Sepet

I went to see Sepet last week at the request of Mrs. Klite. For those of you who don’t know what it is, the word “Sepet” is taken to mean slant eye, referring generally to the Chinese. It is a sort of west side story or Romeo and Juliet. The story of love between two people from different backgrounds( Malay girl and Chinese boy ). It’s an idea that has been covered countless times throughout the world. Now people maybe wondering why I would watch a movie where the main language spoken is not English. But then for most of my movie going life I have watched movies from around the world where English is not the spoken language, in fact there are many people who do this. Most of the time they do have English subtitles, where they don’t you can rely on the emotions and body language portrayed. There appears to be a bit of lull in the standard of Malay movies and I’m told that the movies were better quality back about 30 years plus. Now my Malay and Cantonese are poor and the English subtitles was not that great, but I found the movie easy enough to follow and judging by the laughing in the cinema its funny. I went with the preconceived idea that it might be a bit conservative and stuffy. I found the overall movie refreshing modern, although a little spoilt by the silly censored scenes. There were plenty of parts that some people might find offensive such as the word put down on the scrabble board by the father. If you don’t know what the word means just type it into google. At times it didn’t quite flow properly and then it would catch up. It deals with a lot of misconceptions that goes on between the Malay and Chinese of Malaysia and does at one scene point out that things were a lot easier several hundred years ago compared to todays unnecessary and pointless complexities. My most memorable part of the film which I think Mrs. Klite will be reminding me of in years to comes was:

Husband: “I will never understand you women, even if I live to be a hundred”
Wife: “Darling your job is to love us, not understand us!”

I have found that a majority of the Hollywood movies of late are not that entertaining, memorable and are even lackluster, yet I find Sepet good enough to remember it a week later.
If you want some giggles then go see.

Music of the moment : Beck – Golden Age

Dave Allen

By now most of you would have heard that the comedian Dave Allen died last Thursday. I considered him to be an excellent comedian even though I had only grown up with his later work. His shows used to be few and far between with his barstool, cigarette and whisky style of presentation. His material was often wrapped around religion reflecting his contact with the church in his upbringing. He also introduced the ups and downs of life dealing with teenage children and getting old. A man sadly missed.

Music of the moment : Beatles – Yesterday