Awwwww…

Today’s borrowed film was a Korean romantic comedy called My Sassy Girl.

The short version is that it is sweet enough to kill a diabetic.

The long version:

It was a fun film. I don’t know if I’d ever list it on my all time favorites, but there was a sweetness and lightness to it that made it very watchable. I really enjoyed it in a shameful, eat-too-much-chocolate sort of way. There were a few moments that threatened to spill over into nausea inducing sweetness, but those moments were few and far between, and my only major complaint about the movie was how it manage to avoid so many Hollywood romantic-comedy elements throughout the film, only to fumble right at the very end, when it was most important to keep up their philosophy. Oh well…

I wish I could understand Korean so I could go through the extras disc. One of the things I’m really curious about is whether this movie is shot on film or digital video. I’ve seen what you can do if you toggle frame rates and go through a particular kind of image treatment in editing with video. If you do it right, it makes for a very passable 16mm style image. And this movie does look like it was shot on 16mm. However, during some of their “fast-forward” moments where the image is sped, up it suddenly looks very much like video once the frame rate’s been increased. That could either just be an artifact of film digitally converted to the AVID editing systems when they cut the film, or it could genuinely be that they did a good job of shooting on video that was only betrayed by the frame rate at faster speeds. I wouldn’t be surprised; a lot of film makers here are turning to digital as a way to save costs on shoots, and for the most part it works.

The Story

Kyun-Woo is a well meaning guy who is a bit of a bumbler, essentially clueless and prone to confusion as well as getting kicked around. One night he saves a drunken girl from nearly falling off the subway platform and into the train and after watching her throw up on people on the train, reluctantly takes care of her for the night. Later he finds out that she’s a sadistic, furious, she-devil of a woman who is basically also a decent soul, but wounded and pyschotic in a playful, scary sort of way. They become friends and then the pain begins…

The Soapbox

Watching this movie has pretty much nailed down for me something that’s been brewing in the back of my mind for the last few years since I got exposed to more Asian cinema. Particularly in the area of romance films. I think the biggest difference between the Asian notion of a romantic film and the Western (More to the point, the Hollywood) notion is that of restraint and subtlety. The typical Hollywood romance is passionate and sometimes even hysterical in its emotional excesses. There are tears, screaming, broken furniture, the obligatory song by Hot Female Singer Of The Month, and some kind of life affirming, quasi or full blown Happy Ending that tells us Love Conquers All. The Asian approach seems to be:

1) Love is beautiful, but it is not always a happy or cheerful thing.

2) Subtlety is King

3) There is more drama and genuine romance in a painfully restrained look, or an aborted attempt at physical contact than there is in a sex scene.

That’s probably just the Asian cultural mindset at work, but as Asians generally seem to view emotional displays as unsightly and unpleasant, their love stories tend to be much more tightly controlled, hinting at raging passions within rather than outright showing them. Somehow this implication of passion tends to be more dramatic for me than the lung bursting, bellowing hysterics of Hollywood romances where you have to have tears shed at the 45 minute mark, and again at the 90 minute mark.

Or maybe it’s just a matter of age. Hollywood has been at this for decades now. And they’ve morphed into very cagey, very greedy business entities that, like any good Multinational Corporation, looks at annual earnings rather than artistic achievement or human value. As a result, you hardly get the dialogue heavy, witty exchanges of, say, Hepburn, Grant and Stewart from 1940′s The Philadelphia Story anymore. Romantic films have been thoroughly researched, focus-grouped, and statistically collated, the end result being that the People have deicided the perfect romantic film is… Maid In Manhattan.

Urgh.

On the other side of the Pacific, you have films like this, and my really BIG favorite in Asian romantic cinema, Japan’s Love Letter, which again follows the Asian formula of unspoken feelings, bristling passion kept in check and… somehow… a sweetness and sentiment that actually feels genuine rather than stuck in because, “Girls like that stuff.” You get the idea the director likes that stuff too, that maybe he or she was trying not to cry as this piece of him/herself, a secret wish, or an old memory, played out once more and was captured on film.

Maybe it’s because it’s new. This kind of quality in both film and technology is relatively new to the Asian filmmakers and so there’s an enthusiasm and an energy here I rarely find in Hollywood efforts anymore. You almost feel like everyday that these people went to work, they were grinning from ear to ear thinking, “Holy shit. We’re making a real movie!” rather than sitting down at Spagos to wearily discuss percentages and contracts for performers before going to meet the marketing people to discuss the ad campaign. They still believe in what they’re doing, I think. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

I guess it all falls back on cliches. Hollywood doesn’t have its heart in it anymore. Asian romantic films, in their restrained and subtle way, still very much do. And the one thing I really admire is that when the emotional excess finally does happen, when the tears come out, you (Or at least, I) feel like there’s a catharsis going on too. That unconsciously you’ve been holding your feelings back and finally they get to gush out along with the characters. In that sense, the emotional payoff is much larger and more intense.

