Lust, Caution

I have been meaning to write this review for some time now, especially considering the amount of controversy that it has stirred up. From the nude sex scenes to the banning of the lead actress, Tang Wei, in China. It wasn't until I read an article on Tang Wei's courageous and gutsy comeback into the film industry that I decided to finally pen this piece.

This film adaptation of Eileen Chang's famous short story was absolutely sublime. The pacing, acting, music, scenes, and colors that generated the overall atmosphere for the movie had to have been designed and planned by a mind that is very sensitive yet bold to the sight and sounds that is in the film's director, Ang Lee. With that said, this movie is about the details. The very little intricate details that most fail to appreciate. I watched this movie 3 times, and every time I noticed something I hadn't before. It was like reading a great novel, it gets better with every read-through.

From the beginning scene of the four women playing cards, it was evident to me that a lot of attention had to be paid to the screen. The dialog is simple, without many words, such that each actor/actress's facial expressions and body language became an important source in communicating their state of mind to the audience. A picture speaks a thousand words. Every scene showed meticulous control over every moving part. It's was akin to a piece of music where every note was meant to be. The overall atmosphere felt very raw, and real. Aside from the purposefully yet tasteful saturation of colors, it didn't overload your senses. Aside from the vivid sex scenes of course, which in my opinion were essential to the movie. The rest of the film was done in such a way that it couldn't use a epic music score, action sequence, and many things that is present in most films. It relied on accentuating with less, and that is much more difficult to pull off in my opinion.

I became an instant fan of Tang Wei after this film. People unfairly dismissed her acting skills because of her rise to fame over this movie. The actress I saw on screen was absolutely amazing. It's no surprised Ang Lee picked her for the role. There's simply no one else that could've replaced her. She was a very mature actress that had a lot of talent and knew how to use it. That could've only came from someone that had a true passion for the arts and spent years honing their craft. I loved her acting within minutes of the movie. She had the uncanny ability to communicate a lot without saying much. Like a jazz singer that interprets a song not through powerful and rangy vocals, but through tone, texture and granular control.

The level of intricacy is deep and rare, such that I believe it's hard for most people to appreciate. It's a shame that the hype over the sex scenes made people blind about what is really great about this movie. I've read and heard much criticism of this film. Most of which tastelessly centered around the notion that it's artsy porn. I was disappointed in people's reception, but I also understood it. This movie wasn't meant to appeal to the masses. I just hoped that more people would see what I saw, and appreciate it the way I did. I can only hope this review does the film some justice.

Spring Break: Puerto Rico

A year ago, I took a week long vacation to St. Kitts. One thing I took away from that trip was that I really enjoyed nature raw with just a touch of commercialization. A small bar on the beach side perhaps. For me, a vacation on an island is all about the beach with an afternoon of snorkeling or horseback riding dabbled here and there. It wasn't the kind of vacation where I'd schedule full days of activities. Relaxation was the focus.

Before I get into more detail, let's go through what I did:

1. Old San Juan
2. Fort El Morro
3. Aguadillas's Crash Boat Beach (supposedly famous)
4. El Yunque Rain Forest
5. Brief stint at the "2nd best beach in the world" Flameco beach on the island of Culebra
6. Kayak and Snorkeling at Culebra
7. Bio bay at Fajardo
8. Casinos
9. Beach resort at Ritz Carlton

This is in 4 days. If you do a vaca on an island this is most possibly the worst angle to approach it. I'm not sure why I agreed to go with this schedule, but it should only be done on trip to a more culture centric country like France or Italy. My most enjoyable day at PR was spending the afternoon on the beach resort at the Ritz Carlton hotel and then going with a group of my brothers friends to a nice dinner and some drinking/clubbing afterwards. That's what we should have done. Take it easy.

Aside from Old San Juan and the Flamenco beach on Culebra, the rest of the activities we did I was very unimpressed with. You want a rain forest with a real water fall? Go to Taiwan. You want to go snorkeling? Go to the Bali islands. Bio bay? I'd rather watch it on discovery channel. Way over hyped.

Flamenco beach was very awesome though. Clearest waters with the whitest of sands. Unfortunately we only spent a mere 30minutes as a pit stop before snorkeling. If I could do this over again I'd just spend the whole day at there. The scenery was truly paradise-like.

