CNY class steamboat and movie buffet
Had a class steamboat dinner at joyce's and mine hall, 10 of us squeezed around 2 hotpots and one teppanyaki tray in our hut-like student lounge and had quite a cosy evening – though the afternoon leading up to the evening was quite harrowing. None of the 3 of us who were supposed to buy ingredients for steamboat had ever prepared for steamboat before, so we ended up calling our parents for SOS, haha…. even though mishaps like buying the wrong vermicelli happened 
(who knew the difference between rice, flour and egg vermicelli? they all looked the same!)
afer that went to ying's place and had a movie buffet, every guest was supposed to bring a DVD, select a scene from it and share the reason why they like it to the rest of the people. I brought Songs from the 2nd Floor. Ended up watching short excerpts from all kind of movies, i don't even know what i'm watching sometimes:
sexy beast, zoolander, blue velvet, the pillow book, chungking express, days of being wild, mullholland drive, french and saunders (which i've never heard before yesterday night, but do amazing spoofs!) quitting…. i forgot a lot more, or perhaps i was fell asleep in the middle of some, any guerillas want to cover what i've forgotten?
Kent brought Be With Me, and i managed to borrow it and complete it this afternoon. I liked it! I love the cinematography and the quality and colouring of the shots, the blacks looked so rich! High Definition Digital never looked more amazing. However, my only gripe was that Eric Khoo could have pushed the actors more to deliver better performances. I also felt that each of the 3 stories could have enough material to stand as a film on its own, and compressing them into one film was sort of contrived and did not do justice to their potential, especially the security guard's sequence.
Besides the look of the film, the film also suceeded because it had a very local and real heart, Theresa Chan's story is moving in any context, i believe it would function better as a biography, but yes it did have its moments on film.
I'm glad that local cinema can produce a film with such a professional feel to it, i sometimes missed the grittiness of Mee Pok Man, which still stands as my favourite Eric Khoo film. I hope that he would produce more films and it can only get better from here on.
