amadbrownwoman

faust, faustus, this name comes from latin and it means lucky, fortunate. in goethe's faust, he was a dissatisfied intellectual. he made an agreement the with mephistopheles, that mephistopheles would do everything faust wants in exchange for his soul. faust falls in love with gretchen. in the end, she dies. she is condemned of murdering her illegitimate child with faust. in ghost rider, he is johnny blaze who sells his soul for his father's life. who has cancer. who actually died after a few minutes in the movie but not of cancer.

in real life he is john lennon, who sold "his soul to the devil in exchange for worldly musical success with the beatles," whose 20-year pact with the devil came to its tragic conclusion when mark david chapman who was possesed by demons fulfilled the contract by murdering him outside of his apartment in new york.

there will be another big bang tomorrow if anyone who reads this blog will buy a copy of that book. it is part of my contract with the devil in exchange for, what else, worldly blogstardom. i will die in 20 years, some blog fan stalker will shoot me. at this point i invoke the faith that i never had, wag po lord.

i don't even remember the plot when i saw this trailer. it is that long time ago. all i remember is astro boy, a robot-child who lives with humans and series upon series of battles involving astro and some berserk human-hating robots where in the end astro wins. the youtube video above is purported to be the trailer of the film version set to be released in 2009.

i digress: AGE! is inversely proportional to how much info you (by this i mean me) remember of your fave tv shows during childhood.

...titled nhap (draft) which is about sexual obsession is causing a stir in the local literary scene.

A new novel released earlier this year by Nguyen Dinh Tu titled Nhap (Draft), tells of young disillusioned intellectuals who suffer inferiority complexes, seek redemption in sex, and ultimately fail to make peace with their problems.

“In Nhap, Tu doesn’t shy away from sex, which has long been considered a discomfiting issue in local literature but deals with it in quite a detailed way. His outspoken approach to sex, even when he describes homosexual sex, however, doesn’t arouse abhorrence among readers,” said distinguished author Chu Lai about Tu’s work.

“His sexual writing points to the fact that there are many people in society who suffer from obsessive inferiority complexes and don’t dare to live true to themselves,” Lai added.

“Like characters in other books who are obsessed with hunger and poverty, my characters are preoccupied with their sexuality,” Tu said, adding such obsessions are all equal in a writer’s eyes.

if only my tieng viet is not limited to hbo subtitles.

transcending taboos

An amateur theater club in Ho Chi Minh City has a welcome mat out for anyone who wants to get involved and do a bit for charity while they’re at it.

Saigon Players members come from all over the world and many of them have a strong theater background, but the whole idea of the club is to give anyone a chance to “tread the boards.” There’s a strong contingent from the UK, Vietnam, the US and Canada with Holland, Italy, France, Germany and Australia also represented. It also serves as a regular venue for a bit of nostalgia between the expats.

Charity is a core value of the group, as nobody gets paid and all the money raised from the box office goes to a worthy cause. It builds the members’ community awareness.

Club Nights are usually the first Wednesday of the month, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at District 1’s La Habana Club. These mini-workshops for members explore their theatrical skills and knowledge, with team warm-ups, theater games, group work, scene rehearsals and discussions on possible productions, but most importantly they serve as a forum for like-minded people to meet.

theater lovers wanted

what would i do without you, vietnam translators?

b movie par excellence. one reason i watch comedies even if low budget, in fact especially because it's a low budget is the honesty in showing what a particular culture deem entertaining.

the movie starts with about thirty minutes of some of the most boring shit you've ever seen on films, although of course i'm used to philippine b movies so it is NOT the the case for me how a woman falls in love with a guy, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz, who has nothing going for him except for the fact that he comes from a rich family, but of course in the movie since he's that, he's a catch, then woman got pregnant, guy wants her to get an abortion and so starts the comedy part. woman didn't want to get abortion so she ran away from the abortion clinic, guy runs after her, get into an accident and because of that accident, becomes bedridden for several months. while bedridden, he starts having dreams in which the gender roles of men and women switches all because the men are the ones getting pregnant. it was supposed to be funnny. i found it too simplistic to even be funny: gender roles does not happen because one is having the kids and not the other, even in heterosexual relationships without kids, married, not married, and in homosexual relationships, there exist taking on gender roles. so wtf.


so i said in previous post to not watch this film. that's the verdict, do. not. watch. there is a limit to my love of cheese. okay, if you just gotta, well then watch it if only for:

(1) the one scene that cracked me up, must you guess, it was sex or to be particular, the metaphor to sex: car keys will have a different meaning to me, now on. it was not supposed to be funny but since it's not supposed to be funny, it cracked me up. what the hell, that's me. i've been numbed by socially conscious philippine movies with its in your face f* it til you drop f*ing scenes which is why i found it ingenious.

