Halloween Horror Nights 2 - 10 Things

1. Be there at 8pm sharp. You need to get a head start on the crowd. The earlier you are, the more you get to see, the less you have to wait!

2. If you're in the normal queue, don't hate the people with the Express Pass. If you have the Express Pass, don't hate the VIPs. If you're VIP, try not to gloat openly. (R.I.P Tour passes are available for $148.) Moral of the story is be prepared to wait a little and self-entertain!

3. The main attractions are definitely the three Haunted Houses! Hit Death Alley first, to get a taste of the underbelly of Chinatown before putting your gall to the test at the Dungeon of Damnation. It was, for me, the highlight of the event. The last house is The Insanitarium, which is all the way in. Give it a miss if you run out of time!

4. Be brave. You're here for fear. Open your eyes. Peer through the corridors. Keep your eyes trained on nooks and crannies. Every turn a surprise. Watch where you're going. At times, you might even want to look up at the ceiling!

5. Try not to stay too close to the group ahead of you. You'll see all the tricks prematurely. Where's the fun in that!

6. Bring your cameras with you! Handphone cameras don't do the pictures justice in the scare zones. Total Lockdown and Bizarre Bazaar are fantastic, but for different reasons. There's a lot to see and you'll definitely slow down to admire the destruction and er... torture. Very S&M some bits. A+.

7. Rides are open this time round. They're not the essential but if you've time to spare, Battlestar Gallactica's queue moved quickly last night. The Transformers was the absolute best - the future of storytelling, I must say! Amazing, but extremely popular. Average queue time was 60 mins for Express Pass. The Jurassic Park ride was good too and a great way to cool off if you're feeling hot.

8. There's a Halloween musical called Monster Rock at Pantages Hollywood Theater. Take a breather from the heart-arresting attractions and catch the 11.30pm show (but be there at 11.15 for good seats). Great music, energetic dancing... 21 minutes of great entertainment!

9. Don't wear expensive jewellery. We saw this girl looking for her bling on the floor for a good 15 minutes, with staff and friends searching fruitlessly with her, and her throwing a bitch fit. No loose items in general!

10. If you're not scared, play your part and scream a little maybe? It gives the scare actors a bit more motivation and you get a better show! Well, of course, hopefully it doesn't come down to that and you pee in your pants instead.

Justin is the new Britney

Big Hits, Baby
Such a coincidence that their biggest hits have the word "baby" in them. For Bieber, then 16, Baby erupted all over radio as the song you could not escape from. Annoyingly catchy, distinctly bubblegum and possibly childish to the point of puke-worthy, it brought me back to '98, when Spears, then 17, released ...Baby One More Time. I remember feeling the same way - that it was pop at its most straight-forward, catchy and it was a track that was impossible to run away from. I also almost puked when Sometimes was released but radio refused to stop playing BOMT. Both tracks were monster hits and shot them to pop royalty with the music world waiting to see/hear what would happen next. Sonically, Bieber matured faster as the current album straddles between bubble-gum (Beauty and a Beat) and something slightly edgier (Boyfriend). Spears continued to pander to her teen audience with Oops! before hitting the big time with the adventurous Slave 4 U. I'd like to see Bieber find his Slave with the next album. It can only, like Britney's sound, go uphill from there.



Never Say Never...
... to lip-syncing. When you've become such an electrifying performer that the spectacle you put on stage surpasses the need for people to hear you sing live, you lip-syncing. There comes a point in time where you're on huge sold-out tours - the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts - and you've to put on a show! Thankfully Britney has never thrown up on stage with the backing track running (well at least not that I know of), so it was rather unfortunate when it happened to Bieber on the first night of his Believe world tour in late September this year. Regardless, I've seen his recent performances of As Long As You Love Me at the Teen Choice Awards 2012 and his energy, intensity and playful facial expressions reminded me of a young Spears. However Spears is clearly the more tantalising of the two - just look at this A+, take-notes-all-teen-stars performance from the VMAs  in 2000. With time, hopefully Bieber will be ready to have his carry-a-snake-around-his-neck or I-kissed-Madonna-and-I-liked-it moment very soon at award shows to come.



