So far so busy… haven’t had a lot of spare time since I got back to Durham, I can see this is going to be another busy term! I did however manage to catch Kill Bill Vol. 2 on Sunday and was pleasantly surprised!
It’s noticeably less violent than its predecessor but makes up for it with deeper character and story development. Although at times things run a little slowly a number of scenes stand out for their pure excellence, most notably when she is buried alive. All in all if you saw the first one you’d be stupid to miss the ending!
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The end of the easter break is rapidly coming to an end and I’m off up to Durham in a couple of days time - a few hours of downtime should be expected around that time. After seeing Kill Bill Vol.1 uncut at the weekend (see my last post) I can’t wait to see Vol. 2 this coming weekend - by all accounts it sounds pretty cool, especially if the trailer is anything to go by. Today I thought I’d bring you a review of a rather bleak but equally touching film:
Bus Stop (Korean) - 7/10
Jae-sub is a severely depressed teacher/writer who works at a Korean night school and spends the rest of his time writing a novel. His work colleagues think he is anti-social and they constantly badger him because he never goes out with them for get-togethers.
One day, 17-year old So-hee enrolls in his class. She looks even more depressed than him and he senses that her life must be overshadowed by unhappy experiences. She likes to think she’s more mature than her fellow classmates but underneath her tough exterior is a little, lost and naive girl who can’t occasionally help herself from behaving childishly.
As Jae-sub and So-hee live in the same town, they frequently meet at the Bus Stop and the teacher and his new student start to develop a friendly relationship with both talking about their problems with each other. They seem to share the same problems in life, a sense of not belonging and not being able to fit into their conventional society and this brings them closer together with Jae-sup wanting nothing more than to heal her pain.
The film itself is thoroughly depressing and the ending does little to raise your spirit with nothing really being resolved. If your don’t mind that sort of thing then I’d definitely recommend it.
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Just watched the new uncut version of Kill Bill and if you thought it couldn’t get any better then you’d be wrong! With some cool extended new footage and dialog (mostly in the fight scenes) it’s put back all the bits that should have been in the original had the sensors not objected. Most notably the rumored color version of the main fight is all there, so no longer do you have to sit though the black and white carnage. The beginning of the film has also seen a makeover with things being cut a little different to include some new bits. The anime bit has been significantly extended as well giving us more a glimpse behind the character of O-Ren Ishii. Unfortunately if you want a copy you’ll have to get it from abroad or off the net as its not available here right now but personally I would wait a year or so until the mega box set comes out.
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Although I’ve had no Internet connection over the past week due to my remote location in the Yorkshire Dales I still managed to stuff the hard drive on my PowerBook with a load of foreign movies that I hadn’t seen. I ended up watching 5 of them and have written a short review of each below (In no particular order). In case you wondered I didn’t go on holiday to watch films but instead primarily to go walking and managed to clock up around 40 miles over the week - I think my legs are ready for a service now!
Sound of Colors (Chinese) - 8/10
Most people would probably describe this film as being a bit arty and it basically deals with what its like to be blind, hence the title. The plot is pretty basic and follows a lonely blind woman who helps a man who looses his sight in later life learn how to live again without it. The film is shot beautifully with some haunting moments where the screen is completely black when looking at things from the perspective of a blind person and all you can hear is sound - something which is surprisingly scary. Defiantly worth seeing if you don’t mind films that are all narrative.
Audition (Japanese) - 9/10
Those who have seen Audition understand why it is regarded in the upper echelons of notorious films. The premise is simple - a middle-aged man whose wife dies is looking for a new one but things don’t turn out as planned. Explaining why it is so notorious would give too much away but sufficed to say I would suggest that this is not a film for most people, especially if you want to get any sleep for the rest of the week! Aside from this the films cinematography is excellent and the acting impeccable, especially notable is the female lead who you will never forget!
Slashers (American) - 4/10
I guess you could never expect much from a low (and I mean LOW) budget yank film by the above name and you’d be right. Slashers rips of ideas from a heap of other films, most notably Battle Royale (now where have I seen those neck collars before?!) but it does have a certain originality. The whole film is basically shot as a sick pseudo tv game show called ‘Slashers’ where contestants get placed in a big set with a load of psychopathic killers and whoever makes it out after the allotted time wins. On one level it works very well but with poor sets and even poorer acting this isn’t going to be wining any prizes soon! Interestingly the whole thing appears to be shot in real time without any cuts (something which I doubt) so it wins some points there but overall it comes off as a fairly cliched student film whose audience is probably the same.
Victim (Japanese) - 6/10
Victim is a fairly run-of-the-mill detective story with a few paranormal goings on thrown in for good measure. The story is a bit convoluted and from what I gathered it has something to do with a man who looses his job and get in trouble with loan sharks for failing to pay them back. The film is still enjoyable and well acted although its probably not one you would watch twice.
Zatoichi (Japanese) - 7/10
With another excellent performance by Beat Takeshi Zatoichi is a pretty cool film if you like a good bit of cool Samurai fighting. The film is set in traditional Japan with rival gangs fighting each other over who owns what and people with deep rooted grudges against each other out to make trouble. Things kick off when a homeless blind person with particularly sharp reflexes and a gambling habit enters a small prefecture, stirring things up. Proceedings eventually come to a head and a blood bath ensues with interesting consequences. The film is presented in a sort of washed out appearance with everything looking very earthy and brown giving it a look of being aged. Definably worth watching if you like that sort of thing.
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Lots to report this week on both technical and filmic fronts (no, I didn’t just make that word up!).
On Wednesday I took ownership of a loverly new graphics card with a whooping 256mb of memory being run by an NVIDIA GeForce FX5600 XT chipset. Its a big improvement on my old 32meg card and works flawlessly in Linux - Unreal Tournament 2004 looks amazing!
For a bit of fun I decided to have a play with Wine which is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X (sort of Windows compatibility layer). The basic upshot of which being that in theory you can run Windows executables of Linux. I managed to install Office 2000 but it didn’t like Office 2003 one bit. I suspect MS do not like the idea of what Wine is doing but its all completely legal.
Now onto the films… This one would defiantly fit into the “good film, bad name” category as how could you ever take a film called “SpyGirl” seriously? I somehow don’t think it sounds so bad to the Korean’s who produced it (where its know as “Geunyeoreul moreumyeon gancheob”, seriously!). The content of the film may be seen as somewhat controversial as it follows the mission of a North Korean spy sent to find and bring back a defector from the South. IMDB put in the Action/Romance/Comedy categories which is about right as its all very light hearted and at points down right ludicrous!
Though the premise is pretty far fetched it works charmingly well and I would recommend it if you can find it. I guess that just broke with the standard sort of think I like so getting back on track you may have been aware of the recent release of ‘The Matrix Revolutions’, the movie which people love to hate though more out of ignorance I imagine. I managed to rent a copy from my local library (I’m holding out for the box set before I buy it) and was truly impressed by the quality of the transfer which is second to none.
If you weren’t sure about it the first time round then its definitely worth a second look, just the special feature documentaries alone are intriguing.
I’m off next week for a short holiday to somewhere in Yorkshire (I think) so I’ll be without the Internet (ekk!) till I get back and hence no updates till then :confused:
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