Confessions of a Movie Slut.

the crowds these days seem to be on edge.
last friday, jo had a belated birthday celebration at zouk. loubs, ady and i hung around for a bit though we were seperated quite a lot of the time. jo had other friends around the place while loubs was there with some colleagues and friends. anyhoo, the place was totally packed. particularly phuture where we thought of hanging out cuz jo's a total slave to r&b. *wink* i love the music and the dancing bit but i'm not a really big fan of the clubbing scene.

the crowd was arguably the worst i've encountered in my personal clubbing history which admittedly, isn't very extensive. i was elbowed, pushed, brushed aside, sandwiched (and not the good kind!), molested, ash-trayed (some imbecillic jerks were smoking all over the dance floor and dispensing their ash carelessly) you name it... i felt it. the encore? nobody even bothered to apologise.

i ranted about it to art, and he read my mind... maybe the next generation of clubbers are starting to replace ours and banished clubbing etiquette to that increasingly barren wasteland of basic humanity. they were like a horde of raging zombies! and i'm talking bloodied, crazed, out of sync 28 days laters kinda zombies... in a mad, tribal dance. i'm all for having a good time but i also hope people are considerate enough to consider the well-being others. maybe a club isn't THE place to look for that but there we were packed in like sardines and many inconsiderate idiots were flailing their limbs about, practically bruising other people around them. i'm quite surprised that brawls didn't break out. absolutely horrifying.

speaking about zombies, i'm sorta getting back into the element of cult, zombie movies. maybe it's because of the increasing amount of re-exposure to george a. romero, the director of that cult classic, night of the living dead. my dad got the special director's cut dvd... all by himself, without me while i was in perth. *sniff* i'm so proud... the man's all grown up and making smart dvd choices. hehehe. thank gawd, he doesn't read my blog... anyway, a remake of romero's 1978 sequel, dawn of the dead is signed, sealed and (to be) delievered to american cinemas this march if i'm not mistaken. it's gotten mixed reactions from movie buffs so far... some are jazzed, some romero puritants are outraged. well, you decide. you can get the trailers here. make sure u have quicktime. anybody caught 28 days later last year? awesome stuff. i've got evil dead 1 on dvd, and i'm hunting down evil dead 2 which is the scariest one in the whole trilogy in my opinion. anybody seen those? totally freaked me out as a kid.


movies, movies and more movies...
i caught arven (the inheritence) yesterday, my first movie for the nordic film fest. ady was kind enough to allow me to leave her church service earlier so i can make it on time. she was baptised yesterday! you looked and did great, grrrl! i'm not very familiar with the director's previous works but to my understanding, arven is one of a trilogy of films depicting sectors of the danish society. it focuses on the wealthy elite and portrays a man's moral, emotional and psychological deterioration when he sacrificed his life's passions to assume familial obligations and responsibilities. something a lot of people can relate to, i wager. pretty good film to start the year with... so i hope like dogville, it'll get its run in the cinemas after the fest.


i'm going for villmark (dark woods) tonight with my dad. i think i'm completely saturated with asian horror movies and there's a need to see how europeans deal with the same genre. afterall, the devil's backbone became one of my all-time faves and the others is pretty darn good in my opinion. i'm hunting down a spanish horror film called tesis (thesis)... to no avail so far. i might just have to resort to amazon.com.

i'm going for a sneak preview of irreversible with eileen tomorrow night. cathay has finally kept their word after the whole 27th november fiasco. and dogville comes after that on tuesday. woohoo!! muh wheels're on fire!!! *cough cough*

so... going out incessantly, watching movies in bulk, endless dvd hunts. ok pple, 3 guesses on why i'm sadly broke!... anyone?

an update...
so i just returned from villmark and i'm glad to conclude that the europeans do know their horror. i was also quite sad with the turn out. perhaps, just about half of the relatively small cinema auditorium was filled and about that same number of people turned up for arven yesterday. these numbers pale in comparison to films screened at the european union, french and german film fests. sometimes i feel that the glitz from more well-known genres like the french new wave, or the like, tend to cast a dark shadow over more 'obscure' genres. and i hope that viewers and film buffs don't underestimate the talent pool from nordic countries. denmark happens to be one of 'em and it's where lars von trier and some other film directors forge one of the most fascinating cinematic philosophies and practices ever: dogme 95. kudos to that! although it's been admitted that they cheat and break their own rules sometimes. but the ideology is worthy of respect.

so back to my night. the old man was really hungry all of a sudden and chugged down about 5-6 plates of sushi AND an unagi bento set at sakae sushi. now this is the same dude who proclaims that he doesn't have a big appetite in his old age. we had a bit of time after dinner so we walked around for a bit and decided to sit around at the cinema's foyer. so there i was, stoning and participating in lazy conversations with my dad when the peaceful riverie was quite rudely broken by piercing laughter and some childish jostling about. i turned to look and lo' and behold... (annoying music starts) *do you see what i seeeee?* two life journalists and some other people who could be journalists as well but i don't quite recognise the men in their company... i recognise the ladies though. they were none other than ong sor fern, life's sometime film reviewer and all-time book reviewer, and ong soh chin. i admit to not having read much from the latter person's columns. well, i guess they're having some good (down-) time with friends after work but i'm feeling quite bitchy while i'm penning this. seriously, maybe it's stereotyping but i figured journalists to be matured, educated, serious to the point of being anal but these folks were like the loudest bunch in the place... just surprised me i guess that they could also at the same time act as obnoxiously as the next group of teen punk, know-it-alls. ok, that's just mean... pardon me hey. i get peeved sometimes because it's an open secret that the folks over at sph are quite elitist.

villmark is creepy... it's suspiciously tailored like the danish version of the blair witch project sans the shaky, nauseating camera work and the improvised dialogue. perhaps this could be the kind of movie blair witch might have become if it just went indie and not guerilla. the film makers understood that horror is all about tension and not cheap scares. something that many genre film makers tend to forget these days.

ok, so i'm left with dogville to wrap the nordic film fest and word is out that tix are completely sold out for this one.