RKS 2025 Travel: Destination Southeast Asia (Short Attention Span Version)

GETTING THERE

Not brimming with excitement facing a 15 ½ hour flight from Toronto to Hong Kong with a two-hour layover waiting for a 3 ½ hour flight to Singapore.

The outboard flight and connecting flights to Singapore on Cathay Pacific one of the three best airlines in world as awarded in by Skytrax in 2025.

Dingy Airbus 350 plane with lavatories from prehistoric era and a less than cheerful cabin colour.

Have bulkhead seats in Economy with adequate but not overly generous legroom. Warning though to our left a baby change station in the family seats. Hoping the screeching baby and poop smells are at a minimum.

As the flight departs at noon a good part of the trip will be in daylight but oh no after lunch the cabin is dimmed to the pitch-black status illuminated by entertainment screens. Trapped in darkness like in a Joseph Conrad novel “Darkness at Noon”.

Holy Moses low life economy class passengers receive a menu with a choice and unlike my Air Canada Euro flights from Toronto the menu is far more interesting than Air Canada’s chicken and pasta and unlike Air Canada they do not run out of that cheap and cheerful chicken as it is not on the menu.

I choose a “Crispy Fish with Sweet and Sour Sauce” as a main but replace “crispy” with “soggy”. Started with “Turkey and a Seven Grains Salad”. The turkey is sliced processed sandwich meat. My God. Would they endure sandwich meat in Business Class! Wine, Rolf Binder Shiraz, in a paper cup. Delicious “Betsy” lager brewed exclusively for Cathay Pacific.

The dinner dish is shrimp in rice, actually there are even visible shrimp! Tasty.

Movie selection has a slight Chinese and Korean element to it. Watched “Trapped” a quasi-Chinese Mad Max film and a Hong Kong caper film “Smashing Frank” then an Italian film “Napoli New York”. Three movies watched and six hours remaining. I can’t read in the oppressive pitch-black flying prison I am in. Poor audio selection.

Arrive at Hong Kong’s massive airport and then off to Singapore. Dinner is chicken and rice in gravy. My stomach turns. The fruit salad is long past its prime and the miniscule wisp of lettuce has turned brown.

Take a prearranged car at Singapore airport to Shangri-La Hotel and collapse.

Made it but what shape am I in?

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film: “Dream Eater”: Bereft of Terror

Poor Alex (Alex Lee Williams) is suffering from parasomnia clear at the beginning of the film he is a danger to himself and as the movie progresses a danger to his sweetheart, unsuccessful documentary filmmaker Mallory (Mallory Drumm). As appropriate, given his self destructive bent he is receiving medical care.

Off Mallory and Alex travel to a cottage in a deserted rural area to celebrate Alex’s thirtieth birthday a significant age for the “terror” to come. Yes, yet another deserted locale and found footage horror film. A pattern of predictability is setting in. The winter wonderland escapade, upon medical advice, is to be filmed in its entirety to enable a therapeutic diagnosis which given Alex’s behaviour is dangerously tardy. His doctor has warned parasomniacs have killed their bed partners. What horror watching Mallory act like a lamb going to the slaughter. Alex should be committed to institutional care under mental health legislation as a danger to himself and others. Interesting what love can do to impair rational judgement. Could that be a main point in this film?

A fuddly duddy Dr. Armitage author of a particular demonic possession book flits onto the scene like Dr. Everett Scott in “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and viewers understand the beast Alex is and is becoming of course spiced up by his mass killer cultist mother.

Alex repetitively spooks Mallory frightening the poor dear. Run Mallory, run but in a thespian sense her fright is a bit “stiff”. Theoretically the terror should start cascading about the screen but it is so predictable and formalistic saved by occasional bizarre whistling (not emphysema) and whirling camera work which due to its frequency may make the viewer dizzy.

A bit of a spicy conclusion. Who thought pregnancy test results could be so ominous. I’M BACK!

