They're still in my head.

You may recall last December I posted an entry about how I severely bullied several of my classmates at school. I wrote that to try to exorcise some of my longest-buried demons, and I thought it would work. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, it didn't. I've still reflected on those memories just as repeatedly and painfully ever since.

I know what the most obvious way of banishing them would be - discussing them verbally - but I simply don't want to do that, at least not publicly. I can't help but fear that would only draw more attention to them, even if I definitely deserve punishment for them. It could also re-open the wounds for the other parties, if they indeed still have them. I'm now on good terms with those people, and I obviously want that to continue.

They have since forgiven me for what I did and said to them, but nonetheless I really struggle to forgive myself for all of that, particularly how I treated one of them. Actually, I don't know if I ever will truly forgive myself. I imagine you might be thinking if they could let it all go, so should I, but I can only wish it were that easy, even after 16-odd years.

I'm legitimately fighting tears back as I sit here writing this entry. Not simply for my former classmates (and friends), but because I've remembered how hypocritically I treated them. They hadn't bullied me, but loads of other kids had beforehand and it was horrific. But rather than drone on and become even more manipulative, let me close here on a perhaps optimistic note: I think this entry may actually be more cathartic and helpful for me now than the December one.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #157: Ong-Bak 2: The Beginning (2008).

In this prequel to the sensational 2004 Muay Thai martial arts romp Ong-Bak, Tony Jaa is Tien, the son of the murdered Lord Sihadecho (Santisuk Promsiri). With his mother, Lady Plai (Patthama Panthong) also among the dead, young Tien now finds a mentor in Chernang (Sorapong Chatree), who trains him into a warrior. When he is fully grown, Tien must now avenge his parents' murders and save his village from hordes of invading neighbours.

That really is all the plot you'll find here, which is the main reason why Ong-Bak 2 isn't half as good as the first. Jaa's athleticism remains breathtaking and the fight scenes are very well-choreographed, but there's just no thematic heft or originality here. The original was such rollicking fun because it had a real narrative urgency powering the action; the bulk of this one is just fighting and with a barrage of martial arts movie cliches.

The original's director Prachya Pinkaew had a very public falling out with Jaa, leaving him to direct this one with Panna Rittikrai, and that might explain the decreased quality. But as well as that and the narrative shortcomings, I think too many stunts have been digitally stylised (and yes, Jaa at one point does a flip-kick in slow motion); there's just something so much more authentic when you can see exactly as it was filmed, like in the original. However, the final fight with Tien and the Crow Ghost (Dan Chupong) is awesome overall. Just not awesome enough to compensate for the preceding 80 minutes.

GO, GRETA!

This weekend, one protest in New York City, with 250 000 people, has caused a domino effect and inspired numerous others in some of the rest of the biggest cities on Earth. The cause: political action on climate change. Leading that protest that brought the Big Apple: 16-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg.

Opening her address to her amassed followers, Thunberg thundered: "Do you think they'll hear us? We'll make them hear us!" Given how the protests she has inspired this week have become worldwide news, we now can safely say they did just that, and her followers could also be heard shouting her name like a football chant as she made her entrance. 

But Greta Thunberg is no ordinary teenage activist. At age 11, she was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and selective mutism, and has also battled depression. She has been quoted as saying she considers her autism to be a superpower, not an illness, and that she only talks when necessary. Greta was just 8 when she first learned of climate change and even then, didn't understand why more was not being done to combat it. Before getting up on her soapbox at school about climate change, she even persuaded her mother, successful opera singer Malena Ernman, to abandon her international career due to the ecological hazards of aviation. (Greta reportedly travelled to NYC on a carbon-free yacht.)

As a fellow Aspie, and somebody concerned about the global environment, of course I can't help but salute Thunberg for what she has and is doing, but I don't think her achievements will be limited to change in just environmentalism and disability inclusion. Greta now has a worldwide platform and audience, just like Malala Yousafzai has had, to become a real inspiration for young girls (and women) everywhere, to show they can indeed command a massive following and maybe even spur our leaders into making a positive difference - or even, to become such leaders themselves. I will follow Greta Thunberg's career with great enthusiasm, support, and faith.

Source: https://theconversation.com/greta-thunbergs-voice-speaks-just-as-loud-as-her-words-122142

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #156: Lost (2004-2010).

Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 departs from Sydney, headed for Los Angeles. But somewhere over the Pacific, they encounter severe turbulence, and crash horrifically on an uncharted, deserted island. For six seasons, these 48 survivors will have to unravel mystery after mystery and relive flashback after flashback in an attempt to discover why they've ended up here, and how to finally return home.

