Kibbutzing in Kyoto

And now that we have that little surprise out of the way, I can get on with Dax Watches Movies. This all happened before I watched Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but I wanted to put it after (above) the post about the film because I did say that my next post, that one, would be about a movie.

By the way, her name is Foxy Cleopatra. Because I was watching Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold like an idiot, instead of going to the hospital to be near my wife while Foxy was born. Oh, and Foxy because of Pam Grier, but I didn't really have to type that out, did I?

I was never promised a rose garden, and I am not the type of person to expect one but I was promised a wedding party. I won't say by whom, but a wedding party was promised. For such purpose, I shlepped my tuxedo (not the rental in the wedding photos, but my actual tux), and two of my best suits and all the extra bits to Tokyo. Well, it turns out that I brought an extra bag because there was/will be no wedding party. Instead, Kohei-san had planned a tidy little three day trip to Kyoto for Ali and me. Kohei and Genya Number Two would shadow. Separate hotels and trains and such, but they were never not there. That turned out to be a good thing.

On the second day Ali and her father were feeling a little under the weather. I put that down to the deep-fried fish bones they ate the night before at the sexiest restaurant I've ever been to. Ali was not doing well for a completely different reason, and slowly got worse as the day progressed. In the early hours of the third day, Ali conked my forehead with a hotel tumbler and rather loudly said, "Hello Fuckface. Get up and ring [Genya Number Two]. You stupid fuckface, get up!" I still can't pronounce the guy's name, but whatever. I dialed the number, so many numbers, and before I could even get my trousers on the night manager was there with two really big dudes and a stretcher. Moments later, GNT and Kohei arrived and rang for an ambulance. The two big dudes went away with the stretcher, and three dudes with a stretcher replaced them. These guys looked official, they had white helmets and first aid kits and all that. We went downstairs to the ambulance and while Ali, Kohei and I waited in the back of the van, GNT and the driver spoke in hushed tones about which hospital to take us to. The driver got a little excited and at that point GNT had to speak over him. I'm guessing GNT doesn't like to raise his voice because that was the last thing said by anybody apart from radio chatter until we arrived at Kyoto First Red Cross Hospital.

It's at this point that I should mention that Japanese hospitals are weird. I've never been in a hospital where everything except the emerg is shut between 8:00 pm and 8:00 am. Ali was in labour, so the doctor admitted her and gave her some muscle relaxants to delay contractions and antibiotics for nothing. She was four and a half weeks early, so the doctor didn't want things to escalate. Because we had some very expensive non-refundable shinkansen tickets and I had an assignment due, we swapped out. Ali's mum came down to Kyoto and Kohei, GNT and I all went back to Tokyo. I buried my nose in the books and had the assignment done in record time - all for nought, but I didn't know that then.

Two days pass, and we wait. We got the call while watching Cleopatra Jones, at about 10:00 that Ali was going into the delivery room. We were standing on the platform at Tokyo Station waiting for our train to Kyoto when we got another call. The baby was born. I had to wait for a third call before I could know the gender. Mr. and Mrs. K don't say a lot when they talk to each other. Which is why we didn't know sooner that Ali was in labour and why several calls are needed sometimes. Speaking later with the doctor, the only person in Kyoto besides the overworked hotel clerk who actually tried to speak English, I was informed that Foxy came out so fast there was an audible "pa-shoon" sound in the delivery room.

This time, I brought my books with me. GNT set me up in a business hotel, not the nice hotel I was in the first time I was in Kyoto. I don't know where he stayed and I don't want to know, but he wore the same clothes and they never got dirty. Mr. and Mrs. K stayed somewhere downtown close to Kyoto Tower. On the second day, Foxy had to be transferred to the NICU and be held for observation. She did well, and was released earlier than expected but after a reasonably safe time in the hospital. In perhaps a surreal way, we did some more sightseeing in Kyoto while Ali and Foxy were in the hospital.

It was starting to get to me. My hotel included Viking, which is what many Japanese people say to refer to a buffet meal. They know they are the only ones who say it, so when a gaijin like myself walks into the restaurant, they also say buffet but in the French way not the American way with the short u. It always makes me laugh to hear it that way because it reminds me every time of a line in La Reine Margot when Daniel Auteuil as Henri says he wants to get down and dirty with the Queen. All the chicks in my French class cringed. Back to the point - it was getting to me. Every morning I was reminded of Randy at the deli (or delica as they say in Japan) in Patterson:

"Who do I have to blow to get some decent pumpernickel in this place?" Spoons dropped, and chatter stopped but somebody quickly ushered Randy's less than acceptable Reuben away.

"You know they're gonna spit in the new one, dude".

"I don't care. If it's quality bread I'll take my chances". Not for a second did I think he was serious, and he wasn't. He checked.

I couldn't get any milk for my tea. I was getting rather frustrated because they always gave me cream as if it's the same thing. It's not, it cannot be. Even after painstakingly using words that I know they use in Japanese, the staff still couldn't understand. I guess because even if I say it perfectly, I'm still a gaijin so I can't possibly be saying something Japanese. The only thing that prevented me from getting angry was a little perspective. I thought back to Donny K., and the hissy he threw because he couldn't get a proper cuppa in the Andes. At the time I thought he was being ridiculous. I felt like offering to go outside and milk the nearest llama, but Don was serious so I thought I shouldn't make light. In my situation, it would have seemed even more ridiculous to have a hissy because I wasn't sitting in a shack at a multinational goldmine in Peru. I was in Kyoto, and if I swung a cat I'd hit at least one mini-mart, and a pachinko parlour. So instead, I told myself it could be worse and sipped my tea, ate my scrambled eggs wih chopsticks and listened to Bryan Adams muzak. So perfectly Japanese.

On my last night in Kyoto Mr. K decided it was time to eat. He often thinks of food, in fact he never stops thinking of food. We had to find a place to eat. We roamed the back streets of Kyoto and I spied a sign for Red Stripe. I said we should eat there because they have Red Stripe. Boy, was I wrong. After being mocked by the waitress, I went to the barman and led him outside to the poster of Red Stripe. He apologized and said that the poster was actually for a promo and handed me a flyer for a Jamaican dancehall gig that was happening up the street every Saturday. Like many people, I can't turn down Jamaican dancehall but there was Perspective again, encouraging me to think about my wife and newly arrived daughter. I just shook my head and asked for two large Asahi. It was during this meal that I witnessed the near collapse of a marriage and the birth of a new plan. Flowcharts and timelines determined what was in the best interests of everyone involved. Mr. K, myself and GNT would again return to Tokyo and Mrs. K would stay there to help Ali with anything.

Ali and Foxy and Mrs. K came home when Foxy was a week old, and I met them at Tokyo Station. Foxy is a good baby. She doesn't cry and she sleeps most of the time. I almost want to say that Enzo J didn't get enough sleep when he was that age because I remember that he was up a lot. Sissy was fixing bottles too often it seemed. That's a step Ali has managed to avoid, but it just feels like this baby is too easy.

Northern Monkies and Southern Fairies

So it was pretty shitty here in Tokyo for the last week or so. I did mention in one of my videos that I hate Tokyo. That is not entirely correct. I like Tokyo, but I don't like some things about Tokyo. I may have mentioned in an earlier post that I can be a nightmare house guest, and that almost happened last week. I'm trying to remain positive, so I won't dwell but I am starting to feel a little like Bob Harris. Not the guy who used to do The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC, but the guy in Lost in Translation. As it turns out, that is exactly the problem.

My wife recommended that we rent a few videos, and so we went to Tsutaya and got three. I always have to be pushed to watch a Wes Anderson film, but I did in this case as it seemed the shop had way too many copies available. We also rented Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a film I'd always meant to see but which was marketed in very strange way. Which is the secondary reason why I still haven't seen Snatch, the primary reason being Brad Pitt. We got a third film starring Jean Reno which I know nothing about. I got around to watching Lock, Stock and Two Barrels today, and it was really nice. A little violent and very similar graphically to another Mathew Vaughn film, Layer Cake. You may have heard of it. Oh, did I mention? I watched Casino Royale before I left Newark. Very good work from Daniel Craig albeit in the ironclad James Bond format, but I like his work in Layer Cake better. Layer Cake. Dexter Fletcher of Layer Cake and also of Press Gang co-stars as Soap alongside Jason Statham as Bacon and Nick Moran as Eddie, investors in a card game. Moran is the card player and is warned by his father played by Sting to not play cards. Where does Sting find the time? Anyway, Eddie goes to the game which is fixed and loses his shirt - and 500,000 pounds.

