9 about 9

I went to see 9 yesterday. Here’s what I liked about it:

1. Design: 9 manages to tackle some very familiar influences and roots in its design without turning out stale, and that to me is quite an achievement. It is a thing of imaginative beauty and this aspect of the film at least ought to be applauded. The sack people look great. The machines too are lovely. It’s really a showpiece that ought to be marvelled at.
2. Animated People: Of course, all the pretty design in the world wouldn’t make a difference if the film didn’t look good, but it does. It’s some pretty decent work by the studio.
3. Set-Piece Spectacular: When I emerged from the theatre, the thing that stuck with me was the monsters and the action sequences. 9 is at its best when it pits the little sack people against this or that giant machine monster. It’s in these sequences that the film manages to prove that it’s a gripping piece of filmmaking.
4. Nice Direction: Shane Acker does a pretty great job, especially considering that he probably could have had some more material to work with.

And here’s what I didn’t like about it

1. Dialogue Dud: The dialogue isn’t terrible. It just never catches you, and sometimes even manages to bore you. The characters never say anything terribly clever or memorable, and it always seems to border on the obvious. It feels a bit like the script came out of a standard Saturday morning cartoon. Yes, I think obvious is the word. Obvious and tired.
2. No Character: 9 is made up of obvious characters who tend to be mostly one-dimensional. It doesn’t help that most of them don’t actually end up having a lot of screen time.  Lead character #9, for instance, is about as exciting as a cardboard box, and he is flanked by #5 and #7, the first a secondary character who seems to be there just to say the things that needed saying and the latter presumably a potential love interest although they didn’t really seem to be very interested in exploring any of that. The end-result is that it’s quite difficult to invest very much into the film.
3. Ending, Wut?: I think quite a bit has been said about the ending, and I suppose it tried not to seem like a cop-out, but it was a little bit convenient and definitely felt rushed. And the final, final scene was a little bizarre and strange to me for some reason. It’s almost as if it didn’t want to live with the consequences of earlier plot devices.
4. Dull Drama: 9 tries to be dramatic, but it doesn’t do drama very well. Part of it will imaginably be down to the characters, but it also just fails to push the right buttons for the drama to succeed.
5. Too Short: It’s short. About 80 minutes or under. And I think if it afforded more time to fleshing out the ending, put in an additional monster or two (or gave more time to the existing ones), gave the characters a little more space (and thought), it might have been a much better film.

As it stands though, 9 feels more like a technical showpiece than a proper movie. It’s a beautiful piece of work, but it’s also threadbare in the narrative department, which left me more than a little disappointed.

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Money Matters

So you spend it.

Here’s the loot report for yesterday, or in other words, the books joining my little library:

1. Seeing by José Saramago
2. All-Star Superman Vol. 2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
3. The Odyssey by Homer (Translated by Robert Fitzgerald)
4. The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
5. Pandora In The Congo by Albert Sanchez Piñol (Translated by Mara Faye Lethem)
6. The 4 Major Plays by Anton Chekhov (Translated by Curt Columbus)
7. Last Evenings On Earth by Roberto Bolaño (Translated by Chris Andrews)

Not quite the mix I was expecting, with a shortage of science and poetry. I think I’ll pop by for another book tomorrow if I happen to be passing by, though that’ll likely be a recent novel than anything else. In fact, it might even be in Chinese.

I’m happiest about my Pandora In The Congo buy, actually, because it’s not something I would normally read, and I’ve only heard good things about it.

I had a bunch of other books I was intending to get, including the new Kazuo Ishiguro Nocturnes and In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, but I suspect I’m going pocket paperback for those, if they ever appear. Otherwise I’ll just get them as they are. There was also a science book that’s in a gigantic hardcover and I was at first slightly tempted, but what the hey, I’m a poor student without a job.

I’m sure there’ll be another before school reopens, since there’s the Great Singapore Sale somewhere along these couple of months, so there’s certainly ample time to stock up on my new semester reading.

Today…

I think I’ll be working on a query for The River. I just want some space from Bukit Merah for now, in case I burn out prematurely. I figure that if I can’t tell how long it’s going to be (since I am making it up as I go along), then I run the risk of either writing it too short (rushing it) or too long (dragging it). Some distance, temporal or otherwise, from it might help, so I reckon I won’t be back at it until Monday, depending on how the weekend works out.

Hmm.

