monoceros blogsIf the trailer wasn't enough to satiate your appetite for the final LOTR movie, well, AICN has some news that might do just that. They've tortured some poor sod for information on how long ROTK will be. Three and a half hours - and no toilet breaks in between. So train your bladders well for this December.
Go here for the official word from AICN.
The preciousssss is here! Go here for the ROTK trailer. Or if you want to download it and watch it screen by screen about two hundred times, go here. Amazing scenes, especially the battle ones. Lots of promising fight scenes and check out the re-forged sword. Oh, and I see Eowyn all decked out in armor. In my youth, I related most to two characters - if I couldn't be Bilbo, I'd choose to be Eowyn. But golly gee, I can't wait for December!
Other titbits - LOTR Monopoly and LOTR Trivial Pursuit will be released in November for the holiday season. So you can now have a pewter Gollum crawling around the board - go straight to Mordor, do not pass Go, do not collect two fish... .
Plenty of LOTR fans around the world had a great weekend because of the ROTK trailer. If a two and a half minute trailer does this to people, can you imagine the effect of the three-hour film this December 17th?
I count myself as a decent fanatic, but I declined to watch Secondhand Lions for the trailer; I can wait till Monday when it's online and I can save it on my computer and watch it over and over again.
But if you want to know how some fans reacted to the trailer, go here. They really loved it.
My friend Jennny and I ate Subway sandwiches and watched snippets of my wedding video cds, and then I drove us to Showcase Cinemas to watch Under A Tuscan Sun. A chick-night indeed. But it was a good night. The movie was one of those feel-good shows and it was all about Italy! Okay, it was about Frances Mayes, played by the lovely Diane Lane, and how she gets her life back on track, or on a different track, in Cortona, Italy, to be specific.
The vistas were lovely and got lovelier as the movie progressed. It was a long show, but I didn't mind gazing at the Tuscan landscape, or the sea at Positano, or the old buildings, or the run-down house that eventually became a beautiful villa. Of course, Positano boasted more than the sea - that's where the splendid looking Marcello lived and took Lane's Frances to visit. What shoulders, what cheekbones, what a smile... . He's got better skin than I do (damn it!). If you watch the movie and it does nothing for you, I'm sure Raoul Bova will (unless you don't fancy guys).
The movie is loosely based on the best-selling Frances Mayes memoir of her life in Cortona as she refurbishes the villa, Bramasole. Quite different, but the movie can stand on its on. If nothing else, the movie made me miss Italy even more. When I saw the facade of the Duomo in Florence rise on the screen, I could almost smell again the rain that poured on one of the last Sunday afternoons I spent in Florence. I was waiting for my friends and it was raining (just like in the movie), I went inside the Duomo, which was being decorated for Christmas, and I sat next to and befriended an old Italian man who thought I was Japanese and who later kissed me on both cheeks and wished me happy holidays. I need to go back - not for the old man, but for the feeling. That unmistakable feeling you get when you're walking on the same stones that great artists once tread upon, when you're gazing at a landscape that turns your heart to putty, when you're hiking right by the Mediterranean Sea and threading through grape vines. Nothing ever gets to you the way Italy does.
Reading entries like the following one makes me smile for two reasons:
1. It's nice to read about other fanatics.
2. I get more excited about ROTK knowing there are other people getting excited about ROTK.
Go here to read Oscarwatch's Susan Thea Posnock's excitement for the trailer of ROTK.
*SPOILER ALERT*
This is for folks who can't get to the movies this weekend or will not bother to download the trailer next Monday. A sketchy description of the ROTK trailer.
Go here if you can't not know what'll be shown!
It's been a while since I last gave any updates about the Lord of the Rings. Well, this one is good - the trailer for ROTK will make its debut around the world on Friday, September 26. In the US, a 2 min. 26 sec. trailer will be attached to the recently opened movie, Secondhand Lions. If you don't care for catching movies this weekend, well, the trailer will debut online next Monday, September 29. This great bit of news is courtesy of theonering.net, which I'm sure will be putting up links to the trailer come Monday.