He finds a way to steal the money back, by ripping of his neighbours who are in turn planning to do what we like to call a grow rip. That is, they plan to rob a marijuana growing/selling operation run by as it seems Steven Mackintosh aka Winston who also played Nigel, the best friend in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4. It's only tended by Winston, and is run by Rory Breaker who also happens to be the proposed client of the grow rip proceeds. Only because the rippers don't really know the rippees, or that Breaker runs the show. The sale is brokered by Nick the Greek, a bumbling fence who only knows half the story, as does anyone else.

All the while, the guy who set up the crooked card game also really, really, pretty please wants two rifles that are up for auction. Only he doesn't want them to go to auction. He wants them to be stolen so he asks his Genya to arrange the acquisition. Barry "the Baptist" played by Lenny McLean recruits two "Northern Monkeys", Gary and Dean played by Victor McGuire and Jake Abraham respectively. There's also a collector who plays a part in all of this, but he stays on the periphery with Sting until the very end.

So Gary and Dean retrieve the rifles as requested, but because they are not in the gun cabinet, they claim them as their own and sell them to Nick the Greek, who sells them to his associate Tom, Jason Flemyng who needs some firepower for the rip. The first group of thieves go to the grow op and make a complete cock up of the whole thing, but get away with the money and as much weed as they can carry. Eddie, Soap, Bacon and Tom are all waiting back at the neighbours' ready to take the money. For some stupid reason, they only take the money next door to Eddie's flat. The neighbours find it, and when Rory Breaker comes calling he catches the first group rather than the group that has been ratted out by Nick the Greek. Rory's group and the first group pretty much finish each other off, meanwhile Gary and Dean have been warned that they must locate the two missing rifles. Unknowingly, the two attempt to get the rifles back from the guy who wanted them in the first place. Gary and Dean don't last long against the two rifles, but end up eliminating Barry and his boss in the process. The collector, who works for the boss too, had delivered the 500,000 pound account moments before, only to be told to retrieve it by one of the original thieves whom he stole it from in the first place, and who was now holding the collector's son hostage. After being summoned, Eddie and Tom go back to the boss' office only to find Gary, Dean, Barry and the boss all dead. Eddie takes the money, and Tom stays behind to collect the rifles. He really likes them for some reason. In a panic, on the way back to the office to get the money, the collector rams Eddie's car and manages to wrangle the money back. Eddie, Tom, Soap and Bacon are all sent down for the crime, but are released because they are not part of the original group and the only witness cannot identify them. The four decide that they don't need the money because the debt is no longer collectible, at which time the collector comes in with the money bag. He hands it to them with a fair warning that if they ever try to find him, he will kill them. He leaves Sting's bar and rides off into the sunset with his son. The group open the bag only to find that it is empty save for an auction catalogue. Tom has been sent off to destroy the rifles because these are the only things that connect them to the crime. While he is away, the three remaining thieves discover that the rifles are worth upwards of 250,000 pounds each. They frantically try to ring him as the movie ends with Tom trying to answer his phone and grab the rifles as he hangs precariously off the rail of a bridge.

The ending leaves it open for interpretation. Did Tom fetch his beloved guns and race off into the night to profit at auction? Or did he take them back to the bar so that each could gain equally? Or did he let the guns fall into the river? I hate these endings. All that work to tie everything together and Guy Ritchie leaves one little thread hanging. Silly. Apart from the ending, a very good movie. I would like to see more work from Nick Moran. Maybe when I get back to Newark.

I don't hate Tokyo anymore. I hate the fact that my credit cards work at half a dozen cash machines in the city, and that Visa in particular employs staff to lie to me about it even after I have been put on record as having told them so. I hate that people don't listen to me and assume they know what I want more than I do. I got together with Yumi yesterday, an old acquaintance and she showed me around. It was quite nice. We found a Tully's, and hid in there for awhile. That is the first time I've ever had to wait to be seated at a coffee shop - and that is exactly what Yumi hates about Tokyo. Later we went for Indian food. Very nice. I came home and watched the Monte Carlo Grand Prix in Japanese. It was a good day.

Ill Prepared, He Journeyed On...

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.

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?

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.

Apparenty Not a DVD Recorder

Ali sent me a package today and had told me that there was something extra in it. I knew it was the wedding DVD - her video-grapher friend sent the DVD from Manhattan to Tokyo and then Ali sent it back to Newark. From the size of the box, I thought the "extra" might be the DVD recorder that Kohei promised me the day he went home. According to the letter that came with the box, it's sake but Ali doesn't know if it's any good. Oh, and two sake glasses and some chocs. I'm set.

300... Air Guitarists

Jukka. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? It's a homonym to Yuka, so it's not like Ali can ever say she can't pronounce it. It doesn't have -ko on the end of it so Ali can't exercise her veto, and the twist is that Jukka is a dude's name. I don't think Finns have those names what both genders use like Hindi or something. Either way: Jukka for a boy or Yuka for a girl.

Nope. Sorry, this ain't a post about the movie 300, instead it's a wee rant about baby names with a piece on a documentary sandwiched in. The documentary is opening locally Friday and is called Air Guitar Nation. Technically, this film isn't starring anybody, but it centres around an actor named David Jung aka C-Diddy, and another guy who just won't take no for an answer. Dan Crane's stage name is Björn Töuroque and the story basically takes off from there.

Sensing a lack of American representation in a, well let's call it a competition, documentary film maker Kriston Rucker decides to promote the Air Guitar World Championships and find someone decent enough to represent the US. As it happens, the winning American was chosen at the first set of tryouts, but another person seems to think that he is the real talent and shadows the American winner to Oulu, Finland for the competition. Essentially, Rucker had no better reason to promote (send someone to) this competition other than the fact that no American had been officially entered into the contest. There are attempts in the film to play up the anti-American sentiment that was prevalent in much of Europe at the time, but there were also reminders of why the contest was ever conceived. The event organizers wanted everyone to play air guitar so that they wouldn't hold a gun. After a lame attempt to cause some friction between one of the Americans and some Austrian contestants, it's pretty clear that no one is a hater.

Of course, in a Cinderella-type story Jung is the overall winner in Oulu and unfortunately for Crane, the three-time loser is not able to make an impression the following year. It's a nice kind of film - the story of an actor who's always had to prove himself to his traditional Korean family who wanted him to go into medicine vs. a guy who, if nothing else, lives for air guitar. The viewers are introduced to a group of people who take the hobby very seriously. Some sort of division apparently exists between American air guitarists who only think it's fun and their international counterparts who really take the thing to a whole new level. Boot camps, zen philosophies, entourages - it's not just a hobby for some people.

When I won the preview passes to this film, I knew it would be a little like The Aristocrats, and there was only one person I could think of to watch the movie with. I didn't find too many funny moments in the film, but my buddy could hardly drink his coffee without coughing because of all the jokes. Of course, being Scandinavian maybe there were more jokes for him than for most. There was however, that unfortunate phenomenon at many preview screenings: the drunk prize winner. In our case, the guy was having entirely too much fun for one person and probably felt like he was right there amongst the reindeer, cheering on the contestants. Maybe he wasn't drunk, maybe he just doesn't get out often - it's hard to tell, but he ruined it for at least a few viewers.

In a way, I'd like to see Ali in the tryouts next year. She plays a mean air guitar, and has the head banging down pat when it comes to Black Sabbath. And she's got the vertical leap too. Really, I just want a reason to go to Finland and practice the language/accent. There's just not enough of it in Formula One anymore. Actually, there's more than usual but I haven't got cable.

If Ali had her way the choices of a baby name would be limited to one of those dreadful boy bands what aren't around anymore. And if it's a girl (which I hope it is) then Ali's screwed. There's only one girl band she knows of and I'm not naming my kid Scary or Sporty or whatever.

