Showing posts with label recommendations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recommendations. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 05, 2021

CoronaVirus CoVidEo Corner: Plague Film Bonanza: Part 5

Weirdo that I am, I'm commemorating the CoVid19 lockdown by watching plague movies, and because I love you, I'm writing them up for you, readers, and I'll end the series with a nice best-of countdown!

If you aren't up to date on the series, the rules for inclusion or the scoring, I'll put a recap at the bottom of this post, or you can read the full description and official rules at the table of contents page.

I... I kind of ran out of gas on this blog series, probably because as the pandemic got worse, watching plague movies stopped being quite so fun, but every half-finished blog post in my draft file bugs me, so here's a chance to move one from "unpublished" to "published"


In This Episode (Part 5)

The Crazies (2009 and 1973)
Day of Resurrection/Virus: The End (Fukkatsu No Hi) (1980)
The Andromeda Strain (1971)
REC (2007)
Blindness (2008)


The Crazies (2009) (IMDB Page) and 1973 (IMDB Page)

The Skinny: George Romero, creator of the modern zombie film with "Night of the Living Dead," took another kick at horror/plague can with the 1973 original, and produced the remake in 2010. An airplane crashes outside a small town, releasing a bioweapon government scientists have been working on into the water supply of a very small town. The infection causes people to either die or become extremely violent.

In both versions, the military sets up a perimeter to try to quarantine the town, and things turn really, really sour. For some reason the military wants to get everybody into the school gym for quarantine (sounds like a rotten idea if the infection makes everyone attack each other), which gives the military (and the filmmakers) an excuse to roam all over town in search of extreme situations. We follow different townsfolk and military personnel as the "Crazies" virus (nicknamed "Trixie") goes to work. Things get pretty ugly. The 2010 version follows Timothy Olyphant’s small-town sheriff character close enough that the film has a protagonist, which can’t really be said for the original.

Scoring: 1973 DNF. Night of the Living Dead was better, but a lot of fans of old horror and exploitation films have a soft spot for The Crazies as well. I'll be honest, I didn't feel the film made the most of its premise, it failed to create a real mood of menace or dread, and the gore was dialed down compared to your average zombie attack. There's something about 70s and 80s movies of this type -- there are just so many scenes of someone in military garb shouting "Shut down the thing" into a walkie talkie, while somebody else in a different outfit shouts, "You can't shut down the thing, dammit!" It started with a lot of shouting, and ended with a lot of shooting, but lacked a clear, compelling protagonist and amounted to quite a bit less than the sum of its parts, in my opinion.

Scoring: 2010 DNF/DQ’d. The 2010 film is a little slicker and better acted, and the imagery is quite a bit better. There is a bit with a pitchfork that’s quite well-done, and a set piece set in a car wash that is very silly, and people with the rage virus get more or less disgusting-looking, depending on how well the protagonist knows them. Now, I love me some late ‘00s Timothy Olyphant, but 2010 Crazies still never quite amounts to something impressive. These films are way better-made than Cabin Fever, but the 1973 version was not compelling, and the 2010 version was more of a monster movie than a plague movie, really, so given that it wasn't a great film to begin with, I'm not giving it a full write-up: it’s either DNF as a plague film, or DQ’d because it’s a monster movie.

Both films seem to be trying to make a point about government overreach -- as the military tries to contain the breakout, they herd people into fenced cages in 2010, and confine them in a school gym and confiscate their guns in 1973, but this muddles any thematic coherence the film might have had, because if the disease makes the infected do what they do in this film, the military is very much right to contain the outbreak at all costs, and the group (both films have one) who tries to escape the quarantine is incredibly reckless and irresponsible. The 2010 film commits the sin of multiple sudden-noise+hand-appears-out-of-nowhere startling the viewer, only for that person to turn out to be a friend. Bad enough once. There is also at least one, and possibly more, scenes where a character we like is in a bad situation, about to be killed by a baddie, only for them to be shot from offscreen by a character we hadn’t known was nearby. The sauce is too weak to forgive the story’s shortcomings.


Day of Resurrection (1980) (Fukkatsu No Hi)

The Skinny:
The most expensive Japanese film ever made at the time. It tells the story of a virus created by the military that makes other pathogens much more deadly, and kills all life on earth, except the inhabitants of a few Antarctic research stations. The Cold War finally over, the researchers try to imagine life repopulating the earth after the virus has died away, only to realize US and Russia have set up automated nuclear launch deterrents to a nuclear attack -- launches that will happen automatically if a nuclear explosion is detected, kind of like a dead man's switch, and that these automatic launches might be triggered by a coming earthquake. A few researchers and a submarine crew must go to Washington to turn off the automated retaliation machine before it leads to an automated nuclear exchange between all-dead USA and Russia that would irradiate the earth and perhaps end even chance live eventually makes a comeback.

The Good: There's something nostalgic about watching Cold War films in 2020, I admit. Jaw-clenched men in military garb shouting "Cancel the code red" at each other, gazing off in the middle distance and musing, "It could be the end of life itself, Mr. President" -- there's just something so cheesy and quaint about it now, even though in the 70s and 80s the stakes were so high. The film is competently acted and directed, a little slow, and gives the plague mostly superficial treatment as part of the premise for the drama happening at the Antarctic station.

This film was headed for a DNF until one scene so ludicrous it approached the sublime. An Antarctic station crew is trying desperately to find someone, anyone, still alive on the rest of the planet, and end up talking with a five-year-old who got scared, went on his dad's short wave radio, but doesn't know to let go of the broadcast button when he finishes talking, meaning that people can't reply to him. There's about a three minute scene of scientists and doctors huddled around a radio microphone, shouting "TOBY LET GO OF THE SWITCH" at a five-year-old who can't hear them. Of all the different ways to portray the world ending, they chose this.

Enjoy it with me.




The Bad: The film's premise is a little silly, and it ends on a serious downer. I guess the film's supposed to be a warning about nuclear weapons? Really, it doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be a plague film, describing the outbreak of the plague, or a "stuck in isolation" film about the people at the Antarctic station: the characters we meet and care about are just about all at the research stations, or dead in the first half of the film, yet the climactic conflict to be resolved involves a trip to Washington to shut off an armageddon machine, disconnected from almost all of the characters we cared about, rather than some problem that must be solved at the research stations. As the scientists decide what to do about the future, the women (there are 8 women on the Antarctic stations, at about a 100-1 man-to-woman ratio) agree to some pretty damn awful living conditions for the sake of the preservation of the human race, in a gross scene that doesn't fit the rest of the movie, and sure sounds like a middle-aged man writing out his sexual fantasy, more than something a group of women would actually agree to. The storyline jumps around between places, groups of characters, and time a lot, skipping around from before the breakout, to during, to the Antarctic bases' long stay and search for a cure, to the point that it feels like the story got away from the filmmakers, or the editor perhaps.

