Mini-Blog: I don’t know if it’s something I bring with my personality, or a natural tendency of guitar players, but whenever I get into a song in a style that’s sort of new to me I immediately want to somehow “get involved” in that scene. This happened recently for me with this song from Silent Hill 3.
Also, I noticed that City of the Living Dead is now streaming on netflix.
Anyway, I was hoping to get your opinions about something. Do you think it’d be lame to travel to Japan as part of a tour group? I’m kind of in a transition period right now and I think I might want to go over the next few months. I’m not sure what level of language proficiency I could obtain in the time frame and I think that just in general going around alone would be kind of stupid. Any advice from the more well traveled?
Bloody Reunion: Honestly, I’m only reviewing this movie in the hope that I can convince one of you to watch it so that I can then ask your opinion of it. If only we had stayed one more night at the river!
Brief summary: a group of young adults visit their old grammar school teacher, Ms. Park, in the South Korean countryside. Things are understandably tense as it is shown how Ms. Park, bitter over the collapse of her family, routinely inflicted varying types of cruelty on her students. For some reason, though, she acts more or less oblivious to it all, even when confronted about it.
I kind of wished they had kept the name “To Sir, with Love” which I suspect is the literal translation of the Korean title. I love the blatant irony of it as well as the obvious gender mismatch. But really, the most curious thing about this movie is the twist. I’d say I’ve watched a fair amount of K-Horror, and almost every K-Horror has a twist, but I’ve never seen a twist that was this incoherent. It’s reason enough to watch.
Mini-blog: Still in a somewhat relieved mood after defending. I was pretty beat at the end of last week and over the weekend, but I’m starting to get caught up on some personal stuff, practicing guitar, trying to do some reading. Oh man, Snow Country is kicking my ass. I think I’ve started this book three times. There’s just something about the narrator that just doesn’t appeal to me. I suspect that he was probably the definition of suave in 1920s Japan but it just doesn’t translate, at least for me. But I’ll keep at it.
This is pretty much essential viewing. I’m in awe of people with this kind of talent.
Coffee Prince: As you may know, when I really began to lose interest in mass entertainment, I was still watching Korean horror movies. Really wasn’t a straight line between that and Korean television dramas but I’d say I’ve become a fan over the past month. Coffee Prince was the first kdrama I watched and it definitely hooked me.
The basic plot: Eun Chan is a 24 year old tomboy who has struggled to support her mother and younger sister since her father passed away. She makes money by working at part time jobs such as being a taekwondo instructor, peeling chestnuts, stitching eyes on stuffed animals, and delivering newspapers and milk. Choi Han-gyul is heir to a wealthy family in the coffee business who has just returned to Seoul from studying abroad. His aimless lifestyle raises the hackles of his grandmother, the family matriarch, who is eager to see him married off and start a career. Han-gyul first meets Eun Chan by chance when she prevents his date’s purse from being stolen. He mistakes Eun Chan for a boy and offers her a job to pose as his boyfriend in order to sabotage some blind dates which his grandmother has arranged. You can see where this is going. The Twelfth Night situation is the main source of conflict and drama in the series. Since watching Coffee Prince I’ve seen other kdramas and wanted to talk about the general appeal a little below. Specific to Coffee Prince, however, it would be hard not to notice how charming Yoon Eun Hye is. She’s a famous actress so she’s obviously very pretty. But, within the role, I think she balances the credibility of her passing as a boy with feminine appeal. She also projects a kind of innocent boundless enthusiasm in a way that just levels you emotionally. Also, the soundtrack is, at times, such a snapshot of Zach’s music taste circa 2002, with artists such as Kings of Convenience and Azure Ray being featured prominently.
