Coco by Colbie Caillat

It opens up with a breath of fresh air, like oxygen...you could almost instantly feel the breeze on your face, the sun all over your body, yet you could still feel the little pebbles beneath your feet. It is kind of rough to begin with, but as it moves along, you soon move into finer grains of sand, the songs gradually refine themselves like how you have now reached the more sandy and silky part of the beach. You can now throw out your matt, kick away your sandals, slap on a thin layer of sun-tanned lotion, and last but not least, opens up your most favourite book. It makes you feel all bubbly and true enough, all your feelings of happiness and blissfulness show. My sons now refer to this song as the "ratatouille" song for I used it in my previous post on that movie. It is never bubbly. She has such a natural sunny voice, it does come across in her songs. After a day at the beach, under the sun, it would be perfect to settle into the night with a midnight bottle of sweet memories, hopes and dreams. You then realized that you actually had a great day after all. Everything seems tailor made to unfold the way they intend to be. Listening to Colbie is synonymous to the word, magic...

The Love That Could Have Been

The English Patient (1996)

Directed by Anthony Minghella

Starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Kristin Scoot Thomas, Willem Dafoe, Naveen Andrews

Based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by Sri Lankan Canadian novelist, Michael Ondaatje

An unexpected love, a possessive desire, an addictive longing, set against a vast sand of uncertainties, a desert of unsuspected revelations, poetically told, it reads of the agony of the forbidden love between two passionate souls. Could it be deemed wrong? Of course, from the very beginning, one is a married woman, the other is an explorer who has the wrong name. But as the film progresses, one could be mistakenly misunderstood for you begin to feel for the reasons for them to be together, especially towards the end. What would be right, and what would be deemed wrong by then? It is so character driven that no matter how fragmented the story and events unfold in the film, one could somehow follow these two main characters: One being the patient (Almasy played by Ralph Fiennes), and one being the caretaker (Hana played by Juliette Binoche). Come to think of it, it does remind me a little of PERSONA, but on very different levels, they reveal different aspects of life and love, and how human perceive love should be, with each other. Music is splendid, haunting yet captivating. I simply adore the writing. Of course, it helps when you have good actors to begin with. Ralph is such a great subtle and intense actor that he made the character of Almasy lovable after all. One tends to emphatize with his stubbornly devoted obssessiveness over Kristin's character. After much hardship and struggle, he did fulfill his promise of going back for her. The love in the film is so suffocating that it almost evokes the feeling of breathlessness. A tragic love story is almost always a beautiful love story. But I must say this is definitely one of the best told human stories of our time. On this note, Happy Valentine's Day!

Old and New Friends

I wanted to throw a suprised birthday party for Patrick recently but I failed miserably. I guess when you are around each other so often that I realized it could be hard to be a surprise anymore for it is bound to be discovered, that little secret mission of yours. That was what happened to me, to be exact. Anyway, I wanted this year's birthday celebration to be a little different, and also the fact that I missed some of my old friends quite a fair bit. When you move along with your daily life, you tend to be less reachable for everyone is occupied with the mundane life of earning a living. I got some of our very first work colleague together and these are some of the most memorable first bunch of friends whom I had made in my first job, after graduation! Sid came in the next day after me, and later turned out to be Patrick and my best friend in sharing our passion and love for films. Joey, always busy working away infront of her PC but would be "crazy" enough to offer herself to be the female "victim" in our small little horror movie we eventually made while working there. My most memorable memory of Gary has always been his keen interest in entertaining us all with his jokes and advices, and lots of interesting stories. Fung will always be the inquisitive and charming supporter of all. Boy, we had fun back then, we created our own small FILM CLUB fondly called E=MC2 where we would screen movies once a week at the mini theatre, we enlisted ourselves in a short film appreciation course offered by the infamous PATRICK TAM, who was co-incidentally, working there, under a different division - script development. We were bombarded with more foreign films, films that we would not have had a chance to watch if it were not for the classes then. Looking back, though I was never in the film and TV department, I was blessed enough for that first job was the one that fueled my passion for the moving images, and for now, which I still harbour the hope to one day excel in my own world of movie making! Thanks friends, for coming back again, for the sake of good old times, and see, now that we have extended our circles to more kids, and new little friendships along the way! I had a great time that day, I sincerely hope that the birthday "boy" had experienced the same too.