Some Interesting Developments

What a month! I really should be studying for an exam right now, but I’m not – it’s like the least important thing on my list. My biggest problem is the lack of a DVD burner on my computer. My wedding photographer put all the photos on DVD discs and I have no way to make copies for Ali. I’m not complaining, the guy did me a big solid – flying out from LA on Oscars’ weekend with his crew (free of charge) because he felt that my little wedding was more important than shooting stars on the red carpet. Or maybe it was a chance to see Sissy again. I just learned how to turn the flash off on my camera yesterday, so learning to use the DVD burner should be loads of fun.

The engagement officially lasted a whole three days, and the actual time spent with the in-laws was maximized on purpose. Kohei turned out to be not so scary. Genya is much more menacing, but I think physical stature has a lot to do with that. Kohei turned out to be quite a joker. It’s easy to see where Ali gets her sense of humour from. The day they arrived, I went round to their hotel in my beautifully maintained Jeep and took them out for sushi so that they could meet Bob and the rest of my immediate family. It was a little crowded. Enzo and Kohei got along pretty well. He actually talked Enzo into eating raw fish. I took note of his cunning negotiating tactics. Of course, Bob had earlier invoked the “either/or” rule and somehow got himself uninvited to the wedding. Undaunted, he showed everyone he was still a big macher and handed my fiancée an envelope. Politely, we declined to open it but the next day I nearly fainted. The week before at Chinese New Year, I had received my first and only ang pow, and was quite surprised at the content of that envelope. It had nothing on Bob’s envelope. I took it to the bank immediately, and it will cover the cost of the wedding with lots of room to spare. We could have taken a honeymoon with the residual – oh wait. No we couldn’t. Ali made that clear from the very start. No honeymoon.

The next day I took the inlaws out for Malaysian food. A new restaurant with “the best Hokkien mee outside of KL”. The owner is very gung-ho about his new shop. “No place else has this dish, at least not this good”. That’s a challenge if I ever heard one. Ali and her mum had laksa, Kohei had the beef rendang and I had the char kway teow. We shared a plate of Hokkien mee, and a couple roti canai. Pretty good – my wedding diet was now dead – but there might have been a place or two in Singapore where I might have had better Hokkien mee. Can’t say really, quality is so subjective. Back to the hotel for sake, oysters and salsa. You can take Kohei out of Mexico, but you can’t take Mexico out of Kohei. Friday was a more casual day. I left Baby at home for this one, and got a hold of a sweet Chrysler 300. Orange Peel planned a get together with my mum’s side of the family and my niece gave us some spare rings in case I was stupid enough to lose the other rings. She heard I was stupid. My aunt carefully listened as I clarified a few things with the kinfolk, jotting down little details which she would later use in a speech at the wedding. She basically stole half my speech, but I acquitted myself quite well when the time came.

The day of the wedding, I did everything Sissy had written on the schedule. I drove to the hotel in the Chrysler to meet with the photographer. Sissy warned me and she was right. As soon as we got in the hotel room door it was a free for all. Flashes going off everywhere, and Ali wasn’t even back from the hair salon yet. We were a bit late getting from the hotel to the wedding. There was no way I was going to become a bad cliché – I was getting to my wedding on time. Completely forgetting that Kohei had never seen the surroundings, I drove like a bat out of hell to get to the venue. Perhaps I was trying to show off my wheelman skills as a potential job interview, but I was mostly pissed at the tourists stopping in the middle of the parkway to take snaps. The moment had come to unleash the full eight cylinders. Mrs. Kobayashi managed to maintain composure in the back seat chatting up a storm with Ali, but I noticed in the rear view that Kohei was looking a little sick and hanging on for dear life, silently. That was the tell, he wasn't talking, so when we made it through the tourist traffic, I slowed down. We ended up getting there early, but Ali wasn't very happy. Her disappointment was brief.

Sissy, Orange Peel and my cousin Cece made sure everything went off perfectly. A small wedding and reception for thirty people was on order and it's exactly as Ali and I had imagined. My only regret was that it was over a lot sooner than I probably would have wanted. I didn't feel I was the best host (technically, I wasn't the host) because I was trying to entertain the guests and at the same time trying to give the photogs everything they wanted. After the reception we shlepped around downtown getting MORE photos - 1500 in total.

After the wedding, some of the family went out for a relaxing dinner. And the in-laws left the next day. We eventually figured out how to use the sunroof, about a half hour before I had to return the 300. I got a day off work so that Ali and I could sort out her koseki and then she left a few days later.

I haven’t been doing a lot of movie watching lately, but did happen to catch A Touch of Pink starring Suleka Mathew and Jimi Mistry. I won’t spend too much time on this except to say that I was a little upset that Suleka was cast to portray the mother. When I learned of this movie, I thought she’d portray the girlfriend or something closer to her real age. There was, for some reason, an actor portraying Cary Grant in the film. I didn’t understand this at first and thought perhaps the filmmaker, Ian Iqbal Rashid was trying to suggest something about Grant’s personal life. It all became clear in the end that Grant is how Mistry’s character imagines his father, a man he doesn’t truly remember. Linguistically, I have to say well done to all the actors, especially to Kyle MacLachlan, the guy who played Grant. Apparently, all the american actors used false English/Indian accents while Mistry faked an American one. Mistry was probably the weakest actually, his accent would stray now and then. Lastly, this film is not unlike Hsi yen, a film made more than ten years earlier starring Winston Chao, and pretty much like every other film about interracial relationships. I guess we could always use one more.

Work is moving along, evil Tintin is now just inexplicably irritated Tintin. My contract could wind up any day now, but that’s okay because I’ve got other plans. Married life is pretty much the same as usual right now. Ali’s back in Japan, and Kohei eagerly awaits my arrival. I just need my passport for that and I’m set. The question of exactly how long I’ll be in Japan still has to be resolved, but it’ll probably be longer than most of my trips. I’m toying with the idea of going for three months, but then I thought about leaving everything here alone for three months and decided that maybe two months or one month would be better.

Finally, a Wedding Reception Where I Won't be Serving

So ummm, yeah. It's been quite awhile since I've posted an entry about movies, or about anything for that matter. I was hoping to bring a review of Old Boy by Park Chan-uk, but I haven't really had time for that lately. Things are going better at work, slightly. I was asked to interview for a posting in a different part of the company which would have moved me away from evil Tintin, but he's not so evil anymore. I get him, and he gets me so we kind of feed off of each other in good way. It's still shite, but at least we're working together.

I saw The Departed again last night with Orange Peel and her boyfriend. If I needed any further proof that nobody reads this blog, OP's boyfriend asked me if I had seen this movie. Of course I had man, I reviewed it like 3 months ago. I left about halfway through the movie though because I wanted to get home to watch a Texas Hold'em tournament which happened not to air, but also because I was holding precious and semi-precious stones and I didn't want to get mugged in late night Newark.

Security is out the window now. Which is one very good reason not to let your girlfriend leave the country with your backup set of door keys. I came home one particularly shitty afternoon only to find a hard-looking Asian dude sitting very comfortably on the settee. He looked at me with a goofy grin and said "Irashai-i!", but before I could figure out what was going on, he swooped around me and blocked the door.

"Relax, Dax. Sit down... You know me, don't you? I'm a friend of Ali's, I'm Genya. As you know, your life is undergoing big changes right now and Kohei-san has sent me here to give you good encouragement".

"Huh?"

"Kohei-san and his wife want some assurances. We know you are a good guy and that you want to do the right thing, but even good guys get scared sometimes".

I was stunned. Mostly because Genya's English was a lot better than I had ever imagined, but also partly because I was still trying to figure out how he ever got into my flat.

"How did you bloody....?"

He dangled Ali's key fob in front of me and giggled a little like a girl for a second, and then tossed the fob onto the kitchen marble. I scanned the flat quickly, the safe was untouched, and did some mental calculations to decide if I could make it down the hall to my night stand in time. I decided not to try.

He could see that I was trying to figure out what to do so he grabbed my shoulders and turned me away from the door.

"Calm down. We're not in Japan, my options are limited here. You're part of the family now! We should be celebrating. I just want to talk to you for a little bit so I can report good news back to Kohei-san". And then he smacked me, patted my shoulder, and hopped into the kitchen.

