Dear John

My back is searing with the most uncomfortable heat from my body, un-cooled after a rush 10 laps swimming I managed to have this afternoon (in a warm outdoor pool even after the sun had set) and as other consequences are following, I am now dead tired yet cannot sleep; begging for the old unreliable air con to do some miracle chilling the rising temperature of the room (it is said that the temp has risen 4 degrees since the end of monsoon) and be honest for once when it says it is condensing the hot weather of summer to a16 degrees Celcius. Okay, enough weather talk as I am having this mild headache I usually have after drinking beer too fast or since it is Sunday night, I am trying to anticipate the inner anxiety attacks and panic uprisings as mundane Monday is approaching (actually it is both) and writing in attempt to get total annihilation of self into deep short slumber (which doesn’t really work).

Dear John which seemed like a good idea a couple of hours ago as a Sunday night movie to close the week, but it turned out making me more strung up than the beer and all the seafood and saccharine snacks I junked in for dinner and totally cancelled off any exercise I made in the pool earlier. I could blame it on Channing Tatum’s puzzling forgettable hunky face (as in, you could pass his as any of those Abercrombie alpha male models) and remarkable torso which was in contrary mesmerizing and made it harder for me to sleep it off. Or I could say I was annoyed by the love story twist of a Amanda Seyfried’s dull saint-like Savannah of marrying a dying man either to just reemphasize you are a Mother Theresa but not as unearthly as a nun therefore you can marry to save someone’s life or putting a selfish ending toward the dreadful letter corresponding and waiting for your lover finishing his tour of duty with US army in the middle of the seemed infinite War on Terror. It is just too much of Nicholas Sparks’ forte Hollywood keeps on buying and selling, I am on the verge of accusing director Lasse Hallestorm (not to mention how he directed the cover version of Hachiko) suicidal since he intended to bring something new on the plate and change the system by joining it first and successfully failed. It is a love story, of course it has to be teary, melodramatic and there’s always someone dying to set the lovebirds apart. Yet that is the challenge most of filmmakers have to deal (or decide not to deal) by putting great beautiful actors as the anchors or lots of schmaltzy romantic scenes to make it work. So in order to enjoy this kind of entertainment I had limited my expectation and droned and muffled myself to the charted area of soap opera romance with beautiful people chasing each other across beautiful shore, fancy beach houses, comfy horse stables (mostly for later love scene), acres of acres of greens, and this time lonely war sites.

By this time, you are already familiar to use your Emo remote control to amplify your sympathy when the cues of the formulaic storyline firing. For example, Channing’s John after being ditched through a letter without explanation, finally meets and confronts Savannah with why-oh-why sad and angry irresistible puppy look, you press hard on corresponding-to-your-last-time-being-dumped button or simply having an unabashed vicarious button when anything exciting comes along and you can press cooing button to add extra dramatic effect. But then again the couples may not have the strongest chemistry to display on screen other than what they have in common of pure significant perfected beauty and the every body-knows bland storyline is flat-lining and you end up pressing all kind of buttons to jolt some pulses over the hallmark scenes only to died down with victorious death of the dying man and any obstacles comes between them cleared away and they live happily ever after, which left you with the OFF button you often regret not to press it so much earlier so you can have a good rest and not unexpectedly ranting about it past midnight.

Some Rustic Frantic Muse: The Word You're Looking for is 'Looking'

Would it be possible to miss some guy you just met twice for less than two hours? His lingering out of proportion silhouette your memory managed to contrive out of fragile bits of moments of careful awkward glimpses and basic mundane yet exaggerated demographic information about his age, his education, his work (his money); blatantly hovering like an unfinished conversation you don’t know how it got started in the first place or now to end with.

Then the answer is a definite yes, if you are that girl working out a way to move on from her bitterest close thing to a relationship a year ago that it propelled her into any attempt to find another fixation which included getting her ass in for the first (and hopefully the last) time to an overpriced speed dating program for the lonely lovebirds lost in this decadent jungle, they came up with the most satiric and municipal name, you felt like you are in a government sponsored program in Singapore for ensuring the population growth and potentially rejuvenating its future market.

