Savage Beauty -- special exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In my almost two decades of visiting the MMA, I have never heard or seen of such a throng, the line waiting to get into the special exhibition stretching all the way from the galleries of the Impressionists to the halls of Asian ceramics.  I suppose it takes a proper genius to turn an exhibition into a phenomenal event for the whole town, and the untimely death of that genius to secure his legacy til kingdom come.

My mind is triggered by images, weaving tales based on what I see.  The exquisite artworks, for to say otherwise would be gross understatements, by the late Alexander McQueen transcend the realm of fashion into the worlds of fantasy, brimming with notions of ornithic fever dreams, fairy tales, romantic encounters, legends uttered in secrecy.  Admittedly, there is a dark undercurrent throughout the exhibition, and some pieces certainly border on the fetish and the grotesque (the spine corset, for example, immediately called to mind the creature in "Alien"), but after all, the theme of the exhibition is "savage". 

The exhibition included different chambers, each showcasing a unique collection, together making up the highlights of the artist's career.  The viewers stood in awe, wide-eyed, gawking this way and that, not just at the pieces on display, but at the chambers themselves, completing the atmospheric effects created by the curators.  What incredible curating!  Every chamber fit McQueen's artworks as aptly as a tailored story fit a designated character.  What a memorable ensemble!  I was mostly impressed, mesmerized almost, by the romantic gothic chamber.  Simple black and white were the predominant colors used, materials ranged from leather straps (fetish/cult), intricate and extravagamt lacework(dark filigree) to voluminous silk cape, masks and, last but not least bird feathers dyed black and gold.  The pieces were propped up on platforms surrounded by rusted frames showing seemingly age old patina.  I felt I was whooshed back in time, to a period of Byronic heroes and dark knights and dames shrouded in mysteries and secrecies, to a time when vampires and fiends roamed the earth in luxurious capes and satin, silk and velvet (getting carried away here)~~~

This was a hopelessly romantic designer, and how delicately yet powerfully this collection of his magnum opus, the embodiment of the artist's soul, pulls on the heartstrings of those also possessed with the notion of romance. 

My absolute favorite piece of the entire exhibition is, as the piece is so aptly named, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!  Yes, thats exactly how I felt when I saw this jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, soul-wrenching of a thing.  (And of course, the "raven" is absolutely stunning as well!)

picture time~~~

First, pictures of Tigress and Yutou taken this morning:
Tigress, the incredibly friendly (if not somewhat cloying) female calico kind of grimaced at me because I didn't give her any canned food, only dry food. Her favorite is "Chicken of the Sea", the kind we eat, but I only give her that very sparingly, human food in general are not good for cats. She loves canned food for cats too.

She loves rubbing against people she knows well, and is very easy to get along with. She does scowl if the food is not to her liking.

This is Yutou (芋頭). I believe Yutou is a he. Yutou is sweet tempered and shy, I somehow have the hunch that he is the most intelligent of the lot. He has grown up so much since last summer. He loves to lap up icy cold milk. I was hesitant about giving him milk at first because many cats are not lactose tolerant, but Yutou definitely does not have that problem. He sometimes lingers on after finishing his daily canned and dry food, this is his cue that he wants some milk -- his comfort drink. Yutou has become more relaxed around me lately, he lets me scratch his ears and back and message his furry and soft limbs with both hands now. He meows loudly when I approach him with food in my hands.

Now, as mentioned a long long time ago, I said I would post some of my sketches. At this point, I am not capable of drawing (tolerably well) from memory or imagination alone, so all the sketches I did are from photographs (not taken by me). I will try to find the original links to them.
The one to the left is a quick sketch of an Eskimo mother with her baby and a puppy. The original photograph can be found here. (scroll down)

This is actually a failed attempt, because the Eskimo woman in my sketch ends up looking like the baby's grandmother, instead of his mother (=.=). But I decided to post this piece because this was my first experience using Derwent's sketching set.
This is the same Eskimo woman with her son, now sleeping soundly. The original link is the same as the one above. This little sketch was completed on impulse. I wasn't planning to sketch that day, but somehow I saw this photograph and I felt like giving it a try. I used normal printing paper and a very average green color pencil. I think I was in the right drawing mood, it turned out a lot better than I expected.

This is my most recent sketch. I used Derwent's Drawing Pencils for coloring, and Derwent's Sketching set for outline. I absolutely love Derwent's Drawing Pencils. The colors are solid, somewhat subdued, and generally have an earthy tone (in other words, the colors are not too loud or cartoonish). This sketch took about 2 weeks to finish. The old guy's hat took some special effort, it was a pain in the neck to create those crease and folds, shadings and lighter areas. I messed up his mouth actually, in the original photo, the man has a bigger mouth. The original post where I found the photograph is here. The photograph is on one of the pages, but I really don't know which page anymore. The post, by the way, has fantastic photographs and the writing is simply heartrending.

