Source: www.billathemovie.wordpress.comLooks good, but doesn't take off
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billa_(2007_film)Monday, December 24, 2007
Billa
Source: www.billathemovie.wordpress.comLooks good, but doesn't take off
There are two movies which I believe are milestone movies in Tamil film-making, for their presentation, not substance. One was Minsara Kanavu – the glossy triangular love story by ad director/cameraman Rajiv Menon revolutionarised film photography.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billa_(2007_film)
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Acting
When I dropped by Novena MRT the other day, a flood of memories washed over me. Alliance Française was located just next to it, and it used to be the usual venue of the annual drama production of the School of Communication and Information of NTU.
I enjoy acting, even though I'm not very good at it. People tend to think of it as something very easy to pull off - that's what it looks like on the outside, but try doing it. You need to warm-up, and relax. You need to understand the character. You need to think, feel and behave like how the character would think, feel and behave. It's a serious mind-whack for the serious minded. I've seen actors who can break into tears at the word 'go' - it's amazing. I could never really fully go into any character... my own persona would always invariably show up, and the character would be some wierd mish-mash of someone like me but not me.
I began to act in secondary school, during my days at Umar Pulavar Tamil Language Centre. It was a short play, where I had a role as a lawyer with a comic bent, but the comic fell flat as most of the drama was quite serious and intense (screaming and shouting and adolscent problems etc.). It was then re-staged on radio where I couldn't bear to hear my own voice on national radio.
Then in University, to escape the label of "the ECA-less person", I joined Paparazzi Productions, the drama troupe of the school. In 2003, I played this dude called Uncle Louie in Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers". To jazz up the character, I was told/I decided to have a New Yorker accent throughout the play. But, this too backfired as everyone else was speaking in Singapore English/Bukit Batok/whatever accent. So I was the only tall Indian man speaking in a crazy New Yorker accent and scaring all the small kids in the audience because the stage was so high and I was so tall and it was like some giant walking in and out. But I really enjoyed playing Uncle Louie, not because the character seemed to be the easy-going (suspected gangster) Uncle of 2 young boys, but because of a particular scene which involved the gangster side of the character being displayed to the boys at a particular scene.
Then the next year, the format of the drama production was changed. Instead of the traditional one-big-drama format, the director decided to make it a medley of 7 short plays. (My friend, who was the director, is a very talented theatre actress, scriptwriter and director of quite a number of plays. She has had quite a number of public performances and this medley was her "maiden directorial venture", to quote the cheesy film magazines.) Aptly entitled "A Bowl of Bon Bons", each of the actors had to play at least two different roles, in two short dramas. I played a work-obsessed executive who ignores his wife's feeling in "Split Decision", where the wife decides to leave at the end of the play without the husband even realising it.
The other play was called "Sure Thing", and this I really enjoyed. The story's premise was that anything could go wrong between 2 people who meet each other in a restaurant - the conversation might or might not develop depending on the things you say - or not. So, when the lead characters (there are only 2 folks in the play) meet, every time the girl or boy says something "politically incorrect" during a chat-up, a bells rings and the play is rewinded to the time just before the faux pax occured. The the right thing will be said and the conversation will develop. It was an amazing experience because my co-actress and myself had quite a bit of chemistry, and no two rehearsals were ever the same. There was a lot of experimenting and fun in doing that play.
Those were the memories of Alliance Francais - I decided not to act after that, as I felt it was a good experience enough to last quite a while. And it's not as if I'm some Daniel Day-Lewis. But I enjoy going to plays and dramas, where Thondan was the latest. I recently read about Pondok 2000, and it seems quite interesting too.
The main thing that puts me off, and many others I believe, is the price of tickets. The high price is needed to recover costs of props, venue booking, meals for actors and so on. But unfortunately, it is passed on to audiences as well. It can't be escaped, but I guess we simply have to choose which performances we wish to go to.
I enjoy acting, even though I'm not very good at it. People tend to think of it as something very easy to pull off - that's what it looks like on the outside, but try doing it. You need to warm-up, and relax. You need to understand the character. You need to think, feel and behave like how the character would think, feel and behave. It's a serious mind-whack for the serious minded. I've seen actors who can break into tears at the word 'go' - it's amazing. I could never really fully go into any character... my own persona would always invariably show up, and the character would be some wierd mish-mash of someone like me but not me.
I began to act in secondary school, during my days at Umar Pulavar Tamil Language Centre. It was a short play, where I had a role as a lawyer with a comic bent, but the comic fell flat as most of the drama was quite serious and intense (screaming and shouting and adolscent problems etc.). It was then re-staged on radio where I couldn't bear to hear my own voice on national radio.
Then in University, to escape the label of "the ECA-less person", I joined Paparazzi Productions, the drama troupe of the school. In 2003, I played this dude called Uncle Louie in Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers". To jazz up the character, I was told/I decided to have a New Yorker accent throughout the play. But, this too backfired as everyone else was speaking in Singapore English/Bukit Batok/whatever accent. So I was the only tall Indian man speaking in a crazy New Yorker accent and scaring all the small kids in the audience because the stage was so high and I was so tall and it was like some giant walking in and out. But I really enjoyed playing Uncle Louie, not because the character seemed to be the easy-going (suspected gangster) Uncle of 2 young boys, but because of a particular scene which involved the gangster side of the character being displayed to the boys at a particular scene.
