Best Films Of 2011
I love watching films, writing about films and doing the whole geeky/nerdy thing of putting films in lists and trying to rank them. But, I always struggle writing a best films of the year post. Partly it’s because I don’t see anywhere as many films as I used to, or as many as you really [...]
Dark On The Rock
The title of this blogpost is inspired by a comment in Anthony Lane’s New Yorker review of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. “A solemn voice declares, “We were once a peaceful race of intelligent mechanical beings.” Not, as you might hope, a trailer for the Second Republican Presidential Debate but a prologue to “Transformers: Dark [...]
Second Time Lapse
OK, I’ll admit, this is kind of fun. Quick Tilt-Shift time lapse taken this morning.
Time Lapse Test
For a long time now I’ve been wanting to try and shoot some Time Lapse videos of Hong Kong. Kind of crazy that I waited until my last week here to try. Anyway, here is my very fist attempt. If you are interested in trying this sort of technique, here is the article I used [...]
Urban Futures
It is often said that the most important part of Science Fiction is not the science, but the fiction. In a way it is true of any genre; great stories are what propel our interest. What draws me back to Science Fiction is certainly not the gadgets or technology, but the scope that imagined and [...]
Clearing the Reader – Recent Blogposts That Caught My Eye
Today I’m in the midst of unpacking and setting up for the first week of the new year. Part of that involves going through emails and unread blogposts sitting in my RSS reader. Of course, I don’t get around to reading all of the 1200 or so unread contributions sitting there. But, here are a [...]
My Top Ten Films Of The Year
OK, I’m calling this one early, since I fly out on Christmas holidays at the end of the week. Before anyone posts comments about the films that were originally released before 2009, let me remind you that I live in Hong Kong, which means some films only open here long, long after they opened in [...]
Drawing A Line In The Sand
Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who won her country’s version of the national “Got Talent” television contest. She creates an animation, in real-time, using a backlit sandbox, to depict her nations struggle during the Second World War. Like a lot of people, I’ve mesmerised by her work and performance. If you haven’t already seen [...]
The Big Battalions
The Big Battalions was one of the most compelling things I’ve ever seen on television. It was screened in Australia and I remember taping the whole thing and re-watching it a few times. Over the years I’ve been amazed at how few people had seen the series and wondered why it hasn’t been re-screened, or [...]
Theology And Film – Where To Start?
Say you wanted to get up to scratch as a thinker in Theology and Film – where would you start? It’s a question I’ve been asked a few times. Back in mid 2001 I proposed a Masters level module for theology and film and what follows below is adapted from the paper I wrote in [...]
Hong Kong Arts Festival – Metamorphosis
When the 2009 Hong Kong Arts Festival programme was announced last year, one of the fixtures that caught my eye was the Vesturport and Lyric Hammersmith production of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. First off, Kafka is one of my favourite 20th Century writers and Metamorphosis had a big impact on me. Second, it’s a notoriously difficult difficult [...]
Preliminary Thoughts On The Oscars
I’m calling these preliminary thoughts because the distribution of films here in Hong Kong means that I’ve been unable, as yet, to see many of the films nominated for key awards. Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader, Frost/Nixon, Rachel Getting Married, Okuribito, The Wrestler and Frozen River have yet to open. Milk and The Changling opened last [...]
The Unblogpost
I was going to blog about my adventures in Music Education – until a local institution quoted me more than three time the going rate for a tech course. Now I’m re-evaluating my plans for the year. Then, I thought about blogging on the travails of being an expat who gets overcharged and what that [...]
What Is Bolt Saying To Young Girls?
The animated feature film, Bolt, is the latest (non-Pixar) release from Disney. It pairs animator Byron Howard and screenwriter Chris Williams together as shared first-time directors. The cast includes John Travolta, Malcolm McDowell and Miley Cyrus. John Powell provides the score. The film is not all bad. There’s a solid premise, a good narrative arc, [...]
Finding Inspiration And Creativity In Routine
This time last December I set myself the goal of seeing 200 films during 2008. I didn’t make it. I did, however, manage to see well over 100 films and in the process spark my imagination. I’ve long held that part of the problem with a lot of theological commentators on film (and popular culture [...]
Why Joss Whedon Is a Better Theologian than Most Bloggers and Preachers
A while back Ryan Torma made available his paper on Whedon’s Serenity and Firefly, delivered at the International Conference on Media, Religion, Culture (you can download the PDF here). My only criticism of Ryan’s paper is that he tries to justify reading film/television works like these on missional and apologetic terms; that is, they give [...]
100 Favourite Films
As part of some writing for 2009 I’m creating a few lists of films; especially lists of five or ten films that deal with specific themes like religious conflict, women in the workplace, third-culture childhood and spiritual expression through music. This naturally leads to the general question of “best films ever.” I’ve never sat down [...]
Writing, Presenting, Preaching And Storytelling
“Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.” Ira Glass A while back, Garr posted an excellent summary of Ira Glass’ presentation on creating content for new media. Ira is the host of the consistently excellent “This American Life” radio show (and podcast and now also a TV show). “Everything is more compelling [...]
Hong Kong Asian Film Festival
Inspired by Peter Chattaway’s online personal itinerary for the Vancouver International Film Festival, I’ve decided to post my own itinerary for the upcoming Hong Kong Asian Film Festival. This is the first draft, for the films I already have tickets in hand. I might add a few more, closer to the start, as and when [...]
April-May Film Reviews
The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Richard Ford – Reviews of this film are split concerning the narration, which plays a prominent if patchy role in the film. For me, it was a massive distraction and together with the uneven pace and fitful dialogue undermined what could have been a great western. What [...]
Feburary-March Film Reviews
A long bout of illness, school closure and holidays and exam preparation have meant the number of films viewed recently has been lower than normal. Here’s the list for the past two months. Across The Universe – My hopes were not high; a musical based on The t felt like a recipe for disaster. But, [...]
Re-Modernism
Re-Modernism. It’s something I’ve been thinking about. It seems to describe a lot of current trends. It’s a word-suggestion that you may find helpful. Technorati Tags: Re-Modernism
Things I’m Watching
I don’t often comment on television programmes, largely because we don’t watch much TV in our home (in a conventional sense). To me, the perfect cable TV service would be nothing more than news channels and a couple of sport channels that only showed football. When we settled in India, our local cable service was [...]
The Cinema Thing
I’ve often been asked the “restaurant question.” You know the one – “you’re such a good cook, have you ever thought of opening a restaurant,” or variations thereof. It’s the kind of thing that is really, really socially awkward. On the one hand, it’s a “nice” question, a kind of compliment really (though sometimes a [...]
Fernando Gros is a musician, photographer & writer based in Singapore. Born in Santiago de Chile, Fernando grew up in Sydney and has also lived in London, Delhi and Hong Kong.