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• Ipod killed the mix tape...

  Sunday, Mar 14, 2010 4:34AM / Standard Entry

  I was fortunate enough to have grown up in the 80's where cassette tapes were still a fashionable thing... Remember taping songs off the radio... Everynight I sit by by Radio Cassette player, listening to the top 50, hoping to grab all the songs I wanted... 
  
  When you have a new mix tape, you play it till you either got bored off it or that the tape scratches and dies... Sometimes from tape to tape, certain songs would get carried over for one more tape... now that's the hard part... cos everyone knows when you copy tape to tape, you lose a generation of sound quality...
  
  What about making mix tapes for girls you liked, during different stages of a relationship, certain songs seems to fit together better than others... after awhile, some begin to lose meaning and gets lost when a new tape is made...
  
  During my University years, CD became a common thing, you didn't have to put as much effort into making a mixed CD as opposed to a mixed tape... It was my final year in Uni when Ipods came around... I held out for as long as I could not getting one... cos a CD holds 23 songs at best and when you make a new mixed CD, you have to be very careful with your song selection... My sister got an Ipod and it holds 500 songs... Why would I want 500 songs when I can pick 23 of the best ones I like... it didn't make sense to me...
  
  Nowadays giving a girl a mixed tape says two things... 1) You are really old, 2) you are a weirdo... this is one of those things that technology made obsolete, so now what do you do when you want to give a girl a bunch of songs you like... buy an Ipod, download the songs onto it and give it to her? It just seems pointless now... she'd be saying in her head, hey man, I already got an Ipod, why would I want another one... and if you want me to listen to the songs... just give me the names and I can download them myself...
  
  I do own an Ipod... in fact I own 3, they are all 2 gig versions of the Ipod shuffle... it holds about 300 songs and it's good enough for me... I keep a bunch of sappy love songs in one... the metal/alternative in another for when I hit the gym... the third one I use to listen to podcasts... It might sound stupid, but I am happy carrying around 3 pods with me whereever I go... This way I can go back to the routines of the old days where you have to make a bunch of decisions everytime you sync your pod, you can do it by the mood you are in at that particular moment and put in songs that puts you in that mood... 
  
  The Ipod also changed the way we listen to music and also the way music is made, back in the Tape days, when you listen to a song, you let it play out, cos you know fast forwarding will scratch the tape... Listening to music on an Ipod gives you the power to skip ahead, so when you get a bunch of new songs on your Ipod, you listen to the first 20 seconds of the song, if the melody doesn't catch your attention, you skip ahead... Music makes knows this, that's why more and more songs written nowadays have the lyrics come in almost immediately to make sure you don't skip forward... To me, that is just sad...
  
  Here is one of those songs about making a mix tape from the 90's the end of the mix tape era...
  
  Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MELV6h9JPE
  

  
  
  
  
  

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• JURY DUTY!!! 7 million people in HK, I get picked!

  Thursday, Mar 11, 2010 5:20PM / Standard Entry

  Thing about a lottery system is that the more you want it to happen, the more the odds are stacked against you... Think about it, everytime you are at in a large crowd holding raffle tickets, you are hoping it's you that gets called, and when they call the name, it's always someone who has a hotdog in his hand, with his ticket in his pocket with his change, he doesn't know he's won and his friends are telling him he won and he doesn't want to walk up to the stage to claim the prize cos it's too emberressing and all the while in your mind you are thinking, why not me... This happened to me at Ekka when I was 12, a Brisbane reference for those of you who are in the know...
  
  Just like the Mark 6 lottery... people who buys a ticket every week will tell you they have won 4th prize 9 times and 3rd prize 3 times, it's the guy who buys a ticket one time at a party to help add to the pot that wins the 1st prize...
  
  So I get a letter from the government today, and when you do get a letter from the government it's never good... Because there it's only one of two things they want from you... 1)  telling you to pay up, 2)  telling you do something about things leaking... like an air conditioner drain vent or something to do with the toilet, things that concern everyone else but me...
  
  I pray for things that I know I probably won't get easily, like a suitcase full of non sequential unmarked hundred dollar notes... A really hot girl who doesn't know she's hot who happens to like me for me... No one wishes they get jury duty notice...
  
  The first line in the letter is this, "It appears you are a person - (a) qualified to serve as a juror and (b) can not be exempt from service as a juror under Section 5... They know they are being a huge hair in your ass crack here, by saying we know you don't want this, but it seems that you have none of the criterias that qualifies you to be exempt... sorry dude...
  
