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  • What are your Top 10 favorite films of all time?

    Monday, Nov 19, 2007 10:38PM / Standard Entry

    Hey fellow AnDers,

     

           I haven’t found any running Top 10 lists/Listmania going on AnD, thought I might start one, see if it will catch on… Will try to put up new subjects week to week. To begin, an easy one for me… What are your top 10 favorite films of all time?

     

    My Top 10 Films are...        1)      Boogie Nights 

                                                    2)      Swingers

                                              3)      Nil By Mouth                 

                                              4)      Magnolia                        

                                              5)      Amores Perros                          

                                              6)      Chopper

                                              7)      Sexy Beast

                                              8)      Requiem for a Dream   

                                              9)   Bad Lieutenant

                                              10)  American Psycho

     

     

     


  • Aaron Kwok MV 《舞林正傳》is finally here...

    Sunday, Oct 28, 2007 4:30AM / Standard Entry


    Video:
    Hi Everyone at AnD,

     

              Before we look at the final product, let’s take a quick lesson in the truest truism of all, none is more true than “The Customer is Always Right”. Since Aaron is playing a waiter in this video, I think he would agree with me on that…

     

     

    As new directors, we have no bargaining power to ask for final cut, and in the Hong Kong entertainment industry, many experienced film directors don’t have control over editing either. So it’s up to the producer or the person who paid you to decide in what shape the audience will be viewing your work.

     

    I have to admit, I am a film person, I want to tell stories, so as a rookie music video director, I knew I favored the storyline more than just loud visuals. So I worked with the CG team of the movie “Naraka 19” to make some interesting visuals to balance the two. I had edited a version with a storyline between Aaron and the waitress, where in the end the audience finds out they are both in each other’s dream world…

     

    Sadly a decision was made to abandon my version and out came the version which you are about to see… Hence the expression, “The Customer is Always Right!”

     

    For now, my director’s cut will stay neatly tucked away inside my computer in ones and zeros form. Hopefully one day, people will get to see it…

     

    Enjoy…

     

    Daniel

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf05OlCUG8U


  • Elliott Smith, A Fond Farewell...

    Tuesday, Oct 23, 2007 3:12AM / Standard Entry

    21/10/2007 marks the 4th anniversary of singer/songwriter Elliott Smith’s death… I am surprised to find that his death is currently still an "open case", with the police no closer to solving the case.

    Below is an article about the mystery that surrounds his death, raising questions about his weapon of choice... 

    The mysterious death of Mr. Misery…

    No one was too surprised when Elliott Smith - a boozy, druggy Oscar-nominated folk singer who had talked openly about killing himself - was found dead. But then the coroner's report raised a chilling new possibility: murder.

     

    No one could honestly claim to be surprised when they heard Elliott Smith had committed suicide. Plenty of folky singer-songwriters have a reputation for making introspective, melancholy music, but none quite like Smith's. To some critics he was Mr Misery - a pun on Miss Misery, the song from the soundtrack of Good Will Hunting for which he was Oscar-nominated in 1998. He was the "unhappiest man in the land", a singer you didn't so much listen to as commiserate with.

     

    According to his friend, singer Mary Lou Lord, Smith was the heir to the tragic mantle of her former boyfriend, Kurt Cobain: he was making records for "the sad kids". His gloom was more than sulky posturing: when Smith sang about heroin addiction or alcoholism or depression, he was singing about things he had experienced first-hand.

     

    The cover of his second, eponymous solo album, released in 1995, features a grainy image of bodies falling from a high building. Another, 1996's Either/Or, was named after a book by Kierkegaard, in which the philosopher posited that the aesthete would eventually find himself in a state of despair. As one tribute article wryly noted, you couldn't say that Smith didn't warn you.

     

    That is not to say the circumstances of his death were not shocking. On Tuesday, October 21, 2003, Smith apparently had an argument with his girlfriend, fellow musician Jennifer Chiba, at their home in Silverlake, Los Angeles. As the row got worse, Smith threatened to commit suicide.

     

    Like most of Smith's close friends, Chiba was used to him making melodramatic threats about ending his life. After all, this was a man who, when he decided to relocate from Portland to Brooklyn in the late 1990s, bade farewell to his Oregon friends by informing them that it was likely he would never see them again because he was "probably going to kill himself".

     

    Chiba ignored him and locked herself in the bathroom. She then heard a scream. Returning to the living room, she found Smith standing with his back to her. When he turned around, she saw a kitchen knife sticking out of his chest. Smith had stabbed himself in the heart. Despite emergency surgery, he was pronounced dead 20 minutes after arriving at hospital. He was 34 years old.

