December 12, 2006
"The Host"
Reviewed "The Host" (괴물) for JoongAng today, and I was surprised to find it's not a bad anti-American action movie but a love letter to the classic monster flick, hitting all the key elements -- sea monster created by government recklessness, lost daughter, misfit heroes, even more destructive weapon created to destroy monster (in the original "Gojira," it was the "oxygen bomb," here it's "Agent Yellow").
Click "Continue" to read the text of my review.
In 1954, in fictional Tokyo, an American underwater nuclear test revived a terrible monster ― Gojira ― and a genre was born. Over the following decades men in rubber suits crushing model cities became a focus of national cinematic catharsis for a nation ravaged by war. But somewhere along the way, these films forgot their roots in lowbrow but effective social commentary. They became mere popcorn-crunching vehicles for special effects, destructive exercises in movie excess and nothing more, as the 1998 American remake of "Godzilla" so excruciatingly demonstrates.
But "The Host" is a return to classic monster movie form. An American coroner orders his Korean underling to dump a large amount of formaldehyde down the drain ― and into the Han River. Through some unspecified mechanism, this creates a horrible monster ― a sort of amphibian Ankylosaurus ― that rampages along the Han, stealing a young girl, Hyun-seo (Ko Ah-sung), and taking her back to its lair. Naturally the girl's father, Park Kang-du (Song Kang-ho), sets out to rescue her. But when the government begins to worry that the monster is carrying a virus, the father and his family become fugitives.
Kang-du leads a team of uniquely Korean proletarian heroes: His brother Nam-il (Park Hae-il) is an unemployed 386er and former student protester, while his sister Nam-joo (Bae Du-na) is a member of the Korean national archery team, well known as one of the country's international strong suits.
So when "The Host" soared over 12.3 million tickets sold to displace "The Royal Jester" as the most successful Korean film of all time, we were told it was riding a wave of nationalist and particularly anti-American sentiment, since it sets the Korean salt of the earth opposite the discompassionate United States, oh so subtly represented by the monster its recklessness created.
But I think there's another reason for its popularity: It's just a funny, exciting, straightforward, unpretentious movie.
The most surprising aspect here is the humor. At a funeral for victims' families ― a scene with truly heart-wrenching counterparts in the original "Gojira" ― the Parks fall over each other in grief, drawing photojournalists to capture their humiliation. Bong turns a moment of sadness into a chance for slapstick comedy and a perfect transition to one of the funniest scenes in the film, when a fey government "yes" man leads troops in biohazard suits to quarantine the grieving families. It's this occasional lightness of tone that charms the audience into forgiving the movie's more patently ridiculous aspects (like the grotesque cgi monster itself).
"The Host" is less a rant against American imperialism and more a condemnation of government stupidity and carelessness ― American and Korean alike. After all, it's a Korean, blindly following orders he knows to be illegal, who causes this mess in the first place. And the police who refuse to lift a finger to find Hyun-seo, and later deny the evidence that there is no virus after all, are Korean.
This political even-handedness gives "The Host" legitimate mass appeal and a positive social message, while humor keeps things from ever getting too heavy. A computerized wireframe has replaced a man under the rubber suit, but even so, this monster's sweaty Japanese forebears would be proud.
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August 9, 2006
Gedo Senki, More Im Kwon-taek
My article on Gedo Senki's Korean release. It's a hard news piece, not a review, so I stick to quotes et cetera. But the movie itself wasn't as disappointing as I thought it would be. In fact I was fairly pleased with it. For a first-time animation director, Goro Miyazaki showed good range, and I can't recall a Ghibli hero quite like Arren in the past. The son who kills his father in the first five minutes is certainly an odd protagonist for the son who takes over directing from (and by all accounts dislikes) his father. The domestic scenes were a nice throwback to the calmer films of Ghibli's past that didn't feel the need to be so darned epic all the way through.
But the biggest flaw was the completely conventional climax, especially considering that by all accounts Le Guin's original is much more dramatic and exciting, and better suited to animation. Ah well. And what's with those falling bricks in the final scenes? What is this, a 1980s television cartoon? Come on, you guys can do better than that.
Also reviewed the DVD of Aje Aje Bara Aje (Come, Come, Come Upwards, the worst-sounding title translation I've heard in a while), another Im film. It's a thinker, and I don't think I quite had the time to understand it before I started writing, as you may notice. It's clearly an important film, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I have some of his others, particularly Seopyeonje.
