z0mg "881" r0xx0rz!!1!1!

Just came back after a family film outing to Royston Tan's new movie "881"... my mum (CEO), father (retired financial consultant) and big sister (forthcoming PhD student with focus in Old English linguistics) were ALL singing along to the Hokkien songs in the getai. And so were a whole bunch of other people in the audience (not too loudly, but audibly enough to make me realise what an impact this show is having just by *recognising* that getai is valuable cultural art form).

There are some films that exoticise Singapore for foreign audiences (cf. Chicken Rice Wars), and our automatic response to that as artists is to push for films that represent Singapore as it really is (cf. Singapore Dreaming).

Royston's picked up on a new route - he doesn't care about the reality of Singapore; he'll glamourise us above and beyond believability to give a Singapore audience what it wants (and never really knew it wanted) - a soul-swinging, heart-wringing, singalong smorgasbord of light and colour and campy costume.

I super<3 Royston now; he can have my ass anytime he wants (unless I have Arabic or capoeira class, in which case I have to reschedule).