Movies and DVD

I bought a few�DVDs from my recent trip to Ho Chi Minh. Before I continue, I know I should be ashamed. Coming from the media industry�I should not be�supporting the pirates by buying DVDs that has violated copyright law.

Anyway, I must say quality of such DVDs are better in China than those from Ho Chi Minh city. Out of the six I bought, four are faulty. This is versus one out of twenty from those bought in China. Well, there aren’t many shops selling DVDs in Ho Chi Minh in the first place. I was talking about it with one fellow traveller I met while I was there. I said there are not�as many media�piracy in Ho Chi Minh as I thought there would be. She said no way! Didn’t I see�the pirated books and paintings?! Oh yes, she jolted my memory of the imitation Monet I saw in many of the art shops selling paintings. I must say most of those are of high quality reproduction -�the Vietnamese make great artists.

So, coming back to my main point, I just caught�”Jasmine Women” the other day.�The last ten minutes of the film had no audio. Nevertheless, I understood the whole movie. It is separated into three stories, where the daughter in each story repeats the mistake of her mother. No, Joan Chen and Zhang Ziyi did not�look like a lesbian couple despite them filling most of the scenes. As usual, Zhang was fabulous with her usual�outing as a nubile young play thing for licentious men. But what really hit me when I was watching the movie was,�Joan Chen does not seem to need to work to support her daughter. Well, she owns a photo studio but I did not see any photographers. What’s more, the photo studio gets passed on to the next two generations and no one seemed to need to work for a living at all!

Sometimes I do wish I can be absorbed into the movies. Life seems more interesting and work is usually minimal. I guess I am more conscious of it lately because of the heavy workload in my office.

Truth is, I am more interested to be doing my own work as opposed to my office work now. I am addicted to writing screenplays�after completing my first feature length script not too long ago. I am on to writing a Singapore style “Brokeback Mountain” for the fun of it. It is not exactly “Brokeback”, I guess I will explain it better when it is finished. Anyway I am not terribly original to begin with.

I wondered if a gay film will ever get enough funding to be made in Singapore. Of course that is discounting “Be With Me” since there is hardly any depth to the relationship between the two girls. I suppose if SQ 21 is getting a review in Life on Sunday Times, perhaps one day, Singapore�gay film will actually make it to the big screeens here.

But, when?