And they’ve managed to wear out our dance shoes again.

Famed Swedish producers Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, famously known as Bloodshy & Avant, team up with American singer-producer Andrew Wyatt to form Miike Snow.

The result – a musical triumph, if their eponymous first outing is anything to go by.

Miike Snow is a commendable, polished production. BBC Music proclaims it to be “damn near perfect”, and the Guardian calls it “…intelligent pop music that has the ability to cradle taste-making purists and reach anthemic heights”.

Of course, UrbanWire expects nothing else from a group of esteemed producers – the Swedes have worked with dance-pop music luminaries Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears, while the American has headlined a few bands (Fires of Rome being one of them) and recently collaborated with Mark Ronson to produce Daniel Merriweather‘s latest album Love and War.

What’s remarkable is that the guys managed to garner genuine interest for their music without revealing their star identities – they only did so after coming out from hiding behind the Internet to perform a couple of sets in New York.

The music can best be described as ambitious ‘winter pop’ – the type that transports you to a mildly cool, sophisticated winter’s day in Scandinavia. It’s loaded with addictive hooks and atmospheric charm. The album starts off strong and wanes off at the middle, before pulling itself together and concluding with aplomb. It’s an album that talks of loss and ruined love, but the musical arrangements, which sound upbeat and amazingly refreshing, suggest otherwise.

Their latest single, Silvia, is a standout of the album. The track,  released on Jan 25, is pure aural nirvana. Wyatt’s expressive vocals exhibit a sense of regret, longing and emotional depth over lost love, while the music reaches admirable crescendos that warrant repetition on your playlist. “Animal” brings together electronica and heady pop, and “Burial” is a track that sounds playful, but the macabre lyrics, which talk of misery and the pointlessness of fixing a broken relationship, are anything but fun.

The lyrics are a show of juxtaposition – poetry interspersed with contemporary American-style, rap-influenced lyricism. We like it that the stanzas don’t repeat themselves – a common annoyance in the latest pop tunes like J. Lo’s “Louboutins” and Chris Brown’s “I Can Transform Ya”. However, it sometimes seems like the band’s trying too hard to come up with arresting lyrics steeped in poetic melancholy that, quite frankly, don’t belong in the same league as anything from local music veteran Leslie Low.

That these guys have no name recognition in Singapore (or anywhere else!) is really unfortunate. This may be intentional, judging from their reputation for keeping things under the radar, but we see no reason why these guys should not be given the attention they deserve.

[Pullout quote]
“Well, you know, I think that doing interviews is great. But I don’t think we have any interest at all in being pop stars or anything like that. In fact, that’s kind of our worst fear…  We want people to get into that image; it’s more about, “Go have a crazy adventure,” rather than have it be about our personalities. Because it really isn’t. It’s an experiment, and it’s an adventure. And it’s not much about anything else. I think it’s always a mistake when you start connecting a band to a personality. You begin to limit what you’re able to do.” – Andrew Wyatt, interview with Interview Magazine, June 2009.

The UrbanWire gives Miike Snow 4 out of 5 stars.

Title: Miike Snow
Artiste: Miike Snow
Language:English
Record Label:Columbia
Release Date: 12 May 2009 (Sweden), 23 October 2009 (United Kingdom)

Tracklist:
1. Animal
2. Burial
3. Silvia
4. Song for No One
5. Black & Blue
6. Sans Soleil
7. A Horse is Not a Home
8. Cult Logic
9. Plastic Jungle
10. In Search Of

11. Faker

12. Billie Holiday (Bonus track)

In the past 2 years since the explosion of environmentalism, thanks in part to the 2007 international mega-event Live Earth, Singapore has seen a dramatic rise in what is known as “Greenwashing”.

According to Popular science magazine Scientific American, “Greenwashing is what happens when a hopeful public eager to behave responsibly about the environment is presented with ‘evidence’ that makes an industry or a politician seem friendly to the environment when, in fact, the industry or the politician is not as wholly amicable as it or he might be”.

In short, it refers to marketing efforts by companies who want to project a positive image about the companies to bag more profit, without taking any actual steps to mitigate climate change.

At first glance, transport operator, Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (SMRT), is guilty of this.

Its latest campaign titled “SMRT is Green” extols the benefits of traveling on public transport, but fails to go beyond what the public doesn’t already know. It also seems to come across as a ploy to boost profits – to reward commuters for traveling with SMRT, the company’s giving away free transport passes. SMRT has run similar contests over the years under different guises (the most recent being its “Escape to Egypt with SMRT” campaign), and my conversations with friends reveal that none of them actually care about these campaigns as long as they get from point A to point B…but I digress.

