Tag: popculture

Reading The Host in Context, Part 1

gordsellar2 Comments
This entry is part 10 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Well, here I go. This is my attempt to provide a reading of the 2006 blockbuster Korean film The Host in context — that is , not only a Korean cultural and historical context, but also in the context of Korean Gwoesu (“Giant Monster”)  movies, and those films which influenced the development of the genre in South Korea. Disclaimer — all images not cited to an photographer at copyright their respective owners. They are used in this post for educational/critical purposes, and thus their use falls under fair use. Thank goodness, because this essay would be hard to read without …

Continue Reading

The KOFA 괴수 대백과

gordsellar2 Comments
This entry is part 7 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Unfortunately, I didn’t catch on to what was being played — or, rather, how very rarely some of it is seen — until the evening of the 3rd of August, when it was too late to see the legendary, much-sought-after first Korean monster movie, 우주괴인 왕마귀 (Giant Space Monster Wangmagwi), so I’ll have to just keep looking around and try to catch it next time around. Or, rather, get stomped by it. However, I did manage to see a few other Korean giant monster movies. I’m going to reserve comments on The Host beyond the few things that hit me …

Continue Reading

Starcraft Animation!

gordsellar4 Comments

Aha, I half-remembered this when I was writing about the Starcraft Pansori recently. Here it is! (Apologies to those who don’t have enough Korean to follow, but song’s essentially a cheerful little countdown of how four Zerglings get whittled down to one little fella during the trek home after being left behind enemy lines. For those of you too young to remember the 1998 game Starcraft, I hate you. (And yes, some people are still playing that game over here. That blows my mind too.)

Continue Reading

Quick Note

gordsellar0 Comments

Thanks to, er, Noah Body mentioning a link in the comments to this post, I was made aware of a whole festival of Korean monster movies that’s playng at the Cinematheque. (I missed some I’d have liked to see — though I may get another chance, at some point… we’ll see — but anyway, still getting to see a bunch.) I’ll be there Tuesday, the closing day, for all three films. Just in case anyone else feelings like watching The Host, Bulgasari, and some other Korean film I’ve never heard of before. By the way, I wasn’t the only person …

Continue Reading

Zombie Scholarship

gordsellar5 Comments

Not the we-give-you-money-because-you’re-the-most-deserving-zombie kind, but rather the scholarly-work-in-the-subject kind. There’s a call for essays on scholarly perspectives on the zombie for an anthology. I’m thinking I know a few people who might be interested. (Yeah, Ben, I thinking of you, even if you’re not a litcrit guy, as it’s interdisciplinary and all that. Though “paraconsistent logic +  zombies” might be a harder fit for a scholarly essay than for a short story, one of the editors is a philosophy prof!) More details in the extended post.

Continue Reading