I woke up late this morning trying to scramble to the bank before it shut, and I was greeted by a note in the lifts saying that they might be taken out of service today. Cursing softly under my breath with Caruso on the iPod, I prepared to hoof it down thirteen storeys to the lobby. Luckily, the lifts hadn't been shut down yet and I was able to make it to the ground a lot quicker. The doors of the lift opened and I was greeted by two SWAT members with machine guns pointed at my face. You'd think I'd say something involuntarily, but I couldn't. My knees just buckled and I dropped to the floor, instinctively lacing my fingers behind my head. The two officers stepped back, lowered their guns and told me to stand up and exit the lift. I walked in to the main part of the lobby and noticed a mix of about twenty more SWAT and police officers.
Casually lounging on the sofa yakking on his Blackberry was the Police Media Relations Officer. Media crews were waiting outside, including one from the station that plays all the Bollywood movies. I went over to him and asked what had happened. Apparently, I slept through the whole episode. He said that some of my neighbours had been hoarding restricted and illegal weapons and possibly explosives in one of the flats in the upper third of the building. I automatically thought it might be my organized crime neighbours, you know - the guys who double and triple park their Cads and Maseratis in the carpark. I have to say that they are only allegedly members of organized crime, and happen to be really nice guys. Well, I found out later that it wasn't them, wrong floor. I made it to the bank just in time.
Sissy had come for a visit a few days ago and noticed an increased police presence on my block. I shrugged it off saying that the police always use my street as a shortcut back to the main depot. Well, the next day I was woken up at about 10:00 by a low flying helicopter. The MRO denied that this was part of the police operation, but did mention that the Armed Forces had been called in. Just to show how blissfully unaware some people can be, I told Sissy what went down today and she told me that it might have been a terrorist cell. The thought never occurred to me. I guess I've always felt that lightning wouldn't strike twice. I've got to check the news tonight to see what it actually was, but I seriously doubt it was what Sissy said. The building was never evacuated, so I don't think there was a serious threat.
On to other things - The next instalment of Dax Watches Movies will originate FROM JAPAN! I don't know exactly how I'll manage to watch a film without subtitles, but I'll think of something. I've been taking my sweet time getting ready for this trip. Yesterday, I went out for lunch with a friend from Singapore. It was nice to catch up with her and talk about old times. I tried to do some more homework before going to the salon one last time before I hit Tokyo. Trey worked his magic and was done a lot sooner than I expected. I had plenty of time before I was supposed meet my buddy Randy. Haven't seen him since Air Guitar Nation, but he's got a gift card to a swish Italian restaurant that he's been dying to use up so he took me out for dinner. He was a little late, so I started with a free bottle of Moretti and waited. Already feeling guilty about all the calories in the beer, I ordered swordfish and grilled vegetables with rice. Fish is supposed to be healthier, and it is but it kind of negates the whole dieting aspect when they give you a meal big enough for three. On the way home, we checked out a car dealership because I have recently discovered that my Jeep is not suited for baby seats. Of course, it behoves Randy to visit the luxury lot. Maybe it was because I told him that I had priced out a Quattroporte coupe, but it might also be because that's how Randy is. I gazed at the Ferraris as Randy snidely remarked that the yellow one was well within my price range. Sure, but there was no place to put a baby seat, let alone a diaper bag. We continued in the direction of Randy's place and came across some really good ideas. A Volkswagen or a Honda, something simple that Ali can actually drive. Sissy and I had seen a Toyota Matrix with 2 baby seats and a jogging stroller all crammed in. Randy gave me some more ideas. Things elsewhere are moving along nicely. Jay is putting together an album with another DJ, and they will probably have moved their monthly gig away from the lesbian bar by the time I get back. Too bad, I really liked that lesbian bar. Good times.
I have no idea what I'm in for. Bobby took me to the bookstore to buy my birthday present hoping that at least 1 of the major brand of guidebooks would have something to say about Ali's hometown. Not one. In fact - Lonely Planet I believe - actually wrote in their most recent book that there was absolutely no reason to go east of Tokyo because there's nothing of interest to tourists. Google Maps? What a joke! I can't read Japanese so I can't read their stupid maps. My poor pregnant wife is going to have to take me everywhere. I did find a nice hike I want to take though, but Ali won't be able to go with.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Oldboy
I've completed the Vengeance Trilogy, finally. I didn't necessarily watch them in order, but there is no order in the sense that the film's are somehow related. I'm actually glad I saw them in the order that I did. The Jesus waif at the video store was right. Chinjeolhan geumjassi is the one to see first. I met a couple of Korean girls the other day who were lost, trying to find a Korean grocery. They're lucky they grabbed me. I took them straight away, and as we made our way downtown we had a nice chat about Korean television and movies. They were quite surprised that I knew Full House. I think I accidentally saw a Mandarin-dubbed version of it the last time I went to visit Bob. They agreed that Chinjeolhan geumjassi was a great film, and had only praise for Choi Min-sik, but suggested that I watch more of Li Yeong-ae's work.