A quick check on the “SMRT is Green” campaign and the SMRT corporate websites reveals very little about the company’s environmental policies; only after scrutinising the corporate website is any environmental effort apparent. Interestingly, the campaign website doesn’t contain any information about what the company’s doing to combat environmental degradation – it only contains details about promotions, contest winners, and a paragraph listing the benefits of taking public transport. There’s nothing about the steps SMRT has taken to deal with the issue – nein, nada, nought. Such information is vital if the aim is to move the public away from just the basic knowledge of needing to save the environment (don’t we already know that?), to actually educating them about the intricacies of the issues.

Knowledge can’t be gained without visibility – just like how a child wouldn’t know his father if he wasn’t around. When I first volunteered at Greenpeace in Sydney last year, I had a culture shock, because everyone around me (I’m talking about the general public) seemed to know much more about the environment than I did. They knew about Carbon Capture and Storage, were openly debating the merits of various Emission Trading Schemes, actively recycled their household trash (it helps that it’s mandatory!) and were familiar with climate and environmental vernacular.

Here I was, a Singaporean who felt he knew all there was to know about the environment, in a strange land where environmental issues formed a core of the Rudd Government’s victory in the 2007 Australian federal elections, which led to the creation of the post of Minister for Climate Change and Water (on top of the already present Minister for the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts post) and the creation of a new government ministerial department – the Department for Climate change and Water (which has its own portfolio independent from the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts). I was humbled and had to scour through journals and research publications to get up to scratch, so that I wouldn’t look like a bumbling fool in front of my environmentally ultra-conscious employers.

If it doesn’t want to be seen as insincere and guilty of greenwashing, SMRT needs to take concrete measures to effectively communicate that its business practices or its fleet of vehicles are, indeed, “green”. It need to move beyond the obvious, and go into new territory – things with which the public isn’t familiar, such as the benefits of its new, environmentally friendly buses, its corporate stand and information on how much it invests on climate change mitigation annually.

The company has, in fact, been rather proactive on the environmental front.

In 2008, it rolled out Euro 5 buses that emit fewer pollutants – bringing it in line with buses that run on Compressed Natural Gas. It has also added hundreds of environmentally-friendly taxis to its fleet, and will be doing so for the long term.

In addition, it has looked into environmentally efficient ways to manage its offices and to wash its vehicles. (Click here for more information)

In an interview with Channel NewsAsia, SMRT’s CEO, Ms Saw Phaik Hwa, said, “Going green is not something (we should do)… generations later, (after) something goes wrong… Even when we choose Euro IV for our vehicles and CNG (compressed natural gas) for our taxi drivers, (these will help) save on energy costs.

“So there is a business case for them. We hope that by making these choices, which is good for the environment, it will also be good for them.”

It frustrates me that SMRT has a good product that’s let down by sub-par marketing. Its campaign uses terms such as “Join the Green Revolution” (complete with socialist imagery – ironic, considering the company’s privatised) which really doesn’t do much except to make the campaign seem more desperate.

Half-baked, seemingly profit-driven, and poorly marketed ventures like the “SMRT is Green” campaign only result in a sceptical populace who will soon grow weary, apathetic and doubtful about environmental issues. It completely disregards and reverses the work of thousands of activists, scientists and environmentally conscious citizens by tiring out an already jaded public.

It helps, then, that schools are taking the environmental issue seriously.

Marsiling Primary School, for example, has made environmental education a key component of its drive in providing its students with a holistic education.

When I was a relief teacher there, I was pleasantly surprised to see that students were eager – even adamant – to recycle their trash twice a day. There were separate recycling boxes in every classroom, and representatives from each class would then take the boxes to the main recycling bin with a remarkable sense of purpose.

They were also interested in listening to my environmental education lessons – a far cry from the disdain I used to encounter just 2 years ago.

Now before we thump our chests in proclaiming the progress of our garden city, let us examine what we’ve done so far, and study how we can further evolve. Let us move beyond rhetoric and drive into world-leading action.

Let us be the movers and shakers that we aspire to be. We’ve come so far and achieved so much, but we can always be better.