I've been pretty distracted with grad school so I haven't had so much time to play watchdog for LOTR happenings, but what I do know is that some last-minute filming is still taking place in New Zealand (beyond their schedule), but Peter Jackson promises to let us have the movie come December 17. I haven't downloaded the countdown clock either, so I don't know how many days there are to the big day. I did try to place the clock on this website, but it didn't work.
There's also a new edition of Ian Brodie's The Lord of The Rings Location Guidebook. It will feature locations used for all three movies, including some that weren't in the first edition. You can get more information here. Ian Brodie is director of the NZ Fighter Pilots Museum in Wanaka, and when I received my book direct from the Museum late last year, he had kindly autographed it for me.
I turn 25 tomorrow. Actually, I am already 25, since it's the 20th in Singapore and that is my birthplace. But for now, I am in Ann Arbor and it's not quite the 20th yet.
A quarter of a century. It sounds a lot when I put it that way. But I still feel young...-ish. I'm not world-weary, but I've done my time in the teenage angst years, the university bit, the working world horrors.
This is not an inexhaustible list, just a look back at the milestones in my life:
1978 - born to dear parents and enter the life of my big brother, Randy, who waits eagerly for my arrival at the hospital.
1981 - the earliest memory I have is walking round the pool at Marymount Kindergarten talking to myself (with my finger pointing to the sky), knowing full well that my mother was taking a photo of me. It was my brother's birthday celebration at school and my mom brought a cake and me along. My mother still has that photo.
1982 - I enter nursery and I remember crying or getting upset about something. That gets the teacher's attention and to console me, she lets me play Sleeping Beauty in the skit that afternoon.
1984 - I am in K2, and a boy at school collects a string of girlfriends. He picks girls who have cute things like nice pencil cases or ribbons in their hair. I'm curious what a girlfriend is, so I wear my pink shoes to school and am immediately claimed by this boy. I hate it, go home crying, get consoled by my brother, and vow never to wear nice things to school again.
1985 - Primary One at last! Mrs. Tan tells my mother that I am a bright, chatty girl. I am also the smallest in class.
1986 - I get bullied at school and eventually change my seat so that I don't sit in front of the bully anymore. Despite my traumatic experiences and somewhat lazy approach to homework, I wind up seventh girl in class at the year's end.
1988 - I transfer to Singapore Chinese Girls' School, where I meet some of my oldest and closest friends - Desiree and Van Tan.
1989 - I compose my first poem in the shower on a Sunday morning. Naturally, it is about one of the great concerns in life at that time - growing up.
1990 - Still the smallest in class. Now be-spectacled. Pass PSLE decently.
1992 - I am a prefect, amazingly. People actually seem to like me. My brother gets contact lenses, and I am handed a pair too. Discover that I like writing descriptive prose for fun. Start French classes. My first male friends, a couple of young NS men - one plays piano, another reads Asterix in French (or tries to). French teacher has grey eyes, can't recall name though.
1994 - By now, am fast friends with Desiree, Van Tan and Joan. Still a prefect, and they make me secretary too.
1995 - Victoria Junior College. Still the smallest in class. Choir girl. Am stuck with permed hair. Strangely, some folks like it - I suppose I manage to have my mess pass for style. I play Under A Killing Moon and LeisureSuit Larry on the computer. Really enjoy Literature. I read Lord Of The Rings for the first time. Make friends with Mogan, June, Xinyi, Mandy. (Mogan was already the star that he is today.) Visit Europe for the first time - Turkey, Italy, Austria. Meet my first boyfriend.
1997 - I teach at Changkat Changi Secondary School. What an experience. I can actually get students to like me. Going to university...overseas! I am an English major. I take Anthropology, Art History, Music Theory and something else.
1998 - I go ice-skating every other day. I dislocate my kneecap while snow-blading in Canada. I stop ice-skating every other day. Young love doesn't last, I discover. My dad sends me my first Tomb Raider game. Desiree, Van, Joan, May and I start our emailing group (which still goes on today! and with weblogs too!). I take my first creative writing class and am told to apply for the sub-concentration. At the year's end, I move into Willowtree Apartments and find a nice neighbor called Lin Kiat. We take a Greyhound to Ohio and buy a black Honda Del Sol that I call SOLMATE.
