English Films:
- The Road
- Up
- State of Play
- Anvil
- Where The Wild Things Are*
- Away We Go
- Sugar
- Duplicity
- District 9
- The Class
- Sin Nombre
- (500) Days of Summer
- Thirst
- Away From Her
- Funny People*
- In The Loop*
- The Hurt Locker*
- Up the Yangtze
- Two Lovers
- The Brothers Bloom
- Star Trek*
- Rachel Getting Married
- JCVD
- Doubt
- Be Kind Rewind
- Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
- Synecdoche,NY
- Watchmen
- Gomorra
- The Wackness
Korean Films:
- My Dear Enemy*
- Going By The Book
- Crush and Blush
- The Good The Bad The Weird
- Hellcats
- The Chaser*
- Ad Lib Night
- Secret Sunshine
- The Show Must Go On
- Cruel Winter Blues
- Sa-Kwa
- I'm a Cyborg...
- Family Ties*
- Bloody Tie*
- Someone Special
- Tazza*
- City of Violence (JjakPae)
* - i enthusiastically recommend these
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MOVIE REVIEWS - click top links to follow back to previous reviews.
Anvil: The Story of Anvil (2008) - documentary following the flash-in-the-pan and thoroughly forgotten 1980s heavy metal band Anvil. they used to tour with huge names like Bon Jovi and the Scorpions, but they are old now and still desperately clinging to a possible return to 1980s form. the film is a fantastic look at these broken rockers and how they keep scratching to achieve the success of their younger years, a success they are convinced is their due. it's a sad, depressing look at holding on too tight, but it's also, at the same time, hopeful and optimistic. 3.5 stars. Observe and Report (2009) - seth rogen's a mall cop trying to protect his love from a perverted flasher. i can't tell if it's seth rogen or the writer/director Jody Hill, but someone deserves a big FAIL for this heap of schizophrenic garbage. one thing is for sure, Rogen can't carry a movie by himself without the usual Apatow magic. this film, which is supposed to be a dark comedy, tries to toe that very fine line that successful dark comedies balance on, but instead zig zags all across it like some drunk starlet. the extremely unhappy and bizarre turns it takes leaves it completely at odds with itself, and left me wondering wtf they were thinking when they green lit this terrible terrible movie. 1 star.
Food, Inc. (2008) - documentary about the fucked up food industry and how we're all just a bunch of sheep consumers getting taken for a ride. if the movie looks and sounds like Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, it's because the movie is basically a super-condensed (short on the details) video primer of those two books. no surprise, Fast Food author Eric Schlosser is listed as a producer and Omnivore author Michal Pollan is listed as a special consultant or something or other. both are also heavily featured in the movie. either way, obviously, the film is not news to anyone who's read those books, but would probably be interesting to anyone unfamiliar with our society's addiction to industrial food products and our enslavement to corporate interests. (so dramatic!) 3.5 stars.
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) - sergio leone's Peter Fonda western. a wild west entrepreneur and his children are gunned down, so charles bronson and jason robards are on the case! made just two years after the spectacular The Good The Bad and The Ugly, this departs from the "traditional" western and ventures into the more artsy western film. the first half is littered with long, extended scenes with no dialogue and very little actual movement, and when the second half gets rolling, it turns out that what it's rolling to isn't really all that special to begin with. 2.5 stars.
The Limits of Control (2008) - indie darling jim jarmusch's latest film. a hitman travels through Spain, collecting a series of mysterious clues that eventually lead to the ultimate job. as far as i can tell, it's not really a story about a hitman, nor his job. he's just an observer, our eyes and ears, in this film that i think just wants to produce a series of dreamlike images and situations. quite frankly, i'm grasping at straws with that explanation provided by one of the film's characters because i'm still not 100% sure what the fuck the film was about. it's this quiet dude who meets people and collects little blurbs about life from them, each meeting transmitting a solid sense of place and moment, if not purpose. i could stand 30 minutes of that film, certainly not two hours. 1.5 stars.