Old San Juan reminded me a lot about Europe. Small stone alley ways with a bunch of small shops dabbled all over the place, it was really nice to just walk around and look around shops. Too many run of the mill souvenir stores though. Forts are ok, but if you've seen them before they aren't very different.

Caribbean food is mostly overpriced and tastes lame. PR is definitely overpriced for food. It tastes decent though. Probably one of the better islands for food I've been to. Mofongos (local thing, basically mashed up plantains) was alright, but other than that there isn't much that is local to PR. If anything, you can always fall back on a whopper.

For me, PR was a place where there was no shortage of activities, but most of them were mediocre and unimpressive. If you've traveled a decent amount as I have there's nothing PR can offer that really gets me excited, other than Flamenco beach of course. The biggest downside of it all was that you waste an insane amount of time travelling. I put 450miles on my rental car in a matter of 3 days. That's easily 8 hours of driving. Seeing a large amount of American corporate infestation of fast food restaurants (tons of burger king for some reason) and Walmarts certainly didn't help. I felt like I barely got away.

Would I recommend Puerto Rico as your next vacation destination? No. Unless you are easily amused like most American reviewers on yelp. I rate PR a C+. The only activities you should engage in there is drinking, night life, and the beach. Miami is a better alternative to this. I'm thinking Brazil next.

Sherlock Holmes

It was surprisingly entertaining to say the least, but definitely could have been better. Here's why: If Robert Downey Jr. was not Holmes in the movie, and should an inferior actor have been in his place, this movie would have been your typical action packed mediocrity Hollywood is so good at producing and most tasteless movie goers continue to accept as "good".

I'll admit though, that I haven't read a single Sherlock Holmes book growing up. My mystery novel readings were primarily on the Arsene Lupin series, which I first stumbled upon in 3rd grade when my mom confiscated one of them from a student while she was still an English teacher. After watching the movie, and should the depiction of Holmes be accurate to the books, Lupin is very much the French Sherlock Holmes sans a few small yet significant personality traits that ultimately make them entertaining in their unique ways which...I'll leave for another discussion after I go through a few books in the series this movie is based on.

Now back to Holmes. A genius detective with a keen sense of perception and unmatched deductive reasoning nicely rounded off with an eccentric personality. The result is a character that every guy pretty much wants to be and every girl wishes was single. Robert Downey Jr., whom recently played a very similar role in Iron Man, could not have been more suitable for this role. Boy did he pull it off. The kind of intellectual charm was mesmerizing enough for me to stop thinking about the rest of the movie. I almost failed to recognize Watson was played by another actor I enjoyed watching, Jude Law, until about half way into the movie.

So, I did seem a bit harsh on the premise that this movie would've been a disaster if it weren't for Downey's brilliant acting. That's not really true, it's just that the acting was so good when you took it out, the movie was in comparison was just ok.

The plot, from a mystery novel stand point of view is fairly standard. Lay out the mysteries that are seemingly mind boggling and provide bread crumb sized clues to the audience until the brilliant rationalization of the truth at the end. I have no problem with that, practically every mystery story follows this pattern more of less anyway. Still, I remember the thrill of finding out what happened when I read the Lupin series as a child and being in awe at the intellectual complexity of it all. However, I felt none of that at the end of the movie. The explanations to the mysteries were uninteresting, and fairly predictable. It was a bit boring really.

So, at the end the movie had great acting for the most part, nicely done music that brought out the exciting atmosphere, and impressive action sequences, but it missed the most important, essential ingredient all great mystery stories all have in the plot. That's a shame, because if it were me, I would've traded anything for a great plot that brought out the same emotions when I finished a Arsene Lupin novel.

Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar

http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Buccaneer-Scholar-Self-Education-Pursuit-Lifetime/dp/1439109087/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

This book is written by James Bach, a high school drop out turned software tester extraordinaire, about his life long journey of self-education. I've always looked up to people like this. The idea that being really good at what you do without having gone through some kind of university for a degree is a sexy idea, for lack of a better word.

I wiki all the time, and I usually end up chain-reading links on related topics until I can't see what the tab reads on my browser anymore. Then I just create new browser windows and keep going until Firefox inevitably crashes. Ok, I lied about the last part, but I do wiki a lot.

