Alexander Mcqueen gown @ Sienna Miller

Spring Chic

Vera Wang, Matthew Williamson, Milly, Monique Lhuillier, Stella McCartney, Versace, and Burberry Prorsum dresses @ Mila Kunis

Asos shoes

(Thanks Prikazna!)

Moschino necklace

(Thanks Fever_Cole!)

D&G dress

(Thanks Fever_Cole!)

Jason Wu dress

(Thanks Fedy193721!)

Moschino dress & shoes

(Thanks john2_el_mejor!)

Temperley London outfit

(Thanks Fakeshake3!)

Asos tops

(Thanks Fakeshake3 , Hunnigall & Ms.Brigitte!)

Forever 21 cardigan
(Thanks Summerkiss_24!)

Vera Wang dress

Matthew Williamson gown

Milly Dress

Monique Lhuillier dress

Stella McCartney dress

Versace gown and shoes
(Thanks John2_el_mejor!)

Burberry Prorsum dress and belt
(Thanks Ms.Brigitte!)

Singapore Short Film Awards - Brazil by Philothea Liau

"Doesn't the synopsis for Brazil give away the whole story?" asked a friend. Yes, it does, but that's not the point to the 5-min short. See, Brazil opens with a close-up on a boy's face as his tears well up and begin to fall, but the film doesn't use this arresting image to throw us into the thick of its plot. Rather, it cuts away to a huddle of schoolboys plowing their hands through a box of erasers at a stationery shop, leaving us wondering whether we've been flashed foward or back in the storyline, and wondering how this relates to whatever incident it was that could bring a boy to tears.

The erasers being fought over are the familiar rectangular ones with country flag designs; I felt a pang of nostalgia upon seeing them, recalling the flipping games my classmates used them to play back in primary school. The best moments of Brazil stick to this register, relying on our memories of what it felt to think like a schoolkid. Indeed, the boys aren't digging for just any eraser but for one design in particular, the one that gives the film its title. When one boy has found the prize, the rest stop searching and watch glumly as he pays for it and leaves. The film choreographs that the Brazil eraser is most valued, but it doesn't matter why; the point here is that our emotional investments as kids are quite overblown. The film's final shot loops back to its first, so that we discover the cosmic joke being played on the boy's feelings, and on our expectations for what that involves.

Since the time I last saw Brazil, I have become far more convinced that its basic strength lies in the intrigue and humour of these shots that bookend the film: a testament more to the writing than to actor Damus Lim, nominated for his expert crying performance at the S'pore Short Film Awards. The scenes in the film's middle don't demand much from Damus, though he acquits himself far better than his stilted schoolmates. This ungenerous label applies more to the throng of prospective buyers after his Brazil eraser, and less to the two chubby bullies that block his path. A single take alternates between the bullies' faces as they shout unmenacing threats in their kiddy voices ("You blind ah!"), and helps rather than harms this enjoyable lark of a schoolkid's world writ large.


This review was originally written in Dec '09; it has been edited and expanded for the Singapore Short Film Awards in Jan '10.

Singapore Short Film Awards - Swimming Lesson by Kat Goh

How often do we find local films shot as confidently as Swimming Lesson? The whole film is composed almost entirely out of breathless long takes—one take per scene—thus trapping us in the drama of a family sending a girl off to study overseas. We kick off at home, where grandpa watches a televised swimming match. Behind him, in a flurry of well-blocked activity, a mother fusses to her daughter over the travel adaptors she needs to pack, and to her husband over the time they must leave the house, while the targets of her fussing themselves shuffle around the living room with muffled exasperation. In this take alone, we get to know what everyone feels about the trip at hand (in descending order of worry: mother, father, daughter, grandpa). We can predict, then, that the mother's nagging will persist through the following scenes, pushing tensions to a threshold. We even bump into clichés like "we're wasting time" blame-shifting, and painstakingly prepared bottles of bird's nest soup.

For me, Swimming Lesson handily defeats these obstacles by offering a few striking moments of respite. First, the film scatters bouts of humour within its scenes. Script-wise: Mum explains how to sneak liquids aboard the plane, and dad gets in a punchline on her deftness. Direction-wise: Dad gets into a slapstick scenario in the background of a sustained shot at a coffeeshop (he needs to manoeuvre around a queue), while the rest of the family holds a separate conversation in the foreground. It even comes down to details like Mum re-ordering one less coffee because "girl needs to sleep on the plane"—until we note how the drinks are finally distributed.

