#Sandra Ng

[fayewongfuzao]

Carina Lau, Faye Wong, and Sandra Ng presented the Best Actor award to Andy Lau at the 19th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2000. Faye was teased about her relationship with Nic.

(SOURCE)

[baddawg94]

[froppy-butterflyfan2000]

When Stella Junior used her moonlight magic in a method she is comfortable of, the result was unfair. So later on, she was shown a different way of using lunar magic.

Stella Junior belongs to @gloriousdreamunknown

Damon/Drake and Ethan belong to @ej-cappy-universe

Hannibal, Janaya, and Marianne belong to @froppy-butterflyfan2000 (me)

Athena belongs to @cooltmoney95

[chaotic-theatrical-weaver]

On name and identity, or in which Ellie Is Normal About Names (lying through her teeth):

Tumblr textpost by eyelessfog / "My Name," The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros / "Name initials may influence grades: study," Reuters / Quora response to "What does the phrase 'nomen est omen' mean?" / "Fall Away," twenty one pilots / "Trapdoor," twenty one pilots / "Forest," twenty one pilots / "Redecorate," twenty one pilots / "The Record Player Song," Daisy the Great / screenshots from will80sbyers' gifset of Stranger Things' "The Weirdo on Maple Street," (Season 1, Episode 2) / Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng / The Crucible, Arthur Miller

[persephonethewanderer]

give us gothic literature recs!!!!

here you go anon!

FICTION:

wuthering heights, emily brontë

jane eyre, charlotte brontë

the bloody chamber, angela carter

mathilda, mary shelley

we have always lived in the castle, shirley jackson

the yellow wallpaper, charlotte perkins gilman

rebecca, daphne du maurier

carmilla, sheridan le fanu

dracula, bram stoker

frankenstein, mary shelley

the mill on the floss, george eliot

the orphan's tale, catherynne m. valente

the haunting of hill house, shirley jackson

my cousin rachel, daphne du maurier

the double, fyodor dostoyevsky

the grey woman, elizabeth gaskell

beloved, toni morrison

the fall of the house of usher, edgar allan poe

wise blood, flannery o'connor

white is for witching, helen oyeyemi

wide sargasso sea, jean rhys

our wives under the sea, julia armfield

valerie and her week of wonders, vítězslav nezval

salome, oscar wilde

deathless, catherynne m. valente

piranesi, susanne clarke

picnic at hanging rock, joan lindsay

NON FICTION:

decadent daughters and monstrous mothers: angela carter and european gothic, rebecca munford

the contested castle: gothic novels and the subversion of domestic ideology, kate ferguson ellis

gothic incest: gender, sexuality and transgression, jenny diplacidi

our vampires, ourselves, nina auerbach

the madwoman in the attic, sandra gilbert and susan gubar

a new companion to the gothic, david punter

daughters of the house: modes of the gothic in victorian fiction, alison milbank

women and the gothic, avril horner and sue zlosnik

fairy tale & gothic horror, laura hubner

female gothic histories, diana wallace

women and domestic space in contemporary gothic narratives, andrew hock soon ng

gothic and gender, donna heiland

perils of the night: a feminist study of 19th century gothic, eugenia c. delamotte

the female gothic: new directions, diana wallace and andrew smith

[soracities]

"But I remember, and remembering is like an open wound."

Clarice Lispector, Selected Cronicas

Nothing hurts! Nothing hurts! “Nothing hurts!” [...] “Except for— Re...mem... ber ...ng. Re...member...ing. Remembering.”

Yelena Moskovich, The Natashas

"—I'm not crying, it's just...that I remember"

Sandra Cisneros, Caramelo

[aaronstveit]

read in 2024!

it's that time again! i loved doing reading threads in 2022 and 2023 so i will definitely be carrying on the tradition this year. as always, you can find me on goodreads and storygraph, and you're always welcome to message me about books!

