Archive for Korean cinema

a journal of the collapse, conquest, [1904] war, famine, and death [end of the] year

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 21, 2024 by xi'an

Read System Collapse  (Murderbot diaries #7) by Martha Wells. A sequel to the previous Network Effect, which I only partly remembered. The originaly of this volume is the unreliability of the half-organic android (on which I cannot expand because of spoilers!), even though the limited scope of the story is rather disappointing.

Made bagels at home with half rye, half wheat. Definitely tolerable (esp. when compared with my earlier experiment) and dense enough but open to improvements (I plan to try with no egg finish!, cooler raising temperature, and a different type of yeast).

Watched Korean Officer Black Belt (무도실무관)), thinking it was a series. Single movie it was, and definitely more than long enough as it aligns stereotypes and predictable battle scenes, with no active female character (but plenty of female victims)… And Japanese Golden Kamuy (ゴールデンカムイ) thinking it was a movie. Which it was except it ends unfinished (and is continued as a live-action television series). Inspired from a popular manga and taking place after the Russo-Japanese war of 1904. The manga inspiration is very clear, but the window on Ainu culture is worth noting, if somewhat shallow. (With the miso joke overstaying its limited comic potential.)

a journal of the conquest, war, famine, and death year

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 11, 2023 by xi'an

Read Les chiens et la charrue (Le cycle de Syffe, tome 3 ) by Patrick K. Dewdney, which came out after a long hiatus (esp. when missing the parution in September 2021!). It thus proved hard to remember the complex structure of this universe, as well as the names of characters from the earlier volumes. But after one slow third of the book, including an endless river slog, the right pace set in and I read the remaining 400 pages quite quickly (the trip to Jeddah helped!), with a climactic ending, despite a few too many coincidences. Looking forward the next tome, next year maybe?! While still being stuck in the (disappointing) last tome of Christelle Dabos’ The Mirror Visitor, I read another Max Gladstone’s, Dead Country (The Craft War I), within a few days, despite some weaknesses in the style (heavy infodump disguised as teacher/pupil conversations) and in the story. Unsure I will pursue this series.Had an enjoyable early dinner at Otto, a Rue Mouffetard izayaka. Despite some highlights of the menu being unavailable, the remaining dishes were worth the visit! (And the bet that there would be a table available on a warm Saturday evening.)

Watched Korean Money Heist, which, I am told, is the K clone of La Casa de Papel (I had not watched). Very light and requiring a high tolerance for unlikely so unlikely twists, but with very good actors who managed to keep the pace till the last episode. With a appearance supposedly of the martyr city of Kherson, even though it is actually Hallstatt, Austria. (Just why would a North Korean student read Mayakovski’s poems in a Latin language while in Vladivostok?!)

a journal of the conquest, war, famine, and death year

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 25, 2023 by xi'an

Read both following volumes of Peter May’s Lewis trilogy, The Lewis Man and The Chessmen. The stories remain focussed on the same few characters as in the first volume, with some predictable developments and a rather heavy borrowing to the local history in the shape of a peat-bog mommy or a plane crash. And of the terrible early 20th Century policies of dispatching orphans throughout Scotland without ever checking on their well-being. Rather disappointing in the end with way too many convenient coincidences, implausible twists of fate, and larger than life characters. (And very artificial dialogues of teenagers, either in the 1980’s or in the 2010’s.) Read also two remarkable Tanizaki’s short stories, Fumiko’s feet and The mermaid’s lament. Which demonstrate impressive writing style. And his Diary of a mad old man, written in a completely different way, about an hypochondriac old man obsessed by his son’s wife, who negotiates glimpses at the highest price. It reminded me of Kawabata’s Sound of the Mountain, although the later is much more ambiguous on that relation. (Obviously not the only one to note the similarities.)

Moved the title of this recurring post to add another horseman for another year. Next round, if any, I will have to borrow a fifth horseman from Terry Pratchett!

Had another great lunch at KGB, in the Odéon district of Paris, which stands for Kitchen Gallery Bis and has no obvious Russian connections. Both the surprise collection of primi piatti (incl. a wagyu bouillon and a cold squid salad) and the half-baked tuna were original and an avalanche of flavours. I skipped the desert, centred on rhubarb, as this is our current fare, making fresh rhubarb [from the farmers’ market] marmalade once or twice a week (with a heavy spoonful of ginger).