1999 - I take several Italian classes. I pass my driving test. Lin Kiat and I study in the grad library most days and we stop for hazelnut steamers before heading home. I go for my first major camp at New Hampshire. I carry the heaviest backpack I've ever had. I climb up and down the highest mountain in Northeast America - Mount Washington - on a foggy day, so there's no view. I attempt to skinny-dip. I don't bathe for four days. I discover which type of leaf is the best substitute for toilet paper. I go home smelling of earth and trees, and Lin Kiat still seems to like me.
2000 - I complete my thesis, win a few writing prizes, and have a public reading, which is attended by my family and friends. I say goodbye to friends and professors who tell me to return some day. I leave Ann Arbor and spend several months in Florence, Italy. And fall deeper in love with the country. I hike the towns of Cinque Terre, and in October, I walk the boulevards of Paris with a scarf round my neck and a French song in my head.
2001 - My first real job as an assistant editor at Cambridge University Press in Singapore. I am the smallest employee. I insult my boss a lot and make him angry. But I get a pay raise anyway. The first Lord of the Rings movie comes out. We watch it in California.
2002 - I find new friends in Barney and Karen, who I've been sending messages via MSN. I still insult my boss and make him angry. And I get another pay raise. We start playing Counterstrike at work, and I get to gun down my boss a lot. Lin Kiat proposes! Or did I propose? We watch The Two Towers as an engaged couple. I send in my application for grad school at the end of the year.
2003 - I am accepted into the MFA program. They also give me some money. I continue insulting my boss and also tell him that I wish to quit. I get rather stressed planning a wedding. But it turns out better than I planned - all my dearest friends are with me and my family is happy. I get a new family too. The husband and I arrive in Ann Arbor. We take a Greyhound to Ohio and buy a white VW Golf that I call the White Rabbit. We part for a while so that I can start grad school. I am a nervous graduate student who misses her husband. I am the smallest person in the program. The Return of the King will be released on December 17th, and Lin Kiat will book the tickets for us. The world wanders down its unwieldy path, the stars continue to decorate the night, the air gets colder, and I daydream with a grin as I turn 25.
Lin Kiat gave me a wonderful present last Christmas (thanks to his sister, Christine, who found it in New York City) - an antique red typewriter. We've yet to find a professional restorer of typewriters in Singapore. Mine still has its case and most parts intact.
I hope to get it to look like this one day.
We all know about the historic atomic bomb of 1945. How many people killed by its impact, how widespread the damage was, what it did to buildings. Those were numbers and facts the newspapers gave the readers. John Hersey was sent to Hiroshima by The New Yorker to cover the story, to gather facts like these. But when he reached the devastated city, he noticed the people - the effects of the bombing on the people - more than anything else.
The four essays (with a fifth one added forty years after the incident; John Hersey returned to interview the six survivors once more) follow six people from just before the bomb hit Hiroshima to the weeks that followed. The prose is spare, with little or no metaphors, because it doesn't need to draw further attention to the horror. The sense of place and immediacy, and the questions that interested Hersey surface among the words - who survived and why? How?
A German Jesuit priest who was reading a magazine in his underwear; a doctor (one of eight in a hospital that drew 10,000 victims) who had to borrow a nurse's pair of spectacles (because he'd lost his own in the bombing) and rely on them for a month while tending to patients; an injured doctor whose small hospital collapsed into the river (along with him); a female clerk who was crushed by books; a tailor's widow who dug her three children from the rubble of her house; a Methodist preacher who ran into soldiers with liquid from their melted eyeballs rolling down their faces.
The book humanizes the victims of a city belonging to the enemy country in Asia. It doesn't discount what the Japanese inflicted on the other countries of Asia, but it shows their side of the account. To the rest of the world it was a new kind of bomb, the effects it can achieve, but to the inhabitants who were perplexed, in pain, and lost among their ruined homes, the incident was one of skin slipping off hands like gloves, dead bodies, river water that induced vomitting, darkening skies.
