Saturday, July 26, 2014

My review of movie--Dawn of Planet of the Apes--

Movie (script) review--

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

I saw this last week and was about to write about it, but I always have too much to do.

First off it is Excellent--5 out of 5 stars.

2.  The principal aim of all art is to establish empathy, make the audience feel what it feels like to be an ape, what it feels like to be a human at the last stages--the dawn of the apes, the sunset of homo sapiens.

This movie does this excellently.

3.  Me and the Apes. 

In Burma I had no good information, and like my mother I was a bit repulsed by monkeys.  The only monkeys I had seen were the ones in the badly kept Rangoon Zoo (for all that about Col. Hla Aung)--and we had heard only of the monkey kept as a pet by a British man, a Mr. Grant, if I remember rightly, my uncle's friend, who lived in Rangoon and liked animals.

But in America I went to more and better zoos, including the oldest one in Philadelphia and National Zoo in DC, part of the Smithsonian.

In Burma when the mistreated animals in the zoo died, they were just stuffed and taken across the street and put in the Natural History Museum.

(I can still remember "the gap toothed one" making faces at me because I drove my Mini Minor and took my sons and nephews to the Museum.  What's wrong with that?  Children should go to such places, it is educational.)

In America also I read more.

So I did not like it when someone (Burmese) said to me, "So, teacher, you hold by the theory that men are descended from apes."

That was not strictly correct.

We and the apes are descended from the same ancestor/s.

We all look like apes and chimpanzees still have 99% (?) of our genes.

In the DC zoo in the 90s, I saw apes being taught language with simple sentences.  I think it was an orangutan working on a computer screen with the researcher.

--

I saw the first movie Planet of the Apes (staring Charlton Heston of NRA fame or infamy)--in Warsaw, Poland in 1969--dubbed in Polish.

That movie ends with human beings having destroyed NY City.

--

This one--

Acting and direction, special effects all very good.

But the script!!--that is Excellent.

The first and last shots are focused on the ape leader Ceasar's eyes.

True to this, it is all from Ceasar's point of view, and truly wonderful writing.

Language is introduced slowly, beginning with the first word spoken by Ceasar, "Go!"

Alan Serkis is excellent, also the actor who played the bad ape Koba.

Language is never used for more than a few very simple, declarative but important sentences by the apes.

Apes are majestic.

Humans are portrayed as petty, manipulative and ineffectual losers, stupid.

The music and sets are excellent.

In the end, it is all political and all about power, not hydroelectric power, I mean power as in powerful/Ceasar.

This movie explores what it means to be truly human, a true ape.

Kyi May Kaung--7-26-2014

Friday, July 25, 2014

All the links to all my published stories (fiction) so far--



About the author:
K.M.Kaung started writing fiction as a teenager in Burma.

She comes from a family of story tellers in Myingyan in Upper Burma. Her paternal grandmother May May Gyi, saw the last king of Burma - Thibaw, taken away on a steamboat on the Irrawaddy River by the British in 1886.

Kyi May Kaung's father U Kaung was named after the King's first envoy to the West, Kinwun Mingyi U Kaung.

Her father was a well known educationist and the first chairman of the Burma Historical Commission.

As a child Kyi May was privileged to have noted scholars and artists come to visit the house.

Dr. Kaung holds a doctorate in Political Economy from the University of Pennsylvania.

Her work has been previously published in anthologies and literary journals, and she has read widely in universities and bookstores in N. America and Southeast Asia. From 1997-2001 she had a poetry and political commentary program on air, broadcast to Burma/Myanmar. Edward Albee praised her two act play, Shaman, and she has won Pew, Fulbright and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grants.

This is her first CreateSpace publication.

Upcoming are a full length novel Wolf, and a novella, The Rider of Crocodiles.

You may find her on her blog
http://kyimaykaung.blogspot.com

on Facebook
www.facebook.com/kyi.m.kaung

and at Kyi Kaung@kyikaung on Twitter.

Her web site is
www.kmkaung.com

She divides her time between N. America, travel in Asia and on cyberspace. Links to my recent publications of novellas and short stories.

