My favourite things (cont.)

For Part I [number 10 to 6] please click here.


Number 5//  In The Mood For Love – film – Wong Kar Wai

In The Mood For Love is a 2000 Hong Kong film directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. The film takes place in Hong Kong, 1962. Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung), a journalist, rents a room in an apartment of a building on the same day as So Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung), a secretary from a shipping company. They become next-door neighbors. Each has a spouse who works and often leaves them alone on overtime shifts. Despite the presence of a friendly Shanghainese landlady, Mrs. Suen, and bustling, mahjong-playing neighbours, Chow and So often find themselves alone in their rooms. Their lives continue to intersect in everyday situations: a recurring motif in this film is the loneliness of eating alone, and the film documents the leads' chance encounters, each making their individual trek to the street noodle stall.

Chow and So each nurse suspicions about their own spouse's fidelity; each comes to the conclusion that their spouses have been seeing each other. So wonders aloud how their spouse's affair might have began, and together, So and Chow re-enact what they imagine might have happened. (source: wiki)

...And the soundtrack by Shigeru Umebayashi is absolutely exceptional! 

Number 4//  Norwegian Wood – novel – Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood is a 1987 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The novel is a nostalgic story of loss and sexuality. The story's protagonist and narrator is Toru Watanabe, who looks back on his days as a freshman university student living in Tokyo. Through Toru's reminiscences we see him develop relationships with two very different women — the beautiful yet emotionally troubled Naoko, and the outgoing, lively Midori. (source: wiki)

The movie was directed by the very talented Vietnamese director: Tran Anh Hung :)

Number 3// The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – film – Julian Schnabel 


The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French: Le scaphandre et le papillon) is a 2007 French/American biopic/drama film based on the memoir of the same name by Jean-Dominique Bauby. The film depicts Bauby's life after suffering a massive stroke, on 8 December 1995, at the age of 42, which left him with a condition known as locked-in syndrome. The condition paralyzed him from the neck down. Although both eyes worked, doctors decided to sew up his right eye as it is not irrigating properly and they were worried that it would become infected. He was left with only his left eye and the only way that he could communicate was by blinking his left eyelid. The film was directed by Julian Schnabel, written by Ronald Harwood, and stars Mathieu Amalric as Bauby. (source: wiki)

Number 2// Comforting Sounds - song - Mew 


This sentence should sum up how much I love this song: It is the most peaceful epic 9 minutes of my life. 

Number 1// South of the Border West of the Sun - novel – Haruki Murakami (for my opinion on ‘South of the Border West of the Sun’, please click here)


AND A BIG FAT NUMBER 0// Thunder Road - song - Bruce Springsteen


When life disappoints me and I fall into pieces, this song picks every single one of those pieces up, dusts them, puts them together (although not necessarily in the right order), pats the new me on my back, and says: 'It's gonna be alright!'. 


Thunder Road reminds me of one of those happiest moments - sitting in the Emirates Stadium with my dearest friend Pui-Ching (who is, by the way, an epic singer/songwriter), listening to Springsteen, singing at the top of our lungs with tens of thousands of other fans, and couldn't care less about the world. Oh how I miss being so carefree..


I still remember the date. It was 30 May 2008. 

H.N.