I'd say everybody has that one TV show that marked a shift in their viewing tastes, and Lost was mine. It was the first TV drama I ever watched avidly (indeed I think I only missed it about thrice during its entire run); I was 16 when it debuted and beforehand I'd only watched comedies or animated shows as far as scripted TV goes. But within a few episodes, I was helplessly hooked. This year I revisited the entire six-season series after buying the box set and I remembered exactly why that was. Lost is television at its most ambitious, intellectual, game-changing, compact and relentlessly suspenseful.

Creators J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber and Damon Lindelof (the latter of whom became the showrunner) hatched an ingenious spin on what may otherwise have been a more dramatic Gilligan's Island and filled it with a most relatable and engaging character ensemble; my favourite is Jorge Garcia as Hugo "Hurley" Reyes. As the show progressed it admittedly became more cryptic with each season, but it delivered a masterclass in plotting throughout and that's just an admirable, if very risky, goal for TV creators and writers to set for themselves. In its first season, Lost deservedly won the 2005 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, and would ultimately win ten Emmys overall.

I think its best season was the fifth, and like most shows its quality seesawed, but make no mistake: the full box set of Lost has not one dull or uninteresting moment. Then again, it's science fiction which has long been my favourite genre, but Lost has become a mainstream cult favourite and its originality, scale and daring are indisputable. For me, it's a TV milestone and I will always be super-keen to get lost in Lost.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #155: The Drummer and the Keeper (2017).

Gabriel (Dermot Murphy) is a young drummer in a garage band in Ireland. His lifestyle and playing are spiraling out of control because he's secretly just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and he very reluctantly seeks help for this after his sister and bandmates stage an intervention. After his therapist then encourages him to become more physically active, he decides to play a soccer game at a local home for teens with disabilities. That's where he meets Christopher (Jacob McCarthy), who has Asperger's syndrome. He's the soccer team's goalkeeper and dreams of one day playing professionally; he also loves Lego and maintaining order and routine. That inevitably clashes with Gabriel's hell-raising ways, and it doesn't help that Gabriel quite openly feels ambivalent, even mocking, towards Christopher and his fellow residents. In the truest coming-of-age movie sense, though, they gradually bond and understand each other, before taking a road trip.

On paper, The Drummer and the Keeper should have slapped a beaming smile right across my face, what with my own Asperger's and my frequent love of teen/YA stories and films. But quite honestly, I found it increasingly unrealistic, unimaginative and boring. Writer-director Nick Kelly apparently has a son on the autism spectrum and also hired the advocacy group Aspire as consultants, but does that show? Not for me. It gets as many things wrong about both of these conditions as it gets right. Christopher values predictability and structure, hates being touched, talks in quite technical language and has a twitchy nervousness; those are all very common Aspie traits. But otherwise he's an utter cliche, particularly in how he focuses obsessively on toys and flagrantly disregards personal space. Now, I'm no authority on bipolar but its portrayal here also doesn't ring true for me; it's known to deliver swings between clear euphoria and deep despair. Gabriel has the occasional depressed episode but otherwise appears neutrally serious. I just could not buy any of that, and while McCarthy (who's not autistic) does a fair job of navigating Christopher's mind and heart, Murphy barely registers.

The narrative itself also deliberately invokes too many conventions, I think, and the soundtrack brings absolutely no life or poignancy to it. Regarding coming-of-age movies about mental illness, It's Kind of a Funny Story and The Perks of Being a Wallflower both run The Drummer and the Keeper over with a steamroller. It's no "keeper" for me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #154: Fog in August (2016).

In this highly underrated 2016 German film, young Yenish boy Ernst Lossa (Ivo Pietzcker) is transferred to a psychiatric hospital during World War II where he works for Dr. Werner Veithausen (Sebastian Koch). Rather than having a long stay there Ernst plans to return home soon to his father Christian (Karl Markovics), but isn't discharged because his father has just been released from a concentration camp and has no stable address. Before long, though, Ernst befriends fellow patient Nandl (Jule Hermann), and together they gradually become aware of how Dr. Veithausen plans to implement the Nazi involuntary euthanasia program in the institution. Now, they have to do something about that.