I've always been one those people that had a hard time doing well in school. Sitting in a lecture and taking exams was not my cup of tea. It's still surprising to me that I've made it this far without having to repeat anything. I learn a lot better on my own, without some syllabus or course curriculum telling me what I need to know. In many ways, I don't agree with the shove-down-your-throat method of teaching employed at pretty much every school out there. I'm rebellious in nature, and I hate being forced to do anything.

However, like the author, academia is not what I'm opposed to. Some of the most interesting stuff I learned were through research papers written by PhDs. Still, I believe it's important to maintain the ability to have the curiosity to learn outside of class or work regardless of whether or not a class environment works for you.

The key word here is curiosity. One can attempt to self-educate by reading about something they don't care much for only to fail at the end, but if the person dived into a topic because of a genuine curiosity it becomes very self-fulfilling. The chain of topics you end up visiting becomes incredibly vast.

Andy Timmons: The Tone King

I remember the first time I heard of this guy was watching the Ibanez 90th anniversary show which also featured Paul Gilbert and Steve Vai. At one point, PG and AT were taking terms jamming over a blues based rock song called Red Rooster, and the solo Andy dished out was just out of this world. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuRwjvHdZk8)

The phrasing was so unique and new to me my jaw dropped for while. I remember rewinding to that section just for that solo multiple times. So from there, I started to listen to songs he had written. I played his "That was then, this is now" album front and back that I got my roommate at the time (Antonio) interested in his stuff.

There's something very distinct about his tone, his style. The guy isn't a super control-oriented guitarist like Steve Vai is, but a more feel-my-way-through-the-melody type of guitar player. He doesn't pick every note but instead slides around the neck to hit notes, vibratos in and out of licks, and bends to notes you really don't expect. Every song he has that has him going into a solo, he never makes it sound like it's planned. It almost sounds like he improvised everything on the spot. Kinda like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH5ALwj_fKU (This was a one take, semi-improvised track that ended up on his CD)

I really can't put my finger on what his style is. The rock aspect is obviously there, but he also adds a little bit of jazz fusion into his playing. The outcome is song after song of tireless music that is always inspiring.

------GEAR TALK BEGINS-----
His sound on the other hand, is very similar to what John Mayer has. At least since the resolution album. Very bottom heavy, bright but not ear piercing highs, and very strat-inspired sounds. It has less "twang" than a classic strat tone though. His gear isn't overly complex. A few compressors, delay units, a Ibanez TS909, BB preamp, all into either the mesa lonestar or the stiletto.

From listening to a lot of his songs, he really loves to play with the delays. A double delay with different settings that give it a space-ish dreamy clean tone is what I hear on a lot of his slower songs. On his more rock-ish tunes he has the drive channel engaged on lead and boosts with the TS909, then uses compressor peddles to keep it from going over the top. So all in all, some 4~5 analogue peddles is all he really uses. He plays a Ibanez AT100/300 guitar, which is basically a ibanez-strat in many ways. Although, the AT300 features a less popular mahogany body which gives it a darker sound compared to the Alder bodied, maple neck of the AT100 in my opinion.
------GEAR TALK ENDS------

His stuff you should check out:
--------------------------
September - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36ToDxW_hns&feature=related
This never made it on a CD, but is a great song nonetheless

Cry For you - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaVVZYOvMFY&feature=PlayList&p=4B62E20877C8B42F&index=0&playnext=1
This is to Andy Timmons like what "For the love of god" is to Steve Vai. His signature song.

Pink Champagne Sparkle - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rX1QbNSss0&feature=PlayList&p=AA460BF67C1C0A8B&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=2
A track I personally like a lot. He changed a few things for this live performance. I personally like the CD version better though.

Wall-E: A breathe of fresh air

I'm a big fan of Pixar's animated films. They never ceased to amaze me with their creativity, imagination and just plain genius that fills every film they've released. I thought Wall-E was a masterpiece. One that took a very bold and risky move adopting an otherwise very interesting premise.

Underneath the beautiful animation and masterfully engineered sound effects, which gave voice to Wall-E and Eve, laid a simple yet flavorful love story that really moved me. While there was another major theme related to saving the world and humanity, it all became somewhat secondary to the simple desire of holding your loved one's hand.

This is one of Pixar's best films of all time, one that really pushed the envelops of imagination and set a new standard in the industry. I only own a handful of DVDs, this will be the next one in my selective collection.