Play Review: "ICELAND"

ICELAND: A STATE OF HEART

冰島：心的國度

Iceland and Taiwan are both islands.  Iceland has volcanoes and melting ice.  Taiwan has corruption, pollution, volatile politics on the TV Yuan, and China.  Iceland thought it was safebecause it floated away as far north as possible from the insanity of Europe.  Taiwan thought it was safe because America passionately offers its stallion youth to defend democracy and oil around the world.and China.  
冰島和台灣都是島嶼。冰島有火山和融冰的威脅；台灣則要面對貪污腐化、環境污染、立法院搬演的火爆政治秀以及兩岸問題。冰島自認安全，因為它已儘可能飄流北方，遠離荒唐的歐洲；台灣亦自認安全，因為美國用種馬般的精力，積極捍衛全球的民主和石油。

ART VS. DEATH

   

    25,000 years ago, France

    38,000 years ago, Spain

SUPPORT PEOPLE, NOT RULERS

It is a tragic fact that America, the beautiful Hope of the rest of humanity, usually chooses the wrong world leaders to support. This is due to our own fundamentalist close-mindedness, egotistical stubbornness, and self-deluding naïveté about life. It is also because, no matter what our glorious Constitution, Bill of Rights, and good-hearted American Myth say....our nation's crucial decisions are still made for extremely short-sighted, immorally pragmatic, and greedy financial reasons. It is entirely possible for us to support oppressed people who rise-up against every corrupt and evil dictatorship...but then those who are really in power in America would lose money, and we would all have to sacrifice immediate comforts. Can you imagine how the overwhelming majority of people on earth would react towards America, if we actually helped them, rather than their rulers? What a lovely dream.

GRATITUDE

BOOK OF GRATITUDE

This Book was started on Thanksgiving Day 2011. Then every day when I wake up, I visualize other vital people and things, feel their influence on my heart and spirit, and ritualistically write their names…..

NATURE

I am grateful for hummingbirds, rabbits, trees, clouds, rain, snow.

HEALTH

I am grateful for breathing easily, seeing, moving my body, crying, making love, sleeping well.

PEOPLE

I am grateful I lived in the same centuries with Bob Dylan,

Jackson Pollack, Walt Kelly, Federico Fellini, Maya Plisetskaya,

Akira Kurosawa, Doc Watson, Jorge Preloran, Ingmar Bergman,

WHY I DON'T LEARN CHINESE

I’ve lived in Taiwan for 12 years.

No one can understand why I did not learn Chinese.

It’s absurd.

There must be a logical reason, so people imagine:

·                    I am lazy.

    I don’t respect Taiwan.
          I have a brain problem (besides age).

ART FROM XINDIAN

MOMENTO

One of the most complex film scripts written. Creative filmmakers were thrilled when Momento came out. No one had made a film like that before....and it’s hard to make a completely different film, because everything has been done many times. It is such a difficult film for audiences to understand, but it still earned $40-million, so audiences are NOT stupid, like some producers and studios believe.

The real editor is the Writer/Director, who is unique in cinema, like all great directors are. No one makes films like Christopher Nolan, from England. He studied English Literature, which is why his scripts are so intellectual AND smart.

He started making movies as a boy, with a Super-8mm home film camera. This is the passion needed to become a good filmmaker.

FILMMAKING & FILM SCHOOL

USEFULNESS OF FILM SCHOOL

There is no way to learn Art (creativity).
It is born inside us....
then (usually) killed by well-meaning parents, teachers, and society.

There IS a way to learn creative craft skills....
Find a good teacher / mentor, inside or outside school,
and become their student.

FAILURE OF CONFERENCES

Most conferences, seminars, panels, symposiums, and forums
meant for students and those starving to learn --
to find out the secret of the holy grail (talent),
to "network,"
to find out how to get a job --
are not specific or useful enough.

HOLLYWOOD VS. ASIAN FILMS

It REALLY is important to learn how each different Asian film culture started,
how it was developed, got stronger, and the many financial ups & downs.

