Just Face It
From a safe distance at a neighbourhood food court, I was queuing behind a lady with a heritage-looking tingkat, when she turned around. Looking at her eyes, I surmised she was smiling widely beneath her mask, and nodded in polite response. She hesitated, moved to …
The Invisible Man
Do you know of this movie, ‘Wait Until Dark’? A 1967 film with Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman who is attacked in her own home. She waits until it’s dark, then breaks all the lamps so that the attacker, like her, will not be …
The Virus
I just received this news notification – ‘Coronavirus: No new confirmed cases in Singapore for a second day. MOH reiterated that there is currently no evidence of community spread of the virus in Singapore. None of the 18 previously announced cases is critically ill. All …
Late Night
In show business, a most talented artiste will still need the perfect platform to shine. With a combination of factors, including a big dose of luck, this can happen. And we have seen this happen. How an artiste sparkle, and how a movie for example, …
1917
I remember there was a night when I was training as a cadet soldier. I thought I could not go on. It was an endless exercise of search and destroy in the mountains of Kaoshiung in Taiwan. Out of the blue, a fellow cadet started …
A Sense Of Home
Last week, I pondered over something close to home. The concept of home. A friend based in Los Angeles was back in Singapore for his son’s National Service enlistment. His wife is Taiwanese, his son was born in America. I got to know him last …
Ip Man 4
For those of you who see this film as an almost vulgar cash cow of commercial filmmaking, the eastern equivalent of the Rocky franchise, you may want to know Ip Man 4 is back-to-basic filmmaking at its best. You know how the audience need to …
Marriage Story
There is nothing new in saying every marriage has a story. Watching ‘Marriage Story’, however, is quite a new experience. Directed, produced and written by Noah Baumbach, it is a story of a union that seems to be happy, until it suddenly isn’t. Its unraveling …
The Silver Lining
‘You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only option.’ I have read this line somewhere and I thought I knew what it meant. This year, two film projects brought me face to face with raw courage. One was for the …
Sister
I woke up this morning to Yeewei‘s text – the story is out. Reading the Sunday Times article, Death Row’s Angel Of Hope, I remembered the meeting with Dr Sudha Nair and a social worker on the year-end parties for the PAVE children. Before leaving, …