17 July was my mum's birthday. But the mind of it just slipped totally from my schedule, like that of Kim's departure today. For this, I really sort of hate it.

 

And on mum's birthday, I really felt it was one of those days. Since I'd promised Sister to buy her a pot of fresh milk, I took Bus 735 instead of Bus 122, which then gave me the bloodiest memory of commuting. Every man on that bus was unforgettably dirty and vile, with chavvy way of dressing which nearly suffocated me to death. Nightmare, I could only say. Then the shopping mall bus was even fucked off. Chits chirped all the way and the ugly man sitting in front of me kept looking around outside and inside the bus! I just didn't know why the heck the dick kept turning his head round like a twisted stupid goose?! That really forced me nearly to send him the most horrible smash I'd ever imagined. I really wanted to bloody murder him, the poor sucker. For those stupid women, I'd rather they dance before and doing the stripping things, or just sit there, baby, brooding! I couldn't bear them anymore, and the chits, plus!

 

Most grotesquely fucked off, a most dummy-like small chit just sang the band The Flower 's song when I was getting off. Immediately, I thought I gonna ring his head off or give him, like that poor sucker, a bottom to head prick with a dagger as Hannibal Lector did to Kolnas!

 

What a fuckin' day then when I saw the dinner was noodles! Now I see the reason...though, at that time I was furious. And all the unpleasant rage just "bang" like a dynamite when mum retorted my nonsense that I don't wanna get married any way that "Yes, I know you are a hardened bachelor!", I exploded.

 

Bang!

 

Family life is really nonsense to me. But yesterday should not be a question of claiming my bachelor life.

 

Everybody was then furious and disappointed. I jumped the dinner with its lobsters and egg pans that I liked loads. Simply because I didn't want to surrender.

 

My dinner was several glasses of beer, a loaf of ice cream and 2 cigarettes. Not good in taste though, I had to finish that. Chrysler was playing his magic violin on the radio, and I listened to it bitterly. I'd rather have the piano tracks...

 

The idea that I should send mum at least a birthday card didn't hit me until I finished 4 or 5 songs by L'arc~en~Ciel, and a list of true rocks from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Arctic Monkeys, My Chemical Romance, Ocean Deep Colours, and the Strokes.

 

Rock is my life, I can definitely see, while I was singing loud with the rhythms. Plus, the Classical music, too. I love it. And the beautiful babies, which I should not forget since I finally calmed down and managed to back to myself after watching a 2nd time of Hannibal Rising. My dear, dear, dear Gaspard~~~Je t'aime^^

 

The misery's gone, but I'm afraid the scar's still out there. I really miss Angelo's sooth...

Future Movies: What drew you towards the project initially?
Peter Webber: The ear-piercing scene. I had been reading the script thinking this is a nice, polite little period piece that I will never make in a million years and then I read the piercing scene and I suddenly realised that this is not the movie that I thought it was. There was suddenly something rather dark, slightly perverse and obsessive about that scene. It really unlocked something in the film that I hadn’t seen before and changed my mind entirely about what it could be. At that precise moment it turned into something that I wanted to make… so that was it: Perversity!

Having said that, the film is set in a very beautiful world and I love Vermeers’ painting. I wasn’t desperate to make a film about Vermeer from the outset, in a way I was scared about that side of things, but I saw that it was a fascinating tale about power, about sex, about the relationship between money and art and it was all interesting stuff.

FM: So when you read that scene it all fitted into place?
PW: Yes, I saw the kind of film I could make and it proceeded from there. I told the producer the kind of film that I wanted to make and I was very surprised when he offered me the gig.

FM: Did you have knowledge of 17th Century Holland before you embarked upon the project?
PW: As it happens I did. I had studied history of art at university so I had done my prerequisite study of the 17th century Dutch genre painters; I knew my Rubens from my Rembrandt, I knew my Vermeers and I also knew my Hobberma’s and my Terborchs and all the rest of them so I was adequately prepared. I certainly had the basis, the period wasn’t a mystery. It was great to be able to get back to that, and to be able to say to the producer: “I need to go and look at some paintings”, so he writes the cheque for the air tickets and the hotel. There are worse ways to earn a living.

FM: Did you draw on Vermeer’s work to help create the film’s visual style?
PW: Yeah completely, but we also tried to be aware that not everything should look like a Vermeer, which is why we looked at a bunch of other painters as well. We kept a specifically Vermeer like look for the studio and the attic but the rest of the world is culled from a variety of different Dutch genre painters, some of whom I have just mentioned.