Scoring:
Frightening: This film starts out as a political drama, turns into a survival drama, and ends weirdly. None of the marks it's aiming for are trying to scare the audience. It's frightening that the Cold War led USA and Russia down such horrifying paths to find an advantage over each other, but especially now that the Cold War (as it was then) is over, the film and its stakes don't really hit the mark any more in 2020. 1/5

Scary: The scariest it gets is people coughing, and grossest part of the film isn't anything disease-related, but the women of the Antarctic stations agreeing to lend out their wombs to all the men of the research stations for the sake of the human race. There aren't any jumps or gross-outs: this film is not going for that audience. As I said, I probably would have turned it off if not for the unintentional comedy of the Toby scene, which got me to watch the rest of the film, but not to love it. 1/5

Plausible: The origin of the plague, the idea that USA and Russia might have been engaging in a biological warfare weapons race, the cloak and dagger around how the virus got developed, and got loose, are all ideas/plots/schemes/fears I've heard before in the context of the Cold War, and the idea that a reckless scientist would be the one to invent the pathogen that gets us isn't farfetched enough. We don't get too many details about the type or progress of the plague, and what we do find out is described in a few exposition lines rather than dramatized interestingly, but it's believable that a couple of diseases could interact with each other to create something much worse, or that low temperatures could make a deadly virus go dormant. 3/5

Awesome: This film is a real period piece, for its music and acting, the slower pacing than we get in films today, and for the Cold War context. It's been long enough since USSR fell that it's getting hard to remember just how scary the nuclear arms race was at the time. Moreover, as I said in "the bad" above, the film seems to be unsure of what it is, and not enough of the spaghetti they're throwing at the wall sticks. It was competently made, the short wave radio scene is transcendent, and peak Olivia Hussey sure was something, but none of that was enough to save the film. 2/5

But Wait, There's More! Stinger? You can't really tease more when you've already killed the entire human race save a few dozen, so... nope.

Verdict: If you're going to watch a film where the entire world gets wiped out, The Stand's "what comes after" is more interesting than this.

Total Score: 7/20


The Andromeda Strain (1971) (IMDB Page)
The Skinny: One of the older films on the plague viewing list, but also one of the very plaguiest, The Andromeda Strain is about a group of crack scientists sent into a deep underground scientific lab to study a virus that has wiped out an isolated American village.

The Good: This film probably gets into the details of how scientists would investigate a virus in more detail than any other film in this series: robot arms moving samples around airtight laboratories, computer scans revealing screens of data (in old timey 1970s beep boop green text on black screen style), and detailed discussion of how the virus reproduces, its size, what it feeds on, and how it kills, mean that if you really do read books on epidemiology for fun, this is the plague movie for you. There are a bunch of Very Smart Men (and a woman!) with PhDs gritting their teeth and making Very Important Decisions, and it's kind of charming, but anachronistic (in 2021) how much faith this film shows in science and the scientific method. It wasn't a problem with the science that led Covid to be as devastating as it has been.

The Bad: If you don't read books on epidemiology for fun, this film is a little dry. There are long scenes showing, for example, a robot arm moving animal cages around and exposing them to the virus. The scientists all wear identical red jumpsuits, so a few of the characters kind of blur together, and the way the plot hinges around certain protocols being followed or not, and a bit of a contrivance for the reasons a key piece of information doesn't come to light... well, I suppose it's better than Jake Gyllenhaal in VR glasses punching a virus in the jaw, but again, the film suffers from slow pacing and does a lot of explaining. Sure, every film from the '70s is a slow burn to the MTV-addled attention spans of 2021 movie viewers, but... this one is too, and maybe it's not them, it's me... but given that you, dear reader, probably also have an MTV-addled attention span, be warned.

Scoring:
Frightening: Nah. This film isn't really frightening. You sense academically that the virus is deadly, for one thing by how many precautions the characters take to avoid it (though those precautions slow the action waaay down). The animation and graphics used to represent the andromeda virus are also '70s nifty, and create a few moments of "whoa. It's coming!" but they don't linger enough to count as frightening. 1/5

Scary: There are a few mild gross-outs when investigators discover dead virus victims with entirely coagulated blood, and during the science testing a few animals are shown dying of the virus, but the purpose of this film is not to make us gasp in horror at the disease, but to marvel at the cleverness of those who unlock it secrets (and the writer who came up with it all). 2/5

Plausible: The idea that scientists would be doing science somewhat like this in a super-fancy underground science lab: plausible. The idea that the government has a super-fancy underground science lab and a set of disease investigation protocols including a pre-selected crack team of virus experts standing by for the call? Less plausible, especially after how the pandemic unfolded since 2020. They put a baby on a four-foot-high flat stretcher, keep it there for days, and he never once falls off. The science of the virus and the investigation are very well-thought-through, as they were in the Michael Crichton book. This film lives or dies on whether you think its investigation and results are plausible, and they mostly are.  4/5

Awesome: If '70s competence porn is your thing, there's lots to love here, and yeah, the details of the virus and the investigation are so thorough there's a ring of authenticity that if space viruses came down to threaten the earth, they might work this way, but yeah, it's also 70s cinema with the pacing and style that entails. 3/5

But Wait, There's More! Stinger? The virus escapes containment, but because of things they learn during the investigation, that turns out not to be much of a concern, so yes and no: no points awarded or deducted.

Verdict: The more you know and care about scientific process and epidemiology, the more you'll enjoy this film. The only other films in this series that come close to the level of detail in explaining the workings of their plagues are The Girl With All the Gifts and Pontypool, and of them, Pontypool has the best zinger at the end. It is very very sciencey, and very very plaguey.

Total Score: 10/20 ... perhaps I weighted scary/frightening a little heavy on my scale if the most sciencey and the most plaguey film in the set can only manage a middling score. Than again... it's my series, so I'll score for the things I like, by gum!



[REC] (2007) (IMDB Page

The Skinny: In this Spanish found footage film, a young news reporter follows a fire department call into a building where people are getting sick. While inside, authorities lock down the building, stopping anyone from escaping while a zombie-like infection spreads through the population of building tenants. This film was a huge success, spawning three sequels as well as the shitty tribute of an inferior English language Hollywood remake (which was alright, but close to a shot-for-shot remake, and if I recall correctly, lacked the manic energy of the original). It could qualify as more a zombie movie than a plague movie, but the fact that a lot of my readers are currently in quarantine, lockdown, or under stay at home orders of varying degrees of severity make it relevant enough for inclusion.