I’ve also been thinking a lot recently about what makes kdrama different than American television and why I find it to be so much more appealing. It’s a combination of a number of things, but overall I’d say Korean dramas obtain a certain frankness in a way that domestic entertainment never does. Here, everything always has to be some ridiculous overwrought statement, justice must always prevail, there always has to be a moral, a character will never get away with being a jerk if it isn’t justified as the symptom of a tragic flaw or if he or she is not a villain. It just gets to the point where it’s so far outside any conceivable realm of applicability to your own life that, minus the blatant appeal to the vanity of an inner psychodrama, it just starts to feel completely alienating. I mean, take the best recent American tv like Lost or all those HBO shows. Seriously, does that bodice ripper emotion shit mean anything to me? The image above is of a bottle of Soju, or Korean rice wine, which I guess is kind of the Korean analog of sake. It shows up all the time in kdramas. It kind of struck me as odd in the beginning but I guess that’s because I was so used to tv here where you hardly ever see people drink except if the show is about alcoholism or something. I guess that’s one example of what I mean by a frankness, i.e. things may not be perfect but the sun is still going to rise tomorrow morning. And this applies to all sorts of topics which kdramas touch on such as basic money troubles, relationship issues, etc.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some noticeable issues with kdramas. They can be very picture perfect in their portrayal of city life and love (everyone being uniformly attractive, designer clothes, and all kinds of crazy fancy apartments) but, for me, that’s forgivable as you can tuck away an awareness of the illusion in the back of your thoughts. And I guess it goes without saying that you’ll get an ambivalent impression comparing the world of kdramas with the world as presented in the films of Kim Ki-duk for example. What isn’t cool though is that apparently, and I don’t pretend to be an expert on this, the working conditions in the entertainment industry can be exploitative to the talent. If you followed the news from 2009 you may remember that there were a series of high profile suicides in the Korean entertainment industry. The story of Jang Ja Yeon in particular is heartbreaking to read and I think should make anyone think twice about what they see on screen.
Sorry for the scatterbrained nature of this review. I lost part of it while I was writing.
I’ve been either too busy or not inspired enough to post anything of substance over the last couple of weeks, but my media consumption has continued unabated. So here’s a summary of some of what I’ve been experiencing:
Fang Island (Self-titled album). I downloaded this off of itunes after Zach and I saw this Brooklyn-based happy metal machine open for Red Sparowes in Sacramento a couple of months back. There’s something both heartwarming and ludicrous about this quintet, which aptly describes their music as “the sound of everybody high-fiving each other.” While Fang Island on record is good, they are even more of a beer-swilling, head-banging, vocal-harmonizing guitar-soloing juggernaut live. Like Styx for hipsters…in a good way. Fang Island provided a welcome palate cleanser at the Red Sparowes show by essentially bursting the bubble of avant metal humorlessness. Also, the whole band is originally from Rhode Island and one of the guys in the band used to work at this great video rental place in Providence.
Battlestar Gallactica (the first three or so seasons of the series). Holy Lords of Kobol is Battlestar Gallactica good! Sci-fi of the highbrow/refracted mirror kind, and amazingly great considering the poor quality of its source material. Plus, Edward James Olmos literally captains the ship as Commander Bill Adama, who is about as stoic as they come, but isn’t above punching his son in the gut while sparring in the gym. BSG has all of The Next Generation’s high seriousness without its sometimes cloying moral clarity, and tackles a series of topical issues including torture, electoral politics, civilian command of the military, and journalistic ethics. And the character development is great.
Inception. Roaring Shark West Coast saw Chris Nolan’s latest exercise in self-serious conceptual weirdness a couple of nights ago. I had heard some devastatingly bad reviews of this movie, so I went in with low expectations, and was consequently pleased. The plot is ridiculous but nonetheless entertaining, though it annoyingly manages to recycle a whole lot of Freud, whose theories on identity projection, the subconsciousness, totems, etc. are ransacked for the purpose of making art (or artiness). The sets are predictably elegant and the cinematography clean, though my favorite part of the movie involves what can only be described as Nolan getting his way with a big budget and inserting a protracted ski and snowmobile-based battle in an alpine forest. This is probably the closest I’ve ever seen Nolan get to goofy humor. Nolan brings out his repertory company for this one – Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and, oh yeah, Michael Caine show up for the dreamy madness.
Mini-blog: Don’t mean to bump Rob’s world cup post but I’ve been wanting to post some reviews. Especially to keep the front page updated for the month of shadoweyes. I’ve got a lot of stuff I can talk about and hopefully this week I’m more productive than last week which had pretty much floored me.
I’ve been in contact with Leonard recently and he’s been turning me onto some new music. I’ve especially been digging this video. Which is as fun to shred to than bon jovi.
It’s very glamour which is not something I’m sure I know how I feel about. Hopefully I can get around to reviewing some albums.
It Might Get Loud: Imagine you’re back in high school, sitting in the cafeteria at lunchtime. The vice principal announces over the intercom 3 new initiatives to raise school spirit and fight student apathy: 1) additional study hall period on day of your choosing (with you so far) 2) hourly stretch breaks (uh…) 3) hip new school colors fuschia, orange peel, and slate (facepalm).
