Arab world

As an aside, what's happening in the Arab world is exciting - the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere. It's a really interesting time to be interested in the Arab world right now. Though the Jasmine Revolution is just starting, the only thing in my knowledge that I can relate it to is 1989. Just a couple of years back I learned that the protests that started in Leipzig led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to chain reactions and the end of the Iron Curtain. I remembered listening to these historical events with some doubt, as just stories, as events which I had never lived through. I asked myself how, living in Canada where things move at a snail's pace and going through the motions of elections seem to be like picking different types of $hit off the same plate, revolutions can start and regimes can be toppled. Now there's proof! Living proof!

Tim Burton

Yesterday I went to the TIFF Lightbox theatre in downtown Toronto. As a movie aficionado, when this building opened and I was still in Ottawa I was really curious about it. Yesterday, I was underwhelmed. It's more a theatre than anything museum-like. And the building itself is quite ugly - glass, four floors, no real good spaces.

I also went to the theatre because of the Tim Burton exhibition the set up. The exhibition was initially in New York's MoMA. I've seen a lot of Tim Burton's films but I've never really been a fan of them. At all. Still, I'm interested in his characters and his wacky way of depicting characters. The exhibition had a few props from the films but most were drawings. Most of the sketches were character sketches - they didn't have a story to them and they were grouped together just because they were part of the same movie or project. The best drawings weren't even by him - it was his collaborators who fleshed out the scenarios in which Tim Burton's characters lived. He is hugely influenced by German Expressionism which I find good. If his style were complex but repetitive and vice versa it'd be okay, but his style if both repetitive and not complex. Stick-out hair, bent bodies, sharp angles or round faces over and over again. Okay, I get the point! Now put them into context! Same with the stories that were displayed - his stories are too simple and the words are too simple. Basically, there's no depth in his work. I don't know whether it is because of him or it's the curator's fault.

It was okay, I guess, but I'm saying that because I'm reluctant to part with my money right now and I paid money for this. In fact, I'd say I was a bit disappointed in the exhibition and I would not go again.

Speaking of being a film aficionado, I am doing a sort of pilgrimage to Hollywood in March.

life and debt

The title for this post is a mistake - I was typing it into the imdb search engine when my internet browser switched to this tab. But I think I'll keep it.

I've finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Spoilers lie ahead: well, well well. A lot of Scandinavian *shock value* entertainment that I've come across has something to do with incest and this is no exception. Ahem.

The thing I want to point out here is coffee. According to this, coffee is mentioned 92 times. The first thing the protagonist does in each scene is to make a pot of coffee, boil water for coffee, get asked for coffee, walk to get a coffee, wake up and smell the coffee, stay up for a coffee. Holy smackerals. Reminds me of the time I drank coffee every other day.

Here Come the Comedy Troupes

As a child I would go over to my grandmother/aunt's house on Saturdays and after eating dinner, we would watch TVB TV. I would get really bored as the shows on at that time were silly variety shows where slapstick humour was centrestage and where I didn't understand a lot of the humour. But then when we got home, I would stay up until 12 to watch MAD TV. After a while I came to dismiss most Saturday night Chinese tv up to today. Except last Saturday, I watched this show called "Fun With Liz and Gods". It was satirical. It was hilarious. There are three guys and they do sketches parodying many different types of pop culture things. It was probably because of the many references to Western culture that made it so accessible for me.

Then yesterday, Sunday, I watched Monty Python's Meaning of Life and that was also hilarious. I was laughing out loud and then my parents came downstairs towards the end of it and they probably thought nothing of it, or maybe even thought it was distasteful. Which makes me think that humour if culturally bound.