Then the next year, the format of the drama production was changed. Instead of the traditional one-big-drama format, the director decided to make it a medley of 7 short plays. (My friend, who was the director, is a very talented theatre actress, scriptwriter and director of quite a number of plays. She has had quite a number of public performances and this medley was her "maiden directorial venture", to quote the cheesy film magazines.) Aptly entitled "A Bowl of Bon Bons", each of the actors had to play at least two different roles, in two short dramas. I played a work-obsessed executive who ignores his wife's feeling in "Split Decision", where the wife decides to leave at the end of the play without the husband even realising it.
The other play was called "Sure Thing", and this I really enjoyed. The story's premise was that anything could go wrong between 2 people who meet each other in a restaurant - the conversation might or might not develop depending on the things you say - or not. So, when the lead characters (there are only 2 folks in the play) meet, every time the girl or boy says something "politically incorrect" during a chat-up, a bells rings and the play is rewinded to the time just before the faux pax occured. The the right thing will be said and the conversation will develop. It was an amazing experience because my co-actress and myself had quite a bit of chemistry, and no two rehearsals were ever the same. There was a lot of experimenting and fun in doing that play.
Those were the memories of Alliance Francais - I decided not to act after that, as I felt it was a good experience enough to last quite a while. And it's not as if I'm some Daniel Day-Lewis. But I enjoy going to plays and dramas, where Thondan was the latest. I recently read about Pondok 2000, and it seems quite interesting too.
The main thing that puts me off, and many others I believe, is the price of tickets. The high price is needed to recover costs of props, venue booking, meals for actors and so on. But unfortunately, it is passed on to audiences as well. It can't be escaped, but I guess we simply have to choose which performances we wish to go to.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Leave
Once in a while, I'd have a wonderful day spent at home and appreciating the slower things in life. Yesterday was once such day.
I was on leave yesterday, made a personal vow to not touch the office laptop and not to even think of work. I had invited my mother and sister over for lunch at our place (father was out of town), and my wife decided to cook up a storm for her mother-in-law. I decided to join in the fray and announced that I would be whipping up the famous Jalees'-Father's chilled cucumber salad as a complementary side dish. But there was much work to be done - yesterday was a Friday and I had to be in the mosque for congregation prayers by 1pm. Before this however, the house had to be cleaned, the toilets sterilised and flowers bought for decoration, and cucumber salad done, while my wife would cook the curry and do other items (even though she feels considerable discomfort during this 6th month of pregnancy, she was thrilled to be cooking.)
I went out of the house in search of 2 cucumbers, some yogurt and 3 gerboras (requested by wife to enliven the house). I managed to get everything but the crummy cucumbers. I hunted them down at the other wet market opposite my area, and headed home.
At home, the toilets were given a washing-down, and I tried to sweep the whole house in spite of the miraculous dust particles that always evade my broom (one needs the grace of a 5th-grade ballerina to manage these flying dust particles.) Once that was done, I got down to making the salad - shredded the cucumber to smithereens, chopped up the carrot into uneven bits (something I betted that my immaculate mother would notice), sliced the onions and chillies into er, slices. I then mixed everything into a bowl with cold yogurt and squeezed lime, and the deed was soon done.
I rushed over to the mosque (I took a taxi, no choice), and to my relief, found that the imam was still in the middle of his sermon. Not understanding most of the Malay he spoke, I quietly meditated and thanked Allah for enabling me to make it to the mosque on time.
After prayers, the rain started its business. I was full of praise for the town councils for setting up the sheltered walkways all the way from Lower Delta Road to Bukit Merah to Kim Tian Road, until I realised that the estate where I live, Kim Tian Vista, had no connecting shelter. I still praised the town council for making me dry up to this point, and ran to my block under the falling rain, feeling as though I was running in slow-motion in some dramatic movie scene, with the shouting of "nooooo..." in the background. Anyway -
My mother and sister had arrived home, and we all had lunch together. It is always refreshing to have my mother come over to our place, and other family or friends. It livens up the house. After being praised (there's praise everywhere!) for the mutton curry and cucumber salad (as expected, my mother noticed the unevenly cut carrots), we committed Gluttony by downing some mini Cornettos. We also committed Sloth afterward by taking a classic Indian-style siesta, contributing to fat production.
I woke up with a slight runny nose, which was to become a bigger animal later. My mother and sister bade farewell, while my wife and I left to attend a talk at Darul Arqam, on the Spiritual Transformation of Hajj. It was thrilling for me, as it was a topic of interest to me, and the speaker is a very good friend of mine, whom I had yet to see speak at a public setting. A brother of mine, from the mosque where I used to teach, joined us at the session.
