Point of View
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[1][2] Patrick Tsai in My Little Dead Dick - Photos taken in China where he flew to stay with his girlfriend.
[3][4] 五泉散人|wuquan sanren - Photos seen in his flickr album. Mostly taken in hotel, on bed and feature scantily cladded girls.
[5][6] Sean Marc Lee - Photos of his girlfriend in domestic settings.
[7] Fabian (me!) in A Date With - Photo taken at my grandma house. Second time taking photo of her. Once in 6 months.
Thomas (acted by David Hemmings) in the film Blow Up - Taken in a studio. The model wore handsome clothes with heavy makeup. Once in front of the camera, she poses. The photographer frolics with his model and pinned the model to get his point of view. A fashion shoot with a professional model.
Investing in Art 01
Rinko Kawauchi photo appeared as the cover/promotional image for Paris Photo Fair 2009, an event that i had the chance to attend when i was in paris for exchange. Initially i found that this kind of event very commercial, unlike the other photo exhibitions that i have went. I can still remember vividly that the prints of Vee Speers‘ “Birthday Party” series going at about 4000 euro per piece! Buying large print is out of my game now so i try to invest in photobooks instead.
A short chapter in an investment book say something like ” Investing in Art is investing in what you like”.
Recently i got my hand on “Utatane” by japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi. It is one (out of 3) of her first simultaneously published books (with Little More publishing) that made her famous overnight. It is especially rewarding to see her photos in books than in an exhibition or single prints. “With books, you can take them around and look at any part of them at your own pace.”
I bought this book at a local Kinokuniya outlet with both membership and christmas season discount which end up much cheaper than shipping online! It depends on your location and the time you bought it. Well, i am not an avid photobook collector yet for the first edition of the book with her autograph would have been more valuable. However, it is within my budget and i like the content very much.
“Utatane” is listed here in amazon if you are keen.
Corpse Party
Better blog this while my memory is still fresh. I started playing Corpse Party yesterday and was spellbound till now. It is a 2D anime role-playing horror game. Since the main lure of this game is its plot i shall keep the review as spoiler free as possible.
Unlike 3D games with heavily textured and rendered blood and gore scene to stunned the player visually, this 2D cell shaded game uses music and sound effect to conjure its creepy atmosphere. The screaming sounds real, as if the voice actor really encounter the fear and felt the pain, and its effect heightened by the binaural recording. The background music gives off a sense of urgency, and at appropriate time replaced by absolute silence in certain rooms where you know something is about to occur.
The stories are told in chapters, but is it not simply linear. The unfortunate characters are trapped in the same compound but in a different same spaces and time. To quote from a random npc skeleton in the game, “They (the other students) are definitely in this school. But the space they occupy differs from the space we occupy.” The events occured at different timeline and alternate spaces. For example controlling character A you see blood spills on the wall, only to know what exactly happened in the next chapter from the point of view of character B. The game use this technique for great storytelling effect.
Another appeal of the game is the quest to see all the “wrong ends”. These are game over scenarios when you do pick wrong options or get killed by the ghost. They usually feature different ways of dying, some of which are standards of a horror movie. Sometimes there will be nothing on the screen (black) except text and sound effects, leaving everything else to your imagination. Getting gameovers can never been so rewarding.
Man it will be great to see a live action serial drama or movie of Corpse Party.
Fate/Extra
Here is my first game diary. The game is Fate/Extra, a playstation portable (PSP) dungeon role-playing game from the popular anime Fate/Stay Night. (Why is there a “/” ?)
As usual when a game offer a choice of gender for the main character, i always picked the female. Also Fate/Extra allow you to choice from one of 3 servant classes: Saber, Archer and Caster. I picked Saber, a heavy sword wielder who wears a red dress with transparent fabric in the center revealing her white panty (fan service i suppose), to serve my female servant. For the first few weeks, grinding as Saber was a breeze, win three scissors-paper-stone (the battle system) in a row and the mob is as good as dead. Boss are tougher to handle for the first 4 weeks. I had a hard time with Assassin, he hits hard and waste a lot of my precious item such as Elixir! At later weeks it is the reverse, while the dungeon mobs get tougher; the boss gets easier (the last boss was a joke, in many levels).
