Incestuous Thai Movie My Bromance Explores Boyhood Troubles.

Thai movies are tearjerkers. And when they're as controversial as a homosexual relationship between two adolescents, they're usually a home run for its sappy plot. In 2007, Love of Siam was a telling case of two boys, for instance. It was a boy-meets-boy premise buttressed with a coming-of-age story to conflict with the inevitable kith and kin confrontation.

Today, however, a coming of age genre demands more from the audience to believe that it's artistically honest, and not an exploitation of its problems. Tastefully, film makers must accept that, though, the taboo is always appealing, self-empowerment has become more bearable to watch than its characters' depreciation. My Bromance, a 2014 Thai romantic drama, has decided to shock with the latter, spinning the sappy genre on its head with incestuous overtones.

The 1 hour 58 minutes film, directed by Nitchapoom Chaianun, is set in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It begins with a hot-blooded, tempestuous Golf played by Teerapat Lohanan, a bully of a stepbrother to the softer, effeminate Bank, his film counterpart and star-of-the-moment Pongsatorn Sripinta, who's starred this year in another gay drama, titled Red Wine in The Dark Night. Like the latter's thriller, dabbling themes of homosexuality into the strange turned the film's kindred spirit of two brothers into a bizarre romance- kissing, hand-holding brotherly love, to say the least. Of course, nothing ends well with a drama thickened this much by ingenues' lust for love.

Notably, Chaianun was careful not to steer this hefty genre into its one-dimensional circuit. The problems of family and self acceptance remains, but Golf and Bank's relationship turmoil was rooted in personal woes. A problematic Golf, whose father deprives him of attention, is tamed by a more patient, albeit fatherless Bank, who too, has a fair share of issues that mirrors the former's insecurities. As if by happenstance, the two finding each other could only point toward the larger theme of love. That it wasn't pre-mediated, the foolhardy idea of love was instantly felt.

Chaianun was also strategic to remove the film from the currency of technology to highlight his characters' naivety, underscoring the film's sexual blur between his characters. Golf was less of a keyboard warrior than a true hobbyist of plastic toy fixtures, as seen colouring his figurines throughout the film, only be reciprocated by Bank at the end. Moreover, its expression as a totemic symbol was also introduced in the film as an everlasting promise: Rings were exchanged to the seal the protagonists' romance, whether as siblings borne out of circumstance or star-crossed lovers doomed to fall apart. Everything, to wit, was done to strip the notion of love to its fleeting substance.

However, that's not to discount the movie of its pitfalls. With common-sense-defying narrative and poor characterization, My Bromance quickly became beguiling halfway. The denouement was flawed with an expected death, and complete with a lackluster voiceover at the end, which felt like a farce. The film, conflicted to what's been aimed as youth-quaking love, began to move toward the dramatic territories of adult tragedy. Calculate that with its cliches- self-sacrifice, loss, and total acceptance- My Bromance didn't survive a satisfying ending.

8 years after Love of Siam broke water works in theaters, Thai movies that have stuck to its tried-and-true formula of LGBT complexities still work, somehow. Made more by the fact that in 2015, when modern romantic films rush to encapsulate the digital age in its themes, watching a dissimilar movie only made its genre all the more nostalgic and refreshing.

Why Hedi Slimane is The Most Important Designer in Fashion Right Now.

Californian-based Parisian designer Hedi Slimane is having a fashion moment right now at Saint Laurent, a post he's helmed creative director since 2012. "He's a genius," said Betty Catroux, a confidante and muse to the late designer Yves Saint Laurent. Indeed, Slimane has, in a span of three years, rebooted the label, dropped its first name, courted controversy (though, unwittingly), and skyrocketed Saint Laurent's sales since it succeeded Stefano Pilati's romanticised embroidery of the label.

Stripped off of the high-fashion that designers before Slimane has struggled to restore into its company, Slimane's "genius" was to bring high street to the ideals of luxury. He has torn up and reassembled its parts again to resemble the wardrobe of a night-life streetwalker. Seasonally, Slimane's clothes were nothing of the glamour one'd wear, say, to Swan Lake, but an amalgamation of skinny jeans, army-surplus jackets and almost-air-tight mini skirts slit to the panties. All beside the girlish accessories he'd imagined for the new Saint Laurent girl- chokers, high-inch black stilettos and ripped stockings, Slimane's girl would rather jam to a Pearl Jam concert.

From commissioning runway music with his Los Angeles peers, to featuring Californian artists on his show invites, advertisers can agree Slimane's wizardry is marketing magic, grounded in collaboration. As for the clothes this season, Slimane riffed on the battered looks of festival goers with a musical reference. (Representative: Courtney Love).

