Shelly Kraicer

This i did, outside of KL. And it was delightful 😄

Farmyard in Pontoise

Farmyard in Pontoise
https://botfrens.com/collections/49/contents/15556

Juan-les-Pins - 1888
https://botfrens.com/collections/41/contents/10314

Introducing: Quantum 101 with Katie Mack YouTube video by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

Strong recommend if you are interested in cosmology. The videos are succinct – most around 6 minutes long – and the explanations are satisfying. Same goes for the "Quantum 101" videos.

Vase of Flowers, Tulips and Garnets

Vase of Flowers, Tulips and Garnets
https://botfrens.com/collections/49/contents/16938

"Torontoplex, run by Don Marks, the unsung hero of Toronto cinephilia who has been quietly organizing screening information on a daily basis for over twenty years."
I often get vital info from Don via @torontoplex.bsky.social Also a super chill guy to bump into at screenings :)

Avenue de l'Opera, Place du Theatre Francais. Misty

Avenue de l'Opera, Place du Theatre Francais. Misty
https://botfrens.com/collections/49/contents/16829

We are indeed in a Learian time. I had thought, back when I studied the play, that it painted a bleaker, darker, harsher world than we could ever see in our own time. I was wrong.

At the heart of the book, for me, is a lesson, an encouragement for how to think analogically: how works of art can have political meanings, can speak politically and historically (as well as in other ways). It's an inspiration for my own writing, I hope.

book cover: The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear, by Nan Z. Da

I can't recommend more strongly Nan Z. Da's THE CHINESE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR. Da writes with power & eloquence about how thinking about Maoist China's history informs Shakespeare's play, and thinking about Lear can enrich our understanding of that history. ...1/

press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

2/ Shore inspired us to think more expansively and incisively about time/history, about where we are situated temporally (relatively) and epistemologically and morally (in absolute terms) as a pathway to imagining a positive, vibrant, necessary future for Ukraine.

Professor Marci Shore @ the Munk School, Toronto, this evening: Four Years into Full-Scale War: The Gap between Past and Future. @marcishore.bsky.social is an amazing communicator: plain-spoken and eloquent, absolutely precise when necessary (phenomenology! Husserl!), ... 1/

“Lear’s characters never see the horrible thing coming because they’re always reacting to being newly deprived or somehow in trouble. It all happens so quickly, and the effects are felt so slowly. It’s stupidly slow, blindingly fast.”

Reading Nan Z. Da’s overwhelmingly wise and eloquent 2025 bookTHE CHINESE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR, I keep finding horrible, awful resonances with now. How we can’t see “the horrible thing coming” at us, “stupidly slow, blindingly fast”.

2/ ... into a searching, deeply humane essay on how remarkable (or un-remarkable, when you think deeply and know the histories) Islam in China was, and is. Thum opens entire research fields, and helps us better to understand the predicaments of Uyghurs, Kazhaks, and Hui (& others) in China today.

Islamic China — Harvard University Press A deeply learned reassessment of the history of Chinese Muslims, who since the fourteenth century have been subject to a constant program of minoritization.For more than a millennium, Islam has been a...

Finished reading Rian Thum's fascinating ISLAMIC CHINA: AN ASIAN HISTORY. Thum manages to transmute a detailed bibliographical essay on Islamic texts by Chinese writers (fluent variously in Persian, Arabic, and classical Chinese) ... 1/ . @rianthum.bsky.social
www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

2/ ... which vibrates –– in her own and in the translators' English –– with layers of ironic, variously distanced voices (the collection includes works Chang wrote in Chinese and in English). Some masterpieces, a few duds (the essays): everything is fascinating to read, though.

Eileen Chang Time Tunnel (cover) trans Karen Kingsbury & Jie Zhang

Finished reading the "new" Eileen Chang TIME TUNNEL (2025), translated by Karen Kingsbury & Jie Zhang. The translations of the Chinese texts are fine, and catch some of Chang's wry, Möbius-strip-like doubly/triply enfolded prose, ... 1/

3/ There's a harsh critique of HK oligarchy's financial plunder; a dreamy glitzy recreation of TST East's tacky splendour, and a fighting spirit that seems both nostalgic and urgent. There's even more here (despite the film's regressive gender politics) to dig out: worth a second look.

2/ But NIGHT KING also confronts HK's condition -- loss, disappearance, and mourning -- with vigorous libidinous energy, and the relentless financially optimistic energy that once super-energized this doubly colonized city.

NIGHT KING 夜王 d. Jack Ng, is a HK comedy with a lot on its mind. It needs to be funny fast-paced family fare, as a 賀歲片/ New Year‘s film (and a follow up to Ng's 2023 hit A GUILTY CONSCIENCE). So there's verbal comedy, adult romance, and a screwball borderline incomprehensible money-making scheme. 1/

A review of Blades of the Guardians (2026) I wasn't sure I would ever see a new "real" wuxia film again. But Yuen Woo-ping can still do it. Its action choreography doesn't rely too heavily on post-production effects: there's an impression that...

Brief first review. More later. boxd.it/dboJnF

Blades of the Guardians (2026) Dao Ma, the "second most wanted fugitive," is entrusted by his benefactor, the chief of Mo family clan, to take on a mysterious escort mission-escorting the "most wanted fugitive" to Chang'an.

Pleased to report that master Yuen Woo-ping's New Years film BLADES OF THE GUARDIANS (镖人：风起大漠) is actually not bad. Better than that: it demonstrates that it's still possible to make a real wuxia film (without excessive, destructive CGI & AI intervention), in 2026. letterboxd.com/film/blades-...

So i’ve learned that Ren Suxi is not just a fine actress, but a decent singer. Filmmakers, give her more roles, please.

Faye Wong 王菲 resplendent.

3/ ... and she has an intriguing (though limited) cinematic persona in a few films, especially CHUNGKING EXPRESS 重慶森林 1994. Tonight, Wong's voice (she's 56) seems slightly strained, pushed a bit hard, but it still packs an enormous nostalgic wallop. The CGI graphics are something else, though.

2/ I was alerted to Faye Wong's segment by basically everyone in my Wechat feed, who all posted it with alacrity. She's probably the cultural figure that almost everyone I know (and don't know) in China adores. Her beautifully expressive, flexible pop singing voice is instantly identifiable, ...

回看：【4K】中央广播电视总台2026年春节联欢晚会 The 2026 CMG Spring Festival Gala YouTube video by CCTV春晚

Here's a Youtube link to the massive annual CCTV Chinese New Year Gala 春节联欢晚会, for those who celebrate. If you don't need to watch the entire 5h53min music, skits, and national unity, you can cheat and skip directly to Faye Wong, at 3h 20min.
www.youtube.com/live/dKC5XWD...

5/ But the necessary condition for this kind of rigid, unchanging "beauty" is a perfectly regulated and self-regenerating patriarchy. We see it stumble, in the film, and then right itself. Just like Japan has done, in the brutally nostalgic imaginations of Takaichi's legions of voters.

4/ The film does offer beauty, in the sets, colours, some of the rigidly unfolding graphic architecture of Lee's wide shots. It's a fascinatingly uncomfortable beauty, that even has a rhapsodic, snow-flecked moment at the end. Reaction does offer palpable pleasures: the seductiveness of past glory.

3/ Similarly, KOKUHO fetishizes patriarchy (to the extend that it virtually obliterates its female actresses, all stoic and loving, or limited to one impotent outburst) and lets the men be the most beautiful "women", as well as the most brutal men.