Last night I dreamed a huge rat with blood rushed into my mouth.  I desperated to spit it out but it drilled into the gullet.  It made me breathless so I was awakened and couldn't fall asleep any more.  Nightmares are my irresistable soul-mates. It's the predestination of world end day when all the good and evil disappear together with no sense of feeling of anyone or anything's existence and disappearance. Forgive me. I'm writing bullshits now. 

  The film festival is over and the next one I'm waiting to watch in cinema is probably Banquet, the Chinese film with the A-list star cast.  Zhang Ziyi and Zhou Xun are my favorite female mainland actress who can be unexpectedly stunning in diferent films. I have no idea why some of my peers or younger kids hate Ziyi who is both beautiful and hard-working with a series of convincing performances back in the recent years.  The thing is, most of the Chinese easily get envious and demanding for those who have perfomances and opportunities while the levesl are where they can never reach.  Trash comments and acid critics are everywhere aiming their controversial or ordinary private life instead of their works.  Stars like Faye Wong can neither be too ordinary to be an unique star nor be too controversial to be an idol.  Such a criterion is where the trash magzines and TV shows exsit. This is so bad for the fledging mainland entertainment industry.  Anyway, this is not within my concern and I will look forward to appreciating this ancient Chinese Hamlet story! 

 

  At the monent, I'm listening to the original soundtrack of All about Lili Zhou under the comfortable air conditioning.  What else can be more cherishing if I don't try to treasure this into the long existence of days and nights?  I tell myself to be optimistic and happy as I can and it sometimes it works, I mean, when there are no real troubles to rush my mind.  Happiness is the limited version but at least the attempt to approach happiness is unconditional.  Yes, yes! I'll always try in such positive ways, I mean, sometimes...

  Can't believe I used two days of the weekend time to finish one film, Capote.  I decided to pick up it from the piles and put it into the DVD player on the midnight of Friday, and after less than five mins' viewing, I fell asleep. On the afternoon of Saturday I waked up and restarted it to watch, but when I was just gradually absorbed into the story, a message came up to ask me to hang out with the old days friends for Kara OK and a dinner.  I spent 30 seconds in deciding whether to continue to watch or take a shower to go out, and after 30 minutes I was already in the Kara Ok room having my breakfast.  Back time was the midnight and I continued to watch it for another 20 minutes but couldn't afford to stay up any longer after the exhuasting day.  It was on the afternoon of Sunday that I finished this 114 mins' feature film, a true masterpiece in recent years. 

 

 Truman Capote, an American writer who had just finished his Breakfast at Tiffany's, which had brought him some reputation as a fiction author, saw a news on the newspaper about a murder in a wealthy family in Holcomb, Kansas. Two men broke into a house and shooted the parents and their two kids to death in a extremely bloody way, just for 40 or 50 bucks.  As he saw the news he decided to go to Kansas to do a research to write a documentary story. He visited all the parties including the friends of the family, the classmates of the kids, the police, the witness, the counsel for the defence and the murder men.  As he did the investigation, he was emotionally involved into the murder case, in particular with one of the killers Perry Smith who was actually a psycholigically fragile and easily-hurt man. As their friendship began and developed, Capote knew clearly this relationship was set up just for the obtaining of what had truly happened in and out the murder for this book writing. He promised Perry to help him and find a lawyer for their suiting.  But Capote didn't really try but just spiritually supported him to abducted Perry to tell him the story.  He even dare not to tell Perry he had named his book In Cold Blood which could badly hurt Perry.  Three years passed and what Capote waited was to see the death of the killers and finished this documentary book.  He told his female friend that if the suit got the triumph, his three years' writing would be in vain.  He didn't help his friend Perry but waited for his death, who had the similar bad experience with him in the childhood but ended his life by killing four ordinary people.  In the fourth year, the killers' suit was rejected and they were sentenced to death.  Capote was emotionally forced to see his friends, as the death witness, after which he finished his non-fictional book In cold Blood which made him one of the most famous American writers.  Truman Capote never finished another but gave this unfinished Answered Prayers  the epigraph: More tears shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.