This little caricature of a sketch is for you to laugh at and for my amusement. I am not really a fan of 黑豹(black panther), but I do like their debut album. As you can see, I sketched it from the cassette tape cover. I was sorting my old cassettes the other day, I thought it is about time I get rid of them. But I got into such a nostalgic mood that I ended up keeping most of my old cassettes. I am not even sure this cassette by Black Panther belongs to me. But anyways, I just can't find it in me to throw away BP's debut album.

My drawing tools. I hoarded lots of drawing tools, especially color pencils, ever since I started having this thing for color pencil drawings, and ever since I first set foot in Blick art store. Its a shame I have completed very few sketches but my drawing tools will last probably 50 years. But anyways, this is the 12-piece Derwent's Sketching set, the ones I use the most are HB/2B/4B graphite sketching pencils. The gray play-doh-like eraser is an excellent artist's eraser, you can knead it into any convenient shape of your choice. It erases tough marks. The white pencil-like things are paper stumps used for blending colors. They are INDISPENSABLE, especially if you need to create shading/gradation effects. And of course, you need sandpaper.

This is Derwent's Drawing Pencils. I can't say enough good things about them. They are some of the best drawing pencils you can get.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - halfway thoughts

I have been making mental notes to pick up the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, because everybody was either reading this book or one of the others (the Girl who Played with Fire, the Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) --together making up the crime trilogy by the late Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson.  The trilogy received tremendous publicity and fanfare in major bookstores and the media and drew rapt attention on Swedish crime writers in general.  So finally I picked it up last weekend. 

Reading the Dragon Tattoo meant, first and foremost, overcoming a learning curve, because I knew almost next to nothing about Sweden, where the story takes place.  Incidentally, about a month ago, I had dinner at a Scandinavian place for the first time (the food, by the way, was absolutely superb, right up my sleeves), and the place also had a gift shop selling Scandinavian souvenirs and next to the entrance on a wooden rack were complimentary tourguide books on Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Holland, and we took one of each.  The guidebook on Sweden really came in handy.

I had a hard time with the names of people and places mentioned in Dragon Tattoo, and since at the center of the story is a very extended family, and the author enjoys writing about the layout of Stockholm, there are lots of names.  So I had to do some nutshell reading on Gamla Stan (which by the way, sounds fascinating!!), the tunnelbana, the archipelago, Södermalm and all the other names I still can't remember.  So in this respect, reading Dragon Tattoo feels refreshing, it is something very new to me, informative and educational.  But as I read on, about half way through the book, there came a curious sense of deja vu.  Inexplicably, I sensed a Japanese presence in the way Stieg Larsson tells the story (or maybe there is a Swedish touch to many Japanese mystery books, I simply don't know). 

Aside from the social/political issues and other digressions discussed in the book, Dragon Tattoo is, at the center, a mystery novel.  The initial setting of this mystery uses one of the oldest tricks (and probably the favorite trick of many novelists) in the book -- the "locked-room" technique（密室殺人）, the room, of course, is unconventional in the sense that it is an isolated island.  An established and powerful family is involved.  The family keeps a respectable public facade, but is in fact, rotten to the core with members who can be summed up as inept heir, incompetent drunkard, loose and lewd socialite, and stark raving mad Nazis, among others -- in short, almost a funny-farm.  It takes the author a while to traverse the history of this family and generate a panoramic view -- but as soon as the big picture became clear, the setting immediately reminded me of some of the better known mystery stories by Yokomizo Masashi (橫溝正史), such as Inugamike no Ichizoku (犬神家族) and Yatsuhaka Mura (八墓村), and other stories by the more recent Japanese mystery novelist Ayatsuji Yukito (綾辻行人).  I have been a huge fan of Yokomizo Masashi and I enjoyed reading "Murders at XX Mansion" books (XX館の殺人)  by Ayatsuji Yukito, so I was very pleasantly surprised that Stieg Larsson's style somehow reminds me of these authors: an almost uncanny crime committed in a remote place, an extended family of high social standing, dark secrets that go way back -- the ingredients are all there. 

I also love the way Stieg Larsson writes about the everyday things, especially through the protagonist Mikael Blomkvist as he becomes settled down on the island--the "scene of crime": the mundane chores, the daily routines, the simple but hearty lamb with potato meals, the stray cat Tjorventhe, the windfall lovemaking with a neighbor...etc.  There is something chilling yet comforting about this kind of writing, something I can relate to from writings by Murakami Haruki -- one of the things I like the most about Murakami's novels is the way he writes about the everyday things and almost out of the blue, takes unexpected turns into "twilight zones" and all things go bananas.  Somehow, I'm getting that same vibe in Dragon Tattoo.  The female Protagonist, Lisbeth Salander (I have to resist calling her Salamander) has yet to join path with Mikael Blomkvist.  Her role in the mystery is still obscure but will soon be revealed. 