  Section 5 is a two page document listing the possible excuses you can use if you don't want to be a jury member... examples are that 'You already are a judge or your spouse is a judge..." and "I am the pilot of a commercial airliner..." and "I am a member of the press who will probably leak shit to the media cos it's my duty to leak shit..."  Finally here is a good one... "If you are in an Islamic/Jewish/Muslim congregation..." So basically if you want to get out of jury duty, you need to be the wife of a judge who flies planes for a living who hates pork and is also very religious to the point where simple minded folks will profile you as a terrorist and be concerned that you may lack moral fibre and all the while have really loose lips and likes to gossip a lot...
  
  What's worst is that the Jury picking system is supposed to be random, but it is never random... those with criminal records are taken out of the pool, those with disabilities are take out, those with extreme right or left wing political views are out, those who are in the public eye are out... so what the computer is saying by picking me is that I am none of those things, which means I am common folk...
  
  I refuse to be labelled as a common folk... and before you say something, I already tried the "me no speak the cantonese" one... language is not an exemption criteria... To be looked at as common is like saying I have nothing to offer besides being peer presured into giving a verdict that sends a tax evading businessman to 3 months in jail and lets everyone home ealier...
  
  Then I thought about it... What if I get to be one of 12 jurors who decides the fate of a child molester, teachers who have sex with their students, priests who touch little kids... don't I have a responsibility to serve my city by putting these people away... I would kindly give up a week of my life to do put away kiddly fiddlers... but what if I get picked to be a juror of one of those big time cases where some fortune teller scams billions from a lonely widow who happens to own a publicly traded company... then I'd be there for a year and a half on and off... and no one wants that... with cases like that you are pushing the principle of the matter... if the fortune teller has the mojo to satisfy a lonely widow then good for them, god knows how hard it is to find a mate in this day and age...
  
  Now look, as far as appearances go... I may appear on the outside to be an up standing member of society... but inside... inside... I am something else... and here is why I shouldn't be considered to be a jury member... I root for the bad guys in movies to get away with their crimes... I admire serial killers who don't get caught for decades and is still active with arrest warrants out on them from 10 different states... I am also on a very high protein diet, which keeps me very windy all day long... not to mention the lower back pain that I get when I sit for too long... which leads me to fidgit in my seat a lot... And what's more is that you don't want the fate of someone's life in the hands of someone like me, cos I'll tell ya, I don't much care about other people in general... I keep a copy of Albert Camus' "The Stranger" in my back pack to remind myself of that fact... I prefer that killers get away with murder and is released from prison and catches the swine flue and dies 3 weeks later... I am all for divine justice, but procedural justice in a court room? not so much...
  
  Let me know if you got ny ideas of possible excuses that might help me...
  
  
  

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• Anatomy of a Crime Scene...

  Tuesday, Feb 23, 2010 12:56AM / Standard Entry

  Today was just like any other day, I slept in a little bit... woke up and saw that it was 1pm already... don't judge me, I was watching UFC 110 and it's hard to fall asleep after seeing one broken leg and 3 knockouts in one night...
  
  I was hungrier than usual at this time of day and got dressed quickly. I have been living out of my office of late which is a unit in one of the many industrial buildings in Fotan. Before I left, I checked the weather report and it says it's 20 degrees outside. Stepping out onto the street I realized I had been lied to by the weather bureau again, it was 15 at best...
  
  Everyday I wake up wishing the weather report would be at least close to reality and it never is... I was cold, hungry and I hurried into my local Cafe de Coral only to realize that they stopped serving lunch... I check my watch and saw that it was in fact 3pm, this tells me that the battery of the clock at the office must have run dry.
  
  Carrying my club sandwich to go, I walked out onto the street and saw two police cars blocking the street. I approached the first police van and as I stepped towards the front of the van I saw that a green camping tent has been erected in the middle of the street. No one seems to be taking any notice of it, the cops were standing there, chatting like it was no big thing. As I walked closer to the tent I knew that I was stepping towards a crime scene... the tent was pretty big, in a rectangular shape... but it wasn't big enough to cover what they didn't want the pedestrians to see... I stopped facing the tent about 10 feet away and took off my headphones... I can hear the sound of blood dripping into the drain by my feet... As I looked up, there it was, a pool of blood seeping out from under the tent...
  
  An old woman in front of me looked up to the adjacent building and right then an there watching her do that... my legs gave way... I tried to walk it off, trying to stay calm... this was the closest I have been to a dead body... It was very strange, because it seems like the old woman and I were the only ones who noticed what was going on... no one else on the street seems to be paying any attention to the massive pool of blood... At the time, the blood didn't look real to me, it was bright pink instead of red...
  