This is basically how I respond to the guitarists chosen to participate in It Might Get Loud. A brief summary: a documentary chronicling a meeting-of-the-minds of three famous guitar players, Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White. Biographical segments and interviews with each subject are edited together with a jam session (if you can call it that) with all three present. In a certain sense, the film is exactly what you’d expect knowing that it’s made by the people behind An Inconvenient Truth–a browbeating, pious look at rock music viewed with the cloudy prism of boomer nostalgia. Dumb all around, the Jack White segments are particularly heinous. Not only does he dress up like he thinks he’s still in Cold Mountain but his entire demeanor and everything he says comes off as cover-up-your-eyes embarrassingly contrived. And he’s so full of himself over ideas that have been exhaustively explored in the pages Rolling Stones and other cultural monoliths. Seriously, you’re authentic because you like roots music?
This is not a movie for people who are into guitar. While I can understand deference given to someone like Jimmy Page, none of the three are really shredders. They are primarily known for their songwriting I would say as opposed to their technique. And that’s fine. The only reason I even bring it up is that the jam sessions, which should be the saving grace, are just completely boring. My point being that, even if technically accomplished metal and shred guitarists like Paul Gilbert and Yngwie Malmsteen aren’t celebrated by the middlebrow hippies for which the director is aiming, you could at least sit them down in a room with their instruments and expect to hear something interesting.
I fear that my barrage of reviews in the past few days has had a dampening effect on the rs community. Although I suspect everyone is busy with summertime fun. I know I’m all over the place with the job hunt.
I wanted to give a mention to ross’s latest project Shadoweyes. He’s been posting pages for free online and I’m liking it. I especially like the girls’ feet on page 8.
I was playing some Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time last night. I’m like, really?! Who’s going to see the movie? Or should I ask, who’s going to see the movie again?
Trying to set up the “Darren Interview Part 2″ podcast but that’s pretty tough.
This is what this movie is about. The tear, the blush, the way she holds the sword backhanded. This is a picture of strength and resolve.
Zatoichi has been featured in a number of films. The basic character: a blind master swordsman travelling through feudal Japan using his skills to help the downtrodden. I however only knew of the series from the 2003 film which was good but didn’t leave the same kind of impression on me as ICHI did.
ICHI, takes the basic premise of the Zatoichi movies but makes the main character a female goze singer. The movie begins with Ichi rescuing one of her fellow goze singers from a group of lowlifes. During that encounter she meets the other main character, Toma, a ronin who’s completely badass when wielding a stick but who is psychologically incapable of drawing a blade. There is some pretty good chemistry here with Ichi as the icy, wounded, and quiet beauty and Toma the kind hearted dork. Though Ichi is eminently talented I really liked that she does not come across as completely invincible. Definitely watch this movie, Ichi shreds on the shamisen. Also, really loved the period wardrobe, especially Ichi’s main outfit.
At first I didn’t think the Tokyo Vice review was of interest but then it got a pretty good discussion for which I’m grateful.
Mini-blog: “The birds remind me of what remains.” I think Immolate Yourself is the last album Telefon Tel Aviv put out. I’m only familiar with “The Birds” but it’s a pretty good song. I AM GOING FOR A WALK!
Ok, I’m back from my walk. I took the trail to the town line road which, if you know Rochester, is one of the craziest areas around. Getting back to “The Birds” I wonder if any of it is somehow about the issues behind Cooper’s unfortunate od/suicide?
I love Spice and Wolf. I mean, I just love the show. And I’ll say it again if you don’t believe me.
There was a time, however, when I was fairly uninterested. Just from reading forums, I first found out about the concept of a “waifu” in the context of Spice and Wolf. A “waifu” is basically when someone, usually a lonely guy, declares in no uncertain terms a particular devotion to a female anime character, to the extent that it’s basically a husband and wife relationship. Many felt this way for Holo, (or Horo depending on the translation) the wolf deity from Spice and Wolf. I’d feel wrong casting judgment, but it made me hesitant about the show.
I don’t know at what point I had a change of heart. I think I was just bored one afternoon and noticed that there were some episodes streaming. Who can I thank for this because, as stated above, I ended up thinking Spice and Wolf is really rad?
