Quick word on Sympathy for Lady Vengence From Kyoung

My friend from Korea, Kyoung finally managed to see the conclusion to Chan Wok Park's Vengeance trilogy. He didn't go into the plot specifics, but he did mention that the movie wasn't as good as Oldboy (but then again, what can be, right?), but cautioned that the movies couldn't easily be compared. Kyoung mentioned that the audience was polarized by the movie, either loving or hating the flick. Will this stop me from checking it out? Fuck no, man. Chan Wok Park is easily the world's most exciting director and he has yet to disapoint me with his movies.

Kyoung also saw Crying Fist which I also mentioned earlier as a movie that I wanted to see. He said that it was probably best boxing movie that he's ever seen, which is impressive considering his appetite for cinema.
Classified under:movies,Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

I am mildy drunk

But I'm not asshole or prick drunk; more like bullshitter drunk. Bullshitter drunk means that I'm affable and will hold my secrets, so don't try to pry them out of me, Stephen. Nope, it means that I'm in the mood for shitty fast food and Asian porn. horrah for Chinese tits! It also means that I won't be writing horribly embarassing emails to my ex girlfriends about how much they hate me. This is a good thing.
Categories: personal

In the Realms of the Unreal

What about In the Realms of the Unreal, eh? I wrote about the movie a while back on my sister blog, Moon Karma Zero and finally watched it this evening. A quick primer for those who don't know aobut the movie: it's a doc about a reclusive Janitor called Henry Darger who spent his life toiling away painting and writing a 13 000 page epic about the Vivien girls. I've always been interested in found/outsider art, so the movie was a real treat for me. Having never seen Darger's art in person I was facinated by the level of detail that he put into his paintings and the content of the art. You don't see hermaphrodite girls getting mutilated because of their love of Christ every day, you know?
Categories: Henry_Darger, movies, In_the_Realms_of_the_Unreal

testing new catagory system

This is a test
Categories: test

Karaoka and aftermath

The plan last night was to go to Jackfish Dundees with my brother's girlfriend (for the summer, it must be emphasized) and the female population and engage in the ancient Japanese art of karaoke. That was the plan. I convinced Stephen to give me a ride to Jackfish's selling him on the idea of girls, drunken single girls, with shaved legs, the shaved part being important to my bush addled brain. I met up with Christopher's girlfriend (for the summer) Megan Brooks, the sister of Joe, a guy that I hung out in junior high, Andrew West and his sister, Nicole. Apperently, there was trivia of obscure, for me, at least, country music and late 70s musical anthems mixed with geographical trivia. I ordered myself a picture of beer knowing that my tree planting given abilities of holding my liquor would come in handy. And lo, I wasn't a belligerent drunk. *snark alert* This will come as a suprise to some. *snark alert off* With liquor oiling the wheels of conversation, we talked of many things: Victoria, Issaiah Bell, my brother Christopher, movies, Grand Theft Auto, a shitty new wave band that came to FSJ (whose name escapes me) et cetra. We also hatched a plan to get my brother drunk as no one has seen him under the influence. I've never seen Christopher drink a drip of alcohol in my life, mainly due to a weird quirk of his that says that he doesn't want anyone in the family to see him stumble and vomit. Or so he says. I think he can't hold his liquor. The evening ended with the girls singing a Dixie Chicks song and Stephen and I heading to McDo's to get my drunken hamburger fix. I found out this morning that Megan got kicked out of Loony Tunes. It was best described as a post emptive manuver as they should have done it on her birthday.


If it didn't rain this morning, I'd be out in the field today "working" instead of in the office, doing paper work. This is bad because I have a rare hangover. Why's the field better? I dig it because the work is mostly setup. Since we're pumping water, most of the work takes place in the first hour that we arrive at a site moving pumps. After that, you spend most of the day in the truck reading books, listening to CDs, eating snacks and bullshitting all while raking in tall dollars. Working in the office isn't hard physical work, but it's steady and you don't get breaks like you would in the field. Instead of spending 2-3 hours driving from our place and back in the John out to PJ or Mile, you gotta be ready to work in the basement at 7 onwards. Mornings, like this, where I got less than 5 hours of sleep, it's nice to work in the field since it allows the opportunities to sleep. No such luck in the office.

