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Liisa

Liisa Winklergirl


Last Updated: 11/22/2009

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Gender: Female
Status: Single
Age: 27
Sign: Libra

City: Shanghai
Country: CN
Signup Date: 5/9/2008

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Monday, November 09, 2009 
I just watched one of the most eerie films I have ever encountered being a semi-cinephile myself. Me and my good friend watched it in the Paragon Cinema in Bangkok, my first time to watch in such a venue and I think my first time to view a film in Thailand. I've been here countless times but I guess I've never really found the need to watch movies on the big screen here.





 


ANTICHRIST is a film basically about a couple who tries to help each other recover mentally and emotionally after the death of their only baby son in a freak accident- he jumped off the window several floors below towards the ground. The story seems ordinary enough except of course for the death of the baby and the carelessness of his parents. But this event "tsunami-es" into a more disturbing experience for the couple and results in the demise of one half of the partnership. This is how the movie becomes more powerful and takes on a meaning - jumping off the silver screen unlike any other film I've seen.








Their child has perished because of their negligence and this halts the wife's daily existence. She is in deep emotional pain and wants to physically sympathize with her son's demise. The husband decides to take on a very drastic form of therapy for his partner's sanity. He exposes his wife to her greatest fear, that of dwelling for a while in a cabin which holds a significance or a lack of it for her. Called Eden, it is a house deep in the woods where she stayed in to write her thesis on gynocide while at the same time spending private moments with her son, Nic.



He finds scrawlings and images on the walls of the attic in the cabin which disturb him. Reading her notes eventually has him concluding that her studies on witchhunts and the mass murder of women throughout history has had a profound effect on her being. This feeling is also convoluted by feelings of self-blame and guilt on her part too. women are inherently evil has become an adage too close to real life than he or she would have wanted.









He gets around to reading the autopsy report on his son's death which he actually hid in an effort to help with her therapy. His son had some abnormality to the structure of his feet. Poring on photographs of his son he found in the toolshed led him to find out that she intentionally made him wear his boots on the wrong feet all the time. Like an act stemming from her sympathizing with the misogynistic acts committed by people throughout history. I know it's preposterous to connect the incorrect tying up of her son's shoelaces to such an event but it may not be far off from being the truth. This realization leaves him reeling with many bad thoughts about her.


The wife catches on to her husband's sudden behavioral change and quickly threatens him physically. The last couple of moments of the movie revolve around the graphic display of blood, gore and severed body parts which leave me and my companion nauseous from the proximity of the screen to our faces. The wife's mental derangement results in her severing her own clitoris and earlier her husband's penis. Her death is brought about by her husband dispassionately squeezing the life out of her in an act of defense and perhaps mercy. Mercy because he does not want her to suffer any more and to inflict pain on herself and others.




The film is very powerful and there are many instances which I can't translate into words which are magnetic and hypnotic. The slow movements of the characters in the PROLOGUE and the almost anthropomorphistic manner of the animals in the film are very striking and are most note-worthy. The EPILOGUE is also a tremendously striking scene with the scores of women clambering up a hill in an arcane act of communal effort or group struggle. Once again symbolism plays an important role in making many of events in the motion picture stand out and UNDERSTOOD.

This film is more or less the kind which make me stretch my comfort zone of mere appreciation of ordinary 1.5 hour flicks. And it's nice because I know that when I do something different I most often learn something from it!
12:43 AM 
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Saturday, November 07, 2009 
There is always a point in our everyday lives where we forget about everything and just long to remain in that particular dimension and think of little or nothing else. We always retreat to that moment each day for our own personal reasons. Resistance of a destructive thought, comfort for our battered ego, or refuge for our weary minds, meaningful forays into happier times? It doesn't matter. We long to retreat to that point in space because we reach a state of NO-THOUGHT or LITTLE THOUGHT.






 

My mindless space takes on flesh and reality when I am in the act of running. When I am running, whether listening to music or not, I just follow a path, lines on a track, or the borders of a field and as far as I am concerned that is the only thing that occuppies space in my thoughts. I have found this endeavor to be my solitary confinement but it is not a dark space of uncertainty with a single thin line of brightness against a dark unknown world. It is an instant where I can just blank myself from anything cerebral and trudge on following the white line, watching my shoes come down on the ground from an elevated perspective, wipe the beads of sweat occasionally from my face, shove my hair out of my face if its getting in my eyes' ways, adjust my ponytail, click on my player if I dont like the music because it's slowing me down with its melancholic tempo....





