January 30th, 2005 Busy First Month

Very busy and depressed last week
Many things done:

1. Watched Lee Ang’s “Sense and Sensibility”
A very great film, very delicate, subtle in its way of depictiing human relationships and family matters. It is rare that a Chinese director can make such a great presentation of western classical literature. It is a good story for understanding women’s status in 19th century bourgeoise life. Beautifully pictured, the film music is wonderful too. Hugh Grant’s character may reminds us his acting as Chopin in the film “Nocturne”.

2. Attended Daniel Folly’s “Shakespeare for Dummies”, performed in RRS hall
Folly made all the audience laugh crazily. Shakespeare’s classics should not be something dull and difficult. It could be something highly comical, funny. Folly is such a great actor, full of energy, who can changed his tone and movements to act as many different kinds of characters. Folly is the founder of “Performance Exchange”, which consists of actors from London and Tokyo. He kept on asking “What Fun are we making” after each excercise he had done, reminding us to think about what is essential to made it humorous. He often performed in Fringe Club. If you are interested, you can refer to the fringe club website.

3. Attend Lee Orphens’ lectures on literature and cinema about modern city lives
watched Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”, Chaplin’s “Modern City”, and “Man with the Camera”
Lee Ou-fan said that our generation watched more films than read books. The film become part of our “reality”, attracted, or say, distracted our attention from our daily lives. We may easily fall into a trap to think that our own daily lives as boring and dull if compared to the “reality” presented by film.

4. Shakespeare lesson - finished reading “Romeo and Juliet” and “As you like it”. Watched two films of Romeo and Juliet.
1950s film is too conservative, just like reading poems. Good for pupils who study literature, but not entertainment.
1960s film is purely entertainment: highly violent and sexual. Characters are not as elegant as one might expect. On the contrary, they are very physical. Romeo and Juliet kissed in the balcony scene and made love in the famous morning scene about “lark” and “nightingale”.
In the 1960s film, music is composed by Nino Rota, very great. Those Renaissance dances are quite authentic in style.

5. finished reading Harold Pinter’s “Room” and “Dumb Waiter”
“Dumb Waiter” is the model that 潘惠森’s 螳螂捕蟬 is based on. Very interesting and witful script.

6. Felt angry with the administrations of music department office
I will write in another article about this non-sense incident.

7. Watched “Salome”, bravo!!!
No need to mention, as mouse, alfred, kuno, leon chu all praised it highly. It is simply marvellous.

9. Visited Raymond’s home
a wonderful day reading and listening to his music for the musical “AIDS”

10. Worked overnight for arranging music. And then attended DGS’s musical’s casting on sunday morning.
Their students’ are brilliant!! They are not just musically strong. They sings and plays piano well, acts well. They are also presentable on stage, with good english, mature in their manner, and knows how to help and organize things.