Yoo Un-Seong and the Jeonju International Film Festival

I received an email just now from Yoo Un-Seong, former programmer of the Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea.

Remembering Sam Raimi's original Spider-man trilogy

I saw THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN two nights ago and enjoyed it.

Because of that, and also because of this video below, I am prompted to revisit the original Spider-man trilogy by Sam Raimi.

Observing the observation deck of Haneda Airport at night

This is the story of a man marked by an image from his childhood. The violent scene, whose meaning he would not grasp until much later, took place on the great jetty at Orly, a few years before the start of the Third World War.

On Sundays, parents bring their children to watch the planes... Of this Sunday, the child of this story would remember the frozen sun, the scene at the end of the jetty. Moments to remember are just like other moments. They are only made memorable by the scars they leave. The face he had seen was to be the only peacetime image to survive the war. Had he really seen it? Or had he invented the tender gesture to shield him from the madness to come? The sudden noise, the woman's gesture, the crumpling body, the cries of the crowd. Later, he knew he had seen a man die.

I have never been to the observation deck of Haneda Airport before. So last night, before heading to the gates, I decided to take a look.

A movie leading to a dream leading to an imagined movie...

Last night, he started to watch a film by one of his favourite Hong Kong directors, Johnnie To. It had nothing to do with the fact that it was Hong Kong's 15th anniversary handover, it just happened that he wanted to watch a familiar Hong Kong film with familiar Hong Kong actors. The film, ROMANCING IN THIN AIR, was a romantic drama with familiar trappings, part-NOTTING HILL, part-UPSIDE OF ANGER (he didn't know he could still remember this film), part-anything Nicholas Sparks.

That's how the first half of 2012 ended. Lovely.

The second half of 2012 sort of sneaked up on me. As I was walking home this morning at 4am, I was struck by how pink the sky was. The first rays of the sun were lighting up the sky.

Interview with me on the Pia International Film Festival website

This Japanese interview with me was done last November and had been posted on the PIA International Film Festival website.

I feel bad that I am posting old news, I never liked clinging to past glories. But for the sake of preservation, and just in case I cannot find the interview anymore, at least I will have records of it here.

7 years ago, some guy wrote a novella in 24 hours

In August 2005, I participated in something called Blogathon, a 24-hour blogging marathon for charity. In the span of 24 hours, participants had to write a new post every 30 minutes. For a pre-Twitter/ Facebook era, that was quite a difficult thing to do.

The Films of Edward Yang

The Taiwanese director Edward Yang had been one of my biggest influences.

He died of cancer at the age of 60 exactly 5 years ago, on the 29th of June, 2007.

A few filmmaker friends of mine like Ying Liang and Eva Tang had posted the video below on Facebook to mark this occasion.

Rest In Peace, Nora Ephron

I was slightly saddened when I learned of screenwriter director Nora Ephron's passing yesterday right after I woke up. She had been ill with leukemia for a while.

As you may have noticed from my blog posts this year. Often when a filmmaker dies, I find myself pondering the body of work that they have left, and my memories of them.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA film series were cinematic masterpieces

It all happened yesterday evening, when two friends of mine were reliving memories of old Jet Li films on Youtube.

BUDDYZ TV Spots (a TV series of 5-minute episodes I directed for Astro Ria)

I mentioned about BUDDYZ last month, it's a Malay TV series of 5-minute episodes that I directed back in March starring Alif Satar, Syed Ali, Erin Malek and Elliza Razak, with special guest appearances by Shaheizy Sam (the guy pretty much appeared in almost every single episode as a different character).

Although I worked very closely with my editor and producers for the post-production (I returned to Tokyo right after the shoot, so had to do everything via email or Twitter), I haven't watched the finished work. So it was quite interesting to monitor what viewers thought of the series via Twitter. Was very flattered to see an increasing amount of tweets for the show, and that many of them had nice things to say about it. (obviously, BUDDYZ is a clear departure from the melancholic and "arthouse" films that I've always been making).

The final 16th episode is airing on TV tonight at 8:55pm (with repeats at 11pm)

UPDATED: Adding a playlist featuring both the first and second seasons of Buddyz