Sure, a small country like Singapore cannot possibly make a big impact on clearing up the mess that has been – and continues to be – left by polluters. It has been argued that the cost of going green doesn’t justify the end-product. But why should protecting the planet be only about dollars and cents? The country has the potential to be a world leader in adopting groundbreaking pro-environmental policies. Its small size and single-government structure is an asset since implementing such policies and installing the needed infrastructure won’t require as much human and monetary capital as needed in, say, far larger and fragmented nations such as Australia or the United States.

For a start, SMRT would do well to consider introducing a management-level post of Chief Environment Officer. A simple Google search would show that it’s not all that far-fetched.

And one day, we may be heralded as an example to the world; as an environmental leader, despite our limited size and resources.

World Environment Day was declared by the United Nations in 1972, and is hosted by different cities annually. This year’s host was Mexico, with the theme, “Your Planet Needs You – UNite to Combat Climate Change”

Going by the sea of pinks at Hong Lim Park on May 16, the call issued to Singaporeans who believe in the freedom to love was heard loud and clear.

Between more than a thousand and 2,500 (depending on whether you take The Straits Times and The Online Citizen accounts or the organisers figures) Singaporeans descended on Speaker’s Corner to celebrate the country’s first “Pink Dot” event. They were told by organisers via social networking website Facebook and through their website, pinkdot.sg, to wear pink, which, according to organisers, represents “…the colour of our national identity cards and it is what you get when you mix the colours of our national flag”.

This was the first such event that was carried out legally in Singapore that involved the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community and their supporters here. Last year, police broke up a picnic planned by the community at the Botanic Gardens.

3 prominent celebrities, actors Timothy Nga and Neo Swee Lin, and radio presenter Rosalyn Lee from 98.7fm, were the event’s ambassadors. They made speeches and were featured in videos supporting the freedom to love.

Other prominent personalities, such as multimedia artist Brian Gothong Tan, actress and artiste management head Irene Ang (Phua Chu Kang), choreographer George Chan (The Dance Floor), actress Pamela Oei and US-trained pharmacist Dr Stuart Koe (Fridae.com) were present.

Neo even made 200 small boxes of cookies to be shared among the participants, who were further treated to cultural song and dance items from the various ethnic communities.

The event kicked off at 4.30pm with speeches from the ambassadors and a dikir barat performance.  At 4.45pm, participants  formed the words “Love 4 all”, and an hour later, they gathered to form a pink dot before breaking out into Beatles classic “All You Need Is Love”.

From the reactions on the field, the crowd clearly lapped it up. The well-organised event, which brought together Singaporeans of all races, sexualities and ages, drew rave reviews from attendees.

Colin Toh, 20, a recent polytechnic graduate, said, “It’s overwhelming… I mean, it’s the first LGBT gathering in Singapore. I was expecting a low turnout, actually, but it’s not bad! Everyone looks so happy.”

Colin came with his partner, with whom he lives.

Chee Hui Ming, 19, a media student, said, “I feel proud of Singaporeans for turning up today.”

Some of the participants remained after the event to enjoy picnics with their families, friends and pets.
Mark Cheong Jun Wen, 21, a freelance photographer, said, “It’s so great to see families and kids around. I feel it’s very important that kids are brought up this way.”

“Homophobia is unnecessary, though understandable. We live in a conservative society with traditional values,” he added.

Others did a little soul searching.

Lokies Khan, 17, a Secondary 4 student at Yuan Ching Secondary School, said, “Before I opened up, I was rather homophobic myself. I was afraid people would treat me differently so I tried to distance myself from it.
“But I’m open now. In fact, I plan to come out to my mother today!” he said with a laugh.

“Coming out” is a term members of the LGBT community use to refer to the process of declaring their sexuality. They do this to come to terms with their condition and to include family and friends in their lives.
The event was seen as an important event in the gay acceptance movement here. All the 9 LGBT participants interviewed recounted experiences of bullying and discrimination.

Mohammed “Ely” Haniff, 20, a recent polytechnic graduate, said, “It would’ve been so much easier if I was straight. I was bullied back in secondary school… shoved in hallways, pushed in the toilet.

“That’s why I thought this event was important, and that’s why I came even though I have bronchitis.”
UrbanWire also came to know of some who didn’t come for fear of being “outed” or persecuted, or who felt that it was unnecessary.

Lokies said, “My friend didn’t want to turn up because he felt it wouldn’t change anything.”

