15 Movie By Royston Tan on Youth Subculture in Singapore(Not suitable for ages 18 and below because of vulgarities)

Oh great, this is the full 92 minutes quasi-documentary film produced by Royston Tan and shown during the Singapore film festival that we watched for our Singapore society module on the topic of Youth Sub-culture. May not suitable for people below ages of 18 and below because of the explicit Hokkien vulgarities used in the film.



Homosexual themes and also the high rates of commiting suicide in Singapore are emphasized in the movie. Also reveals to us about the "hopelessness" and "plight" felt by the 15 year old underclass in Singapore who band together to form their particular youth cultures.

Film Review:

Source:

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/film.nsf/reviews/15


There have been plenty of movies about dissaffected American youth, and disaffected Japanese youth, and disaffected British youth, and disaffected Korean youth. Someday, someone will write a movie in which all these groups come together in one violent rumble to determine which country creates the most psychotic teens. (My money’s on the Koreans.)

In the meantime, Singapore — of all places — joins the fray with 15, an energetic, scary, and ultimately sad slice of life in which five aimless teens smoke, fight, pierce each other, get tattoos, and skip school, sulking their way through steamy Singaporean afternoons talking big about brotherhood, loyalty, and gang philosophy while hurling funny insults at each other. “Your brother smells like a durian” is considered a prime putdown.

Director Roystan Tan brings a frenetic style that combines title cards, special effects, animation, and music video editing techniques to show the chaos of these young lives, and amazingly enough, he got the Singapore Film Commission to back him, only to find his film censored after it was first screened.

The five non-actor 15-year-olds Tan recruited from housing projects for his film average about 5’4” and 110 pounds, yet they see themselves as big men in a world that, like the world of Larry Clark’s Kids (or Peanuts, for that matter), is almost totally devoid of adults. None of the boys has a stable family; they’ re always getting kicked out of their homes for one infraction or another. None spends much time in school, although their concern about an upcoming school talent show leads to several funny scenes of gang-related karaoke singing.

Basically plotless, 15’s longest and most memorable scene has two of the boys helping a third as he embarks on a citywide search to find the best building from which to hurl himself in a suicide attempt the next day. Toting placards that say “I Want to Die” in Chinese characters, they head out on a whirlwind tour of Singapore, stopping to insult the color schemes or the bad feng shui of the buildings they deem unsuitable.

Given how badly behaved and obnoxious the quintet can be, their despair is touching. They cling to each other, sometimes literally, looking for anchors of friendship in an uptight conformist society they think has simply tossed them out like trash. Tan does best when he slows down and lets his camera linger on the boys’ sad faces. “Men’s tears are precious,” says one, but their tears do fall. Despite their piercings and tattoos, these kids aren’t as tough as they look.




P/s: I like the part where they blended the Japanese pop music after the Hokkien music that they sing so successfully that it sounds so funny.

Present and Upcoming Movies

The posters for the list of upcoming movies:



The 7 min long trailer for X-Men 3 at this site:

http://thelaststand.dell.com.edgesuite.net/sneakpeek/large.html

I like this MTV 宇恒 - 依然是朋友

情人节的前一天,他离开你身边
却剩下你到至今的想念,
那一夜我陪着你,你哭了一整夜
你是否知道我对他一样很想念
直到有一天我和他碰面
在那间我们常去的咖啡店
才知道有些感受
我和他谁都不曾说出口
我们之间隐藏了什么
除了我自己没人懂
可是你,你怎么说
你知道好事不是从此避开我
哦,我一样难过
多希望我们不曾相识过
music on
才知道有些感受
我和他谁都不曾说出口
我们都是最好的朋友
谁会有勇气去开口
不在乎不再难过
我们还有好大好大的借口喔～
故事的最后
我们都不曾失去过什么
我们依然是朋友
噢～

Important Reflections Part 2

The idea of working on projects and term papers is as follows:

1. To develop your understanding of the theory that we had been taught in class.

2. By working on a project, we are able to focus on 1 narrow aspect of the concept and issue and specialise on working on that concept to show our understanding of it and in the end becomes sort of like a specialist in that field.

3. The design of a project is firstly to introduce the underlying principles of what we are about to discuss, outline the main concepts and your hypothesis that will be discussed. Followed by subsections that focus on headings that discuss one concept, followed by the examples(data analysis) in order to support the concept that we are arguing on. There can be other subsections which discussed on other concepts. And ending with a conclusion why the concept is important.

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade Announced

According to Gamespot, Relic had announced the 2nd expansion to the Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War PC game due to release end of 2006. In this expansion, 2 new races will be added to the universe, making the total number of races up to 7.

The Necrons, "an undead Terminator-like race with a soul but mindless and appears to be unstoppable".