I've never been keen on the fact that my dad runs his business at home. Business bleeds into family affairs more than it should. It's not something that you can turn off when you leave the office, since the difference between the office and the house is a set of stairs. My dad's not the greatest communicator (like me!), so when he gets pissed off, or is having a shitty day, he'll take it out on everyone. It sucks, because you have no clue what'll set him off. Like today, out of the blue, my dad went "You know, I make mistakes too! Everyone is always on top of me", totally without warning. That said, he's a great boss and I like working for him.
Classified under:personal,

Kickass new Korean flicks

If you're into the international film scene, like myself, you probably know that Korea (and to a lesser degree, Japan) is producing some of the world's best cinema. From the stylized ultra violence of Chan Wok Park's Vengeance trilogy to Kim Ki Duk's more contemplative fare like 3-Iron, the Korean film scene is bringing out imagry and action that harkens back to the heyday of late 80s, early 90s Hong Kong cinema. Adi Tantimedh is a comic writer and critic overseas who is incredibly fond of the Asian film scene. I usually trust his judgement of what's shit and what' good. Recently he released his thoughts on three new Korean movies, all of which, I want to see badly now. He says:

im Ji-Won is probably one of the top five directors in Korea right now, with only four movies to his credit. He has never made the same type of film twice. His first, the deadpan black comedy THE QUIET FAMILY, has the dubious honour of being remade into a hysterical DIY musical by Takeshi Miike, THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS.

His second, THE FOUL KING, was a comedy about an office worker who becomes a masked wrestler and loses himself in the fantasy life.

His short film HOME, in the pan-Asian horror anthology THREE, is a hallucinatory nightmare about limbo in a housing estate. That whetted his appetite for A TALE OF TWO SISTERS, a gothic ghost story that takes the key Korean folktale about the evil stepmother and the revenge of the dead girl she persecuted and reimagines it into a labyrinthine maze of psychological trauma, and is probably the most stylish ghost story in the current cycle of Asian horror films.

A BITTERSWEET LIFE is Kim's entry in the gangster genre. It has more in common with Cocteau, French existential movies and Michael Mann. The hero is a gangland enforcer who has never been in love, who doesn't have a life outside of his work. He's a coiled spring of precise, efficient violence and highly valued by his boss. He's given an assignement: to watch his boss' young mistress, and if she's unfaithful, to kill her.

He chooses not to kill her, and unleashes an avalanche of Hell and Retribution upon himself. But when a hard man's heart melts for the first time in his life, and he's made to pay for it, he's apt to return some Hell and Retribution of his own.

It's not the originality of the plot, but the oblique and unexpected approach Kim Ji-Won takes to tell his story here. He goes all out with the hyperreal, ultrastylish Cinemascope compositions of cool, sleek surfaces that mirror his hero's melting glacial exterior. The setpieces are amazing, but it's the moments of silence that punctuate them that make the movie surprisingly contemplative, the camera dwelling on the star's face, after the torture sequences, the fights, and the apocalyptic shoot-out. The film becomes increasingly off-beat as it goes along, my favourite moments being a bunch of bumbling Russian-Siberian arms dealers. And Kim withholds the emotional pay-off and the revelations for the final moments of the movie, making it a gangster movie that plays to the rhythm of a heart breaking in slow motion.

This is one of the of the best films of the year.

ARAHAN is the Korean martial arts-superhero comedy hit of 2004.

A nerdish traffic cop is accidentally zapped by a shopgirl with Chi powers when she was trying to stop a purse-snatcher. He discovers that her father and the friends who trained her are Secret Masters of martial arts who who has stayed hidden in ordinary life for decades, waiting for the right pupil to pass their teachings to. And they in turn discover that with his extraordinary Chi potential, that student is him. When an old enemy escapes from his prison, intent on taking over the world, they suddenly have a deadline to turn him into a Master to save the day.

Again, the premise isn't original, but it's the execution and incidental details that carry the show. The wittiest touch is the story's location of superpowered sages hiding among the bickering urban working class of modern-day Seoul, working as shopkeepers, labourers and small businessmen. The cute superpowered girl works as a convenience store who uses her breaks to run across rooftops and down the sides of buildings to fight crime. The supervillain is unleashed from a secret tomb by workmen drilling to extend some roadworks. The martial arts wire-fu is as slick and accomplished as anything from Hong Kong, but takes the movie one-ups CROUCHING TIGER by being totally irreverent and taking the piss at every opportunity. As a superhero movie, it shares a lot in common with Raimi's Spider-man films, but is a lot more exuberant and much funnier.

Director Ryu Seung-Wan is one of the other top five directors in Korea. He's got all the savvy and inventive wit of Sam Raimi, and casts his brother, the talented Ryu Seung-Bum as his lead.

CRYING FIST

So yes, Ryu Seung-Wan is practically the Korean Sam Raimi, and here he takes a completely different tack after ARAHAN.

The story is simple: an aging boxer and a juvenile delinquent separately use the sport to claw their way back to a life worth living, and eventually face each other in a lightweight championship bout where both has everything to lose and everything to gain.

Boxing movies are underdog redemption stories, not to mention weepies for men. Guys feel better about being emotional after having the snot pounded after them, because they feel less girly about it, and CRYING FIST lays it on in spades. It subverts the conventions by making both its main characters sympathetic underdogs fighting to regain their dignity.

Choi Min-Sik from OLD BOY is the older guy, a former Silver Medalist boxer whose life has gone to shit after years of bad investments and fair-weather friends who took his money and never came back. His wife has thrown him out and his son is embarrassed by him. He has brain damage from all those blows to the head and he makes money by offering himself as a punching bag to passers-by to take out their frustrations on.