Also finally finished Genshiken. Man, I wish my college anime club had been that much fun. The other college kids were great, but the obscenely obese 40-something local otakus who kept coming every week ruined it for everyone.
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June 18, 2006
"Korea Witness"
My review of the "Korea Witness," an essay collection/history of foreign journalism in Korea, was published today. A fantastic, fantastic read. I've read some good Korea histories, but this one combines a wide scope and an immediacy of tone in a way no other one does. It is also sobering to read about journalists around my age being injured or killed reporting the war in the same place I now live so comfortably.
Article text only
As it appeared in print (PDF)
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June 13, 2006
Boomup Always Start!
We came into the office today to find that the Korean management had slapped up these posters all over the place:
What could it possibly mean, "Boomup Always?" A coded reference to a secret missile base on the top of our building (I already know we have a helipad up there thanks to Google Earth)? An exhortation to increase employee flatulence? It is a mystery.
Though I gotta say, every morning when I wake up the first things I do are retain pride and keep customer.
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February 14, 2006
Time roars by.
Yikes, time passes. It's February already!
Interesting things recently:
An expat open mic night at a bar in Itaewon-- met quite a few interesting characters, as you'll read
And reviewed "Memoirs of a Geisha" a couple weeks ago -- one of the dumbest films I've seen in a long time. Great candidate for Mystery Orientalist Theatre 3000.
Also preparing to take my proficiency test for IUC. My editor will proctor, it's due at the end of the month. I'm gratified to find that a brief review is all it takes to revive the memory of most of the kanji I learned in college. Grammar may be another matter, though, and I will have to stop myself from saying "Ne" and "Kureyo" on the verbal portion.
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January 23, 2006
Mountains & Hanoks
My History & Mountains article is out, and forthcoming is one on the hanok village in Jeonju, a preservation zone of old houses that started being developed as a tourist site a few years ago. A few pictures below.
This was the most interesting building in the town, a church built on the site where several Korean Catholics were martyred over the centuries.
This was the traditional Korean inn where Kathleen and Jen and I stayed. The room had air conditioning, a new Samsung television, a refrigerator, and, get this, free wireless Internet. Yikes.
A gate in what used to be the Jeonju wall. The village was built outside the wall by Koreans who refused to continue living in the city when the Japanese arrived. Interesting how these little geographical artifacts can trickle down in history to continue affecting the present.
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January 6, 2006
Welcome to Fantasy Village
I wrote a review of the "Welcome to Dongmakgol" DVD this weekend. For those that don't know, the movie, written by Jang Jin (whose Baksuchildae Ddeonnara I had seen and enjoyed) with music by Hisaishi Joe (Miyazaki and Beat Takeshi's composer) was a sleeper hit over the summer in Korea. I was really looking forward to it. The review below should show I was disappointed (the article's also available in pdf format).
In June 1950, hundreds of South Korean civilians were probably gunned down by American soldiers at No Gun Ri. This ranks alongside the indiscriminate use of napalm by soldiers under the U.N. Command, the massacre of 100,000 people in Seoul by North Korean forces, and the torture and execution of prisoners by the North and China as one of the terrible atrocities of the Korean War. Why did these things happen? How can we keep them from happening again? Don't watch "Welcome to Dongmakgol" if you want to find out.As a personal drama between soldiers, "Welcome to Dongmakgol" is a touching fiction. Perhaps, if it were set in a made-up country, we could leave it at that. But it's set in Korea, and the film's masquerading as a historical portrait and an allegory for North-South relations is its undoing.
Here's the hook: Two soldiers from the South, three from the North and one American pilot end up stranded in a mountain village called Dongmakgol, where they learn to love each other and come to terms with their lives. Dongmakgol is idyllic to the point of absurdity � at first the villagers seem unconcerned by the destruction of their food stores, for instance � and the enemies are soon working happily side by side, calling each other by nicknames.
No one mentions Kim Il Sung or the obligation to spread communism. No one mentions the United Nations or the need to protect democracy. It's as if there is some kind of drug in the air that makes the soldiers forget why they were fighting. In fact, if we are to believe the movie, the Korean War was non-ideological, fought on a whim. Even worse, both sides conveniently forget the wanton massacres by their enemies. This stunning historical revisionism is very disappointing for such an accomplished writer as Jang Jin.