Miranda (not her real name), a closeted lesbian in her 20s, said, “Maybe I’ll come next year when I’m sure there’d be no press or police around. I’m afraid my parents will look at my face in the papers.”

Incidentally, the event preceded the International Day Against Homophobia, which falls on May 17 every year.  That day in 1992 was when the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases.

Over the past year, I’ve been delving into the local contemporary film and poetry scene, and here’s what I’ve found.

The maligned in Singapore have been turning to art to build a strong voice in political and social subversion.

For them, it seems, the concept of poetic justice is particularly seductive in an environment where they have indicated feeling sidelined and discriminated.

The new generation of local artists, such as poet-playwright Alfian Sa’at, multimedia artist Brian Gothong Tan, poet-soprano Cyril Wong, filmmakers Kan Lume, Royston Tan, and writer Ng Yi-Sheng have all been noted for producing works that take potshots at socio-political structures.

Contentious issues such as censorship, identity and National Service are topics that constantly come under their metaphorical microscope.

Because of the controversial nature of the productions, some of their works have not been publicly screened or marketed. But this doesn’t appear to have an effect on them.

Kan Lume, co-director of 2008 feature film Solos (starring theatre stalwart Lim Yu-Beng and co-director Loo Zihan), should know what he’s talking about. Solos is a dialogue-less film about a schoolteacher in love with his student, and how the boy’s depressed mother blames herself for the turn of events. The film was pulled out of screening at the 21^st Singapore International Film Festival due to the cuts required by the Board of Film Censors, and had its world premiere at the 12th Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea instead.

Kan said in an interview published on the film’s official website: “Every important piece of work worth its grain of salt is controversial. The reason we need to make this film is that it changes things, brings about culture, opens people’s minds to examine their beliefs, strengthens, encourages, enrages, brings about healthy discussion, and inspires. The most important thing for us was to do it truthfully, openly and without fear. Unless we are able to face up to our demons in our Art, we can never fully mature as a people.”

The film’s co-director, Loo, is now working on a string of other similarly-themed projects.

And they aren’t the only trailblazers.

Boo Junfeng, the 25-year-old writer-director of critically-acclaimed and award-winning short films Katong Fugue (starring veteran actress Neo Swee Lin and newbie Luke Kwek), Keluar Baris (starring university student Daryl Pan) and Tanjong Rhu (starring screen and opera artiste Nick Shen), also has his feet rooted in controversial subjects.

The last film was based on a true story where 12 men seeking same-sex relations were arrested (and named and shamed in the local media) in a police entrapment exercise 16 years ago.

Boo told Asian gay lifestyle portal Fridae last May: “The incident has always kind of intrigued me. If you ask me for the impetus, I guess it was when I was in secondary school. I remember my Moral Education teacher warning the boys in my class about carrying water bottles at East Coast Park because there were ‘perverts’ hiding in the bushes. And I think that came shortly after the publicity from the Tanjong Rhu incident. So I always kind of knew something like that had happened.

His gamble paid off. British cinematic icon Lord David Puttnam praised Tanjong Rhu, saying: “The film is magnificent. It is beautifully realised”.

The contemporary literature scene here isn’t much divorced from its celluloid cousin.

It is precisely in the need to rescue themselves that young literary stars have found their voice. A large number of their works, particularly from younger writers like Ng Yi-Sheng, 32, Alfian Sa’at, 32, and Cyril Wong, 31, seem to be established in confessionalism – a style involving emotional, honest and sometimes brutal self-expressions.

An example is Young Artist Award winner Sa’at, who, in a poem titled field training from his second poetry collection A history of Amnesia, wrote about one of his experiences in the army:

nobody ever spoke of dying

digging trenches we exhumed ourselves

we buried mines in the loose dirt

as weightless as our conscience

it was enough for anyone to say:

I want my death in another life.

In another poem titled The Merlion from his first poetry collection, One Fierce Hour, he began his conversation about the iconic Singaporean figure as follows:

“I wish it had paws,” you said,

“It’s quite grotesque the way it is,

you know, limbless; can you

imagine it writhing in the water,

like some post-Chernobyl nightmare?

Openly-gay Wong, 31, a Singapore Literature Prize winner, wrote in a poem titled i saw you read my book from his sophomore poetry collection titled the end of his orbit:

in the evening, when father was

asleep and you were in the living

room, a shred of cloud inside

your loose night dress the colour

of flesh in this light. I stared

at your face from the silence

of my bedroom, arms folded

like iron bars across a door,

fearful of eruption – this mob

within me you could easily set off.

