I had a student in my office last week who said something rather saddening. She was, of course, one of an endless parade of students who don’t know how to formulate a thesis, don’t know how to ask a fundamentally interesting question about the world, or rather, who haven’t been taught how one does so, but is now being required to demonstrate such skills… or so I thought. And I thought, it’s not their fault, but it does make me wonder and worry about how useful what we’re teaching them. We’re, in the collective sense. How coherent our curriculum and …
Category: REVIEWS
Coming Soon: Gwacheon International SF Film Festival!
So I should have posted about this before, but there’s an SF Film Festival on soon. It’s starting in a few days (28 October) and runs until 7 November, down at the National Science Museum in Gwacheon, South Korea. There’s a twitter account that’s announcing events and so on, but unless you read Korean, it won’t mean much to you. Much better to head over to the website. It’s a chance to see all kinds of SF films on the big screen, from 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the sequel) to an all-night Back to the Future trilogy marathon this …
Well, I’m Glad It’s Ridley Scott Doing It
… that is, if someone has to turn my favorite PKD book into a TV miniseries. Between that and Guillermo del Toro doing At the Mountains of Madness, I can say one thing: it’s good that people who actually like SF are making these movies.
So True
Miss Jiwaku and I happened to be around a TV when some woman was talking onscreen about the ridiculously-named Bucheon World Intangible Cultural Heritage Expo going on in Bucheon right now. The woman talking didn’t look Korean (she seemed more Southeast Asian, to me, but I’m told she is Japanese), but she was speaking in Korean. “Is she Korean?” I asked, just as the camera shifted to some white woman with curly hair who seemed to have worse Korean pronunciation than anyone I’ve heard before, and speaks the language with a tone of voice just like the Wicked Witch of the …
Conscience of the Beagle, by Patricia Anthony
I commented a while back on how it was odd that Patricia Anthony had disappeared from the SF scene, after having been such a rock star through the 90s. That was when I happened to decide I would check out whatever of her work I could get my hands on, other than what I already had (which was, at the time, only Flanders and God’s Fires — books I have yet to get to). Conscience of the Beagle is a slim book, and one that I recognized immediately as something I’d read back in Canada, though I couldn’t recall what …
방가?방가!
So the other day, I got a chance (apparently rare!) to see the film Bang[g]a-Bang[g]a. I’d seen the poster around, but had I not been told about the wacky screening schedule, I’d have missed it completely. If you haven’t seen it and plan to, I strongly encourage you. I don’t think the film is perfect, but it’s rare to see a film that deals with multiculturalism at all in Korea, let alone one that hits some really right notes. The film has a very limited release, but it should be on screens on Sept. 30th. Yes, one day. I don’t …
Bad Luck Comes in From Tampa…
It turns out jbrandt was right. The Mountain Goats… very much my thing, and inspiring in a writing-wise sense: Also, tangentially, for some reason, this is the song I imagine Kenneth from 30 Rock starting his shows with when he starts going out and singing in smoky bars and clubs after he becomes fallen in New York City, takes to deep atheism and hard drink and crazy women, and then exiles himself to some shack in the depths of New Mexico for a few years till he can wean himself off nanodrugs and sexbots, and then finds the only thing …
Daniel Pink’s The Adventures of Johnny Bunko… in Korean.
I’m not sure how applicable the good common sense in this book is for the Korean job market, but Pink’s advice seemed good to me when I read the English version. It’s available in Korean, and I’d recommend it for whichever students come to you with career questions. If nothing else, it gives a message other than the ones they seem most likely to get from the (often misery-inducing) advice of their friends and families.
Robogeisha Taken? Okay, Well…
Finally, a writing project post! I’ve had some time to get some work done on a few projects, and the ones I’ve gotten to have been coming along nicely… but I’ve also decided to tie up as many loose ends as possible (in terms of shorter writing projects) so that I can dedicate myself to writing a novel after this semester. Anyway, I dug up an old sketch of a short story which, in the form it was originally conceived, was of very limited potential: likely mostly to succeed as a kind of in-joke for Ubuntu Linux users, involving the …
It’s True, Though…
Really, it is. Nobody likes M. Night Shyamalan… … well, except whoever keeps giving him money to make crap. Oh, wait, that’s us, isn’t it? Argh! Can we all just not go to his next movie? You think that might kill the career of the walking dead?