• We enjoyed Chinese New Year in Lingang in Nanhui Pudong
• Jenny found out that our baby is a boy and we’re going to name him Jake. Jenny is now 6 months pregnant. May is fast approaching.
• Our school bought a web server based in Shanghai, which means we can build online learning communities such as Moodle and wordpress blogs. This has been keeping me busy.
• We spent a fantastic Valentine’s day at a new Italian restaurant called Bacaro in Taikang Lu. Its pan fried salmon is really fresh and it melts in your mouth.
• We spent Jenny’s birthday with her friends at the ‘Special Dollar’ hotpot restaurant on Xujiahui Lu.
• I discovered Boduf Songs’ albums. I have not been moved so much by depressing folk music since I heard Caroline Martin at the Bristol’s Cube in May 2003. Enjoy this MP3.
• We watched Red Cliff 1, Red Cliff 2, Eden Lake, and lots of Planet of the Apes.
• Jenny is going part time, but she still makes clothes for musicians including Jiang Fan of canto poppers YFM. Here is a video of Jiang Fan singing wearing one of Jenny’s designs.

Here’s January’s schedule:

Here’s the address in English and Chinese:

Projection 216
Room 216, Building 3, Lane 210
Taikang Road, Shanghai, PRC
泰康 路210弄 3
号楼216 室
021-54656616

Tickets are 15 RMB for refreshments. Please call ahead of time to reserve a seat. Occasionally we get a stampede. As a disclaimer I need to tell you that I’m married to the boss Jenny.

I’m looking forward to Baron Munchausen, because I haven’t seen it yet and Terry Gilliam is a great visual director.

Dr Strangelove shows Peter Sellers at his best playing multiple characters in Kubrick’s bizarre and zany cold war satire.

Wild Zero mixes the Japanese punk rock of Guitar Wolf and zombie horror to good effect, although I’ve always found Guitar Wolf are more stylistic than substantial.

Blade Runner is perfect iconic science fiction and The Big Lebowski is one of the funniest films I have ever seen.

The newest film we’re going to show is ‘Flashbacks of a Fool’, which shows Daniel Craig playing a washed up middle aged actor reflecting on his youth in a sleepy seaside before everything went wrong.

Jenny chose these films. Is there a theme that ties these films together? None of the protagonists in these films are classically heroic, alpha males. Even the Harrison Ford character in Blade Runner has doubts about his humanity, whereas Guitar Wolf is just silly. All posts about Projection 216 come with the disclaimer that I’m married to the boss and that people wishing to go to a film should call before to reserve a place. Tickets are 15 RMB to cover refreshments.

Projection 216
Room 216, Building 3, Lane 210
Taikang Road, Shanghai, PRC
泰康 路210弄 3
号楼216 室
021-54656616

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Tags: projection216

Photos from Jenny’s first collection at Projection 216.
Model: Yi Mei
Photographer: Andreas Larsson
We’ve just uploaded photos of Jenny’s new collection at her websites Projection216 and JNFashionStudio.This is Jenny’s first new collection since she moved from Shanxi Nan Lu to her new studio at Taikang Lu. The move has worked out well. Taikang Lu has a great independent artist community vibe. We got more visitors and we enjoy showing films to friends on the weekend. I could go into lots of purple prose about how cool this place is, but I am biased and it’s better for the fashion, photos and films to speak for themselves.

Related posts:
Catshanghai on Projection 216
Shanghaiist on Projection 216

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Tags: Projection216, Shanghai, fashion, lifestyle, movies

Personal Stuff
We started the year renting a flat in Jianguo Lu and we spent all of our weekends after Chinese New Year looking at places to buy in the Luwan and Huangpu districts. Eventually we found our dream home near Nanpu Bridge, but we had to deal with bankers being stupid about transferring money and the general house buying marathon. It didn’t stop there. Even though we bought our appartment in July, we didn’t move in until November after a team of workmen gutted and renovated the place making it the nicest house we have ever
lived in. Shanghai feels more like home than ever. I am enjoying getting around by walking, on bicycle and the wonderful new metro service that opened two days ago.

We adopted Chog the cat in the spring and he is enjoying the heated floor in our new appartment. It is an amazing feeling to have a cat greet you when you arrive home after a tiring day at work.

Jenny also moved her studio from Shanxi Nan Lu to Taikang Lu. More information about the new studio will be posted here in the next day or so.

Relevant Posts
Buying a House In 13 Steps
State of the Renovation

Learning
Education is my livelihood and I got turned on by the possibility of student created digital content and learning communities as engines for learning. This is still very much a concept and is something that I want to take much further in 2008 given that you need lots of bandwidth to make these things happen. The IBO Information Literacy and Shanghai’s Learning 2Cn really inspired me that learning can be fun, exciting and international.

Relevant Posts
Blogging For Schools
How Many Computers Does It Take To Turn On A Teacher?
Are You A Digital Immigrant Or Digital Native?