Check, Please! Book 1: #Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu* (★★★★★)

Check, Please! Book 2: Sticks and Stones by Ngozi Ukazu* (★★★★★)

Check, Please! Chirpbook by Ngozi Ukazu* (★★★★★)

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (★★★★★)

The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert** (★★★★☆)

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (★★★★★)

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell (★★★☆☆)

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert (★★★☆☆)

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett (★★★★☆)

Dream Work by Mary Oliver (★★★★☆)

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson (★★★★☆)

Cain’s Jawbone by E. Powys Mathers

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang (★★★★★)

You’ve Been Summoned by Lindsey Lamar** (★★☆☆☆)

The Seven Ages by Louise Glück (★★★★☆)

The Last Girl Left by A.M. Strong & Sonya Sargent** (★★★☆☆)

The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang (★★★★★)

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Normal People by Sally Rooney (★★★★★)

How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin** (★★★☆☆)

She Drives Me Crazy by Kelly Quindlen (★★☆☆☆)

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (★★★☆☆)

The Drowning Faith by R.F. Kuang (★★★★★)

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (★★★★★)

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang (★★★★★)

King Lear by William Shakespeare (★★★★☆)

All These Sunken Souls by assorted authors, edited by Circe Moskowitz (★★★★☆)

The Big Four by Agatha Christie (★★★☆☆)

The Avant-Guards, Vol. 1 by Carly Usdin, Noah Hayes (★★★★☆)

That Was Then, This Is Now by S.E. Hinton (★★☆☆☆)

The Avant-Guards, Vol. 2 by Carly Usdin, Noah Hayes (★★★★☆)

Jurassic Park by Michael (★★★☆☆)

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis (★★★☆☆)

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (★★★★★)

Violeta by Isabel Allende (★★★☆☆)

Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister (★★★★☆)

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (★★★★☆)

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (★★★★☆)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker (★★★★★)

The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes (★★★★★)

Third Girl by Agatha Christie (★★★☆☆)

The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis (★★★☆☆)

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (★★★★★)

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (★★★★★)

Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis (★★★☆☆)

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, translated by Ros Schwartz (★★★★★)

Persuasion by Jane Austen (★★★★★)

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore & David Lloyd (★★★★☆)

What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall (★★★☆☆)

We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir by Raja Shehadeh

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie* (★★★★★)

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (★★★★☆)

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin* (★★★★★)

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (★★★★☆)

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (★★★★☆)

An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson (★★★☆☆)

The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard (★★★★☆)

You Shouldn’t Have Come Here by Jeneva Rose (★☆☆☆☆)

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (★★★★☆)

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston (★★★★☆)

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis (★★★★☆)

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien* (★★★★★)

The Iliad by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson (★★★★☆)

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith (★★★★★)

4:50 From Paddington by Agatha Christie (★★★★☆)

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (★★★★☆)

From Turtle Island to Gaza by David Groulx (★★★★★)

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (★★★★★)

Cryptid Club by Sarah Andersen

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis (★★★☆☆)

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (★★★★☆)

Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat by Bill Watterson (★★★★★)

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis (★☆☆☆☆)

An asterisk (*) indicates a reread. A double asterisk (**) indicates an ARC.

[lautakwah]

*and also cross dressing shenanigans

2024 was SUCH a flop year for me in regards to cinema bc work fucking sapped the life and joy out of me and i barely watched any films + fell behind on some of my fav actors so yea <3 (i intentionally skipped the zhu yilong propaganda films tho they're like.... i mean i like them fine, they tend to be decent but also if youve seen one youve seen them all no matter how talented the directors LOL)

[daily-coloring]

Best of 2024 - Films

Strange year behind us, I watched move TV than ever, but visited the cinema at least once a month too (3x in January). The only thing I regret, that I haven't cried more and louder when All of us Strangers ended. Still couldn't re-watch it and since then I just can't listen Frankie's The Power of Love. I just can't.

01. All of Us Strangers - 2024 - Dir. Andrew Haigh

02. Foe - 2023 - Dir. Garth Davis - "Junior has been selected as a candidate for off-world colonization. Nothing will happen just yet, the couple are promised, but of course — to skip ahead to Terrance’s second visit, a year later — something does. Junior’s advancement to the next round means that Terrance will need to move in with them, to probe Junior like a lab rat. Also, don’t worry! While Junior is away, Hen will live with a biological replacement — a replica that has living tissue and Junior’s memories. It’s the high-tech equivalent of leaving a war wife with a photograph, Terrance explains, except that this photograph can live and breathe. All to help their marriage survive, naturally." - NY Times

