Movie: My Tehran For Sale (Granaz Moussavi, 2009, Iran, Australia, 95 min.)

Date: Feb 1, 2010

Rating:
(too predictable, but Lord, them Persian Eyes..)

Plot: Rebellious stage actress finds it harder and harder to lead the double lives needed to survive in Tehran, Iran. And then she falls in love with a man that can provide her with a solution.


Cast: Loved the lead actress, her presence and performance were never over the top, often portraying frustration in a very subdued manner.


Visuals: Nothing special, loved the insights into Tehran’s underground party scene.


Conclusion: Too predictable; you’re served with a large part of the ending right at the beginning of the movie. Nothing wrong with knowing the closing details of the plot, but you better keep me interested and/or entertained during the whole journey. And that didn’t really work in this movie.
But those Persian Eyes..

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(thanks to Milov for the last.fm screengrab idea! have a look at his artist list for 2008)

Tracks Most Played In 2009 (Last.fm):

2009 for me was about rediscovering Q-Tip. Still gotta review his Kamaal The Abstract album, give me a coupla days
And I finally got into the Visioneers remix album; I didn’t expect it to be soooooo addictive!!

Artists Most Played In 2009 (Last.fm):

Meshell’s dropped a few places; still can’t get emotionally invested in her laterst album, ohwell.. My year has been very jazz-influenced with music from Robert Glasper, Freddie Hubbard and Brad Mehldau. Honorable mention: The Foreign Exchange, a great Dutch-American collaboration.
I kept trying to like Mayer Hawthorne, but his work, at least to me, is on the wrong side of retro-recycle pop. And The Chess Cadet Allstars are still in the top 15 of 2009!

Albums Most Played In 2009 (Last.fm):

Honorable mentions: the 4Hero collections, Life:Styles and The Remix Album.

2009 Discoveries (or Re-discoveries)

Just go and have a listen..

That’s it, now on to a new year of listening to great and exciting music!

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Well, here are some more of the pics I took from the first day of travelling down the Mekong River

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Took some hours of rest at the hotel and I was interested in seeing the Saigon River. It took me some time to get there and it already was getting dark. First I went along the Ben Nghe Arroyo canal/river/water thingy and then I got to the Saigon River itself, unspectactular by itself, but the evening darkness provided an excellent treat: large floating restaurants along the river, all heavily (and rather tastefully) decorated with all types of lights and lighting rigs.

The most exciting thing was trying to cross the Ton Duc Thang Avenue to actually get to the water: there is nothing more scary than trying to cross a busy road, riddled with traffic, both moto and big ass buses.
Even scarier: try doing it in the evening with columns of headlights approaching you..
It is a statistical impossibility that seemingly no one gets hurt in traffic here. And I’m not interested in being witness to such an accident either. Damn..

Official count of the number of passengers on one moto: six – three adults and three children. Hey, it gets the job done, right?

Walked back to the hotel, went to the Go2 Bar a block further and was mentally tortured by their horrific selection of music: Jack Johnson, Thingy Blunt, The Live Recordings of Bryan Adams and many more choice selections. The food and the people were nice, tho.

Tourist tip: it’s nice to sit outside any popular bar watching people and traffic pass by, but be ready to suffer an enormous army of street peddlers trying to sell you all kinds of crap. It’s their way to earn money, no problem with that. I just wisely chose to sit inside where you’re relatively safe from small kids trying to sell you tissues.

So, tomorrow it’s off to Phu Quoc Island, the weather reports aren’t that great, but I’m ready to go into seclusion on a tropical island. Not sure how the internet connectivity’s gonna work for me, but hey, I’m on vacation

Oh, here’s the married couple..

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My first venture into Saigon this evening and wow..
Citing typical has-been-wannabe internet vernacular: OMFGBBQ!1!!1!
The city is incredible! It’s filled with life and business and madness and chaos and fluffy bunnies and unicorns!1!!
Back to some semblance of normality: the place is literally buzzing with activity; the people are allways in transit, always on the move, always mobile. The motos and cyclos rule this city, cars come a distant second and pedestrians are so very much shit out of luck. It took me a few attempts but I managed to cross the streets rather confidently and more importantly with all body parts intact.
The traffic has its own rules, the most important one: it’s not worth having to go through the whole accident thingy, so this time, I’ll let you pass. But next time..
Zigzagging through traffic is a manic experience, but crossing anywhere near Ben Thanh Market?
Well, I reckon even ants would start reassessing the terrain for other options. The place will scare you to hell and back. I loved it!
Saigon/HCMC in the evening is dependant on the neon lights, because the municipal lighting delivery service has taken a leave of absence since the Big Bang and isn’t expected to return any time soon. This creates an eery atmosphere, where you can walk through brightly lit streets and suddenly find yourself on a pitch black street looking behind you just in case somebody gets any funny tourist-molesting ideas.

Had a meal at Allez Boo, which was nice, the place is clean, very tourist friendly and the food was okay. Had my first heart attack moment there: I was careless with my passport and it appeared to have dropped on the ground without me realising a thing. I was checking my bag when I found my passpport on the bag waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was lucky somebody was nice enough to put it there instead of makingmy life a bit more complicated.
LuckyMeMomentNr1.

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