In the battle for finding the right one, the gentlemen were expected to shift from table to table after 3 minutes of getting to know the missus of each post. A dragging repetition of three little minutes of instant concoction and distortion of a personality, a quarter of century worth of life resume and delivered it in such a tiring rapport, you became quite uncomfortably professional in introducing yourself partially. But you never quite grasp the knowledge either your personality could surpass your modest post war look from recent small pox attack with cleavage of sporadic sad spots well-hidden under elaborate shawl; or barely outwit the rest of your Paris Hilton-esque chic and casually glamorous opponents (that is how they interpreted the casual dress code on the invitation) which consisted mostly socialite ladies in blooming and your high school girlfriends that seemed to stay singles just like you when you last saw them almost a decade ago. Then you had to have that self-deprecating comedic routine again of how you end up here which besetting your initial behavior against being single is like being a leper, even though no one asked you to explain and actually after listening to their brief life stories, these girls were beyond your league and in total bewilderment on how they needed to go speed dating to get a guy.

And of course, there were those man targets to conquer. Those supposed alphas of our dreams. Such a subconscious carnal ambition blundered bluntly into tepid expectation as the mind numbing conversation and rapid rating analysis distracted us from actually talking with each other. Instead, we were busy shooting two-ways monologue of intermittent ideas of who we think we were to avoid formidable silence and uneasiness from dropping on us like bombs. And nobody told you to practice on your poor pictorial memory before meeting ten different guys that looked the same after thirty minutes. So you came handy to develop particular monikers based on what they do that you self-sabotagingly mentioned it out loud to their very ears and to see them cringed just because you thought it was so damn funny, you forgot and kept jumbling their names.

You had your lukewarm not-going-anywhere with banking guy which was too cute to be true, plastic guy or better known as the guy who ditched you for the hotter hostess, car seat guy who emphasized that he was in distributing, not manufacturing and he was quite jolly and carefree, Singlish guy who spoke like a true salesman with broken accent, few indistinguishable guys who just wanted to leave your table ASAP, then of course the Church guy whose first question you answered made it clear that one of you wasn’t going to any church nor having any future together.

You had your tragironic moments with intellectual guys who thought you were having a good time like they were: snack guy, a local snack distributor who happened to be an educator and the only guy who quoted Soekarno to make his statement about education and liberation and to impress a girl, only turned out to be a total self-centric dude in the room who regaling yourself with his wine only requesting it back after a sip; and the learning program guy who actually very nice but sought after for any business opportunity with you (which you were partly to blame since you came up with the company profile presentation-like approach in the first place after you did not know what else to tell).

After the long ride of short stilted minutes, we had to tick on our score card who we wanted to get to know further and their contacts for the host to quickly match us up while we were “freed” to join the looser session for longer conversation with whom we were interested. Yet we pretty much looked like lost cattle nipping and munching all the delicate snacks (since the last drop of wine drained out by the guys even before the session started), rolling over our eyes, fidgeting our feet trying to get into circular forms of some girls and some boys relating their unavoidable six-degrees of separation linked back to their hosts’ small social networks from which this love-business getting its participants and flimsy trust on their claims that they proposed participants that were credible because they knew them.

The latter so-called benefit could actually be quite a deficit when you realized the hosts’ tight social circles were inclining to almost stereotyping. The gents like the ladies could have been simply your typical high school friends but with better haircut. They came mostly from the same mold of some rich Chinese Christian entrepreneur families, graduated from US or Canada and now either working with big companies, having their own business or helping their parents’ since the local minimum salary rate could neither afford their degrees nor lifestyles. You might not want to complain about that since those actually translate to old firm establishment and all a Cinderella can ask for a safe bet. Still it was challenging to fend off the plausibility of dating one of the children of corn with high maintenance and certain narrow-mindedness and the slim chances of them accepting you and your vague religious stance and class struggle mumbo jumbos.