It is a thin book, but from the first page, you are swept back in time, walking among the ruined city with the bewildered survivors. As the New York Times puts it, "Nothing can be said about this book that can equal what the book has to say. It speaks for itself, and in an unforgettable way, for humanity."
In 1946, the New Yorker, so popular for its cartoons and light-hearted articles, devoted an entire issue to all four essays that Hersey penned. It was a new kind of journalism - a group portrait that focused on a single event that affected a city and the world. John Hersey's career is forever remembered because of this one book. He later taught Eileen Pollack in a creative non-fiction class at Yale University, and she is now teaching me what he taught her.
Go here to read more.
Ann Patchett came to Ann Arbor yesterday for a reading. She is the author of the Pen/Faulkner award-winning novel, Bel Canto. Even the president of the University of Michigan came to listen to her read.
Bel Canto was, unforunately, a rushed and required reading for me. If it weren't, I'd really enjoy it a lot better - there's an opera theme, the language is at times beautiful and the character development superb. Ann Patchett based the plot on a real-life event that she read about in the newspapers. The story goes that a Japanese electronics tycoon (also an opera fan) is invited to celebrate his birthday in an unnamed South American country. His favorite opera singer has been hired to perform at the party, diplomats and many important people have been invited, and the party will be held at the vice-president's luxurious home. Terrorists storm the house after the sixth song and the heart of the story deals with how the hostages and terrorists form strange and remarkable bonds.
It's going to be made into a movie (to be produced by the people of Monsoon Wedding) and into an opera that will premeire at Santa Fe in 2006 (Andrew Lloyd Weber decided to cancel his offer to turn it into a musical - more on this later). Renee Fleming, the famed soprano, will play the opera singer in the movie (but not in the opera). She'd read the book, been told that the opera singer character in the story was inspired by her (she wasn't), called Ann Patchett up, and now they're friends!
Ann Patchett wasn't sure she wanted her book turned into a staged musical. But Andrew Lloyd Weber withdrew his offer after the notorious takeover of a Moscow theater by Chechen rebels in October last year. Many people called or wrote to Ann Patchett, claiming that her book had lead to the terrible incident. A lot of people asked her if she would have finished her book had she been in the middle of it when September 11th happened. She said she would have continued, but if the event had been the Moscow theater, she would have trashed her novel in its unfinished state.
Patchett gave an inspired reading that entertained even those who hadn't read the book. She handled the question and answer session enthusiastically and graciously. While inopportunely chewing on some bread, I introduced myself to her during the informal reception held at Peter Ho Davies's home. It's rather strange to meet a celebrated author, but she had no airs and made an effort to speak to everyone.
Despite my great pleasure in hearing her read and meeting her, I forgot to ask her to sign my book. Oh well.
Go here to read more on Bel Canto.
Michael Buble goes to Singapore to perform. And I'm in Michigan. Life has an offbeat timing that doesn't always work for me.
My god-sis (aka best assistant to have on your wedding day), Ai-Mai, went to the concert and she's smitten. She's smitten, I'm envious.
I went canoeing with some old friends. There were five of us in two boats, rowing from Argo Park to Gallup Park. Beer, sunshine and bread for the ducks. The water was shallow and clear in many places. We ran aground several times because of the rocks, but it didn't stop us from having a splendid Sunday afternoon. We walked barefoot in the cold streams and waved at other folks enjoying the good weather. Even the dogs out and about were near smiling as they played in the water.
That every Sunday could be like this.
It's a wonderful thing to fall in love with a new song. Sometimes you know on the first listen, sometimes you won't till the second or third time. I came upon "Touch her soft lips and part" unexpectedly. Unaware at first of how much the song would mean to me.
Here's how it went: I watched the movie Tadpole, really liked the soundtrack, especially the French songs; since the movie has no soundtrack available, I did some research on the singers involved and found one of the French singers, a group of musicians and vocalist called Mich En Scene; their cd is available on a website called CDBaby, which sells only independent music and I chanced upon a jazz vocalist called Lisa Thorson, sampled the music files, and purchased her CD along with Mich En Scene's album.