Second, Kee Chiew Hiang's shrill characterisation of Mum turns out to be vital to a late-breaking decision by the character. The film even doles the mother a generous close-up as we watch her anxieties preying on her, playing out on her face, and she utters a line in dialect that made the audience gasp with disbelief, not because we didn't believe the character would say such a thing, but because we'd bought wholly into her motivations for such a choice.

Finally, the film takes its time to unfold why it chose its title. For a long time, we wonder if Grandpa's swimming match, lasting through home and car and coffeeshop, is the film's only tenuous link to a "swimming lesson", until it intersperses brief shots of an unidentified girl floating serenely in a swimming pool. The relationship between these meditative shots and the storyline remains a mystery, until a frightful action by Grandpa, a cutaway to the floating girl, and our memory of subtle hints sprinkled earlier in the story tie it all together. I still catch my breath when I think about that finale, and wonder how the filmmakers captured these authentic long-take driving scenes on the roads by the Esplanade. A masterclass.

Singapore Short Film Awards - Did you see what I see? by Soon Zhan Hui

Apparently, the spirit of the Mandarin voiceover on emo music is hard to exorcise. Royston Tan has a lot of cleaning up to do. To give this film credit, the narration is on English. But the narrator (no better way to put this linguistically) really cannot make it one lor. To be fair, like my own first films too. 

In 'Did you see what I see?', we amble through a black and white montage of bleak scenes of life. In the director's own words, the montage reflects reality, one that is not meant to be beautified by shooting in colour. One that has to remain as sombre as the real life. My heart sank as I followed the train of thought, which echoed some real personal pain. But soon, my brain sank too and got left behind somewhere in the black and white streets.

p.s. I am not sure if the filmmaker saw some light at the end of the tunnel because the last scene came into full colour.

Singapore Short Film Awards - Death Chess by Ng Guo Rong

Yet another tale about revenge, with a suggestion of violence. The coupling of that with it being a  'first film' usually offers a jarring visual experience for the audience. I may be wrong in saying that it is a first film but its whole 'fan-boy' feel about it from its visual cliches to the 'seen-it-somewhere-before' title (Sounds like 'Death Note') seems to suggest it. It centres around a 'life-and-death' chess game between a tormentor and his captive. The is a act of revenge by the tormentor for losing out to his victim years ago in school. Most of the mise-en-scene is a yawn, all attention is focussed on the electric drill that is driven closer and closer to the victim as the game progresses. But that is all before we turned our eyes to the tormentor. It a while to confirm an initial suspicion that the tormentor is really quite a camp queen - the exaggerated chin lifts and the poses, nevermind the fact that he had been mentally debilitated by past events. So distracting was his theatrics that it was easy to lose the storyline.

Perhaps its website will speak more fairly for the film. Check out Death Chess at www.deathchess.webs.com 

Singapore Short Film Awards - The Tibetan Mastiffs by Danny Lim

Easily one of the most forgettable films of the night but the most polished. Comparing his 'My Underwear, My World' to this, this is a big leap in terms of style and professionalism. The seamless documentary would fit in nicely into a Channel News Asia slot except that it had a bit more narrative wit than many of the news channel's programmes. The aesthetics and choice of shots also mirror a lot of the documentary films that came out of Oak 3 Films like 'Veil of Dreams' and 'Brother No.2'. Both seem to come from the same cookie-cutter. The only difference is it had a more refreshing narrator voice.

I must add that it was a gratifying experience watching 'The Tibetan Mastiffs' despite the predictability of it. Abundant in its images of our endearing furry friends, the satisfaction is akin to being fed a dose of National Geographic. And for the dog-lovers, dog porn perhaps. These dogs are so robust and stout yet helplessly loveable that you even feel like touching them. But don't risk your hand, the owner's already said they are only used to 'zi ji ren' (their own people).  A point of pondering there for me about dogs' ability to bond with humans and live side by side.

This brings me to the way the subject of the people of Tibet was introduced. To paraphrase, the Tibetan Mastiffs are strong and resilient to challenges and obstacles, like the people of Tibet. Certainly, the opening up of this narrative window was very clever. But it stopped right at the surface, giving the audience only a partial scent of Tibet's tumultuous historical experience, missing out on the chance to give the film a few more inches of depth. But of course, it's about our furry friends, which my work-beaten eyes could not complain about.

