Tuesday, July 26, 2011

dark as ebony...EDITED






"...Done to death I know, but not like this...we strip it down, make it visceral and real..."



The eerie opening lines of the ballet director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) to his company upon introducing them to their opening season performance. Maybe he wanted them to know the gravity of the task ahead of them: that of re-interpreting an overused storyline in ballet productions all over the world. Or maybe he just wanted to flex his skills at seduction, that of choosing the premier ballerina of the moment, celebrating her muse-hood and wringing her dry until she was devoid of all moisture, flavor and spice like the fate that befell ex-premier ballerina Beth Macintyre(Winona Ryder) in this case....



Although this, in my opinion, is not best-actress-material performance by Natalie Portman she does flex her acting and emotional muscle well here. Transitioning from the soft, feminine, uncertain delicateness of a fragile young lady to the twisted, lunatic contortions of a raving madwoman and then back again several times throughout the film not only displays her versatility but also her method of attacking the role of a deeply disturbed character.



Nina Sayers (Portman) is the ballet dancer in the company chosen by Leroy to play the Swan Queen and the evil twin, the Black Swan for his production SWAN LAKE. It is obvious that right from the very start Nina is on a personal crusade to acquire this role. But after dancing miserably in the audition, she felt she needed to appease Leroy verbally through a personal meeting. He highlights that her calculated and more controlled style of dancing was excellent enough for the Swan Queen role but wasn't for the more provocative and passionate style that befitted the Evil twin. The lead dancer had to embody both roles. Leroy however uses his position of power to take advantage and kiss her and then through some Machiavellian machination credited Nina with the Swan Queen role for the performance.




Thus began a hazy and intense journey for Nina, well mentally at least. The stress of the upcoming performance got to her. The increasing criticism of "HE-who championed her" on her rigid dancing moves. His numerous daring sexual advances as an excuse to release her from the bondage that her potentials were allegedly trapped in and prevented her from performing at her optimal best. The comparisons to Lily (Mila Kunis) a dancer from another company who was lent to them for the Swan Lake production whose more less-perfectionistic but graceful and freer style of dancing was so desired by the director. The drive to be perfect, an unspoken dogma that suddenly haunted her. These all eventually coalesced to wreak havoc on Nina until performance night...



The crescendo of disillusion and detachment blew on full steam. Doppelgangers appearing out of nowhere at unexpected instances, stigmata-esque manifestations characterized by imaginary bruisings, cuts and scratches in her body and fingernails, out-of-body sensual experiences including that of pleasuring herself with her hands, hallucinations of events taking place but with lack of tangible reality when her senses eventually overtook her seemingly intoxicated self ... these were but one of many manifestations of the inner demons that suddenly plagued her from the sheer pressure of trying to achieve perfection.




On the night before the performance all demons broke loose when she partied and let loose with her rival-turned-ally Lily. Ecstasy for starters, and flirting with two boys, dancing the night away in a noisy club as sides, the whole menu of a night seemingly turned into a disaster for Nina until they got to the main dish....sex with Lily in her bedroom despite her mother's pleadings at the door. This part was probably one of the most interesting in the movie naturally but also because both women played the role very well. There was total submission to the sensual act, Nina allowing herself to be pleasured orally by Lily's willing lips, mouth, tongue etcetera...all part of Nina's distorted sensory perceptions...





Performance night and the first act is going well until one of her doppelgangers distracted her and the Swan Prince drops her in the dance lift that would end the first act. Furious, Nina storms into her dressing room only to find Lily already donning the Black Swan costume in an effort to replace her in the second act. Nina loses it completely and stabs Lily to her death and hides her behind closed doors. She suddenly finds herself morphing into the Black Swan, the passionate second skin that had eluded her throughout her struggles through rehearsal and frigidity. She dances flawlessly on stage as the Black Swan, in an almost unearthly perfection. The applause is thunderous....



The third act finally unveils to her and to the viewers that the persona she wounded and had thought dead in the dressing room was herself. She needed to endure the pain to master her dark side and unleash the passion she had not known existed inside her. Dressed and dancing as the Swan Queen again in the third act she bleeds from the wound she had instilled on herself - finally giving way to a semblance of clarity in the end and an arcane happiness at having achieved a performance of freedom after intense personal suffering...



