Tuesday, April 18, 2006

CHERMIN the movie: Day of the Dead


Farid Kamal(Yusuf) and Natasha Hudson(Nasrin) as a couple in Chermin. Camera rigs being mounted on the Kembara before the driving scene. Scenes of happy moments before its impending doom, yeah I'm sure every smartass would have tried to guess. Pic courtesy of Wei Onn of Addaudio who took loads of pics during the production. Me and Jay requested all sort of footages when we started the pre-production of title-decko and website, we knew the L.S.D peeps would have production shots, Wei Onn, our LSD 'connection' whom everyone knows is the friendliest and warmest dude we knew. Also known as the dude who possesed 'deep-voice' naturally and all-around good guy. So we pounced on him to surrender all his pics to us and coaxed him to sign a copyright-free agreement to allow us to use ALL his shots!(Kd)

Zarina would be in a better position to talk about the making of 'Chermin the movie' on her blog. The actual reason i posted this pic is simply because Natasha Hudson is the only person who're aware of their pic being shot by another camera besides the main movie cam. She's pretty, ain't she?

Peaceful, eh? Scroll down to see the 'residents'. Best real-estate in town, No Complaints.

The day of the dead or Hungry Ghost Festival(Traditional Chinese: 中元節 or 盂蘭節; pinyin: zhōng yuán jié, and sometimes called 盂蘭盆; pinyin: yulanpen). According to Wiki, it's a period of time "in which ghosts and spirits come out from the lower world to visit earth." I remember you only have the main day as the day to:
'offer food and burn hell-money to please the visiting ghosts and spirits'.

Now, you have the luxury of the entire Month! No kidding, ask any 'Lam-Mor-Lou'(Taoist monks) or 'San-Kuan'(God's Stick or conmen of God, lolx)and they will reaffirm it. Ignore it at your own peril. hmmm... he might slap a chant(yellow-paper with inscriptions written in blood) on your back and have a ancient chinese zombie follow you all the way back home...

Another ancient Chinese belief, when loved-ones kick-the-bucket/kaput and they happen to be out-of-town in the land of big-big China, families requests these 'Lam-Mor-Lous'(Taoist shamans/wizards/warlocks/witch-doctors/etc) to bring back their bodies for proper burial at home. "How they do it? Please tell us" Innocent little Jimmy asks. "Glad that you asked, sonny" These shaman-dudes would perform rituals and place a 'Fu' or that yellow-paper thingy on the corpse's fore-head and 'Viola!', you have a mindless and still very-dead zombie at your bidding! The only flaw is, they only hop. So it's norm back in ancient times, you might encounter a troupe of these hopping-corpses following a Lam-Mor-lou at night for 'homecomings'. Just imagine it's DHL of the dead and sign the damn papers when it's delivered on your doorsteps!

My grandparents were all buried at cemeteries, for the chinese nowadays, the most economical is by cremation. It's guaranteed to save spaces, fast, clean and available for 'visits' anytime of the year. You could even have the 'remains' inside an urn and be bought back to your living room! Fret no more about getting up at 5am in the morning ONCE annually to labour for Hungry Ghost festival, bringing the whole family to mosquitos-infested cemeteries armed with shovels and 'parangs' to clear walls of prickly grass.

For the Elites, you can even 'reserve' plots of land as your own pre-death graveyard, with trees planted in your name, statues and water-fountains to add grandeur to celebrate your demise. Like the ones at Nirvana, Semenyih or Nilai Memorial, where packages varies depending on your budget, but again if you do have financial difficulties, they can recommend the Ah Longs from Bkt. Beruntung to relieve you of your troubles... or make sure you savour the best in modern-day burial should you failed to service your loan. =P

Death comes to us, all. The only difference is, How do you wanne be remembered?

For me, I just wanne leave this world without owing people anything. It's always the simplest of reasons but the hardest to achieve.

Parting gems:
"Shoot straight you bastards and don't make a mess of it!"
Executed by firing squad.
~~ Harry Harbord "Breaker" Morant, Australian poet & national hero, d. 1902