All posts by Wan Kong Yew

The Breadwinner (2017)

My wife added this to our list, probably because it’s been a while since we’ve watched an animated film. I was inclined to dislike it however as it was by Cartoon Saloon, the same studio which made The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea. I didn’t like both of them as I felt that they were first and foremost children’s films with no real punch in them. I am pleased to report that the same cannot be said for The Breadwinner which is so hard hitting that it isn’t suitable viewing for children at all.

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I’ll See You in My Dreams (2015)

So I don’t recall seeing lead actress Blythe Danner in anything even though she has had quite a storied career. It turns out that she is the mother of Gwyneth Paltrow and her performance in this film is great. Brett Haley’s direction here is solid as well and does an admirable job of expounding on its theme of relationships as one grows older.

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Faces Places (2017)

So this is an unusual documentary made by two persons: Agnès Varda and JR. Varda is a director of some reknown with a body of work that mostly predates the French New Wave though I’ve never watched any of it. JR is a photographer and artist who refuses to reveal his real name and apparently wears his hat and dark sunglasses combo non-stop. This film is a sort of travelogue as they make their way through rural France in a specially designed van.

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Recent Interesting Science Articles (May 2018)

It’s been a busy, eventful month here in Malaysia and things have been interesting on the science front as well.

  • Last month I had an entry about brain organoids and the ethical implications therein. This here is an article about the same thing except using stem cells edited using CRISPR to more closely resemble Neanderthal DNA. The hope is that it would yield insights into behavioral differences between Neanderthal and humans.
  • In space news, a reexamination of old data showed that the Galileo spacecraft apparently passed through a plume of water shooting into space while doing a flyby of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. With both water and apparently enough energy in the system to send geysers into space, this makes the moon an even more attractive prospect to search for life.
  • One story that made the rounds a fair bit is how California police apparently use genealogical data to trace a murderer. Using DNA found at crime scenes dating from the 1970s, they matched it to people living in the 1800s, then followed the family trees back to the present to find descendants who most closely fit the profile they were looking for. It’s an impressive piece of detective work boosted by modern technology that would put any CSI episode to shame but as usual raises all kinds of privacy concerns as information about one person can reveal information about others.
  • I’m not sure how legitimate this next bit is as it seems rather far-fetched but SCMP is usually a reliable source so here it is. The article is about how large companies in China are collecting data directly from the brains of their employees by having them wear headgear with sensors that monitor brainwaves. The idea is that they can then measure fatigue, emotional spikes, attention loss etc. Needless to say all this data is extremely useful and valuable, allowing the employers to have far more control and knowledge over the performance of different employees, how best to arrange shifts and work routines and so on but it’s pretty scary to give this level of power to companies.
  • Finally here’s a more wide-ranging article about how a variety of companies have learned to use classical music to deter unwanted people from loitering near their premises. The practice was apparently first used by 7-11 stores to repel loiterers in the 1980s but is now common in many transit systems. Baroque music in particular seems to work best to discourage transients from being too comfortable but as the article states, it feels sinister to weaponize classical music in this manner.

No Way Out (1987)

As my list of films has been running down, I’ve been lowering standards and adding less significant works. No Way Out is frequently cited as one of Sean Young’s most memorable performances and was very well reviewed in its time. It turns out that I must have watched this long ago as I have a very clear memory of the scene with computer processing the image but it was good to rewatch it anyway as I certainly did not understand the twist at the end at that time.

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The Road to Mandalay (2016)

Leaving aside the rarity and hence novelty value of a film about Burmese emigrants, I don’t think I could resist checking out something named after the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling. It was made by Midi Z who was born in Myanmar but is now Taiwanese. Its most notable star is Kai Ko who shot to fame due to You Are the Apple of My Eye but subsequently fell into disgrace after being caught in a drugs bust.

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Deadpool 2 (2018)

It’s a little embarrassing to keep going to the cinema only for superhero films but after their brilliant marketing campaign there was no way I would be missing out on Deadpool 2. I was initially skeptical of decisions such as making Domino a black woman but as it turned out this film is clearly made by people who understood what the 1990s comics scene was like and I ended up like this more than Infinity War.

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