Yay! It's New Years! Sadly my family is on the opposite side of the continent, but I was able to spend Friday at my friend Cedric's house party eating home-made pork dumplings. After eight years of being a vegetarian, I've decided to slowly start integrating meat into my diet until September as I'll be going on a big trip this summer and don't want to offend the various cultural groups I visit by refusing their delicious food.
Anyway, have a great Lunar New Year and a friendly reminder that its not just Chinese people who celebrate this event so calling it 'Chinese New Year' is kindof sino-centric. It'd be like calling January 1st 'Canadian New Year'. Yeah...kinda weird.
Oh and finally I'll be on 102.3 Radio Centreville (Montreal's commuity radio station) today talking about how much food one consumes on a given New Years weekend. To use my self as an example, I ate for 6 hours straight at Cedric's place. Yeah, good luck to all those who have to do this all weekend.
Rob arrives back to Concordia after being away for a month...
Phil: Hurrow... Rob: What? Phil: Hurrow? Rob: What the fuck Phil? Phil: I'm speaking Chinese... Rob: What? What the fuck? What kind of racist shit is that? Phil: I'm saying 'good meat.' Rob: Ohhhhhh... I thought you were saying hello with a really bad Chinese accent. Phil: (in a sad voice) I just wanted to show you what Mandarin I've learned while you were gone... Rob: Whoops.
Please check out "Wrestling: The One-Ring Circus" photography exhibit at the Windsor Gallery, a friend of mine, Brian Howell, is the photographer. The exhibit goes on from now until February 8th and follows the release of Mickey Rourke's movie 'The Wrestler'. Brian's work however, has been around for years before the film and is passionate and painfully raw, I remember buying the book from him to give to by buddy Al for Christmas and just marvelling at the emotion oozing from the pictures.
Brian traveled with me in China and is a really cool dude. The last time I chatted with him he was thinking about doing stuff on punk in China and was currently (the last time I talked to him was about 8 months ago) breaking into demolished houses in Surrey and Delta. In another life (and if I was braver) I'd be doing the exact same thing.
I liked this video a lot. While I'm sure a lot of this has to do with the fact that it pretty much is the same topic as my thesis, she does a really good job presenting it and shows that she has done a lot of research. I find the performance to be a bit too flamboyant, but I'm willing to concede that maybe its because I'm a boring academic.
About a month or so ago I was interviewed for the 'Toronto Star' by a very cool dude by the name of Raju Mudhar. As a matter of fact, even after the interview we chatted about gaming, journalism and a whole ton of other cool stuff. I forgot about the article but when I mentioned it off-hand to my mom she decided to go try to find it. And here it is! Trust a librarian to be able to find anything I guess!
http://www.thestar.com/article/540687
On a somewhat related note, Paul went out and bought an XBox 360 for Christmas and he's been playing Farcry 2 like a fiend. I on the other hand am glued to GTA IV. On the horizon? Fallout 3, Dead Space, MK vs DC and much, much more. The Parungao boys are saying goodbye to MMOs, and hello console.
Man, this physically pains me. Like Michael Bay level hurt. But sadly, I understand that Hollywood is almost always about the money, and almost never about preserving credibility or talent. Evidence? At least five huge mainstays in popular Korean cinema and Japanese anime are being converted to the Western big screen and the outlook is pretty murky. I'm tempted to just out-and-out call them terrible but I don't like to judge until I see the final product...but really, lets go through these one by one.
Dragonball
Yeah its kinda old news that one of the biggest the Japanese anime series of all time is being converted to a live action film but it seemed to flow with the theme of this post. Now I'm not a huge Dragonball Z fan, although I watched a ton of it back when I was young. I'm predict this is going to be another 'Transformers' where the acting is stale, the film will lean far too heavily on graphics, the fanboys will be pissed that the movie didn't follow the original storyline, the film will be overly stylized with no sense of irony...oh yeah, and it'll make a ton a money. Mind you, since I'm not a huge fan, I'm not particularly pained by this, I mean really, how would they make it true to the original text? Have them stand around staring at each other sizing each other up for 45 minutes?
Oldboy
One of my favorite movies of all time. And who do they turn the reins over to? Steven Spielberg and Will Smith. Sigh. They do a good marketing twist though. When asked if the movie will be the same as the Korean version Will Smith responds, "we're going farther than that, we're going to adapt it from the original comic." How do we read this? Ah, we can't have a storyline as controversial as the Korean Oldboy but we don't want to upset the fanboys so we give a wishy-washy answer. Hmmm maybe Spielberg can include some aliens a la the recent Indiana Jones movie or A.I. Or maybe Will Smith can write a pop-rap song about being stuck in a room for a decade.
JSA (Joint Security Area in Korea...Joint Security America in the U.S.)
Yes, I agree. The social-political context between the US-Mexico border parallels the North/South Korean border. Man. And while I might not be a scholar in US history, I don't think that at any point being friends with Mexican border guards could potentially cause a full-scale war. How exactly do you pull off this film? Oh I see, get the guy who wrote 'King Arthur' to do it. That'll be good.
Cowboy Bebop
My favorite anime series is becoming a live action film, and I'm actually quite calm about it. I'm actually kind of interested in what they'll do. So far Keanu Reeves has been pulled in for Spike which, I guess is kind of fitting (in all honesty you don't need crazy acting chops to play Spike, just lean on the wall a lot and smoke). I tell you what. Keep the gritty atmosphere and I'll watch. Moreover, you've got the Matrix team behind it which makes me much more optimistic. Please, please, please...keep 'Tank' on the project. Their music is out of this world.
Akira
In a good case scenario this movie will be good, and surprisingly I'm optimistic as its being described as 'Blade Runner' meets 'City of God.' Wow, nice name dropping there Warner Brothers. You even made a bitter skeptic like me re-think the entire project. Moreover the exec bringing this to the table is the same person who spearheaded the new Batman franchise and 300 which have a similar dark atmospheres - so the chances of them candy-coating Akira are a bit less than if, oh, Spielberg took on this project. However, if they do re-vamp the ending to be more kid-friendly the movie is done-for, but in all fairness, how do you pull off a giant disgusting mutating blob that kills everyone in Tokyo and make it work for an American audience? Time will tell.
