On culture.

Fri, 6 Aug 2010
1 min read
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Eight Plays by Huzir Sulaiman.

Found the bit that I like the most:

It angers me when after hundred years of importing aspects of other people’s culture some politician in a 4,000-ringgit Italian suit complains about Western values and such-and-such a thing is not from our culture. Our culture is everybody else’s culture. We’ve never had our own. You can’t arbitrarily draw a line to freeze its change and growth. And it angers me when people like Thomas Thomas expect me to be original, when in fact to be Malaysian is to be derivative. Deal with it and grow up. Would you like some coffee? No? It’s Colombian.

    — Huzir Sulaiman. “Notes on Life and Love and Painting.” Eight Plays. Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish Books, 2002. 135.

Toy Story 3: “easily the best film of 2010”.

Sun, 20 Jun 2010
2 min read
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Toy Story 3: The Toys Are Back In Town!

Well, the title says it all.

I got the quote off a post off Huffington Post and the picture from this site which has a pretty cute review.

First things first, or, how you know the movie’s really good – I’m writing a sort of review on it, something I rarely do unless I am immensely moved or immensely pissed off by something.

However, I’m not providing any specific examples from the film so that I don’t spoil the film for you.

Why I like Toy Story 3 so much is because it’s packed with so much goodness in it that it has something valuable for everyone.

For example,

  • Entertaining and humorous storyline for the kids: Check.
  • Tearjerker/romance/comedy/action elements for the various segments of the adult population: Check.
  • Concepts like existentialism for the literary geeks: Ch – WTF?

Yes, I’m serious. You can even see some Freudian psychology (yeah I know it’s passe but still) at work in terms of the life drive/Eros/self-preservation instinct that some characters portray.

Some other literary aspects of the film that appeal to me:

  • The plot has been crafted very well and fits together very tightly, such that there is adequate closure to each conflict that arises, which allow the round characters to progress in a convincing fashion,
  • The conflicts are both plausible and palpable – what each character goes through is at no times trite or contrived, and last but not least,
  • What really had me in awe was the film’s employment of a literal deus ex machina that leverages on a series of motifs from the fim/within the Toy Story trilogy. It’s cheesy and a tad predictable if you’ve been following the clues in the film – but it’s done very well.

So please go and watch Toy Story 3 if you can. Even if you can’t appreciate the literary aspects of it, I think you’ll appreciate the truths about life that the film depicts.

P.S. No, I haven’t been paid to plug the film, but I wouldn’t mind a free t-shirt if anyone could get me one of these babies.