I just finished watching this movie, and posted a review over at AllConsuming. I don’t do that for everything I finish, but this movie deserved a review. I remember when I was a kid, my father said of Canadian films, “Well, you know, they film something like a bug, and the bug sits still, and you’re waiting for something to happen. Then the bug moves, but nothing happens. Ten minutes, you watch that bug, and then you give up. That’s Canadian film.” In some ways, he may have been right. Canada certainly can’t compete in the area of action, thriller, …
Tag: FILMS & TV
Ask, Receive
Lately, I have thought about asking whether anyone reading this site knew of films about Indians that are not Bollywood films. What do you know? Bruce Sterling recently posted a link to filmholic, where I found links to some titles! Easy as that! And worth viewing, for a first pass, isthe film linked here, which is “Pria”, a story about an Indian-Canadian girl who tries to lose her accent in order to meet the boy of her dreams. I’m considering playing it for students who worry so much about sounding like a “native speaker”.
Syriana
I just watched Syriana, and found, well, entertaining enough. There were lots of plot threads running at once, and while they all kind of came together, I could see where they were headed, mostly, about halfway in. Still, some of the ideas bandied about in the movie were interesting, if a bit disturbing. How do people deal with crippling loss? How do people deal with hopelessness? How do people deal with their own guilt? And what might the Middle East look like in a century? All interesting questions. Unfortunately, the answers to most of them, as offered in Syriana, were …
혈의 누
혈의 누 (Blood Rain), directed byKim Dae-sung, was a film that I once told Lime I wanted to watch, and she said she’d already seen it and didn’t wish to re-view it. At the time, she told me it was about a “serial killer” or “a murder mystery” (I can’t remember how she put it) “in the Joseon Dynasty”. Which, to me, sounded fascinating, but I bided my time, until today. Well, I watched it tonight, and have to admit, I indeed did find it quite fascinating. It reminded me of nothing more than the film version of The Name of …
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Crap Film
I just watched Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and I have to say I am happy I wasn’t talked into going to see the sequel while in Seattle. Wait, no, I want to say, I am so happy I didn’t waste a minute of my time in Seattle on the sequel. This movie was garbage. Of course, I suspected that when my friend Shawn[DeLong], who I’m told said of The Hulk, “It wasn’t that bad!”, praised it to high heaven. I love Shawn like a delinquent quarterback brother who’s (mostly) grown up, but the man …
Dasepo Naughty Girls (다세 소녀) Review
This review of the film and the comments combined represent my feelings about it — it could have been quite brilliant, and it wasn’t bad, and it put a lot of things front-and-center that most people around here seem more comfortable not looking at directly — things like teenaged prostitution, for goodness’ sakes, or the “requirement” to have a religion (it killed me to see how many of the high school girls, once ensorcelled, took up Islam and Hinduism) — but it wasn’t quite a brilliant film. The “Bollywood” numbers were more like numbers from any old musical, if you …
Much Better, Thank You… (A General Update)
I’m feeling a LOT better, actually. The problem which seems to have kicked in during my time in Seattle is finally ebbing away… slowly, mind, but I’m finally able to take my prescription only occasionally, instead of continuously. Which is good, since one of the pills included in it was an anti-inflammatory. I know better than to once again start sitting for long periods of time, however. Every time I do that even a little, my system acts up and I pay the price. Daily walks seem to be helping, and I’m thinking of investing in one of those chairs …
Dogfight
I remember a couple of hip guys in my high school discussing this film, Dogfight, all those years back. Now I know why. It’s a good movie, if you can track it down. I got a copy released with two other films, for quite cheap. Well-done, humane, and interesting. Someone on IMDB called it a sleeper. I don’t know how successful it finally was, but I did find this discussion of how books and films become sleeper hits interesting.
Another Story Idea, Perhaps?
So, YouTube’s Lonelygirl15 was a fake. Well, I can’t say, “I told you so,” because though I did view a clip and shake my head about how this was not a 16-year-old or a regular blogger, I didn’t post about it. (I don’t remember doing so, anyway.) But you know, the news that it’s fake (here too!) includes all kinds of speculations about whether the makers of this sham project are going to quit or not. After all, if it were me, I’d be turning the project on its head, making a film about this girl who’s hired to make …
On Appropriation, Race, Popular Culture, and Dorky White Asiaphiles
So I happened upon this blog post at reappropriate, and it got me thinking. To be honest, I didn’t trawl my way through all the comments that followed the post, but I did read a fair number of them. I was tempted to respond with something snide about how young people are so apt to map their personal anger into statements about the entire world, couched in politics for the greater safety from criticism and negative response. But I decided that, as generalizing and as mistaken as parts of the post are (in my opinion), it’s unfair to respond in …