Much less epic and graphic than Schindler's List (1993) or The Pianist (2002), but more restrained and authentic than The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), Fog in August is an admirably unique and emotional entry in the Holocaust film genre. Not simply because it focuses exclusively on Aktion T4 (the postwar name for Nazi Germany's involuntary euthanasia program) as opposed to what happened in the camps and ghettos, but because director Kai Wessel and writers Robert Domes and Holger Karsten Schmidt strive to tread this very delicate territory with thoroughly lucidity, tenderness and objectivity. Wessel's direction has a very precisely controlled pacing, with no flashy angles or tracking shots and minimal music cues, and Domes' and Schmidt's screenplay sticks respectfully to the facts as much as possible for narrative reasons, also giving each character dialogue that sounds realistic for their ages and the period. The cast are uniformly solid; Pietzcker and Hermann adequately convey their young characters' fading innocence and together they show nice chemistry as these two kids who reluctantly come to care for each other, Fritzi Haberlandt is the standout for me as the secretly sheltering but vulnerable Sister Sophia, Henriette Confurius makes her complicitly evil Sister Edith a balanced creation, Koch is watchable if not exactly challenged,

Fog in August doesn't actually try to say anything new for a Holocaust movie despite its distinctive focus, but it works so well because it manages to convey its messages in quite a brave, sincere and original way. It also succeeds as a coming-of-age tale involving an encounter (that unfortunately really happened) with a truly seminal brand of evil, and that in turn also helps it emphasise what happens when the child's world and the adult's world collide. The result is genuinely powerful, sobering and unsettling.

As the Clash might say: should they stay or should they go?

They are just four of many such examples, but thanks to their living situation their case has divided Australia this week. Former Tamil boat people and now residents of Biloela, Queensland, parents Priya and Nadesalingam, from Sri Lanka, and their four- and two-year-old daughters, Kopika and Tharunicaa, who were both born here, are facing imminent deportation on the grounds that they've produced inadequate evidence of their refugee status. Priya and Nadesalingam both arrived Down Under in 2013 and were detained on Christmas Island for months before being freed on bridging visas, which let the holder stay in the community while applying for another visa.

The Morrison Government, particularly Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, have repeatedly stated they will not protect them from deportation, a position which has inspired public opposition from the Greens and even two prominent other figures of the right, former Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce and broadcaster Alan Jones. 

Now, I don't know the facts about their legal efforts (or those of the people representing them) and so I don't think I should take a side here. This post is meant just as neutral commentary. But my heart still goes out to these four, and I will say this: with Australia's ongoing racism problem, and Sri Lanka's rampant poverty, I believe they'll be damned if they stay here and damned if they don't. Whatever their case's outcome, I hope I'm disproven there.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #153: Kundun (1997).

When you think of Martin Scorsese, you probably wouldn't imagine him telling the story of the young Dalai Lama, what with his track record of violent movies about inner-city American criminal life. But amongst all those bloody, obscene sagas he's also made several films very much out of his niche that thoroughly demonstrate his range, like The Age of Innocence (1993), Hugo (2011) and this one, 1997's Kundun.

Set between 1937 and 1959, it's a dramatisation of the young life of the 14th Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso (played at various stages by Tenzin Yeshi Paichang, Tulku Jamyang Kunga Tenzin, Gyurme Tethong and the real DL's grandnephew Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong), growing up in rural Tibet. As a boy he has to complete several journeys and missions to prove and enhance his mental and physical strength and enlightenment. During one journey he grows homesick and frightened, but is comforted with the tale of the first Dalai Lama, who was called "Kundun." The film then follows Tenzin as a young adult undertaking a diplomatic visit to China, where he meets and negotiates with Chairman Mao (Robert Lin) and his forces, before heading home to assume his position as Tibet's spiritual leader.

Working from an erudite screenplay by Melissa Mathison, who interviewed the Dalai Lama before writing it, Scorsese treads this very delicate territory (especially delicate for a white American director) with admirable patience, objectivity, lucidness and attention to detail for a result that's thoroughly absorbing despite the slow pacing. However, it's worth noting that this was his second film focusing on faith or a religious figure after The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) (he's since made another, 2016's Silence), and as a young man he seriously considered becoming a priest. At his disposal here are the striking visual design, lush photography and exquisite score, all of which were Oscar-nominated. Probably the only flaw here is some of the acting; the cast are all professional indigenous (albeit English-speaking) actors, but the child actors playing Tenzin are never quite convincing; quite frankly, Tulku Jamyang Kunga Tenzin is very inexpressive.

But overall, Kundun is a beautifully intimate, and powerful mix of faith and coming of age. Even for a white, Australian atheist like me.