The Internet
This has been another great year for Internet tools including Twitter, Google Calendar, GMail, Google Reader, Firefox, Firefox extensions, the Flock browser, RememberTheMilk, Fring, Facebook, Shozu and blogging. It has also been a frustrating year, because the Internet offers the possibility to cater all my information, communication and entertainment needs in one big cloud. The truth is that DRM, censorship and bandwidth continue to be obstacles that prevent normal Internet users in China and elsewhere from getting everything that the Internet can offer. I don’t know how many hours have been wasted by slow Internet connections, blocked sites and timeout errors. I hope we have a much better year for connectivity in 2008 and that different services become far more inter operable.

My favourite website of the year has definitely been Lifehacker for excellent technology and productivity tips. Leo Laporte’s TWIT network continues to produce high quality shows, but I have also been enjoying Tekzilla from Revision 3. There is still a gap in the market for a child friendly Internet tech video show.

Gadgets and Desktop Software
I became an obsessive Windows Mobile user, because it kept me blogging and connected on long bus journeys, although it often crashes at inopportune moments making me curse it as much I enjoy it. I had a look at the Iphone and admired it, although I am not prepared to invest in one given that I spent a fortune on buying and renovating a house. I would love to buy a tripped out MacBook to run Windows, Mac and Linux on the same box, but I will keep that in check while I save up spending money for our planned European vacation. In the meantime, I bought my wife a fantastic Asus Eeepc for 3000 RMB and gave my old Dell more mileage by running Ubuntu Feisty and Gutsy Gibbons on it. Ubuntu has served me well as a robust open source OS serving my everyday computing needs, although I screwed up an upgrade, which lost me a little data (and lots of time). I ended the year by setting up a robust and ridiculously cheap offline backup solution using Jungledisk and Amazon’s S3.

Relevant Posts
Lifehacker on Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile Must Have Apps

Music and Film
I continue to enjoy my Emusic monthly subscription. $10 a month entitles me to 30 unprotected MP3 songs and it works on Ubuntu. Highlights of the year have included Fridge’s “Eph Reissue” and I am a Robot and Proud’s “The Electricity in Your House Wants To Sing”. We have access to more films than we could ever, which we enjoy on our new big screen projector that has turned our living room into a cinema. We have recently enjoyed “Rescue Dawn”, “Zoo”, “Shortbus”. Films is going to become an even bigger part of our life as we start to show our favourite crazy movies to friends in Jenny’s studio on a weekly basis. I regret not writing more film and music reviews, although it has been a busy year and I feel my blog lacks a focus.

I wish anyone who reads this has had a great year and can look forward with enthusiasm to an even better 2008.

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Tags: Shanghai, culture, blogs

Man Push Cart is possibly the scariest film I have seen for quite some time even though there are no scenes of blood or threatening villains.

The film is just a story about a Pakistani immigrant called Ahmad who is struggling with work and life in New York. While most New Yorkers sleep, Ahmad fetches, pushes and pitches his coffee cart around the streets of Manhattan. He is a sad, lonely man trying to get his life back after the death of his wife. Ahmad is a kind and unassuming soul with a simple dream to save enough money for an appartment so he can look after his estranged son, but nothing ever goes his way. He tries to be a good friend to those who intrude upon his life, but he still manages to alienate everyone around him. He rescues a kitten, but foolishly kills it with kindness. He trusts a business associate who rips him off.

In many ways this is a companion piece to last year’s Happyness except it is not given a sentimental Hollywood makeover where heroic struggle is always rewarded with success, romance and dreams that come true. Instead, Man Push Cart has a low key documentary feel that makes it very realistic. Ahmad is wonderfully underplayed. He is a passive victim of life, barely speaking a word as he hides in the sleepless shadows of New York before dawn. Still he is swept along by currents that he can not understand or control.

The film looks to Camus’ remodelling of the Myth of Sisyphus where a man is absurdly condemned to drag a boulder up to the top of a hill only to roll it down before the repeating the process ad infinitum. Ahmad faces a similar fate of pushing his cart around the streets of New York without any prospect that his life will ever improve.

Watching a kind, lonely soul struggle in this way is almost more than the viewer can bare, but you see people like this in every situation. This is what makes Man Push Cart so terrifying and compelling.

More on Man Push Cart
Interview With Ramin Bahrani, Director of Man Push Cart
Man Push Cart on Internet Movie Database (IMDB)

It is not a comfortable experience to watch a film like this under any circumstances, especially with your lovely wife sitting next to you. I kept screaming “Open the door!” at the TV in a tone bordering on exasperation and disbelief. I bet director Chris Gorak had too many glasses of wine at a dinner party and got into a heated debate about the right thing to do in the event of a dirty bomb. Would you open the door if your wife came home after being contaminated by a highly contagious biological terrorist weapen? It’s the sort of moral dilemna that you might hear in a pub between university educated football supporters. It’s mildly entertaining way of passing a few minutes before last orders. To me it’s a no-brainer. Call me romantic and old fashioned, but I would open the door and let my wife in even if it was very risky. I also think that most decent honourable people would do the same for their partners and children.