Where the Wild Things Are (2009) - my thoughts on this movie here. one of the best films i've seen in years. the range and potency of the emotions i felt watching this film might be a first for me. 4.5 stars.
reading this article this morning about the lack of business opportunities in Iraq for american companies, i was caught off guard by exactly how pissed off it got me. the iraqi economy is growing and there are lots of contracts for service and construction being doled out, but the american share of the pie is losing to other countries like Turkey and Russia.
i think this quote says it all.
Even Iraqi Kurds, many of whom are politically at odds with Turkey, seem to get along with the Turks when it comes to business.
“Turkish companies are not afraid to do business in Iraq,” said Eren Balamir, who was in charge of Turkey’s pavilion at the fair.
The high cost of security — a cost that most regional businesses don’t have — has dissuaded many American businesses from coming; some contracts spent as much as 25 percent of their budgets on security.
this bears repeating. american businesses are specifically targeted for violence simply for being American.
america has a lot to atone for in Iraq. our sins there are many. without absolving us of guilt or future accountability, a few things should never be forgotten in the narrative that will follow. 1. once the pieces broke apart, america rightfully assumed responsibility and tried -- and is still trying -- with heroic effort to pull it all back together. 2. once the pieces broke apart, our essential partners, the iraqi people, whether through active participation, tacit approval or impotence, fought against our help.
Prior to last month's deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq's cities, al-Maliki trumpeted the occasion as a "victory" for Iraq over the American "occupiers." from USA Today 7/23/09
that's our friend and partner the iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. with friends like that...
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if you've been curious at all about Dan Brown's latest novel The Lost Symbol, it sucks it hard. it's not nearly as entertaining as The DaVinci Code probably because it relies much less on the "forbidden" revelatory aspect of his books and more on the craptastically, made-for-tv-movie cheesy narrative that he writes with. here's one trap Dan Brown sets for himself when choosing to write about the stuff he does. he describes his characters as uber-intelligent, super-people that own the knowledge of the world, but he himself is not blessed with this ability. an average man can't correctly predict the thoughts and actions of people more intelligent than him. these characters he writes suffers as a result of this contradiction. they often come off as simple and mundane, despite his attempts to dress them up.
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here's an interesting article on the actual school and people Fast Times at Ridgemont High was based on. yes, the phoebe cates dating older men, giving blowjob lessons in school, hot as shit, sex-vixen character was based on a real person. she saw the film with her high schooler kid who thought it was weird to see his mom like that. fucking nuts.
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and here's something that looks a little (yay!) creative from our wonderful world of movies. KICK-ASS. this movie looks... kick ass. directed by Matthew Vaughn who also made Layer Cake and Stardust.
Hollywood has without a doubt gone bonkers over remakes. there should be a unified and indignant cry of outrage at this clear indication of hollywood's lack of respect for our collective sophistication. the lazy bastards think we're too simple to appreciate new and creative content! let's see what backshelf stores they've pilfered and recycled over the last few years. Batman, The Hulk, Get Smart, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Prom Night, Star Trek, Transformers, Race to Witch Mountain, The Taking of Pelham 123, Friday the 13th, The Stepfather, The Last House on the Left to name just a few. and that doesn't even get into the absurd saturation of unnecessary, franchise-killing sequels like Indiana Jones, Fast and the Furious, Transformers, Terminator and X-Men.
personally, i'm a huge fan of indie films, mainly because i see a lot more of the filmmaker's personal fingerprints in the final cut, and that usually makes the film more creative, and fun to watch, even if the topic is the same as a conventional film. there's a lot of crap out there -- i've seen plenty of that too, but there's a lot of fresh stuff out there. enough to make all these remakes irrelevant anyway. but there are certain instances when a remake is called for, even necessary.
1. special effects. technology will always improve, therefore, films heavy with effects can always be improved. the new Star Trek deviates from the original in spirit, but i don't think anyone can deny the space effects are infinitely cooler and more easily watchable now with the new version.
