Bloodthirsty Catholics
I’ve not done a film review in a long time and to be honest I’ve not managed to keep up with Asian Cinema as much as I used to but this said I saw a Korean film over the weekend which is worth mentioning: Thirst (박쥐 – literally translated as “bat”).
From legendary director Park Chan-Wook (Old Boy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, I’m a Cyborg…) the film premiered earlier this year but has only recently come out on DVD so I finally had a chance to get hold of a subtitled copy. Anyone who’s watched his previous works will know that you’re in for a brutally visual tour de force and although it’s not nearly as extreme as Old Boy it does not disappoint. From the outset it’s a beautifully crafted narrative with excellent acting, a stirring soundtrack, luscious backdrops and a few good stunts which are genuinely exciting (unlike most of the todays CGI-fests).
As with all Mr. Chan-Wooks films it’s a bit difficult to know where to begin when explaining the story. Perhaps I could best sum it up as Catholic-vampire-noir but with very adult overtones which go way beyond your usual sharp-teeth blood-sucking clichés. At this point it’s worth pointing out that about one-third of South Korea’s 45 million population are Christian and numbers are growing faster than in any other country (in stark contrast to its decay in the west).
The story revolves around a troubled priest, Sang-hyun (played by Song Kang-ho), who works in a small hospital but is unsure about his vocation which is amplified by the death he sees around him. He volunteers to take part in an experimental drug trial in Africa with fails, leaving him with a particularly nasty and fatal disease but miraculously after a blood transfusion he recovers.
Returning to his home he becomes a local hero (a “bandaged saint”) and devoted parishioners, thinking that he has the gift of healing, flock to his services. One of the visitors is his childhood friend who invites him to his house to play mahjong with his family. There he meets his friend’s wife, Tae-ju (played by Kim Ok-bin), who he finds himself dangerously drawn to. We discover a particularly dysfunctional family with an overbearing mother who treats her grown son as a baby and his wife as their servant.
Suddenly one night Sang-hyun relapses and violently collapses only to wake up the next day a changed person with an increasing taste for blood (which he initially steals from comatose patients at the hospital). His personal demons return full force and from here on in things start to get crazy. He begins an affair with Tae-ju who is also pretty messed up, having been forced into her marriage, and the intensity builds with both willing each other to deeper extremes until finally murder is committed.
I wont give the rest away but sufficed to say it gets pretty horrific with much lustful blood-letting and general insanity. There’s also a hint of Shakespeare in here with multiple layers of subtext which will take repeat viewings to unravel. It adds a whole new dimension to the Catholic sacrament (whereby it’s actually believed that the wine is turned into Christ’s blood)!
Trailer (Korean Version):
Trailer (International Version):
Overall a unique take on the vampire concept with some thrilling twists but imperfect in its execution (7/10).
Which Video Platform?
Now that I’m starting to create short videos with my new LX3 the time has come to decide which video platform to host them on. There are literally hundreds of options but to me only three main contenders: YouTube, Vimeo & Flickr (let me know if you think I’ve missed anyone important). Having played with all three here’s my take on the pro’s and con’s and what I ended up choosing…
YouTube
The king of online video has come of age with support for widescreen and HD newly enabled. Over 13 hours of new footage is uploaded to YouTube every minute which clearly gives you some idea about the scale of its operations and the massive community it provides. The player is functional but not the most elegant out there.
Vimeo
Vimeo is more of a boutique platform which values quality over quantity and as such has a smaller community than it’s bigger brothers. It’s always been an innovator and was one of the first to support HD streaming. Easily the most beautifully designed of the lot, some serious attention to detail has clearly gone into the interface.
Flickr
Late to the game, Flickr started off life a photo-only sharing site but has recently branched out into video also. It’s implementation is minimalist and elegant – current Flickr users should feel at home here. Its major disadvantage is that it doesn’t support HD yet and clips are limited to 90 seconds (a “long photo” as they call it!).
The result – I like Flickrs simplicity and YouTubes mass appeal but I’ll be using Vimeo to host my little creations. They have the right combination of solid technology, nice aesthetics and an internesting community. If Apple invented a video sharing site it’d be Vimeo.