I didn't know how to feel after I watched Oldboy. Again, the need for vengeance is explained very well, and the concept of justice is striking but I think it's more challenging to decide who is right in this one. Both of the main characters have committed wrongs, but I guess in the end I side with Oh Dae-su, who has clearly suffered more than Lee Woo-jin. There is a lot of common imagery between this film and Chinjeolhan - snowy mountains, a schoolhouse, abandoned flats, a salon, funky wallpaper and of course prisons. The music is remarkable in this film as well, and if I can get my hands on the soundtrack to any of the three films, it would be a good day.
The set up goes like this, if you've read the comic then you can skip this part: A drunk is released from police custody by his longtime friend No Joo-hwan played by Ji Dae-han who also appears in Chinjeolhan. I recognized him by the way he eats a bowl of ramen in the cafe. While Joo-hwan is on the telephone explaining to Dae-su's wife what has happened, Dae-su goes missing. The film continues to follow Dae-su's confinement. He's held in some kind of prison, but it's not a government prison that's obvious. He makes a list of all the people who might want to do this to him, and spends fifteen years getting in shape and vowing revenge. He doesn't really plan his revenge like Geumjassi did, but he's plenty mad. He's sick of eating substandard gyoza, and I can sympathize. He manages to dig his way out of the cell, almost only to find himself next breaking out of a suitcase on a rooftop. He meets a guy who wants to jump off the roof, but Dae-su won't let him. He wants to tell the guy played by Oh Kwang-rok who also played one of the anarchists in Boksuneun naui geot and appeared in Chinjeolhan, his story of vengeance. As Dae-su walks away from the block of flats, we see the jumper fall to his death, mashing in the roof of a perfectly good Kia (I think).
It's on, Oh Dae-su is free and he wants to kick some ass. He knows that his wife is dead and that he has been framed for her death. He comes across some grubs on the pavement and takes a cigarette from one of them. They don't take kindly to that, and attempt to kick his ass. Oh comes back with some very good moves, allegedly peformed by Choi himself, and goes on his way. Sitting on the pavement staring at a fish tank, he is approached by a homeless guy who hands him a cellphone and a wallet. I think the wallet is full of money, but I don't know what won look like so maybe it was just paper. He's hungry and makes his way to a sushi restaurant and asks for something living. The chef thinks that she has met Oh before, but they decide that it must be because of her television show that Oh watched while in confinement. She hands him a small octopus and he doesn't waste any time filling his stomach. He receives a call on the cell phone and it happens to be the voice of his captor. He collapses and the sushi chef takes him home. There's a reason for all this seemingly normal behaviour which is revealed later in the movie. While Dae-su sleeps, Mi-do, played by Kang Hye-jeong reads his journals. She's fascinated by his story, but he doesn't like her reading it.
Oh decides that the only way he can find his captor is to locate the shitty dumpling shop that used to deliver his meals. He remembers seeing a tag to the Blue Dragon restaurant. He tries every Blue Dragon restaurant in Seoul, but can't find the right mix of ingredients. Almost losing hope, he sees one last add and checks out the cuisine. Score. After telling Mi-do that he can't trust her, he takes a hammer from her flat and chases the delivery boy back to the block of flats where he was kept. He fights his way onto the floor and discovers that the place is totally wired for video and that the surveillance company has had a contract to do what they did to Dae-su. He goes to town on the manager's jaw with the hammer, and then the crew and pretty much kicks butt. He likes to fight, and gets stabbed in the back which doesn't hinder him.
Thinking that his daughter has been adopted by a Swedish family, he plods on trying to piece together the mystery. He visits his old friend Joo-hwan who runs an internet cafe. They google the alias of the captor and find a connection with their old school. Oh goes to the school and rifles through the records to discover the identity of his captor. A rather youngish Lee Woo-jin played by Yu Ji-tae who's actually younger than I, but is meant to play a character who finished school more than ten years before me. Tsk tsk tsk. At the school, Oh gets all the clues he needs - he discovers a flyer for a salon where he learns of the connection between himself and Woo-jin. It goes back to his friend Joo-hwan who is killed while giving details about Woo-jin and making disparaging remarks about Woo-jin's sister in the process. Woo-jin just happened to be listening.