Yet you had fro-yo guy who interestingly left his corporate job for joining the line of frozen yogurt franchise gold diggers and made it seemed so easy to have jocular conversation with him. He was the only guy who you could free to laugh about and with. He was so familiar (and probably because he was once one of your friend’s best friend at junior high) and an Office geek that it bemused you to see him nonchalantly complaining why every women wanted men to be like Jim when he saw Jim Halpert wallpaper on your BB. You probably hooked him with your adventurous (if not jurassic) trip to Komodo and you're always wanting to be a journalist and cinephile. Just like you, he probably looked for somebody different from the rest. And just like you, he might find himself disappointed in the end.

You met him again on his unexpected invitation out of the blue to his fro-yo booth, only to be perplexed than certain since he seemed busy with his work as food scientist/businessman promoting his baby masterpiece of endless variants of toppings and self-made tutti frutti exotic yogurt recipes and apparently the next hippest place for any reality TV set with one of them having a shooting session at the time. Then he got distant as his friend visited and he caught up twittering about the event. This made you reluctantly referred to this guy in Oprah saying if man likes a woman, he always has a plan laid. What was his plan? You could not decipher. He even canceled his plan to take you to a movie.

Did he already take the conclusion? How to rejuvenate and perpetuate this? Does it worth a try? Simply to talk with him again, to contradict the unreal and isolate the atom of his real solid self, collect it like a scientist should for further discernment yet appreciate it freely like an artist would. To face the fear and clumsiness like a simple-minded girl could. Alas, the ideal world of independent woman can be so drifted apart from the sorry state you are in. How that promise of a better future with him just intoxicates you into futile day dreaming then early regrets of how you will never meet him again because you just don’t have neither the guts nor active mind of a spell binder and war strategist combined to approach him. Instead of calling him to join for some coffee or movie or saying all those pickup lines that seem so easy and carefree to spill out in the movies; you ended up abandoning your tedious works for a while only for jotting your gut out on paper in some coffee shop.

Phoenix: Rose from the Mess to the Masses

Rock stars and common people are two sides of the world defining each other through the creation of otherworldly distance that at certain stratospheric level of stardom is like believing inherently natural for Michael Jackson to moonwalk his way to the toilet. How we know them, consume their music in form of personalized media bubble packages of YouTube videos or iTunes downloads in our private minds and their disillusioned twitter accounts build its own copy of reality of the embodiment of the artists. A twisted simulacra of getting used to enjoying them acting as a band in a video or hearing over the radio that sometimes it feels more intimate and real than actually seeing them live ten metres away with horn blowing high-pitched decibels ripping your hair off. To somewhat frame the sentiment grandiosely we can refer to what Umberto Eco said of Disneyland, “ We not only enjoy a perfect imitation, we also enjoy the conviction that imitation has reached its apex and afterwards reality will be inferior to it.” ("The City of Robots" Travels in Hyperreality). That is pretty much what swimming in my head when I compare armchair travelling to backpacking and when I went to Phoenix’s concert few months ago without any pre-emptive action to deal with my subconscious uneasiness of detachment and ignorance toward the band for the past 3 years especially their latest album because basically the girls just wanted to have some fun and take whatever the night was offering after rough week of selling bourgeois bohemian products to the Bobos picking up pieces from the recent economic collapse. I was just hanging on the bittersweet whim of my past addiction back in college, toward playing their earlier hits banging my eardrums and half-witted brain at 3 AM, helping me to survive from quoting and overanalyzing Baudrillard for my final thesis. Even Googling first over the who’s who in your Blackberry had been passed as intrusive if not unthinkable (to my defense), and my sole knowledge that the vocalist is having relationship with Sophia Coppola was sufficient for me not to be obsessively remembering what he actually looked like (which became quite a hassle later that night). As Phoenix rose from the ashes of its old-self, they and people watching became a whole different reality for me that night.