The Good: This film does a good job at slowly escalating tension and fear. Even more, the directing and acting strike me as realistic, simply because if there were a zombie breakout an apartment building, people would be losing their shit and the actors in this film actually show fear and panic. When something happens, people are all shouting at the same time, the cameraman doesn't know where to point, and three people have three different ideas about what to do. Most people wouldn't stay cool and turn into Vin Diesel zombie slayers in this situation, and even police and rescue workers are shouting, panicking and making rash decisions. The film does a few tropes well -- the creepy kid, the harmless old lady gone wrong, and the ending, in an attic, mostly in the dark, is a pretty darn great ending, probably good enough on its own to justify sequels and remakes.

The Bad: To be honest, all the usual reservations about found footage films apply. The premise -- that it's a professional cameraman -- helps sell the idea that camerawork should be mostly good, and there are a few haunting images that fit seamlessly into the story -- my favorite is when a character shouts for her friend down a spiral stairwell, and about ten zombies in the stairwell at different levels all look up, and all start climbing -- but there are also places where the shaky camera and dancing flashlight beams mean that horror reveals are too short, murky, or unsatisfying. It's a hard balance to reveal
just enough to be scary, but leave the rest to the imagination, but films that use found footage shaky cameras to skimp out on horror reveals are a bugbear of mine. This film had about 70% as many really frightening images as it could have, in my opinion.

Scoring:
Frightening: Yes! The way this film turns a perfectly ordinary living area into a house of horrors is very well done, the suspicion that you never know what your neighbors are really doing is a good foothold for terror, and the idea of not being able to escape as things curdle is real and effective. The ever-escalating creepouts and scares make this film a very good variation on the Blair Witch Project template. Showing the raw fear of the building tenants slowly increase makes the frights work, and the cast really sells it. 4/5

Scary: Yes! The film bends its own zombie rules - the speed at which people turn into zombies keeps increasing - and the explanation of the whole thing is perfunctory at best, but there are enough surprises, things jumping out of shadows, and gross or startling images that the film takes the viewer where it wants them to go. Good use of light and darkness to set up surprises and increase suspense means that there are jumps, but none of them are cheap. 5/5

Plausible: Explanations or origins are barely better than hand-waves, but I it was refreshing that there
wasn't a "how do they know all these things/how did they find out so quickly and correctly?" character explaining things, the way Jeffrey Wright's character in Invasion or Hallorann in The Shining or Gottleib and Geiszler in Pacific Rim seem to always have a theory, or know something, or pop in with a bit of exposition, and always be correct. They point a camera around a creepy science lab and zoom in on some creepy newspaper clippings, but nothing is ever fully, or even partly, explained. It is fully believable frightened local authorities would quarantine a building and let everyone inside fester. Every zombie film is preposterous from the very premise, but this film was chaotic and fun and scary enough that it earns a little slack just for being fun. 2/5

Awesome: I've mentioned things like
people who know what's going on; a lot of films also spend screen time on the public official whose choices make things worse, and part of me was waiting for them to come along and clarify the situation. They never did, and for all the unanswered questions, I  actually appreciate how limited and narrow this film's focus was: we only see what the single cameraman recorded, we only know what the characters inside the building know. This film is a concise, adrenaline spike of chaos, panic and fear, and then it's over, and that's enough. It delivers what it promised. 4/5

But Wait, There's More! Stinger? Even though there are sequels, this film does not end with a tacky sequelbait scene. Plus one point.

Verdict: The film succeeds by knowing what it is, what its audience wants, and delivering that. The found footage genre has some inherent drawbacks, but I didn't find myself getting annoyed by them, because of the film's excellent pacing, tight narrative focus, and an excellent performance by Manuela Velasco.

Total Score: 16/20 A taut, tightly focused, scary film about small spaces. It might be hard to watch for someone quarantined themselves, but the film delivers on its promise and follows through its premise. It doesn't always make
sense, but between the pacing, the energy, and the scares, that doesn't matter.





Blindness (2008) (IMDB Page)

The Skinny: A mysterious infectious disease causes people to suddenly "white out" and lose their vision. Julianne Moore's husband, an optometrist, is exposed very early, so she travels into quarantine with him, while still sighted, to take care of him. Quarantine gets pretty rough as more suddenly-blind people arrive in the quarantine facility, and then, as the rest of the world goes blind, too, resources get scarce and the quarantine wards begin to compete. As the only sighted person in quarantine, Julianne Moore has some hard choices to make about how to use her sighted advantage over the other quarantinees. The first third of the film explores the spread of the plague a little, as Danny Glover describes what happened to the people in quarantine, and the middle of the film retells a Lord of the Flies type story of humans becoming shitty in shitty circumstances, and then the final third of the film introduces the theme of finding hope and home in dire situations.

The Good: Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo are two of my favorite actors to watch, so that is a pretty durn good start! According to wikipedia, about 700 actors had to be trained to act blind for the scenes in quarantine, and wandering around the city. The film is interestingly made, with some interesting visuals and excellent incorporation of music throughout.

The Bad: Trigger warning for sexual violence. Some of the men in the shitty quarantine ward do classic shitty man behavior, and the film is not shy about showing that, but at least also shows its impact and consequences, both on the victims and on the perpetrators. There is very little explanation of what is happening, or why, and the progress of the plague and its workings are less interesting to the filmmakers than how the film's characters react to it. That can be fine, but then I wish the scene-writing had drawn the characters' personalities and their choices in sharper relief. As it is, the film is almost an abstracted series of moods and ruminations rather than a character or acting-driven story... again, which is fine, but perhaps an underuse of Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, Danny Glover, etc.'s talent as actors. Moreover, the final third of the film, where Julianne Moore (the characters are never named) and a few of her friends escape the quarantine and explore their benighted city, seems like almost an entirely different genre of film than the first part, the quarantine drama.

You're gonna have to get all the way off my back...
(source: pitch meeting)
Meanwhile, Julianne Moore seems to be the only person in the entire city, or perhaps the entire world, who retains her sight, and short of "that's just the premise of the film, so..." that's not explained or examined either.