This is not to say that I’m turning my back on Western cinema. I still think The English Patient and Moulin Rouge are some of the all time best love movies ever made. But I am finding a novelty and appreciation for this more low-key stuff that I don’t often see anymore.

And for now, I like it.

I really, REALLY like it…

Here We Are, Born To Be Kings, We Are Princes Of The Universe…

Just had an idea while walking back with the groceries, and I wanna’ get it down before I lose it.

One thing I have always loved about RPGs was the fact that usually the storylines had fairly big, epic scale. Usually the scale was save the world, although sometimes it was save the galaxy. But today it suddenly occurred to me, “Hey, why doesn’t anyone take it further?”

So I have now come up a rough idea for an RPG that would either be called Karma, or Nirvana. The scale here isn’t just epic, it’s cosmic. It’s multi-generational and the stakes are the very fundamentals of existence itself.

You control an entity. I have to call it an entity because over the course of the game, the protagonist would actually shift in form, gender, what-have-you as time passes and it moves onto the next cycle of its karmic/reincarnation system. Okay, let me back up. I haven’t yet fully worked out the mechanics of the plot yet (Since this idea is about 15 minutes old at the moment…) but it has something to do with the hero/entity progressing over the course of entire lifetimes, moving onto the next cycle in newer, more powerful forms. The idea of “levelling up” would be slightly different in this game, as you get Karma instead, and while you will progress in “levels” during the course of one lifetime, adding new skills, upping your stat-attributes and all the usual rigamarole associated with RPG advancement, the big key here is that you will die. You will die frequently and you will often want it to happen because when you do die, it will doubtless be in the elimination of some key figure of the plot and when you are reborn into your next life (Years, sometimes centuries after the previous one) you will be able to spend the Karma you acquired to purchase new abilities for this new life. Actually, maybe I should be more specific and say that while you will still acquire experience points in order to advance the abilities of your current character (And some of those stat/ability upgrades will carry over into the next life) the Karma points are what allow you to purchase the “Super” or “Cosmic” abilities will allow you to truly kick ass in combat.

The whole point of this game at the moment seems to be the systematic elimination of various levels of Gods. I think quite a few religious parties would get mightily offended with this game, but for the moment I toying with the idea that the character progresses in power and ability over the years, decades, centuries, millenia and eons to eventually challenge the fabric of deification itself and kill it.

The reason I started this post with that Queen lyric is because I’ve ALWAYS wanted to see, hear or read something that took it at a literal level. This character/protagonist will start out in a tutorial/introductory prologue as a fairly primitive sort of person who is more enlightened than those around him, and will challenge the conventions of his pre-agragrian society as the game’s intro. He’ll start to question the idea of why people have to live in fear of gods at all, and will, after successfully beating the shaman/priest/religious figure of his tribe, die at the hands of the tribe.

Then we move to the next “chapter” (The game will be divided into chapters) with a woman, although she recognizably has the same eyes and similar facial structure as our cave man. Whatever abilities the cave man acquired through levelling up and Karma acquisition will also be present, though can’t be spent just yet as the woman, for the first few minutes of the new chapter anyway, goes about her normal life, as usual feeling that something is inherently wrong with her or the world, though she can’t quite articulate what. Eventually, her country is totally ravaged by a thinly disguised stand-in for Hebrews who are killing and enslaving people left, right and center, claiming this land is theirs by divine right, and the woman watches as her family is slaughtered and her military helpless to defeat these substitute Hebrews as divine intervention in the form of Holy Fire or whatnot decimates troops and she begins to truly question and hate the presence of gods.

This triggers latent memories of her previous life and now the game gets cooking as you can finally spend those accumulated Karma points to buy up new abilities. She manifests these cosmic abilities as she attempts to unsuccessfully repel the Hebrew stand-ins (This chapter, like most to follow, will probably take about 3-4 hours to complete, and will have many twists and turns) as she is regarded as both a saviour by her people and a demoness by the righteous Hebrew stand ins that bitterly resent her interference in their divinely approved genocide. Eventually, at the end of the chapter, her “boss” is a confrontation with the substitute Moses where they discuss the rights and wrongs of brutally murdering an entire people based on a God’s say-so and the Moses substitute shrugs and says he is merely an instrument of the divine and it is not his place to question these purposes. The woman says that maybe it’s about time someone started doing just that, and proceeds to beat him, leading to his martyrdom, rise to prominence of this new religion, the unavoidable slaughter of her people. She is struck down by the prophet’s own god, since humans can’t seem to do it, and dies with a burning sense of injustice in her heart.

