I guess nothing is more personal than nostalgia, yet nostalgia is not hat used to be, as you could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you, or for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

One year ago when the film was just realized my friend Angelique in Shanghai wrote the following on a Facebook conversation with me: I myself was the second-generation armaments factory kid, therefore the film is conversant and familiar to me. Sending text messages to my dad while watching the film, I urge him to give a copy of the film.  I am afraid that they are of that generation who have to sob when facing the past.

Jia Zhangke blurred the boundary between documentary and fictional film, which it rather controversial. Personally, as long as the works of the film director is not sensational and sentimental and not gushing with feelings, at least the has a sincere heart towards the story and the audience. Read the rest of this entry »

Friends and families are experiencing marriage crisis, to marry or not, to have kids or not, to divorce or not, to remarry or not, old rhythm, fresh plots. Leo TOLSTOY said it all in Anna Karenina: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Several buddies recommended the same TV sitcom on the subject: The So-called Marriage – 所谓婚姻.

婚姻就像一场战争,男人和女之间,征服和被征服之间,永无止境的战争,这场战争没有真正的胜利者,最后剩下的只有失败和伤害。

Marriage is like a battle between men and women,  a never-ending battle between the conquest and the subjugation,. In the battle there is no real winner, what is left at the end are only failure and injury.

人生本来就是一场战争.其实我是看淡了痛苦,所以也就不用痛苦了。如果一定要拿爱情和婚姻相比,那爱情,爱情就像一杯浓酒,婚姻就像一杯白开水,但是浓酒不能天天喝啊,因为生命承受不了,可白开水必须天天喝,因为生命要靠它延续。

Life itself is a battle. In fact, I was just indifferent to suffering, so it is not painful. If you have to compare love with marriage, then love, love is like a cup of rich wine, marriage is like a cup of boiled water. But you can not live on rich wine every day, because it is too heavy for life to afford, yet  you have to drink boiled water every day, because life depends on it to continue.

其实不管人们怎么去评价婚姻，说到底呀就是一现实的男人和一现实的女人，最现实的联手合作。

In fact, no matter how people judge marriage, in reality it is the most realistic collaboration between a realistic man and a realistic woman.

当两个人携手踏上红地毯,迈入婚姻的殿堂,就等于拿到了一份契约,男女就是定契约的甲乙双方,作为合作,合作者必须具备尊重理解宽容他人的基本素质。

When two people set foot on the red carpet hand in hand entering the marriage hall, it means signing a contract between the man and the woman as Party A and Party B.  As a co-operation, the parties must have the basic quality of  respecting, understanding and tolerating the others.

本来婚姻就是一项投资,爱情呢就相当于注册资金,结婚证就相当于营业执照,婚礼就相当于开业典礼,至于收益情况如何,那就得看甲乙双方合作情况如何了。

After all marriage is an investment, love is equivalent to the registered capital, marriage certificate is equivalent to the business license, the marriage is equivalent to the opening ceremony, as to the profitability, it depends on how Party A and Party B co-oparate.

相爱是艺术,相处是技术。发酵好了婚姻就是一坛美酒,时间越长就趣纯正,发酵不好的话,婚姻就像一坛发了酸的泡菜。

To love is art, to get along is skill set. When the fermentation is good, the marriage is an altar of fine wine, the longer it’s aged the pure it tastes, when fermentation is not good, the marriage is an altar of sour kimchi.

In Hinduism Avatāra (अवतार) is a Sanskrit word for a deity deliberately descent from heaven to earth. In English the translation is “incarnation”, or as some argue more accurately “appearance” or “manifestation”, in Chinese it appears as 化身, 下降, 转世. So Krishna is the avatar of Vishnu, and Arjuna is the avatar of Indra in Mahābhārata.

Or perhaps in ten years time all people remember about Avatar will be Na’vis at Pandora of James CAMERON, the most expensive film ever made, and maybe the most profitable film ever made, and for sure the most expensive film ticket ever in China? Obviously the 200RMB per ticket at IMAX Shanghai is much higher than what we paid at IMAX here in New York. maybe indeed Shanghai is the new Pandora.

CAMERON’s Avatar is for sure the most beautiful film I have seen, a visual feast, so real yet so imaginative at the same time, an two hour and forty minutes odyssey to a marvelous dreamland… that’s probably all I could see about the movie. The story and the plot? A anti-demolishing battle between original residents and the greedy property development, as you might read from newspapers about Chinese cities going through rapid urbanization. The only difference between the sci-fi film and reality is that in Chinese eventually the stubborn nails, as the government bureaus and super connected developers call them, will eventually be pulled out mercilessly, yet in Pandora the Na’vis resisted the colonist’s expansion and kicked them out.

The Na’vis had to pick up machine guns and crash the plane, so at the end the mother tree is dead, the ugly operation center of the colonists is left in the planet, and I wonder whether the avatar of Jake the human and the Na’vis will live happily forever, after the once upon a time destruction happened.

It remains me a Chinese proverb 隔靴搔痒 – to scratch one’s itch with boots on, so there is a problem, and there are efforts made to solve the problem, be it our collective fear about the future or guilt about the past, the result? I am not so sure.

I would recommend to watch it as it’s really really beautiful, after that, go back to Peter BROOK’s Mahābhārata.

This is for my dear friend Pilar in Shanghai.