03. French Exit - 2020 - Dir. Azazel Jacobs

04. The Promised Land - 2024 - Dir. Nikolaj Arcel

05. The Substance - 2024 - Dir. Coralie Fargeat

06. Strange Darling - 2024 - Dir. JT Mollner

07. Uncle Frank - 2020 - Dir. Alan Ball

08. The French Dispatch - 2021 - Dir. Wes Anderson

09. Poor Things - 2024 - Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos

10. DogMan - 2023 - Dir. Luc Besson - "It’s a lot to handle and also a bit silly, but Besson often pulls it off — thanks in no small part to a commanding performance by the chameleon-like Caleb Landry Jones (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), who manages to be touching and slightly terrifying at the same time. He carries a film that’s too offbeat to achieve the mainstream success of the Taken and Transporter franchises, which helped turn Besson’s EuropaCorp into a major international studio a few decades ago. And yet, as a sort of personal artistic statement — and one where Shakespeare crosses paths with Marlene Dietrich, and deadly hounds with drag queens — Dogman is worth a look. - The Hollywood Reporter

11. Unicorns - 2024 - Dir. Sally El Hosaini & James Krishna Floyd

12. Snack Shack - 2024 - Dir. Adam Rehmeier

13. Femme - 2024 -Dir. Sam H. Freeman& Ng Choon Ping

14. Passages - 2023 - Dir. Ira Sachs

15. My Old Ass - 2024 - Dir. Megan Park

16. Wicked Little Letters - 2024 - Dir. Thea Sharrock

17. Furiosa: A Mad max Saga - 2024 Dir. George Miller

18. Hit Man - 2023 - Dir. Richard Linklater

19. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On - 2021 - Dir. Dean Fleischer Camp

20. Beautiful Thing - 1996 - Dir. Hettie Macdonald - "At the centre of the story are shy, introverted Jamie and Ste, his neighbour on a tough London council estate. Jamie is picked on by his classmates; they seem to sense there’s something about him that means he will never quite fit in with their crowd. Ste, meanwhile, is more popular thanks to his love of sport; he is nevertheless miserable living with his brutish father and older brother, and seeks solace with Jamie and his no-nonsense but kind-hearted mother Sandra." - On: Yorkshire Magazine

21. The Holdovers - 2024 - Dir. Alexander Payne

22. The Zone of Interest - 2024 - Dir. Jonathan Glazer

23. Bonus Track - 2023 - Dir. Julia Jackman

24. Sick of Myself - 2022 - Dir. Kristoffer Borgli

25. Arthur The King - 2024 - Dir. Simon Cellan Jones

26. Suite Francaise - 2014 - Dir. Saul Dibb - "Irène Némirovsky's unfinished novel Suite Française, written shortly before her death in Auschwitz in 1942 but not published until 2004, was described by the French newspaper Le Monde as "a masterpiece… ripped from oblivion". It was as if, from beyond the grave, Némirovsky was giving a modern-day readership an intimate eyewitness account, harrowing and ironic, of the experience of the Nazi occupation for the French. She wrote about both good and bad behaviour, heroism and cowardice, in every stratum of French society." - The Independent

27. Good Grief - 2024 - Dir. Dan Levy

28. The Blue Caftan - 2022 - Dir. Maryam Touzani

29. American Fiction - 2023 - Dir. Cord Jefferson

30. Road House - 2024 - Dir. Doug Liman

[cantsayidont]

Some movies of the early '00s, good, bad, and indifferent:

THE SWEETEST THING (2002): Enthusiastically raunchy but extremely dumb romcom starring Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate, and Selma Blair as three 20something friends supporting each other through various sexual and romantic misadventures. Not without charm, but too sloppily written to really land except in fits and starts, and the weak plot, which focuses on the Diaz character's disastrous pursuit of a hunky real estate agent (Thomas Jane), sidelines both Applegate and Blair so completely that they might just as well have been condensed into a single character. However, it is occasionally very funny, with the highlight being a hilarious musical number entitled "Your Penis Is…" CONTAINS LESBIANS? Not even as a concept. VERDICT: Your life will be no poorer if you tune out after the musical number, but don't miss that.

HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG (2003): Slow-moving, moody, downbeat drama about the battle of wills between depressed white divorcée Kathy Nicolo (Jennifer Connelly), whose house has been wrongfully seized and auctioned off by the county, and the buyer, exiled Iranian military officer Massoud Behrani (Ben Kingsley), who moves in with his wife (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and teenage son (Jonathan Ahdout) and refuses to sell the house back to the county for less than four times what he paid for it. (With the skyrocketing cost of real estate since the film's release, hearing those amounts may cause physical pain.) Now broke and homeless, Kathy falls into a relationship with a married local sheriff's deputy (Ron Eldard), whose attempts to "help" by bullying and terrorizing Behrani into cooperating lead to tragedy. A strange story that spends a lot of time alternately cultivating and then deliberately puncturing viewer sympathy for the characters, and which seems unusually determined to avoid examining the larger social and structural forces that are actually driving the plot. Connelly and Kingsley are effective; Aghashloo is boxed in by her thankless, rather condescending supporting part as Behrani's timid wife Nadi, who barely speaks English and lives in mortal terror of being sent back to Iran — a far cry from her later role as cunning, sharp-tongued politician Chrisjen Avasarala on THE EXPANSE. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Not at all. VERDICT: Well-made, but very heavy going, and the last half hour (which is a real downer) is troubling on several levels.

BOARDING GATE (2007): Customarily oblique Olivier Assayas crime drama, in some ways reminiscent of a William Gibson story (though it's not based on one), about a sleazy businessman (Michael Madsen) confronting his soon-to-be-former mistress Sandra (Asia Argento), whose sexual favors he has previously exploited to gather intelligence on business partners and rivals, and who now wants to break things off for good. That meeting is just one strand in a more complex web of betrayal and vengeance involving Sandra and her new employers (Carl Ng and Kelly Lin), who each have their own agendas. The terse, gritty, sometimes lurid story can be tricky to follow at points because Assayas deliberately avoids ever pulling back to present a larger picture of what's going on or revealing much about the actual nature of the characters' business, and the jittery, desaturated cinematography seems calculated to keep viewers disoriented. The problem is that the film also holds the characters at arm's length, making it hard to care what happens to them, and the ending succumbs to Gibsonian anticlimax, leaving it unclear what the point was supposed to be. That it works at all is due mostly to Argento, whose smoldering performance is the main thing holding the film together. CONTAINS LESBIANS? By implication only. (Sandra describes a reluctant past encounter with a woman who doesn't actually appear in the story.) VERDICT: The story's self-imposed limitations tend to smother its virtues, although in stretches, the movie feels more like a William Gibson story than most actual William Gibson adaptations.

THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS (2004/2006): Sordid, thoroughly unappetizing drama based on the 2001 short-story collection by "JT LeRoy," adapted by Asia Argento and Alessandro Magania and directed by and starring Argento herself, her second feature directing effort. (The movie debuted at Cannes about two years before "LeRoy" was revealed to be a fiction created by Laura Albert, although that revelation limited the film's eventual theatrical release in 2006.) The film is an episodic chronicle of several nightmarish years in the life of a boy named Jeremiah (played at different points by Jimmy Bennett, Dylan Sprouse, and Cole Sprouse), who after spending his early life in foster care ends up back in the custody of his erratic, self-absorbed, wildly irresponsible mother Sarah (Argento). After Jeremiah is sexually assaulted by one of his mother's awful boyfriends (Jeremy Renner), he's ineffectually counseled by a useless social worker (Wynonna Ryder, appearing unbilled) and placed in the custody of his Jesus-freak grandparents (Peter Fonda and Ornella Muti), who are no less cruel or abusive in their own ways. Sarah later "rescues" Jeremiah, encourages him to cross-dress to pose as her younger sister — leading to his being assaulted by another of Sarah's terrible boyfriends (Marilyn Manson) — and then moves them in a run-down house with a meth lab in the basement. The public interest in this very unpleasant material, which is a veritable anthology of child abuse and frequently difficult to watch, was ostensibly driven by the notion that it was based on real events of "LeRoy's" life. With that pretense revealed as a fraud, what's left is a distasteful appetite for the self-consciously lurid, to which Argento's main contribution is the gusto with which she embraces an especially unsympathetic maternal role. Even that was rendered all the more unpalatable by the subsequent allegations of Jimmy Bennett, who reported in 2018 that when he was 17 (about 10 years after this film was made), Argento sexually assaulted him in a California hotel room. Argento's DARVO response squandered all of her remaining goodwill and permanently consigned this already hard-to-stomach movie to the "Morbid Curiosities" file. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No, and aside from the point. VERDICT: Unpleasant content, fraudulent premise, too many creeps. Very strong CW for CSA and other forms of child abuse.