Scoring:
Frightening: This isn't a scary plague film in either sense. The moods, the feeling of being hedged in and helpless in quarantine, the gross feeling as humans start being shitty, and keep getting shittier: this movie has some downer spots, but none of them are really frightening. The most haunting part, for me, was when Julianne Moore and a few of her closest wandered out of the quarantine, and wandered through the city trying to find food or safety: one of the group falls one step behind, reaches his hand out in the wrong direction to touch the back of the person ahead in line, and ends up getting separated from the group through simple bad luck and happenstance: he goes from being a part of the group, protected by numbers, to just another vulnerable, solitary soul in a city of lost souls. Just like that. 1/5

Scary: Other than the horror of sexual violence, as well as some physical violence with a knife, there aren't jump-scares or gross-outs here. Where it does get horrific are in the predatory behaviors of the men who control the food in quarantine, and out in the city, where if it seems like you have food, you'll get mobbed by groping, lurching bodies trying to grab at whatever you have, like those scenes in a zombie movie where hundreds of zombie hands reach through a doorway and pull a person back through. Also, there is a short scene of dogs eating the bodies of dead humans in the street. Gross, but a sharp underscore of the idea human life has no value once society has broken down. 2/5

Plausible: It's kind of a "Lord of the Flies" vision of what would happen if everyone lost their sight at once, but to be honest, none of the gross behaviors we see people do seem beyond imagination. And in the midst of that, effort is also made to show that the characters do continue to form and develop their relationships, and do those other, lovely things that humans do, too. 3/5

Awesome: As I said, any film with Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover is off to a good start. The film gives an interesting and well-realized portrayal of an interesting premise and, while I wouldn't say it's fun or always enjoyable, there are interesting things going on throughout. The initial dramatic tension that comes of Julianne Moore being able to see when nobody else can doesn't really yield much story-wise: she operates more as an observer and audience stand-in than as the story's driving energy, though she thoroughly refutes the idea that "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man (or woman) is king." The film is careful to include little moments of human connection, intimacy, spontaneity and surprise, for example when it rains and suddenly all the lost humans groping for food take a moment to enjoy the water pouring over them. On the other hand, with few exceptions, the film is not beautiful to see: colors are washed out, and almost every scene is full of clutter and human squalor, cruelty or desperation. If you are into films showing a lot of people down on their luck and heading toward bottom, people who don't know how to groom because they can't see mirrors, this film is for you. 3/5

But Wait, There's More! Stinger? None.

Verdict:
Perfect Sense was the uplifting art film about plague and loss of our senses. This one was the dark, cynical one. If you like that dark edge, Blindness isn't a pretty look at humanity, but it's well-made in its bleak vision of human isolation and meanness.

Total Score: 9/20 That seems about right for a film with some good bits, but slow pacing and parts that were hard to watch.



Series Recap:
Weirdo that I am, I'm commemorating the CoVid19 lockdown by watching plague movies, and because I love you, I'm writing them up for you, readers, and I'll end the series with a nice best-of countdown!

To sum up the ground rules:

Qualifying:
It has to be a film. There might be some great plague television out there, but I have a kid: binge watching six TV series that are too scary to share with my kid this week is off the table. It has to be a narrative film, not a documentary.

The film has to be about a plague or viral infection. That is, the film has to put significant attention on what the infectious agent is, how it spreads or works, and what can be done about the infection. If the response is "we need to hide from/kill all the zombies" it's not really a plague film: it's a zombie film. If the response is "we can beat this if we discover and exploit a weakness in how the virus spreads" then it's a plague film. (So, World War Z: yes; Dawn of the Dead: no.) There's a little wiggle room here, and I'll be making some calls. Deal with it.

Scoring:
Films that fail to hold my attention get a DNF (Did Not Finish)

Films that hold my attention are scored on four dimensions:
Frightening (is it the kind of scary that's moody, builds up, and stays with you afterward?)
Scary (is it the kind of scary that makes you jump in your seat, or wish you'd eaten a smaller lunch? Surprises and gross-outs get points in this category.)
Plausible (does the plague, and people's response to it, seem realistic, as if it could possibly happen?)
Awesome (is it a good movie? Does it hit its marks?)
Each of these dimensions will be scored out of five.
Finally, for bonus demerits/points:
"But wait, there's more!" stinger - does the film end by hinting that the infection is on its way to a sequel new location? You know...the montage where the contaminated water ends up at a bottling factory while ominous music plays? Yah those are cheesy, and I will be docking points for them, depending on the amount of cheesiness.

It's unlikely that any film will get a 20/20 on this scale, because frightening, scary and plausible are usually a trade-off: films that make me jump like a cat usually don't also make me fear door handles, and a film that does both probably asks for a big suspension of disbelief in the plausibility category.

Saturday, April 04, 2020

CoronaVirus CoVidEo Corner: Plague Film Bonanza: Part 4

To Recap:

Weirdo that I am, I'm commemorating the CoVid19 lockdown by watching plague movies, and because I love you, dear reader, I'm writing them up for you, and I'll end the series with a nice best-of countdown!

If you aren't up to date on the series, the rules for inclusion or need a full description of the scoring, or you want links to the other installments in the series, I'll put a recap at the bottom of this post, or you can read the full description, the official rules, and find links to every part of the series on the table of contents page linked here.

Scoring:
Films that fail to hold my attention get a DNF (Did Not Finish) and no score (that would be unfair).

Films that hold my attention are scored on four dimensions:
Frightening (Is it the kind of scary that builds up, and stays with you afterward?) Dread & anxiety get points here.
Scary (Is it the kind of scary that makes you jump in your seat, or wish you'd eaten a smaller lunch?) Surprises and gross-outs get points here.
Plausible (Does the plague, and people's response to it, seem realistic, as if it could possibly happen?)
Awesome (Is it a good movie? Does it hit its marks?)
Each of these dimensions will be scored out of five.
Finally, for bonus demerits/points:
"But wait, there's more!" stinger (Does the film end by hinting that the infection is on its way to a sequel new location?) That's tacky, and I take away points depending on the amount of cheesiness.

Coming Up in this Review: 
Antiviral (2012)
Maggie (2015)
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Pandemic (2016)
Stephen King's The Stand (1994)
28 Days Later (2002) / 28 Weeks Later (2007) duology
The Invasion (2007)



Spoilers for every film, by the way.

Monday, March 23, 2020

CoronaVirus CoVideo Bonanza Side Quest: SOCIAL DISTANCING MOVIES

Hey there friends.

Source
Feeling a little cooped up? Self-quarantine and voluntary isolation getting you down? Climbing the walls like a capillary action food-coloring and paper science experiment... gone wrong?

Well, self-isolation is getting to me, too. So I'm taking a short break from my CoVideo Plague Film Bonanza for a mini-side quest to mention movies about... isolation! Ever been locked in a room, not knowing when you'd get out? Ever reached the limits of what you could do in your confined space, but you don't know when it'll be OK to leave? Ever hear people say things like "We might have to do 18 months of social distancing until there's a vaccine" and thought "Oh crap. I'm losing my grip already after twenty days!" This one's for you (and me), before we all start seeing ants.