Talking about people who came to watch, it revealed to me through an unexpected juxtaposition that I played undermined role of a postman delivering certain strangers’ happiness since I was the one who kept my friend’s and his friend’s friends’ tickets jumbled in my shoulder bag with mine. The plan was I gave them the tickets over quick dinner and dashed off to regroup with my slightly more groupie girlfriends who already at the scene and whose extended knowledge on pop culture and recent Phoenix news would be my guidance post from getting lost in musical limbo. Yet unaccustomed by pre-concert backstage stalking activity, I was pretty flabbergasted under my calm exterior to know from an insider that the band was having dinner at the same place (which considered one of the hippest and classiest restaurant in town - citation needed) I was going to bringing in the tickets. So tracing back to New York caste system in the years of The Age of Innocence or even in today’s Gossip Girls, I was this Brooklyn girl strutting her way and tumbling charm to an Upper East Side dinner only to act like a less composed die hard fan in front of well-reserved strangers, exploiting my beginner’s luck to have a picture with a group of white guys we assumed as the band. After laps of total self-deprecated action and an awkward hi to my ex boss who actually owned the place, sponsored the concert, and probably witnessed my downfall from grace, I was made to believe that I just took the picture with the friendly band mates without its lead man who was acting as the loner guy from Mars, sitting lazily at the table. But without me knowing, this Thomas Mars stood up all of sudden in time for picture and down again to enjoy his tea by the time I thanked the standing members. That’s how the invisible voice accompanied me all these years disengaged with the visible remoteness of an alien showing at the backdrop of a picture. I am that typical girl you meet for the first encounter that says ‘I’m sorry” too many times for no particular reason that usually preceded by heavy courtesy and lingering timidity or even carelessness and childishness of wanting to runaway from any trouble and inconvenience possibly caused during my motor mouth moment or my simply nonchalant behaviour which I exhibited quite frankly at about having picture with Mr. Mars twice in one night, this second time totally an accidental sabotage over my friend’s chance as the band passed through us on their way huddled to the private lounge at the after party. We were just these two girls waiting for our drinks to come when my girlfriend shocked the three of us and proximity itself that the guy she was waiting all night actually coming closely to her direction and the only thing that attracted the other groupie for a signal of celebrity nearby was our utterly amateurish silent panic. He kindly refused to take picture but finding that quite snobbish and pitied over our stubbornness, he relented in the split second only weirdly enough I got to be taken with first as she was holding the camera and I was right beside him. As every twist of the story takes place before we know it, the bouncer already saved him up from the gathering crowd because an insistent girl thrown herself and took my friend’s slot. His final denouement was a feeble and helpless protest yet considerate and humble to our ears, “She was first…”.

This elaborated commotion earlier pretty much making me missing the opening act of rustic Naif and starting in the middle of the S.I.G.I.T (Super Insurgent Group of Intemperance Talent) who apparently had the talent to go live as insanely rocking as it is recorded and burning the night in high anticipation with their scrawny look of long-haired late 70s rock band screaming long riffs of rollercoaster ride in a forgotten rock land. Yet the young night turned an unexpected downslide as their somehow ironic remark onstage of not knowing what Garuda called in English (screaming out loud, “It’s Phoenix...Hello?!” against thousands of euphoric audience apparently a futile action) and the anti-climax performance from Rock ’n Roll Mafia who had the hard time that night and years to come to live up to their name if they kept their inappropriate resilience to play electronic gung-ho with robotic spirit of New Order era.

Almost thirty minutes of complete flat lining boredom trying to toss away giant bouncing flattening balloon across the room while the other hand wearily holding the empty glass of overpriced beer with medleys of getting to know your new friends and catching up with some old friends later, the main attraction resuscitated us from a near death experience by revisiting the haunted spirit of Franz Liszt himself in his 18th century glories as the pioneer of mass hysteria catalyst and early fascination inducer on artist as celebrity and live performance, through the beautiful chaos of speedy "Lisztomania". The crowd turning to heated pack of sardines jumping and galloping rhythmically through its every jive. It reverberated “from the mess to the masses.” indeed. With an encore too sweet to last, our crazed hunger over this addictive electrifying rush to the brain seemed inauspiciously unquenchable through their nonstop detour to Wolfgang Amadeus and some classics. We floated through "Love is Like a Sunset", raved over "Funky Square Dance" and the susceptible crowd weathered by nostalgic hearts already beat according to the stormy vibration of "Run", it was running from the core of the gig.

