So, the Manila city council has passed a resolution banning “The Da Vinci Code” in all cinemas in the city because the movie “is undoubtedly offensive and contrary to established religious beliefs which cannot take precedence over the right of the persons involved in the film to freedom of expression.” In a phone interview with… Read More »
I was reading American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and it suddenly dawned on me that the choice of Christian Bale as Batman in Batman Begins was, to put it in Ellis’ term, “premeditated”. In the chapter titled “Nell’s” (page 206, Vintage Contemporaries, paperback), there is a paragraph that goes: “Daisy! And Patrick, you devil!”… Read More »
Published by Creative O Pte Ltd, Chaotic Thoughts From the Old Millennium reads very much like an ego trip by the Creative Technology founder. Worse, fillers suspiciously ran the course in this book. Although the author tried to justify the liberal dose of amateurish babble disingenuously passed off as Philosophies & Theories (“Marriage Is Like… Read More »
To Catch a Tartar: A Dissident in Lee Kuan Yew’s Prisonis an excellent study of the conceit and deceit of a man many Singaporeans thought they knew. The author, Francis Seow, is a former solicitor general and president of the Law Society in Singapore. This is his first-hand account of how he has suffered under… Read More »
The World’s Most Infamous Killers is a collection of more than 150 tales of the most prolific and shocking murderers to have made the world’s headlines over the years is not a treatise on the psychology of serial killers. As noted on the introduction page, the book “does not discuss how to build up a… Read More »
Written by Nguyen Du (1765-1820), The Tale of Kieu: Truyen Kieu (Vietnamese Edition) (The Tale of Kieu) was produced during the social and political upheavals of the 19th century, and is now a cornerstone of Vietnamese literature. In Vietnam, Truyen Kieu has attained almost a Shakespearean status: according to news reports, children study it in… Read More »