1.   Originally published in Wild River Review on line, The Lovers is the story of a ballet dancer from Chile, who has to leave her native land for political reasons, and emigrate to Philadelphia, in America.
Burmese-born author Kyi May Kaung lived many years in West Philadelphia while pursuing her doctorate in Political Science.
The Lovers has vivid local color while traversing the uneasy life of political asylees. The Lovers, print edition
https://www.createspace.com/4767856?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026
The Lovers, Kindle edition
http://www.amazon.com/The-Lovers-Novellas-K-M-Kaung-Kaung-ebook/dp/B00JX8NZRU
2.   Black Rice is a Burmese man with very dark skin, almost purple, and almond eyes. What happens when he is captured in an ambush in Burma's delta in 1947, as ethnic strife rages, a year before Burma's Independence from Great Britain? Find out here as K.M. Kaung takes you on a heart stopping journey through life. An intensely flavored pill of a story in 48 pages. A view through oddly made eyes.

"You've got to be taught, to hate and fear, you've got to be taught, from year to year. . . ."

Song lyrics, Rogers and Hammerstein, South Pacific, the Broadway musical.
3.   The Rider of Crocodiles
Dr. Kaung was traveling in Thailand when a colleague told her his great great grandfather was not killed in Ayuthia in 1767 when the Burmese invaded, as he knew how to ride crocodiles.
print edition
Kindle edition
--




4.  Dancing like a Peacock and Koel Bird
My two stories, Dancing like a Peacock and Koel Bird are also available on Create Space, print edition. Published by Words Sounds and Images--
A seven year old girl is sent off across the border to earn a living and send money home to Burma. A computer expert finds--

https://www.createspace.com/pub/simplesitesearch.search.do?sitesearch_query=K+Kaung+dancing+like+a+peacock&sitesearch_type=STORE

My short story collection-

Dancing like a Peacock & Koel Bird, also includes Little Transparent Fetus Buddha.

Print (soft cover) + Kindle editions

http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Peacock-Bird-Border-Stories-ebook/dp/B00JWZSL3C
5.  FGM—Kindle editionhttp://www.amazon.com/The-Awful-Rowing-Toward-God/dp/0395203651
FGM: A Story about the Mutilation of Women.
Dr. Aset, a trained gynecologist with several post graduate American degrees, lets herself be drawn into an inappropriate
relationship.

My novella FGM is now available on Kindle--http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KJ3FUOE

there is also a print edition on the CreateSpace/Amazon store.

https://www.createspace.com/4738586
6.  Dealing with death and old age in the USA as immigrants--
No Crib for a Bed and Other Stories, Kindle Edition
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JW2ZD40
No Crib for a Bed, print edition
https://www.createspace.com/4768879?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026