Watched part of The Mother, a total waste of time as another action movie with implausible situations, a complete disregard to real life constraints, and the permanent glorification of guns.

a journal of the plague, sword, and famine year

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 2, 2023 by xi'an

Read Brent Weeks’ The Way of Shadows, a rather traditional tale of an orphan boy learning assassin’s skills from a master, within a crime guild organisation tolerated by a feudal structure itself ruled by a below-par king, with the usual dilemma between dedication to the (gory and amoral) job and love+friendship+loyalty constraints. Both collide when the love+friends+kingdom come under actual threat from a neighbouring total-evil kingdom. Some aspects of the dilemma are interesting, other are not and weaknesses in the scenario abound. The final climax of this first volume is quite disappointing, but cannot be discussed as a sequence of major spoilers. I wonder whether the following volumes will see some improvement. And Gone to Dust by Matt Goldman, a somewhat enjoyable detective novel but… lacking a proper level of surprise, with whiffs of Marlowe emanating from the central character, Nils Shapiro, an annoying tendency to brand name dropping, detailed descriptions of itineraries that should bore even the locals, and the of-so-convenient! recourse to Somali terrorism in the middle of Minneapolis, to solve the day. Plus a painful insistence on how foul Winter is in Minnesota…

Had a week of Venetian fare at Da’a Marisa, the de facto cantine of Ca’Foscari! And a sampling of neighbouring cannoli, not always successful and not competing with the cannoleria I visited in Milano, which made me cook a batch myself for Easter weekend. With the result that the tubes were reasonable but the ricotta filling too liquid.

Watched the last season of the BBC series His Dark Materials, while wondering whether or not the third volume of the Book of Dust would ever appear. And Kill Boksoon (길복순) which is a manga style movie playing on the hardship of being a single mother when working full time as a contracted killer! Very light (and gory) if rather funny.

a journal of the plague, sword, and famine year

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 2, 2023 by xi'an

Read my very first Annie Ernaux piece and it was in English, in The New Yorker! A very short piece on a short visit to her mother. Beautifully written, carrying the bittersweet feeling of the impossibility to reconnect with earlier times and earlier impressions. I was much less impressed, however, by her Nobel discourse and the use of Rimbaud’s race (and Galton’s and Fisher’s…) in such a different context. A constant projection/fixation on her background and class inequalities, supplemented by an ethic of ressentiment, does not sound enticing, the more because auto-fiction has never appealed to me. (Sharing similar social and geographic [Rouen!] backgrounds sounds precisely as the wrong reason to contemplate reading her books.)

Cooked weekly butternut soups, red cabbage stews and squid woks as these are the seasonal best offers at the local market, along with plentiful Norman scallops, not yet impacted by inflation. Also restarted making buckwheat bread, with the side advantages of temporarily heating home (and a pretense to add the rice pudding dish in the oven!).

Watched Trolls, Wednesday (only on Wednesdays), and Decision to Leave. Apart from the Norge exposure, the first is terrible, esp. when compared with the earlier 2010 tongue-in-cheek Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren).Wednesday is a television series that centres on Wednesday Addams, the dead-pan daughter in the Addams family. I found the series hilarious, even though intended for YA audiences. The quality of the episodes varies, those from Tim Burton usually coming on top, but the main character (Wednesday, in case you are not paying attention!) is fantastic. (The fact that, Christina Ricci, the actor playing Wednesday in the 1991 movie is also involved in the series is a great wink to the earlier installments of this series.) And, final argument, a series where the heroin pogoes to a song by The Cramps cannot turn all bad! The Korean Decision to Leave (헤어질 결심) is a masterpiece (except for the ridiculous climbing scenes!) in deception and ambiguity (with a very thin connection to Hitchcock’s Vertigo). Far from his backup role in the stunning Memories of Murder, Park Hae-il is fabulous as a policeman torn between his duty and an inexplicable attraction for the main suspect, brilliantly played by  Tang Wei, who manages the ambiguous character till the very end.