Occasionally tears might run down my face! I have no idea if it's sweat escaping the barricade of my brows and streaming through to my lashes and onto my eyes or if these are genuine products of emotional blockage cracking up because of the failure of my desistance to let myself go. But most often it's the unexpected smile that's often seen by an outsider because I have let a funny or trivial thought intrude my mind in my zone of BLANKNESS...

I intend to keep this habit of mine for a long time simply because it's a worthy sojourn into an unknown state of myself. I am sure and yet unsure of what I am going to think or what I'm not going to think and this in itself makes it such a valuable exercise for my exhausted mind. My being enters into a strange homeostasis which keeps everything in a healthy balance and doesn't allow waverings from any part of me whether it be physical or mental. You should find your own sanctum of SEDATION too people. Believe me it works for me and I know it will work for you...




 


4:31 AM 
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Saturday, November 07, 2009 







Mysteries have always been a fixture in my interest in anything from biology to history to current events. The more questions unanswered, the more boxes opened to reveal more boxes inside, the better. Perhaps this is my obsessive immersion in the strange , the unknown and the questionable, a product of a childhood trauma where my friends never showed me answers to their riddles which came from a silly newsletter published by a giant Chocolate drink brand for their young market. This explanation is becoming too lengthy and is making me digress from my main point. One true thing is I have been a sucker for mysteries for a long time now. And I have had many blog entries anyway to prove that too! There you are.


As I turned on my television for a highly anticipated program, I brace myself for the final say on a near-century old mystery which has tickled my imagination to no end but has plagued the whole world which persistently demands for answers. The House of Romanov ruled Russia for hundreds of years and was the last Imperial dynasty of the country. Czar Nicholas II became the last Emperor of Russia when he and his family were executed by members of the Bolsheviks in 1918. They were thought to have all died within the confines of the cellar in the house were they were kept for more than a year under government arrest.


Mystery then surrounded the whole family and the circumstance of their deaths from then on. The original story was all of them, the family and the members of the Royal Staff, eleven in all, died in that instant. But because of so many details being spewed forth by the higher levels to both local and international entities and units curious about what befell the Romanov family that fateful night in July 1918, the whole story became obscure and muddled. The most popular story to have come out of this and the initial reason that drew me to the Romanov mystique though is the belief that their youngest daughter Anastasia somehow managed to cheat death coming at her in the form of bayonets and bullets. Another side to the story was that she had indeed been shot and wounded but she managed to cling onto dear life and pleaded with a kind soldier, while they were on their way to the burial site, to release her. Anyhow the premise is she managed to live to tell her tale.


That was the point where history mixed with myth and to tell you the truth I would have nothing against any of that because I love the elusive search of Anastasia and the mystical fate of the Romanov siblings! The power of the unknown is just so irresistible for me! But for some perverse reason I guess I am also thankful that National Geographic muscled such great effort to research, examine and exhaustively solve the Russian Royal family mystery finally provided the missing piece of the puzzle. The whole world has been remedied off one thorn and can heave a collective sigh of relief.


The final verdict is....Yes they all died during that night of the execution. Nobody survived and the claims to being the heiress or heir to the Romanov fortune are totally bogus. Nine bodies were found in 1991 in the Koptyaki forest and after a massive scientific and historical blow-by-blow study resulted in the verdict that yes, these were the bodies of the Romanovs with their staff buried with the purpose of concealment from the whole world. The absence of two bodies from the burial site found in 1991 because they would be found more than a decade later a few meters from where the original nine were found. The reason for this slight geographical gap was that way back in the morning after the killings, the executioners attempted to burn the two bodies first but they could not with the weather not cooperating plus the conditions of the soil not helping their cause. They were also fearful of the incoming daylight and the possibility of eyewitnesses to their inexplicable cover-up.


