Randomness #520F

Whew! The Japanese Film Festival‘s over.

If you missed this year’s movies and the Q&A sessions with director Ichikawa Jun and actress Yoshiyuki Kazuko (who seriously looks like she’s 50 and not 70+), Stefan has taken very detailed notes.

Q&A with Ichikawa Jun

Q&A with Yoshiyuki Kazuko 

I may not always agree with his opinions or like his writing, but I genuinely admire his diligence. The man’s a true movie fan.

—

So what if this rumour that Google might be developing a virtual world isn’t true? Bet the folks up on Mountain View are working on something similar anyway.

More interestingly, judging from the slate of apps that Google already has — especially Google Earth and Google Maps — maybe their virtual world will do what none have so far: integrate both the real and virtual — bring us closer to augmented reality.

But with one company controlling almost all this tech… that’s scary. Some possible glimpses into a Google-dominated future from Bruce Sterling and Cory Doctorow

—

This is not a painting of Ophelia — it is a picture of Elizabeth Siddal dying of hypothermia.

In Amsterdam for IBC 2007

Taken outside the Oude Kerk. The flagstones are uneven, giving the ground a lumpy look. This bronze addition fits right in — referencing the specific uses of the area and its immediate physical environment.

Jenny Holzer at the Venice Biennale

Protect, Protect, 2007

More on we make money not art.

I saw her work for the first time at the Singapore Biennale last year while passing the Padang. All I had to take a photo with was my handphone.

(Flickr won’t let me blog my own photo so a link would have to suffice.)

I’ll let the critics decide if she’s “good” or not. It’s just that I usually take note of giant type. Stuff by Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha etc.

The Last Wayang – 31 Aug

Was browsing the pamphlet for the upcoming Singapore Art Show (which btw comes with special post-its attached) when this event caught my eye:

The Last Wayang

Situated at the disused Capitol Theatre, The Last Wayang provokes a reflection on Singapore’s old films.

Date: 31 Aug
Time: 7pm – 12am

I emailed NAC for more info:

The Last Wayang is a project helmed by Lasalle Masters students and graduates. It consists of video projections on the facade of the disused Capitol Theatre. One projection is of stills of old film posters, and the other is an MTV style video.

Below is an excerpt of the project description from the artists “The video comprises of [sic] images of past films and how they have contributed to the flourishing local films of today. The highlights will be done in a trailer / MTV superimposition to apply this contradiction of nostalgia and modern times. “

I often wish the Capitol would reopen as a cinema.

(earlier posts about the Capitol)

Wandering hours

In 1656 the Campanus brothers had built a night clock for Pope Alexander XII. In a total innovation, they replaced the then conventional hands with hour figures on rotating discs, which performed a semicircular arc across the clock face […] The concept is that the moving hour display keeps an almost metaphorical count of the passing minutes rising and setting along the hourly arc.

(From The Watchismo Times. The link takes you to more wandering hour clocks and watches)

Sympathy for Shin?

Imagine an attractive and talented young woman who said she had an art history doctorate from Oxford. Vivacious and persuasive, she becomes the director of the Tate Gallery. Then, just after being hired to curate the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, she is exposed as a fake who failed to get a single A-level.This scenario, reminiscent of a Patrica Highsmith novel with its hint of The Talented Mr Ripley, is precisely the scandal now rocking the Korean art world after one of its rising stars, Shin Jeong-ah, was unveiled as a fraud.

(Source: The Independent. Yonhap’s version casts her actions as an attack against Korean academic elitism)

Forget the novel — this story is begging to be turned into a slick, high-budget Korean movie. Just needs an additional romance element as an excuse for Rain / Bae Yong Jun / some other hot Korean male actor. I bet Korean producers are already negotiating the rights…

Seriously: Shin reminded me of the Geum-ja character from Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Geum-ja relies on her powerful obsession with revenge and to create and maintain her kindly facade. I don’t know the facts of course, but Shin after the department store tragedy might have developed similarly powerful obsessions that made her new identity so convincing.

Say, what’s Park Chan Wook doing these days?