For all the weirdos like myself, who deal with the anxiety of living in a time of plague by watching plague films, maybe you also cope with isolation and quarantine by watching movies about isolation, confinement and claustrophobia. In case that's you, here are some films about isolation and claustrophobia. I'm not going to watch new films for this because it's only a sidequest to my Plague Film Bonanza, and be warned that things are a little spoilery, but while my discussion of the film might require me to reveal that there's a twist (in order to talk about whether it was well done), I'll try not to give away what the twist is, exactly. Here are a few social distancing films I've seen, and I welcome your suggestions for further viewing in the comments.

Here is the rest of the CoVideo Corner plague film series.


Now on to the list!

Monday, March 16, 2020

CoronaVirus CoVidEo Corner: Plague Film Bonanza Table of Contents

The Plague Film Bonanza has sprawled large enough to require a central control and table of contents, so I'll have the rules here, and links to each of the installments.

To Recap:

Weirdo that I am, I'm commemorating the CoVid19 lockdown by watching plague movies. Some people cope with stress and anxiety by rewatching The Princess Bride or Singin' In The Rain, but I do it by going dark. If you also deal with uncertainty by watching movies about other people in even more stressful situations, this here is for you!

Maybe you dealt with a coming lockdown by buying (or trying to buy) facemasks, hand sanitizer, and ungodly amounts of toilet paper, or adjusting weekend plans. Well, I went and found every movie about infectious diseases I could and have been watching them one by one. So if you're housebound anyway, why not pass the time scaring the crap out of yourself, right?

I'm writing mini-reviews of some classic, less-than-classic, and absolute garbage plague films, and because I love you, I'm writing them up for you, readers, and I'll end the series with a nice best-of countdown!

To sum up the ground rules:

Qualifying:

Rule 1: It has to be a narrative film. There might be some great plague television out there, but I have a kid who is apparently studying from home until he is forty: binging entire seasons of TV series' that are too scary to share with him is off the table. Documentaries would require an entirely different scoring system, so they're out, too. Most, but not all the films here are fiction, and I'm limiting the series to narrative films.

Rule 2: The film has to be about a plague or viral infection. That is, it must put significant attention on what the infectious agent is, how it spreads or works, and what can be done about the infection. If the response is "we need to hide from/kill all the zombies" (Dawn of the Dead) it's not really a plague film: it's a zombie or monster film. If the response is "we can beat this if we discover and exploit a weakness in how the virus spreads" (World War Z) then it's a plague film. Another example: if the vial of plague pathogen in Mission: Impossible 2 were replaced with a computer chip, or a piece of microfilm, the rest of the film basically wouldn't change. Mission: Impossible 2 is a MacGuffin chase, not really a plague film. There's a little wiggle room here, and I'll be making some calls. Deal with it.


Theory of Scary Movies (context):

Films that hold my attention are scored on four dimensions, with one bonus category, but for my first two categories, I need to explain my theory of scary movies.

Because plague films are usually scary, I need to explain that there are two ways scary movies scare us. Think of Alfred Hitchcock's bomb theory: a bomb exploding under a table surprises the audience, but if the audience knows there's a bomb under the table and it doesn't explode, we get suspense. A surprise can be part of good storytelling, but it can also be a cheap trick. Suspense makes small, mundane details suddenly important or compelling.

Scares work this way, too. Some movies scare us by having a monster jump out of the closet. I call these jump-scares, and they're scary for five seconds, like the bomb under the table exploding. The new It remakes use this again and again. A good jump-scare comes from sound design, editing, and camera work. There's a craft to it, but it's simple setup and payoff. Make people think something is coming, and then deliver it in a way that messes with their expectations somehow. I'm measuring this kind of scare in my "Scary" category. Does the film make me jump like a cat? The scary category also covers gross-outs, which are common in plague films. If there's blood, pus and gore making the audience feel squicky, points go here.

Like the bomb under the table that doesn't explode, other movies scare us by having a character suspect there's a monster in the closet, and find they're too afraid to open the door and check. Suddenly, that closet door is scary all by itself, and every time the character has to go in that room, or a muffled sound echoes through the house, we feel anxiety. My favorite horror movies establish an ominous tone that something bad is going to happen and let that dread build and build. The payoff, when it comes, is more satisfying because the film set it up so carefully. Think of the films Paranormal Activity, The Others, or The Babadook. It doesn't even need to be outright horror: We Need to Talk About Kevin does this beautifully. The imagery isn't gory and the jump-scares (where they exist) are understated, or contribute to the ominous mood that builds. This kind of scare sticks with you. Unlike the chill that's gone in five seconds, these movies have you checking your locks or changing your passwords a week after the film is over. I'm measuring this in my "Frightening" category. I personally prefer this type of scare, though the best scary movies (It Follows, The Thing, The Ring, A Quiet Place) do both.

The Scoring Categories

The Failed Experiments:
Not all these films are going to be what we conventionally call "good films," but even bad films have ways to hold one's attention. If a film was so dull, poorly made, or predictable that I didn't watch it from beginning to end, and instead skipped to the "good parts," it gets a DNF (Did Not Finish). I tried, but even as I pretend zombie films are relevant to a global pandemic, I have enough integrity not to review a film I haven't seen through.

The Categories: Each is graded out of five points.
Frightening (Does it create that moody, ominous feeling of dread that builds up, and stays with you afterward?)
Scary (Is it the kind of scary that makes you jump in your seat, or wish you'd eaten a smaller lunch? Surprises and gross-outs get points in this category.)
Plausible (Does the plague, and people's response to it, seem realistic, as if it could possibly happen? If unrealistic, does the film follow its own rules, and unfold believably, granted the initial premise?)
Awesome (Is it a good movie? Does it hit its marks? Are the scary parts scary, the sad parts sad, and the joyful parts joyful?)

Finally, for bonus demerits/points:
"But wait, there's more!" stinger - does the film end by hinting that the infection is on its way to a sequel new location? You know...the montage where the contaminated water ends up at a bottling factory while ominous music plays, or the one infected cat escapes the exterminators and heads toward the Lincoln Tunnel and the mainland? Yah those are cheesy, and I will be docking points for them, depending on the amount of cheesiness.

By having two categories -- half the entire scoring -- on scariness, this system will over-rate scary movies and under-rate things like dramas or love stories. We'll discuss that as we get into the reviews.

It's unlikely that any film will get a 20/20 on this scale, because frightening, scary and plausible are usually a trade-off: films that make me jump like a cat usually don't also make me fear door handles, and a film that does both probably asks for a big suspension of disbelief in the plausibility category.