FM: It’s funny because many people have noted the obvious associations with Vermeer, but I think the overall look of the film is more reminiscent of Rembrandt because you’ve used chiaroscuro lighting so heavily.
PW: Yes, that’s true mostly because it’s a very dramatic way to tell a story. You look at Rembrandt and you think that the work could almost be stills from a 17th century film noir, and that’s the sensibility that Eduardo Serra (Cinematographer) and I share. We like darkness and that’s the kind of things European filmmakers do. In America they tend to light from the top down; start with everything being lit and bring it down from there, but in Europe I think we go the other way. There’s a lot of darkness in this film, in fact there was almost too much to begin with. When the first graded prints were produced we realised we had gone a little bit too far, so we pulled it back. If it had been up to me and Eduardo I think we would have left it that way but we had to let the audience in a little bit to see what’s happening.

FM: It is a period drama and you touched on your reticence to do it in the first place.
PW: Yeah, well there are some good ones out there, but a lot of them are rather dull and tedious concentrating mostly on the frocks and the carriages. I hated a lot of period dramas and frankly I was slightly surprised to find myself directing one, which is maybe why it turned out as well as it did.

FM: So were you mindful of trying to create a more contemporary style for the film?
PW: Yes, very much so. We could have got bound up in the frills and the ruffles and the lace and the bowing and all the rest of it, but we made a lot of deliberate decisions to strip it back and make it as minimal as possible and that I think makes the film feel much more modern. Also with the score we could have done a baroque period score; I experimented with this type of music when I was cutting it, which really dragged it down and made it this museum piece again, so we chose a more modern score eventually. I was making the kind of film that I wanted to see, that’s the good thing about my job. So at least I would be happy even if other people didn’t like it.

FM: That’s all you can do really, I suppose.
PW: Well, you’ve got to try. Often there are a lot of people getting in your way, but not in this instance I have to say, and it’s not because we’re sitting here in the Pathe building (Pathe co-financed the film and are distributing it), I know a lot of people who have had a far harder time of it. They were really in tune with the kind of film that we wanted to make and weren’t ever trying to make us too “Hollywood”.

FM: That’s refreshing to hear. How did you set about recreating 17th Century Holland? You have mentioned the influence of the genre painters…
PW: You look at the painters of course. Hire a great bunch of people, a great cameraman, production designer and costume designer and set to work. Look at each scene decide the mood you want to convey, decide the story points you’re going to tell and decide how you’re going to use each of those tools, those different areas to tell the tale. It’s step by step, that’s what Oliver Stone said… well what he actually said was “Inch by motherfucking Inch”, but I am not sure that I’m allowed to say that to you! But it’s true: lots of preparation and then when you’re shooting it it’s just shot by shot. Sometimes you have blinding flashes of inspiration but mostly its just strong, slow and steady processes as you gather everything you need to create the world.

FM: In a way it’s like applying layers and layers of fine oil paint?
PW: Completely. There are a lot of very practical decisions to be made in filmmaking; people talk about all the thematic stuff and the highfaluting stuff, but at some point you have to decide how big do I want this room, because as soon as you put a 35mm camera in there it’s only half the size with the amount of people that are required to be in there. A room shoots a different size to the way it looks, so you have to consider a whole heap of technical and logistical problems that you have to overcome and fit living characters inside.

FM: what led you to cast Scarlett Johansson in the role of Griet?
PW: She’s amazing! I spoke to 150 girls and she was the most amazing amongst them. I met a lot of good actresses along the way but there was only one who could really do the kind of job that I needed them to do to make the film that I wanted to make. It’s a tricky thing because when we made the film she wasn’t the Scarlett Johansson as she is now; it was “who?” “Oh, the girl in Ghost World”. Now everyone knows who she is and it will be much easier to get Scarlett Johansson movies made in future, as it should be. When you’re casting you look around, you try and cast someone going on your gut instinct, it’s not a precise science and God knows we can all get it wrong on occasion, but we lucked out this time round.

FM: So you were familiar with her work before?
PW: Oh yeah. I knew “Ghost World”, which I love and “The Man Who Wasn’t There”, I am a long time fan of the Coen brothers, and “Manny and Lo” which is a great film that she did, well worth searching out. But meeting her really sold it. She has boundless energy and enthusiasm; intelligence and a certain kind of sexuality. The thing I was worried about was would she transpose to the 17th century, and we had no problems.