It seems that Woo-jin's sister, Soo-ah, played by Yun Jin-seo had an undeservedly bad reputation and this caused her to kill herself. In turn, Woo-jin swore that he would kill every woman the perpetrator of the rumours had ever loved. See, Woo-jin had loved his sister in that unnatural highly taboo way. He believed that it was consensual and therefore not exactly wrong. This is pretty much why I can't give him any sympathy for what he ends up doing. He attributes the rumours to Oh Dae-su, and after the highschool retrospective is over Dae-su learns that he has unknowingly allowed Woo-jin to regain custody of Mi-do. At this point, the viewer is treated to the final bit of mystery - a piece of mystery I had figured out after the sushi restaurant scene. Woo-jin shows a photo album to Dae-su in which he learns that he has been diddling his own daughter. He begs Woo-jin not to tell Mi-do, which he agrees to do after Dae-su cuts off his own tongue and grovels at the feet of Lee. As Dae-su is left spitting blood in the aftermath of a gun battle which featured Kim Byeong-ok as Mr. Han, and also as the weirdo preacher guy in Chinjeolhan, Lee goes down in the elevator and shoots himself in the head.
Disgusted with himself, Oh Dae-su disappears. This is the part I said I would explain later, earlier. While in confinement, Dae-su had been visited by a hypnotist who programmed him to think that Mi-do was just some chick, and to fall in love with her. Woo-jin had also been looking after Mi-do since the death of her mother, there never was any adoptive Swedish family, and he had hypnotized her to act in certain ways when she would later meet Dae-su. After the whole shoe-licking, tongue-cutting episode in the penthouse, Dae-su tracks down the hypnotist and convinces her to hypnotize him again so that he can forget everything that he has done to Mi-do. She agrees, and Mi-do finds him in the mountains and I think that was the end.
It has occurred to me that my posts, particularly the ones about movies, were much more interesting if I wrote them while drunk. Things have changed, haven't they?
I didn't know how to feel after I watched Oldboy. Again, the need for vengeance is explained very well, and the concept of justice is striking but I think it's more challenging to decide who is right in this one. Both of the main characters have committed wrongs, but I guess in the end I side with Oh Dae-su, who has clearly suffered more than Lee Woo-jin. There is a lot of common imagery between this film and Chinjeolhan - snowy mountains, a schoolhouse, abandoned flats, a salon, funky wallpaper and of course prisons. The music is remarkable in this film as well, and if I can get my hands on the soundtrack to any of the three films, it would be a good day.
The set up goes like this, if you've read the comic then you can skip this part: A drunk is released from police custody by his longtime friend No Joo-hwan played by Ji Dae-han who also appears in Chinjeolhan. I recognized him by the way he eats a bowl of ramen in the cafe. While Joo-hwan is on the telephone explaining to Dae-su's wife what has happened, Dae-su goes missing. The film continues to follow Dae-su's confinement. He's held in some kind of prison, but it's not a government prison that's obvious. He makes a list of all the people who might want to do this to him, and spends fifteen years getting in shape and vowing revenge. He doesn't really plan his revenge like Geumjassi did, but he's plenty mad. He's sick of eating substandard gyoza, and I can sympathize. He manages to dig his way out of the cell, almost only to find himself next breaking out of a suitcase on a rooftop. He meets a guy who wants to jump off the roof, but Dae-su won't let him. He wants to tell the guy played by Oh Kwang-rok who also played one of the anarchists in Boksuneun naui geot and appeared in Chinjeolhan, his story of vengeance. As Dae-su walks away from the block of flats, we see the jumper fall to his death, mashing in the roof of a perfectly good Kia (I think).
It's on, Oh Dae-su is free and he wants to kick some ass. He knows that his wife is dead and that he has been framed for her death. He comes across some grubs on the pavement and takes a cigarette from one of them. They don't take kindly to that, and attempt to kick his ass. Oh comes back with some very good moves, allegedly peformed by Choi himself, and goes on his way. Sitting on the pavement staring at a fish tank, he is approached by a homeless guy who hands him a cellphone and a wallet. I think the wallet is full of money, but I don't know what won look like so maybe it was just paper. He's hungry and makes his way to a sushi restaurant and asks for something living. The chef thinks that she has met Oh before, but they decide that it must be because of her television show that Oh watched while in confinement. She hands him a small octopus and he doesn't waste any time filling his stomach. He receives a call on the cell phone and it happens to be the voice of his captor. He collapses and the sushi chef takes him home. There's a reason for all this seemingly normal behaviour which is revealed later in the movie. While Dae-su sleeps, Mi-do, played by Kang Hye-jeong reads his journals. She's fascinated by his story, but he doesn't like her reading it.
