Actually, I just log into Bloglines, but when I get there, often enough I find, in my “Asiana” folder, one of Simon World’s Asia by Blog entries. They provide a useful set of links to issues not only in Korea but all across Asia. I follow at least half the links every time I go. Which means that at this hour, when I have precisely sixty more minutes to get to the office, I shouldn’t be going to Simon World at all. But you, on the other hand, should go there immediately.
Bloglines rules, though I often have to hit the “Mark all as read” button.
I’m doing a whirlwind tour of your last 100 or so entries so I may drop in from time to time.
On a completely random note, have you seen “My Sassy Girl”? :)
Wow, Lal! I’ve been wondering how you’ve been over the last year or so, and especially after Ritu mentioned you a few times.
Glad to know you landed on Planet Gord for a while. How’s the stay been?
I have seen “My Sassy Girl”… I think it was the second or third Korean film I saw, after I arrived, in fact. It was a little sentimental but I liked it just the same.
More interesting are a few other films like “2009: Lost Memories” (an alternate history/time-travel story in which the Japanese change history in order to become a major military world power, not-so-incidentally retaining hold over Korea at the same time… it’s great except the “Time Machine” at the end sucks big time); “Going Home” (a “let’s return to traditional Korean family values” film, but good nonetheless); “My Wife is a Gangster” parts 1&2; “Volcano High”, which I think is my favorite Korean film (a kind of college-aged-Harry-Potter-meets-kung-fu kind of thing); “Memories of Murder” which is a good mystery based on a real unsolved case in Korea; the very good political allegory film “The President’s Barber”; the very interesting semi-Buddhist film”Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring”; and… argh, I can’t remember the name of this really rather good SF film I saw, something simple like “Tomorrow”. Argh, that was great and so ignored here… one of the few SF films that got the mood, atmosphere, even the fashions right. There were also a few disturbing but interesting movies like “Paramnan Kajok” (Adulterous Family?) and “Crazy Marriage” and “The Isle”… as well as films I enjoy but my girlfriend hates, like the “Yeo Go Gae Dan” (probably spelled wrong, but it’s a series of horror films set in girls’ high schools) and the like. Oh, and there’s a really good one I’ve never seen a tape or DVD here for, but which I’ve seen overseas, where the title is the name of two apartments side-by-side, something like “301:302”. That one was WHACKED out.
Finally, there’s an art-housey type collection of short Korean films going the rounds now, called “If You Were Me”, and they’re really quite disturbing and good. They include stories about a pedophile’s neighbours, a girl who whores herself in order to afford an “eyelid operation” so she can have white-people-eyes (pretty common here, I guess), and a horrifying piece about a kid who gets a tongue-lengthening operation… something which some parents actually do to their children, convinced by lying quacks that Koreans have accents when speaking English because their tongues are too short. (A myth that apparently cannot be dispelled even when one brings up the existence of overseas Koreans who speak English as naturally as any other native speaker).
All of those are worth seeing, in my opinion.
That is, if you’re into Korean film.
So, are you still on Culture list?