"Where is the sake? I know you've got some in this place".

"I don't keep it in the kitchen. It's in the bar, next to the dining table".

"Sit down man! I'll pour - you don't take it heated do you?"

"No. Are you going to hit me again?"

"I don't think so, as long as we work toward the common goal".

"Huh?"

"You know, reading the same book", as he unfolded his hands into the shape of an open book.

"Oh, you mean the same page!"

"Ah, yes! Sorry for my English. Sometimes your idioms are very strange. Sit! Sit! Cheers, old boy!"

We sipped sake for a few moments, saying nothing, just sizing the other one up. Genya was a little hesitant at first, I could tell he didn't really like this part. He put down his sake and cautiously began.

"Dax, I like you. Ali likes you. Kohei-san likes you, and he doesn't even know you. You should be grateful that Ali's mother said such good things about you".

"More sake, please".

He poured me a wee dram.

"I know you're nervous Dax, but I keep telling you that you have no reason to be. I'm just here to let you know that Kohei-san is watching. As you know, in Japan, Kohei has some notoriety. You don't need to concern yourself with that however, you are gaijin. Kohei-san and his wife just want what's best for Ali. We want you to come to Japan for a little while. When can you manage it?"

"I want to come to Japan, but it's not so easy. For starters, I haven't got a passport, so that will take a few weeks. Then I've got my contract - I can't just break it - and then there's school..."

"Already done. I've looked into it and apparently your college does not care if you take the summer semester off-"

"But that's in May! Right now it's February."

"In May, your contract will be over and you will have a new passport. So where's the problem? You can't just get married and leave your wife in Japan. Work with me Dax."

"I am. I am, but these things take time. If Kohei-san is worried about Ali, then he shouldn't worry. Everything is in place, the church, the reception, the photographer, the car service... He's bloody coming for the ceremony! So, there is no problem."

"Good. But we are still concerned about you coming to Japan. You could be a teacher."

"I'd be more successful as a bartender, believe me. In any event, I am coming to Japan but only on a short term basis. Ali's cool with that, and so am I. Kohei-san doesn't need to worry".

"Good". And then he hit me again. When I woke up, the spare set was gone again.

I'm like Enzo's cat. We forget to drink water, but instead of ending up in the vet's office with a $500 bill for fluids, I end up in the hospital with kidney stones. And I get super drunk super fast. I've been training for the wedding. Seriously, I've been spending enough time in the gym to actually break a sweat - but I've sorta been cheating too. The quickest way to lose weight temporarily is to stop drinking fluids. This is an old boxing trick that has worked for me a few times before, but I'm not really trying to do it this time. It's actually quite dangerous. In my case, it can aggravate kidney stones, causing them to shift and put me in the hospital. This has never actually been a result of forced dehydration for me, but it's something I worry about now. I'm getting my old form back, and I'm trying to add a little mass but that probably won't happen before the wedding. I've got two weeks to tone up, and it sounds easy enough, but I ache like hell. I just keep telling myself pain is the cleanser - Off to the gym!

Zero Sum Game

Recently, I watched Boksuneun naui geot or Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, the first of the Vengeance Trilogy by director Park Chan-uk, and although it shared some characteristics to Chinjeolhan geumjassi, this film was not so clear cut. In fact, I didn't like it or at least I had a very hard time watching it and sympathizing with the main character. Maybe it's because I'm a father, but couple that with the fact that the little girl character has the same name as a very fetching violinist I used to know, and the fact that violin music plays at points during the film, it's like one big fat trigger whipping me across the face repeatedly like Yu-sun's bow did.

The film is about a deaf guy who finds himself taking care of his older sister who needs a new kidney. Interesting though that kidneys are also later symbolic in Chinjeolhan geumjassi. Ryu, played by Shin Ha-kyun slogs in a factory to pay the hospital bills. He gets laid off from the job, and ends up bringing his sister played by Kim Ji-eun to his flat for care. Ryu is determined to find a kidney for his sister, but unfortunately carries type A blood. He hooks up with a dodgy couple of guys who are willing to sell him a kidney. They throw the old bait and switch, and their mummy tells him he doesn't have enough dosh to buy a kidney but she so nice that she can find one if he gives his kidney in exchange. Naively maybe, Ryu gives up a kidney and the next thing he knows he's lying naked in a vacant tower of flats, broke.

Ryu's girlfriend, Yeong-mi played by Bae Du-na, is an anarchist and hatches a plot to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy family, more precisely from the man who laid Ryu off in the first place. A bit of surveillance and the pair easily snatch Yu-sun, played by Han Bo-bae. She's so cute! A ransom exchange is planned and the pair of kidnappers have every intention of returning the girl, but then Ryu's sister figures out what is going on, and kills herself because she is ashamed of what her brother has done.

Ryu can't believe what has happened, and takes the body to the place where he promised to bury his sister. While placing his sister under a grave of stones, a peculiar character arrives. The character is credited as being retarded, but clearly the young man simply suffers from a rather serious case of cerebral palsy. A little bit of understanding goes a long way, people. He takes a fancy to the tchochki necklace that the little girl wears. He tries to nick it, but ends up just creeping the shit out of the girl. She tries to run across a rickety bridge to Ryu, whom she considers a friend, but dives in the river. Flailing, her cries are ignored by the deaf kidnapper and she drowns. My last ounce of sympathy for Ryu just floated down the river.

The story now focuses on the story of Park Dong-jin, Yu-sun's father, who has vowed a little revenge of his own. He works with a police inspector to track down the kidnappers and eventually comes across the body of his daughter. The scene in the medical examiner's room is quite telling. Park attends the autopsy, and is being torn apart emotionally as we hear the bone saws and stuff cutting up Yu-sun. He goes back to the scene of the crime and discovers the body of Ryu's sister buried on the opposite shore. He attends her autopsy and shows no hint of repulsion as the bone saws go to work on her. Tracing the steps of the kidnappers and using a series of photographs, Park discovers Ryu's identity. He goes after Yeong-mi, who devised the kidnapping to begin with and tortures her for information. During that time, he takes out a delivery man who may have seen something he shouldn't have, and the viewer begins to see that this humble electrician isn't the bootlack he has been portrayed as so far. He continues to torture Yeong-mi, who confesses that she is truly sorry for what has happened and warns him that if she disappears, her anarchist friends will get Park. The dude's basically got nothing to lose, so he amps up the electricity and that's the end of Yeong-mi.

Meanwhile, Ryu is getting a little payback on the brothers who scammed him in the first place and their drug-addicted mummy. He doesn't come out unscathed and discovers that Yeong-mi has been murdered. He now must take vengeance on Park, and goes to his house. Ryu is promptly knocked out in his weakened state by electricity the moment he tries to open the basement door. Park takes him back to the river and explains that he understands that Ryu is a good guy, but that's why he must be killed. Park cuts the lashings, and then in a gesture of poetic justice, cuts his hamstrings so that Ryu is forced to slump into the water and drown like Yu-sun.

Park drags the body from the river and cuts it into smaller pieces so that it's easier to bury. He finds a nice quiet location down a country road and is in the middle of digging a decent pit when a group of four anarchists show up and stab the guy to death, pinning a note to his chest detailing the death sentence that Yeong-mi had written earlier in the film. So it ends up being a zero sum game. Everybody involved in the kidnapping is dead and I hate that. Somebody has to survive, even if it's the bad guy, somebody has to be left standing.

The viewer is led to sympathize from the beginning with Ryu, who does everything he can to care for his sister. But by the end of it, I was cheering for Park, Yu-sun's father. I was actually surprised at how differently I saw this film. Before, I may have sided with Ryu, but I guess I see things differently now.

She Ate the Layer Cake

I suppose it was only a matter of time, but Layer Cake is now my second favourite film. About a year ago, perhaps longer I read an article in the New York Times about a Korean director who was apparently making waves in the violent-film genre. I scoffed ignorantly thinking that nobody could top Takashi Miike.