[sunstwist]

jc,

hi there! i just realized things kanina which made me burst into tears talaga... nevertheless, our connection is doing great naman na and I believe in fate kasi, honestly speaking, siya talaga ang may pakana nito in the first place. somehow nakaka-overwhelm din kasi hindi na ako puro hopes ng "maybe in another lifetime," hindi pang-"almost" lang.

please alagaan mo lalo ang self mo kasi someday i hope i can finally take the responsibility of it. i’m very grateful to meet you, and alam mo ba? peace isn't peace without your presence. the world is gentle and bearable knowing that you exist.

i’m looking forward to our future successful versions of ourselves, achieving each single goal, surviving, and enjoying life.

heart heartssss!

(btw, the sunrise clip is a raw video from my camera roll, which i took noong nov 14... eight days before your birthday. did you know that 8 is the whole of 3? so if there is a mirrored 3, ang kalalabasan is 8, which is also a horizontal infinite symbol. ang galing no hahahahahaha.

HUGS FROM ME AND MOLLY. 🫶🏻

~ sandra

[baddawg94]

[awayfromthecurrent]

So random that the first person I thought of was Aaron after my 26hrs shift. Nasa HK sya ngayon for his orientation sa work nya, dinamay sila ng company party kineso daw kaya thankful sya na 3 countries na yung napuntahan nya ngayong year (plus the Thailand sa Nov na nakabook na)

Nakakatuwa na hindi naman kami, not in a situationship also but.. chillin lang talaga. We update each other, bigla biglang tatawag, maybe bc wala naman kaming ineentertain na iba? Alam ng friends ko na nandyan lang si Aaron, and happy ako na kilala na nila yun hahaha sobrang daldal nga raw parang di lalaki 🤣

Verbatim:

Aaron: alam mo ang panget mo talaga kausap, pwede bang enjoyin ko na lang yung 3 days stay ko dito ng tahimik? Wala ka bang shift? Gahd memessage ko nga si Sandra pabilhan ko ng pancit

Later on:

Aaron: ang ganda kaya dito hahahaha napagkamalan akong chinese sa train kanina wtf HAHAHAHAHA tawa kasi ako ng tawa sa kasamahan ko ubos na english ko pero tawa pa ko ng tawa tanginang buhay to I should really watch english series without subtitles na talaga hay pero uunahin ko muna tapusin yung Loyal Pin kasi ang ganda ganda ni Rebecca sobra

Ganyan yan. Ganyan talaga yan.

[ikaelawa]

Hours before my flight, sumaglit ako sa bahay nila Bonnie para bigyan sila ng tinapay since like mee, lahat sila dun mahilig sa tinapay.

Sandra, Bonnie's younger sib messaged me this. Tuwang tuwa daw si tita sakin kasi wala raw akong mata pag ngumingiti at ang dami ko raw kwento. Di nya raw akalain na magiging close kami ni Bonnie hahahaha kahit ako eh loool. Mamy na nga rin tawag ko sa kanya eh hahahaha tinatawag lang naman nilang mamy yan pag naglalambing sila.

Ayun, si Sandra kasi kinakausap ko kapag hindi ako nirereplyan ni Bonnie (bc doctor duty) tapos magkkwento lang sya ng random things abt her bf at pati yung ex ni Bonnie. Nakakatuwa lang hahaha. Sandra's an arki pala, topic namin madalas eh puro environmental kineso hahaha kasi same namin gusto yung ganung topic!!!!!

[liuyonghuay]

almost home 《我以為家》 by Ng Mun Poh Practice Space September 2022

Director: Yeo Lyle Playwright: Ng Mun Poh Dramaturg: Neo Hai Bin Lighting Designer: Faith Liu Yong Huay Sound Designer: Sandra Tay Performer: Ng Mun Poh

Home is where we want to be