Singapore Short Film Awards - The Rescuer Hero by Christopher Broe

Ang Moh love story by the HDB long kang (drain) with furry Ang Kong (toy)

A simple flavourful sentence like this can be used to sum up Christopher Broe's short Rescuer Hero. I don't quite get its point but its got its innocent sweet charms. A young man, contorts himself, risking dislocation to retrieve his monkey soft toy... but only to torment it in various ways again, and to rescue it again after that. So you know the cycle. This catches the attention of the blonde girl who appears at the playground. No prizes for guessing that she secretly digs the his lamely heroic ways. 

Sitting through a number of films from the TISCH students often puts me in a ambiguous state between appreciating the American pizzazz in storytelling and production and squirming at the sense of incongruity in character, situation and space. Think savvy robbers in HDB heartland (I made that up). But it is easy to forgive given their circumsta

nces. I think Wong Kar Wai made an absolute mess out of 'Blueberry Nights' but we know 'where he was coming from'. 

All in all, 'Rescuer's Hero' was weak in its point but sweet in its aftertaste, mostly from the man's silliness. 

Singapore Short Film Awards - It's Magic by Shilpa Krishnan Shukla

I wonder what's the point of making a film when it illustrates a situation that has been played out to tedium and clicheness in TV soaps. Unless of course, the director has been quite starved of TV fare. In 'It's Magic', a man, a tad remorseful for his affairs, returns to his former love. But she is not appeased with just a make-up gesture. She needs vengeance for the hurt and lures him into a lethal trap. The generous peppering of her lines with cliches like 'now you see it now you don't', reinforces the feeling that you have watched this to the accompaniement of countless bedtime snacks. So my guess is the point of making this film could be simply a directorial exercise. Or is it a 'Girl Power' message? This is where Shipla's casting of the Indian lady here makes a strong point. With her hair rebonded, dressed in a chic modern outfit and hands gracefully balancing 2 glasses of wine, she cuts a figure seldom represented in local movies - the modern suave Indian woman. The closest to that was last seen in 1979 in Saint Jack (especially when Monica Subramaniam untwirled her sari...).

Alexander Wang outfit @ Sigourney Weaver

(Thanks, Fatimuchi!)

Singapore Short Film Awards - Man in Snow Globe by Koo Chia Meng

This is must be the last part of a Kelvin’s physical trilogy. The first being ‘Tanjong Rhu’ by Boo Junfeng, the second being ‘Anniversary’ by Royston Tan and finally ‘Man in Snow Globe’ by Koo Chia Meng. Kelvin is the actor playing the lead here and he seems to have reached some kind of ‘muse’ status. This time, it more physiological than physical – he is blind and slowly regaining his sight at the expense of losing parts of his memory (with the help of a kind of technology). It opened with a montage reminiscent of Julian Schnabel’s ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, flashing gauzy intimate images of people and scenes. Then, we are at pore-distance to the lead’s face, subjugating us into a journey of the man’s coming to terms with his loss.

The situation is grave. However, the actor looks a little too young and athletic to evoke a feeling of diminution. This is a pity because the Chia Meng has cleverly manipulated some visual tools to obliquely convey the pain of blindness. These included the girl (Julie) with her faced partially eclipsed with a birthmark as well as the sprinkling of powder over his body to elicit his sensitivity to touch since his ‘vision’ is failing him. In fact, the powdering scene was a signature moment that made the film and a thoughtful payout to the title. A tantric kind of feeling in both an emotional and sensual way (yes, it’s about his body again!). Aided by camera work that has a freehand sort of expressiveness and sure-footed editing, ‘Man in Snow Globe’ is a like pretty poetry. I only hoped it had more bite.

February 2010 Hot Buys

Oscar de la Renta dress
(Thanks Fedy193721!)

Christopher Kane top

Balmain jacket

Versace jeans

Marc Jacobs top

Louis Mariette hair brooch

Judith Leiber bag

Versace boots

Thanks to Hot Buys Addicted blog for some pics!

