Fulltime Casual

World Cinema > Drama

My love for Korean cinema is largely the result of watching films directed by Mr. Chan-wook Park. Now when a white guy such as myself mentions an affection for any flavour of Asian movies, there’s an understandable assumption that he’s a filthy fucking Weeaboo. Let me state quite categorically that this is not the case: no Dragon Ball Z figurines dangle from my satchel, you will never catch me cosplaying for any reason, and I don’t have a subscription to some sad online Japanese language course. I still love Korean movies, and especially those by Chan-wook Park because while they’re so unflinchingly brutal, they’re also horribly, terribly, touching.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is just such a film, it tells the story of green-haired Ryu, a deaf-mute who’s sister is dying of kidney failure. He pledges to save her and offers his own kidney as transplant, however his blood type isn’t compatible and both he and his sister must wait for a suitable donor to be found, a potentially expensive and lengthy process.

Ryu is suddenly retrenched from his job at a smelter. Without a source of income to pay for his sisters operation his only option is to buy her a kidney on the black market. Unfortunately he doesn’t have enough money to purchase one outright, instead he’s offered a trade: his kidney and what money he has in return for one for his sister. He wakes up from his own backyard surgery poorer, minus a kidney, and with nothing in return. Faced with even fewer options than before, Ryu and his girlfriend Cha decide to kidnap the daughter of his former employer and use the ransom used to pay for his sisters operation and care.

This film is the first of three that revolve around the subject of revenge, and this one focuses on the theme of people’s utter lack of interest in each other. Whether it be tenants of a thin-walled apartment complex ignoring the sounds of fucking and domestic violence just meters away from them, or cars failing to stop for someone in need, the story highlights peoples isolation, even when in physically close. Contrasted to this is Ryu, while his deafness leaves him cut off from the world it’s not by choice, and he frequently reaches out to people as if his deafness was a shield from the inability of others to empathise.

The film is nicely shot with excellent use of colour and attention to detail, and like the experience of the protagonist there’s no score to add context. Without music the film feels more unsettling and alien.  This brings me to the more visceral side of the work; with no music to subtly remind you that you’re watching something crafted, what you see on screen becomes especially brutal and distressing. It’s not just the violence, it’s the grief, pain, and horrifying detachment that leave the biggest impression on the viewer.

The cast is generally great and Kang-ho Song who plays Park Dong-jin, the father of the kidnapped girl, is a real highlight. If anything the third act uses serendipity a little too much to push the story along, and coupled with the occasionally bad CG prop, gushing arterial spray, and seemingly random additions to the plot it does detract from the finish of the film. Still, it’s still a grim and well shot story, if not the strongest of the three films in the vengeance theme. If you can deal with the pacing and can stomach the really quite disturbing story elements then its definitely worth grabbing the DVD.

3.5/5

For Australian’s, when you see the final screen that says opening July 11th, of course you can ignore that. Hellboy II must be a second-tier film too, the Australian release date is the 28th of August. 

I did also watch a couple of other movies last week - one was Definitely, Maybe which is a fairly new release in the video store.  Full disclosure: I have a slight addiction to watching rom-coms, no matter how crap they are.  There’s something quite soothing about watching something that can be quite formulaic, and knowing pretty much how it will finish with a happy they-get-together ending.

At any rate, this movie is from the same producers as Love Actually and Notting Hill (which, if you look at the promotional material long enough, seems to have employed the same graphic designers as well) and like both those movies, is really quite watchable.  When you’ve watched as many bad teen rom-coms starring Freddie Prinze Jr as I have, you really do appreciate ones that are well acted, and have interesting elements in it.

Definitely, Maybe is essentially a romantic-mystery: the main plot point is how a child, Maya (Abigail Breslin) tries to find out which character her mother is in the story her father Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) tells her about how they met and fell in love.  The twist?  We know from the beginning of the movie that the Maya’s parents are in the process of a divorce.  How can there be a happy ending?  That’s where the interest lies and I found it very deftly done.  The humour’s light and very dry and the female leads did an excellent job.  Rachel Weisz has an amazing screen charisma to her and Isla Fisher seems to be making her mark in these types of light roles.  Ryan Reynolds does some solid work, although I can’t help thinking another male lead would have made it more affecting (Mark Ruffalo perhaps?).

