I have this problem: I’ve been trying to research the work and “ideas” of Ayn Rand, the better to satirize them in this story I want to write. The painful thing is, well… reading Rand is painful. It really is. I read 100 pages of The Fountainhead and couldn’t understand how or why it blew away people who are supposed to be intelligent, educated, and so on. It’s a embarrassingly bad book, mainly because, besides clunky, boring prose, it’s something that could only be a sensible argument if what it were arguing against weren’t a complete and utter strawman. Anthem …
Category: REVIEWS
Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King
I stayed up late last night — very late, actually — to finish reading Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, and yet, I’m not exactly sure what I want to say about it, or how I feel about it. I really want to love it, to think it’s wonderful and run around recommending it to my friends. I do know of some people I think will really like it, in fact, though I’m not sure I know anyone I can suggest reading it who will fall for it. The writing is, of course, solid. Thomas King knows how to set …
Gunpla Advertisement Analysis, and 우뢰매!
Gunpla Ad Analysis: While it’s a side of SF fandom that, like filk, I just don’t quite “get” — mostly just because I know so little about Japanese anime SF, I suppose — Gundam fandom is something that is, at least, visible here. Gundam merchandise in shops is, in fact, more common here than RPG game products ever were in shops in the North American cities I’ve lived in, and there’s definitely some serious interest in anime here. (Indeed, Korea’s Robo-Taekwon V was quite obviously a response to Japanese battlebot-suit anime frnachises like Mobile Suit Gundam; see here for more …
Coming Soon: “Invasion of Alien Bikini”
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 …
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 …
One More Thought on 블라인드 (Blind)
I’ve already posted my thoughts on the film in general, and some notes on representing disability in fictional narratives, but one more thing struck me that was off-putting about the narrative. It’s mildly spoilery, so for the picky, I’m putting it in the extended section of this post.
블라인드 Blind, Part 1: A Review
Miss Jiwaku and I saw the new Korean film Blind tonight (the title is the same in Korean: 블라인드), and I have to say, as long as you don’t know anything about blind people, it’s a pretty good film — a tightly plotted thriller with a shadowy bad guy and a surprisingly sympathetic pair of protagonists-in-peril. (I was especially shocked not to hate the boy-band-ish teenage food delivery scooter boy, at least after he wises up and stops being a petulant little prick.) It was a bit overly-sentimentalizing, but not bad. (Not SFnal, though the CGI in it, which is …
Some Notes For Korean Film Companies Considering an SF Film Project
After the debacle that is 7광구, which I discussed here, I figured I might write up a few suggestions for Korean film companies considering undertaking an SF project. After all, I’m someone who has studied Korean SF films carefully, picked out their pitfalls and how and why they failed — either domestically, or internationally — and I have a few thoughts based on my own frustration with the way Korean SF film has gone, and is going. I think there are a few very simple things that production companies in Korea need to realize, if they want to start putting …
7광구 (Sector 7) — Setting Korean SF Back Decades
If you want the short version of my reaction: skip this movie, pretend it was never made, save yourself some money and some disappointment — that is, if you have a half a brain and actually like SF. Sector 7 is shot amateurishly, it is badly acted by almost the whole cast — and since at least some of the cast can act, I suspect it’s badly edited and badly directed; the budget was mostly used creating CG for a rather unimaginative monster; it was derivative of The Host (괴물), the Alien series (especially Aliens; it was badly written; it had …
The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
I’ve read things by Fritz Leiber that I adore — both Conjure Wife and, more vehemently for me, Our Lady of Darkness are important ones — but The Big Time simply did not work for me. I like the idea of the Change War — familiar though it is — and the notion of cutting people out of their “lifeline” so that they become pseudo-immortal soldiers in the war — and idea that I think still has legs, and indeed is used these days in time travel narratives; I like the idea of the Place as a pocket universe outside of …