Here, then, are links to the film reviews.
CoVideo Corner sidebar: Social Distancing Edition:
This post discusses a set of films about claustrophobia, isolation, boredom and helplessness: the feelings we're all feeling during our stay-at-home quarantines and self-isolation
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Cube (1997)
The Shining (1980)
Room (2015)
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Oldboy (2003)
Chicken Run (2000)
Groundhog Day (1993)
The Descent (2005)

Go to Part 1 
Films reviewed:
(Carriers (2009)

Deranged (연가시) (2012)
Patient Zero (2018)
Outbreak (1995)
The Bay (2012)
Perfect Sense (2011)

Go to Part 2
감기 (The Flu)
Black Death
Pontypool
Extinction: The GMO Chronicles
괴물 (The Host)
Viral (2016)
The Girl With All the Gifts

Go to Part 3
And The Band Played On (1993)
12 Monkeys (1995)
Cabin Fever (2002)
Planet of the Apes Trilogy (2011-2017)
World War Z (2013)
Contagion (2011)

Go to Part 4
Antiviral (2012)
Maggie (2015)
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Pandemic (2016)
Stephen King's The Stand (1994)
28 Days Later (2002) / 28 Weeks Later (2007) duology
The Invasion (2007)

Go to Part 5

Monday, December 30, 2013

Why Japan Shouldn't Apologize To Korea (Right Now): Part 1: Why Not?

What the hell, Roboseyo! You were the happy blogger who isn't supposed to hold controversial views!

Bullshit. My views are the ones that make sense to me. After thinking it out. So there, imaginary person I argue against.
Did you even read the post, Mr. Snuffleupagus? (source)


Prime Minister Abe, of Japan, done just goofed. He visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which, in East Asia, is the diplomatic equivalent of shitting in the party punchbowl. (Unilaterally declaring air defense zones is the defense equivalent, but there you have it.) (Analysis on Korea's position in the US pivot to Asia.).

This article came out in The Economist, on USA's frustration over Korea and Japan's refusal to share their toys. Asian Foreign Policy heavyweight Victor Cha wrote in the New York Times about the same thing. The Diplomat asks why Japan's apologies are forgotten. The hair-pulling is on a regular cycle: several times a year, and even more since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe got in, Korean politicians, or other rabble-rousers call for Japan to apologize to Korea, maybe promising that love-based Asian economic zone is held back only by this. China also feels it is owed an apology, for similar reasons: "Korea and China" could be switched in for "Korea" and the main points of this article would stand more or less unchanged, given that the ball is mostly in Japan's court.

I wrote a term paper on this topic last semester, focused on the Korea Japan situation and I'd like to share some of the things I learned, or concluded, from that.

The basics: from 1910 to 1945, Japan made Korea into a colony, as part of an imperial plan to become in Asia what modern European colonial powers had become in other parts of the world. It went badly for Korea. Along the way, and especially during the Sino-Japanese war and World War II, some horrific things, like torture, human medical experimentation and forcible recruitment of Korean women to be sex-slaves to Japanese soldiers, came to pass.

This series is not discussing those historical facts: those have been documented and debated elsewhere. This series IS discussing the political realities of apologies between these two nations. So if you want to dispute facts. This isn't the blog you're looking for.

Move along, now. source

Got it? OK.

Nopologies: There Have been Apologies before: Background


Next: There HAVE been apologies before (just to pre-empt the Japanners in the comments, here's a list).

The most important, direct apologies were made by Prime Minister Murayama in 1995.

To the comfort women: "On the Occasion of the Establishment of the Asian Women's Fund"

And here's the text of the most famous one: "On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the war's end"
During a certain period in the not too distant past, Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology. Allow me also to express my feelings of profound mourning for all victims, both at home and abroad, of that history.
Many subsequent apologies have basically repeated the language in this apology.

Here is a series of posts from Ask A Korean! explaining why those apologies have been rejected.
The Murayama apology was made by a progressive government with a weak minority in the Diet, and was controversial in Japanese civil society at the time: after the apology, a string of Japanese government ministers visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine, which honors convicted war criminals along with Japan's war dead, and symbolizes Japan's reluctance to confront and particularly, disown, its colonial past. (NYT: Japanese Apology For War is Welcomed and Criticized) (Apology "Not enough"). It's the same shrine Prime Minister Abe visited in this latest news cycle.

On and off since then, other Japanese leaders have continued to visit Yasukuni shrine, publishing houses have continued to publish textbooks white-washing Japan's war aggressions, public figures have continued to say stupid things about comfort women, and Japan's presiding president considered revoking the 1995 apology, to appease his far-right nationalist supporters. At the grass-roots level, denialist netizens say whatever shit they want pretty much with impunity. So yes, it was an apology, but since there was no break from past behavior, from leadership OR the public, it hasn't come across as very sincere to Koreans.

The question of what WOULD be a "sincere" enough apology is an important one, and we need to have an answer that has broad support among Koreans - enough that asking for more could be seen as unreasonable... to most Koreans. Otherwise that complaint about moving goalposts won't go away, but  incentive for another apology will (if it hasn't already). We also don't want the impression to develop that the aggrieved have more invested in being victims, than in moving on. Some argue that is already the case, and that would be a shame, because Korea and Japan have a lot to gain from a better relationship in areas like economy, diplomacy, and security.


Political Economy


The key to the clickbait title lies in the political economy of international apologies. Political economy is a simple enough idea: in the same way financiers look at incomplete information and make educated guesses about how to profit, politicians choose actions to maximize political gain. A sane politician  won't make an action or comment or support a policy that will clearly cause them to lose approval points, votes, and reputation, (their political capital) compared to their rivals. Given that politicians decide to issue these kinds of apologies, let's ask, what do politicians risk, and what do they gain from apologizing to another country? 

For an apology to be successful, it need to be issued by a country's leaders. It needs to be supported by the population, it needs to be accepted by the other country's leaders, and that acceptance needs to be supported by that population. Those are actually a lot of moving parts already. Things complicate further if both countries have democratic systems, more or less healthy free speech, civil societies, and political oppositions. Things complicate further still if both countries have citizens who can read the other country's language, and even more again if both countries have strong currents of nationalism.

Scenarios:

[Update: this used to be a big long thing about two imaginary countries. I'm gonna take a moment to simplify it, because it's about two actual countries.]

Let's imagine three scenarios. Japan's leaders and their people, and Korea's leaders and their people are trying to negotiate an apology that will allow both countries to move forward into better relations.


Scenario A: Strong Apology


This is how you apologize to Comfort Women.
More info here and here. Photo from here.