The sixth song on Lisa Thorson's CD is "Touch her soft lips and part", composed by William Walton who wrote it in classical form for the 1945 film version of Shakespeare's Henry V. Since then, it's been played in the classical circles and more recently picked up by jazz artistes. The music accompanies a scene in which a soldier leaves his lover to go to war. There are no lyrics, but Lisa Thorson's voice bears the tragedy in a haunting arc that begins and ends with such sad, beautiful notes.
Go here to listen to Lisa or look up some great work by independent musicians.
I've accomplished a number of things this past week - stood up and addressed the class which I'm grading (all 70 students in it), read out a piece of old prose to my workshop mates, finished all the reading required for my creative non-fiction class, cooked the first dinner for my cooking group, applied for a customized plate for my white Golf, washed and waxed the Golf - but the one task that really defines my week is the two-and-a-half-hour piecing together of my futon frame.
Yes, Miss Small-And-Not-The-Most-Tool-Savvy here decided at 10.30 pm last night to fix up her own futon, instead of running to a guy friend and pleading for help. After reading Thoreau's Walden while camping four summers ago, I have ever since been inclined to be self-sufficient and self-reliant (I try, of course, but fail at times). When I looked at the long, flat rectangular box leaning against the wall of my living room, I instinctively knew I shouldn't deprive myself of a learning opportunity.
Well, I nearly tore my hair out trying to figure out all the parts and tools. Three different kinds of bolts, washer, spring washer, special washer, bars, hook, leg etc. Then I had problems lifting the parts in mid-air while trying to attach them to parts of the frame. This job needed just another person to help lift and balance the parts while I screwed in the bolts and nuts. I would've finished a lot faster. But I managed somehow and completed the job with no errors. The heavy beige mattress went on and was the most comfortable thing after the hardware session.
Now I have a place to sit while watching TV. Unfortunately, my cable connection (a free, previously undetected, one) got disconnected. Life has interesting odds.
I'm having pork chop tonight.
I feel I ought to be writing some paragraphs on the movie's I've seen recently. But most people have seen most of them and already know what it's all about. So perhaps this is more a list to keep track of what I've viewed:
Movies in the theater
- Whale Rider (this was quite a while ago. Two months. But I'm still remembering the strange sounds of the sea when Paikea lives up to her name as the whale rider.)
- American Wedding (since LK and I saw the first two American Pie movies, it would be apt to watch the third. ahem.)
- Pirates of the Carribean (how could anyone not watch this. heh.)
- Lara Croft: Cradle of Life (I play the games, might as well watch the movies.)
- S.W.A.T. (we'd just seen Phone Booth and The Recruit on DVD so it was a Colin Farrell marathon.)
- The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (watched this show one and a half times, due to inconvenient blackout.)
- The Medallion (not so good. Sorry, Jackie.)
- My Boss's Daughter (we watched about fifteen minutes of this and it was more than we could stomach.)
- The Italian Job (fun chase movie. Made me almost wish I were leaving the theater in a new Mini Cooper S instead of a Golf GTI. But my white rabbit is a good car. Like I said, almost wished.)
Movies on DVD
- The Colin Farrell marathon: The Recruit, Phone Booth
- Talk To Her (terrific film. Just terrific.)
- Bringing Down The House (this was good, fun comedy.)
- The Hunted (I'd watch most Benicio Del Toro movies. Go Benny of the bull!)
- When Harry Met Sally (got this at a good price in the Virgin store in NYC.)
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (will not gush, will not gush.)
- Bowling For Columbine (we liked this. Made you sit up. Made me think of all the fellows in Singapore. Great gun control in the country, but almost every guy and a number of women know how to work an M-16. They know it but they don't yearn for it.)
- One Hour Photo (very good show. Cleverly and tastefully done.)
- Tadpole (watched this with Jenny who's recovering from shoulder surgery. Great movie. Loved the soundtrack, which was never made available. French songs and Adam Cohen singing Charles Aznavour's "She" in French. And I've discovered the British group Everything But The Girl at last. Anyone got good recommendations on their discography? I recall Van Tan once remarking how the name "Everything But The Girl" suggests the kind of emotion and expression you'll find in their music.)