Slave
As Bieber makes teen ovaries explode worldwide, Britney did the same to her fans, with many proclaiming "I'm a Slave 4 U Britney!" as she did her rounds in countless magazines, TV appearances, concerts and music videos. Ahh, music videos! They've got that genre under their belts! Also, both teen stars have the media fixated on their every move. Following in Britney's footsteps, Justin's been dating fellow teen-star Selena Gomez. When she had her belly-button pierced, Bieber got tattoos. Growing up in the media spotlight as the biggest teen star of the moment will inevitably give way to The Breakdown. With great success comes pundits taking bets on their big fall and the bigger the fall, the bigger the comeback. (The breakdown is only possible when you've attained an incredible amount of fame and are perched at the top of your game.) I wait with bated breath for Bieber's head-shaving, grabs-umbrella-and-attacks-a-car, Gimme-More-at-the-VMAs moment.

In my crystal ball, Justin looks like he'd be able to capture the world's imagination with the good-kid-gone-bad-gone-good story. Neither of them are Adele, but Bieber has what it takes to be the next Britney. Or he could become a boring, try-too-hard like Christina but I hope that never happens.

Love is like...

Love is like... just another thing that you need to sustain yourself. One shouldn't make a big deal about it. Just like one should not make a big deal about having air to breathe and having food to eat. When it's there... it's just there so you can move on with other aspects in your life. It's not supposed to cause you trouble and you shouldn't put in too much effort into getting it.

The people who are successful in life don't make a big deal out of love. It's there, they have it, they know how to maintain it, nurture it, but it's not what their entire life is about. Their lives are about their passion and their passion is not a someone, but a something. Changing the world with a business, a new innovation, taking part in philanthropy... these are worthwhile pursuits. 

We're constantly fed these terrible ideas, from movies, from music, from books, that love is life-changing and how it consumes you and how it's exciting and thrilling and nourishes your being and justifies your existence on this earth. Romance. Romance is a pain in the ass. It's great that people around you have it but it should be equally great if you don't have it. So you can concentrate on the real important issues, you know, like helping kids who need education, people dying from starvation and whether the eventual winner of the US X-Factor will have a #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

At the end of it all commitment is everything. You just need that one person, that one who wants to be together with you as badly as you do. After that you don't have to make a big fuss out of it. Nothing to celebrate, nothing to scream about. You don't have to come up with funny, special things - no anniversaries, no fucking birthdays. Just knowing the person is there should be enough. You draw nourishment from the relationship, just like how you would eat a burger or drink a Coke and then you can do other good things with your life.

I should learn to do just that. 

Gf.Bf

"We should have two lovers. One who loves me, one whom I love."

After spending an hour watching behind-the-scenes footage from the movie's official youtube channel, I've got a glimpse of Yang Ya Che, the director behind this moving piece of work. He's a demanding man, who was hard on his cast and crew, expecting the best from them. He had a vision. He wrote the script like a thesis of sorts. He wanted to make a film showing Taiwan in the 80s, when the three young characters, as well as the territory, was on the precipice of awakening.

The movie spanned three decades and in that time, the backdrop of Taiwan and her people changed visibly. The characters moved on with the times and watching the the three actors push their limits, it was as if you saw nine characters in a single movie!

I particularly liked that it wasn't written with a beginning-middle-end structure that's so prevalent, making films so predictable and you're just staying around for how it happens. Gf.Bf felt more like an experiment, three personalities thrown together and they delivered fireworks! At any one time there was so much tension between them, so much uncertainty, so much struggle it literally took my breath away. They were so intertwined with friendship and love that they couldn't tear themselves apart, like they were destined to be in an endless push and pull with each other.

They fought for freedom from each other and from themselves. Like life, nothing is certain. Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you don't. You make sacrifices expecting something in return but that's not for sure. Like Yang said, it's a little selfish. You give everything to the one you love, but when you're disappointed and let down and hurt, you should have someone to catch you, someone who loves you, to make that fall a little less painful.

So much was said, but wasn't shown, just hinted at. And that's really masterful use of cinema. I started thinking a lot. And got a bit sad. I thought about my notions of love. I thought about how detached we are from one another, that it takes something to fight for that brings people together and how it's lacking in society now.

I'd watch it again. There's just so much more to uncover.