FM: Do you think that the relationship between Vermeer and Greitt is more about companionship than love?
PW: In a way that’s one of the questions that the film is trying to answer: What is love? What different kinds of love are there? Companionship is part of it, but only a small part of it. There’s the recognition that they see the world in the same way, that they see the world through the same eyes; it’s the kind of feeling you get when you meet a kindred spirit. After that comes a swelling obsessive feeling for each other, that is made all the more intense by the fact that it can’t be consummated.

FM: There’s a prolonged sense of anticipation that exists throughout the all the scenes that Greitt and Vermeer share, did you find it difficult to maintain that tension for as long as seemed necessary?
PW: No, I think they difficulty lay in charting the path through that tension that had to start at a certain level and end at a certain level. This meant that in the editing room we had to make a lot of hard decisions about reorganise scenes which we had originally intended a different way. The emotional through line had changed simply by the fact that the relationship was now being filmed. It’s part of my job as director to keep hold of the emotional tone of the piece, sometimes some scenes take on their own life and become something different from what you expect and this can be a very good thing as well. It was something that we were aware of, but what you can’t control is the chemistry, is the chemistry going to work or not; that’s down to what the actors bring to the table.

FM: To me the film is really about the balance between people and objects that are desired and those that desire them, do you think this is the main push and pull that drives the narrative?
PW: I think it’s one of the threads without a doubt. I think that it’s a film in which no one really gets what they want and that’s an interesting thing in an age when we seem increasingly obsessed with self-gratification. Vermeer and Griet don’t get each other; Vermeer kind of gets what he wants because he produces this masterpiece, and although he’s restrained by the morality and the ethos of his time would have done it any differently because everything is done in the service of his art at the end of the day. I think he takes their relationship and uses it to create a kind of frisson between the artist and the sitter, so he gets the most out of the film but in a way that is psychologically damaging to him. That’s the price he pays: more tears are shed over answered prayers than over unanswered ones. The patron Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson) gets what he paid for but he doesn’t get what he wants because the girl will never look at him in the way that she looks at Vermeer. He can own the painting but he can’t take it into his soul, he is forever exiled from the emotions that went into its creation. No one gets what they want but it makes for more interesting drama.

FM: You’re lucky that you had the kind of backing that allowed you to do that; you may have been forced to tack on a happy ending?
PW: well yes, and there were certain actresses in discussion who did talk about wanting an ending that shows Griet painting, so there we go.

 

http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/filmmaking.asp?ID=63 (16-07-2007)

前几天在网易上看到了极恶性的虐狗事件：一只没出生多久的小狗被砍掉4个手掌脚掌，随后遗弃。人们被这一幕吓懵了，吓哭了。兽医给它动完手术之后，没多久它因为疼痛过度而死亡。

 

我不知道网友们会如何评价这个惊如霹雳般的罪行，我也知道大致总是声讨，咒骂和哀怨。我没有去看他们的评论，因为我当时已经无话可说。

 

初中时，我和班长回家的一次，不幸看到一条大狗当街被一辆轿车碾过，它没有速死，但哀叫声至今却仍然留在我的灵魂深处——我们人类的罪行啊，永远数都数不尽！然而我幸运地却可以仍然幻想这只大狗还活着呢——今天，因为第二天，为这一不幸的目击而哭到稀里哗啦的我却被几个男生告知“这狗一会儿就爬起来了，向小路跑得不要太快哦！”

 

我不知道这是不是他们在骗我，在安慰我。但这一个车祸，即使是当事的司机本人，应该也是万分自责的。

 

然而这一次呢？

 

我总觉得我无法面对动物真纯的眼睛，即使是狼，狐狸，也总比不得人的贪婪和充满欲望的眼睛，所以，我从不为人的死去而悲伤，即使是暴虐，我也鲜有动容；然而面对这些本身就没有人类聪明，强大的动物！我怎么能够不感到弱者的可悲和无助！

 

我相信世界上没有一个人会从未对这些弱者给与一刻的同情，甚至眼泪。既如此，为什么不能让这份微不足道的爱扩延开去呢？多么讽刺呵，当一只小狗被虐待时，有多少无用的女人正在街上昂首挺胸地阔步前行，誓和她的同类一比高低；有多少肚满肠肥的商业杂种正在大谈特谈那些偷税漏税，正在大谈那些短视的环境污染项目！有多少愚蠢，伤感的恋人在大喊大叫“你是否考虑过我的感受！”又有多少无所事事的家伙正准备无所事事地结束自己无所事事的人生！

 