Movies I would like to see
- Le Divorce (I like Paris. not a fan of Kate Hudson, but I like Paris and French music.)
- Under The Tuscan Sun (read the book, might as well see the movie. It's also starring Diane Lane, who was in The Outsiders, The Perfect Storm, A Walk On The Moon and Unfaithful. Oh, and this film is also about Italy. Italy.)
Note: There are several more movies I marked down in my Entertainment Weekly issue, the one with the fall movie preview. But it's sitting in my bedroom, and I'm lazy to go get it.
Movies I want to see but won't get to
- Turn left, turn right (starriing Takeshi Kaneshiro and Gigi Leung, based on a lovely little Chinese book that I read over the summer. Thank you to my colleague Susan who gave me the soundtrack inspired by the book, which inspired me to pick up the book; and thank you to Desiree, who shares my enthusiasm for the book, the movie and Takeshi, and who'll get to see it this month in Singapore and who'll, I'm sure, tell me all about the movie I am missing.)
For anyone interested in reading about the author Jimmy, go here to his website (it's in Mandarin). His books have great water-colors, themes and lovely words (or at least, from what I make them out to be, they sound lovely).
And for those interested in the film itself, here's a website to visit (you have to wait a long time for it to load up. Thanks for this, Des!).
The category of Prose and Things will be filling up swiftly as I detail my reading and writing journeys this fall. It's the second day of school and I'm already up late trying to complete my reading for the lesson tomorrow. Not only am I reading every line, every word and every pause, but I am also writing notes, notes on ideas and observations that I am expected to share with the class in an intelligent, coherent manner.
I am enrolled in the Creative Non-fiction workshop, a class for which I had to submit a writing sample in order to be selected to be among 19 others. 19 students who are all older than me, and probably armed with more experience and better (ie. mature) writing styles, and perhaps even more literary competence. Nevertheless, I shall do all my readings, prepare clever things to say in class and plan my essays to the smallest detail. I shall attempt to avoid looking like a fool.
Among my esteemed classmates - an ex-editor of Harper's Magazine, an editor of a business magazine, a writer who has written in Arabic for the past six years, a Newsweek correspondent who has spent the past eight years in Moscow, a fellow who was on the Peace Corp in Russia, and several second year MFA students. I am the only first year MFA student, and probably the youngest. (I seem to be the youngest wherever I go. If not that, then the shortest or the quiestest or the noisiest.)
Tonight's readings - "Shooting An Elephant" by George Orwell, "Death Of A Pig" by E. B. White and "Six Days: Some Rememberings" by Grace Paley. All personal essays, all well-structured, all evocative writing that any literary fan would devour in seconds (okay, minutes). I empathized with ol' George, who was only doing his best to avoid looking like a fool in front of a couple thousand of Burmese people. I near wept at the death of Mr. White's pig and envied (the kind of envy of another person who's had a more interesting life) Grace Paley's six days in prison, a result of publicly protesting the Vietnam war.
Creative non-fiction is the fourth (the newest) genre, after fiction, poetry and dramatic writing. Creative non-fiction combines elements of all three. It can use the narrative structure of fiction, the deep, lovely language of poetry and sections of lines exchanged between real-life characters set in an everyday or exotic location. Creative non-fiction can be memoir-like, it can be made of mostly research, or it can sound like a drawn out poem, but it is always personal. Personal in a good way, not in the egoistic sense. The writer lets us glimpse a part of his or her mind and memories and knowledge. He does not - must never - flash us with indecent amounts of himself. (That kind of thing is left to weblogs.)
More on creative non-fiction as I dig deeper into the course and its readings. The semester has just begun. And I must now bury myself momentarily with these three essays, just as E.B. White's pig was buried with a chance worm and a fallen green apple, although the poor pig would have no need to take notes on the connection between the worm and the apple. Mr. White has already done so for the pig and for us - "the worm (legendary bedfellow of the dead), the apple (conventional garnish of a pig)". A dead pig, that is, slaughtered for the dinner table.