A sudden re-interest in Korean culture made me think of this director, and after a particularly stressful Friday at work (you know, the kind of stress that makes your head feel 15 pounds heavier), I went up to the video shop and rented the last of the "vengeance" trilogy by Park Chan-uk, entitled Chinjeolhan geumjassi or Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. I couldn't remember the director's name exactly, so the clerk had to ask the shop's walking dictionary and he knew right away who I was looking for:

Me: I can't remember the name exactly, it's something Korean. He makes violent movies.

Dictionary: You mean Park Chan-uk?

Me: Chan-uk - that's the one. I've heard he's more violent than Takashi Miike.

Dictionary: Ummm, I don't think so. Miike's violence is pretty sick, but Park's violence is more beautiful. He leaves a little more to the imagination...

My Korean is fairly limited, consisting of a few phrases such as hello, goodbye, and you play violin very well, but I mustered a "kam sa ham nida" and rushed out the door. For good measure, I grabbed six Corona and a beef rendang on the way home. I was set. I remembered what the Dictionary told me, and I have to say he was very right.

I was looking forward to something parallel to Sasori and this had some overlap, and would have been a great place for Sasori to pick up, but it soon outgrew the Japanese film and revealed itself to be something so much better. The music is solemn and orchestral, triggering fond memories of a very fetching Korean girl playing violin in my flat several summers past. The music lends itself very well to the tone of the movie. Very well. One thing that really helped move the story along is that the lead actress has a strong resemblance to my hair dressor, a woman quietly plotting some revenge of her own.

It begins as the story of a young woman, played by the very captivating Li Yeong-ae, who went to prison for the man she loved. I thought Li was the same woman who starred in Bin-jip or Three Iron, but I was wrong. That lead actress is Lee Seung-yeon. Totally different actress. During her time in prison, Geum-ja formulates a plan to take revenge on the guy. She spends thirteen years in prison, acting as a selfless, model inmate who does everything she can to win the trust of others and get what she wants. She tallies several favours, and manages to kill the cell block bully with a smile on her face. She wins fans across Korea, one of them being a creepy minister who, it turns out was sent to keep an eye on Geum-ja. Promptly after getting out of prison, the new Geum-ja tells the preacher to fuck himself and she begins collecting favours. She pays a visit to one of her fellow inmates who has been released and picks out some nice clothes and takes a flat. Next, she approaches the family of the boy she allegedly killed and asks for forgiveness. They tell her to go away so she cuts off a finger and threatens to cut off more until they forgive. The bandaged finger is used as a nice little time marker by the director, a little obvious, but novel all the same.

Back and forth between a series of flashbacks and present day, the story unfolds. The next step Geum-ja takes is to acquire a gun, made for her by the husband of one of her former cell mates. This is a big favour - for this Geum-ja had to give a kidney. At least I think that's the one she gave her kidney for. Geum-ja reports to a bakery where she is given a job by the former prison dessert teacher. She works a few days and then asks for a 3 month advance. She seduces the son of the baker, and tells him she will kill him if he touches anything in her apartment. Geum-ja has discovered that her daughter had been given up for adoption and was living in Australia.

Jenny, played by Kwon Yea-young uses a fairly convincing accent, though one completely unsuited to Australia and is very eager to travel to Korea with her mother. She threatens to cut her throat if her adoptive parents don't allow her to go with Geum-ja. They relent and off she goes to Seoul. She meets the son of the baker and learns a little Korean. She chooses a puppy and takes it on a picnic to the country where she takes Korean lessons with the son while Geum-ja shoots the puppy in the head. Sissy was completely confused by the whole movie, beginning with the flashbacks, and then with the dead puppy. I guessed that Geum-ja was only practicing and making sure she could do the deed when the time came. During the lessons, Jenny writes a letter to her mother explaining that she is angry with her mother and wants her mother to apologize. Back in Seoul, the Australians arrive at the bakery and find Jenny.

The plan is not quite complete. Geum-ja takes one more favour from an inmate who has been keeping an eye on the real child killer by posing as his girlfriend or whatever. She carefully waits for Geum-ja, and unfortunately is uncovered by the creepy preacher. He reveals the connection between the two women, and Mr. Baek hires two goons to do her over. He ties her to a chair in his apartment and patiently eats his dinner while the two goons wait for Geum-ja and Jenny to arrive. The guys ambush Geum-ja and her daughter in the snow covered street, chloroforming the girl and trying to shove Geum-ja in a car. Of course, Geum-ja wants revenge so she's not going to take it lightly. She shoots one guy in the face - the camera shot is from behind his head and the viewer is treated to a rather unconvincing blowout. She then chases down the guy holding Jenny and waits until she is in close range to pull the trigger. She carries Jenny back to Mr. Baek's apartment, where the fat fuck is lying unconscious on the floor. See, his girlfriend or whatever was a master poisoner and went to prison for poisoning someone in the first place.

The flashbacks are over now, and the movie is about half over. The vengeance begins, and this is done very well. The director admits in an interview that his intention all along was to ask "When is violence ever justified?", and he keeps the message true. He turns the question inward - the viewer is forced to contemplate an appropriate answer. With the help of the original case inspector, who knew that Geum-ja was innocent all along but needed to close his case, she holds a congress with the families of the victims - turns out there are five families - in a schoolhouse where Mr. Baek is being held.

Cunningly, the meeting is wired, and Baek can hear everything being discussed, everything being agreed and all the hatred and sadness harboured by the families. One by one, the families are treated to a videotaping of their child's death. Baek made tapes for souvenirs, and Geum-ja found them. After all the violence and gore, I found this scene to be the hardest to watch. Though, you don't see the crux of the footage, you do witness the reactions of the families. This is how I know the director is good - maybe also due to my hair dressor's personal story, but Park made me feel like I was sitting there in the schoolhouse. Geum-ja asks the families what they want to do, and each person agrees to secrecy. Some want to hand him over to the police, where others want their pound of flesh. It is agreed that the families will take care of the matter themselves and that the ransom monies they had delivered to Baek would be returned. The first people to have a go are the parents of the first boy - each has agreed to leave a little something for everyone else - and so forth. Geum-ja herself has already beaten, poisoned, and shot Baek and leaves it at that. Her vengeance will be satisfaction. Satisfaction knowing that others were able to dispense rough justice along with her. They clean up the crime scene and pose together for a photo so that nobody will ever rat on another, and they go their separate ways. Back in Seoul, Geum-ja apologizes to Jenny and buries her face in a tofu cake. Closure.

The Golden Mullet

Happy New Year. Well, at least I hope YOU have one. I'm miserable. Ali has gone and it was all very shitty. Christmas night, she gave me a dirty look for not leaving Bob's place early enough so she could pack a decent suitcase. She was also a little upset that I had left her alone with Bob, giving him ample opportunity to give her the third degree. On Boxing Day, we popped around to Orange Peel's and had a nice little get together. Ali didn't say a word about staying too late then though. The next morning, we had a quick good-bye and she was off in a taxi to JFK and I was off to work.

I watched Tim yin mat yue or Sealed With a Kiss the next Saturday, and I probably shouldn't have. I watched it because it starred Louis Koo. This is the first drama I've seen him in, and it was actually quite good, except for the shitty ending which sucked. I'd tried to watch it before, but the reception wasn't good so I abandoned the effort. This movie was made before Koo began sporting his Golden Mullet and he looks better, or more believable, without it.

Okay, so the story goes like this: Koo plays a mute villager who doesn't have much to do around the place except help his mum look after the shop, work on his boat, and shake down addicts and restauranteurs for protection money. His friend Angel, played by Suk-Ching Au seems to be the brains of the outfit and Kam Shui (Koo) the muscle. Angel is a bit of a tomboy in the film, but has a crush on Kam. Along comes Mandy, played by Yo Yo Mung, who rents a room above Kam's shop and waits forlorn for her ex-boyfriend to call. He doesn't.

Time goes by, and Kam develops a crush on Mandy, who in turn has developed a crush on a fire-fighter. Kam is left to run the shop all by himself, but as good friends do, he and Angel help Mandy get in with the fire-fighter. Of course, Kam doesn't really want this to work but Angel doesn't want Mandy in the way of her friendship with Kam. Mandy and the fire-fighter go off to Hong Kong, and Angel and Kam continue the shake downs so they can gamble.