Or... the way Koreans seem to want it to go:

Swap out Willy Brandt and the gates of the Warsaw Ghetto, and put in Prime Minister Abe at the feet of the surviving Comfort Woman: this apology is everything Koreans have ever wanted. But Japan's political climate is pretty closely balanced: any move by one side is hotly contested by the opposition party.

It's direct and contrite: it expresses responsibility as well as remorse in clear, unambiguous language. It is backed up by substantive action in various arenas: politicians are banned from going to Yasukuni Shrine until the War Crimes display is erected, at which the text has been composed by a joint team of Korean, Japanese and Chinese scholars and historians. War criminals' names are expelled from the shrine, or moved to the new "hall of ignominy." Those same historians and scholars have a free hand to suggest amendments to museum displays, history textbooks, and general school curricula pertaining to the entire colonial period and Pacific War. Japanese lawmakers contact Germany to discuss the ins and outs of Germany's ban on Holocaust denial, with an eye toward a similar law for Japan's internet. The apology and reparations to the surviving comfort women are negotiated with full input from the surviving comfort women and they are compensated out of Japanese government coffers, documented in a way that expresses clear culpability, paired with an apology they helped write.

Japan's ruling party immediately faces a domestic backlash (even Willy Brandt was criticized for kneeling), and the prime minister is crucified in the media and civil society by the usual suspects. "They are humiliating their country in the international arena!" Out come the black vans, a few Korean-owned shops in Osaka get trashed by a few drunk Japanese denialists whose nationalist rage-on is in full swing.

Korean media (of course) covers this backlash (extensively). During the next hotly contested Korean election cycle, one of the parties makes a play for those easy nationalist votes by claiming the apology wasn't enough and promising to overturn Korea's acceptance of the apology.

This, in turn, causes a backlash in Japan: "They were never going to accept any apology" which hurts Japanese politicians supporting the apology in the next election... leading to other politicians seeing an advantage to be gained by promising to walk back that apology. If they win, they walk back that stuff about changing national museums and textbooks, and defang any Holocaust denial-ish laws that were passed. Now there is a backlash in Korea too, agains politicians who accepted that apology. "They're not really sorry, and you're suckers for accepting it."

The deepest bow on google image search. Source
Japan: "We can never bow low enough."
Korea: "Your bow has no meaning anyway"


Stuff like this gets published during the backlash: the apology has been rejected.


Japanese leaders who made the apology lose even more political capital, and frustration grows nationally that even a strong, good-faith attempt to fix things, failed. There is less incentive than ever before for any future apologies, and an increasing political disincentive, given how apologizing led to a backlash against the last folks who did it.

Nothing's settled and nobody's happy. Ill will between the countries has probably increased, as long as civil society in Japan has too strong a faction opposing apology.

TL:DR: The apology that would satisfy Korea's people would lead to a backlash in Japan. That backlash would lead to Koreans no longer being satisfied by the apology anyway.


Scenario B: Weak/Qualified (Non-)Apology - the Nopology




Let's say Japan makes the apology its domestic political climate, with that slim majority, can bear. It issues a cautious apology carefully worded, in order to avoid sacrificing too much face. Japanese leaders are protected from domestic criticism.

But over in Korea:

The apology is quickly derided as insincere and unsatisfying. We've seen this happen. Opportunist Korean politicians line up to criticize it and demand a "REAL" apology (and if South Korean politicians don't, North Korea will be quick to say the South is rolling over like a lapdog or somesuch). Protestors line up outside the Japanese embassy. On the other side, Japanese politicians and civilians accuse Koreans of moving the goalposts, or being implacable: "They don't really care about apologies: they just like to play victim."

Result: The apology is rejected. Ill will between the countries increases. Those attempting the apology lose a lot of political capital, and likely even decline to follow through with it. Those stoking anti-sentiment in both countries gain political capital. Nobody is happy except the rabble-rousers, whose positions are more entrenched than before.


Scenario C: Semi-Weak Apology



Same as Scenario B, except the apology is a little more strongly worded: takes more responsibility, or is backed up with the promise of more concrete action. Not as much as Scenario A, but more. Now, in Korea, there is some support for accepting it. But don't forget that Korea is a democracy with protected free speech, so opposition politicians and commentators, whose job it is to oppose things, still argue that the apology isn't enough.

Because of them, fallout is the same except:
Some people deride the apology instead of everybody; opposition Korean politicians criticize the apology, instead of ALL Korean politicians (some try to take the high ground, and talk about the long view... which might work, but might get buried under emotional arguments when everyone's nationalist juices are flowing, if the opposition's demagogues are at it.)

Once the Japanese public sees the mixed reaction, their reaction is pretty much the same as in Scenario B, and the end result is more or less the same.

The results in these three scenarios are actually worse for relations between Korea and Japan than the status quo: low grade resentment with the occasional flare-up when a dumbass politician or textbook publisher gets punchy.


TL:DR

For now:
  • The kind of apology that would be supported by Japan's public won't wash in Korea.
  • The apology that Korea wants wouldn't wash in Japan. 
  • Half-assed or qualified apologies make things worse. 
  • A full apology shouldn't be attempted until those who would reject even that in Korea, or those who would oppose issuing one in Japan, are small enough minorities that they are politically radioactive, or at least irrelevant. 
There is no point in adding another Japan apology, that Korea will also reject, to the list of apologies that have already been rejected, and politicians have strong disincentives to do so, as it generates public ill will and burns political capital for no benefit.

In the political economy of international apologies, politicians are calculating the above three scenarios, and in none of them does the cost/benefit end in the positive, because pleasing nationals of some other country (who don't vote in your election) isn't worth it unless you can please your OWN country's voters at the same time.

And that is Why Japan Shouldn't Apologize To Korea (right now)

Do I think Japan should apologize? Yes. But only one more time, for the last time, in such a way that everyone is satisfied that it will be the last time.


Part 2 coming eventually.




Some useful readings from the paper I wrote, that informed my logic on this topic:
Cooney, Kevin J., and Scarbrough, Alex.  2008.  “Japan and South Korea: Can These Two Nations Work Together?”  Asian Affairs: An American Review. 35.3: 173-192.
On the troubled relationship between Korea and Japan: a history of attempts to patch things up, and a clear demonstration that domestic opinion can strongly affect international policy and diplomacy.
Glaeser, Charles L., Berger, Thomas U., Mochizuki, Mike M., and Lind, Jennifer. 2009. “Roundtable Discussion of Jennifer Lind’s Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics.” Journal of East Asian Studies. 9: 337-368.
A great panel discussion in which Jennifer Lind raises the point that a badly done apology, or one that isn't seen as sincere enough, can actually worsen the situation between two countries. Charles Glaeser highlights Jennifer Lind's discussion of the lack of other apologies we'd expect to have happened (see upcoming)
Lawson, Stephanei and Tannaka, Seiko. 2011. “War memories and Japan’s ‘Normalization’ as an International Actor: A Critical Analysis.” European Journal of International Relations. 17.3: 405-428.
Contains a very good history of Japanese apologies, and why they were seen as inadequate.

