Sepet

Stout is gooood. Very very good, especially after a day's work. I was at work on Monday. It was strange to get off at 5.00 instead of 7.00. It felt wrong somehow.

I'll try to stay on topic today.

Anyway, I hung out at my friends house and later went to The Favourite Watering Hole to have drinks and sing old Malay rock songs. Old Malay rock songs.....well, rock. The new ones don't quite cut it.

On Sunday, I watched Sepet. I had quite a bit of trouble explaining it to my colleagues on Monday. See, usually local movies can be categorised by language. It's a Malay movie, a Chinese movie, an Indian movie, an Iban movie etc.

Sepet ? Just like real life in Malaysia, it's multilingual. It's a Malay/Mandarin/Cantonese/Hokkien/English movie. I know one reason why they haven't been so many multilingual movies made in Malaysia is that the censors, for whatever reason frown upon it.

You'd think that a made-in-Malaysia multilingual movie would be the most natural thing in the world. It's not, even though this country is multi lingual. I find it strange.

I like Sepet. Very sweet and quite realistic. I like the script and the multilingual-ness. I like the fact that unlike many other local stuff, Chinese people speak various Chinese dialects instead of Malay. I like the use of English in it's natural Malaysian form. The language makes Sepet believable.

This is a huge improvement over the other local movies that I have watched previously. I can't relate to a lot of them.

High lights for me include :-

Intro montage. Genius !!

Orked's Mat-Salleh-celup-tak-sedar-diri-wanker tirade at the school. I loved that. I'd watch this movie again just to listen to this again.

Milf ! "Yes it's a word. It means Mothers I'd like to..." Harith Iskandar. I'm not even surprised. I'm even less surprised at the fact that the censors completely missed that one *snicker*

"I'm balancing a giraffe on my face" For some reason, I loved this scene.

Ida Nerina and Harith Iskandar ! They rock bebeh.

The "world falls away" scene at the VCD stall. Made funnier when Lin snaps her fingers and the sound comes back on. No contrived dialogue necessary to convey the idea here. Very nice touch.

Having said all that, there are some things that could've been done:-

The relationship between Orked and Ah Loong should've been explored more. Also, Orked's relationship with Johari could've been made more clear. I didn't quite get why she would still go out with him after what he tried to pull at the party.

Ditto Ah Loong's gangsterism dominated underworld background, in particular his connection with Jimmy and her sister.

Some scenes struck me as being rather pointless. I like the transitions shots though.

Most of all, some of the acting is not so good and the delivery of lines could've been more forceful but since most of the people involved are either non-actors or first timers, they did a decent job. At least they didn't suck.

All in all, I loved this movie. In particular, I like the fact that the movie made no real attempt at serious social commentary, since indie films tend to veer towards that. It was hinted at, but that was it. Sepet is not about social issues. It's about two kids from different parts of Ipoh.

In that respect, it worked very well. And, Sharifah Amani is cute...

In other news, I managed to get Star Wars: Republic Commando from my friend yesterday. Looks pretty good, unfortunately the ingame sounds are too light, too muted. I like very percussive sound effects for my war games on PC.

So far so good, aside from the sound I like what I see.

I hope they make sequels set in the old Star Wars universe. I'd like to see Rebel Commando and Imperial Commando in the future.

In more news, nothing much is going on now.

I took many pictures of the Kuching skyline at dusk while waiting for Sepet on Sunday. I'll put them up once I decide which ones I like.