Thursday, July 24, 2014

In Burmese--Burma the least developed again--

အၿပီးသတ္ေရြးခ်ယ္ခ်ိန္
_______________________________________
Lwin Thandar Soe _ 2 2 . 0 7 . 2 0 1 4
စစ္အာဏာရွင္မ်ားက အသြင္အမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးေျပာင္းၿပီး အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခဲ့ရာ
ႏွစ္ငါးဆယ္ ေက်ာ္ၾကာၿပီးေနာက္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသည္
ကမာ႔ၻအဆင္းရဲဆံုး ႏိုင္ငံအျဖစ္သို႔ ေရာက္ရွိ သြားခဲ့ေလ၏။
ေခတ္မွီဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေသာ ႏိုင္ငံျဖစ္မည္ဟု ေၾကြးေၾကာ္ကတိေပး ခဲ့ရာ
ႏွစ္ ၅၀ ၾကာေသာအခါ ေခတ္ေနာက္က်န္ ဘက္စံုခၽြတ္ၿခံဳက်ေသာႏိုင္ငံ
အျဖစ္သို႔ ေရာက္ခဲ့ရေလ၏။
ကမာ႔ၻဘဏ္၏ ေနာက္ဆံုးထုတ္ျပန္ေသာ စာရင္းဇယားအရ
ကမာ႔ၻႏိုင္ငံေပါင္း (၂၁၅) ႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ခ်မ္းသာဆင္းရဲဇယားတြင္
ျမန္မာသည္ (203) ျဖစ္၏။
ေအာက္မွ စေရတြက္လွ်င္ အဆင့္ ၁၂ ျဖစ္၏။
အေရွ႕ေတာင္အာရွႏိုင္ငံ(၁၁)ႏိုင္ငံတြင္ နံပါတ္ (၁၁)ျဖစ္၏။
ကေမာၻဒီးယား၊ လာအိုတို႔ထက္ပိုဆင္းရဲ၏။
အာရွတြင္ ဒုတိယအဆင္းရဲ ဆံုးဆုိေသာ
ဘဂၤလားေဒ႔ရွ္ႏိုင္ငံသည္ပင္
ျမန္မာ့ထက္ အဆင့္ငါးဆယ္ျမင့္ေန၏။
ထိုစာရင္းဇယားအရ အီသီယိုးပီးယား၊ ဆိုမားလီးယား
စသည္ဆင္းရဲမြဲေတေသာ ႏိုင္ငံမ်ားသည္ပင္ ျမန္မာထက္
အဆင့္ျမင့္သည္ဟုဆို၏။
ထိုသို႔ေသာႏိုင္ငံမ်ားသည္ ပင္ ျမန္မာထက္ခ်မ္းသာသည္ဟု ဆိုေန၏။
ရွက္ဖြယ္ေကာင္းလွ၏။
ယခုတြက္ခ်က္သည့္နည္းမွာ G.D.P (Per Capiat Income) ကို တြက္ခ်က္ ျခင္းျဖစ္၏။
၀င္ေငြကို လူဦးေရႏွင့္စား၍ရေသာ အေျဖသာျဖစ္၏။
အၾကမ္းဖ်ဥ္း အေျဖသာ ျဖစ္ေပသည္။
ယေန႔ကမာၻတြင္ တြက္ခ်က္ေသာနည္းမွာ
H.D.Iနည္း (Human Develop- -ment Index) ျဖစ္၏။
လူတစ္ေယာက္ခ်င္းသည္ တစ္ႏွစ္၀ယ္လိုအား ေဒၚလာ သံုးေသာင္း၊
ပညာသင္စရိတ္ ေဒၚလာေျခာက္ေထာင္၊ လူသက္တမ္း ရွစ္ဆယ္ဟု
စံထား၏။ထို႔ထက္နိမ့္က်လာသည္ႏွင့္အမွ် ဆင္းရဲသားစာရင္း၀င္လာ၏။
ထိုတြက္ ခ်က္နည္းျဖင့္ တြက္ခ်က္လွ်င္ ျမန္မာသည္ အဆင့္ 203 ပင္မမွီႏိုင္ေပ။
ယေန႔ကမာၻ႔စီးပြားေရးအဆင့္ကို တန္းမွီသည္ဟုဆိုႏိုင္ေသာ
အာရွႏိုင္ငံမ်ား ျဖစ္သည့္ ဂ်ပန္၊ ေတာင္ကိုရီးယား၊ မကာအို၊ စကၤာပူ
တို႔သည္တစ္ခ်ိန္က ျမန္မာ့ ေနာက္တြင္ရွိခဲ့၏။
ယခုစစ္အာဏာရွင္မ်ားက ေခတ္မွီဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေသာ
ႏိုင္ငံ ေတာ္ႀကီးတည္ေထာင္ၾကေသာအခါမွ ျမန္မာသည္
ထိုႏိုင္ငံမ်ား၏ ေနာက္တြင္ က်န္ခဲ့ရံုသာမက
ကမာၻ႔အဆင္းရဲဆံုးႏိုင္ငံ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ရေလသည္။
ယေန႔ေျမေပၚေျမေအာက္၊ ေရေပၚေရေအာက္ သယံဇာတဟူသမွ် ကုန္ပါၿပီ။
သူခိုးေစ်းႏွင့္ေရာင္းလိုေရာင္း၊ ခိုးလိုခိုး၊ ၀ွက္လို၀ွက္ႏွင့္ ဘာသယံဇာတမွ မက်န္ ေတာ့ပါ။
လူသယံဇာတကိုၾကည့္ပါဦး။
ဘြဲ႕လြန္ပညာတတ္မ်ားသည္ပင္ သူမ်ားႏိုင္ငံ တြင္အိမ္ကၽြန္အျဖစ္
အလုအယက္သြားေနၾကရရွာၿပီ။
စကၤာပူေစ်းကြက္တြင္ ျမန္မာ အမ်ိဳးသမီးငယ္မ်ားကို ေစ်းကြက္တြင္ခ်ေရာင္း ေနၾကပါၿပီ။
တရုတ္တြင္ လိင္ကၽြန္ တရုတ္မယား လုပ္စားေနရ၏။
သည့္ထက္ေအာက္က်စရာမရွိေတာ့ပါ။
တိုင္းျပည္ကိုႏွစ္ ၅၀ အတြင္းမြဲျပာက်ေအာင္ လုပ္ခဲ့ၿပီးေနာက္ အရွက္မရွိ၊
သိကၡာမရွိ ေနာက္ထပ္သက္ဆိုးရွည္ေအာင္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေနၾကပါၿပီ။
၂၀၁၅ တြင္ အႏိုင္ရေအာင္ ညစ္နည္းမ်ိဳးစံုျဖင့္ ႀကိဳးပမ္းေနပါၿပီ။
သူတို႕လက္ထဲကို ႏိုင္ငံအား ထည့္လိုက္ပါ ေနာက္(၅)ႏွစ္တြင္ ႏိုင္ငံေပ်ာက္၍
အိမ္နီးခ်င္းႏိုင္ငံတစ္ခု၏ ျပည္နယ္ တစ္ခုအျဖစ္သို႔ ေျပာင္းလဲေရာက္ရွိသြားေပလိမ့္မည္။
သန္း(၆၀)ေသာ ျမန္မာျပည္သူတို႔သည္ လက္တစ္ဆုပ္စာ လူတစ္စုကို ေၾကာက္၍
တိုင္းျပည္ဆင္းရဲမြဲေတ ကၽြန္ျဖစ္သည့္ဘ၀ကို က်ေရာက္ခံၾကမလား။
ဒီလူတစ္စုကို ဖယ္ရွားမလား။
အၿပီးသတ္ေရြးခ်ယ္ရမည့္
အခ်ိန္ေရာက္ပါၿပီ။
___________လြင္သႏၱာစုိး_______________
သတင္းအသစ္တင္တုိင္း သိရွိလိုပါက
http://www.facebook.com/lwinthandarsoe
ကို Like
လုပ္ထားေပးပါရန္