 

  As no comments were truely made for the sentence for Pery or for the writer Capote in the film, I also feel no standpoint to comment on the protagonist, but at least he finished a great book through comforting the killer by giving him a four years'  friendship  if he deserved that, whatever was fake or gradually not.  The director and the screenplay writer were so great to tell  a hugely complicated story and story-in-story in a wonfully slow, seemingly-peaceful but essentially-shocking pace.  Philip Seymour Hoffman's stunning performance extraordinarily derseves Oscar's Best Actor's Reward.  In all, it's a film worth watching and an even must-see one if you like documentaries.  I have to take a glass of wine and watch anotherf now!

 

  Friday night, some time to update the blog, as usual.  I have been feeling terribly exhausted for the whole week, with no particular reason.  I begin to wonder where my incredible strength and energy goes.  Just look back to one year ago,  I was usually happy to hang out with friends from midnight into the morning of Sat after a whole week's work, with so much passion and ambition for interesting things.  Now, I turn to a completely different person pysically.  No more real willings to go to any pubs or parties under any situation. No night life seems any novel or attractive to me.  Watching a three-hours' film while drinking a glass of wine is already a luxury. Yet no too much concentration on the subtitle rolling or the facial expression on every character on every scene, but capturing how the stories go is already a triumph.  Watching people of different backgrounds and experiences lead their own lives; some live in a life of my faded and far dreams, some are in the world I can never approach but yet can see, and some are leading the life exactly as I'm leading. And I see them live their lives, and alcohol gradually works, with story timely finished, going to sleep, with some excitement together with a dim fatigue.

 

 Travis' Paperclips is the song I would like to hear millions of times these days. I'm intoxicated by the rock singers' slow songs. They possess the most explosive strength in the world, but when they use it in the gentleness and mildness, the strongest expression is in the softest drift. Simple words, liquid music, touching and sexy voice.  The soundless beats give the heart the most proper place to harbor and to return, like a careless whisper, to be sent to his sweet candy.   Nights rocket on the beautiful tracks, leaving the days backward and forward. But if we can say this, rather than the nights are in the middle of days, days are in the middle of nights.

 

 

 

03.45: No sleep

 

by the Cardigans

 

it's way too late to think of

someone I would call now

the neon signs got tired

red eye flights help the stars out

I'm safe in a corner

just hours before me

 

I'm waking with the roaches

the world has surrendered

I'm dating ancient ghosts

(the ones I made friends with)

the comfort of fireflies

long gone before daylight

 

and if I had one wish fulfilled tonight

I'd ask for the sun to never rise

If God lent his voice to me to speak

I'd say, go to bed, world!

 

Ive always been too lame

to see what's before me

and I know nothing sweeter than

champagne from last new year's

sweet music in my ears

and a night full of no fear

 

but if I had one wish fulfilled tonight

I'd ask for the sun to never rise

if God passed the mike to me to speak

I'd say, stay in bed world

sleep in peace!

 

   Till recently I occasionally noticed an American legend, Chet Baker, a stunning and enigmatic Jazz singer.  The personal fact is his most celebrated song My Funny Valentine has always been on the top of my favorite songs whereas I never paid any attention to its singer, a man with a half-feminine voice. 

 

  The other day when I passed by and stepped into a frecently-visited video shop, where a grey colored record was properly placed on a shelf, neither more nor less than enough to catch my sight. A french-version album, Le poete du jazz by Chet Baker.  The moment was like a lifetime date between me and Chet Baker, which mysteriously reminded me of a scene in the film The Talented Mr Ripley, when Ripley deliberately fell his bag to acquire Dickie's attention to his collected Jazz albums, one of which was Chet Baker.  I immediately gave a non-hesitation to the unscheduled purchase of that grey record, as an operational start for the spiritual talk with a far hero who is already in heaven. 