Cutting-edge DNA testing plus a lot of scientific applications as well as mind-boggling research through the historical archives of the Communist party chambers KILLED my Romanov mystery obsession! Their conclusion certainly nailed the coffin on the Russian family's fate. My feeling is ambivalent though in the sense that as much as i want the fire of the enigmatic fate of Russia's last Imperial Family to keep burning, the scientists and the historians who contributed to this historical unraveling of a ninety-year old Pandora's box DO deserve all acknowledgment, papacy(!!!) and command the highest respect! They are champions of this world obsessed with science. The scientific realm is always seeking to dispel myths and mysteries and I am one who recognizes the premise, "Seeing is Believing" greatly.
4:14 AM 
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Saturday, November 07, 2009 
in a perfect world, i would be in sixth grade, all sweaty, even smelly like my other playmates but unaware that i was having the grandest time.

this was the most beautiful period of my life where not a whiff of prejudice, social class or difference in sexuality was ever present. My playgroup was a team in the real essence of the word, united, without regards to color of skin or money inside our pockets or family background. We never really understood why we were able to bond together though. There were enough differences to assume we would never be a solid team. But during our free time we found ourselves playing tag, hide and seek, eating together and squealing at each other's miserable test scores. the immeasurable joy of running and climbing through monkeybars and the big slide, the tears over scraped knees and bruised shins, the thrill of the chase and the disregard for toning down the volume of our shouts was a sensation that no other experience can ever come close...

it was also a time of my life when i thought i was going to fall into the arms of my crush and live together with him for all time. i suffered the agony of blushing when he would sit beside me, the torture of friends screaming when he would come within short distance of the group, and the anguish of my grades falling miserably into unfathomable lows after long nights of thoughts of him..

it was also a time of my life surprisingly where I became a little distant from my family. the hours at school had made me looked forward to staying longer simply because of the irresistible temptation of long hours of playtime during class dismissals, which gave me lesser time at home. there was less interaction with siblings, and cousins, that pretty much i almost became a stranger at home. even when with family, i would feel shy when i would run into classmates in the mall or some public place because i would feel because i was not with friends it was a bit unusual...

in this page of the book of my life, you will see the petal of an unknown flower. its color has faded but the smell embraces the whole literary creation of my existence...


4:10 AM 
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Friday, August 28, 2009 
http://sharedreviews.com/images/reviews/42222/6a00d41430ceb86a4700e3989848890001-500pi_1_1243874220.jpg


What is the connection between an oldish and rather crazy man who has the ability to talk to cats and an insecure, deeply passionate and impulsive young lad? A lot, apparently, according to the latest Murakami creation I devoured....



The Japanese author who has the witchraft-like ability to weave mysticism into the most mundane of situations has once again impressed me with his "Kafka on the Shore." This ability he possesses in his writing is executed so smoothly that the transition from realistic to mystic is most natural and as a result easy to read and digest. He never delves too deeply into the realities of life to bore you and definitely has yours truly hooked on his books!



The story revolves around the parallel but in most ways dissimilar lives of a young and restless Japanese lad called Kafka (coincidentally!) who tries to find his place on earth, feeling unloved and unwanted by family, and an old man, Nakata, whose simplistic external lifestyle is a fabulous cover for the fantastical world he EXISTS in. The two never meet in the story but their experiences have profound consequences on their daily existences.



Kafka develops an identity and familial crisis at the tender age of fifteen and decides to find himself by running away from home and discovering the world for himself. He is in dire need of finding the rationale behind the realities of his own life -his dad abandoning him to devote himself to his craft and designating his own life with a rather uncanny prophecy....his mother and sister leaving him when he was very young.....his own burgeoning sexuality.



He meets several characters along the way, the first of which is Sakura, who he thinks is his sister but proceeds to lust after her. Oshima, a female to male transsexual who becomes his dearest friend during his sojourn. Oshima acts like an older brother/mentor to Kafka, and helps him by giving him work at the library in Takamatsu where Kafka meets the unrealistically beautiful but trapped middle-aged librarian Miss Saeki who also works there. The two find that there is a rather bizaare connection between them and it is because Saeki is Kafka's mother. But this does not happen until after they have both made love and dreamt about each other. This was the prophecy laid out to him by his father....he would make love to his sister and mother and kill his own father. The demise of his own father at Kafka's hands would best be explained by the events in the life of our second most important character...



....Nakata, is an old man who acquired a mental ailment when he was young. This results to a lack of coordination and many basic cognitive skills. But he acquires this magnificent ability to communicate with cats and predict certain unworldly events on a miniscule scale. Surviving on government subsidy he augments his income by informally working as a seeker of lost cats. Because of his magical way with the cats, he has a hundred percent success rate and is rather famous around his neighborhood for this. But the moment he kills the man responsible for the murder of many felines, Mr. Johnnie Walker, his life changes. This is the moment in the story where everything becomes symbolic and hazy (for me at least). Mr. Walker is actually the symbolic representation of Kafka's father, and is murdered by Nakata. So we can then assume that at one point or maybe the whole time, Nakata is or becomes Kafka's alter ego. Because he executed the prophecy laid out for Kafka.