Think Glastonbury and one'd flog to death about those Wellington boots he showed, alongside the slip dresses, which closed the show sans Love's tiara accessory- that the grunge rocker would don. In between, the show was not without the repetitive pieces of an everyday wardrobe, from sparkly dresses to perfecto leather jackets, and the netted tank tops that one can order, pronto, from NastyGal.

Crowning the girl with a tiara was also a deliberate choice. As the show opened under the haunting spell of musician John Dywer's soundtrack, an atmospheric number with repetitive beats that drummed on ad infinitum, models bowled down the catwalk from a black cube- a similar fashion to Larry Bell's featured cubic artwork this season. Their summer-of-love outfits, during which showed a collage of denim, furry shrugs, and immaculately tailored blazers, were accessorized with sparkle less on the feet than bijoux-ed on top of their heads, as if to scream, "f**k me, I'm famous," rung from the same rebellious bells of Courtney Love's kinder whore aesthetic. The prom queen this season is a champ of her own wardrobe, a point Slimane has been prodding when he first showed boots, instead of heels, oversized Nirvana-like plaid shirts, instead of dinner jackets, on his debut. It's no rocket science how easy these looks could be assimilated.

How has all that worked for a luxury business that prizes itself on the conceptual and operatic designs for close to a decade has less befuddled its audience than to scurry them to think alike; to reformulate their own strategies to follow suit. Slimane's influence is based on commerce and pure marketing, churning out easy-to-pair pieces that'd fit like a missing puzzle into his wearer's closet. You didn't know you wanted Wellington boots, and you didn't know they could be styled this or that way, until you watched a Saint Laurent presentation.

And his competitors are gradually etching on, with yet another old-house Courreges revitalising its codes this Paris Fashion week, with no complete looks but as to reintroduce variations of its famous jackets. Buyers would jump for joy, customers would find that easy to digest, and the appeal is right in line to fashion's new standard of purchase: See it, like it, wear it tomorrow.

Wieden + Kennedy's History of The Internet

When Kim Kardashian tried to balance a champagne glass on her a** for Paper Magazine in 2014, the "Internet broke", to say the least about going viral. However, it was less at the atrocity of the social media mogul- reigning in 46.2m followers since, among her peers- than at its admittance, that she has also come to define the Internet: total self-disclosure, partial-state-of-undress selfies, and depending how strong your WiFi connection is, a tool that has surveyed, governed, and changed our lives irrevocably.

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What's interesting then is that global advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy has furthered this discourse. Appropriately, it has churned out a page-long response for the 20th Annual Webby Awards, as part of other 20 notable works, which include organizations like Tumblr, NASA, Google, and, even, creative agency Kinetic Singapore, whose influence has had a hand in shaping our future.

Instead of crowing about its benefits or embedding it with human stories that honour its genesis, Wieden + Kennedy has broached the topic in a free and interpretative way, by "objectively" putting the Internet in context with its enduring history. Noteworthy remarks, like sound bites from popular culture, are included as much as its impact to advertisers, a concern that has challenged marketers to rethink about ways to connect with its audiences.

Over the next 20 weeks, a host of ideas will start unfurling from various organisations in tandem with the theme, "The Internet Can't Be Stopped." It's almost retrospective to think that every company listed has touched our lives one way or another. What the Internet should then be to them will also be related in poster-sized prints.

Relevancy is what makes this campaign so inclusive and exciting to follow. "Self-destructing videos" points to Snapchat and "#FirstWorldProblems" is a quintessential millenial gripe. Let's just say the Internet has a long tedious background that will never see a clean slate.

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Still Banging, Miley Cyrus!

As with pop to shock, titillate, and- if you're Miley Cyrus- assault your musical senses, nothing measures up to the ex-Disney star's latest surprise album which was released during the MTV Video Music Awards on August 30. While we've witnessed Nicki Minaj's jungle-festooned performance which was later joined in concert with Taylor Swift that night, it was during a drag queen studded performance that Cyrus closed as host when a new single titled "Dooo It!" entailed an even pleasant surprise. Available online, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz promises another side to the raunchy star.

On its own, the music is punchy, offbeat. It's stuff you'd play without risking musical nausea; it's an mix up of musical styles- from '80s pop to today's indie records- that has made plenty of swerves from the Bangerz star's latest dabble into crazy hip hop. Oozing 90 minutes of tracks drenched in psychedelia, Miley Cyrus & her Dead Petz is a heavy concoction of pop and nostalgia.