But the worst is saved for the end, when the motley crew decide they must sacrifice themselves to save the village. The climax is beautifully filmed and quite emotional, but something defeats it and in the process the entire movie: They deliberately shoot down an American plane and celebrate the death of the pilot. Where is that enlightened appreciation for all human life? It seems a few weeks in a farming village is not only enough to inspire
amnesia, but also to turn these two South Korean soldiers into enthusiastic killers of their erstwhile allies.This film could have worked. If only it had been a realistic portrait of the hardships of a rural village disrupted by the ideological divisions and cruelty of both the Northern and Allied armies, we could have seen a truly moving examination of an unequaled period of tumult and pain.
Instead, we get slick propaganda, designed to make us forget what really happened � or worse, made by people who have already forgotten.
ben@joongang.co.kr
I hadn't heard much about public opinion on the movie when I wrote this, so all I knew was it had been extremely popular. I was a little afraid I had been too hard on the film. So I asked one of the managers in our office, an older man, maybe 55-60, if he had seen it. His reaction was reserved and apologetic (everything my review isn't).
He said, "I have three or four thoughts about that movie."
"First, it was the only movie I saw in a theater last year." Apparantly he hadn't been to a movie theater in a long time, and said he was impressed with how comfortable the seats were and that they were on a slant so he could see over everyone's heads ("They used to be flat, so that if a tall person sat in the front you could not see.")
Second, he was impressed by how good the actors were. He said he watches some of those TV dramas and the actors are not really good at all, but that the actors on the screen were very believable.
Third, he said, he said the North Korean officers seemed too nice to him, and it seemed unrealistic. He said he'd talked to his son, who told him that it's just a movie for entertainment, and he shouldn't take it seriously. But, he said, he thinks it might still be important (no kidding). He said that it was almost as though the North Koreans were always "our friends."
Fourth, he said he'd heard about some kind of conspiracy where North Korean characters in movies (like JSA, Silmido, Taegukgi, and Dongmakgol) were acting "nice." He didn't really elaborate on this, so I asked someone else in the office about it and she said that though she didn't really buy into it, there was a conservative speculation that film directors are paying back Roh Moo-hyun and the pro-democracy people for driving out the military dictatorship by helping out his NK policy with revisionist movies.
This also seems like too much to me, though I have to say this script doesn't seem like the same Jang Jin who directed Baksuchilddae Ddeonara. That movie was tightly played and very effective, whereas this one is entirely unbelievable and moves like a slug.
Next mystery: Why the heck did all those Koreans go see it in theaters?
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November 2, 2005
Zen retreat
I will tell people about this, I promise. It's just that what I would post here is currently under consideration for publication in the paper. So obviously I can't post it. If it's not published (or when it is) I will though.
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October 25, 2005
I like to sit. I hope.
I'm actually going on part of the Zen retreat at the center this weekend, covering it for the paper.
I can't go at the beginning because I have to cover the Czech National Day reception, but immediately after that I do this schedule:
Friday:
8:20-8:50 Sitting
Sleep or optional practice
Saturday:
3:00 am Wake up
3:30 108 Bows
4:15 Chanting and sitting
5:30 breakfast
6:00 - 6:30 Work period
7:00 - 10:00 Meditation:
7:00-7:30 Sitting
7:30-7:40 Walking
7:40- 8:10 Sitting
8:10- 8:20 Walking
8:20- 8:50 Sitting
8:50- 9:00 Walking
9:00- 9:25 Sitting
9:25-9:35 Walking
9:35-10:00 Sitting
11:30 Lunch and rest
1:00pm-4:00pm Meditation
1:00-1:30 Sit
Walk
1:40-2:10 Sit
Walk
2:20-2:50 Sit
Walk
3:00-3:25 Sit
Walk
3:35-4:00 Sit
4:30 Dinner
6:00 Chanting
7:00-9:00 Meditation:
7:00-7:30 Sitting
Walking
7:40-8:10 Sitting
Walking
8:20-8:50 Sitting
Sleep or optional practice
Sunday:
3:00 am Wake up
3:30 108 Bows
4:15 Chanting and meditation
5:30 Breakfast
6:00-6:30 Work period
7:00-10:00am Meditation
Then I have to go cover an education fair. It's going to be intense. I'm looking forward to being totally unprepared.
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September 2, 2005
Columns
This week provides an example of a good column, by one of the people who reviewed the recently released papers regarding the Japan-South Korea normalization treaty of 1965, a pretty darn bad one that is totally disconnected from reality (and from any concept of structure) and an utterly hilarious one (you have to keep reading until the end).
