香港經濟日報正舉辦「顧往‧惜今‧Photo Blog」徵文比賽，請讀者把他們對下列「大事件」的個人深切感受，或當時相關的個人經歷，與大眾分享。
1) 禽流感
2) 金融風暴
3) 告別啟德機場+新機場大混亂
4) 巨星殞落
5) SARS
6) 七一大遊行
7) 迪士尼樂園開幕
8.) 世貿韓農示威
9) 董去曾來
10) 告別天星皇后
以上除了第10項之外所有事件我都親身經歷過。SARS 大概是全香港人都覺得最難忘吧?沒有沙士，我們不知道香港的官員有多無能，醫護人員有多偉大；不會有愚昧青年在愚人節利用假新聞網站散佈香港是疫埠的謠言，引致全城人心惶惶，瘋狂搶購糧食；不會覺得當晚張國榮的死訊那麼難以置信；更未必會有50萬人遊行。
天星皇后要拆卸，我其實沒有什麼感覺，不在香港可能是原因之一。當然我記得曾經在皇后碼頭看煙花，在天星碼頭等人，但這只是我的個人回憶，非那些抗議團體所聲稱的集體回憶。在我心目中香港qualify有集體回憶的地方並不多，維多利亞公園是其一。
Latest book by PD James. A famous writer was found hanged from the rails of a lighthouse on a secluded resort island. Three investigators went to find out the truth.
It’s a classy detective fiction, the plot was ok, though not flawless. Towards the end the chief detective caught SARS from one of the island visitors and he had to be confined in the sickroom and rely on his juniors to finish the investigation. I found this part most ridiculous and somewhat unnecessary. This significantly dragged down the score I would have given for this book.
Jodie Foster plays an aeroplane engineer who is moving back to New York from Germany with her six-year-old daughter after the death of her husband. On the plane (somewhat like the A380) her daughter gets lost. She can’t find her anywhere despite a full search by the crew, and the bizarre thing is, her daughter is not on the passenger list, and nobody on the plane has seen her. The captain thinks she is imagining things out of grief for her husband, and when she starts messing around with other passengers the captain put her under arrest by the policeman on board. In the end it turns out that a hijacker has kidnapped Foster’s daughter and hides her away, and Foster has to confront this man alone and rescue her child.
Foster is always good in playing intelligent woman, but the problem is she gets frantic too early in the movie. She’s screaming at the crew right at the beginning and accusing an Arab passenger of taking away her child with no proof. She knows how to mess around with the plane facilities and she’s relatively calm when she does that, which doesn’t seem to match her hysteria state of mind.
This is Angela Merkel’s declaration of German presidency of G8 next month. I found this heading very amusing:
- I know I shouldn’t take this literally, but if we were to give a “human face” to globalisation, what kind of face would it have? Laughing? Frowning? Screaming?
- Does it imply that globalisation, and in a sense G8 countries which dominated the process, is/was inhuman? If so why?
- If this is an aim to be adopted, then how can we measure its success? And by whom?
I didn’t have much expectation before I went into the cinema, as I was not impressed by Spiderman 2. But still it is unexpectedly boring. It’s more a movie about Peter Parker who turned to the dark side than about Spider-man. The last scene of “big fight” was also not that spectacular. Kirsten Dunst was so plain and unattractive that I can’t understand why she’s chosen to play the role.
It’s a story about a 15-year-old boy Christopher Boone, who has Asperger Syndrome. He is a maths genius but he has problems with social interactions. He can’t tell lies because he doesn’t understand them. He likes everything to be in order. One night his neighbour’s dog was murdered and he decided to become a detective and solve the mystery. This embarked his adventures and discoveries of his family’s secret which rocked his orderly world.
The book uses Christopher as a first-person narrative and from his perspective, we see how “unfathomable” and “ridiculous” adults’ behaviour are. On the other hand, when we read his as-a-matter-of-fact description of his reactions, such as hitting people when being touched, groaning or screaming when he’s upset, wetting his pants when he finds the toilet dirty etc., we feel the emotional stress of his parents who have to take care of him. He thinks and acts according to his logic, but he cannot see things from other people’s points of views. Sometimes he makes us laugh, but sometimes we just want to slap him for his “inconsideration”.
It’s a funny but sad story. Highly recommendable.
The book started with Sigmund Freud’s trip to the USA when his psychoanalysis techniques were needed to solve a murder case and victim of an assault who had lost her voice. Freud was not the analyst himself, but rather his American follower, Dr. Younger, was the protagonist in this book. Dr. Younger was assigned by Freud to lead the case and Freud gave him advice from time to time. It was a smart design since Younger was an American, and through him the whole American society and the background of the murder plot could be revealed more naturally. Besides, he was younger than Freud and so he could, in some cases, worked together with the detective in some dangerous evidence-seeking adventures.
I must compliment the author, Jed Rubenfeld, for his meticulous research on US geography (mainly New York), the society (high society lifestyle, people, politicians, and how the science world were against psychoanalysis), Freud’s works and his theories. The murder victim was based on a true case treated by Freud. What Freud said in the book were all real, including his bickering with follower Carl Jung. All of these minute details made the whole story probable.
The book shifts between Dr. Younger’s first person narrative and third person’s narrative of what is going on elsewhere with different groups of people. It might have been better and easier to follow if the whole story is told from Dr. Younger’s perspective. But anyway, the story gets better after the first quarter and there are so many twists that it’s becoming hard to put down in the end.
Started in 1956, it’s the longest running international (in Europe) music competition in history. Given the nature and the “internationality” of this event, it is of course not just about music, but also about politics.
