The Traneumentary, Shooting for Trane, and Pound/Trane in Comparison

This entry is part 3 of 60 in the series Blogging Pound's The Cantos

First of all: if you’re interested in John Coltrane, there’s a wonderful podcast series (titled The Traneumentary) which has now concluded, but which is worth working your way through — the segments are brief but contain interviews with all kinds of jazz musicians, producers, and other folks, as well as discussions of specific tracks in voiceover on the tracks themselves.  For more on the origins of the project, see here. It’s wonderful, and full of bite-sized chunks, and very professional — and for those Trane fanatics out there whose significant others or friends ask, “So, why Trane?” I think it …

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Tinker Tailor / Nameless Gangster

Miss Jiwaku and I have lately seen two movies worth the price of admission: one that is #1 in Korea (범죄와의 전쟁 / Nameless Gangster — yeah, the English title is really unfortunate), and one that I’m pretty sure won’t be playing here for long: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I won’t say much about the latter beyond the observation that I learned something watching it: there’s no point in trying to watch an actually good, actually challenging movie in a CGV cinema. While I’ve gotten used to the audiences at anyplace except Cinematheque behaving like idiots, I hadn’t yet tried …

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Ruler of the Your Own World (네 멋대로 해라) — The Halfway Point

During my first few years in Korea, I asked Koreans I knew what was the best South Korean-made TV show they’d ever seen. I would hear different answers from different people, but one consistent answer I got from people who cared about and consumed a lot of movies, films, and books, was the recommendation that I check out 네 멋대로 해라, a TV program that aired back in summer/fall 2002 (and which, in English, got titled Ruler of Your Own World.) Somehow, though, my other (very brief) experiences with Korean TV dramas kept me skeptical. I don’t care for the kind …

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Gobble-Gobble

Yeah, for you Errol Morris fans, that’s a double-gobble: Well, here are some links for you to gobble down, and think about later: I’m a little dubious about the idea we’ll have enough energy to fuel anything as expansive as what is discussed in this video featuring a talk by Jesse Schell (a Carnegie Mellon University Professor), but I do imagine we will be going about receiving points for all kinds of daily activities, and in fact I’ve been thinking about shifting a couple of my courses to an XP-based grading system next semester. I think this notion is likely to work its way …

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Deus ex Pigritia, or Why You’d Better Not Get Me Started on Battlestar Galactica

Inevitably, when someone hears that I am an SF writer, they immediately mentioned whatever SF things they happen to know about or like, expecting I, too, will like it. This is awkward because I usually rather hate their favorite book, TV show, or movie. Not all SF fans, or SF authors, like all SF. It’s a simple thing to say. But it’s another thing to explain it, and they usually seem to find the fact so unbelievable that an explanation seems wanted. My explanation almost never satisfies them, but maybe that’s because I haven’t rehearsed my sound bite. After all, …

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Invasion of Alien Bikini, or, I Feel Sick

This entry is part 50 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

So, I mentioned the Korean SF film Invasion of Alien Bikini a few weeks ago. Miss Jiwaku and I saw it tonight, and, well, to say it ruined out evening would be an understatement. I am going to tell you the whole plot here, so that you don’t have to see it, and know why you should not, in fact, spend a single won on it. The thing is, the film really didn’t have to suck. The opening section was actually really interesting: I felt like I was seeing Seoul represented in a film in a way I’d never seen …

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Persepolis (the film)

Miss Jiwaku and I just watched the animated version of Persepolis last night, and I have to say, it was really very impressed. I’ve read only the first book — my friend Jean-Louis recommended it to me, and I enjoyed it quite a bit, even reading it in French. (Which was not so hard.) I haven’t managed to read the other volumes, but I am curious. I have Volume 2, and figure I can check out Volume 3 next time I’m in Canada. But the way the film was put together — using Satrapi’s characteristic style, but with a wonderful audio …

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Coming Soon: “Invasion of Alien Bikini”

This entry is part 48 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Well, Miss Jiwaku just surprised me with the trailer a few days ago (when we were booking tickets for Cowboys and Aliens; the trailer was for what appears to be a Korean SF sex-comedy to be released toward the end of this month: Apparently, a guy steps in and saves a woman from some thugs, only to discover that she is in fact a lovely little sex-hungry alien. She wants to rob him of his virginity, and for some strange reason, he refuses… so she tortures him. No matter how cheaply done, no matter how confusing, this is definitely bound …

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블라인드 Blind, Part 2: Some Notes on Depicting the Physically Challenged

The other day, I posted my thoughts on the newly-released Korean film 블라인드 (Blind). I thought I’d follow up with some thoughts on the depiction of physically handicapped people, for anyone who’d like to be reminded of the lessons of which I was reminded by the films missteps. A lot of this is not just applicable to depicting people with physical disabilities, but also to depicting people of any group about which one does not know intimately, or which experiences the world in a way different from oneself (through the lens of another gender or sexual orientation, a different race or …

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