And I noticed how you paused

after a poem to peer beyond

the gold-flicker rim of your glasses.

From where I sat on the floor now

falling away from under me, you appeared

to watch the altar with its singular flame,

the bible at a corner of the table praised

fervently by dust, a portrait of

Mary and Christ, Mary with Christ

yet unbroken in her arms.

I will leave it to you, dear reader, to make out the subtexts and meanings of the above.

If this is the direction of local creative output and if this wave of hard-hitting issues-based output continues to be produced, then there is huge cause for celebration. I, for one, am excited and deeply touched by the strength, fearlessness of authority, the beauty of humanity and juxtaposition – of purity amid “immorality” – presented by these brilliant sons of Singapore.

Courtesy of Focus Features

With the 81st Annual Academy Awards just a few days away (Feb 22), The UrbanWire gazes deep into our crystal ball to see which of the  5  Best Picture nominees may emerge victorious.

Ready?

Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Reader

Frost/Nixon

Overview

Frost/Nixon is a historical drama adapted from the play by Peter Morgan (The Queen, The Last Queen of Scotland). It’s a dramatisation of actual 1977 television interviews between broadcaster David Frost (Michael Sheen – Blood Diamond, The Queen) and then-president Richard Nixon (Frank Langella – Superman Returns, Lolita).

Among the 5 Oscar nominations in its bag are Best Actor (Langella), Best Director (Ronald Howard – Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code) and Best Picture.

Story

The movie centres on the Frost-Nixon interviews in 1977. Disgraced former president Richard Nixon is coaxed by talk show host David Frost to come out of hiding and take part in a series of televised interviews, in hopes of reestablishing the former in politics, and the latter as a credible, serious journalist.

The premise is so straightfoward it needs no further description.

Sauce

The actors remained in character off-camera.

Other directors in consideration for the making of the film were Martin Scorsese (The Departed, The Aviator), Mile Nichols (Charlie Wilson’s War, Closer) and Sam Mandes (Jarhead, Road to Perdition).

UrbanWire’s prediction

Not a chance. The movie simply isn’t groundbreaking enough and there’ve been other Nixon-themed movies such as 1976′s All the President’s Men and 1995′s Nixon and 2004′s The Assassination of Richard Nixon. But then again the Academy has voted pretty strangely in the past…such as Crash’s “shock [Best Picture] win” (as branded by international media) at the 2006 Academy Awards.

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Milk

Overview

Based on actual history, Milk is a biopic by critically-acclaimed American director/screenwriter, Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Psycho). It garnered 8 Oscar nominations including Best Actor (Sean Penn – Mystic River, The Interpreter), Best Director (Van Sant) and Best Picture.

Story

Milk is a true story based on 1970s gay activist and politician Harvey Milk, from his 40th birthday to his assassination. The film is centered on Milk’s will recordings 9 days before he was shot, and uses flashbacks and actual archival footage to dramatise the action. It starts with police action against gay bars and their patrons in the 1950s and 1960s, and then shifts to the actual announcement of his death by then president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (and current Senior Senator of California), Dianne Feinstein.

The story follows Milk (Penn) as he makes history by becoming the first openly-gay person elected to office when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He does this with his considerably younger lover Scott Smith (James Franco – Knocked Up, Spiderman) as his campaign manager.

Having moved from San Francisco’s gay district of Castro in 1972, the New Yorker realises that the gay community needs a voice and he effectively strengthens the Gay Pride movement. He sees politics as an effective way in achieving this.

After a long and hard battle, he finally wins. However, he soon hits a snag in the form of Supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin - American Gangster, Hollow Man), a conservative, who feels resentful against the attention given to him. White resigns from the board after losing a proposition to repeal gay rights legislation, but changes his mind and asks Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber – Home Room, Legally Blonde) to overturn the earlier decision, who declined following lobbying by Milk. Enraged, he enters San Francisco City Hall on Nov 27, 1978, and shoots the mayor and Milk.

Sauce

The film, which has been in developmental hell, starting from 1991.

Thousands of extras agreed to take part in the movie for free.

The apartment that was featured in the movie is the actual place where Milk lived, and the shop in the movie was where Milk worked.