To come to think of how these French alt rock philosophers not only have supported me pulling through my sanity from another French postmodern philosopher but also now through the darkest hours of capitalistic doom adulthood only seems to offer; and seeing them with beatific expression toward us built brief solidarity and mitigating shield in the menacing crowd of self-interested strangers starving for good music to go along with their cigarette breaks and autistic-stomping on other people’s feet-jitterbug. As for my friend, no worries, she managed to make her Cinderella story as she stalked Mr. Mars on his way back to the hotel as midnight struck and get all the pictures she wanted to have with the rest of the rock band who mingled with the commons without that otherworldly distance.

Garuda di Dadaku

Many times we try to defy the loss of innocence and the deformation of our childhood dreams or so called happiness from embodying that mundane greedy soulless molds of adult Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once warned us about in "Little Prince". During the course of our lives to adulthood we caught up in taking for granted small moments whose implications and upon which decisions we made yet were not fully comprehend at the time, afflicted with the kind of cool grownup we'd imagined as a child. We are compromised in so many level. We learn that we easily stranded in that catch of responsibilities, work ethic, money versus love, dreams, happiness etc. And we blamed on what we watch and read and listen or in that matter lack of, during our childhood.

By all means history repeats by itself, we now try to protect what's left of innocence of our children and their magnanimous beliefs for their dreams from the scaring world. Now that the end of school holiday morphing into a cultural rite of passage for family bonding, parents taking on leave vacation to start paying attention on what their kids have been watching and should have been all year and tweens gleefully streaming the malls for shopping spree or being autistic, gathering like a flock to tweet or update their FB status from their crayoned colored BBs and even old fashionably strapping themselves in front of the magic black box all day building reality over drama queen reality shows and sensational infotainments. I was the product of latter imbalanced media fetishism for violence and romance without much space for children's movies, and not to mention my parents lack of inhibition on media filtering and big sister's raging hormones mostly can be held responsible for taking me out to watch Pretty Woman and Ghost as my first family movies. Of course after that I redeemed it with series of Macalauy Culkin's tutti frutti flicks like Home Alone and My Girl among my most favorites and tried to wash away what Demi Moore and Patrick Sawyze doing during pot molding with monstrous dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. None of local children's film I could relate or even remember being made in my generation as the industry went hiatus in the 90s. I was too old by the time Petualangan Sherina came out and it took almost another decade for the same producer to release Laskar Pelangi. And in interval only few films actually showed decent encouraging and edifying story line unspoiled by Ratapan Anak Tiri plot or some money churning vehicle to exploit some child stars.

So it was no wonder that recently that itch, that gap in our development as an adult and the missing link of our childhood entertainment can be temporarily reconciled in Goelali Children's Film Festival and this holiday season's Garuda di Dadaku and King showing hopeful trend to revive the genre.

Despite my misfortune to only manage to watch a very disturbing commodified Bollywood cartoon of The Return of Hanuman (Hanuman is the show off Indian Superman whose songs can be your next RBT if you just follow the one liner ad at the panorama) in the festival and starting to doubt the curatorship and sparse agendas, Goelali is becoming a very omnipotent platform for kids to get various alternative channels to the great invention called movies from around the globe.

And after watching Garuda di Dadaku, we have the sense of urgency to be belittled of having an excuse to giving up our dreams and at the same time enjoy the cathartic quality these kids emitting through their carefree performances in the desert of acting world dominated by dramatic bulging eyes and tremendous fake extravagance. Bayu, the cute talented hero is ambitiously idealistic to becoming the best football player. With his mushroom hair, sun baked face, skinny dirty legs and genuine humble smile, he represents some groundings in imaging Indonesian kids on screen. His sense of realism mostly throttled by his single parent working mom and his overbearing grandfather that equalizes success with anything but being an athlete and specifically prohibits him from playing football due to traumatized by his failed football player son. Like most kids these days, he gets shepherded around from one intensive course to another that left fun nor talent nor interest alignment out of the loaded standardized curriculum that about to produce children of corn. If that's not harsh enough to budge him from joining the U13 national team, his family is too poor to submit him to such luxury of Arsenal soccer school that seems to be the only way to get in the national team and in tradition of Siti Nurbaya, he is forced if not deluded to follow his grandparent high demands. But in the world of cinema, nothing's better than an excessively wealthy and challenged sidekicks for support. Heri, his best friend slash manager is a typical lonely privileged kid in a wheelchair that can buy his dreams for others but not really have it. In this case, he is the philanthropist for his friends' education. Together they roam secretly through the jam packed Jakarta for a field to practice for the selection that not yet turned into urban landscapes of malls and fancy apartments only to find the right place is an abandoned cemetery plot running by Zahra, an odd artsy girl with umbrella entering the scene with one of most thrilling action in the movie. Like a prequel to the Breakfast Club, these three find their way to become the jock, the manager, and the artist.