The consequence of Nakata's action brings him to flee where he lives to avoid police detection. He meets Hoshino, a truck-driver who lives a sedate and cookie-cutter life. Their friendship blossoms because in Nakata, Hoshino realizes that life can be spontaneous, natural and free-flowing. There is no need to worry about the future by living in the present and letting life take its course.



The two set out on a journey charted unknowingly by Nakata himself. There is a mission that must be accomplished. I personally think that his mission is to open Kafka's eyes to the harsh realities in life. They must be dealt with and not abandoned. This is the moment where the mystical and unconscious begin to merge with the real and tangible again....the magic of Murakami weaving through the plot and it is gorgeous beyond belief hehehe...



The two characters never meet though, Kafka and Nakata. The demise of Nakata in the end signals that Kafka is nearing the end of his own quest for his place here on Earth. The story leads me to believe that Nakata is a figment of Kafka's unconscious self but he is tangible in many ways so I am quite stuck on what to believe...Anyway there are certain portions in the book which makes me think that sometimes the acceptance of what takes place in life is easier than questioning and squeezing your head for their meaning and depth. So the caveat is I must follow this philosophy when I am reading a Murakami book! Hahahaha!



This book dragged a little in certain parts I have to admit but I think most of this is purely because I have been lazy to read and tackle it. But all in all it is another Murakami masterpiece and I am looking forward to the next one in my shelf hehehehe.
5:28 AM 
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Friday, August 28, 2009 




....may be found in this chat transcript.....

----------------------


Liisa Winklergirl says:
shall we tackle the gay issue concerning transsexual lovers today?

Antony says:
sure why not if ur bored
where do u stand on that issue?

Liisa Winklergirl says:
transsexual lovers are a species all their own
they are NOT gay
BUT THEY definitely are NOT STRAIGHT
look..there has to be SOMETHING DIFFERENT ABOUT YOU
if you want to caress, cavort with, lollipop, ride on or even just look at SHEMALE C**K
in the act of intercourse.....dont u agree with me ANTONY?

Antony says:
yea I agree its impossible to hang on to hetrosexuality when ur thinking of having a dick in you or even if the partner of choice has one

Liisa Winklergirl says:
many men who love TSgirls are afraid of being called or thought of as homosexuals...
and i dont know what the stigma is all about there but I love gay MEN too!! Gay men are handsome, cultured and very well-mannered...
and i would f**k a gay man too as long as he doesn't try to look as close to being a woman like me
LOL

Antony says:
however i agree that it cannot be gay, as by definition homosexual men are attracted to other men, and manly attributes

Liisa Winklergirl says:
which is why THEy are not gay too right?

Antony says:
yep
the only label which fits even a little is bi

Liisa Winklergirl says:
so men who love tsgirls are....remotely close to Bisexual?

Antony says:
yeah its the only publicy accepted label that can come close
as it really covers all bases

Liisa Winklergirl says:
let us not talk about dispelling the labels game...it will always be dragged into this conversation no matter what we say or not say...LET us PLAy the LABELS GAME

Antony says:
well even if we try to avoid it society and people in general love labels
everyone wants to be pigeonholed into a category
there is a fascination with it
i think for some ts lovers, it's because they want to belong somewhere, they don't wanna be outcast into a non existant box
thats why so many of them ask the whole "am I gay?" question as they want to be categorised
they want to know that they belong to some group
at least thats in my opinion

Liisa Winklergirl says:
so what you are saying is...many of guys who love TS do not want to be left out in the open or in a gray area or not type-casted (as it is the norm of the normal world)? which is why in an unconscious manner they are begging to be labelled too right?

Antony says:
yeah i think it's part of basic human nature
it's not a conscious thing, i think people just want to belong

Liisa Winklergirl says:
ahh belongingness needs....which is part of Maslow's hierarchy anyway...i don't see how it shouldn't apply to sexual preferences and deviations or the lack of these...

Antony says:
this of course is just my opinion, i could be utterly wrong, but it just makes sense to me

Liisa Winklergirl says:
it makes a lot of sense to me....this is a very good perspective and a pretty respectable one anyway...