Here is part 2 of this series.
Here is the table of contents.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Large and Tall T-shirts: General Request

Hey there.  I have a few friends who are taller and/or larger than the average Korean, who need to buy a few new t-shirts for the summer.

So... especially these days, when there are more big and tall Koreans than ever before, there MUST be more big and tall shops where Korean folks can get the big and tall sizes they increasingly need...

Where are they?  Can any of my bigger-than-the-average-Korean readers - particularly the females - recommend a place where my friend could either buy, or have made, some summer wear?  She's looking either for a tailor where they actually know how to fit larger women (not just slapping an elastic waistband on a tent with feet holes), or a shop where they have sizes for her.  She's also a bit tired of digging around the big-and-large shops along "wanna buy a suit" street in Itaewon, where she's been all through the wringer with bad experiences.

So... help me out here, folks.  Directions are good, links to google maps are better, links to websites for shops and even online stores help, too.

I know someone will come through for me on this one.  My coworker is waiting on it.

Rob

Thursday, May 06, 2010

Great Jimjilbang... cleaning my desk

I've had the business cards of a great jimjilbang cluttering my desk for months now, so I'm just going to scan and post the info and let you know that this place is pretty sweet: the clay kilns out back are a wonder, and the coal roasters where you can buy rice cakes, potatoes, sweet potatoes and corn, and then roast them yourself, are AWESOME.

You should go there.

Here's the place.  hanbangland.co.kr.  No promises the website will be useful.

It's between the Shinchon/Hongdae area and the Jongno area, and the masseurs are hella strong.

Enjoy~

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Here's for you, Melissa and Joy: Roboseyo Blogs Music

See, if I started writing about music, it'd take over the blog pretty easily... but Melissa inspired me, with her "25 Musical Facts About Me," to add my final word to that silly 25 Facts About You thing that's going around on Facebook... (and meanwhile, Joy always mentions that she and I ought to talk about music sometime)...

but not before I say this:

Listen, you goofballs (and I know it's the same people...plus a few of your younger counterparts). Remember seven years ago, when your friends staged an intervention, and told you to stop sending E-MAIL forwards to all of them, all the time? And how some of them threatened to cut ties with you entirely...

SENDING FACEBOOK NOTES AND ZOMBIE BITES IS EXACTLY THE SAME THING.

The difference between forwarding "Timmy the Brain Tumor" e-mails in 1997 and tagging people in facebook notes which require them to do something and tag others, or sending them zombie bites, vampire bites, pirate bites, or WHATEVER, is equal to the difference between taking a piece of crap and wrapping it in a PLASTIC box, and wrapping the same piece of crap in a CARDBOARD box. It's just as annoying, and I'm just as not going to do it.

OK. That being said...

Here are, not 25 stupid facts about myself, instead,
25 Songs that Make Rainbows Burst Out My Eyelids.


Here they are: in No Particular Order
Tom Waits - Hold On
Radiohead - Thinking About You
Propellorheads - History Repeating
Magnetic Fields - Busby Berkeley Dreams
Jens Lekman - Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death
The Polyphonic Spree - It's The Sun
The Arcade Fire - Neighbourhood #1 - Tunnels
Andrew Bird - Fake Palindromes
Neko Case - I Wish I Was the Moon Tonight
Tegan and Sara - Call it Off
Buddy Rich (and his band) - The Beat Goes On
The Mountain Goats - This Year
String Quartet plays Radiohead - Motion Picture Soundtrack
White Stripes - I'm Slowly Turning Into You
Yeasayer - Red Cave
Jens Lekman - People Who Hate People
Do, Make, Say, Think - Frederica
Lucas - With the Lid Off
Antony & The Johnsons - Bird Gerhl
Angela McCluskey - Famous Blue Raincoat
Nina Simone - Suzanne
Blind Melon - Soup
Wolf Parade - I'll Believe in Anything
Feist - Mushaboom
Stan Rogers - Barrett's Privateers

Most of these were dependent on their availability on Youtube, and there are a hundred other songs I love which I could substitute in for any one of these, but those are twenty five songs that make me glee.



and I'm NOT TAGGING ANYONE.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Joe Mondello Shows us How Its Done: K-Blogger of The Month for September

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but this post finally pushed me over the edge.

Remember back in April, I tagged Brian from Jeollanam-Do my April Blogger Of The Month for his stuff about the Coreana Nazi ads, which eventually got the attention of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and coverage on international news outlets.

Well, I've been thinking about featuring a kind of K-Blogger of the month every month, and doing a brief write-up about one of the Korea Bloggers on my blogroll (see sidebar). Today, Joe's latest post, has finally prompted me to do it.

Without further ado, to give credit where it is due, here is September's K-Blogger Of The Month.

Joe Mondello has been in Korea a way long time, and speaks Korean really well, as well as playing a respectable mandolin.


Joe is one of the expats who has lived in Korea for a long time, and still manages, on his blog, to try to walk a mile in Korean shoes, tries to offer up the benefit of the doubt wherever he can. You can see in his writing that he certainly does have things he likes and dislikes about Korea, but those things do not seem to cause him to lapse into bitterness or unabashed judgementalness. Meanwhile, he has a wry sense of humour that takes a while to spot, but that is consistently refreshing and occasionally hilarious, once you know when he is talking out the side of his mouth. (Writing out the side of his keyboard?)

He is very perceptive, and subtle, and prefers to tell stories (he calls them slices of life) over making proclamations. I think this is a very good approach to living in a different culture. I respect him a lot for it.

Anyway, Joe also has decided that, when he sees Koreans acting like "ugly Koreans" (you know what I mean) rather than confronting and pushing about, he will shame them into remorse for their inexcusable behaviour with his own class and politeness. Taking the high road like this, when one is being constantly watched anyway, the way we paleskin bignoses are, is probably the best way to go anyway. That we could all do the same.

Well, here is an anecdote Joe shared about being a good guy in the face of all the peer pressure to litter and spit in the street, and buddy, I admire the heck out of him for reacting to this situation with so much grace, given that he has probably spotted this exact situation five hundred times. Here. Read his story.

Here's to you, Joe. Well done, sir: I raise my glass to you and your "good foreigner" directive. May we all be as generous and gracious on our bad days as well as our good.