On an optimistic note could it be Mallory’s chance to Hot Doc fame? How much can filmmakers parlay their misery into a work of art?

Canadian theatrical release began 24October2025.

Directors are Jay Darkulic, Mallory Drumm and Alex Lee Williams.

RKS 2025 Canadian Film Rating 64/100.

RKS Literature: Murderous Missionary Ships (Pat Barker)

“Rivers was used to missionary islands where canoes paddled out to meet the oncoming steamer, brown faces, white eyes, flashing smiles, while others gathered at the landing stage, ready to carry bags up to the mission station for a few sticks of tobacco or even sheer Christian goodwill. A cheerful picture, as long as you didn’t notice the rows and rows of crosses in the mission graveyard, men and women in the prime of life dead of the diseases of the English nursery: whooping cough, measles, diphtheria, chicken pox, scarlet fever-all were fatal here. And the mission boat carried them from island to island, station to station remorselessly, year after year.”

Pat Barker, “The Ghost Road”, 1995.

RKS Literature:  Supressed Memory and a Smack on the Leg (Pat Barker)

“Was this the supressed memory? He didn’t know. Was it trivial? Well, yes, in a way, compared with Prior’s lurid imaginings. A smack on the leg, a lesson in manliness from an over conscientious but loving father. It’s a long way from sadistic beatings, And yet it wasn’t as trivial as it seemed at first.”

“The Ghost Road”, Pat Barker, 1995.

RKS 2025 Wine: Montes Alpha 2021 Special Cuvée Cabernet Sauvignon

Chile has a leg up when the subject is quality and affordable wine many of which are under $20 CDN.

A blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Carmenére. It has rested 16 months in French oak.

Montes Alpha 2021 Special Cuvée Cabernet Sauvignon is running in the quality pack!

Aroma: Richer than Jeff Bezos. Massive blackberry attack leads the charge supported by a blueberry and dark chocolate platoon. Absolutely decadent but not in an Augusto Pinochet type of way!

Palate: About as huge as the presence of the CIA in the downfall of Salvador Allende. Precise acidity prevents jamminess. In addition to the blackberry and blueberry some spiciness all giving the wine a complex and long finish with some burn not surprising considering the 14.5% alcohol.

Personality: Proudly Chilean strutting incredible quality for a song.

Cellarbility:  Enjoy now with its assertive nature. It may mellow out through to 2027.

Food Match: Think all manner of beef and why not with a prime rib on a cold winter day in Canada. Throw in some Yorkshire pudding why don’t you?

Price: $24.95 CDN.

RKS 2025 Wine Rating: 92/100. 94 Jamessuckling.com.

(Montes Alpha 2021 Special Cuvée Cabernet Sauvignon, D.O. Valle de Colchagua, Montes, Chile, 14.5%, 750 mL.).

RKS Literature: Death and Cartography (Michael Ondaatje)

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden as if in caves. I wish for all of this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography-to be marked in nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such earth that had no maps.”

Michael Ondaatje, “The English Patient”: 1992.

RKS Literature: The Human Element and Burglary (Michael Ondaatje)

“Caravaggio was constantly diverted by the human element during burglaries. Breaking into a house during Christmas, he would become annoyed if he noted the Advent calendar had not been opened up to the date to which it should have been. He often had conversations with the various pets left alone in houses, rhetorically discussing meals with them, feeding them large helpings, and was often greeted by them with considerable pleasure if he returned to the scene of the crime.”

Michael Ondaatje, “The English Patient” 1992.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film: “Clan of the Painted Lady”: Back to Your Roots

Why do some search to find their “roots” while others don’t give a damn? Director/writer of “Clan of the Painted Lady” Jennifer Chiu, a British Columbian, delves into her Hakka culture and her own family history to determine where it originated and where it is travelling to. Like the Painted Lady butterfly that embarks on a 9,000-mile migration around the world each generation completing a leg of that migration not knowing the beginning or end of the migration the Hakka’s have a history of migration but unlike the Painted Lady butterfly they do not know their final destination.

