Scriptwriting Endeavor

Good Morning, what a lovely Monday morning! A blog in English on Mondays serves me well to spend the previous weekend in an English mindset to receive information from all over the world! As I’m now packing for my 9 days journey to Okinawa from Wednesday (2/20) till Thursday next (2/28), I shall miss the blog next Monday as I’ll be strolling on the beach, attending concerts, savoring Okinawan food, drinking Orion in Kunigami Village in northern Okinawa!

The Spring Concert 2019 at Taipei City Library-Jin Xing Branch was a success. We drew a crowd of 30+ people young and old, including all performers. After 8 weeks vocalization lessons and golden angels singing-bonding thing, I learned from the Korean voice coach all the singing skills, but most of all, is to sing with your heart, Canta con el Corazón!

During the last weekend, I gobbled six films borrowed from Taipei City Library, A Heartbeat Away, Happy Feet 2, Cuban Fury, Attabu 1 & 2, August: Osage County!

A Heartbeat Away is a 2011 Australian musical comedy film about a marching band in a small town called Montague. The film was a box office disappointment, widely considered a commercial and critical flop. During its opening weekend it took $44,204 across 77 screens, giving it a screen average of just $574. But, I was fond of the entertaining film full of imagination and surprises with a touch upon family and community values. I picked up a couple English words and many brass band jargons! I understood getting old is not getting worse, but better!

Cuban Fury is a smart and funny comedy starring Nick Frost as an introverted guy who takes up salsa dancing to woo his co-worker, Rashida Jones. Along the way he has to battle an office rival for her affections, played by a particularly dickish Chris O’Dowd. A movie about Salsa, is my kind of movie, I picked up a few salsa movements from the movie. Salsa is like something from another planet, the music, the passion, the rhythm. Once you put those shoes on, you never want to take them off. It was like people had fire in their heels (feet of flames). So, I decide to acquire the basic Spanish language, before I venture to Havana, Cuba to learn Salsa!

Heart like a bison, balls like an elephant
Take on the world
sequins
Turn up
TV blares
Stubble
A ball buster
Tranny
Bum flap
Tzatziki
Coin a word
cossack dance time
raucous
what a pickle
3-D jigsaw
Kingdom of Tonga
Head-butt
Lanyard
Wallop
Stand down
Not of my world
Way out of my league
Knock it on the head
Lath
High-brow chit-chat
Adjudicate
A butterfly with a parsnip
Rewrite history
Door creaks
Glasses clink
Scampi fries
Blow away cobwebs
Quid
Suede sole rubber sole
You’re in my yard now!
Oh, crikey!
The culprit
No innuendo
Craic
A horse’s arse
Arms of a eagle, not a heron, legs of a stallion, reggaeton
Takes a lot of hard work to make it look easy
Think about it all the time
Chimichanga
Ace it
Squashy chops
Goonie time
An old pair of shitty shoes from the late 80’s
A silk shirt studded with jet-black rhinestones
Evoke an echo
Big smile, tits and teeth out
Eye of the tiger
Nib

Happy Feet 2, the sequel to the 2006 film Happy Feet, is my kind of movie! Being a dancer I myself, love movies of rhythm and melody, seeing emperor penguins with big feet tapping on the iceberg. In the movie, Erik, the son of Mumble and Gloria, must stop the Apocalypse from bringing over Antarctica. I like the cross-culture communication between emperor penguins and Adelie penguins using English and Spanish. I picked up a few useful words and phrases in English and Spanish, and a few Antarctic crustaceans, krill, plankton munchers! Humans or other animals, we all need friend to be in a big ecological system in peace!

Whiz on cue and finish with a headstand
Wild maverick outcast
There’s only one of me in all the world
It stands to reason
We’re rebels seeking for thrills and adventure
Man chichis
Mojo
Apocalypse
Guts and grit
Okey dokey
Resplendent
Gosh darn goody
whimper
bitter twisted lonely guy
it you will it, it will be yours
fat chance
adapt or die
things always look different on the way back
niggling
call full time on your career
death throe
mortal terror
spare the despicable life
every nook and cranny
whimper
no hanky-panky
waddle
fortitude
as long as we are together, we are already home
huddle up
oomph
last nine legs
riposte
cranky
look for biff
the multitude
claim a forfeit
a solemn promise
rawhide
topple

Attabu 1 & 2, two-part documentary film series about the rise and fall of the Wufeng Lin family. Attabu refers to the original name of the Wufeng area under the language of the Taiwanese Plains Aborigines. I shall watch them again for a couple of times, as the films have both English and Japanese subtitles! I can study two languages as well! The first film depicts the Lins sailing from China to Taiwan in 1746 where they would become one of the most powerful clans in Taiwan due to services for the Qing dynasty (1644-1912).

Part II continues the story from the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, when Taiwan officially became a Japanese colony. Under Japanese rule, the Lin's influence waned as the clan members came to support different political ideologies. After Japan's defeat in World War II and Kuomintang's retreat due to the Chinese Civil War, some clan members were then persecuted as traitors or communist sympathizers by the Republic of China administration during the period of White Terror. The story continues, the offspring of the Lins are now all over the world!

I enjoyed watching 『August: Osage County』directed by John Wells, with a super strong cast of Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. I started watching it with the English subtitle on for one hour Tuesday evening, then I continue watching it with Chinese subtitle the following morning. After watching the interview, I knew the movie was originally a successful play by Tracy Letts! So I made up my mind to rewind the film, and see it again from the beginning, and study the screen play word by word, to study English, and to know the history of the plains in Oklahoma, that is southern, eastern, and western all at once. The 19 minutes funeral dinner (48:30~68:20), just what a theme, simply amazing!

Strike a little paragraph in the marriage contract
Abstinence
comeuppance
Injun Cheyenne
Fuck a fucking sow’s ass
Vicodin, darvon, darvocet, percodan, perco cet, xanax, oxycontin, dilaudid
Requited love, requite like for like
prickly pear
spruce up
upholstery business
spiritual affliction
go out on a bender
unfathomable
Thank God we can’t tell the future. We’d never get out of bed!
You take it as it comes, here and now!
Brainsick looks on your faces
Roses come to the cheeks
Throw a fit
distraught
have no time for spite
exhibit a little character
Gordian Knot
Precocious
Forsake the responsibilities
Shrill insanity
Self-righteous
Porking
Smidge of indignation
Clumsy goofball
Wrangle into
adversarial
invalid
fathom
scintillate
downer
truce
pull a stunt
cooch
gauche
tip your hat/cap (to somebody)
hysterectomy
perpetuate the myths of family or sisterhood
don’t lay the sister thing on me
point a finger at me
beat-up jeans
underbite
Liberace Mr. Showmanship
Eavesdrop
Unorthodox
Tune up
Sociopath
Cut and dried
Life just puts you in the corner that way
Settle the hash
A crock of shit
bottom feeder catfish
infuriate
Carson McCullers
cut no ice with me
nobody slips anything by me
brood about
choose the higher ground
sulk about
hindsight is 20/20
smug little ingrate

Being a ex-pharmacist, I’m overwhelmed by the sad episode of overdose of pills and alcohol in the story! Every family has a story to tell, painful and/or joyful!