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 …
Category: REVIEWS
Trotsky: A Graphic Biography by Rick Geary
I remember, when I took a film course as an undergraduate, studying with a professor named Don Kerr. When we watched The Birth of a Nation he read to us from the local newspaper in Saskatoon, an article dating back to the film’s release there. I still recall the amusement shared by all when the author claimed that henceforth, people could not longer criticize films for the decline in morality — “Films like this one can educate!” the article claimed — and that demon liquor was to blame. Huh? Social ills coming from either booze of movies? At a remove …
The Life and Loves of Mr. Jive Ass Nigger by Cecil Brown
I read this book quite a while ago, and meant to post a review. Librarything is now saying, no freebie books if I don’t, and anyway, I do want to review it. But this is a bit from memory. Anyway, here’s what I posted on the Librarything website: This is, as someone else put it, a novel of a time and place. But it’s an interesting and somewhat alien time and place, even though it’s not so very long ago. Maybe it’s just because I’m projecting onto this text, but some other books that came to mind when one reads …
Banned in China: Your Assurance of Quality Content
The title of this post is a throwaway comment Bruce Sterling made in his lecture, “The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole” (mp3, video with terrible audio), in the course of mentioning that most scientists who are able to do the scary stuff that frightens Bill Joy are unlikely to be willing to take up residence in the caves of Afghanistan or up in North Korea just to get the freedom to research things that have been banned by everyone else. It reminded me of a funny thing an ex-student in Beijing told me — this blog is blocked …
Star Wars: 스타워즈 프로젝트 컴필레이션 (2008)
Quite a long time ago, K-indie insider helikoppter of Indieful ROK emailed me to let me know about an album she figured I’d be interested in. The reason she thought I’d be interested was, you see, my ongoing series about SF in Korea. (How she stays on top of music in Korea is something everyone paying attention is amazed by, considering she’s not actually in Korea. Such is the power of the internet… and strong passions.) Now, this is going to be delicate. See, there’s such a thing as genre-media-inspired music in the West. It’s called filk, and it generally …
Hwang Shin Hye Band and Bulnabang Star Sausage Club — Live at SangSang Madang
This is a review of the 불나방스타쏘세지클럽/황신혜밴드 show at 상상마당 last night. If you’re interested in Korean indie music, here’s my skewed and fannish take, behind the cut.
A Random Linkdump and Concert Tonight…
No time to post anything too significant today, or for the next couple of days. Oh yeah: this is late notice, y’all, but… Hwang Shin Hae Band is playing tonight. No idea if there are tickets available but I’ll be there a few hours early, trying to get one! Show’s at 8, and here’s a map to the venue — the Sang Sang Madang live hall… So anyway — my content free post of… Shiny Links! Some stories by people you should know about: Tina Connolly’s “Hard Choices” at Brain Harvest (or play the game, made by Kaolin Fire, here) …
Korean Industrial & Japanese, Er, FolkyPop?
More free stuff… Not sure about quality — which is my nice way of saying I’m not really convinced — but you may be amused by Che-Il Gwa, which is some kind of Korean industrial music. And to cleanse your palate, something a little more folkypop, from Nagoya: Secret Ocean’s album Kokoro No Furyoku. Okay, and for people like me: Intercontinental Music Lab. Geek out, ya geeks.
Giving It Away For Free?
Those of you who know my taste in music know I’m not all that crazy about hip-hop, but I have to say, there are a few tracks on the new Super Chron Flight Brothers album (titled Indonesia) which are pretty cool. I particularly like “African Robotics” and “Broccoli.” Don’t ask me why: it’s very, um, Mouse on Mars meets Wu-Tang Clan, or something. With moments of Pete Namlook-ishness, and smatterings of that flutey Futurefantastafricanistic sound (yeah, my own term, baby) that always makes me think of Sonny Fortune’s hypnotic flute solo on that amazing Miles Davis album, Pangaea. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/fRXwqX1ag2Q” …
Pop Top 40…
One of the big jazz films for me, when I was a teenager and getting into the stuff, was Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues. I know, I know… the integration of the music into the film is shaky at points, as some have pointed out. I don’t remember it being quite shaky as that guy claimed, but there were things I kind of raised an eyebrow at back in the day — though also a lot of things I thought it got kind of right. After all, the film had style, and it imagined a world where jazz was cool, …