(2) the abortion clinic with its imagery of a butcher shop. abortion was made to look so brutal in this movie. i swear this is what every woman in the whole world think of abortion. but just about anything that involves doctors and nurses and hospital assistants and the assistants to the assistants' poking and prodding in that region is so invasive it's brutal to me.

ennio morricone will write the music for quentin tarantino's inglorious basterds. tarantino has already used half a dozen of morricone's spaghetti western themes for the two kill bill, he however has never hired a composer to write original music for his films before.

this is from kill bill vol 2 and the music is ennio morricone's l'arena.

i am happily awaiting for inglorious basterds in the pirated dvd's of saigon square.

and for the i'm proud to be an azn goddess moment, see facebook badge to the right, to the right, cue demonic laughter maggie cheung will play the part of madame mimeux. and the movie i mentioned in status update in badge, don't. watch. it.

A representative of the Vietnamese Embassy in Singapore has told Thanh Nien the embassy “is contemplating appropriate actions” in light of a recent newspaper article about a Vietnamese bride matchmaking service.

“We must look at the issue from multiple perspectives to respond in a correct way,” said Bui Tan Long, the first secretary in charge of community affairs at the embassy.

vietnam embassy ponders stance on matchmakinguproar in thanh nhien news

find me a find, catch me a catch!

Mr Mark Lin of Vietnam Brides International Matchmaker took out advertisements in the Chinese newspapers on Wednesday, offering the discount on the grounds that his business has been hit by the global financial crisis. Three Vietnamese women have been at his Orchard Plaza office in the last two months, waiting for prospective husbands.

Mr Lin is charging $4,000 as his matchmaking fee for each - half the fee he usually charges for flying them in and feeding and housing them. Over 20 men have inquired about the women this month, but he has yet to make a match.

(and some women, sitting in the high throne of stiff-necked priviledge often not only in class but also in race would again start the discourse of viet women oh wait, asian women are like prostitutes. oh yes, i've heard some white women in vietnam saying this....)

before yous start thinking of another slut-shaming vietnamese women are like these and that, tadadadadatado, oh so old arguments while sitting in a comfortable seat in a cafe where there are no locals around except for that cashier and the waiter who served the just divine coffee, ahhhh, you're sipping right now, stop your comments: we do not live outside of socialization, we are the product of it.

let's focus on the men: if you were a man who can easily afford it, would you? and if you were a woman, what do you think of men who would?

here is the whole story from the straits times: vietnam bride agencies cut fees

and here is the response of vietnam in thanh nhien news: story on vietnamese bride service draw cricticism. what killed me while reading this article is how desensitized the gov't official who was interviewed in this article was. "she was stunned to see such a respected newspaper running a very insensitive story on a very sensitive topic." she was concerned about the unblurred faces. she didn't exactly center on the practice of marriage brokerage in vietnam but how the straits times treated the issue. alas.

this blog account was used for my friend's blog before. i helped that friend set it up but now she's using another account for that blog. so for those comments that seems totally not related to any posts here, i can only say, i don't know how to remove them.

okay so i lied, this is not agent oo7, this is agent 00 Weng Weng.

Weng Weng (September 7, 1957 — August 29, 1992) was a Filipino actor and martial artist. He was born in Baclaran, in what is now Parañaque City.^[1] Only 2 foot, 9 inches (83 cm) tall, he is listed in the Guinness World Records as the shortest adult actor in a leading role.^[2] He played Secret Agent 00 in For Y’ur Height Only ^[3], The Impossible Kid ^[4][5][6] and "D’Wild Wild Weng".

In the late 1970's, he came to the attention of Hong Kong movie maker Raymond Jury who cast him in the role of Agent 00 in the James Bond style spoof "For Your Height Only". In the movie, the brilliant scientist Dr. Kohler is kidnapped by an evil organization headed by "Mr Giant". Secret Agent 00 is called to rescue the doctor, and 00 does so by using a combination of kicking people in the knees or the genitals, shooting with remarkable accuracy, and sliding across the floor firing his pistol as he goes. The film ends with Agent 00 locating the secret island that Mr. Giant uses for a hideout, dispensing with the red beret wearing guards, and meting out his special form of justice. The movie was a huge hit throughout the Philippines and Asia as well as countries as far apart as Iceland, Uganda, Tonga, Bolivia and Papua New Guinea.

the director of the documentary is andrew leavold. he's the owner of a video cult store called trash video who turns into a film maker because of his obsession to find the movies of a filipino b movie actor in the 70's named weng weng.

i'm so gonna watch this!