Force or no Force, The Force Awakens Will Still be a Hit.

It doesn't matter whether you liked the new Star Wars movie. A resounding unanimity from fans, critics, and celebrities has extolled The Force Awakens "the best Star Wars movie ever made" or "this is how you make a Star Wars movie", or something spoiler-free along the lines of "amazing" and "out of this world". 

In other words, your opinion doesn't matter. And neither should mine.

I'm not usually one who speaks in absolutes. That is, I don't jump at every opportunity to hate on something. (Even if that thing was as bad as Attack of the Clones.)

But the new Star Wars movie was forgettable. There, I said it. 

Decades after the blockbuster went on a sabbatical and returned with a new main man- J.J. Abrams- to direct its sequel, everybody cheered. The franchise was becoming stale after a brisk trade, slapping every Star Wars-related sticker on souvenirs- from coffee mugs to t-shirts to sneakers, you name it. 

So when J.J. Abrams released its teaser trailer earlier this year, it felt timely for a reboot. It was an opportunistic return of the galaxy's most beloved characters, rewarded by newer faces that promised more diversity beyond its premise- the old movies saw a male-dominated cast but only one Princess Leia. Plus, Abrams wasn't unfamiliar with science-fiction; he revived Star Trek.

And he gave what fans wanted with Star Wars. He stirred up a greater sense of nostalgia in the people than they could imagine feeling for a space opera- the interplanetary systems, the exoticised alien races, the sizzling of lightsabers. One critic confessed to crying, once its opening sequence snailed up the screen. ("Luke has vanished!")

Now, calling Star Wars a global phenomenon is a gross understatement. Like all powerful franchises, Star Wars has a life of its own. 

I imagine a tentacled beast besieging Hollywood, hanging in black space, roping in different directors to rewrite its screenplay sequels afters sequels (Rian Johnson will succeed J.J. Abrams in episode 8). Star Wars will live on forever.

So why rush a good story, right?

Does that explain, then, why The Force Awakens felt like a placeholder? Does that justify, after production companies shelled out billions of dollars to reboot a franchise only as to spot snippets of background narratives than to tell a story, all the enigma? 

Who is General Snoke? Why is he so large? Where did the First Order spring from? Why is Kylo Ren suffering from an Oedipus complex? Is the cross guard lightsaber a riff on Darth Maul's double-wielding lightsaber? How is Rey, a force-sensitive scavenger, any way related to Star Wars? Am I the only one who didn't find Finn funny? Mark Hamil, who played Luke Skywalker, why the long face?

Instead, The Force Awakens has asked for another year of your time- its sequel is slated for a 2017 release-, yet before the epic gets closer to the nub. 


While J.J. Abrams knows how to stage better fight scenes- the sinister crackling sound of a lightsaber cutting across the theatre- and dramatic explosions than the original saga's prequels, whose CGI-glut scenes had only the gloss but no impact, The Force Awakens was robbed of a crux that etches all good movies into people's mind: A proper, compelling story.

The Force Awakens was supposed to propel the saga forward- by uncovering lineages tracing back 30 years before this movie was set. 

But all it did to thicken the plot, for me, was to veil it from ever happening anytime soon, until episode 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13... zzz... Hey, this is just my opinion. 

The Sexiest Movie Never Made

Little matters whether Gaspar Noe's French drama "Love" (2015) is a porno-flick or a tasteful porno-flick. It isn't just about the sex in its 135 minutes, okay? But a dangerous menage a trois, unspooling creamily lit bodies into dance-like sculptures as they copulate and fall away like all doomed-to-fail relationships. Sorta.

I've never watched a Gaspar Noe movie for the same reason I've never heard about him. But a quick search dredged up numerous results of how, beside the underground director's previous films (i.e. Irreversible, Enter the Void), "Love" was bore, a letdown, a beautiful hazy dream that's also disappointingly softcore- for a movie that pronounced itself hardcore with 3D come-flying stunts by actor Karl Glusman's penis. Gaspar Noe is second to Lars Von Trier, after the latter got banned from Cannes for being a Nazi sympathizer. What both men have in common, however, is the titular "enfant terrible" title they share of in cinema. Misfits don't make blockbusters- they make artful underdog films like "Love", for fans.

Thusly, my virgin experience at Noe's titillating melodrama.

Within 30 minutes into the intimate space Noe staged,  I was stupefied, amused, empathetic, and- also- very bored. While not all at once, I was delighted by the unsuspecting intro of watching two people whacking each other off. There, naked, Murphy (Klusman) has a finger in his later-known girlfriend Electra (Aomi Muyock), who's returning the favor as she holds onto his penis like a crutch. But unlike the erotically charged Ang Lee breakthrough, "Lust, Caution", "Love" couldn't save itself from becoming a laughable morass, even after an hour into what out and out sex only the French can perform without making one feel molested just watching.