  I walked home with my sandwich and sat down, I couldn't really bring myself to eat it, and I felt like I needed to call someone and tell them about it... the first person that came to mind was my mom so I dialed, she didn't answer... For half an hour, I saw flashes of the tent, the blood and the old woman looking up at the roof of the building... I wondered... was it a man or a woman... did he or she jump off the roof or was it a hit and run...?
  
  I ate my sandwich and went to the gym where my parents lived and before I got onto the bike, my heart was already beating like mad, I tried to block out the image of the dripping blood from my mind, but it was all that I could think about... I went down to Shatin to have dinner with my sister and I told her the story pretty much the same way I described in the above text... she looked at me and the first thing she said was... "Oh... what a poor doggy..."
  
  Hearing me describe the incident, she thought that I was talking about a dog being hit by a car... and right then and there... my sinuses cleared and I started laughing... It must have been a dog I thought, if it was a human body, the cops would have been interviewing people on the street, there would be CSIs there collecting evidence... instead of people going about their day, not giving a care in the world...
  
  Dinner tonight was one of the best meals I ever tasted, it was as if a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders... the tension in my chest has gone away... I took the train back to Fotan and walked back towards my office... I was dreading going back to the "Crime Scene" all day, but by then I didn't really care... after all it was just a dog I told myself...
  
  Coming out of the train station, I see the the tent and the cops were gone, there were no cars around so I walked onto the street and saw that the blood has been cleaned and cleared... that is when I saw a person sitting by the curb and one look at that person, my legs gave way again... there he or she was, sitting at the curb, expressionless, putting incense sticks into 5 tiny pots, lighting them one by one... I felt my heart sink into my stomach, I took one more look at those incense pots, I can see that there were flowers laying beside them...
  
  It wasn't a dog after all... I got back to the office and I wanted to call my sister to tell her the truth... then I thought about it and realized, all those people walking by the crime scene today thought that it was probably a dog... for a moment there so did I... if I didn't decide to walk back to the scene tonight, I would probably go on thinking it was a dead dog rather than somebody's son... somebody's daughter or somebody's friend... All these people will be able to sleep tonight not knowing...
  
  Whoever that was sitting by the curb lighting those incense stick, I really hope that he or she would be okay, I really wish the weather would be warmer tomorrow for their sake... because there is nothing worst than waking up the day after the death of a family member, walking out onto the street without a sweater and realize that you have been lied to once again... by the weather bureau...
  
  
  

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• The meaning of being "Independent"...

  Sunday, Jan 10, 2010 11:49PM / Standard Entry

  In 1998, a film called "Pi" won the best director award at the Sundance film festival and launched the career of an important director, Darren Aronofsky who later directed "Requiem for a dream"and recently made the "Wrestler". Here is a director who didn't forget his Independent roots...
  
  "Pi" was made with a minimal crew for $65,000 USD, the film was about a math genius who built a machine in his apartment that can predict the stock market... then 10 years later, came the "Wrestler"... and Micky Rouke wasn't Aronofsky's first choice, in fact, it was Nicholas Cage who chased down Aronofsky wanting to play the lead role of "Randy the Ram"... with a big name like Nicholas Cage, Aronofsky could have made the movie with $25 million USD, but after meeting with Rouke, he realized, the character not only was a better fit for Rouke, it also mirrored what Rouke was going through with his own career and he decided to cast Rouke, by dropping Cage, his budget went from $25 mil to $2 mil USD. A lesser director would have gone for the money, but Aronofsky stuck to his guns and the end result was a Oscar worthy perfromance from Rouke the film also rejuvinated Aronofsky's career after the disappointing "The Fountain"...
  
  In 2004, Shane Carruth directed "Primer", a film made for $7000 USD, with himself and his friend playing the lead roles, shooting on 16 mm film, he shot the film over a series of weekends on a ratio of almost 1 to 1, meaning he shot only one take of every shot and edited with everythiing he shot. He edited on his Mac using "imovie", the film later won Best Picture at Sundance... Although Carruth haven't made a film since, "Primer" has been named by critics as a great Science Fiction in the likes of Kubrick's "2001"... The film, about an inventer duo who created a time travel machine in their garage and began exploring going back and forth in time.
  
  To me, "Primer" was the last film that can truely be called Independent... these days, you hear directors say how difficult it is to be Independent and stay in the indie film scene... they are not talking about raising money from family and friends, spending 3 years on rehearsing with the actors and shooting the film over 10 days, then edit it on weekends for another 3 years to end up with a VHS copy of the film that somehow ended up in the hands of a critic from the Village Voice who recommended the film to Sundance...
  