Hollywood has almost bankrupted every country's vital film industry,
but most of them are recovering slowly,

TNUA

POST-PARADE

SEX SURVEY (2012)

In last 2 years, surveys (248 pages) 
in Europe, USA, and Asia, 

questioned over 200,000 gay men:

The average age of the gay men is 38 (USA), 34 (Europe) and 29 (Asia).

The percentage of the total general population with HIV+ is decreasing slowly,

but the percentage of gay men who have HIV+ is increasing.

In the US, new HIV+ diagnoses are 48,000 a year,

but young gay men it increased by 35% in the last four years,

and young black gay men by 50%.

There are big increases of HIV+ 
in Asian countries:

GREAT JAPANESE FILM DIRECTORS

Fukasaku Kinji

Gosha Hideo

Harada Masato

Honda Ishirō

*Ichikawa Kon

*Imamura Shōhei

Inagaki Hiroshi

Inoue Haruo

*Itami Jūzō

Iwai Shunji

Kaneko Shusuke

Kinoshita Keisuke

*Kitano Takeshi

*Kobayashi Masaki

*Koreeda Hirokazu

*Kurosawa Akira

PICASSO, AGE 24

   

NEW FILMS FROM CHINA

LACUNA   2012
醉后一夜  

Director: Derek Tsang, Jimmy Wan. Producer: Pang Ho-cheung, Subi Liang. Screenwriter: Derek Tsang, Jimmy Wan, Zhang Youyou, Kuk Yuk. Cinematographer: Charlie Lam. Production Designer: Jeffrey Kong. Editor: Wenders Li. Composer: Alan Wong, Subyub Lee, Tom Lee. Cast: Zhang Jingchu, Shawn Yue, Chu Yue-sun, Yoga Lin, Lawrence Chou.

One morning a Hong Kong boy and a Mainland girl wake up in each other’s arms in the “Bed and Bath” section of a deserted high-end Beijing department store – without any idea of how they got there.

BUDDHISM

All religions seek a Father who is all-wise and all-powerful, who will guide us, threaten us, condemn us, hurt us or reward us, according to our complete devotion to Him.

He controls everything and knows everything, but he will not tell us everything, insisting instead that we just have faith in Him, so that He eternally remains in charge, obeyed, feared and worshipped.

What a remarkable position to be in! And He did not invent the position…we did.

QUOTES - ART & FILM

“If Picasso limited himself in anything he would not be Picasso: he loves the world so much he wants to steal it and eat it.”......Randall Jarrett, Poet

 “The aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations.”......Leo Tolstoy

"While onegoalof movies is to entertain, the kind of film that I believe in and make, goes one step further. It compels a viewer to examine their own conscience. It stimulates thought." .....Sidney Lumet

DEER & RABBIT

I am the deer and the rabbit
and the invisible bear . . . . .

TOO MUCH TRUTH

Everything that every self-help book, cook book, medical book, philosophy book, political book, gossip book, make-over artist, and mange comic book says is right.

The environmentalists, educational reformers, and nutritionists, alternative medicine advocates, editorial cartoonists, columnists, educators, sportscasters, futurists, doomsday prophesiers conspiracy theorists, and art critics are all right.

I have to be afraid of H1V, swine flu, body fat, air pollution, chemicals on and in my food, water pollution, cell phones, drug interactions, anything made in China,

SCRIPT

DESIRE

REVOLT OF THE DOGS, CHICKENS AND DUCKS  

Final Scene

Copyright © 2012 

Reg. Pend. WGAW - All Rights Reserved Worldwide

INT. BEDROOM - night

[Note: This scene is described in great visual and audio detail, to capture and make clear the intended intensity.]

Moonlit shadows.

CU: Jackson Pollack abstract flurry of many-colored fabrics sensually cascading into the frame, up, down, crumpled on the floor.

SND: Exaggerated. Complex solos and symphonies of swishing, crinkling, metal… Cotton, synthetics, alpaca wool, silk, rubber, snaps, buckles, heavy, feather light.

WHY WAR?

Though I am an educated, cultured, aware man, and even a professor, I am stupid. I honestly do not understand why America is fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I am deeply sympathetic to the soldiers, their families, and the civilians on all sides who have died or been wounded, physically and psychologically, but do not know why they had to make such sacrifices.

MEANING OF LIFE

What does it all mean?