I guess in a small seaside village like this one, the protection racket develops a certain rapport with their targets. And so it is with a particular individual who seems to never have the money required and is frequently thrown in the harbour. During one shakedown, Angel who is working solo, goes bezerk on the guy because he tells her that he likes her. She considers this an affront and shivs the guy in the gut with a broken bottle. Kam runs down to the beach and sees what Angel has done, and the fun and games are over.

Angel disappears and Kam takes the addict to a doctor. Everything seems to be back to normal until Kam goes to clean the room upstairs and finds cues from Mandy that she knew he liked her and Kam decides to go to HK to find Mandy. Kam grabs an address and runs through town to the ferry.

And if the movie had ended there, it would have been nice. Unfortunately, some people don't like happy endings and I'm not saying that everything has to end happily ever after, but this ending really sucked, almost as hard as Layer Cake, but with a romantic premise mixed in. On the way to the ferry, somebody stops him and reminds him that his flip flops just won't suit him in HK, and that he should change his shoes. He runs back to the shop and begins to put on his nice shoes. He hears something in the back and goes to investigate. It's the drug addict who seems to be strangely calm considering he's just been caught breaking into a shop. Kam lets him eat some food and just as he turns to finish putting his shoes on, he gets a knife in the back. The remaining five minutes is just too sad, or maybe I'm emo. Suffice it to say that as soon as Kam turned around to go back to the shop, the movie sucked.

A Christmas Eve Tradition - Sort of

I've known about a certain ritual for awhile now, but have never had the chance to experience it - Japanese Christmas Eve. In Japan, so I'm told, they don't really get the whole Christ the Saviour shtick so they generally give gifts to one another and that's that. But for dating couples, December 24th is a time for a romantic evening out. Rather than shop oneself daft in a mall, they use it as an excuse to get away and thanks to Japanese efficiency and groupthink, what could be a very elaborate, individual expression of love has degenerated into a bucket of chicken, a bottle of cheap plonk and a night in a cheesy love hotel.

Ali has been working on this for a little while and I'm glad to say that she puts a little more effort into the exercise than what I've heard others do. No KFC for me, instead homemade fried chicken drummets - marinated for 24 hours and dredged in Ali's secret blend of spices. But that's not all. As you can see from the photo, she prepared corn soup in the blue coffee cups (Japanese efficiency), sticky rice with lotus root in the caramel-coloured bowl, a salad where lettuce is just garnish on the plate with the blue rim, and fried tofu cakes blended with chicken in a mushroom consommé. I snatched the candle holders in a secret Santa deal at my new job. Not bad at all. Last but not least a strawberry shortcake made using the finest handmixer money can buy. The thing is older than me, maybe older than Sissy and it still works. Truthfully, the cake is a remake. The first one was a write-off because the recipe is in Celsius and my oven is Fahrenheit. Somebody forgot to convert... but as you can see here, the second version is pretty darn near perfect.

So is this becoming a food blog now? I love food, but no. Thanks to Ali, I'm at my highest weight ever, a whopping 160 lbs. and I don't want to get any bigger. This is still a movie blog, and to that end I watched Baak nin hiu gap starring Sammi Cheung and Louis Koo last night. The opening of this film was so ridiculous that I almost turned it off. The only reason I kept watching is because I like Koo, and though I don't think Cheung is a particularly strong actress, she knows how to make a scene funny - and just the right amount of funny. It turned out to be some hybrid of a romcom and a kung fu flick in which the student must have her heart broken in order to master the kung fu style. Student May, played by Cheung cures an ailing millionaire playboy named Tiger, played by Koo. May's teacher tells her to follow Tiger to Hong Kong and romance him.

The plot becomes a series of stunts in which Tiger tries to make May fall for him, just as he is about to dump her. The problem is, May isn't the jealous type and she continues to love Tiger for who he is. The whole storyline turns out to be nothing but a two hour advertisement for cosmetic firms and shoe companies as Tiger discovers that the secret to mastering this style of kung fu is not to have one's heart broken, but to have one eye open and one eye closed. Phooey!

I'd watch it again, but skip the parts about the kung fu school and stick to the relationship stuff between Tiger and May. It would cut about half the movie out, but it would still be one of the best performances I have seen for Sammi Cheung.

Meri kurisumasu!

A Little Change Up

I'll be taking a few days off of work, and it's hard to imagine why but I'm actually looking forward to it. I've been at the new place for two weeks now, and it's a pretty good place to work, except for my supervisor. I've had worse, believe me but this guy is constantly kvetching. about. everything.

It took some time to pinpoint his demeanor, but it's like this. Imagine Hugh Laurie as Dr. House, you know, the genius doctor who pisses on everyone around him because they're not as smart or as good as he is. Only my supervisor is no genius, and he doesn't walk with a cane. Then, add that to the fact that he looks like a roughed up version of Tin Tin - ginger hair and turtlenecks.

Everyone on the job deals with him because they have no choice and they realize that he's the kind of person who can't be any other way, so I guess they feel sorry for him in a way. He tries to be nice, but his conversation somehow always devolves into a declaration of how stupid our clients are, and how our co-workers don't know how to do their jobs. Always careful to never name names, he'll never make a mistake or at least never concede that he's made a mistake and that if something bad happens it must be your fault, logically. I like my other co-workers, and I put up with my supervisor because I was hired to muck out the place - not to deal with his drama. There's a lot of muck.

And all this made my time away from work so much more enjoyable. Trey, my wax guy had another recital last night and WOW! That's all I can really say. It's almost two years since I went to a recital, and I had almost forgotten how amazing his singing voice is. One lady a few rows down started to cry during Ave Maria. There's such a disconnect between Trey from the salon and Trey the opera singer. He started with some new stuff, a little Bizet and then after the intermission he came back with some old stuff by Giordani. Caro mio ben was the first song I'd ever heard him sing and it really freaked my mind. Last night too, it was difficult to make the connection between Salon Trey and Stage Trey. For a little treat he sang Silent Night - uh-MAZING! And then he ended with Con te partirò. It took me a minute to figure out where I'd heard the song before. At first I thought it was Celine Dion but since I don't listen to anything Celine I was puzzled. I remembered that I had heard Andrea Bocelli's version like a million times a few years ago. Everyone bought the CD, except me.

I stuck around afterward for a little bit to show some support. I mean, the guy waxes my junk so it was the least I could do. He was surrounded by a crowd so I didn't get a chance to congratulate him, and besides my stylist was there all alone. I gave her a ride home and then met Ali and a few of her friends and played my favourite game - chauffeur. Ali's got a full calendar for the next little while. She's made so many friends here, and it's going to take a while to say goodbye to them all. She's hoping to accomplish this all before the 27th, and then it's sayonara.

Freebie!

There were a whole lot of movies that I've seen since the last post, but this is the only one I'm gonna talk about right now - Curse of the Golden Flower. Because it hasn't been released yet and I want people to know about it before they go. Yes, some of you will be skiving off work just as I write this so it will probably be a pointless exercise but I'm gonna do it anyway.

This was meant to be a photo of what I manage to eat nowadays, but since I had a free pass to see the newest release by Zhang Yimou, I thought I'd throw it in there too. Zhang takes directorial credit as well as a writing credit for this, and despite being crammed against the wall on the right side third row, I liked it.

Sure, I had had passes to see a sneak preview of another Zhang film House of Flying Daggers, and it was pretty much the same - only different. There was a lot of the same imagery, a lot of close ups of Gong Li's face, a whole lot of flying fighting, but the story was a little different. I had a bit of a problem with the wardrobe, though. I'm no expert on Chinese history, but the dresses worn by the Empress and the female servants seemed to be a bit... let's say modern. This costuming ploy saved Bram Stoker's Dracula, so why wouldn't it help a film about the Empress of China? As my friend pointed out, there's really no reason to complain, but I prefer accuracy. If that's how it was back then, then so it was. Li stars alongside Chow Yun Fat as the Empress Phoenix and Emperor Ping of China, respectively. My friend and I were both a little puzzled by the whole premise but it goes a little something like this:

The Emperor has three sons by at least two separate women - probably just two but it's never really established where the third kid comes from. Ping is currently trying to poison his wife in an effort to drive her mad. See, his wife is having an affair with the eldest son, her stepson or whatever who in turn is getting it on the side from a servant girl who... more on her later. Anyway, Ping can't blame his son because he always was the favourite so I guess that's why he's trying to poison the wife - he blames her. Turns out the eldest son is a bit of a failure, and the hopes of the Empire truly rest on the shoulders of the second son played by Jay Chou. His mummy, the Empress discovers that she is being poisoned and shares this news with him. She says that during the Chong Yang Festival, she will force her husband to abdicate the throne so that her son can become Emperor. The son vows to protect his mother who, tells her stepson of the plot. The stepson decides that he can't go along with the plan and reveals all to his father.