Directed by Ifa Afansyah to bring up the comical struggles yet easily underdeveloped and lack of depth due to digging what's left from bubble gum script writing by Salman Aristo; Bayu is striving for his dream against the failing grades, the typical competition with bullying kids and adult authorities that try to shape him respectively with common shortcomings like the loving yet poor parent (Maudy Kusnaidi), the rich yet busy parent, one joker driver that is more of a parent than the real ones (Ramzi), the perfect clean coach (Ari Sihasale), and lousy authorizing grandparent (Ikrarnegara) from the world of New Order who claims to know what best for his family and uses all his pension money from his past career in national oil company for his grandson's art course instead of saving for college, and finally a dramatic heart attack (which scared shitless of a kid asking her mom, is he dead?).

Meanwhile, it is a false start to think of Garuda as more trying to jack up the diminishing prestige of our sports world and patriotism less than an ironic background which works better in Iran because of its uber restrictive policy in film making that makes innocent children's film flourishes. The catchy theme song "Garuda di Dadaku" by alternative band Netral really boosted that disjointing sense of pride and sportsmanship against the unparalleled world of our real catastrophic hooliganistic national football not to mention the scattered patriotism that only arouse when outside threats coming to out borders. It is merely using football as an effective mean to an end of fighting for your dreams no matter impossible it is.

And it is not the first time Ifa playing the wild card of childhood dream and football craze, something that most Indonesian can relate to. His previous short film about how Acehnese boy copes with the trauma of tsunami through his fascination for the World Cup staples his ability to extract what producer Shanty Hermayn reflects as the impressive side of each character and less compromised by glaring product placements and Hollywood like narrative in Garuda. Yet common slapsticks trap in Indonesian comedy by overwhelmingly exploiting the lovable Bang Dulleh, Heri's driver actually glues up with these trio precocious idiosyncratic kids sparks a dynamo to keep the movie running against the dragging scenes with over dramatic grand dad and anticlimax scenes of the football match.

Still, with his wide innocent smile and signature banana curve ball goaled through a window bus we revisited our childhood dreams.

SOL PROJECT - 28 May 2009 BBJ

I was unexpectedly pulled out of my corporate slave daily routine that Thursday night. Coming late to the show after charming dinner with coworkers who happened to be a nice-yet-they-don't-realize couple, made one left drained and exhausted by the vicarious happiness yet to be materialized and the thought of that desperate hope which led to abiding loneliness; one started to feel if the whole idea of coming to such a free crowded live performance of fusion music (like life is not complicated enough) two hours from home at past eight PM was still a good idea. Yet paradoxically this corruptive mood can bolster me further to embrace my true nature of an escapist on any given chance, not only makes me perceived as the affirmative buddy who always says yes to any invitation, I could easily beam the contrite smile of being late and grateful to finally come.

As I jumped out of the cab, the heat and the rhythm of funk jazz building on the vibrating walls of audience spilled over Bentara Budaya Jakarta's narrow opening ground swapped into intimate music carnival, I regretfully missed half of the attractions and grateful for the half full cup of surprises heading towards me. I was moving into the transfixed crowd cheering supportively of what it seemed an elegant Balinese lady dancer unmoved on her solid twisted pose getting ready to groove along the manga-like background of lead singer in glittering mini kimono, brass players in batik, kendang beater which without the instrument some might consider the guy in stripped red-white shirt and heavy mustache as a street mobster/satay seller/Wally in where's Wally, a drummer with Balinese black and white checkered drum sets; and to surmise all the oddity of the night's juxtaposition, the mighty punk with spiky hair, boots, and truck driver sleeveless shirt playing the melody on less tuggish keyboard: TAFKAR (The Artist Formally Known as Rudy Octave) as the band leader and provocateur of Sol Project. Not to mention featuring artists and definite ingredient of the fast tempo of Latino beat in a jukebox:the duo Colombian, sizzling singer Wilson Novoa and Faiser Forez on never ending percussion.