Chiu was born in Kolkata to Hakka parents eventually migrating to suburbia in British Columbia’s Lower mainland. The Hakkas had origins in Northern China and facing war, poverty and social marginalization they migrated the Southern China further migrating primarily to Canada, Jamaica, Mauritius and India.

Chiu searches for others believing Hakka culture is worth saving fearing its disappearance connecting with Hakka in China, India, Vancouver and in The Greater Toronto Area, the largest Hakka community in Canada. She discovers activists seeking to promote a distinct Hakka community, but the younger generation may interpret the promotion of Hakka culture as slavery to the past and an unwillingness to move forward. This is a breaking of the intergenerational bridge of Hakka culture which signifies the beginning of the end of that culture. Are the Hakka drawn into the melting pot and is the younger generation of Hakkas happily immersing itself in the pot?

Through family/friend/community activist interviews and Super 8 footage in Canada, India, Jamaica and China she weaves her lens on Hakka culture in these countries.

When the fundamental existential questions begin raising their heads the documentary veers for brief moments into seemingly less on point kitchen table chit chat and a bit too much personal family focus having questionable relevance to Hakka culture. Her visit to the tannery district of Kolkata, Tangra, might well be the most fascinating segment of her documentary. Tangra is the epicentre of Hakka owned leather tanneries, As Tangra suffers a shutdown by the Indian government economic circumstances dictate the younger Hakkas have little intention of remaining in India. Strangely Tangra Hakka youth have no interest in learning the Hakka Lion Dance so it is Indian youth replacing them. A stark reality that the intergenerational bridge rapidly appears to be collapsing. A small group of Hakka youth are filmed discussing the future and it is one of migration to opportunities. The daughter of the Lion Dance instructor would appear to be an exception wishing to remain in India.

What is clear is that the Hakka are on the edge of losing their identify in the face of their disinterested younger members while a handful of Hakka community activists in Toronto and Vancouver work to promote Hakka culture to save it from irrelevance. Is the Hakka culture worth saving? The answer will only be answered in the future. Unlike the Painted Lady butterflies, it has no final destination. Hakka youth may stop migration of Hakka culture to the next generation cold.

“Clan of the Painted Lady” has its world premiere on 6/9 October2025 at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Documentary Film Rating 71/100.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film: “Akashi”: Wisdom of the Cuckolds

Kana Yamamoto (Mayuma Yoshida) returns from Vancouver to her Tokyo home, for the first time in a decade, for her grandmother’s funeral.

Kana is a struggling artist yet to find success like her late artist grandfather. As well she has yet to find success in love after being “dumped” by her Tokyo boyfriend Hiro (Ryo Tajima) just prior to boarding a plane with her to Vancouver. Being in love they were to start a new life together by emigrating to Canada.

Traversing time to the past (as the film frequently does) her grandmother stated then there were few options for postwar marriage in Japan and she married her grandfather knowing he was in love with another married woman. Her grandmother mused life may be more difficult for those with numerous options.

Kana discovers the aggrieved spouses surprisingly recognize a higher form of love suffered at their expense but appreciated.

Perhaps the words of Kana’s father somewhat define “Akashi” upon him saying no one really knows how to live their life only pretending to live life like one is expected to do. Perhaps being lost is exactly where you need to be. There are few truly happy people in “Akashi” being deceived, lost, frustrated or unsuccessful but that is where they are at the moment and that is how they live their lives accepting it and even strangely embracing it.

The film has deceptive soap opera moments about love and deception but dig deeper you’ll find deeper meanings however at times you may just not be sure what they are but have fun attempting to make those determinations unless you are totally distracted by “that omnipresent silly hat”.

Directed by Mayuma Yoshida.

World Premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival 5/9October2025.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film Rating 71/100.