Antony says:
whenever anything is discovered one of the first things we do is try to categorise it, why would it be any different for sexual behaviours

Liisa Winklergirl says:
very intelligent statement too...now
the question....possibly bisexual cannot describe a man who has chosen to just scr*w TS girls exclusively right?
bisexual is someone who f**ks men and girls...

Antony says:
i don't think it's as simple as that
by definition bisexuals are attracted to either sex
therefore they would easily find a ts girl attractive, as there are characteristics of both sexes
even if the man himself has no attraction to any other male features, he has to concede that ts women have one pretty damning male feature that they obviously like
personally I find the idea of sleeping with a man abhorrent, it does nothing for me at all, as I'm attracted to a female body
but at the same time i cannot deny that i do find c**k to be something which does appeal

Liisa Winklergirl says:
i think what I can derive from your statement is...we, Tsgirls, might as well be the OBJECT of every bisexual's dream....a man and a woman in one, don't you think so? I mean this is just a conclusion to your rather insightful statements above

Antony says:
it would appear that way, but again this is just going from the society accepted definitions
there are some guys whom cannot fall under that label as although they are attracted to ts women, they do not find themselves attracted to genetic females
in some parts of the world they have it right, by accepting TS women as a third sex

Liisa Winklergirl says:
i wonder how we are going to label...bisexual men who adore men and women but have a great disdain for TS girls....normal bisexual men?

Antony says:
nothing is as simple as black and white, we're all really varying shades of grey
some guys will adamantly claim that they're 100% straight, but they just like a lil bit of cock
which is an oxymoron

Liisa Winklergirl says:
haha it is an oxymoron haha i have to second that hahahaha ...even the men who don't want to touch c**k but like seeing TS c**k when theyre screwing them *Hint Hint DOUCHEBAG*

Antony says:
in an ideal world, it would be considered straight to be attracted to ts women, but that all falls apart as soon as they bottom for a girl

Liisa Winklergirl says:
they still like a lil bit of c**k...the sight of it hahahaha

Antony says:
from my experience ts women themselves only want straight men, which is fine as they are basically women, and it makes sense they'd want to be with straight men

Liisa Winklergirl says:
yes the ideal world however crumbles too when you begin to define it with the appendage or the lack of it between your legs hahaha
when you define sexuality that is

Antony says:
but by their very nature of who they are makes that almost impossible as any man that accepts them for who they are, becomes a fag in their world and therefore not suitable
it's a fine line

Liisa Winklergirl says:
somewhere in my career as a Psychology student we were introduced to scales of homosexuality etc
whatever...i have long since forgotten what that was....but i think the scale had one criteria which is incidence of homosexual acts among others..
forgotten it
so how GAY you are is defined by the incidences hahahaha
how screwed up is that?
and by saying that...how screwed up is the Psychological Society
but then again it has always been a gray area science...

Antony says:
i think we're all bisexual by default, but at the end of the day it shouldn't matter as long as your happy


------------


what do you think folks?


--------------------------

nomenclature:

transsexual, ts, tsgirl - a person who strongly identifies with the opposite sex (in this case a man who identifies himself as WOMAN) and may seek to live as a member of this sex especially by undergoing surgery and hormone therapy to obtain the necessary physical appearance.

bisexual - a person possessing the tendency to direct sexual desire toward both sexes

homosexual - a person possessing the tendency to direct sexual desire toward another of the same sex

c**k - male genitalia
5:17 AM 
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Friday, August 28, 2009 




 


Because of its irritatingly semi-romantic but perfectly amusing unfolding, I have watched this film about three times in the last couple of weeks. The actors are stellar presences on screen but their portrayals of their respective characters in this wickedly funny flick are something I find very humorous yet engaging. Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a movie for keeps.


Two American girl friends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) decide to spend their summer in Barcelona. Vicky is a girl who is traditional and committed in her ways of love towards one person while Cristina is spontaneous and is willing to accept that suffering is a part of the neverending quest for love. Vicky is spurred by the love of Gaudi's art to pursue her studies of Catalan identity in Barcelona while Cristina is just out of a relationship and is in Spain to vacation...cruising, not knowing what she wants in life.

At an art exhibition they come across an artist, a painter, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who is not only well-known for his paintings but more so for his messy divorce with his ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) which almost cost him his life too. The girls' interest in him was palpable even when they had never spoken to him. During dinner the two are approached by Juan Antonio and invited to come to Oviedo to sightsee, wine and dine and make love. Vicky finds his blunt approach to be atrocious while Cristina thinks his no-bullshit approach to be very acceptable.