Of course, "Love" should have been a serious movie. The takeaway at the end is a tragedy of a couple's misguided trust in each other. Murphy plays a callous role in manhood's woes, and Electra is a stunning femme fatale with problems only enigmatic female characters possess (which isn't very much). Where they fortify their relationship, albeit the messes, is in the hot sex they often share. Until the threesome with their neighbor Omi (Klara Kristin), which led to the cheating, and a baby born out of wedlock, watching Murphy and Electra pre-break in flashbacks was like watching two foolhardy teenagers in love profess an eternity: A shallow, regrettable experience.

Why did I submit myself to a long, tepid movie laden with depressive monologues and full-frontal private parts sliding off the screen like a Gustave Courbet painting? For the art? If only, when all I felt in the merits lost- Benoit Debie has staged remarkable love scenes here, especially in the bordello glow of Murphy's bedroom- was a sense of restlessness. Who knew sex could be boring? Watching "Love" was like watching strangers getting it on in their Parisian apartments through a peephole. And without any depth, the characters quickly became flat and stale, when they should've been as deep and total as their thickets of pubic hair.

Yes, I definitely watched it for the sex. No shame.

Inside Tending to Your Organisation, a Training Guide For All CEOs

A Bountiful Harvest: Promoting Diversified Thinking

Tending to Your Organisation is a training manual for managerial positions and frontline workers alike. It aims to segue a company's cultural competency in its workplace.

Over the course of two months, every team in class was tasked to create a comprehensive manual that'd be graded for an Organizational Communication module. Albeit a school project, professionalism was expected from every work members of the class produced. The individual manuals- based on a list of relevant topics pertaining to the said module- would then be pitched to a class who'd play an imagined audience (i.e. HR managers, CEOs). Its totality would be assessed based on one's understanding on the subject matter.

My team's pick was Cultural Competency, a study in one's aptitude across a cross-cultural setting. By proffering skills to readers to hone their own competency, the challenge was to underscore the manual's objectives and benefits to prospective clients in a presentation.

Challenge:

It's too narrow to limit culture to a language or a skin colour, according to anyone with the common wisdom to know of different races, ethnicities, and genders. The view on culture encompasses a wider set of examples. Personal experiences, values, beliefs, attitudes- culture can be summed as a way of how people lived, in brief. It is a worldview.

The challenge then, was to present its competency as a benefit to our clients' interest. Anyone who cares enough must be informed and persuaded to the benefits of a healthy workplace culture.

Insight:

Cultural competency isn't a bottom line that reaps monetary benefits, once mastered- nobody can guarantee that. Neither is it a problem like workplace conflict, which can be nipped by changing one's methods at absolving conflicted interests. However, if its ambiguous non-referent idea had a strategic posture, it'd be that cultural competency is a value. And like all values, cultural competency cannot be trained. It has to be aspired in people.

By equipping CEOs with an education, the values would, thus, cascade downward to all members of an organization. The objective was to create an open, trusting, and inclusive workplace culture.

Execution:

The manual- which could take on any form of presentation- was marketed as a guidebook.

And like all natural practices, one's company culture needs tending. The guidebook rules out the dogmatic prescriptions of telling CEOs what they should do with their own companies. Instead, it coaches them throughout various organizational phases, from the start- at the importance of a better hiring process- to the tail- once an employee has settled within the company.

Thusly, its title and successive chapters:

Tending to Your Organisation: A Guide to Honing Your Cultural Competency

A Budding Organisation

From Friction to Fruition: Managing Conflict Effectively

My role as team leader and copywriter was not only to materialize all members' ideas into its content, but also to buttress our pitch with copy for the promotional ads. We avoided the cliches of an emotional appeal (that meant no poverty porn or any exploitative tactics at the expense of the minority). Rather, targeted at CEOs, we wanted a strong voice of reason to speak for itself.

As a first part of a trio of simplistic ads, this is a double page spread written, and presented formally, to promote the training guide:

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Next, with an interest directed to our audience, who're all CEOs and leaders in their own stride, my team I made two OOH ads. We wanted the headlines to be concise, yet promising to its reach, with a bare-bone layout and clear message:

Finally, the highest stakeholder for our audience (What do CEOs want?) is, in fact, their own intended audience whereby company growth relies upon those relationships; their customers:

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Cultural competency is an opportunity.

Results:

Tending to Your Organization has earned my team and I high points for the content and its presentation format. We too, leagued amongst the top three of presentations, voted by populist choice. Although we were eventually won out by peers with their leisurely pitches, my team and I believe a pitch doesn't share the same name as a sketch. We leaned our sales message- without the fat.