什么爱啊，恋啊，家啊，钱啊——在它们蒙难得眼睛面前，只有生命的纯洁才是最可贵的。由很多宣扬恶的人，或因为对恶的猖獗妥协，或因为给自己的纵恶找一个理由，或因为厌倦了被庸俗之辈炒滥了的“善”，他们确实存在着。恶，也确实就在那里——一个无法否认的事实。在这只死去的小狗面前，恶无疑大获全胜，满载而归——然而当心！我知道某些杂种要硬把它定义为美！定义为人性！

 

我记得那个无奈的故事——The Lord of Flies——一个有关人性的故事，一个灵感来自二战和鬼王Beelzebub的失败之作。我只想说：残酷的现实让一部分人失望沉沦；但我即使清楚地知道我性格中那恶的幽灵，我也依然会像Ralph那样，追随理性和善。

 

没有什么大道理可以验证这个孩子气的想法（我知道现在很多人依然以恶为美，而不知恶为何物），我只要知道，我确确实实哭了——在它的纯真的眼睛面前；我就知道，我是一个罪人，一个怀着所谓善心的罪人。

 

安息！所有未死，已死或将死的善良的动物们——人类除外。

前两天我看到Dior在凡尔赛宫的60周年纪念会活动，John Galliano还发布了新一期的高级成衣。Oh,我的天哪，那些是什么玩意儿！真可以用当年John Ruskin评价萨金特的那幅（名字似乎叫）“夜.焰火”的讽刺话来嘲嘲他。

 

我要说的是：像他这样糊弄人的设计师，凭着迎合了一班智商低下，品味雷同的所谓“名流贵胄（也不知他们到底名在哪里，贵在哪里）”，而大出风头的傻B，竟然还能被人认为才华横溢---所谓世风日下---便是如此吧！而让我更加伤心的是：我一向很喜欢的Eva Green也在现场大赞这头蠢驴---I just love his style...(and blarblarblar, all those shit like sorts!)

 

不可否认，某些高级定制服装的设计确实是很有才华的，但大部分只是盛名之下群氓的光环效应。我很乐意把几张傻B照片拿来给大家共享一下（我想：大概你们已经看到过了可能。）：

 

我简直无法想象这样的一个无能的政府：根据纽约时报的报道，现任伊拉克政府竟然宣称如果美国过早撤军的话，就会导致国家的分裂，内战，或者地区战争---OMG！如此国家！！！

 

如果作为领导人，竟然连依靠自己的力量都无法站立起来并建立一个能为人民做出贡献的政府/国家，而仅仅是像残废的无用的纯种的那些狗一样，要依靠主人的帮助才能维持住国家的稳定的话，那他完全可以下台了。既然自己想做一个国家的总理/总统，就应该有如此的魄力：稳定社会，繁荣一个或数个民族；然不应该一切都指望他人的帮助。这些伊拉克的首领们，实在应该学习一下“自力更生”了（虽然这个词组在中国很被学生们所唾弃）。

 

难怪高中时，巴勒斯坦和以色列激烈对峙那阵子，我一个比较“右翼”的同学会轻蔑一把整天只在新闻中看到死亡，听到哭叫的巴勒斯坦：这种弱等的民族就应该被消灭！（当然，这不代表我的意见---我还是相当钦佩阿拉法特的为人的。）

 

我突然想到Black Rebel Motorcycle Club的一首歌，歌词里他们大叫着：

上一个礼拜在Brian家里和Glenn他们共进晚餐；之后Brian到底不愧是摩羯座的人，拉着我们去七宝老街逛了一圈；我给他们买了冰激淋，然后我们在灯光闪耀的老街那座拱桥上大赞特赞。我们接着从将来会通9号线的Shopping Mall里穿过，在UBC里我又请他们喝了一顿饮料。我要了激情古巴---但是，所用的饮料杯不是我喜欢的风格，从基酒上判断应该是Vodka之类，却用了类似于啤酒杯的盛器。很令我失望。

 

这个星期又有一次接机的任务：2个韩国人。超无趣啊~~~反正我也不懂韩语，大家准备沉默吧。最讨厌的事，莫过于第一次见面的人长得不够漂亮！周五要去海宁，2个韩国人也得跟着去：All about BUZINESS。不过生意若是这样做做，也实在简单。

 

学校的事已经结束，仍然非常留恋校园的气息。可惜没有值得我为之回去的事物，光是那种气息而已，为此，我宁愿花钱去贺绿汀音乐厅逗留一个晚上。Bach的大提琴独奏才听到第四首，对于这一首组曲，还仍然没有大的印象－－－倒是Ｃ大调那首，它明亮的Allemande还不停回旋在脑海里。然而不管怎么说，第四首的Gigue还是很值得一听的。

 

I am looking forward for sth. more challenging...