UrbanWire’s prediction

Though this movie’s the bomb, (with Penn giving a stunningly nuanced and respectable performance as Milk) it may not win because there simply wasn’t much fanfare surrounding it. Personally we think The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a great dose of escapism and deserves to win, but after analysing the other films, The UrbanWire selects Milk as the possible winner of the Best Picture award because of these and more:

(a) the progressive, left-leaning Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the home of the Oscars) may be feeling resentful against the recent success of Proposition 8 which removed the right of gay couples to marry in California, and hence use this as a chance to affirm their support for the gay community.

(b) a common sentiment among members of the Academy is that the 2005 Ang Lee gay-themed film, Brokeback Mountain, was robbed of its win (Crash, which explored racial tensions, won)

(c) Americans are riding on a wave of nationalism after the election of President Barack Hussein Obama.

(d) the acting was simply top-drawer.

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Slumdog Millionaire

Courtesy of Fox Searchlight

Overview

Slumdog Millionaire is yet another feel-good, rags-to-riches tale. It is an adaptation of the 2005 Vikras Swarup novel, Q and A. The film, directed by Danny Boyle (Sunshine, Trainspotting) and co-directed by Loveleen Tandan (casting director for Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair), has grossed the highest amount of Oscar nominations for a non-American production (it’s British) in a decade: a total of 10, including Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay (Simon Beaufoy – Burn Up, Yasmin), Best Director (Boyle), Best Picture.

Story

Jamal Malik (British actor Dev Patel) is an uneducated 18-year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai who experiences the biggest day of his life on India’s version of the popular game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Because he makes it far in the game (he reaches the last question), he raises suspicions of the host (Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor) and the police, who accuse him of cheating.

Malik then explains how he knew the answers, and the movie flashbacks to various scenes in his life.

As expected of Bollywood-style films, the movie ends with a song-and-dance number.

Sauce

About 20 percent of the movie is in Hindi.

Demonstrations were conducted by slum dwellers who took umbrage at the word “Slumdog”.

UrbanWire’s prediction

Perhaps it’d win for Best Original Score, but not for Best Picture. It just isn’t as nuanced as the rest.

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Overview

Adapted from a 1921 short story by deceased American writer Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button leads year’s Oscars table, with 13 nominations including Best Actor (Brad Pitt – Babel, Mr & Mrs Smith, Troy), Best Director (David Fincher – Fight Club, Zodiac) and Best Picture. It has made more than US$156.5 million (S$233.7 million) so far.

The film stars hunky kid-bearer and one-half of media phenomenon “Bradgelina” – Pitt, and co-stars Oscar-winning Australian sheila Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth, Lord of the Rings).

Story

The story starts with a dying Daisy (Blanchett) asking her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond – Inland Empire, Surveillance) to read out entries from Benjamin’s Button’s diary. As she reads, the film takes us to what happened at those junctures in time.

Button is born in post-war New Orleans on Nov 11, 1918, with the characteristics of an 86-year-old man. Understandably, the mother dies and the father dumps him in a nursing home, where he is found by Queenie (Taraji Penda Henson – Baby Boy, Hustle and Flow) and Tizzy (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali – NYPD Blue, CSI), who work there.

Curiously, as the years go by, Button grows physically younger. He meets many people and makes startling discoveries, but ultimately arrives where he left off. Ironically, he becomes too young to live.

The story concludes with a shot of the raging Hurricane Katrina. It is a tale of love, hurt, joy, sadness and the effects of time.

Sauce

The film has been in development from at least since 1994, and Steven Spielberg (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skill, Munich) and Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon, Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code) were once attached to the directorial spot.

John Travolta and Tom Cruise (egad!) was considered for the lead role, but, thankfully, turned it down. Hey, don’t judge us – The UrbanWire’s sure you’d agree that Pitt’s just way hotter!

UrbanWire’s prediction

This film has a high chance of winning.

But because of the weight of the other contenders who all talk about social/historical issues, the film’s cultural depth is compromised due to its fictional nature. Also, ironically because of the sheer amount of nominations, it may lose out on the Best Picture accolade by Academy members who feel that the other movies deserve a chance.

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The Reader

Overview

The Reader is a British film adaptation of a 1995 German novel by Bernhard Schlink. It has 5 nominations for the Oscars, including Best Actress (Kate Winslet – The Holiday, Titanic), Best Director (Stephen Daldry – Billy Elliot, The Hours) and Best Picture.

Story

It is 1995 Berlin, and a teenage Michael Berg (played by baby-faced 19-year-old German actor David Kross) prepares breakfast with an older woman, Hanna Smith (Winslet) with whom he had a one-night stand.

