Archive for the 'Film on Fusion View' Category

These days, my hearing ain’t what it used to be - especially when it comes to lyrics of pop songs. This video illustrates hilariously what can become of beautifully crafted lyrics when misheard by an old biddy like me.

Take it away, Joe Cocker…

I find it fascinating how people use public spaces in urban landscapes. This is a video I grabbed of some amazingly talented young girls practicing a dance routine at More London Riverside. They told us their group is called Esteem and they were in a show at the Unicorn Theatre in March. (The ambient sound on the vid is from inside the restaurant where I was having lunch when I happened to glance round and see them strutting their stuff - for music, they were in fact playng tracks from their mobile phones!)

Every so often, at Xmas time, a friend of ours who lives in New Zealand sends us the latest Topp Twins CD. What Twins? The Topp Twins. They are, well, twins who do a double act of country music and comedy and they are absolutely hillarious - and absolutely talented.

This year, our friend sent us the DVD of their movie, a documentary covering their 30 years in entertainment. If I was to give the elevator pitch to who they are, it would go something like this: yodelling, lesbian country & western comedy twins from New Zealand who are also activists for nuclear disarmament, lesbian & gay rights, Maori land rights and cancer awareness and whose act includes “characters” such as a couple of hard-drinking men’s men, society ladies and holiday camp leaders.

Yeah. Kinda difficult to categorise…

But they seem to have the knack to unite their diverse audience of rednecks, high society types, farm folk and city lesbians and gays and are considered NZ’s national treasures.

I think it’s a combination of their toe-tapping music, hilarious performances and warm, affectionate good humour even when touching on political subjects - and their ability to carry their audience along with them so that everyone is just so busy having a good time, they forget the differences that might divide them. But you can analyse it till the cows come home: at the end of the day, I reckon it’s because they are simply a hoot! See for yourself in the following videos:

The Yodelling Song

The Spoon Song

They have an official channel on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/user/ToppTwins

So, thanks, Trisha, for this year’s fab Xmas present!

Youtube can help you hit the big time. It’s official.

I blogged awhile back about Malaysian singer songwriter Zee Avi, who was discovered by an L.A. music agent, after she uploaded a video of herself performing a song in her bedroom and now has a record deal and is touring music festivals around the world.

Now, a commercial director from Uruguay Fede Alvarez has been offered a US$30million deal from Hollywood after uploading a short sci-fi video “Ataque de Panico!” (Panic Attack!) onto Youtube:

And the short apparently only cost him around US$300…

Too good to be true?

Well, apparently, global blockbuster District 9 director Neill Blomkamp (also a commercial director) got his big break after his viral short Alive in Joburg got him the chance to work with Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings). That partnership eventually led to Blomkamp’s chance to make the feature length version of Alive in Joburg, which became District 9.

You can watch the short below:

The magic seems to work for videos that have a scifi theme or lots of special effects/ explosions. However, I wonder if any budding Woody Allen’s have had their Youtube flicks picked up by the big studios….?

True to the fusion nature of this blog, after the last two Mondays sharing the bizarre world of Western opera, today I wanted to change gear to a more serious note and show this moving documentary about the dying art of Chinese Opera - just managing to keep alive in no other place than my homeland Malaysia.

The documentary summary says it all: “Chinese opera in Malaysia face another brink of extinction, not by heavenly super powers but simply by the lack of interest in the young generations to learn and explore the art. We meet a few of the very last Cantonese opera singers left in Penang and learn what makes them pursue and love the art and why they have accepted the fact that they might very well have to take the art with them to the grave.”

I regret to admit it but I suppose people like me are part of the problem. We are educated in Western music and arts along with other aspects of our schooling over here in Europe and lack exposure to Eastern styles of creative expression so start to drift away from our cultural heritage at an early age. Then later on, we find the tones and harmonies of Chinese music strange to our ears - and performances are rare or difficult to locate. I’m hoping that an aspect of globalisation is that Asian arts are rising in international prominence: think of “Farewell My Concubine”, the Monkey myths that have been made into series and dramas and also the Peking Opera making inroads into the West. China itself is increasingly influential globally in terms of the economy - and no doubt, this will lead to its cultural influence widening its reach, too. With social media and the internet as well playing their part in disseminating documentaries like this one and bringing Chinese opera and arts to a new online audience, I’m optimistic that Eastern culture will continue to thrive.

My cousin Joanne is CEO of the Clean Air Network (CAN) in Hong Kong, an independent NGO that encourages the public to speak out about the health impacts of air pollution. She sent me CAN video above via Facebook the other day. It doesn’t pull its punches and made me feel asthmatic even just watching it!

I blogged last week about the idyllic fake English town, Thames Town, being built outside Shanghai to recreate for the aspiring Chinese middle classes the loveliness of an English market town. The purpose seems to be to escape from “loud and dirty Shanghai” to this fantasy of an English way of life. The clean air issues for the congested island of Hong Kong are no doubt repeated in the megacity that is Shanghai, with its population of over 8 million people. In fact, clean air is a vital issue for all cities around the world, not just in China. It seems to me that the answer to the hustle and bustle and dirt of Asian cities is not escape to an idealised suburban sprawl (which actually adds to the problem by adding more cars and concrete to the setting) but to address the noise, congestion and dirt by implementing sustainable policies.

Here in the UK, the hot topics of the century (pun intended!) are climate change and sustainable communities. There is a huge public drive towards clean energy, recycling, minimising our carbon footprint and livable neighbourhoods and cities. We aspire towards walkable environments, pavement cafes (weather permitting!), neighbourliness and community, safety and good health for all - places that people want to live in and can thrive in. Sure, there’s a long way to go in many parts of the country but the journey has started and even dirty old London has electric buses, electric cars and campaigns to encourage more bicycling and walking; recycling schemes; windmills on top of some buildings; green roofs and more.

So for Hong Kong, Shanghai and any other city in the world whether it’s London, New York or my hometown of Kuala Lumpur, I hope very much that sustainability is or will become part of the DNA of their evolution. With people like my cousin Joanne (whom I’m very proud of, by the way) taking a lead in one such factor for sustainability in a major Asian city - and I am sure there are many other passionate advocates for livable cities around the world - I am optimistic for the future.

Following on from the film last week of diva Anna Russell summing up Wagner’s Ring Cycle in 30 minutes, I thought that we could continue our education in posh music with another film that digests All The Great Operas in 10 Minutes:

By the way, this film retells the story of the Ring Cycle in under a minute and even the second time around after last week’s masterclass, I still can’t follow the plot - can you?

Fabulacious!

We were having dinner with some friends the other evening and talking about opera when someone mentioned Wagner. The reaction was visceral. None of us liked Wagner, it turns out!

The consensus was that the Ring Cycle is way too long, way too Germanic and well, The Lord of the Rings for Intellectuals. However, one of our party felt that it’s one of those 101 things that you need to do before you die - go to see it at the holy shrine of Wagner, Bayreuth, and to sit through the whole cycle, however long it might take (15 hours, according to Wikipedia; 20 hours according to Anna Russell - see below - taking up 4 or more evenings).

But until then, we can watch it on Youtube, reduced to 30 minutes by fabulous diva Anna Russell:

First 10 minutes:

Second 10 minutes:

Third 10 minutes:

Little Boy Blue. It’s a sweet little nursery rhyme - or so you thought.

Actor Michael Emerson makes it into just the creepiest monologue…

(You’ll need the sound enabled on your computer to enjoy this one!)