  These days, being independent means that you wrote a script, and travel to film festivals pitch meetings, pitching to potential producers over 3 day conferences, if you are good at socializing and making connections, then you may end up meeting a producer or an agent who decide to take on your script and may be even you as a director. What follows is months of script development and trying to secure presales...
  
  This is the part that conflicts with the Independent spirit... Preseeling your film worldwide to gather enough money to make your film... Preselling means you send your script to distribution companies all over the world and they from looking at your script, will decide whether they will distribute the end product for you when the film is made. Since we are talking about new directors here, most distributors will try to minimise risk by choosing only commercially viable projects since you as the new director have nothing to show for it.
  
  This is a common practice when it comes to film financing these days, it makes perfect sense for funding bodies, because it sets them up for a guranteed breakeven point. Thats why most film festivals now becomes a meat market, if you can write a cool and attractive synopsis, you are half way through the door... if your film takes more than 3 sentences to get to the hook, then better luck next year...
  
  What we forget is that SCRIPT is still king and should always be KING... it is the quality of the script that gets your film made, not how good you are at marketing yourself... Rod Lurie was a lowly film critic who wanted desperately to make a movie with actress Joan Allen... He got his chance to meet Allen at a film festival and mustered up the courage to talk to her, telling her in their conversation that he has written a script that he thought would be perfect for her, she gave Lurie her contact details, it was when he went home that night, looking at Allen's contact info that he sat down and started writing what eventually became "The Contender" a story about a female vice presidential candidate's journey into the white house...
  
  A few months later, Allen received "The Contender" script and after reading it, loved it and agreed to do it. Allen helped Lurie put together a producing team that helped Lurie get in touch with actors like Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman... both agreed to play roles in the film for no money saying that if Joan Allen wants to make this film, we want to be in it. They were able to raise $2million USD and began production WITHOUT a distributor or any presale... it was after their debut at Sundance that Lurie went home and realized, the easy part of making the film is done, now it's time to go out there to make the investers their money back... but it didn't take long, because waiting for him in his answering machine is a message from Dreamworks, the lady on the phone said that Steven Spielberg wants to talk to him. When Lurie called back, Spielberg was on the other line, saying he wants to buy and distribute "The Contender"...
  
  This is a story about people who believed in their work so strongly that they are willing to risk their time, money and effort on a story that would have fallen through the cracks as a one page synopsis inside a 200 page film festival program buried deep in the "Pitch" section... It was Lurie's script that moved Joan Allen, it was Allen's passion for the project that moved Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman, it was the gamble these artists took that moved Robert Redford and later on, Steven Spielberg. But Rod Lurie remains one of the many hardworking and talented directors that no one knows about. Then we see films like "Juno" get to the main stage because of Diablo Cody's colorful background as a stripper... "Juno" was a fine film, don't get me wrong, but "The Contender" is a cut above the rest...
  
  Being Independent means you risk everything you have on a chance, an off chance that you may get to make a great film. Being idependent means you may lose everything you are risking but you still go forward because you believe in your work so much that you are willing to die with your script. The Director of "In the Soup" Alexandre Rockwell once said that the independent spirit died when "Glitter" premiered at Sundance and Mariah Carey represented her film by showing up in Park City Utah wearing pink hot pants and knee high leather boots in snow...
  
  For me, the independent spirit dies when you make mock up versions of your film's poster before the script is even written... it dies when your project gets an article in Variety before the deal memo has even been signed... It's truely dead when you show up to a pitch meeting with backup ideas or more than one script in your backpack... I have been guilty of all three and will probably continue to carry a few scripts with me to festivals... so next time you tell people you are an independent filmmaker... stop for a moment and think, am I deserving enough to call myself an independent filmmaker... or am I anything and everything but...
  
  
  

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• To Tap or Not to Tap?

  Wednesday, Jan 6, 2010 12:07AM / Standard Entry

  I have been a Mixed Martial Arts fan for many years, and over the years watching the different shows, one thing stands out, Japanese fighters rarely "tap out" to submissions such as chokes, armbars or kneebars...
  
  They say it is their "Bushido" (warrior) spirit that tells them, if they were to lose, then they should die on the battlefield... for those of you who don't know what I am talking about, tapping to an opponent's submission attempt means you are accepting defeat, so that your opponent will then stop doing further damage to you.
  
  Here is the fight from the news years eve MMA event called Dynamite in Japan, it shows one of the fighters displaying his belief in the Bushido spirit and his very high threshold to pain as well...
  
  The victor of the fight, Shinya Aoki, is the best light weight fighter in the world right now, not only did he take home the win and the paycheck that night, he also took his opponent's arm with him... you've been warned...
  
  Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0S6m2_DM6I
  

  
  
  
  
  

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