Oh decides that the only way he can find his captor is to locate the shitty dumpling shop that used to deliver his meals. He remembers seeing a tag to the Blue Dragon restaurant. He tries every Blue Dragon restaurant in Seoul, but can't find the right mix of ingredients. Almost losing hope, he sees one last add and checks out the cuisine. Score. After telling Mi-do that he can't trust her, he takes a hammer from her flat and chases the delivery boy back to the block of flats where he was kept. He fights his way onto the floor and discovers that the place is totally wired for video and that the surveillance company has had a contract to do what they did to Dae-su. He goes to town on the manager's jaw with the hammer, and then the crew and pretty much kicks butt. He likes to fight, and gets stabbed in the back which doesn't hinder him.
Thinking that his daughter has been adopted by a Swedish family, he plods on trying to piece together the mystery. He visits his old friend Joo-hwan who runs an internet cafe. They google the alias of the captor and find a connection with their old school. Oh goes to the school and rifles through the records to discover the identity of his captor. A rather youngish Lee Woo-jin played by Yu Ji-tae who's actually younger than I, but is meant to play a character who finished school more than ten years before me. Tsk tsk tsk. At the school, Oh gets all the clues he needs - he discovers a flyer for a salon where he learns of the connection between himself and Woo-jin. It goes back to his friend Joo-hwan who is killed while giving details about Woo-jin and making disparaging remarks about Woo-jin's sister in the process. Woo-jin just happened to be listening.
It seems that Woo-jin's sister, Soo-ah, played by Yun Jin-seo had an undeservedly bad reputation and this caused her to kill herself. In turn, Woo-jin swore that he would kill every woman the perpetrator of the rumours had ever loved. See, Woo-jin had loved his sister in that unnatural highly taboo way. He believed that it was consensual and therefore not exactly wrong. This is pretty much why I can't give him any sympathy for what he ends up doing. He attributes the rumours to Oh Dae-su, and after the highschool retrospective is over Dae-su learns that he has unknowingly allowed Woo-jin to regain custody of Mi-do. At this point, the viewer is treated to the final bit of mystery - a piece of mystery I had figured out after the sushi restaurant scene. Woo-jin shows a photo album to Dae-su in which he learns that he has been diddling his own daughter. He begs Woo-jin not to tell Mi-do, which he agrees to do after Dae-su cuts off his own tongue and grovels at the feet of Lee. As Dae-su is left spitting blood in the aftermath of a gun battle which featured Kim Byeong-ok as Mr. Han, and also as the weirdo preacher guy in Chinjeolhan, Lee goes down in the elevator and shoots himself in the head.
Disgusted with himself, Oh Dae-su disappears. This is the part I said I would explain later, earlier. While in confinement, Dae-su had been visited by a hypnotist who programmed him to think that Mi-do was just some chick, and to fall in love with her. Woo-jin had also been looking after Mi-do since the death of her mother, there never was any adoptive Swedish family, and he had hypnotized her to act in certain ways when she would later meet Dae-su. After the whole shoe-licking, tongue-cutting episode in the penthouse, Dae-su tracks down the hypnotist and convinces her to hypnotize him again so that he can forget everything that he has done to Mi-do. She agrees, and Mi-do finds him in the mountains and I think that was the end.
It has occurred to me that my posts, particularly the ones about movies, were much more interesting if I wrote them while drunk. Things have changed, haven't they?
Andrew Collins... You Will Be Missed
I listen to BBC - BBC Asian Network, BBC7, 6Music and occasionally Radio 4. It started because I couldn't stand the monotony of my job. A little music, I thought was better than other options because I could do two things at once. Work and listen. You can't really work and talk to your only friend on Instant Messenger at the same time like one of my ex-coworkers would do. Andrew Collins' was the first show I listened to. He used to do the late afternoon slot which was late morning for me. Good music, intelligent conversation and funny anecdotes. They moved his timeslot to weekends where he would do two shorter shows, rather than five 3-hour weekday slots. And now that's over too. At first I thought that the BBC had decided not to renew his contract, because there are whole lot of others who left 6 at the same time, but it seems that Andrew is a man of many interests and had decided to try something a little different now. He's writing, and blogging about stuff like movies, and theatre. See his blog here. I don't know if I'll go back to 6music anymore - I can't listen at work and Phil Jupitus is gone as well.
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