The session was very good - the Ustaz''s style of delivery would endear anyone, as it was a very personal and informal style. I also took home many thoughts. I had always thought that the Hajj was too profound an experience to take lightly like a normal overseas trip, so I had thought that it should be done after a person had retired/whose kids had become self-reliant/had no more "obligations" to society. However, I learnt that another way to look at the Hajj would be to see it as an experience in the journey of life, which should be undertaken when one was fit and able, rather than when old and feeble. It is a pillar of faith in Islam, and logically looking at it, when one is able to fulfill it, it should be fulfilled as soon as possible.
After the talk, we went for dinner as a big group, with the Ustaz and friends we made through the session. I felt privileged to be in the company of such people, and glad that my wife and one of my brothers from my mosque was able to be in this gathering.
I went home, nursing a quickly worsening cold. I took some pills, which helped a bit. I went to sleep, rehearsing the first four verses of Surah Al-Layl as I drifted into sleepyland.
Today is a new day - the weather looks like it would rain soon. I just hope it doesn't rain later when I attend a massive bowling tournament organised by my one of my Ustazes, a bowling-fanatic. Billa has also just released - we might just try to catch in tomorrow evening.
I was on leave yesterday, made a personal vow to not touch the office laptop and not to even think of work. I had invited my mother and sister over for lunch at our place (father was out of town), and my wife decided to cook up a storm for her mother-in-law. I decided to join in the fray and announced that I would be whipping up the famous Jalees'-Father's chilled cucumber salad as a complementary side dish. But there was much work to be done - yesterday was a Friday and I had to be in the mosque for congregation prayers by 1pm. Before this however, the house had to be cleaned, the toilets sterilised and flowers bought for decoration, and cucumber salad done, while my wife would cook the curry and do other items (even though she feels considerable discomfort during this 6th month of pregnancy, she was thrilled to be cooking.)
I went out of the house in search of 2 cucumbers, some yogurt and 3 gerboras (requested by wife to enliven the house). I managed to get everything but the crummy cucumbers. I hunted them down at the other wet market opposite my area, and headed home.
At home, the toilets were given a washing-down, and I tried to sweep the whole house in spite of the miraculous dust particles that always evade my broom (one needs the grace of a 5th-grade ballerina to manage these flying dust particles.) Once that was done, I got down to making the salad - shredded the cucumber to smithereens, chopped up the carrot into uneven bits (something I betted that my immaculate mother would notice), sliced the onions and chillies into er, slices. I then mixed everything into a bowl with cold yogurt and squeezed lime, and the deed was soon done.
I rushed over to the mosque (I took a taxi, no choice), and to my relief, found that the imam was still in the middle of his sermon. Not understanding most of the Malay he spoke, I quietly meditated and thanked Allah for enabling me to make it to the mosque on time.
After prayers, the rain started its business. I was full of praise for the town councils for setting up the sheltered walkways all the way from Lower Delta Road to Bukit Merah to Kim Tian Road, until I realised that the estate where I live, Kim Tian Vista, had no connecting shelter. I still praised the town council for making me dry up to this point, and ran to my block under the falling rain, feeling as though I was running in slow-motion in some dramatic movie scene, with the shouting of "nooooo..." in the background. Anyway -
My mother and sister had arrived home, and we all had lunch together. It is always refreshing to have my mother come over to our place, and other family or friends. It livens up the house. After being praised (there's praise everywhere!) for the mutton curry and cucumber salad (as expected, my mother noticed the unevenly cut carrots), we committed Gluttony by downing some mini Cornettos. We also committed Sloth afterward by taking a classic Indian-style siesta, contributing to fat production.
I woke up with a slight runny nose, which was to become a bigger animal later. My mother and sister bade farewell, while my wife and I left to attend a talk at Darul Arqam, on the Spiritual Transformation of Hajj. It was thrilling for me, as it was a topic of interest to me, and the speaker is a very good friend of mine, whom I had yet to see speak at a public setting. A brother of mine, from the mosque where I used to teach, joined us at the session.
The session was very good - the Ustaz''s style of delivery would endear anyone, as it was a very personal and informal style. I also took home many thoughts. I had always thought that the Hajj was too profound an experience to take lightly like a normal overseas trip, so I had thought that it should be done after a person had retired/whose kids had become self-reliant/had no more "obligations" to society. However, I learnt that another way to look at the Hajj would be to see it as an experience in the journey of life, which should be undertaken when one was fit and able, rather than when old and feeble. It is a pillar of faith in Islam, and logically looking at it, when one is able to fulfill it, it should be fulfilled as soon as possible.
After the talk, we went for dinner as a big group, with the Ustaz and friends we made through the session. I felt privileged to be in the company of such people, and glad that my wife and one of my brothers from my mosque was able to be in this gathering.
I went home, nursing a quickly worsening cold. I took some pills, which helped a bit. I went to sleep, rehearsing the first four verses of Surah Al-Layl as I drifted into sleepyland.
Today is a new day - the weather looks like it would rain soon. I just hope it doesn't rain later when I attend a massive bowling tournament organised by my one of my Ustazes, a bowling-fanatic. Billa has also just released - we might just try to catch in tomorrow evening.
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