Forever Enthralled
Zhang Ziyi has a new film out next month (in China anyway) about the life of the late Peking opera master Mei Lanfang titled “Forever Enthralled“. It’s a slight departure from her former action roles (House of Flying Daggers etc.) but the trailer looks promising:
The director, Chen Kaige, has had mixed succes in the past so it will be interesting if this film is a return to form after his pretty but shallow previous outing, The Promise.
Mei Lanfang (1894-1961) is well known for having stood up to the Japanese occupiers in 1937, who liked his art but for whom he is said to have refused to perform, making him poor until the war finished in 1945.
I personally find Chinese Opera pretty incomprehensible and headache inducing but perhaps this can change my mind.
Skyline Time Lapse
Apologies for not posting so frequently for the past couple of weeks – work/life has been very hectic (even more so than usual) and doesn’t look like it will let up for a few weeks yet. That said, I will endeavour to get a few posts out starting with this experiment I made recently…
A couple of weeks back I moved rooms in the house where I live to the top floor “penthouse” which one of my previous housemates had just vacated. Aside from having its own ensuite bathroom (a major plus!) and a balcony it also has great back and front views. Whist enjoying watching the world go by I decided to try creating a time lapse video with the inbuilt camera on my MacBook Pro. Above is my first attempt which I captured using an open source program called Gawker which took a picture every 20 seconds and then mixed together in iMovie ’08. The music is “Red-Eye” by The Album Leaf and the view is looking towards Canary Wharf which you can just see peeking out from behind some of the houses in the foreground.
Although the picture is fairly compressed it’s nice to see what you can do with the tiny camera in a MBP and I hope to be doing some more experiments in the near future.
Peking University Ruins
One of my most curious discoveries in Beijing came on my final day when I visited the grounds of Peking University (colloquially known as Beida) which can be found in the northwest district of Haidian (very near where I used to live). The rambling grounds are located on the former site of the Qing Dynasty royal gardens and retains Chinese-style landscaping as well as many traditional buildings including a large lake and pagoda.
It’s ranked as one of the best universities in Asia and, having been originally established by a group of Americans, has a rather colourful history – during the Cultural Revolution students were sent for “re-education” (they call it “re-adjustment“) to cleanse them of their liberal misunderstandings!
I wasn’t entirely sure if visitors were allowed to wander around the campus uninvited but none of the guards bat an eyelid at the gates, possibly because I’m still young enough to pass as a student, but nevertheless I was allowed to continue unimpeded! Having walked around the lake, passing a number of groups taking kitsch wedding photos (as the trend appears to be) I ventured off the main path into an altogether less well kept area and stumbled across a cluster to abandoned traditional-style buildings which I can only presume used to be classrooms.
As the whole area seemed to be deserted I decided to have a poke around inside. Most of the rooms were filled with rubbish and mother nature was clearly starting to get the better of the interior but what intrigued me was the rather artistic graffiti which previous inhabitants had left on some of the walls. As if echo’s from the past the walls clearly had a story to tell although sadly I have no idea what any of it says. If anyone out there would be kind enough to translate I’d very much appreciate it.
Whilst walking through the silent courtyard overgrown with weeds it struck me that the whole place had a bit of a bleak atmosphere and it was a great shame that it had all been left to rot. It remains a mystery as to why it has been abandoned but hopefully they’ll get around to restoring it before the deterioration gets much worse…
And so, after a very delicious dinner of Beijing Duck with my former colleagues, my second stint in Beijing came to a close. It had been a busy week to say the least but I was extremely glad to get another glimpse of this amazing pre-Olympic city with its many faces both young and old. I’m not sure when I’ll be back next but I’m sure we will meet again!
Sidenote1: If you’re into urban exploration then you may like this list of websites which feature rich photo galleries, stories and other background information including maps and building plans (for the more adventurous!).
Sidenote2: If you’d like to donate to the earthquake relief effort in China then Google have setup a site to do just that. They have options to donate to two different bona fide charities.
Ghost in the Shell Live Action
What exactly is the definition of human in a society where a mind can be copied and the body replaced with a fully synthetic body? Where is the boundary between human and machine when the differences between the two become more philosophical than physical? Ultimately how do we define what it is to be human?