Overall it’s worth renting out for a date night with your partner.  Or for those single girls out there who still secretly dream of having that happy ending.  Rating: 3/5 stars

Is this episode in a nutshell.. after a quick tour around the blogs, chatting about Edgar Wright taking on Antman,

the sadly taken down Star Wars Crawl

The Onion’s 19 Cameo’s 

Joss Whedon’s new internet only project

then its onto the films we saw.. 

Justin Checked out 3:10 to Yuma and Charlie Wilson’s War

Wan Chin Saw Kung Fu Panda,

and i watched The Onion Movie, Zombie Strippers, and finally, good lord, Teeth. 

To find out your homework you’ll just have to listen. 

 

 Charlie Wilsons Kung Fu Zombie Stripping Teeth From Yuma [59:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I just spotted this on Decyrptions Blog, Hey Internet!

A slick little video that i couldn’t agree with more, especially as i weigh up my WALL-E dilemma. 

Okay. The good news is that rumour has it that not only will My Name is Bruce finally get a cinema realese, but it may very well have a sequel.

If rumours are to be believed: Hail to the King, baby! If rumours are not to be believed, Hail to the King baby anyway. If you know what I’m talking about, this is probably old news. If you don’t know what I’m talking about stand up right now and walk away from the computer. Pick up your wallet and your keys, get in your car, drive to your local video library, walk up to the counter and say “Hello, sir! May I hire Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn” and “Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness:”? If. in your mind, you are wondering “Why am I hiring sequels to a movie I’ve never seen?”, ignore this. It only seems like rational thought. Take the DVDs and go home. Watch them. Watch them now. And, when you’re done, tell me youre not a monarchist.

I dare ya!

Anyway. It’s crazy, rambling film-geekery what gets me into the trouble. I was so genuinely hurt by what I saw that I wasn’t really able to approach it as a normal human being with critical faculties intact. It meant too much to me. It was such a part of my childhood that I couldn’t see straight - and maybe I still can’t. So, to wash away the sins of Indy 4, I watched Raiders the other night with a friend. And it was awesome! But not fundamentally as different from the tragedy of Indy 4 as I had imagined.

Raiders has all those Spielbergian comedic beats, which date poorly. It has that curious mix of awesome action and silly gags. The fight in the streets of Cairo is played as three quarters clowning around and only one quarter genuine danger, for example. It also has implausible scenes, like the G-men in the first act telling Indy that “this is all strictly confidential” while they happily chat in an enormous echoing lecture-hall.

That being said, Raiders is awesome and Crystal Skull is just downright silly. It doesn’t matter that they are built of similar elements - an argument that’s been offered me more than a few times by folks who liked the movie. What does it matter that the elements are the same? Star Wars has the same elements as Phantom Menace. Godfather 3 had all the same elements as Godfather 1. Happy Days still had Fonzie after he jumped the shark.

Raiders was awesome and Crystal Skull was terrible.

I’m just saying.

Childrens > Animated

CG Animation has grown up a lot since I was playing with Lightwave and learning to use Maya. While I’m very out of practice these days watching great animation still gets me as excited as when I was 13 years old, watching the T1000 morph and ooze for the first time. Kung Fu Panda gave me all that buzz and more, I loved almost everything about it.

The film opens with a 2D dream sequence which on its own was enough for me to justify the ticket price. It oozes quality from the outset: the character design is striking, and the landscapes, scenery, and buildings were beautifully realised. The animation is excellent: the lead performances filled with such personality and presence you can’t help but be empathise with the characters. This is by far my favourite Dreamworks Animation title to date.

Kung Fu Panda is often genuinely funny thanks to both slapstick elements that would be at home in early Warner Brothers cartoons and great one-liners. While it’s story about an unlikely hero is a film staple, it’s delivered with such a deft touch and obvious care by the production team that you can forgive the story elements and character development being a little light. The action sequences were really entertaining to watch and Po’s post-training dumpling fight (it’s better than it sounds) was the very definition of great comedy timing. If anything the film felt too short, but with a running time of 92 minutes that may have just been me wanting to see more. The kids in the cinema loved it, and the adults who brought them (or who just brought themselves) were wrapped as well.

This is my favourite film so far this year, the credit sequence was really nicely done and if you feel like it there’s a cute little something at the end of them. Now where did I put my copy of Maya Personal Learning Edition?

4.5/5 Stars

Vin Diesel is back in Mathieu Kassovitz big budget sci-fi action film Babylon A.D.