The Necrons had been revealed as an unplayable race in the previous expansion Winter Assault, now they are fully a playable race in Dark Crusade.

In the new expansion, Dark Crusade, Necrons will become a fully usable race (they will most likely be toned down, as they were meant to be extremely powerful), as well as the Tau. Not much is known about them at the time, but they were seen in an official trailer for the game. Several units, including Monoliths, Flayed Ones, Scarabs, and a Necron Lord were visible. The Nightbringer also made an appearence, but it is not known wether or not he is only available in the campaign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necron

The Tau, a technological advanced race belonging to the good side and who excels at sharpshooting and advanced technologies. In the game, their appearance are likened to Japanese anime robots.

In the new expansion, Dark Crusade, Tau will become a playable race, as well as the Necrons. Not much is known about them at the time, but they were seen in an official trailer for the game. Several units, including Fire Warriors, Kroot (Carnivores and Oxes), Hammerheads, and what appeared to be Markerlights, were visible. Commander ShadowSun also made an appearence, but it is not known wether or not she is only available in the campaign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_(Warhammer_40,000)


Source: Gamespot.com
Shadowsun, a hero unit of the Tau, squaring against the Necrons.


Source: Gamespot.com
A Necronlord, a hero unit of the Necrons.


Source: Gamespot.com
A Necron warrior up against some Tau units.

Trailer of Dark Crusade



Hyping up the second expansion for the PC RTS Dawn of War, comes this little trailer and its sneak-peeks at the two new armies stepping up. The Necrons and the Tau.

New Tagboard

Someone hacked into my tagboard and remove all previous postings and added several spam and nonsensical posts.

I cannot recover those messages so had to get a new chat board. This new chatter board is quite cool because it can incorporate into the design of my blog skin.

Anyway, do you know that you are destroying people's lives by hacking their tagboards and blogs. Don't think that you can run away with this, because you think you can be protected by the anonymity of the net.

Important Reflections

Have some interesting thoughts after I had gone through this semester. After all these time spent in NUS, I find that the experience before taking modules and after taking modules is something like this:

Before I had gone for the module I had chosen, it’s like starting on a journey into the unknown. I won’t know what to expect and not sure what I would stand to gain or experience in this module until after I had experienced it personally by attending it. It’s the same with doing projects and assignments and writing essays. All the open ended assignments – projects and essays, its like finding a way out of a forest into the sunshine before I started researching for any ideas to write. The point is that finding the way out is not the issue, but the main issue is experience the loss and enlightenment at the end of it, even though if I don’t do well in it, I will certainly gain the experience, and will not likely to repeat the same mistakes again the next time. Also, the point about gaining the knowledge is not to benefit your own self only, but to share it among others, in order to make the world a better place. One of the advantages of taking modules that can critically assess our world, is that we can avoid falling into the structures that are created by the “evils” of this world to benefit themselves so that we will not become part of the “unequals” that are perpetuated in our society – such as patriarchical mindset, capitalistic mindset, etc even though we may be unintentional sometimes in helping the “evils”. Also, treat assignments with fun and enthusiasm so that our life will not become miserable as a result of this.

The most important skill developed in this semester is in argumentative essay writing skills, thanks to the EL modules I had taken which allowed me to learn this knowledge. The crux to writing a coherent essay is:

To have a good thesis statement that I can use and focus on throughout the remainder of the essay.
To have good structure for the essay, firstly, I need to have a theory statement, followed by relevant substantial examples to support the theory.
To have a counter-argument that shows that it cannot invalidate my original stand – if appropriated correctly, this can add structure, and increase the strength of my current stand in the essay.
Reference materials must be properly attributed to the sources and included in the bibliography to avoid plagiarism.

The most difficult part about writing such open ended essays and project is to find a right topic that you can focus in writing with the relevant examples and concepts that can be applied to show your understanding of the module. This, I think is a skill that needs to be developed further in future. But the point is still to read the question carefully to pick out clues from the question and address it. This will prevent from going out of the question which will result in penalties.

All the modules taken this semester are very interesting and challenging. Looking forward to next semester – trying a SS and Science GEM next.

Paper 4: Media, Discourse and Society

Just finished this paper today. As promised, there were no surprises in the paper. We were tested on stuff within the syllables itself. Therefore the paper is okie. However, I missed out some parts about discussing why the effect in the text is ideological, and also made some other mistakes like merely grabbing the quotes in the readings and putting them in the paper.

These topics were tested:

1. Interdiscursivity
2. Ideology of advertising
3. Analysis at the level of discourse
4. Understanding advertisers

End of papers. 8 May 06 is the start of special term semester 3, so no holidays...for me...