The game continues on in this fashion, with various incarnations of this same soul always rising in power/stature (As a result of the accumulated Karma and experience from the previous life), always having the same eyes and same general facial structure and always eventually rising to challenge the deities of the universe. It starts out small in the first few chapters, taking on the human agents of these gods, and gradually, as the game progresses, the amount of time it takes for the soul to come to itself and remember its purpose gets shorter and shorter, until finally, towards the middle of the game, permanent retention of past lives goes into effect. Many sacreligious moments will occur in the game with more thinly disguised religious moments pertaining to all faiths, such, as for example when the protagonist goes out into the desert to see the game equivalents of Jesus and Satan during the temptation, and the protagonist stands in for humanity demanding that they both go away and leave people alone.

Gradually the scale of the game ramps up, going beyond the confines of earth to encompass the galaxy, and finally the entire universe. I envisage certain cutscenes/plot developments like when the supercharged, nearly god-like protagonist engages in battle with one of the more powerful pantheons/deities in an effort to stop them from wiping out an entire cluster of galaxies, and fails, showing a cutscene that involves the death of trillions upon trillions of sentients who snuffed out as a result of divine whim. The game would end with the final form of the protagonist, now, for all intents and purposes, a god, wiping out the last of the deities that rule the universe, and in chaos that ensues from destroying such a pillar of existence, finally makes the ultimate sacrifice of using their superpowered soul to keep the universe going, but with the provision it has wiped out any possibility of coming back as a more concrete deity to once again control the lives of countless beings.

The theme of the game is, of course, that humanity doesn’t need gods, fate, or destiny and that in the end, human will should be the defining factor of life, not religious faith or divine intervention. As the protagonist advances from humble cave man to prominent leader of a nation to mistaken prophet to finally demi-god and fully divine status, there is a constant reinforcement that blind faith is wrong, expecting a divine force to rescue you is wrong, carrying out genocide on the justification of divine right is wrong, and that ultimately, we are responsible for our actions and should not give, or make accountable, our actions to anything beyond ourselves.

Let’s just say I wanna’ take Nietzsche’s famous statement of “God is dead” a step further and have a game where God is killed and existence is the better for it.

This is truly evil, isn’t it?

Stupid, STUPID Day…

Unlike the nudists who insist that winter was invented by the clothing companies, I think there is something to the conspiracy of Valentine’s Day being invented by the candy & greeting card market. For just a few dollars on this one special day, you can go out and make a declaration of your love that they guarantee can’t be expressed in months or years of loyalty, devotion, laughter, tears or emotional bonding.

Of course, despite all this, that didn’t stop me from scurrying off and buying the meager rose I could afford, or writing the love letter, or placing these pathetic love offerings on the girlfriend’s drawing table while she sleeps (and is still sleeping as of the moment of this writing) hoping that this will be enough to placate her and say, “I really care, but I’m also really broke right now, so please don’t make me sleep on the couch tonight…”

Of course, in a sick, sad, emotionally retarded sort of way, it’s also a kick and a half, since this is the first time I’ve ever actually been in a position where I COULD get someone Valentine’s Day stuff, so there’s that victim of consumerist-societal-conditioning that whispers, “Yes! There is someone I have to spend money on! I AM AT LONG LAST A REAL BOY! HOLD ME, GEPETTO! NO, NOT THERE, YOU OLD LECH…”

So yeah, for those of you who were regular victims of my old mass mails before I started blogging, there will be, much to your relief, no Valentine’s Day rant about how much you all suck, how much I hate you all, and how much I’m going to punish myself because someone loves you and no one loves me, so there… Yeah, and I’m reeeeeal sure you’re all going to miss its absence this year…

A Meditation On Elves

Thanks to this whole Lord Of The Rings whackiness, every girl and her aunt now has a thing about Elves, this has left most males utterly bemused. “But Elves are pansies!” they protest. “They look like girls, wear green long johns and prance around the forest like a bunch’a Nancy Boys! I don’t get it! Hell, Mr. Spock has pointy ears, how come with the exception of trek girls most females don’t think he’s cool?!? And he’s far cooler than Elves, he’s got that crazy Vulcan nerve pinch, what gives?!?”

Fellow holders of the Y chromosome, here is your answer:

Style And Romance.

I think most females, even if it’s only for 5 minutes of their childhood, go through a phase of absolute Love For Magic. This usually manifests in the incubation stages of the illness as a fondness for unicorns that eventually, if left untreated, will lead to unicorn posters, the collection of lead or pewter figurines depicting wizards, castles and yes, Elves. Once it hits the Elf stage, real guys just don’t measure up. A quick comparison of the Real Man to the Real Elf reveals these alarming facts.

Real Man: Lives to be about 70

Real Elf: Lives to see the next species killing asteroid hit the Earth

Real Man: Camps in forest with tent and makes girlfriend gut the fish, with blunt bowie knife not actually used since his boy scout days.

