Other Good Movies I’ve Seen Lately

I should add — some non-SF films I’ve seen lately were:

  • Nixon. Well, I haven’t finished it, yet, but I enjoyed what I saw. Anthony Hopkins, damn, that man can act.
  • New York, I Love You. A fine omnibus of shorts, this was like a collection of flash fiction set in what seems like a realer New York than most depictions of the city.
  • Haeundae. Well, actually, I guess this Korean movie was an SF film — no less than Japan sinks — based on the idea that something as bad as the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia could hit the East Coast of Korea at some point. (It seemed ripe for metaphorical analysis, really, given that that’s where invasions from Japan have come, but, well, the issue is almost completely avoided in the film, except that it’s a chunk of Tsushima Island that triggers the tsunami.) The science is mostly quite bad, and I found most of the characters (aside from the main, poor couple) quite unlikeable. Some of them — like the grandma, the rich local businessman, and the young man who ended up on the bridge — I actively disliked enough to look forward to seeing how the tsunami would kill ’em.Having given this a pass, I only saw it for the sake of taking Miss jiwaku’s mom to a Korean film, since she hasn’t seen one on the big screen for quite some time.
  • Tarzan Ke Kota: a bizarre Indonesian fantasy film featuring an Indonesian Tarzan and a cast of other oddball characters. We were tired when watching  it, and so gave up on it in the middle. Quality of the filming was about mid-80s Hollywood, but the film is fascinating as a bizarre document from another culture, as a comment on urban vs. rural life, and more. (A more realistic story might have involved an Indonesian Tarzan living in the wilds of Papua, but it would also have been much more politically offensive.)

As for the update: I’m still in Indonesia, still reading and not writing as much as I’d planned. Decided to cool it an try enjoy the rest of my stay instead of stressing out on the writing thing: I’m working on reviews and some short things. I’m going to post some book reviews, and schedule them to appear on the blog over the next few days. We’re hitting Bali soon, so I will not be online as much.

Still struggling to finish my review of Cyberabad Days.It’d have been done days ago if I had regular Net access, but, well… I don’t. And won’t, for a few more weeks. The research and thinking has done me some good, in the meantime, though.

When I originally wrote this, I had two weeks  left here in Indonesia — now I have eight days — and the current works-in-progress are a review of B.R. Myers’ The Cleanest Race and a short story weaving some of Indonesia’s Hindu past into its (distinctly Indonesian) Muslim present. Just fantasy, a bit of imagining. Shall have to find a couple of people willing to read such a thing to tell me how wrong I got it! I’m going to put the finishing touches on my review of Cyberabad Days and finally post it, in any case. Hopefully today!

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