These are probably fairly typical. The JoongAng editorial writers usually just fart out something that fits the space, but most of the guests are more interesting. But on balance I'm glad I'm reading them. Even the bad ones can be instructive.
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August 29, 2005
Kim Dae-jung Gets Funky
Christina's post on journalistic foibles in the Phillippines reminds me of some of the odder things I've had to deal with since coming here. The other papers here (the Herald and the Times) refer to Kim Dae-jung as "DJ." That one took me a second to figure out. Fortunately the JoongAng's standards are higher than that. I certainly feel like some of our op-ed columns (which we're required to translate from the mother paper instead of writing ourselves) should have been "willfully destroyed," though. That said, they're just so entertaining. My favorite so far is the one that argued that Koreans are winning the global economic contest because of their innate competitiveness, as evidenced by their skill at badeuk (Go) and Kart Rider (a computer game). I also heard about a column about a year ago that extolled the virtues of Korean genetic engineering by highlighting the fact that using metal chopsticks gives Koreans the dexterity necessary to insert genes into eggs.
And the Fountain column is always very funny. I'm not sure what the purpose of it is, but it seems the writer picks a random premise out of a hat every day and then sees how he can go from that to "President Roh is bad." There have been some pretty creative ones so far. I will post links to the next interesting example.
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August 19, 2005
Island review
I got to review The Island after all.
The photo caption pretty much sums it up:
"The Island" tries to confront ethical issues of cloning too controversial and real to be bandied about in a crash-bang blockbuster.
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August 10, 2005
Ben is Stupid: The Sequel
Not only don't I know Korean or Korean culture, I am reminded that I didn't learn how to be a journalist in two weeks either. Specifically, I am ashamed of a View from the Pew column I wrote last month on Yeouido Full Gospel Church. Though everything in the piece is factually true, I treated it in a judgmental, snarky, un-Christian and unjournalistic way. Really, reading the article now, the levels of hypocrisy I displayed are horrific. I was rightfully chewed out the next day (the only reason it got in the paper at all was because the editor was out). Part of the problem, though not an excuse, was that I wasn't sure the degree to which the "column" was supposed to include my own opinion (my editor assures me that degree is precisely zero). Sure, the sermon was rather toxic. Sure, they dragged me off to an office building and sat me down for two and a half hours and pitched their religion to me, making me late for work and behind schedule. But they were also genuinely doing good work, and I could've lost the dumb comments about ATMs in favor of exploring the realities of a church that has spread out across the country and built a vocational school for disadvantaged kids and a home for the elderly and more all based on the charisma of one single man. That would have been a much better article.
I wouldn't have posted about this (frankly I would rather have forgotten that it happened), except that the piece found its way onto a blog by a much-more-experienced-than-me woman living in Busan, a blog that is apparantly frequented by other much-more-experienced-than-me people in the news business in Korea.
At least the Internet makes me aware of (some of) the repercussions my screw-ups have. I am acutely aware of having graduated from college not two months ago yet and being one of the most blundering, ineffectual people I know, not just because I don't know Korean, but because I haven't gotten my brain around this whole "real life" thing.
Though I suppose, with someone already calling for me to be fired after only six weeks in the profession, I can only go up from here.
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August 5, 2005
SICAF Article
At the bottom. I get to go next weekend and write a wrap-up for the 19th. Me so excited. This is going to rock.
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August 4, 2005
Games 'n' Movies
In addition to the regular Ticket listings this week, Friday carried my reviews of Psychonauts which you should go buy right now, and Stealth, which you should avoid if at all possible.
Tomorrow a feature on SICAF.
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August 2, 2005
Movies, Games 'n' Cartoons
It's official, I've become the weekly film critic guy here. Pretty cool. This week I review Stealth, as Island has been out for too long. Not as cool.
Also got the weekly video game column foisted on me today. Which will make this my first return to game writing since I worked for Disney in middle school.
And next weekend I cover the Seoul Cartoon and Animation Festival. So this week I am being paid to watch movies, play games and go see cartoons. I never expected to accomplish one of my life goals so soon. ;)
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July 15, 2005
Knowing my stupidity
I was shoved into writing this because the person who was going to do it flaked at the last minute. It's supposed to be a guest column about Korean culture. Of course, I have about as much experience in Korean culture "as a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company," as Douglas Adams might say, so I wrote about what I don't know. I just hope someone finds it entertaining.
Another highlight of the day's paper is this column, a very moving piece about the reporter's estranged relationship with her father.
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