2. a truly new take on the original content. sometimes the new film, even while based on old versions, will have an honestly new vision, and becomes a distinctly separate entity. christopher nolan's new Batman series qualifies here as a dramatic departure from the fantasy-land tim burton Batman. it went from an almost campy (or does it just seem that way in retrospect?) comic into a darker deconstruction. even something like the new Starsky and Hutch which was more a comedic send-up than a remake qualifies as worthy, in my book.
3. a revival of a forgotten work. this is kind of a gray area, because who's to say what's really forgotten? is it really forgotten if it's remembered enough to remake it? how can it be improved or at least not degraded by a new version? very tricky stuff here, and i'm kind of wondering if this should be a qualifier at all. i only know that few people in our generation really would have known or cared that there was an original The Taking of Pelham 123, had the original not been remade, right? the remake gives an old property new life, which in an of itself is kind of worthy, i guess, but is highly contingent on how good the final result is. more so than the other two remake justifications.
films that fail the remake standards: the new Hulk film really didn't add anything to the content nor, strangely, did it add in the special effects department. it was also re-created so close to the preceding version that you have to wonder how desperate the studios were to crank out a comic, any comic, film. fail, fail and fail. Get Smart, also, nothing new nor fresh, nor dazzling to look at (besides Anne Hathaway who, sorry to say, does not qualify as a special effect.)
a film that might be a worthy remake? the upcoming Clash of the Titans! i'm crossing my fingers. the old one starred harry hamlin with his hair salon haircut alongside some goofy ass mechanical owl. the new one here looks more rough and tumble as our hero battles -- like really battles -- the Gorgons, the Kraken and other greek fantasy crap. the director also helmed the newest Hulk remake, which was a huge disappointment like i said, so that's one strike against, but the cast seems interesting with Liam Neeson replacing Lawrence Olivier (wow! really? Lawrence Olivier??) as Zeus, Danny Huston and Ralph Fiennes.
the special effects definitely look like a huge improvement over the Mr. Bill claymation crapstravaganza the original used, and the look and feel of the film in general look more ass-kicking, dark and badass over the original "let's run around in togas with our wtf-is-that-a-robot-owl?" prissiness of harry hamlin's dimpled ass chin. have a look.
babies are cute as hell. babies scare the crap out of me.
thinking about having a kid one day was never really anything but an exercise of fear and brutal conclusions about myself. i really only barely take care of myself. throw in my severely self-centered disposition, perfected to extremes in a way only a perpetually single person can achieve, love of sleep, lack of self-restraint and patience, carelessness, depressed and cynical outlook, propensity to over-worry about random shit, control-freakishness (oddly this and carelessness exist in the same person. go figure) and a general desire to kick things, and chances of my kid ending up decent are not looking good.
i mean it's really hard to think that i would all of a sudden have this epiphany triggered by the baby's birth and re-organize my life for the baby's benefit. i think people are capable of what they have done in the past, and there's very little evidence of my responsible, co-existent, selfless life before, so why bet on it magically appearing after a baby is born? that's a really risky bet to be making, despite the volume of testimonial evidence that this motivational revolution does happen at that moment of birth.
i like drinking wine and eating brie, two things i probably won't be able to afford if i also have to pay for $1,000 baby strollers and save for college and all that business. i like watching movies in their entirety whenever i feel like it, with maximum volume. i like going out to eat and drink with friends once in a while. i like going out to listen to music. i like not having to clean up my messy living room. i like not having cheerios all over the back of my car. all gone. this brings up the ugly but equally likely possibility of me resenting the baby for changing my life so dramatically. i really like sleeping all i can, and am unbearably cranky when i lose out on even a little bit of it. that might be all i see on that poor kid's face: what i lost.
how would i handle it when the kid grows up a little and gets really mouthy and rebellious? i think that's when i'll really lose it. and when i do lose it, the long term consequences are truly scary to think about. the goal here is to shape a decent, functioning, contributing adult. future president would be great, but the baseline is decent, functioning and contributing. will my losing it stunt their growth? then when they do end up pregnant or in jail, i can really go to town on myself for steering them there by losing control.