Ne Win family investment--

http://www.elevenmyanmar.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6921:shocking-agd-bank-revelations-require-prompt-investigation&catid=33:business&Itemid=356

Breaking news--Ne Win scions and Tay Za's bank from Irrawaddy

http://www.irrawaddy.org/business/ne-win-scions-plan-takeover-tay-zas-bank.html

A good article about Burma--they are very rare these days--

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/SEA-01-180714.html

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Kind words on my No Crib for a Bed--

Kind words from a reader/fan.

"I must confess I skipped right to the third chapter (third story in No Crib for a Bed) and read it in the parking lot.  I will be re-reading it when I start from the beginning, as the trilogy should be read.
"All I can say as I wish I could give you a great big HUG!!  Your writing is inviting the reader to live with you in the precious, funny, painful and bewildering moments.
"I find that brave and worthy of reading your words."

Sent 7-9-2014 in a handwritten note with a picture of White Tara on the cover.

Here's where you can buy my short story collection that L. was talking about.

Dealing with death and old age in the USA as immigrants--

No Crib for a Bed and Other Stories, Kindle Edition
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JW2ZD40

No Crib for a Bed, print edition
https://www.createspace.com/4768879?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026

Very pregnant young women--a poem by Kyi May Kaung

Very pregnant young women.
I love the way they start to waddle as the tummy gets bigger
the way they have to sit with their legs a bit apart
the way they stroke the baby in their tummy from the outside while
they tell me their legs are swollen now--
The dark circles under their eyes.
The housework they did in a frenzy, having everyone over for a barbecue
because their adrenaline is up.
Me saying--It won't be long now.
I can see the baby is moving down from your shape.
Copyright Kyi May Kaung--7-15-2014

Monday, July 14, 2014

Summer Reading from me--The Rider of Crocodiles--



The Rider of Crocodiles
Dr. Kaung was traveling in Thailand when a colleague told her his great great grandfather was not killed in Ayuthia in 1767 when the Burmese invaded, as he knew how to ride crocodiles.
print edition
Kindle edition

Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Summer reading from me--about winter--



Dealing with death and old age in the USA as immigrants--
No Crib for a Bed and Other Stories, Kindle Edition
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JW2ZD40
No Crib for a Bed, print edition
https://www.createspace.com/4768879?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026

Summer reading from me--Black Rice



Black Rice is a Burmese man with very dark skin, almost purple, and almond eyes. What happens when he is captured in an ambush in Burma's delta in 1947, as ethnic strife rages, a year before Burma's Independence from Great Britain? Find out here as K.M. Kaung takes you on a heart stopping journey through life. An intensely flavored pill of a story in 48 pages. A view through oddly made eyes.

"You've got to be taught, to hate and fear, you've got to be taught, from year to year. . . ."

Song lyrics, Rogers and Hammerstein, South Pacific, the Broadway musical.

Specialpost--Ellen Bernstein--expose of World Bank Rohingya project--

https://www.irrawaddy.com/culture/books/hellfire-and-damnation-in-myanmar-ex-world-bank-country-head-recounts-rohingya-catastrophe-response....