The tornadoes, the tsunamis, rebellion against Middle East tyrants, the Tea Party, human rights in China, economic and political collapse in America, football and soccer fanatics, global warming or not?

We already have all the great thinkers we need to assure planetary survival, mental health, freedom, and happiness: op-ed columnists, professors, philosophers, self-help gurus, and thousands of known dead thinkers whose work survives on the same internet as Facebook.

AI WEIWEI

by Sophie Elmhirst, 10/11/12

Ai Weiwei doesn’t usually dream. He doesn’t remember his dreams, or if he does they are deflatingly

banal. Last night, for example, he says he dreamed he was hungry and feasting on cucumbers, but 

in his eagerness bit his tongue and woke himself up – “Ow!”. His unconscious imaginings haven’t 

always been so prosaic. When Ai was detained at Beijing Capital Airport last year and held in a

secret police cell for 81 days

THE TYRANNY OF THEORY / THE PLEASURE OF ART // 學說的專橫／藝術的歡愉

Why is it that sentimentality and melodrama are considered artistically lower class than acerbic, dark, hopeless, and spirit-crushing drama? Who determines the truth about human existence…academics, critics, scientists, theoreticians? Does more education inevitably lead to disillusionment and negativity?

究竟為什麼那些惆悵傷感或情節通俗的戲劇，在藝術層面上，總被認為劣於那些刻薄、陰暗、絕望、重創靈魂的戲劇？究竟誰有權決定人類存在的真理…是學者？評論家？科學家？亦或理論家？難道受的教育愈高，就不免要抹煞幻想、負面思考嗎？

Do people who believe in gods have to be freedom-loathing terrorists, determined to force their personal idiosyncratic fantasies on everyone else? Do people who believe in goodness have to be obsessed idealists who defy realities to ignore evil, even as they are killed by it?

難道信仰諸神的人，非得是痛惡自由的恐怖主義者，強迫他人接受自己一廂情願的想像？難道崇尚善良美德的人，非得是鬼迷心竅的理想主義者，不顧現實，無視罪惡，即使自己因此喪命也義無反顧？

JAFAR PANAHI

EVERY international film director, actor, producer, 

and critic must sign a strong petition, and also fully use the media to demand 

that Jafar Panahi and Muhammad Rasoulof be released from prison and from Iran, immediately. How can we tolerate this,

ART FROM TAIWAN

Click here to view this photo book larger

WHAT DID I LEARN? WHY ART?

It’s my birthday…..

What have I learned about life this year?

Or in my two centuries?

We are remarkably the all the same, except for the very visible, very important, very absurd surfaces.

I am you and you are me.

POEMS

WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

(vee-SWAHV-ah shimm-BOR-skah)

1923-2/3/2012

Poetess, Poland, Age 88

Noble Prize in Literature

A toddler unfamiliar with the law of gravity

investigates "things that don't move by themselves"...

A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth

They don't all want to go, e.g. the bookshelf,

the cupboard, the unyielding walls, the table.

But the table cloth on the stubborn table

--when well-seized by its hems--

manifests a willingness to travel.

And the glasses, plates,

creamer, spoons, bowl,

are fairly shaking with desire.

Death, from the point of view of a cat who has lost its master...

MY POLITICAL, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC POLITICAL PLATFORM

Nationalize: pharmaceuticals, hospitals, armaments, oil, cable, phone.

American companies must manufacture products in America.

National health insurance.

Guaranteed minimum level of living: money, medicine, housing, school.

No one allowed to earn over $10-million/year.

No censorship of ideas, but no free speech that incites violence.

Gun ownership: only 1 handgun for protection, 1 hunting rifle; no concealed guns or knives.

Arms cannot be sold overseas to undemocratic governments.

A Modest Beginning

WHAT MAKES ME FEEL ALIVE.....

Fog
Rain
Storms
Snow
Cold weather
Breezes
Wind
Typhoons
Clouds
Pure air
Flowers
Trees
Rivers
Oceans
Mountains
Deserts
Birds
Fish
Dogs
Cats
Rabbits
Wild animals
Baby animals
Kids
Teenagers
Asians
Chinese
Taiwanese
Hakka
Aborigines