Mikael Blomkvist is played by Daniel Craig in the 2011 film adaptation of this book.

近所の猫たち

星期天，在小區附近往返了數次，一次是去公園晨跑，一次是去圖書館閑逛。看到了起碼十只貓。有一戶住家門口，經常性地看見兩只體型瘦小的貓在等食吃：一只全身土黃，另一只是咖啡色和白色相間的奶牛貓。有一次我沖著奶牛貓叫了叫，小東西竟然充滿期待地跑了過來，當時真想一把把他撈起來拐回家。看到的其他野貓也多半瘦小，難得的是還看到一只全身灰藍、基本符合British Shorthair特徵的藍貓。看到一只和肥大很像的四蹄踏雪黑白貓，懶洋洋地趴在某戶人家的門口，一點也不怕我。看到一窩大概是今年剛出生的小貓，比奶貓大些，但體形都還是幼貓，都是虎斑紋，聚集在一輛破車上，那個附近大概沒人住，這些小貓就把這裡當窩了，看起來不像吃得太好的樣子。

一圈看下來，得到的結論是，我家那幾只貓的日子真是太好過了，每只貓都敦敦的像個小肥豬，吃東西還挑三揀四，最喜歡吃人吃的tuna關頭，最不愛吃沒加關頭的乾糧。大家都明顯長大了，尤其是芋頭，骨架子和四肢都比以前大了不少，或許因爲芋頭酷愛喝牛奶？而且芋頭現在也不像以前那麽害羞。虎妞比冬天瘦了一些，不過骨架子還是大了很多，記得以前虎妞的體型比肥二小，現在已經明顯大過肥二。肥大還是最大的一只，膽子還是很小，但其實他很喜歡有人撓撓，又害怕又期待的樣子很可愛。

異形 4 in 1

Bought the "Alien" 4 in 1 collection. I saw this collection sitting on the top shelf of the DVD section in my local B and N months ago, wanted to grab it then and there, but hesitated and waited. I did this a few times, and finally decided to just get it and get it over with.

The first Alien movie I saw (on TV) was Aliens (the 2nd in the series) directed by James Cameron. I was still in junior high, and USA was showing Aliens that afternoon. It was already about 40 minutes into the film, but I got pulled in right away, and I was completely blown away by it, gave me nightmares. I remember I had to keep on changing channel when the action scenes got too intense for me, but always changed right back because I didn't want to miss anything. Aliens is the only sci-fi action/horror/thriller that made me want to watch so bad but also scared the wind out of me. I literally froze in place at the sight of those saliva-covered grotesque creatures that kill with their tongues and acidic "blood". I mean I still kinda shudder at the thought of those things, but am at the same time fascinated by the Alien films. So this is what made me hesitate about getting the DVDs, I thought the films would still be too intense for me. But it turned out I have grown a lot more numb to violence and gore over the years, though I'm just as repulsed by sordid horror films that are nothing more than mindless slash and splash.

So I watched all four Alien movies in two afternoons. Unquestionably, the first two in the series are monumentally better than the latter two. The first Alien, directly by Ridley Scott, definitely has a "British touch" to it (whatever that means). It is characteristically un-Hollywood, the build-up to the climactic "chest burster" scene is long and requires patience; the dialogues and character development are rather subtle, highly believable, especially the unexpected turn of events which begins with the android Ash who suddenly turns predatory on his teammates, and which leads to the ultimate revelation of the "real" purpose behind the mission of the ship named Nostromo, as masterminded by the Company. Surprisingly, the central figure of this movie, the alien itself, does not get that much screen time (compared to the latter ones). But this doesn't change the fact that Alien is creepy-as-hell and beats Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection (4) on the "scare-o-meter", both of which contain much much more slash and splash.

Aliens(2) is a roller-coaster-like action packed combat thriller, and it is GOOD, i mean, mind-numbingly good, though in a completely different way from Alien(1). I imagine it must have been pretty easy to screw up Aliens and turn it into something like Alien 3. But Cameron is just too good at this kind of stuff. The suspense is heart-gripping; there is a lot more gore and violence, but not to the point your stomach begins to churn. Mostly, it is the combination of suspense and powerful action scenes that makes this film excel. But there IS something else in this film that leaves a mark: the development of the character Ellen Ripley, the lone heroine, the bond between Ripley and the little girl Newt, something that turns into a mother-and-daughter bond, versus the similar queen-and-offspring bond between the queen alien and all the other aliens. So the final climactic moment in Aliens is the showdown between the "two mothers" -- Ripley and the queen alien...both of them lean and mean when it comes to protecting their children.