First let’s talk about the music. In recent years, Eurovision has become somewhat controversial and not taken very seriously by viewers and musicians. Many winners of the past contests disappeared into oblivion and so winning the competition is not a career guarantee. And with increasing number of participating countries and the relaxation of language restriction to the songs, the contestants have to try very hard to become outstanding. Apart from working on the music, they spend more effort on creating unique images, costumes and dance in order to differentiate themselves and attract the audiences. So the whole competition is more about visuals and entertainment rather than on real music. Last year’s winner, Lordi from Finland, who looked like monsters, was a very good example to illustrate this.
There are always wacky and campy contestants and this year there is no exception. The wackiest singer is Ukraine’s comedy drag queen Verka Serduchka. She (actually is a “he” as he is an impersonator) and her dancers wore silvery costumes, performed funny dances and sang a poky tune “Dancing Lasha Tumbai” in German, English, Ukrainian and Mongolian. If you think she’s a joke and should be out from the competition then you are wrong. She was the top favourite and came second in the race.
Serbia’s Marija Serifovic grabbed the title this year with her song “Molitva” (Prayer) in this year’s Eurovision song contest, much to the surprise of most people. It’s the first balladic song in the last 10 years’ to win the title. And since it’s Serbia’s first entry in this competition the Serbs are really thrilled.
Germany sent a real and serious singer, Roger Cicero, who dressed in Frank Sinatra style and sang “Frauen Regier’n Die Welt” (Women rule the world). Although I felt a bit weird to hear jazz in German, his performance was top class, and he was tipped to win, but unfortunately he ranked 19th out of the 24 final contestants. (see, it proves that in this competition real music doesn’t matter much).
A lot of the competitors tried out unusual genres and combinations to attract attention (or what we call “crossover”). Unfortunately they didn’t always work. Most of their songs were kitsch, and some groups couldn’t sing in tune. The most horrible one, in my opinion, was UK quartet Scooch, who dressed like airline crew singing a cheesy song “Flying The Flag (For You)” with a flashing aeroplane background. Early this year there was rumour that Morrissey would represent the UK, because he was discontented with the failure of his country which came 5th in 2006. I guess he might have thrown his hands up in horror seeing the performance from Scooch this year, who ended in 22nd out of 24.
Despite the mostly hackneyed tunes, there were some nice and impressive performances, including Hungary’s Magdi Rúzsa who sang a jazz blue song called “Unsubstantial Blues”. Latvia sent a group of 6 tenors called Bonaparti.lv who sang an Italian opera style song called “Questa Notte”. Bulgaria’s Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankoulov combined folklore singing with gripping techno rhythm using only percussion instruments in their song “Water”.
So much about the music. What about the politics? This year it’s obvious that the competition has an Eastern dominance, as the final 10 contestants qualified after semi-final were all from Eastern Europe. The contest ran like this: last year’s top 10 and the BIG FOUR (UK, Spain, France and Germany, as they contributed most to the competition) automatically qualified to the final, so that made it 14 contestants. The other participating countries had to compete in semi-final, after which the top 10 voted by phone or SMS by audiences in these countries (there’s no jury in this competition) would enter into final together with the other 14 competitors. When the 10 voted after semi-final were all from Eastern Europe, the west immediately sensed something wrong.
The final 24 music groups were subject to the same telephone / SMS voting mechanism as in the semi-final. Then each country’s broadcasters would tally the votes and give equivalent points to the contestants. However, people in the home country could not vote for their own musicians in order to guarantee fairness. So how “friendly” you are with your neighbours become key to the results. There were accusations that the former Eastern bloc countries were reverting to the old ways by voting in a block, after they awarded their maximum points to their neighbours, thus blocking the winning of any contestant from the west. This didn’t seem to be unfounded. Russia and Belarus gave each other 12 points (the highest), so did Moldova and Romania. Serbia’s Marija Serifovic won the maximum 12 points from each of her country’s six Eastern European neighbours. Trying to balance it up, Denmark voted for “our neighbours, Sweden”, as did Norway. Some Brits believed that they got so few votes because of Britain’s role in Iraq. The country with least friend is Iceland, who got only one vote.
Tactical voting or sour grapes? Music may have no border and it may bring harmony to people of different nationalities and races, but it is not the case in a competition.
Or perhaps we don’t have to take it too seriously and should merely treat this music contest as an annual kitschfest.
Another art fiction based on Vermeer’s painting by Susan Vreeland. Unlike Tracy Chevalier’s “Girl with a pearl earring ” which tells the story of Dutch Mona Lisa in a real painting, this book is about an imaginary painting by Vermeer. And it’s also not solely about the character in the painting. It starts in modern time America with a lonely mathematician who is obsessively in love with this painting, which was stolen by his German father from a Dutch Jewish family during WWII. Then from chapter to chapter the story traces retrospectively to the different owners of the painting in the last three centuries, ending in the Netherlands. This painting, spanning over time and space, has meant a lot to their possessors, spiritually and practically. A very nice try by Vreeland.
Jonathan Janson has attempted to paint this imagery painting. It has also been made into a TV movie called Brush of Fate.
There’s a talent competition here called “Deutschland sucht den Superstar” which attracted thousands of applicants. A small number of contestants were chosen, who had to compete every week in front of the audiences and the jury. The supporters could vote for their favourites via telephones, which formed a major part of their score. Each week one of them were ousted. Last Saturday we finally had a winner - Mark Medlock, who won by a majority of 78% vote. He was my favourite, not because he’s born in Frankfurt (this of course counts), but because I like his soft, low-pitch and luring voice. He’s more mature and thus was more appealing to a wider range of audiences than those teenage heart-throbs. And he’s also a controversial candidate. He is gay and he swears at his fans, though this doesn’t seem to have put them off, but on the contrary they crave for him more. Such is idolization.
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