There's a thingy going on where you can catch Singapore films at Cathay Cineleisure. Sad to say, I've never really caught many Singaporean films. In fact, I was a hollywood-kinda girl all throughout my teens, being entertained with teen horror flicks most of the time. Remember the Final Destinations and the Urban Legends... ...I also caught most of John Grisham's books that were turned into movies. The best of that genre was 'What Lies Beneath' which was the only one which scared me from beginning to end.
Later on, probably due to the much-improved subtitling for chinese shows, I found gems in HongKong productions like 'Golden Chicken', and slapstick styled shows like...the mahjong ones and Stephen Chow, of course. There was also a craze in time where Thai shows were all the rage and through watching their shows we could catch a bit of their life and times. Thai shows usually had a bit of horror, with human drama interspersed in them. Thai movies are quite deep that way - at first it seems to be just about the scary feeling, but later you realise... the overarching theme is about family love, or friendship, or some issue.
I also caught many Japanese and some Korean movies - those days, all the Japanese ones were post- 'The Ring' so those that made it to our shows were horror genre types - and Korean shows ultimately involved cyborgs or bio-terrorism warfare. French films were always interesting - my favorite of all time are those by director Jean Pierre Jeunet ('The City of Lost Children', wow!) - unfortunately, no one seems to want to take the risk of showing foreign films here - cannot even get the DVD.
One of the...only...Singaporean film I caught (not counting Jack Neo's shows and the recent 'Wedding Game' Oh wait, I watched Royston Tan's one too)...was 'Leap Years' - Captain Zero dragged me to it! I was reluctant at first, because... I think I am the only one in the nation who has... read the book. Honestly, have you heard of the book before watching the show? But yes - although not really a fan of Catherine Lim, once I've found a good author, I NEED to read the rest of his/her stuff. The book was unexpectedly bad... but the movie, unexpectedly good!
I've read 90% of Agatha Christie books - or at least what is available here... most of John Grisham's and Amy Tan's. Jostein Gaarder's good too. Loved 'Sophie's World' but hated 'Vita Brevis'.
My current obsessions are Nicholas Sparks'; am swiftly building up my collection... and my favorite christian authors so far, John Ortberg and Eldredge. (Both Alkitab and Pianist had good reviews after reading their birthday presents which were Eldredge books! Am so happy to 'convert' them too haha!)
Christopher Paolini's 'Brisingr' was so good (I actually bought it because I read about him being homeschooled in 'microtrends' AND the cover was so nice, I like dragons) that I borrowed 'Eragon' and 'Eldest' from Dree. (And I've also finished reading 'Confessions of a Shopaholic' and 'Slumdog Millionaire' this, and last week. Haha.) I'm wacky like that. Now that there are so many books turned into movies and suddenly available at your nearest bookstore, I'm tempted to start a collection. Heh. Bookshelf + DVD shelf?
Back to Singapore films, I guess it's quite sad when you're a renowned filmmaker like Eric Khoo...he is always being interviewed on news and stuff... but no one has watched your films. Well, some people have... but, not many for sure...
Suddenly I am reminded of how blessed I am, without realizing - all my productions will be on a platform which will have... more than 6 million viewers in a year. (If everything goes smoothly!)
Sure, maybe most of them are doctors talking about boring stuff. And no one will know I produced 90% of the content (Although I appear as calefare in most of them, sigh.)
But I don't need them to know my name. I'm also blessed that my audience is not so critical since most of them are 'killing time' watching the screen, waiting for their patient queue number to be called.
So perhaps, in a way I'm so much more blessed than the other filmmakers out there! I was overwhelmed just thinking about that, today. 6 million viewers! Wow!
And that... I should also make an effort to catch more Singapore films.
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