Meeting the painter and spending time with him in Oviedo totally changes their lives. He was passionate about many things, and very very adept at dealing with beautiful women. Vicky, who at first skeptical towards Juan Antonio, begins to question her own beliefs and even finds herself emotionally attached to Juan Antonio. It was rather strange that it was she who first had sex with Juan Antonio as circumstance was rather unfavorable to Cristina dealing her with an ulcer when she was about to have sex with the Spanish painter.








When they come back to Barcelona Cristina, though, eventually gets around to dating Juan Antonio and they become an item. She also becomes attached to Maria Elena who after another suicidal episode has been taken in by Juan Antonio in the comfort of the home she used to share with him. The attachment between the two women becomes very physical and the three of them begin to share a rather mutual sexual relationship. When Cristina confides this phenomena to Vicky, Vicky suddenly finds her attachment to Juan Antonio, which she had been trying to subdue, resurface again.




The end of the story sees acceptance in the end at the cards fate has dealt them. Vicky accepts that she is destined to have a more traditional path of love and commitment with her fiance, Doug, while Cristina is as aimless as ever, after she has left the turmoil of Juan Antonio and Maria Elena




I love movies like this which are have an itch to them. This itch is there because it wants us to pull for something to happen and yet it never does. I wanted Juan Antonio to sweep Vicky away on her feet but it doesn't happen and this immortalizes the movie. Penelope Cruz' acting, which by the way won her an Oscar best Supporting actress award, is just lunacy beyond comprehension which also serves as fodder for those hungering for comedy. Her Spanish and English cross-yakkings are hilarious and yet natural.

Somehow I could really connect with Vicky because although she tries to defy convention, she is held back in place by her own beliefs. She finds herself guilty whenever she does things which are so not her. She is torn inside because she knows she wants to do something but it is contradictory to the principles she hold in life.

I enjoyed the movie immensely for many things and more. It is a light comedy which tackles the emotional struggles many people have which they try to downplay because they think they are in control of their own lives but they helplessly know they're not. The realities of social acceptance and emotional freedom are illustrated in a rather blunt way in this movie which makes it a guaranteed fun watch.


PS thank you to these sites for the photos :)
http://blog.spout.com
http://slamonline.com/online/blogs/game-notes/2009/01/game-notes-pistons-at-wolves/
4:41 AM 
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Friday, August 28, 2009 








Has it ever occurred to you how utterly frustrating it is when you have wanted to meet someone after months of anticipation and then you just miss each other by a day? a moment? He has to leave or she has to jet-set to another place and then boom! You never know when you will see each other again! And that nagging feeling consumes you because you want to and will never know what could have happened had both of you made it to that one moment, one place in time?


This is the reason why I love this age-old flick "Sliding Doors." The plot manifests into a two-fold situation where it showed both sides of a story. Gwyneth Paltrow is Helen, an attractive, young woman who just got sacked from work and was trying to catch a train to go home and relieve herself of this stressful event. Perhaps her live-in partner, Gerry might have offered the necessary moral support she needed at such a low time in her career. In the first part of the one crucial scene, she is able to make it to the train and therefore makes it back home a little bit earlier than she was expected. To which she was greeted with the loathsome scene of Gerry orgasming in the arms of another woman in their own bed in the apartment that they both live in.


The second scenario manifests itself with the train doors just shutting down and her having to take an alternative route home. She is mugged unsucessfully by a scumbag and has to go to the clinic to have a rather severe cut on her forehead taped up. She arrives home later than expected hence NOT knowing that her boyfriend just had a whirlwind day in bed with that other woman in the first scenario.

The flick begins to illustrate Helen's life in this two split but rather bizaarely similar circumstances. Similar because they are portrayed as happening at the same moment in time. The emotionally distraught Helen cuts her hair and gives it another hue. Finding and dating another guy, James and beginning the process of dealing with the postpartum depression brought about by her ex's betrayal became the pattern of the story for the first Helen. She also learns to let go of the rather clingy past.

The naive and unknowing Helen is offered rare glimpses of her boyfriend's lack of fidelity but was always in denial of the unmistakable truth. Right until the end where she eventually is led to the truth by no other than the other woman.