Kraft Lawrence is a traveling merchant in a time evocative of late medieval Europe. Modern agriculture has basically put a harvest deity, Holo, out of work. Holo is a magical wolf but she can also take the form of an attractive young woman with ears and a tail. At the beginning of the story Lawrence purchases some very important wheat which leads to Holo inviting herself along on his travels. Their goal is to make enough money so that Lawrence can realize his dream of opening his own shop and to bring Holo to her homelands in the north. Along the way, we see how the transient lifestyle and the details of medieval economics nurtures a deep connection between one “Spice” and “Wolf.” “Spice” because, after a successful business venture, Lawrence asks for payment in pepper.
You can’t overstate the economic aspect of this show. I had this whole mathematical metaphor for Spice and Wolf that I wanted to explain with diagrams. Just look at this planetmath entry about short exact sequences. Think of ‘B’ as an entire pie, then think of ‘A’ as a single slice of pie that you take out and ‘C’ as the pie that’s left over after you take ‘A.’ In the parlance we say that ‘B’ extends ‘A’ and ‘C.’ If you give this some thought you might wonder if ‘B’ is the only way to extend ‘A’ and ‘C’. It depends on what sort of mathematical objects you are studying. There is always one way which is called the direct sum which I tend to think of as a way to blindly combine two things, by construction into one object. Anyway, I’m really going off the deep end, but what I wanted to say was that Spice and Wolf is like a direct sum. You take a kind of man and woman romantic story and put it next to a course in medieval economics. The point is that you don’t really change around the romance element, you add something to it.
Does that make sense?
Anyway, watch Spice and Wolf and you will come away with thoughts of coins, barter, market values, and credit and you won’t be disappointed.
Oh, and just for the record Spice and Wolf has a really great ED. The opening lyrics are pretty thought provoking.
As I told Zach I’ve been going bananas with thesis stuff recently so I haven’t had the chance to write much. But I’ve got a significant amount of things that I’ve watched or read that I’ve wanted to review.
But before I get into that. I just wanted to say that I’ve been thinking about adding a dish to my cooking repertoire. If you watch anime you’ll often see characters eating a plate of food that’s like half white rice and half meat and vegetables in sauce. That’s Japanese Curry. I ain’t never had it. Anybody have any particular thoughts on this. Is all curry pretty much the same? Part of me wishes that I could get an electric fryer and make my own fried chicken and donuts and stuff but that seems like a dangerous thing for a novice cook to be messing around with.
Anyway, ross and nick have been holding shit down on the podcast, especially the latest two episodes so be sure to give a listen. I’ve kind of been getting back into music recently. I think it’s sort of like a forestry kind of thing, where the life of the forest will be renewed by a fire, allowing everything to grow back. I’ve been jamming to some Japanator radio. Can’t say I’m overall impressed with the music but I’m exploring a lot of new concepts such as listening to stuff I’m not gaga over. It helps me concentrate in a way. But there are some things I think are actually pretty good. I can recommend episode 130, especially the second block with the bump of chicken song.
To unwind the other day I went to borders and bought a manga volume. Here is a review.
Bunny Drop Yumi Unita: Let me start off by saying something.
This manga is heartwarming.
The premise of Bunny Drop, when relatives gather at the funeral of a patriarch they encounter his 6 year old illegitimate daughter Rin. She’s extremely shy and reserved around her family except 30 year old bachelor Daikichi, who resembles his grandfather.
Frustrated that no one will step up and offer to take Rin in, Daikichi brashly offers to take care of her. Obviously, all kinds of insanity ensues as he tries to balance raising a child and working a full time job.
Why would anybody want to read this?
I think I may have some sense of what a story like this speaks to. I’m about to turn thirty myself. Although I don’t really find myself outright wishing I had kids at this point I admit I think it’s something that I’m missing on a subconscious level. Sort of like a phantom limb. The genius of Bunny Drop is that it pushes all the buttons of a guy transitioning into real adulthood, maybe who feels that he’s missing some important milestones in life. However, the contrivances of the plot allow him not to feel directly challenged. So you get all the emotion without the unpleasantness of having to confront your own issues.
Yeah, but definitely check it out. And look out for more reviews.
I tend to react with skepticism to articles commemorating books, albums, and so forth just because they’ve recently been repackaged, reissued, or otherwise trotted out again in superficially updated or improved form – often with the intent of separating fanboys and fangirls from their dollars. This is particularly true when the publication doing the commemorating is Rolling Stone, a magazine that seems to spend most of its time these days finding one or another sixties-generation artist or album to commemorate – a form of red meat thrown directly into the jaws of the magazine’s rapidly graying and generally musically unadventurous readership. But I’ll make an exception for the Rolling Stones’ 1972 album Exile on Main Street, which is currently being rereleased with some alternate takes, additional tracks, and other assorted bells and whistles.