I’m not going to try and answer this today but these are the philosophical questions that form the basis of the futuristic manga and anime series ‘Ghost in the Shell‘ created by Masamune Shirow (first published in 1989). Whilst being nearly 30 years old the franchise is still alive and well with three movies, a TV series, game and trilogy of novels being spawned from it along with many aspects having slowly percolated into popular culture (it heavily inspired The Matrix).
With such a strong pedigree it’s rather worrying that Production I.G has sold the rights for a live-action movie to DreamWorks under the direction of none other than Steven Spielberg. For fans this is a pretty worrying development. Whist there is no denying Spielberg’s talent it’s an altogether different proposition when applying it to something like this, the main fear being that it will be severely dumbed down for a Hollywood audience.
If they can respect and stay faithful to the original maybe this has a chance but then again the likelihood of that is pretty low – the precedent is already pretty well established for ruining Asian cult classics.
Update (10/2009): Apparently Dreamworks has hired Laeta Kalogridis as lead writer (who also worked one of the Tomb Raider movies) along with Avi Arad (formerly of Marvel) and Steven Paul to produce what’s being called a “3D live-action film”. Anyone care to speculate what that means?
GO! GO! PiKAPiKA!!
We interrupt our usual coverage to bring you one of most unique short animated films I’ve seen in a long time from some very creative folks in Japan (all made without a single drop of CG):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zp-65Lwmh8
Using stop-motion animation and time-lapse photography techniques the film was shot in Tokyo over a period of 10 nights, using 77 people, different coloured flashlights, and a digital camera with a long exposure to capture over 16,000 frames (behind the scenes). It’s no small feat for a semi-amateur production and the end result certainly has the wow factor.
A group in Germany called Lichtfaktor do something similar for a living and have made some seriously cool tv ads which you can find on their website. It would appear to becoming a bit of a fringe art form with some calling it “light writing” or “light graffiti” but a whole lot less destructive than its spray-on counterpart (interview)!
You’ve got to wonder when Sony will commission someone like this to do a Bravia advert for them – it certainly has all the right visual elements to go with their “colour like no other” campaign.
Photo by Lichtfaktor
Painting with light is something which anyone can try fairly easily themselves, still images being the simplest. You’ll need a tripod and a camera which can do exposures of 10-30 seconds at around iso100 with as small an aperture as possible (plus a whole lot of practice and patience!).
Hello to Tomorrow
Eurostar, the high speed train which runs under the English Channel (through the Channel Tunnel) between London and Paris, has recently relocated to St. Pancras International station in London (from Waterloo). It’s grand new home, celebrated for its Victorian architecture and often termed the ‘cathedral of the railways’, features heavily in a recent TV advert for the service which clearly draws heavy inspiration from another classic (in style, if not in substance at least):
The Eurostar AD (2007):
Koyaanisqatsi (1982):
For an iconic film which so few people know of, but had such a deep impact on the way we viewed the world, it’s nice to see this little homage (complete with Philip Glass soundtrack). Even though purists may see this as denigrating the originals’ artistic integrity isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery?
From a purely marketing perspective it definitely gets the right message across.
More video segments from Koyaanisqatsi after the break…
Polyrhythm
Whilst wandering through the crazy land of wonderful things that is the Internet I came across Perfume (パフューム), an up-and-coming techno/electro-pop group from Hiroshima, who have recently released a rather catchy new track “Polyrhythm” (ポリリズム). The heavily synthesized style shares a striking resemblance to two of my other favourites – Polysics and Capsule. [via]
To promote the single they also did a recycling awareness video, an interesting synergy to say the least!
I always find it interested to see how technology (past, present or futuristic) permeates into popular culture and in particular Japan, where it seems to be embraced unlike anywhere else. Art mirroring life, life mirroring art or commercialism wrapped up in a placebonic package?
More videos after the break…
The Machine Girl
In the world of ultra-violent Japanese films they don’t come much more insane than this:
NOTE: TRAILER NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART
Yakuza, Ninjas, Sushi, Chainsaws, Flying Guillotines… it has it all! Where else in the world would you find a movie about a school girl seeking revenge on her brothers killers and the loss of her own arm (conveniently replaced with a gun)?!
I’m not saying the film will be any good but it might just be crazy enough to become a cult classic. [via]