Word: tannings
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...Royston Tan respectfully disagrees, and he has the footage to support his dissent. The 26-year-old director's new film, 15, explores the dark side of the Singapore story. Shot with a cast of actual public-housing kids rather than actors, 15 mixes graphic realism with quick-cutting, music video-style camerawork to reveal what it's like to be young, alone and angry in a city that refuses to acknowledge your existence. The movie sold out its initial run at this year's Singapore Film Festival, took home many of the major awards and was recently selected...
...Unfortunately, Singaporeans may need to fly to Venice to see it. The city-state's government has yet to approve the film for general theatrical release; according to a source familiar with the negotiations, censors have asked Tan to replace or cut five minutes from the film, including scenes in which the characters rap the names of Singaporean gangs. Tan is currently appealing the cuts, citing not just artistic integrity but the fact that his producers, the independent company Zhao Wei Films, don't have the funds to reshoot new footage?assuming they could reassemble his delinquent cast, a number...
...allowed to see 15, because the Lion City's middle classes would learn more from this film than they did studying for their O-level exams in secondary school. 15 is meant to give its native audience a glimpse of a subculture usually airbrushed out of the official reality. Tan took his stories and his cast from the struggling teenagers he met as a part-time high-school drama teacher, and their gritty tale rings true. The picture follows a group of five teenage delinquent boys as they embark on their daily odyssey of cutting class, chain-smoking, self-piercing...
...also not Larry Clark's Kids, a film 15 echoes. Though Tan's teenagers live in a world that seems void of adult authority?or even adult presence?they are hardly the empty-eyed nihilists of Kids. If anything, Tan's punks feel too much, clinging to each other and their noble concepts of friendship and camaraderie, agonizing over parental rejection. They just want to be loved. For every brutality?slicing an obnoxious bully's face, stomping a passerby on the street?15 offers moments of cloying mawkishness. One character lets his friend stay over after he's been kicked...
...core countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will continue to falter, owing to the ever-present threat of terrorism. These countries should face Islamic militants squarely and decisively. Only by fighting terrorism and adopting viable economic programs will the troubled ASEAN members emerge from their predicament. Albert Tan Makati City, the Philippines...