At some point, the eldest prince tries to commit suicide. As the festival approaches, the servant girl who has been knowingly poisoning the Empress for weeks, chases her boyfriend to the Imperial palace to protect him or something. Her family has just been set upon by assassins sent by the Emperor because her father, the Emperor's doctor was married to a woman who happened to be a threat to the dynasty. Really, only the mother knows why. The servant girl arrives at the palace pursued by her mother, and both are captured and taken to the Emperor who is only trying to have a little peace and quiet with his wife and three sons. The servant girl's mother, known to the Empress blabs the Emperor's secret - that she is the mother of the eldest son, and thus the servant girl learns that she has been shtupping her half-brother for quite some time. She runs from the palace, screaming as her brain is exploding and is killed as she flees, and so is her mother.

The story moves back to the Emperor and his new family. The youngest prince stabs his eldest brother in the back and is pretty much wasted by the father after that. Somewhere in the film, the second son leaves the ceremony and goes outside to gather with the troops. He attacks the palace, but it's hopeless. He can't win. I guess he's the only one left of the ten thousand rebels who stormed the grounds because he is invited to eat with his parents. He is told by the father that he was meant to become the Crown Prince. The Emperor had changed his mind and had planned to make the announcement the very next day, but after this little act of treason the Emperor gave him an ultimatum. The choices were either be torn into fifths by horses, or continue to administer his mother's medicine which is poisoned, and which he knows is poisoned, but can't let his father know he knows it's poisoned because then the whole charade would be over and it would somehow implicate his mother who also knew the medicine was poisoned but couldn't accuse her husband directly of trying to poison her. So it's not really a choice at all. Either he dies or his mother dies. He kills himself, and that's pretty much the end. Which left my friend with a few questions like why the Emperor was trying to slowly drive his wife insane, and left me wondering what happened after that. This really wasn't the place to end the film I thought. What about the next morning? I would have liked to hear that conversation between Phoenix and Ping. Maybe there was no next morning for Ping, what with no heir and a really pissed off, ass-kicking wife. Just a few more minutes... That's all I'm asking.

The movie is all about hypocrisy and other stuff, but mostly hypocrisy. The Emperor proclaims that he has a model family and that it is his duty to inspire his subjects. All the while, he's trying to turn his wife mad, and his sons secretly hate one another while one is having an affair with the Empress, another is plotting to overthrow his father and another is just trying to get a little attention. Man Li stars as Chan Jiang, the servant girl. I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of her in the near future.

Coming Up for Air

After a few arduous weeks, I'm back same as always with a total of six films to discuss. That's the problem with updating so infrequently - I forget which movies I've been watching and then I have only a little to write about on each one. By the way, this is Enzo J at his baby shower. Such a busy little man, we had to reschedule the thingy. After 50 days, we had the party. This is a photo of Enzo with his great-great-aunt Imogen. He's getting a good look because I think she might be the oldest person Enzo has met.

The morning of the shower, Ali started whipping up something in the kitchen. I should have said something, for she had the mistaken impression that this was a potluck affair. We ended up toting a pot of Japanese stew to the thingy and toting it home again. Ali had pretty much met everyone at the thingy before, but I had to re-introduce her again. She couldn't remember anyone's name because, "You all look the same". She could only remember the cowboy but not his name, but unfortunately he wasn't there so she was a little screwed. This would happen twice in the same day. Later, we drove past an IHOP which Ali had recently discovered was a pancake restaurant.

"I want pancakes. Turn here." So there we were, sitting in a pancake house with a pot of Japanese stew on the table. About half way through my hotcakes, I looked at the kitchen and recognized the chef(?) as a guy I went to highschool with. I told Ali to take a good look and remember his face because I was going to show her my yearbooks later. About an hour later we got back to the very cold flat and I brought out my senior yearbook. The dude wasn't in it. I checked my sophomore yearbook. No photo. He was in my freshman yearbook. I guess he switched schools or dropped out or something which might explain why he's flipping hotcakes. I showed Ali the photo which was a pretty good likeness except that he had put on weight, as we all tend to do after that much time, but she said that she couldn't remember the guy's face because we all look the same. Arghhhh! I kinda wanted to say something, but I knew I shouldn't.

I messed up big time a few weeks ago - I erased Ali's iPod. Yet another reason to hate Apple. I wanted to upload some of my own music onto her iPod. I plugged in the cable and iTunes started to update her iPod. I cancelled the update, or at least I thought I did and ended up not uploading the music I wanted. For some reason, even though I'd cancelled the update my entire iTunes library ended up on Ali's iPod, and all her own stuff was gone. Of course, I thought nothing was wrong until a few days later. I was woken up by Ali screaming in perfect English "You Stupid Fuck!" This all could have been avoided if Apple had provided the music I requested several times instead of my having to work with an external source.

I messed up big time again a few days ago, when the whole reason why I've been hiding went all Pete Tong. I really, really studied for my exam so I had a good feeling about it. That's it lad, your entire course hinges on six questions. If you miss any two, you flunk. Well, I neglected to wear my watch and ran out of time on the exam, unable to correct an error I discovered late in the game. I suspect this will become another rewrite, but it's all very demoralizing. Kinda like when your brother asks you if he can borrow your nice new Fluevogs because he wants to take them to summer camp but you say no because you know the shoes won't fit and these shoes weren't really meant for hiking. But he takes them anyway, trashes them and tries to hide them someplace but you find them. That kind of demoralizing. The upside is that I have managed to find a job, and they've even granted me a little gardening leave before I start. I'll make the best of it.

And so, in no particular order, the films up for consideration are The World's Fastest Indian, Sixth Sense, Eyes Wide Shut, Something's Gotta Give, San jaat si hing or Moving Targets, and Let's Make Love.

Ali came home from her last day in class and told me that her classmate suggested The World's Fastest Indian. At first I was intrigued because I personally felt it was a little too soon to film a biopic of Narain Karthikeyan, but then Ali muttered something about motorcycles. I checked it out and was pleased to find that it was all about land speed records. So while Ali was out having her farewell party with her classmates, I was watching this film. While I was getting info on this movie, I learnt that part of the set had been used by a motorcycle gang in Invercargill, New Zealand. A wee trigger took me back to the hellish stranding in Quincy, California. There I was with Sissy and inexplicably, a girl from New Zealand who had hooked up with my friend's nephew and fatefully decided to ride back with us while my friend and his nephew wandered around the Nevada desert taking what turned out to be some kick ass photos. Before this girl hooked up with my friend's nephew, she had been in a relationship with a guy back home in New Zealand who happened to be part of a motorcycle gang. She claimed to be a bit of a hellraiser, but I didn't buy it. She was waaay too much of a princess, and I didn't like her to begin with. I tried, really, to get along with her for Sissy's sake, but this girl just wouldn't cut anybody any slack. By the time we got rolling out of Quincy, this princess had lost it a few times. We got her back in time to make her connecting flight back to London. Maybe under different circumstances, we would have got along better. I also learnt that somewhere in the film a BSA is featured, probably in the beach race which was also a trigger but a nice one, of that very cold night in December 1992 when I met my ex-girlfriend's father. Let's call him Bob, because that was his name. And in a way, he does look like Sir Anthony Hopkins who stars as Burt Munro in the film which makes the film all that more interesting. There I was, the young, wide-eyed, long-haired "colonial" with Bobby in Birmingham, meeting my girlfriend's mum and dad for the first time:

Bob:'Ere. [Pointing vaguely in my direction] You like automobiles?
Me: Ummmm, yes sir.
Bob: I've got something to show you. Come with me--
Girlfriend: Nooo! Dad, don't...
Bob: It's alright. I'm just gonna take this one out to the shed.
Me: Just me, sir? Not Bobby and his girlfriend?
Bob: No, lad. Only you said you were interested.