Well, call me Mr. Hypocrite - I’m unfeasible excited by this film despite the novel the film was based on, the director, and the writer being Frenchmen. In the film adaptation Vin plays Toorop, a special forces veteran who takes a lucrative one-off job of escorting a woman named Aurora from Russia to China. She’s carrying a genetically modified fetus which is the focus of intense interest by several nefarious parties.

In theory the film doesn’t sound exactly A-grade, however the novel the film is based on “Babylon Babies” is quite good, the director has done some beautiful work in the past, and the casting looks good. The film also looks really sexy as evidenced by the trailers.

There are currently two cuts planned, one for the European market and one for the American. The Euro version is slated to weigh in at roughly 2 hours, 40 minutes - expect the American version to be roughly half that thanks to the distributor Fox. They thought it was just too long.

I’ll be lining up for this one - it’ll be worth seeing on the big screen.

Wall-E opened in cinemas across the US today, and has scored a remarkable 90 average on Metacritic.Here are the top ten comments;

100 Village Voice Robert Wilonsky
A film that’s both breathtakingly majestic and heartbreakingly intimate.

100 The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
The visual design of Wall-E is arguably Pixar’s best. Stanton, who wrote the script with Jim Reardon from a story he concocted with Peter Docter, creates two fantastically imaginative, breathtakingly lit worlds.

100 Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
While I may argue with the little guy’s taste in musicals, it’s remarkable to see any film, in any genre, blend honest sentiment with genuine wit and a visual landscape unlike any other.

100 New York Post Lou Lumenick
A charming, hilarious robot love story aimed at the entire family.

100 USA Today Claudia Puig
At once futuristic, funny and fantastical.

100 Washington Post John Anderson
The idea that a company in the business of mainstream entertainment would make something as creative, substantial and cautionary as WALL-E has to raise your hopes for humanity.

100 The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
It’s Pixar’s most daring experiment to date, but it still fits neatly into the studio’s pantheon: Made with as much focus on heart as on visual quality, it’s a sheer joy.

100 Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
It whisks you to another world, then makes it every inch our own.

100 Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The first half hour of WALL-E is essentially wordless, and left me speechless. This magnificent animated feature from Pixar starts on such a high plane of aspiration, and achievement, that you wonder whether the wonder can be sustained. But yes, it can.

100 TV Guide Ken Fox
It can hardly be called a children’s film, but a masterpiece of feature-film animation for all ages.

It is such a shame then that I’ll probably be watching this visual masterpeice on my laptop, via a Bit torrent site.

I’ve been looking forward to WALL-E ever since i heard the concept, but Pixar and DIsney have decided that Australians should wait til September 11 2008 for the film to be released here. I thought we’d been through this before? When movie files being Bit Torrented first made headlines a few years back, all the major studios started releasing their blockbusters on the same day across the planet. They realised that one reason movies were being pirated was the long wait between markets.

For instance, the biggest movie going weekend in the US is the Thanksgiving Day long weekend. Typically studios would release Testosterone Gun 4 or whatever blockbuster they expected to make the most money from that weekend. In Australia, the biggest movie going day by far is Boxing Day. So in the past, Australians would have to wait over a month for such releases.

Piracy changed that, and today Testosterone Gun 4 will generally open on the same day around the world. But lately the studios have been falling back into the delay shtick, on the ’second teir blockbusters’. Which begs the question, how the hell does Disney think WALL-E is a second teir blockbuster?

To be fair, I can understand why they delay releases. The price of an average film print that plays at a cinema is around $3000. So for a universal release, a $3000 print must be made for every cinema screen in the world. By staggering a release around the world, the studios can make far fewer prints and re-use them in different markets. So, when we finally get to see WALL-E in September, it will be a hand-me-down scratched print from the US. Does that make you feel better?

Sorry, I’m rambling now, but it just kills me that i cant see WALL-E tonight at the cinema, but i can see it on The Pirate Bay.

So my question to you dear reader, is should i wait, or should i pirate?

I’m really sorry about this.. The lovely Mattro on teh twitters just linked to a Mini Me sex tape that TMZ has gotten its hands on..

 So far, I’ve only had the guts to click on the link, i haven’t pressed play yet. But as TMZ have said: 

Come on, you know you wanna watch …

UPDATE: Sweet Jebus I gave in and watched it. Its only about 10 seconds, and all you see is Mini Me adjusting the camera then licking her chin and kissing her, but still, i threw up a little.