The Grand Budapest Hotel

Watching The Grand Budapest Hotel does give you a feel of reading a book through someone else’s eyes. It is very stylised but suit its context. At times it feel Tim Burtonish but with a slightly more colourful palette. It also feels very Baz Luhrmann but a lot less over the top.

The film recounts the events of a lobby boy turned millionaire through the recounting of the writer who via a chance encounter came across the story. And this recounting was done through another person reading the book wrote by this writer many years later. Sounds complicated on paper but in fact it was done quite ingeniously as each layer was peeled off like a Russian doll.

Under the lenses of Director Wes Anderson we were able to read this book chapter by chapter and let our imagination run wild. The good thing about this movie is that you do feel like images are leaping off the pages as you imagined when you are reading a book. This approach opened up a lot of possibilities in terms of how shots could be framed. Honestly it might not be everyone's cup of tea but personally I admired how the director managed to balance imagination with story telling. This is extremely important for The Great Budapest Hotel because it is telling a story. The imaginary in the movie are vivid and relevant. Sometimes you feel like you are watching a sequence in a video game, sometimes a dark tale by Tim Burton and sometimes a Baz glamour fest. But no matter what kind of technique was employed they all tied in to the context of the story perfectly. That I think is what is good about The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The Grand Budapest Hotel has recruited a number of who's who in the current acting industry. It is basically a hotel with Oscar winners or Oscar nominees in every room. Some of the big names include Ralph Fiennes as one of the leads to cameos of Tilda Swindon, Adrian Brody, Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Murray and the list goes on. The great thing is that this is truly an ensemble piece. Everyone was just doing his or her part without attempting to upstage anyone. I think this is what great acting is about, know your part and do your part properly. Ralph Fiennes as one of the central characters M Gustav was particular and eccentric. This is a huge departure from his menacing performance as Voldermolt and his heavy and intense workmanship in The Reader. Gustav is a surreal character in a surreal environment. His popularity among older women was uncanny when compared to his pride in maintaining the meticulous high standard of the hotel for those who stay there. The Lobby Boy Zero was played by newcomer Tony Revolori. He is kind of fit for the part but then sometimes you do feel his performance is kind of one-dimensional. There are only a set numbr of looks from him most of the time. However, I have not read the original story so I could not pass judgement whether he is doing a good job or not. However, he did have good chemistry with Ralph’s Gustav, which is important. To be fair he did have some good moments to show the depth of his character. As for great cameo moments from other acting greats in the movie I could never forget Adrian Brody's dark velvet rope in bright red shoes. Those shoes really highlighted his status as a wealthy prick who cares about nothing but his own inheritance. Tilda Swindon's brief moment as the flailing Dowagers was also outstanding. Initially you didn't even notice that it is her. And her comic moments in just a few scenes were just right on the dot.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is not the easiest of the movies to watch and understand. It does require undivided attention to understand the relationships and events. Not that the story is complicated but you would certainly enjoy the movies more when you pay attention to all the tiny bits of details planted by the cast and crew throughout the movie. It is a comedy with its own quirk that distinguishes itself from the pack. Great performances from a great cast is a selling point (as you can see from the movie poster) but be sure to bring an open mind into the theatre before sitting through this production. However, if you are looking for a straightforward comedy, this is not something for you.

 

Music (that) Makes the People

Was trolling through my music collection on my iPod over the weekend. During the process I re-discovered a lot of songs that I haven't listened to for quite some time. That Sailormoon theme song; those good old Cantonpop songs that I still miraculously remember not just the tunes but also the lyrics. I was surprised that I was still able to play that sing-along thing to those songs. However at the same time I noticed that I haven't updated my music collection for quite a while.

I used to buy a lot of music. It has always been an important part of my life. I never was the person who stick to a particular kind of music. I listen and buy music according to the pleasure of my ears and my heart. As a classically trained person I always love classical music and have a sizeable collection. Growing up in Hong Kong without a doubt I got hooked on to Cantonpop. Some critics may classify most of them as sickly sweet candy tunes, which in my opinion is a sickly over-generalised view without understanding the music and it's culture. Then there are English pops. Some of them introduced by my radio days, some of them from the school's music club and some of them by accident. I also got into Japanese anime songs as these were stuff I grew up with. I even learnt Japanese because of that. With the "invasion" of Japanese drama I got into J-Pop, which for most of my friends I was a late bloomer. When I developed my interests in video games, I started listening to video games music too. To top all of these, there are also Latino music, French music and musical theatre. So with such wide spectrum of musical interest (or according to some people lack of specialisation) my music collection should be growing continuously. How did it happen that I am spending less and less of my disposable income on buying music?

With the advance of technology buying music had never been easier. Long gone are the days you need to go to the shops to get a CD. I still enjoy browsing on the shelves flipping through racks of CDS enjoying their packaging and covers. But then online shopping is now complimented with digital download purchase, which means I can virtually buy any music I like at a click of the mouse. So why isn't my music collection growing as it should?

I believe my love for music has not waned but probably as I grow older, I get a lot more picky on what to buy. This probably due to that fact that not all my disposable income is that "disposable" anymore. As I moved out of home, expenditures rises. Bills that were dealt with by parents are now my stuff. Utilities, food, car and now a mortgage they all inevitably shrunk my share of disposable income. So I have to rationalise my spending across all categories of things that I like - theatre, cinema, concerts, music, videos, video games, books etc. As a result I began to play safe in my purchases. Some of my adventurous attitude to music and cinema was eroded and leading me to restrict myself to all the safe purchases instead of just buying anything that seemed interesting. For me this is not healthy as it starts building fences around my interests, which is not great when you work in a creative industry. I believe you always need new catalysts to stimulate your creativity.

Radio used to be a main source for exposing me to new music but nowadays radio is so boring that I eventually just switched it off. One thing I sometimes cannot understand about radio in Australia is that a lot of time it is about the shock jocks not the music. Maybe the industry had moved forward and I was left behind.  The fact is on any day I prefer to listen to music broadcast than wasting my time listening to the babbling of some radio hosts who think they are funny and relevant to the society. Radio seemed to have lost its function of promoting music.

Some people may think this is a mid-life music crisis - you live to a point in life that most musical contents became irrelevant to you. You can no longer relate to those puppy and silly love songs the newer and younger artists are talking about. Yet you refuses to admit that you belong to an older generation of musicians. As a result you become the void generation on the dichotomy of music appreciation. I personally do not agree. I am still open to new music just that I do not know where to find them sometimes, or worse still do not have as much time to find them. Maybe my appreciation levels and standards are now more refined with all these years, good music is still good music. By that I do not mean music that complies with certain composition structure or marketing blitz, I mean music that pleases my ears. Once a colleague made a comment on me saying "I would never expect you to listen to this kind of music" and there was another friend who once said, "You could play such beautiful classical music why would you listen to any Madonna stuff?". For me if I like the music it is relevant to me. I don't need to build a framework around it.

So the question remains - how could I continue to expose myself to new music? Maybe I just need to find time and make the effort, as with all things you love, you need to work hard to keep the love going.