Club 30s

If there is such a thing as a thirties club, it has just gained a new member today.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this spanking new 10-year membership in this spanking new club, except that I had forgotten to bid goodbye to the Club 20s. What the hell was I doing the instant the clock struck 12? Probably watching Mr. Darcy on the spanking new Pride & Prejudice VCD. Oh well, it would have been tearful otherwise, I might as well be grateful I'm spared all that mess.

Somehow, being in Club 30s is like a huge huge deal, a giant step in life. Like totally grown-up now. No more playing funny. Responsibility time. And in my mom's opinion, settling down time. Oh thank God, mom is nothing like poor Mrs Bennet who worries sick over unmarried daughters, or she'll most certainly be bed-ridden by now!

Forget Victorian times. Fast forward in the future - now - in New York City. Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City), the epitome of modern women, open-minded, learned, street-wise, worries about dying alone, unloved on her 35th birthday. Can't say I don't kind of, sort of worry about relationships and companionship. But if I were to be tossed into one out of age-related desperation, I'd much rather die alone, unloved. Though that's quite unlikely to happen, because there're always family and friends, the best people you can count on in this world.

Friends made my turn-of-the-quarter century birthday one of the best, if not the best, I've ever had. I had a really long day on location shoot, heading back into the office after 7pm. My colleague-friends had cleverly designed a mini treasure hunt, which I unashamedly busted by finding the biggest present they got for me first. It was an autographed NSYNC poster, the one thing that I wanted more than anything in the world, at least at that time. That night, we partied in the office watching 10 Things I Hate About You. Chit, Fauzie, Pauline, Rachel, Karen, thanks to the googolth*.

Maybe I'll go watch Munich today. Why on my birthday? I don't know. Perhaps to remember the 5th anniversary of the best birthday I've ever had. That year, too, was when terrorists slammed 2 jetliners into the World Trade Center in NYC on September 11. I was there. Although I wasn't born when the Munich incident happened, there are a few chilling coincidences. The attacks were carried out on 11 Israeli athletes by a terrorist faction called the Black September. See? I'm going to catch Munich today.

*Googol = 10 to the power of 100

Oscar's Fair

The results are out. Nobody made a clean sweep this year. Not Brokeback Mountain, whose director Ang Lee picked up the directing Oscar but lost the Motion Picture of the Year category to Crash. Congratulations! I didn't manage to catch the movie but I've heard nothing but goodness. And isn't its theme so achingly haunting? What's up with 'Hard Out Here for a Pimp' winning the Best Original Song category? Rap culture is inching its way into the uppity Academy Awards, so it seems.

I think this year's Oscars is the fairest of all the awards so far. It honours all the great films of the past year, instead of just one or two. Crash, The Constant Gardener, Walk The Line, Brokeback Mountain, Memoirs of a Geisha, Narnia, King Kong. Even Wallace & Gromit.

Narnia and Geisha for art, costume and makeup awards as they are truly outstanding in recreating worlds so different that they wrench the audience from their place in this mundane world to enter another plane of existence, a beautiful, exciting one, for a couple of hours. King Kong for sound and visual effects - who can top the wrath of a tormented 25-foot monster?

The Constant Gardener should have picked up more awards but well, I think I should quit b***hing about it now. At least Rachel Weisz is deservedly honoured as Best Supporting Actress and yes, she's sweet, she still has to mention 'the luminous' Ralph Fiennes to remind the Academy that her co-star is just as deserving of at least a nomination. YEAH! What's up with that?! Fiennes deserves an Oscar nod as Justin Quayle! Oh well, Fiennes will never win that category anyway. It is Philip Seymour Hoffman's all the way. His portrayal of Capote is uncanny.

Finally one for Reese Witherspoon. That girl has proven herself. I think she wins the Best Thank You Speech category too - "June Carter once said, "I want to matter. That's what I'm trying to do." Yes Reese, you have mattered.