 

  The album I bought contains 20 songs including the original and instrumental version of My Funny Valentine.  I can safely say that all of the twenty are extraordinarily composed with a uniquely wonderful performance and in a premium production.   In listening to his sensimental and soulful singing, I thought of his disordered and disturbed adolescence along with drugs and hard working days on his expression through music, and his falling down into the heaven from an Amsterdam hotel balcony.  A legend's life was unexpectedly finished, and when it was finished, all the malicious gossips and bad comments ended.  People still on the earth began from the moment of his dying to pay much more attention to his music than ever.  A sparkling fall with the fall of those dim and old dreams, a fall with the fall of a legend's prosperity and corruption, and that's a fall of a body with the fall of a child-like soul to return his motherhood.  When life experiences needed no comments, we only give the good comments on his works that are still with us and become our soul friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  I was told by a friend that a real blog should be like a diary from an ordinary person, instead of a lyric album from a poet.  I definitely didn't give a great deal to one's  comments but  for this time was  enlightened that to write down what has been done might be interesting. Such a blogging without any permission to message leaving is a self-entertaining anyway. 

 

  Today I reviewed two flims with a girl using the notebook in a coffee.  Differently styled and equally classic two: the Talented Mr Ripley and the Midnight Cowboy.  In a cozy but a little crammed coffee to watch two films for four hours is an interesting experience.  No big comments were made when the flims were finished. I guess all the comments were inside the hearts that were too deep and  huge to be spoken out.  Anyway, we dodged from the burning sunshine in such a delighfully meaningful way.

 

  In the afternoon I accompanied another friend to buy a proper cellphone and did some shopping. What an exhausting way abiding sweat and sweat!  All the streets were packed by human swarms, whenever and wherever!  Damn it!  Sometimes I really hate where I live, the fast urbanization and all the problems caused by that; but the paradox is the places of beauties and purities have no convenience and taste which I must live along with! So, never ask me when I shall leave the city, the answer is I'm trapped here, compulsively as a volunteer.  Some personal leisure may be a wise way as a compromise but recently I can't even concentrate on any reading, I mean, concentrating on one book. When I'm too busy to get myself some time for reading, I complain for no freedom.  When I'm occasionally rewarded by some controllable time to read, I will think if I should do a film which is more visuallized and concrete.  When I decide to calm down to enjoy a film, I begin to worry about which flim should be picked up for such a valuable and limited period of time!  A classic literate one, a pioneer experimental one, or a realism reflectable one? I feel perplexed and commandless and eventually decide to do nothing! But doing nothing but enjoying a tranquility is such a luxury that I can't bear my idling the time to enjoy a peace!   What can I say?  To lead the life as a real life is not easy but indeed very very hard. 

  Just back from cinema and afterwards a delicious hotpot and can't fall asleep, I feel the mood to do some updating here. Such a long time without any update! 

 

  This evening, or, more precisely the previous evening that has just passed, I watched a selected one for the film festival, Invisible Waves produced by the Netherlands.  A Japanese guy worked in a Hongkong restaurant had an affair with his boss' wife. Knowing that underground sexual affair, the boss didn't even complain the Japanese guy but gave him an eccentric errand to kill the wife and sent him to Phuket, the Thailand island as a rewarding trip.  The Japanese guy suffered a serious of strange things during the whole trip without any a good luck.  He unreasonably felt sick to vomit along the whole way and met strange people: a girl from Korea who was actually his boss' lover, a gang of Thailand robbers who broke into his hotel room, a Kara Ok lover from Macao who wanted to kill him.  It was a trip of disasters and redemptions.  The Japanese guy, or his ghost, eventually went back to Hongkong for revenge, but what waited for him was a fatal disorder. 

 

  I never, to be honest, expected to watch such a bizarre film in Shanghai cinemas but it indeed is a great experience!  While concentrating on the beautiful film, I also noticed that some of my neighbors were crying and some of them were laughing, and what is interesting, that happened at the same time.  Well, what should I comment, a good film makes people think and laugh and cry. 

 

  Nevertheless, after briefly reviewing the film, what am I supposed to write down or think about?  Blank.  Under some circumstances and at such a midnight in particular, I often have no peculiar thinking focusd on anything but the mid itself is like a blind horse fleeing on a bleak and desolate field with nothing that could shock anyone's eyes, but simply makes people feel hopless and desperate. In the mind it is a field of nothing but strangles me to half awake and half asleep.  It is nothing but with the view that all the passengers are hustling in their own meaning which is completely irrelevant to my silent existence.  It is silent but strong, not destructive but invulnerable.