The film is well shot and captures the atmosphere of fear and panic that would ensue in the event of such an apocalyptic scenario. It is also low key and all the action happens in one neighbourhood, almost exclusively in the house. You get a sense of the husband’s heat, discomfort and uncertainty as he is trapped in his home waiting for the cavalry to arrive or for the ash to go away. For all the film’s good points, I can not get over the central flaw which is that it is absurd for a husband to lock his wife outside in order to guarantee his own safety. It is morally implausible and not very likely. Let’s hope that this moral quandry is never put to the test.

Links:
imdb.com

The Queen  follows the public and private world of Britain’s royal family in the week following Princess Diana’s death in 1997. Trapped in a world of formal traditions and duty, The Queen and her family failed to tap into the nation’s need to engage in public displays of grief. For a few days, Britain (stirred up by the media) hated the royal family for being so detached and almost blamed them for Diana’s death. Helen Mirren will probably win an Oscar for her amazing portrayal of Queen Elizabeth, because you totally believe that she has become this character. The other characters are not so convincing. Michael Sheen comes across like a weedy caricature of Tony Blair. Mark Kermode said the whole enterprise seems like a very worthy UK television drama rather than a major feature film. Still, The Queen is a very good story that is worth watching just for Helen Mirren’s performance.

I also saw Christopher Nolan’s new period movie called The Prestige. It is set in London at the turn of the twentieth century and it is about a feud between a couple of performing magicians. You don’t have to like magic tricks to enjoy this film. Nolan is great at creating atmosphere and surprise as the two conjurers obsessively try to uncover each other’s secrets and settle old scores. It is also helped by a great cast of watchable actors including Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johannsen and Michael Caine. David Bowie has a cameo role and his accent is very funny. I liked this film very much.

Pan’s Labyrinth is a wonderful new Spanish language film by Guillermo Del Toro. It is a scary fantasy piece set at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1944. Ofelia is a sensitive girl who takes refuge in fantasy books and her imagination. She and her pregnant mother have been summoned to live in the Spanish countryside to be with Captain Vidal, Ofelia’s step father. He is a cruel and ruthless soldier brutally suppressing a guerilla unit who have taken refuge in the forest. While all this is taking place, Ofelia realises that she has a connection with a magical subterranean world populated by fairies and fauns who give her three tasks to complete before full moon. The film is full of imagination and possibility against the backdrop of human conflict and cruelty. The animations, music, acting and cinematography are all stunning. It is magical without being twee and sentimental. Pan’s Labyrinth is perfect story telling and is the best film I have seen for a long time.

I just read this breaking news on Tech Crunch. It has also been reported on the BBC and New York Times. Steve Jobs has just published an open letter to the music industry asking it to abandon DRM on music that is purchased as downloads. This is extraordinary considering that all music bought on the Apples Itunes Music store is crippled with digital rights management (DRM). This means music I have legally purchased can not be played on my computer that runs Linux, because Itunes only runs on Windows and Mac OS.

The letter explains why Apple has to add proprietary DRM to the music it sells. Otherwise, the major four music distributors (Warner, EMI, Sony and Universal) will refuse to license the music Apple sells on its music store. The agreement with the music industry requires Apple to keep its DRM secure. Jobs discusses the three major DRM models.

Model 1: Top to Bottom Proprietary DRM
Apple operates a closed vertical DRM model where purchased music and videos will only run on a combination of hardware and software to the exclusion of all others. Apple’s music downloads will play on Ipods and Itunes software. Microsoft and Sony have the same closed models for their music download services.

Model 2: Interoperable DRM
This model would allow content purchased through one DRM system to be played in another. For example, the DRM would enable music purchased through Microsoft’s Zune store to be played on a Creative device. Jobs recognises the appeal of this alternative to proprietary DRM, but he argues that copy protection is built on ’s ecrets’. A consortium of partners licensing an interoperable copy protection standard will cause the inevitable leak and subsequent breaking of such DRM. He does not meention the fact that Apple makes profits selling hardware rather than media content so proprietary systems seem to suit Steve Jobs for the time being.

Model 3: DRM Free Content
To be fair to Steve Jobs, the nub of the letter admonishes the music industry to abandon DRM given that 97 percent of music sales are still from CDs, which means they have no copy protection anyway. Ipods are full of music that is ripped from CDs or pirated from the Internet using peer to peer download services like bittorrents. Jobs argues that DRM is not working so it should be scrapped.

It is refreshing to see another computer mogul publicly criticise DRM. Bill Gates spoke out against music copy protection in December. Everyone hates DRM except the big players in the movie and music business. I would like to see Apple and Windows take a stand by removing support for DRM in their hardware, software and music stores. In the short term, the content producers will boycott them until they realise they have nowhere else to go. Studios and recording companies already rely on the tools and service that Microsoft and Apple provide. If Sony and Warner looked at the E-Music model they will realise that consumers will be happy to purchase downloadable music and movies providing the experience is convenient, high quality and reasonably priced. Making people pay $10 for a 192 kbps AAC download that does not work on all your devices is none of these.