However, there's very little familiarity with the early twerking, tongue tying star. That means, beside the country music image she's shed since Bangerz came on, this record is anything but the oversexualized, or the "All American". The music is hazed with dreamy vocals, singing a wide-varying list of topics in styles inspired by her predecessors. (From the absurd- "Twinkle Song"- to the deeply emotional- "Karen Don't Be Sad", there are songs like "I Get Scared" that reminds one of an early Paul McCartney). Offset that with the Miley you know, a couple of songs about high-fun and drugs were also thrown in, brewing a bizarre 23 track-album, including a ballad about a dead blowfish, that should cure us from pop's oft-late cliches.

Has there ever been a time more appropriate for pop music to evolve? If today's idea of pop is Taylor Swift, Cyrus's new album would be a one-up. Rife with colour- explicitly depicted on the album cover- the music is fresh on its own without a pop album's formula of love, boys, and breakups. It's a project borne of Cyrus's artistic freedom, which she took to her discretion after Bangerz's success. Crediting an impressive collaboration with famous help, such as Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips, Los Angeles's indie rocker Ariel Pink, and record producer Mike Will Made It, the music has the muscle of a steady pop record that could be raucuous and cheeky, and yet, too, daring, pushing boundaries few pop stars do, by introducing a marginal taste that could only be classified as "indie" to mainstream listeners.

In the Ariel Pink track, "Tiger Dreams", listeners are greeted with heavy reverb, awash with fuzzy waves that'd sweep them off with mellow overtones. And as Cyrus begins to croon ("the first who holds servility is probably right..."), everything else becomes a fuzzy blur that elicits dreamy illegible phrases masked by the occasional Auto-tune. Meanwhile, as with pop's familiar territories, "Lighter" riffs on '80s synth beats in typical fashion of a love song, "What's going on in my mind, when/ We're together, everything is so sweet..."

As the 22-year-old star explained to the New York Times, "That's what I've got the luxury to do... I can just do what I want to do, and make the music I want to make." Would this, then, suggest yet another reinvention from Miley? Frankly, it's unlikely, to say nothing that the album was an off chance from her record contract with company RCA, who knew nothing about it. But consider this a non-commercial self from the chameleonic pop idol, who's really a cultural tour de force shaking things up right now.

Thanks Miley! Now I can't stop.

A Stock Photo Romance, Love is.

The One. An everlasting promise of finding the perfect Other that fortifies relationships into an unbreakable bond. Without its notion, we wouldn't have known pseudonyms like Big, or heard songs like "Bound 2", a 4 minute track dedicated to newly mother-to-be Kim Kardashian West. In fact, the One is but made up of two; two hopeful singles who believe that they were born into this world on a quest for marriage, deeply connected sex, and riding in coital position on a dirt bike.

Today, though, the definition might've skewed from the classics, and yet furthered online. Otherwise, how else do we explain the apps whose existence trolls our hope for a match that can only be made in URL? (Ashley Madison anyone?) In the face of technology, we know better that the One is out there, except, he or she is on an algorithm, making snap judgements about our profile pages.

Feeling insecure? Here, an early essay that highlights how love's experienced then, and now.

A basic couple in matchy plaid from Gap.

In Old English, love was, though, still is, ascribing to a beloved noun. It is connotative of a friendliness that weaves the word with a feeling of warmth, affection, and joy, to say nothing of its added expression by the 15th century, when love became a verb, as in, to make love, to have sex (Love, n.d.). Granted, the word love has been around longer than generations before my own, like infinitesimal beings dotting the planet with our right to feel it, act upon it, and behave as we are in it. We are such hopeful people when it comes to love that to think of a world without one would be a catastrophe. Like our unsolicited issues of Cosmopolitan or our churches, sex columnists and clergymen would all but run out of a job in one fell swoop if love never exists for a day. Love is grand, in brief, and simplistically, “a strong feeling of affection”(Love, 2015). However, compared with history, which has compounded love's earliest of meanings into a wide-varying list of phrases, such as "love letters", being a "love fool, or to "love thy neighbour", modern love has witnessed an overhaul in its definition. To say that love is unchanged is false, regardless of the wise men that have made its notion lapidary. While it is still a feeling derivative of joy, today, love is defined today by technology, expressed as a swipe on apps, and synonymous to engaging in casual debauchery, whereby loving your neighbor is as literal making him your bedfellow, hooked up from an app that measures his or her online radius.

It all started with Facebook. Like with any meeting place by happenstance, the cliché of its idiomatic phrase, "love at first sight" has moved its venture. Having dated once on the Internet, instead of finding love by the cinematic tropes of bookstore corners and coffee shops, my ex-partner and I took off after befriending each other on the social media channel. We dated briefly online, exchanged flirtatious virtual letters by dropping them off into each other’s inboxes, and declared our statuses- thanks to Facebook’s innovative (and invasive) labeling function, “single”, “married”, or “in a relationship”- before moving on like any real-world couple. Love, in brief, was not bound by physical places. Gone were the days of brushing shoulders and locking each other’s gazes in public spaces; today, you lock down on each other's Facebook profiles and update your marital status, pronto.