For my second play-through, i was eager for some challenge, so i picked Caster, which according to the forum is supposedly the toughest to use (indeed for the first play-through). However it was even easier than Saber for both grinding and bossing, if you could supply the servant with the mp pool to spam. The clear game save allow you to start the 2nd game with all your formal wear of which Staff of Fortitude and Staff of Rebuke allow you to transfer mp from master to servant. I read there are other skills later in the game that allow you to steal, regenerate mana per turn or end of battle. One or two spell is all it take to KO a normal mob in the dungeon. It only took 3 or 4 turns of spamming to take down a boss, for Rider at least. Now i am on week 2 and had no trouble at all. I only pick mobs that give more exp and spam all the spells onto them.
What about Archer? Well i probably won’t invest my time on the third play through, but from the youtube video his Noble Phantasm, Unlimited Blade Works is the best looking of the 3. It kind of remind one of Fate/Zero‘s Gilgamesh Noble Phantasm.
Get the limited edition here
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
It begins when i saw the film “Norwegian Woods” by Anh Hung Tran. No, the first impression is when i came across a book title “Kafka on the Shore” written by a japanese author (anything japanese naturally caught my attention) whom had the same family name as Takashi Murakami, and Kakfa reminds me of Kafka from Final Fantasy 6. The movie wasn’t anything special although i am surprised by the sex scene between Ken’ichi Matsuyama and Rinko Kikuchi. Anyway thats how i came into the world of Haruki Murakami.
To date i have read all his published books except Norwegian Woods, because i thought i already knew the story, and the latest IQ 84, because the local libraries have yet to carry it. The collection of short stories in “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman“, in my opinion, were his best works. My favorite is “Man Eating Cats”, not because of cats, which were only briefly mentioned anyway, but about how the protagonist quit his job, left his old life behind, and went to a foreign land faraway and start his life from scratch with a women he like.
Many of his themes, such as mirrors, dreams, illusion, husband-wife relationships, zoos, cooking, jobless middle-aged man, sex, sacred stones, names, hawaii and greek islands were all found in this book. Well perhaps this is the last book i have read so i could relate better after spending all these times in his world and getting to know the characters.
Maki Nomiya + Mika Ninagawa
Although i have never been to Japan, i could imagine walking in tokyo streets in the 90s, with Pizzicato Five’s music perpetually looping in the background. And listening to Pizzicato Five, particularly Maki Noyima’s voice remind me of Mika Ninagawa early photographs. The young japanese girls in her photo book “Like a peach” brim with life, giving a similar feeling of taking your first bite on a fruit.
Well to me, they kind of resonate.
Maki Nomiya is a vocalist from the Japanese (Shibuya-Kei) pop group in the 90s.
Mika Ninagawa is a Japanese photographer known for her out-of-this-world vivid colors.
Sean Marc Lee in Singapore
Had been following this American-born-Chinese photographer for a while. Sean Marc Lee takes photos in film, and from the photos he took of his friends and girlfriend, he seemed like a great guy to hang around with.
He is in Singapore recently and took some really “old school” and movie-like images. Even though i have lived in Singapore for all my life, these images still look somewhat special, unlike those taken by local photographers.
I guess no matter where you are, the photo you made always tells about you. He is a film-maker by profession, lives in taiwan at the moment, reads books by Haruki Murakami, like to dine and drink with friends (i suppose). It is really nice to see the country from a foreign artist perspective.
Kaiji 2
Kaiji 2 taught me that gambling, is all about hope. You know that the odds are against you but keep at it even if you had to pour out your money saved for your grave. Who knows, your faith and determination might even inspire comrades that share the same dream of striking it rich, whom will bet everything on you.
So do not lose hope and keep gambling.