881 and 42nd National Day

Roys­ton Tan is a bas­tard — make me cry on National Day! But con­grat­u­la­tions Mindee and Yann Yann — Papaya Sis­ters rock!

I’ve said before that if we get one good local movie a year, we’d be lucky. Last year we had Colin and Yen Yen’s Sin­ga­pore Dream­ing and then Tan Pin Pin’s Sin­ga­pore Gaga, so that was pretty much a bumper crop by our standards.

Last night, we paid good money to watch our first Roys­ton Tan film, 881, and damn it was good money well spent. This film alone makes for a bumper year.

I’ll have to admit an ear­lier aver­sion to his debut, ‘15’, even though my friends told me it was really not a bad piece despite its run-in with the cen­sors (‘aiyah, rebel film wannabe’, I thought), and we thought we’d watch 881 because the sub­ject was inter­est­ing enough (hun­gry ghost getai), we knew the actors per­son­ally, and we’d already watched Harry Pot­ter V and Simp­sons wasn’t play­ing at the hour we wanted to watch a movie.

It turned out to be a happy con­spir­acy of fac­tors, because, dammit, if you have no other plans this week­end, go buy tick­ets now and watch already. And even if you had plans, can­cel them and go buy tick­ets and watch already.

It blew us away, this bloody Roys­ton Tan film, and that’s really ’nuff said, unless you take plea­sure in know­ing that the token Mediacorp-contracted actor has no lines in the film because his character’s a mute, and his voiceovers are done by Roys­ton him­self anyway.

What’s not to like about a film which if you were to sum­ma­rize in a sum­mary sort of thingie, you’d call it a ‘Hokkien Musi­cal Which Is Some­thing Like Moulin Rouge’?

Don’t wait for 881 to make its rounds on the Euro­pean fes­ti­val cir­cuit. Go watch now, and tell the Ang Mohs you watched it at your local cin­ema first.

One half each — title track music video from 881

Mindee Ong and Miyagi circa 2000: Lookee you now, Mindee, we is so proud of you! Naomi says, bas­ket, make her cry on National Day! Well done!

So taken by Royston’s film we were that I’m writ­ing this blog post back to front, because we had planned to make an evening out of National Day — going out to eat, skip­ping the parade because we’d already seen two rehearsals, and then catch­ing the movie before head­ing home and to bed.

OK, where was I? Ah, yes, we started the after­noon out at Tan­glin Mall, because a good cof­fee was needed to kick-start our day, and there still isn’t any­where else (or any­where con­ve­nient) that serves as good a cof­fee as Caffe Bevi­amo. Just check out the crema:

Then we looked around at the new furniture/lifestyle/dunnowhat shop that had been mak­ing us curi­ous because it’s pre­de­ces­sor ‘Barang Barang’ had sev­eral months ago sud­denly closed shop at both Tan­glin Mall and Great World City, boarded up, and all we could hear were sounds of ren­o­va­tion. Called ‘iwan­nago­home’, this shop is tons brighter than Barang Barang because of the huge num­ber of lights they use. It’s worth a look or two before you decide, hmmm, I don’t have so much spare cash to buy these things which I can prob­a­bly find in Thai­land or Indone­sia if I had the time and spare cash to fly there to buy.

Some­times, warped shop­pers’ logic can save you a bit of money.

Then it was off to the Straits Kitchen at the Grand Hyatt for din­ner, which we thought was pretty apt because it’s a buf­fet, and how much more Sin­ga­porean can you get at a buf­fet? Actu­ally, you can, when you realise the price is not bad either — $42 per per­son, to com­mem­o­rate the 42nd National Day. This is also where I get to say that for that price, it’s really really worth it when you can eat as many bowls of the “Mini Bud­dha Jump Over The Walls” soups as you can manage:

Mini Bud­dha Jump Over The Wall — or is it Bud­dha Jump Over the Mini Wall?

A meal like that was always going to make on feel down­right patri­otic, wher­ever you may hail from. A jum­ble of cuisines, fresh fruit and desserts, brisk ser­vice. The only thing that was lack­ing was the hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble choice of music. We know it’s called the Straits Kitchen and you’re try­ing to recre­ate a ‘Straits’ ambi­ence. But Canto and Mando pop tunes, and maudlin Malay slow rock bal­lads do not make for a good diges­tive accom­pa­ni­ment. That was prob­a­bly the only salah thing about din­ner, though.

Quick, dude, they’re not look­ing. Pour the rest on the floor!

When I eat chili crab, I need two fin­ger bowls because I’m messy like that

For the rest of National Day, I hear peo­ple enjoyed them­selves, and we saw a cou­ple dressed in red and white wait­ing for a cab to prob­a­bly take them to the float­ing plat­form. So patri­otic, so Sin­ga­porean, we thought. Then we saw another cou­ple, also in red and white, and walk­ing ahead of the other cou­ple so that they’ll get a cab faster. More Sin­ga­porean, we thought. And no bet­ter day to dis­play that.

Unbe­knownst to Aun­tie and Uncle, another Aun­tie and Uncle have just walked 20m up the road to snatch a pass­ing cab. Maju­lah Singapura!

Tech­no­rati Tags: 881, film, food, Mindee Ong, Nation­al­Day, Roys­ton, sin­ga­pore, Yeo Yann Yann