Memorial Day/Cherry Dessert Day/Bob Day
2008-05-26 @ 11:15 p.m.

Caught the Singapore Shorts Finalists at Sinema Old School with Ben Woon, Chun Long, Daniel, Eugene and Thong. We saw, in order: Wet Seasons (Michael Tay), Para Asia (Fran Borgia), Love Me, Love My Dogs (Lincoln Chia), My Home, My Heaven (Muhammad EySham Ali), Kallang Roar (Cheng Ding An), Silent Girls (Rick Aw), Keluar Baris (Boo Junfeng). At least that's what I remember the order to be. I liked My Home, My Heaven and Keluar Baris best, although I thought Para Asia was cool because the palette was monochromatic and one of the girls in Silent Girls was quite pretty, in a juvenile sort of way. Wet Seasons had cool animation, and it was definitely an unusual way to pay tribute to someone, although the masturbation motif seemed too gratuitous. Para Asia was interesting because it didn't feature any dialogue, yet the message still came across loud and clear, and like I said, monochrome is just cool. Love Me, Love My Dogs made me go "Huh?" for a while, but as you get to the end, I guess you can begin to see where the main character is coming from, at least a little, and I wish the director had allowed her to speak in Mandarin, as she sounded much more natural and relaxed when she occasionally said something in Mandarin. My Home, My Heaven was interesting, especially the sequence near the beginning that intercut footage of the prison with footage of the mosque, with the behaviours of people in the two locations parallelled. Kallang Roar, I couldn't really identify with, having zero interest in football, local or otherwise, but I quite like Lim Kay Siu as an actor. Silent Girls felt a bit gratuitous too at moments, and given our contemporary society, is less shocking than it might have been despite its lesbian undercurrents. Keluar Baris had funny as well as poignant moments, but having moved on from that phase of my life, it didn't leave as great an impact as it might have, because if anything, my life now is moving in the reverse trajectory to the film's narrative. Daryl Pan, incidentally, sounded like a kid whenever he spoke Mandarin. I'm thinking of learning Middle English...