(of course, my self-centeredness is in full bloom here. assuming that i, as a parent, will have that much influence over my child is the height of conceit. right now, as i see it, friends have an equal or more profound effect on the child's personality and character than the combined parents do. but, hey, i'm highly egotistical so all the kid's failings will be mine and my own, for a short while anyway before, through some transfer of burden, they end up right back on the shoulders of my kid.)
and despite this revelation of my possibly psychotic fear of having a child (or fear of myself?), this post is actually about how great it must be to have a kid. let me take it back a step here to explain.
yesterday was a very good friend's son's first birthday party. this son is one of like ten kids born all around the same time whose parents are all friends with each other. i live kind of far so yesterday at the party was the first chance i had to see all these kids, and it was encouraging. it wasn't so much the parents that changed my mind though, but the infants themselves. some were just kind of inexpressive and unreadable, but some really seemed to show a good-natured and decent disposition, and seeing that set the wheels in motion.
now, some might say, "they're infants! of course, they can't be anything but good-natured", which i would disagree with. i think some kids are born mean, and it honestly hurts me to see kids being mean to each other. that doesn't conclude though that mean kids have to stay mean. but seeing those kids yesterday being all goofy, curious and well-mannered, i now have to think about the effect a good baby can have on his parents, and how that goodness can reflect back onto him reinforcing their goodness. so, ultimately, this raises the previously unforeseen possibility of the good nature of the kid overcoming environmental shortcomings. in other words, it's not all about me fucking my kid up. my (as yet imaginary) kid might end up being a stronger influence on his own life than my own unintentional acts of life sabotage.
isn't that what good people do? positively change things around them? and maybe they can do it just by being born.
just when i thought we were pretty settled on the number of ways and reasons how and why the public should demonize Wall St., i see the news over the last few days and find something completely new for america to get pissed at Wall St. about! Wall St. is getting H1N1 vaccines along with everyone else! oh noes!!! mothers, lock up your doors and hide your children! those fang-faced, blood-sucking boogeymen are back!
apparently, some big Wall St. banks got H1N1 vaccines by the NYC government, the authority charged with disseminating the vaccine there, while some hospitals and clinics still have shortages. the news media have been unabashedly and quite shamefully painting this as another example of Wall St. greed, openly implying, but never directly saying, the banks are getting unfair preferential treatment while endangering the public.
so, let me get this straight. the public is clamoring for wide and quick distribution of the vaccine to high-risk people, BUT only through the traditional methods that are almost guaranteed to be bottlenecks? i understand that there may still be lines at hospitals for the vaccine, but given the need for fast and wide area coverage shouldn't the city utilize a shotgun approach and send vaccines to as many existing clinics to cover a wider dispersion area? the idea that there's time and bureaucratic manpower available to poll hospitals, wait for a response, do the math and ultimately derive an accurate count of which hospital needs how many vaccines is completely, off-the-wall ludicrous. given that that kind of slow, calculated approach is unacceptable right now, shouldn't the city send smaller amounts of vaccine to many more clinics rather than sending them all to just a small handful hospitals? and that's pretty much exactly what they did. the city sent the vaccines to a large list of company clinics, including Wall St. bank clinics that service huge swaths of employees daily, as well as hospitals.
think for a second about what the public and the media are really saying with all this coverage. note that they don't mention the other non-Wall St. companies that got the vaccines. they just highlight the Wall St. banks including Goldman Sachs, their latest whipping boy. they are saying the city should send out the vaccines to all clinics except Wall St. bank clinics. is that what we're all about as a society right now? for shame! i mean even if Wall St. were solely to blame for this economic shit storm we're suffering -- and they're so very clearly not --, is this how a civilization treats itself?
and who the hell absolved the rest of the country outside Wall St. of all blame in this recession anyway? was it not the local mortgage broker who originated the bad loans? were there not legions of gullible and greedy buyers who signed up for mortgages that they couldn't possibly support? were they not the voters -- half the country -- who elected the administration that let the SEC relax regulations? get off your fucking high horse, America, and accept some responsibility. this is our problem.
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