Shamu has passed away...9/9/2009

Sorry for the delay in letting everyone know about Shamu. He passed away unexpectedly on 9/9/2009-possibly had his stomach twist inside of his ribcage and caused bloating. That is what the vet said? Didn't know where my passwords were to get back on here, finally remembered them. Lots of other things have been going on, too. I may leave this sight up for a while, but will not be posting to it anymore. Hope everyone enjoyed it.

ss Rotterdam

Van het vorig voorjaar heb ik nog een enkele maand op de ss.Rotterdam gewerkt , hier een fotolink met 31 paginas waar je kan zien hoe het er is geworden na de verbouwing , onderaan staat een daschboardje klik niet op terug anders ga je terug naar het hoofdmenu maar klik op pagina 2

http://www.aadhoogesteger.nl/bezoekssrotterdam/bezssrd271209pagina1.html

Who's Shooting What in 2010? Eric Khoo

Name of Project: Untitled animation based on Yoshihiro Tatsumi's 'A Drifting Life'

Brief Description of Project: Yoshihiro Tatsumi, a 74-year-old graphic artist, is regarded as the father of gekiga, a term he coined for the darker and more realistic form of manga he created in the late 1950s. For Eric who was writing and drawing comics in his early 20s, Tatsumi was a huge influence. “The more I think back, everything from ‘Mee Pok Man’ to ‘12 Storeys’ has been influenced by him,” (Eric).

The black and white feature animation is based on Tatsumi's autobiographical “A Drifting Life” and will be in Japanese. It will be a co-production between Khoo's Zhao Wei Films and local media production firm Infinite Frameworks. Multimedia artist Brian Gothong Tan will be the lead animator on the project.

Who's Shooting What in 2010? Brian Gothong Tan

Name of Project: Music Video for Singapore Pavilion at World Expo 2010

Brief Description of Project:

Brian is currently shooting a music video featuring a who's who list of Singapore singers like Stephanie Sun and Tanya Chua. This video will screen at the Singapore pavilion at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. The screening form is unusual because of the 180 degree projection of the final video. Further down the year, Brian will also be working on some commissioned works for the 2010 Youth Olympic Games.

Video depicting the Singapore Pavilion

Who's Shooting What in 2010? Ellery Ngiam

Name of Project: Forgotten Tears

Brief Description of Project: A family drama of how the living come to grips with life. As a professional mourner, Helen Ying cries at other people's wakes. But she cannot bring herself to mourn her eldest daughter's death. When remaining daughter Emma discovers a link to her deceased sibling, Helen controlled world is shaken. She must confront her deep-rooted grief or risk losing all she has.

Who's Shooting What in 2010? Ho Tzu Nyen

Name of Project: Endless Day

Brief Description of Project: 

Endless Day is an action film inspired by a film entitled A Touch of Zen (1969) made by Hong Kong director King Hu. The treatment of action is such that you can feel the physicality involved with the fight scenes, when you see the protagonist actually panting. 'Until today I still think it's one of the greatest martial arts films ever made.'  Endless Day is a mix between Robinson Crusoe, The Blue Lagoon and A Touch of Zen. It'll be filmed entirely in Singapore.

Project Tagline: In an undeterminable time and place, a boy and a girl try to build themselves a house, in the heart of a tropical paradise. Soon the outside world collapses on them, for fate is on their backs, like a madman with a razorblade...

bilog na itlog?

GMA (the Tv station, not the President, duh!), as always, led the way pagdating sa educating the masses para sa darating na election. Tinalo pa nila ang Comelec na hanggang ngayon hindi pa rin alam kung matutuloy ang computerized voting. Aligaga pa rin sa kaliwa't kanang beaurucracy, technicalities at kung ano-ano pa kaya hindi maasikaso ang page-educate sa mga botante.

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Using the popularity and talent of Sex Bomb, they (GMA-7) came up with a very effective song and dance instructional video na talagang tatanim sa utak ng makakakita. Pag hindi pa naman nila na-gets kung paano ang tamang pag-boto, naku ewan na lang.

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At kahit sa true lang ay oblong ang itlog at hindi bilog, generally accepted na rin naman yon kaya heto at maki-kanta/maki-sayaw tayo sa SB. It's DS' way of doing it's part for patriotic purposes.

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Proenza Schouler and Balmain @ Sigourney Weaver

Balmain boots

P. Schouler top, belt...

...and dress.

Who's Shooting What in 2010? James Leong & Lynn Lee

Name of Project:The Great North Korean Picture Show (documentary film)
Brief Description of Project: North Korea is to many, a place of mystery. A hermit state. Secretive. Impenetrable. Now, this groundbreaking film opens a window into a world like no other – follow two young film students and a leading director as they show us their country’s version of Hollywood. An industry helmed, personally by the man everyone calls the Dear Leader – Kim Jong-Il. An industry that exists not for profit, but as a tool of the state.
Project Tagline:An unprecedented journey inside Kim Jong-Il's movie world.