *sigh*

The folks at DA HUANG PICTURES have set up an online shop, so you can now buy their much-talked-about festival hits and watch it at the comfort of your own living room.

Including Amir Muhammad's banned VILLAGE PEOPLE RADIO SHOW (sequel to THE LAST COMMUNIST).

There's also James Lee's WAITING FOR LOVE, which is the third movie in his 'love trilogy' (check out thoughts on BEFORE WE FALL IN LOVE AGAIN and THINGS WE DO WHEN WE FALL IN LOVE, the first two films of the trilogy) .


Before We Fall In Love Again
The critically-acclaimed LOVE CONQUERS ALL and FLOWER IN THE POCKET are available too, but don't let the title of the former fool you, it's definitely NOT a date flick...


Love Conquers All


Flower In The Pocket

So yeap, remember to check out Da Huang's online shop.

Trivia: Many cast and crew from Da Huang's productions were involved in my short film, CHICKEN RICE MYSTERY. Like Chye Chee Keong (the hapless husband who got screwed over in "Before We Fall In Love Again"), Lee Ming Wei (the elder kid in "Flower In The Pocket"), Kimmy Kiew (the teacher in "Flower In The Pocket") and even director James Lee himself :D Of course, I even had Da Huang's Miss Everything Nikki Tok herself in my production team. She was the one who took the many awesome production photos of CRM

After 3 weeks of Japanese language classes, I decided to put my newly-acquired language skills to test by going to the cinema for the first time since arriving at Tokyo. My original plan was to see IRON MAN, but since it isn't going to come out in Japan until September, I can only pick a Japanese film to watch (all other Hollywood fare were stuff that came out during the end of 2007, the newer stuff showing now are SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES and 10 000 B.C...)

I picked a film which I knew wouldn't really be too much of a challenge to understand despite my lack of Japanese language skills:

SHAOLIN GIRL.

That's the much-talked about Japanese 'Shaolin Soccer spin-off' that Stephen Chow himself had co-produced with Japan's megaproducer Chihiro Kameyama (who is behind massive hits like last year's HERO movie, the BAYSIDE SHAKEDOWN films, the UMIZARU films etc.) Since Stephen Chow's involved, he, of course, had some say on the casting, and interesting, SHAOLIN GIRL, has two Stephen Chow regulars, Lam Tze-Chung and Tin Kai-Man (former's the fat sidekick, latter's the guy who played IRON VEST in Shaolin Soccer and the no.2 guy in KUNG FU HUSTLE's Axe Gang), there's also the pretty Kitty Zhang from CJ7 (the teacher, not the kid).

The film stars the always-solid Kou Shibasaki as the protagonist, along with Yosuke Eguchi (he played Chara's long-lost brother in SWALLOWTAIL, the samurai hero in the movie within a movie in APRIL STORY, the big bro in the classic dorama HITOTSU YANE NO SHITA/ Under One Roof) and Toru Nakamura (the guy's forever a badass, you've seen him HK productions like Tokyo Raiders and Gen X cops)

Anyway, the film begins at Shaolin Temple, where Rin (Shibasaki) had just completed her training. The scene was in Mandarin, and it was amusing to see Shibasaki speak in passable Mandarin, but the Chinese lines of the (obviously Japanese) actors playing the old Shaolin Masters were barely incoherent. Behind me, I heard a few people giggling, I assume they were Chinese too.

Rin returns to Japan after her training to take over her long-deceased grandfather's dojo, only to find out that the place is broken-down and abandoned. She then seeks her grandfather's best student (Eguchi), who now runs a Chinese restaurant with bumbling assistants (Lam and Tin), and also comely waitress Minmin (Kitty Zhang). Lam and Tin's numerous dialogue in Cantonese made me giggle, but since I was the only one who giggled, I assume I was the only one in the cinema who understood Cantonese (thus meaning that the others who giggled earlier were from Mainland China, Singapore or Taiwan... just a guess)

But then, the cinema was pretty quiet, in fact, I seriously don't think there was a single time when anyone laughed at all (some barely audible chuckles, I guess). But then, SHAOLIN GIRL isn't exactly a laugh-out loud fare like Shaolin Soccer. Yet there are still numerous homage to both Shaolin Soccer and Kungfu Hustle. Just that soccer is replaced by lacrosse.

We see Minmin bringing Rin to college to join the lacrosse team, yet Rin struggles to fit in with the team despite her superhumanly Shaolin kung fu skills, she will learn cliched lessons like how to be a team player, and gradually gain the acceptance of the other team members. It's all very predictable, yet it isn't, but not in a good way.

I had wondered briefly why the film was called SHAOLIN GIRL and not SHAOLIN LACROSSE if the mainly on lacrosse? Then as the film crawled towards the halfway point, I realized that the film had too few lacrosse scenes to be a lacrosse film, and it's quite slow-paced, and nearly too long. Too many mundane stuff happening, and my problem with the pacing is compounded by the fact that 40% of the time, I had no idea what was going on since I couldn't understand the dialogue (but I could make guesses like, ah, Nakamura's college president character is a villain because he's in a big office, having conferences with sinister-looking minions, or that something has happened to Eguchi's character that made him lose his faith in martial arts) Then the film abandons a few plot strands, and shifts from the sports genre to the martial arts genre.

Some of the major martial arts setpieces towards the end were kinda entertaining, and to me, was better than the rest of the movie, which really felt meandering, aimless and manipulative (for the humour). Even so, it's not something I've never seen before in other films of this genre. Seeing Rin take on hundreds and hundreds of baddies would've been cool if director Katsuyuki Motohiro (Space Travelers, Bayside Shakedown films, Summer Time Machine Blues) didn't make the strange stylistic choice of trying to inject the sequences with pathos, putting in solemn and foreboding music instead of trying to let us really feel the badassness of those visceral moments. Since the film is also aimed for all members of the family, it's very tame, nothing like the 'HOUSE OF THE BLUE LEAVES' battle in KILL BILL VOL. 1, and not over-the-top enough to be like KUNGFU HUSTLE's ending fight scenes. Hell, even the Korean film, THE CITY OF VIOLENCE, had more exciting fighting scenes (not a good film though, but I think I may have enjoyed that more than SHAOLIN GIRL).

However, the ultimate special move she unleashed upon the 'final boss' is very WTF-ish, in fact, while in the cinema, I was mouthing that over and over again while staring at the screen... while everyone was silent, I guess the Japanese audiences have really gotten used to everything.

To me, this film is another one of those films that tried too hard to be too many things at once to please as many people as possible, but ended up not being able to deliver properly. Ultimately, this is still a feel-good family film. People bond via tai chi, bad guys have hidden secret pasts and are just one worthy opponent away from redemption, enemies don't remain as enemies etc. The end credits plays over an ending montage that will make many smile, but will also reminds me of the potential this film may have squandered.

Maybe in the past week or so, I've seen too many other superior Japanese films, I had just seen Kou Shibasaki in MAIKO-HAAAAN!!! and I think that's a vastly superior film if you're looking for a crazy comedy.

Check out the trailer and you'll know what I was talking about regarding the Shaolin Master's Mandarin skills...



One thing I do wonder is whether Kitty Zhang was dubbed, or did she really speak Japanese in the film. Or whether Tin and Lam are reprising their characters from Shaolin Soccer as well.