Alien 3 is, simply put, a mistake. There should have been only two alien movies, Alien and Aliens. In Aliens, most of the marines died, but the movie still ends on a hopeful note, with survivers Ripley, Newt, Ripley's love interest Hicks, and the android Bishop returning to base. But Alien 3 decided to smother even this feeble hope, killing everyone but Ripley. The entire movie feels pointless, and whats worse, Alien 3 decided to end with Ripley jumping into a furnace, and with that, there just HAS to be another sequel. I mean, you just don't kill the heroine in a series like this.

So, we come to the last in the series, Alien Resurrection. And "resurrection" means bringing Ripley, and, more importantly, the alien back to haunt us (oh yes, the new Ripley is badass), and not just any alien, the mother queen. This is the only alien movie i watched in the theatre. I don't loath this one as much as I should, because mostly, I don't mind watching Ripley lording over everybody else(including the aliens). She is angry, she is mean, and she spews acidic blood. But other than that, this movie is like a fetish nightmare, and every character thinks he/she is so tough that they just can't get over themselves.

今年就是大片年啊，就是大片年

過去的兩年因爲某些原因，幾乎整年沒有進電影院。

我看電影的態度基本是：大屏幕看與小屏幕看有明顯差別的，就去電影院看。文藝片和劇情片也喜歡，但通常不會急著去影院看。所以，那年錯過了Avatar尤其可惜，尤其是裏面有我相當喜歡的Michelle Rodriguez和Sigourney Weaver。

不過，今年就當是把前兩年錯過的都補回來。今年真是大片年啊，大片年。從四月份開始，Fast Five就震撼揭開了暑期檔的序幕，整個暑期，各種超級英雄匯聚一堂，集體轟炸粉絲的荷包。從F5，到Thor, Panda2, X-men first class, Transformers3，到Green Lantern和Captain America，印象中沒有任何一年有這麽多super blockbuster這麽密集的一起上映。而我們這些粉絲也樂得幾乎一個禮拜進一次影院。

如果沒有記錯，看超級英雄電影，是從X2: X-men United開始的。當時連X1都沒看過，對X-men的漫畫也基本不熟悉，就跟朋友進了影院。一邊看，朋友一邊小聲講解人物關係，竟然看得津津有味。後來又回頭補看了X1。在X2的結尾，Jean為了救其他人而犧牲了自己，大家都很期待她在X3的閃亮復活和回歸，卻沒想到X3是這樣令人難過的結局。

我一直覺得像X-men這類大片，雖然正面人物（或觀衆能找到認同感的人物）不是不能挂掉，但整體還是要給人希望，結局不能真的令人感到沮喪。而X3就犯了這個大忌：Jean死了不說，Cyclops也被她親手殺死，Magneto失去了特異能力（雖然這個地方似乎埋了伏筆），Mystique也變成了普通人並被Magneto抛棄，Rose鉄了心要變普通人，而最難過的是，Jean竟然是死在Wolverine的刀下。我堅決不接受這是X-men系列的最終結局啊！這太苦情了吧。

好在上個周末上映的X-men: First Class非常好看，因此説不定以後還能看到其他X-men的後續故事。飾演Charles Xavier的James McAvoy應該說從各方面都難以跟後來的Patrick Stewart聯繋起來，不過這並不表示他演的不成功。誰又能想到，禿頭的X教授年輕的時候竟然是個泡妹高手，滿嘴甜言蜜語。不過有一點從一開始就可以肯定，Xavier是塊天生當領袖的料，他非常擅長安撫他人，也沒有人比他更會説服他人。從最初，X-men團隊就是以他為核心。

而我更感興趣的則是年輕的Eric Lehnsherr（Magneto）。由於X1和X2的Magneto是由老戯骨Sir Ian McKellen飾演，那種老辣陰險的氣質完全被演活了（還記得X2裏面，Magneto只靠三個小鉄球就輕而易舉的逃出監獄），因此，在前傳裏看到一個特別菜鳥的Magneto（由Michael Fassbender飾演）是很有意思的事情。

看來在兩人都還年輕的時候，無論是心理還是特異能力，更強大和更成熟的都是Xavier。Eric由於幼年時候在納粹集中營的陰影，人格從小就有扭曲的一面，特異能力的力量源泉一直是來自於内心的憤怒。而直到認識了Xavier，被其“淳淳善誘”，告訴他只有當内心找到平靜，特異能力的威力才能夠真正變得強大（好像抄自熊貓2），而我們也似乎看到了Eric能夠返回光明一面的希望。

前傳的成功之處（之一）在於：導演很流暢又細膩的描畫出了Xavier和Eric，這兩位特異人中的領軍人物從陌生人到相識，到相交，到相知，直至最後的分道揚鑣。兩人雖然選擇了兩個完全不同的人生理念，但他們之間有著非常複雜的過去，也曾經像兄弟一般並肩作戰過。