He led me out to the yard and motioned back towards the garage. "That's a Moggy lowlight. It's mine." I remembered my girlfriend telling me that her father had an old Morris Minor. In the dark I could make out that it was a lighter colour, perhaps sky blue and that the engine had been ripped out of it. As we got closer to the garage, he told me to go inside and have a look. There was just enough room to inch along single file, and he was making sure that I couldn't turn around. "I've got something else to show you, keep moving toward the back."

It was at this point that I was suddenly reminded that I had known this man for approximately 5 minutes and had no idea how he felt about me dating his daughter. I turned back toward him and looked in his eyes. Cold stare - I froze. I was pretty sure that he was going to corner me in the shed and pull out a shotgun.

"Lift up that canvas and see what's under there... Go on. Don't be shy, I'm not going to shoot you." I lifted the canvas and there was a 1938 chocolate brown BSA before my eyes. At least that's what he claimed it was and I have no reason not to believe it. He said that it had only had one owner, an Italian expat who had gone to England to sell gelato. After much saving, he finally had enough money to buy a bike and sell his gelato that way. Of course, the next year it would all be over. In 1939, the gelato man had to pack up and leave the country. Bob bought the bike at auction or something and reassembled it from scratch. The thing had been boxed for years. Bob turned out to be a great guy. I really should have tried harder to stay in touch with him and his family.

The movie stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as a older New Zealander named Burt, who coincidentally had had a twin brother in his youth named Ernie. I laughed at that part, which was hard because you learn the brother's name right at the same time you learn that the brother had been crushed by a tree. This elderly, rather eccentric mechanic decides that he wants to use his 1920 Indian motorcycle to set a land speed record in Bonneville, Utah. The guy had basically spent 45 years, assuming he bought the bike new, tuning it up to go fast. He knew it was already the fastest bike in Australia and New Zealand, and the one thing he wanted to do before he died was make it the fastest bike in the world.

The story lags a wee bit, presumably because the diretor wanted to remain as close to the real events as possible, but it follows the old codger in his bid to raise enough money to get to Utah, it chronicles his heart problems, and his encounters with a friendly Central American used car salesman played by Paul Rodriguez who we all know should have been chosen to replace Johnny Carson. Okay, maybe I just know that. But can we honestly believe that there wasn't a better comedian than Jay Leno available to usurp Johnny? I have news for you - Jay isn't funny. Never was. But he likes cars and has some dandies in his garage, so he's alright by me. A car salesman, a native who helps him with his old man problems, and an old lady who runs a service station and nearly gets Burt killed in a cemetery. You see how this story meanders. It also gets a little preachy on the habit of smoking. I can only believe that the real Burt Munro was a staunch anti-smoker. He finally gets to Bonneville only to discover that he hasn't registered his vehicle and it doesn't pass technical inspection, partly because his tyres have no tread. He meets some other very helpful Americans and is voted the most popular driver at the meet. After some arm-twisting and rule-bending, the old guy gets on his bike and rips down the salt. He's added a lead brick to the front of his bike to reduce vibration. I imagine this is much like what Ferrari and Renault did to their Formula 1 cars for 2006. Of course, Renault was ordered to remove their device but Ferrari was allowed to keep theirs. Go figure. Burt quickly discovers that the lead brick doesn't work as expected and makes the run without it. He can control the aero by popping his head up a wee bit. The director makes a point of emphasizing goggle trouble, and as the bike accelerates close to 200 mph, the goggles fly off the helmet. All the while, Burt is slowly burning his leg on the exhaust because he doesn't have a fire suit and an asbestos wrap makes it impossible for him to fit into the bike shell. I was reminded of the time Sissy decided to catch a ride on a motorcycle while wearing shorts and burned her leg pretty badly. She walked it off like a trooper. So we have an old man with heart troubles sharing his heart pills with his motorcycle for a nitro boost careening blindly down a painted line in the desert cooking himself. The story is limited here in that it has to stay true to fact, so there's no second wind or anything, the guy keeps accelerating until he hits 200 and then wipes out. Technically, in order to set the land speed record according to USAC rules I think the car has to be able to get to the finish line, turn around and match or better the speed in a ten minute window. Whether I'm imagining that, or whether that rule wasn't in effect at the time is not explained. Burt Munro had set the land speed record for modified motorcycles smaller than 1000cc before he died. But he didn't die. He went back to New Zealand a local hero. Apparently, he went to Bonneville again for nine years following that record and his record still stands.

Eyes Wide Shut was the next film that Ali brought home from the library. As you may have heard, this film stars Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and kinda sorta Sydney Pollack. I remember there being a lot of controversy surrounding this film, but I guess it was more buzz than scandal. This would be the third Stanley Kubrick for me, but the only one I watched the whole way through. Watching Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in upper sixth history and Spartacus were the other two. What did I like about Eyes Wide Shut? Certainly not the acting. What I liked was the music. I was reminded of The Ninth Gate starring Johnny Depp I guess because of the aspect of suspense but also because of the scenes in the country. All in all, the film was a let down considering all the hype that surrounded it, but it was pretty good for what it was.

San jaat si hing starring Nicholas Tse, Edison Chen and Simon Yam was a film I'd seen before, but couldn't follow because of the bad reception. I tried to watch it again after getting rabbit ears, and got about halfway through before growing bored. I thought about The Departed and how this film would fit perfectly between the police academy period and the point where Leo DiCaprio applies to the Massachusetts State Police. I haven't looked into it, but I think this film was meant to parallel Infernal Affairs. I think there was a little too much comedy in this film for a drama, but about as much as I've come to expect from Cantonese dramas.

I really couldn't say anything to dissuade Ali, so when she brought home The Sixth Sense starring her favourite Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis, I wasn't too surprised. This film is famously about a kid who sees dead people. The kid is a bit of an oddball because of the things he sees, and he ends up having sessions with Bruce Willis' character, who figures he can help the kid and atone for making a mistake with a previous client played by an almost unrecognizable Donnie Wahlberg. They work together to find a way to make all the dead people go away happily, and at the end Willis discovers that he too is dead but is happy to go away. I didn't think too much of this film. I thought it could have shown more of Osment's character helping dead people get where they need to go, but it didn't. What I did like about this film was the exteriors of the homes, and the spiral staircase inside one of the homes. I remember Bobby and me trying to get our mum and aunts to put a spiral staircase into the beach house, but they nixed the idea saying that it would be too difficult to get the furniture up. Am I a fan of M. Night Shyamalan? Not yet.

Something's Gotta Give starring Jack Nicholson, Amanda Peet, Diane Keaton and Keanu Reeves was a good one. I probably only say that because I'm starting to appreciate Nicholson's work more and more. I don't think I can say the story is very original, but it was well done by Nicholson and Keaton. I'm planning on seeing The Holiday with Jack Black and Jude Law soon. Nancy Meyers writes and directs both films.

The last thing I wanted to do when I got home after my exam was go to bed. I wanted to rewrite, but Ali told me to stop worrying about and relax. "You're a failure, and there's nothing you can do about the exam now, Stupid. Just forget about it, you are so A", referring to my blood type. Apparently, Asian cultures can tell as much about a person from their blood type as Western cultures (read pot-smoking hippies) can tell from one's astrological sign. Personally, I think it's all a load of hooey. Instead of torturing myself over the exam, I turned on the television and got the George Cukor gem Let's Make Love on the Canadian channel. I would have flipped channels, but I instantly recognized a young Yves Montand. As for the film, I'd seen it before and it was getting late so I didn't watch too much, but anything with Montand in it is worth watching in my books. I should also mention if you didn't already know, another great French actor died a few weeks ago, Philippe Noiret of Les ripoux and Tango died of cancer. I was tempted to write something when it happened, but then I realized that I really wasn't very knowledgeable about his work. No, I haven't seen Cinema Paradiso or Il Postino and I probably won't, but this guy was a mainstay in French cinema and was one of my favourite French actors.