Legendary Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman passed away on July 30, 2007. He was 89.
If you’re a film student, his works are definitely some of those you would have studied. I remembered studying THE SEVENTH SEAL. But the film I loved most is WILD STRAWBERRIES. Eng Tiong’s favourite is PERSONA.
View his filmography here.
Eng Tiong and I were in Hong Kong for the past 2 weeks, completing post production for our 1st movie TRUTH BE TOLD. Finally!
To read about the technical/ production aspects of this trip, click on our TRUTH BE TOLD production blog here.
This entry, as the heading suggests, is about the miscellaneous thoughts & happenings. Well, 10 days is considered a little long a stay. Most tourists are out of there by Day 5. But we aren’t there for a holiday although it’s perfect that the summer sale is ongoing! Strictly speaking, we’re not shopaholics. But it’s just hard to ignore items at 50% discount we’ve had intentions to purchase anyway!
Global Warming?
Hong Kong’s weather is a killer. Understandably, it’s summer but it’s been one of the hottest ever at 33/ 34 degree celsius. Although Singapore is hot and as Singaporeans, we should be able to stand heat better than most people, we still find HK’s summer weather 10 times worse. In Singapore, the hot weather is usually balanced up with cool breeze. In Hong Kong, the summer breeze is hot. The whole place feels like an open-tub sauna and we’re baked alive the moment we stepped out of the cool comfort of air-conditioned buildings.
Okay, places like Las Vegas in summer is much worse but I guess we weren’t expecting such bad weather in a place like Hong Kong. A Hongkonger friend ruefully remarked that the winter is no longer as cold as it used to be. She’s even joking that there may not be any winter in Hong Kong in 50 years (there goes the chance to don fashionable winter clothes!)
And we joked that Singapore, in reverse, may have winter then! (New marketing campaign for our toursim board – “Come to Singapore – the place to don your winter coats!”) Strange as it is, we return to Singapore on the 26th to a rainy day at 24 degrees celsius. That’s 10 degrees lower than Hong Kong! My feet are cold and I’m sneezing… Or maybe in 50 years, it’s not snow in Singapore. There won’t be a Singapore. You’ll find the sea.
Like Hong Kong, like Singapore
Besides wandering round Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, we went a little further this time – Sha Tin in the New Territories. The suburban town is about half an hour away from Shenzhen.
The area we were at is a residential estate. It’s strange – we felt like we’re back in Singapore’s Punggol New Town. Or Bukit Panjang. The wet market looks like the one in Tiong Bahru. It seems we’re not that different after all. Although apartment blocks in Hong Kong are much taller than Singapore’s, we’re pretty much heading in the same direction. Singapore is already building 50-storey blocks – both private and public. Well, that may be a good thing because if our land is swallowed by the sea, we could still live on the upper floors! (Think A.I.)
A Guiness Record
A new info we’ve found out from our Hong Kong counterparts – the corner shop at Causeway Bay along Hennessy Road/ Yee Wo Street (the busy traffic light junction opposite Sogo) has the most expensive shop rental rate in the world -HK$70,000/ month for 17 sq metres! The most ironic thing – the shop sells mostly cheap take-away snacks. But if you look at the human traffic passing through from Times Square towards Sogo and back the same direction every day, every hour, every minute, every second… it makes sense. In the picture below, the shop is located at the top left corner where the blue truck is.
Cinema-spotting
And once again, a look at Eng Tiong’s hobby. We’ve visited or came upon cineplexes around the Causeway Bay area, the one at IFC and some on Kowloon side. We’ve caught HARRY POTTER & THE ORDER OF PHOENIX at UA’s Windsor Cinemas at Causeway Bay and INVISIBLE TARGET at UA’s Tai Koo branch. We must say, we still prefer Singapore cinemas, especially GV’s.
We’ve visited the latest mega shopping complex Megabox at Kowloon Bay which also contains UA’s newest and biggest cineplex, including the IMAX theatre. But sadly, we didn’t have the opportunity to catch a movie there. They are showing Harry Potter everywhere and the next upcoming movie was Shrek 3, which we’ve already caught in Singapore. Well, that leaves us something to do on our next trip!
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UA Windsor Cinema – where we caught Harry Potter.……………………………………………………………
UA at City Plaza, Tai Koo – where we watched Invisible Target.
The reason for coming here – Eng Tiong wants to take a peek at the Directors’ Club (think GV’s Gold Class). But we’re currently poor filmmakers with no money for such luxury – yet.……………………………………………………………
Standee & lobby cards for Jay Chou’s latest movie “Secret”……………………………………………………………
This life-size interactive standee is in amazingly good condition! The ones we’ve seen in Singapore are worn and torn.……………………………………………………………
An AMC cineplex at Kowloon Tong.
We’re featured in the latest issue of Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s E-Grad, an online magazine for alumni. Read the article.
Taiwanese director Edward Yang passed away on June 29, 2007 from cancer complications. He was 59.
Usually, we hear of this or that famous filmmaker dying and they are always some remote Hollywood figure we’ve never met. This strikes closer to home. We’ve actually met Mr Edward Yang. Back in 1994 when we were still in film school, we attended a screening of A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION and he was also in attendance to talk about filmmaking.
Asia and the world has lost a great director.
Filmography:
In Our Time (Guangyin de gushi) (1982) (directed one episode of this four-part film, the other directors being Tao dechen, Ko I-Cheng and Zhang yi)
Desires (1982)
That Day, on the Beach (Haitan de Yitian) (1983)
Taipei Story (Qingmei Zhuma) (1985)
Terrorizer (Kongbu Fenzi) (1986)
A Brighter Summer Day (Guling jie Shaonian sha ren Shinjian) (1991)
A Confucian Confusion (Duli shidai) (1994)
Mahjong (1996)
Yi Yi (aka A One and a Two) (2000)