This could have been an otherwise disturbing film for many except that I love these sort of macabre films with imaginary and sometimes demonic representations of personal experiences of people. I've no idea whether a film has been done about a ballerina's emotional and mental struggles before massive performances but this certainly was very watchable for me and could possibly inspire my next photoshoot. Maybe scratch out the lesbian theme three quarters right into the movie...or maybe not!!! :)



Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Guapitoooooooooo...


Too cute for words!!

I'm obsessed...well actually I AM OBSESSED!!!!

Guess who? :)

Kisses to all...and hopefully to him :)


































































Friday, July 1, 2011

exercise your Suntec moment...





Being back in the Lion City is refreshing. I don't know why. Maybe it's because every time I come back here there's always something new being built or finished. The big Noah's ark that is Marina Bay Sands stands out like an incongruous bump in the Singaporean landscape. I still cannot get over the fact that they built another line for the trains here considering how diminutive this country is compared to the rest of Asia. Or maybe the heat of the city adds extra miles to the couple of meters you walk thus contributing to the size of this nation? Tell me about it, I am not one to walk under the humid conditions - a far cry from my first time here when I was capable and willing to walk miles (hundreds and hundreds of meters in Singaporean parlance)!


So what is your Suntec moment?


Hahaha If you don't know what that is then go ahead and read.


I caught up with a long-time fan yesterday. Long time is long time as in wayyy before this blog was ever made - can you imagine? We had fancy coffee and a couple of drinks as well as some healthy snacks(always for me!). I've never really done any big-time touristing here as never try to stereotype myself as the classic Filipino tourist and WORK interferes all the time as well anyway LOLLL. But I did don my tourist cap yesterday and went around my area. You know in a city that is so little and expectedly for me, one THAT MIGHT hold too few surprises I was actually taken aback at how close everything was to my hotel. Go ahead and figure. We were having drinks at Bali Lane in the Moslem area when my eyes saw a view of this huge and well-known porcupine (I like calling it that) structure. This gigantic building is quite memorable for me because my first time in this city I posed for a picture in somebody's hotel room and there was a view of the spines from its back! KINKY!!! LOLLLL I was quite surprised to actually just see it from where I was. And to think from my view I could see also see Raffles Hospital which is only blocks away from where I was staying! My friend told me everything within the city center is just really so close to each other and so easy to get to. It's just that we choose to contribute to the country's public transportation funds or we'd rather be lazy-arsed individuals and not exercise a little LOLLL



Now I was tearing my brains apart to try and identify the name of this giant spiky structure. Believe me it isn't so easy when a bit of Stella Artois has penetrated your cerebrum! But as always I try and struggle because I believe it's a mental exercise that helps me and my poor addled mind stretch itself to the limits. It's also a reminder that despite the massive doses of hormones and medications I take, my brain is still intact and my mental functioning is still very polished as it used to be. Ahhhh... Suntec City! I got it! I'll never forget that place because as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I've had my picture taken with that in the background!!!



After several more rounds of Stella, a song I really liked played in a bar right beside ours. With a bit of alcohol in my veins and a looser tongue (can you imagine this? I'm already considerably loose sober! hahaha) I decided to approach the faux deejay what the song was. Why faux? Because it seemed that he was multitasking his way around - talking to customers, adjusting the music controls and going back and forth to usher in guests to his bar. Problem was I asked him about several notes into the next song already. The playlist was on shuffle and he said that with the kind of program their music was running on it was a bit hard to go back to the previous song or even look for it on the list. I've never known such bullshit as there is always a way to find a song that's been played on your list and I kinda guessed he was just too lazy to look for it! Nothing I did could convince him to look more closely so I left him alone, leaving the place a bit drunk and still with no title for a song whose title continues to elude me! LOL


Now back in my hotel my Suntec moment spurred me to look for the title of the song online! With my alcoholic convalescence making slow progress I thought it was going to be a long night. My tenacious and ingenious self finally found it after a reasonable mustering of patience and after a titanic struggle for so many minutes on Youtube. It was simple enough really. I typed on Google "singer + sounds like Bruno Mars" and voila! I clicked on the links that this wondrous search machine provided for and I was able to stumble upon the song. I don't want to sound condescending but I think there's a little bit of smartness with the way I handled looking for it. I think in some small way it provided me with a simple satisfaction which is still satisfaction however you look at it!



I would never yield to failure, nor would I ever allow my brain to decompose from lack of use so I'm always gonna look forward to more Suntec moments as my miserable life progresses on....



Now that was a rather weird rant and an unusual post. So arcane of me really to start write from nothing...I guess this is why we call it blogging rather than composing noh? hehehehehehe