Real Elf: At one with nature, lives in magnificent tree palaces or other architectural wonders, and can bend the forces of nature to his whim to a certain degree.

Real Man: Plays Everquest to the exclusion of all else. (Amendment: Real Geek Man)

Real Elf: Can cast spells without having to subscribe for $9.90 a month, and doesn’t need a cable connection to do it.

Real Man: Plays Dungeons & Dragons (See previous amendment)

Real Elf: Kills dragons.

Real Man: Interested in sports, cars and drinking.

Real Elf: Interested in romance, enchantment and all manner of wooing and drama.

Real Man: Forgets birthdays and anniversaries.

Real Elf: Senses your needs before you even know you have them.

Real Man: Belches.

Real Elf: Croons.

Real Man: Gets fat.

Real Elf: Gets better with time.

Geez, is it any wonder that women would rather spend time with someone named “Legolas” than “Buck”?

Let The Delusion Begin:

So this is my very first ever Blog post. Why am I doing this?

Wait, back up. I suppose the first question for anyone reading would be who is doing this, then “why”?

I’m Wayne Santos. I’m a writer.

I’ve been reading too many blogs by my still living literary idols and have decided to imitate them in the inane hope that this will somehow make me interesting too.

At the moment I live in Singapore. I’m not Singaporean though, I’m Filipino-Canadian, though I’m more Canadian than Filipino, since I can’t play the Bass guitar, don’t own any semi-automatic weapons that I break out as a conversation piece at dinner parties, and I pronounce “Fish” with “F”, not a “P”.

I’m hoping very soon to stop being a writer and start being a Famous Writer, ’cause I’ve got a couple of books sitting around at a publisher who’s name I can’t mention, and while the guy who actually received the books seems pretty hot to print them, his higher ups (Who I have been psychotically tracking via their own blogs on the ‘net, just to see if they’re really that busy…) have been unable to reach a decision as to what to do with my books.

Apparently they haven’t known what to do about them for over a year.

Does this happen to Neil Gaiman? William Gibson? Nooooo… they just happily blog away while people throw money at their feet for left over ideas they throw at the masses from the dinner table. Then again they’re geniuses, I am not. I keep forgetting about that part.

Other stuff that might be of relevance:

I have a cat. His name is Zero. He is beautiful and stupid and has a tendency to fall off objects or bump into things. Once he accidently got drain pipe cleaner in his left eye and ran around the house meowing like the apocalypse had come knocking and had decided he was going to buy all the apocalypse products none of the other homeowners wanted.

I have a girlfriend. I won’t mention her name here, but she’s an incredibly talented artist and one of these days I’ll have to buy her a fur coat when I’m not starving to death.

Oh yeah, in true, typical, writer’s fashion, I’m starving to death. Well, to be honest, I’ve only got a few dollars in the bank, am currently unemployed, and am very nearly an illegal alien.

In Singapore of all places.

Bits and pieces of this will make themselves known over the years, but for those curious readers who are actually checking this out, RIGHT THIS MINUTE, you can all tell yourselves, “Hey, I was reading Wayne Santos’ (Y’know, the famous novelist) blog before he even became famous!“

From The Actual News Department:

I should write about something that actually happened today. This is it. After a hiatus of a few years, I finally decided to submit short stories again. I sent one off to a Canadian anthology and got an answer that I wasn’t quite expecting. They told me that they liked the story mostly (NOTE FOR LITERARY HISTORIANS: THIS NEXT SENTENCE COULD BE *VERY* IMPORTANT IN YOUR ANNALS IF I’M FAMOUS), but that they wanted to make a few changes to it.

The story in questions is called The Ghost Girl. It’s about a girl who, not ironically at all, sees ghosts. I actually wrote this short story a few years ago, then turned around and based an entire novel off it, Broken Presences. That novel is one of the ones sitting with a publisher I’m not naming (It’ll all come out once the fame hits, promise…), and it also prompted me to write a few short stories based around the characters from both this initial short story and the novel that came of it.

Problem: They want to make Jen (My heroine) a lesbian.

There was much rapid blinking upon receiving this news.

It would rather break with several years worth of continuity that I’ve already established in all the other stories, and besides, Jen is categorically NOT a lesbian. Attractive women are to threatening her. Much as they are to me, but that’s a whole other load of neuroses… I think it’s something like Hemingway (Yes! I’m about to embark on literary sacrilige!) having “The Old Man & The Sea” read and receiving a comment like, “Man, why does he have to fish? I think this would be a much better story if he played golf, don’t you? It just scans better, the old man and the green, can’t you just hear it?”

At this point Hemingway breaks a bottle of Jack Daniels over the head of the offending commentator, but only after drinking it first.

Anyway, I think I just broke some rule for the size of a readable blog or something so I’ll sign off now and try and find out how I can stop being an illegal alien.