Visually speaking, the scene of this mini Taman Mini Indonesia Indah just might intimidate me into third world Alice in Wonderland situation where my working outfit and ten pound bag of laptop and capitalist burden easily out of context with the rest of casual, beatnik audience, and dreamlike ethnic performers (and have I mentioned I was invited by a reggae fanatic who always wears apparels with green yellow red stripes and Marley himself on the chest of his T-shirt for this occasion?); yet surrealism behold, everyone felt belong to this chaotic costume party, danced along with the cross dressing music and became the literal melting pot. The banner suddenly sang the loudest, something to do with mutating Indonesian ethnic music with Latino groove in contemporary world. That would make the main courses swarmed with the resurrection of traditional songs and national heritages as well as Bali Dancers swirling around on already packed stage, Borneo Picollo jamming, sinden serenading in Javanese with drowning rock ambiance, a Colombian doing some rap and covering "Rocker Juga Manusia" in Samba, and North Sulawesi pop cult "Poco-Poco" served with hot Salsa.

At the near end of the show, last Balinese dancer showed up, a young girl incessantly being beautiful with many facets of extreme expressions and in matter of seconds from being total dead serious when she stared at us, smiling eerily as she shied away; one might get the feeling of overdone tour de force of circling the mosaic world in less than two hours and consuming all the mindboggling Indonesian ethnic music mixtures could offer in this fast track package. Yet some also craved for some more and better than what easily trapped as generic production of funky ethnic jazz performance that sometimes all the varieties on stage can be slightly kitschy after a while, you could have believed a troop of oompa loompas rolling on stage.

Two Lovers

Based loosely from Dostoevsky's "White Nights" yet probably will be more memorable as Joaquin Phoenix's last curtain call and the premature more of omnipotent actor of our generation; Two Lovers is the bittersweet entanglement between confused emotions of what contemporary culture defines as modern love story. Sadly, we are given evidence of his metamorphosis into a hip hop artist through the heartbroken character of Leonard, the Russian lit-morose and suicidal lover archetype who tactfully and blissfully throws a few raps, slapsticks and later on some slick dancing moves among other sweet painful rendering of devotion to win the heart of this tantalizing blond, Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow as the M.I.L.F of our generation in real life) who prefers rejecting and using him for her obsessive affair with a married hotshot lawyer. The other lover, Sandra, not less tantalizing yet not so tucked up as Leonard and Michelle (this similarity makes him falling more into Michelle as Sandra into him paradoxically), is the daughter of the respective Cohen clan who about to absorb Leonard's parents' dry cleaning business into their chain and his life into the safety net of Russian Jewish middle class. Along the action of en tangling and distancing between these two love interests, Phoenix shows the hopelessness and inner fragility of a mad crush over an impossible love that paralyzes him in the wicked subtleties people around him have to afford the consequences just to make him happy. Paltrow plays crucial axis in turning the mood of the characters around her. Michelle is manipulatively powerful over Leonard without her really admitting it as she is focusing attending her own wound through one of the best shots conjured of the window scene when Leonard helpless voyeuring and talking to Michelle across the building. Even with standard dialogues and romantic catch phrases in the world of media exploited amour such as, "I want to take care of you" and the very magnum opus cliche of "I love you", you find them some sense of truism in this mundane landscape and come out of their mouths without regret, reverberate honesty and desperation to have, to love, and be loved you have not find in a while on screen. Without a strong casting and directing, the somber winter of Brighton, New York will not help much in saving the plot from becoming another soap opera subplot episode 210. As most love triangles end up in terrible tragedy, James Gray as director/cowriter/anything in between learns from his meticulous study on cinema history (the guy is believed to know the name of every director in every movie ever made), manages to make a graceful dance to come up with the beautiful notion of human redemption and practicality of love, most people end up vicariously relate with Leonard, the poor guy not so lucky in love.

when will it stop?