Last night Rob and I went out to the Blue Lamp Lounge (Sacramento’s Bug Jar, site of the infamously poorly attended Tristeza concert) to see progressive metal band Red Sparowes. After a quick stop at Midtown Taqueria for some carnitas and al pastor, we headed over to the show. To be honest I was expecting another 5-6 person turnout, but surprisingly there was a line when we arrived and the place was decently crowded. The first band got going with a minimum of fuss and played a solid set of completely uninspired instrumental metal. They worked without microphones so during the one time they deigned to address the audience and say who they were, all we heard was “…..from San Francisco….” I mean they were basically playing the kind of music Rob and I had paid to hear, so I’m not going to knock them too hard but they were copycatting so hard it was tough to understand why they might expect anyone to go out and pick up their music as opposed to any other band’s. Finally, the bassist kept doing this one “move,” I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, where instead of just nodding his head to the beat or whatever, he’s got to do this like deep bow every time he plays a note. Understandable if you’re bringing the house down with your thundering guitars – but in this context let me just say it came off forced.
Next up were party-band Fang Island. I’d never heard of them prior to the show, so at first Rob and I were thinking they must be some local yokels who got themselves onto the Red Sparowes bill. This was bolstered by the fact that not only did at least 50% of the audience seem to be there for Fang Island, but Rob was convinced that he had seen at least one of the band members around town. Later on we found out that they were Brooklyn-based, and that Rob had actually seen them “around town” when they were students at RISD in Providence. Their most recent album got an impressive 8.3 on Pitchfork. At the show both Rob and I had some trouble telling if they were really amazing or really not amazing. A lot of energy, 3 guitars, and 4 guys singing these really simple and catchy harmonies. Definitely not who you would expect to be opening for Red Sparowes, really not even in the same genre. The Pitchfork review mentions Andrew WK and I think that’s about as good a touchstone as any. Their self-description of their sound is “everyone high-fiving everyone.” Very anthemic, kind of meathead rocking. Listening to their stuff on myspace in the light of day, I can’t say I’m overwhelmed, but some key cuts are “Daisy” and “Curaga.”
Finally Red Sparowes took the stage and for better or worse were exactly as you might expect. Note-perfect renditions of songs from the albums backed with the digital equivalent of a laser light show, having abstract movies that vaguely connected with each songs’ pathos playing behind the band. Not a word was spoken by the band, the transitions between one song and the next being accomplished by a change in the accompanying video. And you knew the set was over when on the last note of the last song the display went back to showing the “Red Sparowes desktop wallpaper.” Overall I really like the Red Sparowes sound – to me they’re a more polished or restrained Pelican, and I like that each of their albums are very high-concept. I think they could do with some more soloing and the addition of vocals but you could almost levy that complaint against the genre across the board (with Isis being a notable exception since they sing and as Rob has pointed out, they’re basically all soloing at once all the time). Some choice tracks are “The Soundless Dawn Came Alive As Cities Began to Mark the Horizon,” “Like The Howling Glory Of The Darkest Winds, This Voice Was Thunderous And The Words Holy, Tangling Their Way Around Our Hearts And Clutching Our Innocent Awe,” and “In Every Mind.”
My interest in Prussia goes back to the European history class I took senior year in high school, when I was first confronted by an unfamiliar territory splayed across the map of central Europe, a phantom country whose capital – Berlin – was familiar, but whose national territory circa 1870 represented an odd amalgam of lands now belonging to Germany, Poland, Denmark, and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg). As I learned, prior to German unification in 1871, Prussia was one of a myriad of kingdoms and smaller sovereignties laying claim to bits and pieces of what would eventually become the unified German state. Surprisingly to me, it was Austria – often thought of these days as a sort of quaint southeastern afterthought to Germany proper – that for centuries represented the most important player in the game of German and Central European power politics, with Austria’s Habsburg monarch by tradition retaining the (increasingly ceremonial title) of Holy Roman Emperor. Though as I would learn, Austrian hegemony or quasi-hegemony in a disunited Germany would become increasingly tenuous as the eighteenth century bled into the nineteenth, and as Prussia expanded outward from its traditional power base in Brandenburg (now in northeastern Germany) and Ducal Prussia (now on Poland’s Baltic coast).