The first thing I can comment about this picture is that I have never really been an admirer of Gwyneth's beauty haha! But this is probably the best she looked in her whole career. She was young and I think it was around this period that she was doing movie after movie including Great Expectations (which I am going to watch in a moment!!!). Her "bankability" was at its prime during these days in my own opinion.

The second thing I can express is this film makes us see the impossible. Why impossible? Because in our lives there can never be a two-fold scenario! The parallel universe is a popular theory but one which has yet to be proven scientifically in my opinion.

We have to make a decision when we arrive at a crossroad. We have to follow one path and go through with it through to the end! There can never be a split scene which one can see a sort of parallelism going on. The closest we can get to seeing the other side of the coin is through our ASSUMPTIONS. Perhaps a derivation from an unexpected form of intuition and maybe a bit of intellect could help us arrive at a conclusion but then again this one is never with 100 % certainty.

The flick is not really a blockbuster in many aspects of the word but it offers an interesting plot which is enjoyable to watch. It is not a feel-good film but it was light-hearted enough for me to enjoy on my bed-ridden day here in HK! hehehe....

PS thanks to these sites for the photos!!!!!

www.thriller-reviews.com/..?m=200803
http://www.johnhannah.net/sdoors.html
www.guardian.co.uk/..film/2007/nov/24/television
4:38 AM 
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Friday, August 28, 2009 





The weekend was quite a drag for me and it would have been a total bone-marrow-deep bore had it not been for DANCE DANCE DANCE. This is a literary creation brought to life by a truly magnificent Japanese author called Haruki Murakami. And the first I devoured among his many works. After reading this book I shall forever pontificate and exalt the talent and imaginary skills of this man. He is deep without being boring and he is rational but very imaginative.


Some of the websites which have chronicled this man's work as well as some of the publications who critiqued him have compared his genius to that of Alfred Hitchcock. The capability to pluck ordinary individuals with ordinary lives but surround them with unusual circumstances and phenomena. The very essence of many of his books I presume( As I have not read them all yet).


DANCE DANCE DANCE is about a man who is purposedly and mystically led to a hotel in Sapporo, Japan, he once stayed in many years ago. He is looking for a lady he used to live with in the past. She has left a deep scar in his heart and being and he wants to find out how she has been and her current whereabouts. Staying in the hotel he stumbles upon some Divine Being who reveals to him that there are connections in his life that must be severed, healed or abandoned to give a semblance of completion in his every being. He also meets a young, conservative but struggling-to-liberate-herself lady who works as a receptionist in the hotel and in my opinion is a reincarnation or retransfiguration of the woman he stayed with in this hotel some years ago.


When he comes back home to Tokyo his heart is still very much into the quest for that one woman in his past he thinks can complete his being. Along the way he reestablishes contact with an actor-classmate of his who is linked in a way to that woman. They forge a friendship which is bounding but not completely unstrained. He also comes into connection with the eccentric daughter of a world-famous female photographer who has nothing in common at all with him and yet a deep-seated fascination and liaison is forged between the two of them. He meets her mother too, the photographer and her partner, a one-armed ex-Army American who exists for a short time only in the plot.



Perhaps the greatest revelation the main character finds out in the end is that there are connections that will be severed in order for more important ones to become binding and strong. Several deaths and the instances of morbidness abound near the end of the story perhaps as a way of clearing the path for our hero to achieve completeness with the one woman who remains at the back of his mind, the purported reincarnation of his beloved, Miss hotel receptionist.



Murakami has an extraordinary talent of giving life to inanimate objects and giving them a role in the main character's metaphysical existence. One example is the description of the "telephone" as a less than pure idea. It is technology that has mastered communication for us but unless there is a will on either party to communicate, the phone remains useless...Amazing isn't it? Of course he places this with such relevance so that it doesn't seem absurd to talk about a phone in a novel...He is also very adept at fantaisical imagination and creating scenarios transcending history, filmography and current events. He places the main character's admiration of Jodie Foster as Cleopatra, one who deserves the highest accolade among the Egyptian set of characters he has created in one of his lazy mental meanderings. He links her to the main character's admiration of his personable actor classmate who is the official swimming trainor of the Pharaoh's ancient Egyptian kingdom.



I have already bought five books excluding this one, of this astounding author! I would like to thank the people who have given me this opportunity to explore more of this author's amazing range of literary and creative skills. You are forever close to my heart and cheers to the next five I am going to have to read! Hahahaha
4:30 AM 
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009 


















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