Soon after he sends off Hanna, he is diagnosed with scarlet fever and rests for three months. He visits her upon recovering and the two strike up an affair. Suddenly, after her promotion, Hanna leaves without warning.

The movie then cuts to an adult Michael (Ralph Fiennes – Harry Potter, Maid in Manhattan), who attends a legal seminar at Heidelberg University in 1966. Here, he witnesses a trial of former female SS guards – one of them turns out to be Hanna – blamed with allowing the deaths of some 300 Jewish women during the 1944 Auschwitz evacuation.

A key witness to the case was Ilana Mather (Romanian-born German actress Alexandra Maria Lara), who wrote a memoir of the incident. Unlike the other defendants, Hanna does not deny that Auschwitz was an extermination camp. However, she denies writing a report on the barn fire, and caves in when asked to furnish a sample of her handwriting.

But interestingly, Michael finds out that Hanna is illiterate, and he doesn’t know what to do.

While the other defendants escape with shorter terms, Hanna is slapped with a life sentence. Michael marries and has a daughter, but divorces. He soon begins reading into a tape recorder his notes from the period of his affair with Hanna, and sends the tapes to her. After learning to read, Hanna writes back, to which he replies with more tapes.

The day before her release, Hanna hangs herself, and leaves Michael a tin and some cash. Michael then meets an older Ilana (Swedish actress Lena Olin – Casanova, Chocolat) and tells her about the affair, the truth about Hanna’s illiteracy, and suggests the money be donated to a Jewish organisation dedicating to promoting adult literacy.

Sauce

Nicole Kidman and Juliette Binoche were considered to play Hanna – the former actually signed on, but withdrew due to pregnancy commitments.

Production had to take a break to allow Kross to turn 18 so that the nude scenes could be shot.

UrbanWire’s prediction

Yawn.

We’ll answer this with a question (annoying, we know): Have you even heard of the movie?

And gosh, we’re bored of Winslet. Titanic’s over.

‘Nuff said.

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Aside from Ang Pows (red packets stuffed with cash) and dancing dragons and lions, the season is also synonymous with snacks and savouries.

So what better way is there to get you excited than to show you some of our most promising finds?

We took a look at what the folks at local bakery café, Cedele by The Bakery Depot had to offer.

Once again, they have worked their trademark organic, vegetarian, handmade and no-trans-fats flair for confectioneries into familiar Chinese New Year (CNY) cakes and cookies – with a twist.

The UrbanWire was excited to try out the healthy snacks that came in attractive, re-usable containers.

The treats were all made from scratch and were clearly labelled according to their dietary benefits (e.g. no baking powder, no eggs, no trans fats etc.).

The Confectionery Pageant

One of the menu highlights is the Circle of Happiness range of 8-inch round cakes ($18.80 each), which includes flavours like Blueberry Almond, Pear Frangipani and the Cherry Chocolate Financier.

The cherry on the icing was, without doubt, the Cherry Chocolate Financier (above, $18.80). The cake was delightfully moist and crunchy, while cherries completed the package with an acidic hint, all of which led to an interesting explosion of texture and flavour. The Almond Apricot cake ($18.80) had substantial bite to it with the liberal amount of almond slices sprinkled at the top, while at the same time not being too overpoweringly sweet. The cakes are part of the Circle of Happiness range

However, the other cakes and cookies left much to be desired.

The cookies were fragrant and looked brilliant, but bombed in the taste test. The only exceptions were the Cornflake Crunchies ($15.90), Lemongrass Pistachios ($17.50) and Pineapple Pocket Pies ($17.50), which had more pronounced flavours. Though the latter offering was soft and delectable, the pineapple jam could have been more pronounced.

The Golden Bar cakes (above, $13.50-$16 for 350g, $30-$32 for 1kg) looked highly appetising but turned out to be dry, coarse and difficult to swallow. The best of the lot was the Orange Cranberry cake (first from right), which tasted strongly of orange.

While we are definitely going to make a run for the Cherry Chocolate Financier this CNY season, we’ll stay clear of the other goodies that, quite frankly, disappoint and solidify the impression that healthy eating is bank-busting and tongue-numbing.

But don’t write them off just yet – if you enjoy mild flavours, have special dietary requirements and/or want a guilt-free CNY, this is a fantastic option.

Additional reporting by Ervin Liu, Jessinta Cheng and Teo Yin Yin