Results in a week. Wonder what I’ll see. There’s something nerve-wracking about getting your results reported to you by your computer. A click of the mouse and poof it’s there. And as if it wants to mess with your head a bit more, it doesn’t appear instantly. No, it just lags a bit and hangs around and tries its best to surprise you. Then it shows up like a magic trick, and you’re struggling to contain the dread in the first couple of seconds as you try to make sense of it all.

Then it makes sense. And it’s like dust, taking ages to settle.

Next week. Friday, I think.

2.8

The WordPress 2.8 beta has got up and going. [via WordPress.org]

TRICO

Team ICO’s next project has an alleged trailer. [via Kotaku]

Looks great. I like the giant beast.

9

New trailer for 9. [via YouTube]

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Losing A Friend + Aliens

What Happened?

The Christmas week came and went with a flurry of activity. I did almost no writing, a lot of shopping, and there were a couple of other things.

Of writing, I was stuck for a long time trying to dream up some short story. I had a few half-ideas but I abandoned all of them. I settled on something on Saturday night, and wrote bits and pieces yesterday. It’s a few hundred words now and I suppose it’s going to be a few thousand eventually. It’s just nice to write something original and unrelated to all the stuff I’ve been doing.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with it. I think it’ll be clearer by the time I finish it. I’ll probably put it up here. Or I might submit it to some school publications. (The idea is that it isn’t work and so shouldn’t come affixed with things like money and stress.) We’ll see. It’s a fable. Of a fashion. My sort of fable, I suppose, isn’t an unfair description.

I also started on writing out a plot summary for Singapura, which is something I’m sure I’ve mentioned before here. It’s looking okay, but I expect to be done with it only in three or four months. I want to get the whole idea down properly first. Given the nature of the project, I think this is the only way through.

And as for The River‘s query letter… It’s kind of stuck.

But other than that query letter, this is all good news.

Shopping has bought me a new shirt which is sitting on a boat captained (I imagine) by a talking rat and lost somewhere out in the choppy sea. I have faith in talking rats, so I’m sure it’ll arrive. Among other purchases, I got myself a calendar. 2009 is the year of Henri Cartier-Bresson, it seems.

I will be going down to the bookstore once more tomorrow to find something, but other than that, I’m trying to avoid spending until the next school term.

And a couple of other things, yes.

I’ve had my room painted, which involved a lot of shifting and huffing and puffing. It’s all done now, except for some of the moving, but that’ll probably be taken care of tomorrow.

And one very last thing: I lost a friend last week. Nothing bad happened, so there’s nothing to worry or feel sad about. It’s just that some recent events got me rather frustrated with things, and along the week they also made me realise that there were things that were wrong in the friendship. It disgusted me to some degree, and I thought to either sort it out or to end it.

I chose to end it.

Someone asked me along the week how I did it. (He was quite surprised that it was even possible.) I said that I just told her, I’m sorry, I don’t think I can be your friend anymore. Best of luck. Which is really what I did, albeit a condensed version of it. It’s left her bewildered but not as distressed as she could be, if she is at all. (After all, things didn’t go sour or anything, and it must have all been rather strange and sudden.) And I’ve managed to step away from it too.

Why did I choose this? I imagine I just didn’t want the potentially tortuous path out. Given the nature of the problem (which I won’t speak of; so you’ll just have to use your imagination), I didn’t think it would be possible to sort it out anyway, so to speak, because I’m sure there doesn’t seem to be a problem to her and it’s just my insanity streak acting up. I’m sure if she thought otherwise, she would have pursued some form of resolution, which hasn’t yet happened.

Or, of course, maybe I’m just a coward.

A nice thing though is that through this I found a friend to depend on. And I don’t care if your heart is made of stone–that’s a nice thing to find.

As for the one I lost, a letter she sent me sits at a corner of my bookshelf, like a reminder of what I lost and what I hope one day to repair. It stings a little. A friendship of a few years isn’t just going to go away like a dream. I suppose it’s something I’ll come back to, when I’m ready. Or maybe not. I don’t know.

For now though, I guess all I can do, as that old song goes, is to follow the sun.

And A Few Other Things…

A very nice essay on 2666 by Francisco Goldman. [via The Elegant Variation]

Trailer for Shane Acker’s 9, produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmanbetov. [via Apple Quicktime Trailers] It looks amazing.

John Hodgman on close encounters of the third kind and love. [via TED]

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