     

    Never lost for an opinion, Courtney Love called it "the best suicide I ever heard of". Although killing yourself in this way is uncommon - according to the LA Coroner's Office that dealt with Smith's death, less than 4% of suicides in 2001 and 2002 were due to "sharp force trauma", and most of those were wrist-slashings - it is not entirely unknown. You turn the knife sideways and plunge it between the ribs. It is an extremely painful way to die, a last resort for people so low they no longer care about themselves…

     

    [Strangely enough, Courtney Love was a one time suspect in Kurt Cobain's apparent suicide, is she trying to tell us something?]


  • Coming Up Roses… Everyday...

    Thursday, Oct 11, 2007 6:49AM / Standard Entry

    Dear AnDers…

     

                A few of our fellow AnD resident artists threw me a little birthday gathering last night. From the left we have Rachel Tan, an up and coming actress, beside her is Derek Tsang who like me, is breaking into the industry as a writer/director, next is Johnny Chen, whom we call the “Hong Kong Keanu Reeves”, beside me to the right is Lloyd Chan, my screenwriting partner on a new film project called “Coming Up Roses” and to his right is legendary film producer and Jackie Chan’s manager Uncle Willie. We attempted to barbeque our own food but it started to rain, so we got take out instead... All in all it was a fun night...

     

     

     

    I got a copy of “The Secret” DVD as a present (Not the Jay Chou Pianist movie) but a documentary about how we can all control our own destiny by thinking what we want and believing it will happen, all the while sending out positive thoughts and vides and the universe will make the rest happen for us… What it is I think is a prolonged birthday candle wish, like making a wish all day long… Do check out this site http://www.thesecret.tv/

     

    Lloyd and I are awaiting a decision from a studio on “Coming Up Roses”... Derek has an important meeting this week… Rachel is looking forward to her big break and Johnny is writing an epic screenplay… Please send out positive vibes/thoughts for us all… Try it for yourself, see if your all day long birthday candle wish will come true… In the mean time, don’t forget to check out their pages too.

     

    Lloyd Chan      - http://www.alivenotdead.com/?cominguproses

    Johnny Drama  - http://www.alivenotdead.com/23325

    Rachel Tan       - http://www.alivenotdead.com/33193

    Derek Tsang     - http://www.alivenotdead.com/32986

     

    The project “Coming Up Roses” is inspired by an Elliott Smith song of the same name, below are the lyrics… The song really sums up what it means to be struggling in doing what you love to do most...

     

    Wish all of you the best of luck in finding your Roses…

     

    Daniel

     

    "Coming Up Roses" by Elliott Smith

    I'm a junkyard full of false starts
    And I don't need your permission
    To bury my love
    Under this bare light bulb

    The moon is a sickle cell
    It'll kill you in time
    Your cold white brother all right in your blood
    Like spun glass in sore eyes

    While the moon does its division, you're buried below
    And you're coming up roses everywhere you go
    Red roses follow

    The things that you tell yourself
    They'll kill you in time
    Your cold white brother alive in your blood
    Spinning in the night sky

    While the moon does its division, you're buried below
    And you're coming up roses everywhere you go
    Red roses

    So you got in a kind of trouble that nobody knows
    It's coming up roses everywhere you go
    Red roses


  • We're born on the same day!

    Tuesday, Oct 9, 2007 12:07AM / Standard Entry

    Hey Everyone at AnD!
     
    My birthday is on the 10/10, and I'll be 26. Though I don’t feel old, my body seems to be telling me otherwise. Anyway, I realized I am born on the same day as the play write Harold Pinter and the singer Anita Miu…
     
    So I checked out this site http://www.historyorb.com/ and found I am born on the same day as a lot of “writers”, “Singers” and... well...  “NFL football players”… I am a screenwriter by trade, so I guess it’s 33% true what they say, that people born on the same day may have similar interest or even lead similar lives…
     
    How about you guys… any proof that the old saying is true? Who do you share a birthday with? And are you very much alike? Anyone dating or married someone born on the same day?
     
    Daniel
     

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Stats

  • Chan was born in Hong Kong in 1981 and grew up in Brisbane, Australia. He wrote, directed and produced his first English feature film ‘Half Lit’《暗火》in 2003, It was hailed by critic Dr...

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  • Occupation:  DirectorScreenwriterFilm/TV Producer
  • Age: 28
  • Gender: Male
  • Total visits: 52,286

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