Ryu Seung-Bum, the director's brother again, plays a completely different role from the well-meaning nerd in ARAHAN. Here he's a sullen tearaway with a mountain of pent-up rage and a way with his fists. He starts to find an outlet in the boxing program in jail, and after his father dies, feels the need to atone for the grief he caused his ailing grandmother.

By the time the two men meet in the ring at the film's climax, we're rooting for both of them and watching the tragedy of two men trying to find redemption by pummelling the shit out of each other.

Unlike the cartoon stylisation of ARAHAN, director Ryu goes for a sharp, high-contrast look and the use of long lenses to draw you into the characters' world. And unlike namby-pamby Hollywood fights, he shoots the fights in long uninterrupted mastershots without the use of stunt doubles. It's the dynamism of both style and story that reinvents the boxing movie.

Sounds like Korea is aping HK's strongest genres: the wire fu flick and the heroic blood shed gangster movie. Hopefully these movies (and Sympathy for Lady Vegeance) will be in Chinatown next time I visit Vancouver
Classified under:Korea,movies

Site overhaul almost finito

Well, it took me a good couple of hours, but the site redesign is almost finished. Thoughts, anyone?

Deeds and memes.

Well, as of a couple of hours ago, I finished my good deeds for the week and phoned up Pearl. Today's her birthday, you see, and I give her my annual phone call today. I can honestly say that this year was better than my call last year since this time she was actually home and I didn't have to talk to her Englishly challenged mother. We didn't chat that much, since I had woke her up, something that tends to happen when I give my exes a ring (this also happened when I called up Miwako on her birthday, earlier this week). Since she was so sleepy, I told her that I'd phone her up in a couple of days, most likely later in the day so I could talk to her in a more concrete state.

Had she been awake, I doubt that we'd have that much to say. For the last week, we've been emailing each other quite a bit; an email per day. It's like the old days, brain picking with a dash of inuendo. It's good to know that she's still the same person, inspite of the fact that she's getting married.

Tangently, I've shamelessly stolen another meme from Heather. Shameless, I tell you!

1. Reply with your name and I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal. Unless I got it from your journal, or you've already posted it on your journal.

I usually don't do this, but I'm up for the interaction. Indulge me, once again. This, I command.
Classified under:personal,memes

Books that I want to read

Coming up later this year is a new comic by Vertigo comics called Testament. The premise is intriguing, as it's an alogorical comic about the Bible. Much like how cinema often reinterprets the Dracula myth for each generation, Testament reimagines the Old Testament in a world much like our own. Seeing as Vertigo usually trades their comics 6 months after the end of an arc, I'll be waiting until next October to pick the series up.

My buddy from tree planting recommended a book to me called the Dice Man. He assures me that it's one of the greatest novels that he's ever read. Considering how much reading material digested, I'll take his word for it. He tells me that it's a book about a psychologist that, in a fit of boredom, decides to make all his life choices based on a roll of the dice. Denis urged me to go into the book clean, knowing no more than that, so thats what I have planned.

The collected edition of Demo is coming out later this year, the critically acclaimed comic by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan. Originally sold as "what if kids had powers in the real world", it looks to be much better than that.

Also published by AiT-Planet Lar, the guys that brought out Demo is Tales From Fish Camp. It involves tales of hard drinking and hard work, which sounds like tree planting.

The first two trades of Scott Pilgrim will be waiting for me in PG when I get back. I look forward to this more than anything else.

Classified under:books,comics

Why Rogers is pissing me off

A couple of days ago, I was pretty stoked to find out that I could send email to my Rogers cell account. Seeing as I'm now spending most of my day away from the computer *gasp*, I figured that getting my e-mail would make things easier. Since I have an utterly kickass gmail account, I knew that anything that came into my mail box would easily be forwarded to my cell, unlike my shitty hotmail one. I had all this cool shit planned out for my cell. I was going to use one of those RSS subscription services to send feeds to my e-mail account, allowing me to pretty much have all the web access that I'd need on my phone. Pretty cool, eh? Unfortunately for me, Rogers has this bullshit policy of billing me for emails received as text messages. To receive a message, I have to text Rogers to authorize it, a 15 cent fee each time. To make matters worse, there's a 160 character limit per message, which means that depending on the length of the message, you'll be shelling out more money. Pretty shitty. I heard that this policy is a relatively new, just added last month. , so I'm not the only one being burned. Hopefully Rogers realizes the error of their ways and reinstitues their old system, but seeing as they're a money hungry corporation, it's quite doubtful.

Le sigh!
Classified under:rogers,cell phones

Rob needs help badly!

If someone could get all the tracks from the Go! Team's album, Thunder, Ligthening Strike and put them on the internet via You Send It, I would be *very* grateful.

Classified under:personal,the Go! Team