A tired web of romance's three-way-trap.

However, unlike the epics, as with Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Tristan and Isolde, who share a common tragedy, modern love ends with the tragedy of iPhone apps. If the mishap then were to be in the unparalleled expectations of love, apps today would have to be the bar that keeps lowering our standards. Post-Facebook, when apps that took over our mobile phones seem to work in tandem with the buzzing Internet age, acting upon love, or simply, asking a person out on a date, is predetermined by its lazy swipe. For example, in one game-changing dating app, Tinder, users specifically log on as single hopefuls looking for love. The app has boasted that, within seconds and a measured radius, a prospective partner is just a swipe away: If you like what you see, you take a right swipe; and if you don’t, you move left. Should you get a match, you are too, prompted to “keep playing”; thus, to keep your options open has already been decided for you (Brodwin, 2015). Further complicating this notion of love by captitalising it into a lucrative business, Time writer, Samantha Grossman (2015), reported that users could now link another of their photo-sharing profile, Instagram, into their Tinder pages, so that they may progressively “attract a quality mate”. They include almost-nudes, surreptitious pictures of inanimate objects, wholesome traveling photos, or even a Lamborghini. Tried and true, I took on the dating app, once, after carefully selecting my avatar. Unlike Facebook, where offline dating is still considered traditional if you used it as a platform to kick-start your relationship, Tinder is the future that skids love into the gutters. While the average human being forms an impression in five seconds, I could trim mine to two, and then one, after deep sighs heaved at how profiles barreling down the home screen do not appeal immediately. What is to be made of a profile image is often judged too quickly by thumbnails, swipes after swipes. The sweet gesture of love today is not a measure to decide if there is any chemistry between two hopefuls, but a way to debate if one user profile is more worthy of your time beside the next. This is reductive to the early notion of love, that its romantic feelings could be groomed with time. Unlikely to be formed by the spontaneity apps have boasted with the advent of matchmaking sites, time is a luxury modern love cannot afford. In other words, love has become the fuel to our ire of instant gratification. We are, while foolhardy suckers for love, becoming more flustered at faster results and faster broadband speed that would only decline our chances of finding any love at all.

"We love Love!"

Most recently with apps, I have been reading into love as an excuse for something else. By the stretch of my imagination, I have never thought of love to be purely physical. Throw in erotic fiction Fifty Shades of Grey and one would call bluff on love. “Love is really just sex!” as my eighteen-year-old cousin adequately summed it, one day. He thought that the erotic saga, written by EL James, was reflective of our times. To him, sexuality is a discourse we need not shy away from, as an expression to make love to someone whom we desire. To me, sexuality is more than just to love freely, but also a rendezvous with our dating apps. As with the term, “the love that dare not speak its name” (Love, 2015), alluding to the homosexual trial of author Oscar Wilde in the eighteenth century, love’s offence is not in its name, today; rather, it is in its usernames that people hide behind on dating apps that exploit guilt-free sex. Like any “couple”, I have seen friends marry up nicely with one another on these apps, meet up for dinners like a date, and oft-travel abroad together. If there were a catch, it would be that dating apps have made monogamy a hidebound idea. As with those who sleep around freely, parties could see anyone else they fancied, throughout the open relationship. There were no ground rules, as love was free, and in the main of love’s name, it was equivalent to risqué behavior. In contrast to Tinder, these “dating” apps belie, because wholesome headshots are replaced with salacious photos of one, taunting to be privately messaged off the grid of its interface. Though, some profile messages still read “Looking for LTR (Long Term Relationship)” they are but baiting when users ask later if one would like to “make love”. Has love, thus, been blurred so deeply that it is indistinguishable from casual, wanton sex, to say nothing of how openly accessible these apps are to anyone?

Today, love makes as much sense as the evolving state of the Internet and its applications. We are still using it, learning to advance it, and hoping to improve lives with it. Yet, that love could be found, forged, and fallen out of on its platform is defined by all the instances evidenced in my encounters: Love is a meeting place where romance ought to blossom, and it helps with an internet connection; however, it is also a filtering tool where we can carefully sieve out those we suspect of never loving; alas, it is an excuse for exploiting one’s sexuality. As befuddling, romantic, and enigmatic as love was in its early definition, love has leaped on with technology. Like its modern age, are we not still figuring it out what it truly means to ourselves?

Bound 2.