the best of 2005 (so says all of me)

thinking about the love for film, it's virtually impossible to express thought and emotion in just words most of the time. what is film to me? where could i possibly begin. sight and sound seducing the senses- carry with them an emotion, a thought, an idea, a story. or perhaps even many. it entertains, compels, inspires, exhilirates, challenges, frightens, saddens and maybe even disappoints. i dare to hope that film continues to ask difficult questions... questions that we would otherwise willfully ignore or avoid to perpetuate our own comfort and complacency. referring to ang lee's ambitious albeit sentimental thought on contemporary cinema, i too would like film to be a means of bringing about change in the ways we think. so thank you 2005. thank you very much for these:

(in no particular order)

bad education- pedro almodovar
howl's moving castle- hayao miyazaki
a very long engagement- jean-pierre jeunet
kontroll- nimrod antal
millions- danny boyle
sin city- robert rodriguez and frank miller
my summer of love- pawel pawlikowski
turtles can fly- bahman ghobadi
mysterious skin- gregg araki
a history of violence- david cronenberg
the descent- neil marshall
the chronicles of narnia: the lion, the witch and the wardrobe- andrew adamson

i've never felt this way... and i've never said this to anyone before but....

i love you guillermo del toro. dear God! i love you! and i want to have your children!

the trailer for pan's labyrinth finally hits cyberspace. hell yea!

a return ticket to loserville. sweet!

summer break is great. until you fall into the inevitable mindnumbing monotony of too much free time. gotta learn to mix it up a bit so later i'm gonna drag myself out of the house in the wee hours of the a.m. and travel across singapore to the far reaches of jurong to catch harry potter and the goblet of fire @ the omni. i've prepared my little tote bag of bottled water, panadol, barf bag and lotsa tissues. whoopee.

no big agenda on this new year's day so i spent the rainy afternoon indoors with napolean dynamite. and what an afternoon indeed. heard heaps about it early last year when this humble quirky movie started to accumalate a considerable following, propelling it to a kind of cult stardom. jon heder is napolean dynamite, king geek amongst resident oddballs of a small town in idaho, and alienated teenager who deals with the trials and tribulations of life and high school with his little, outlandish ways. seriously, it's trippy. with a tight red afro, beady blank stares, outrageous lies, bizarre convictions, distorted drawings, napolean is both weird and appealing. you may cringe at his antics but you might just find yourself compelled to watch what he'll do or say next. the setting and tone of the movie are effective too... a town in the american heartlands that looks like it's stuck in a liminal space between rural wasteland and suburbia hell. taking it all in, one feels rather trapped in a time-less warp.

i've never seen a movie with so many losers. it got a little painful at a point not because the characters were bordering on spazz but because you start to wonder about the dweebs you've met before and that little dweeb in you. the interesting thing about napolean as a character is that he is at once outlandish and yet familiar. i swear he's a celluloid reincarnation of someone i knew once... someone beyond my understanding (from college no less!). it's an excellent satirical take on life at the epitome of its mediocrity and it strangeness. anyway, the weird can be wonderful sometimes and in my opinion, it's worth a watch. if not for anything else, then for its deadpan, whitebread jokes.