Giant Monsters All Out Attack Week Day 3: Gamera 3 Revenge of Iris

After nearly a year, I'm finally finishing the Gamera trilogy. The series itself spans 4 years, so technically, I have to say I'm ahead of schedule.

We start off with a dead Gyaos somewhere near the equator. You may remember the Gyaos from Gamera: Guadian of the Universe. They were the pterodactyl type things. Giant lizard birds, sent to destroy the earth. This particular Gyaos is dead.

Next we cut to a sub scanning the ocean floor where they find a metric shit ton of Gamera skeletons. It's like a Gamera graveyard. It's crazy. The opening credits then roll over a recap of the prior two movies. It shows mostly the battle between Gamera and the Gyaos. Legion is surprisingly under represented. Next we meet Ayana whose parents were killed during the attack while trying to save their cat, Iris. Ayana jumps up as it was only a dream.

Ayana is bitter and hates Gamera. Gamera stole her precious! We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little Gameras. Wicked, tricksy, false! Her obsession draws her to a creature hatched from an egg that she names Iris. The creature begins to bond with her through a pendant similar to the comma's from the first movie.

Gamera himself is still busy battling the Gyaos and is returning to Japan. The government and citizens are kind of getting fed up with the destruction caused by these battles and want to kill Gamera himself.

As Iris grows, it tries to absorb Ayana into itself. Ayana is freed from the cocoon, however Iris then decides to feed on the life force of the other people of the village. Ayana is taken to Kyoto and Iris follows. Iris, however is intercepted by Gamera and the battle begins. Ayana learns that it was her own hatred that Iris has fed off of and the Gamera was not responsible for her parents death. Gamera, in turn, saves Ayana and kills Iris, the end.

This was a fun movie. Seriously. It was better than a lot of the Godzilla stuff from the mid-90s on. While it was very story driven, there was a good amount of death and destruction. There was even a fair amount of CGI in it which is somewhat abnormal for Japanese Kaiju movies, though it certainly worked in this one. Let's go with 8 buildings destroyed with your parents inside looking for a cat that will feed your anger and lust for Kaiju blood until you, in turn, lead to the destruction of another city in your quest for revenge out of 10.

Those shoes aren't red!

Sometimes, it's fun just to go to Best Buy and look at movies you've never heard of and try to find something good in that barren landscape of anonymity. Like finding a needle in a haystack. Sometimes you find something amazingly fun, like Kamikazee Girls the rest of the time, you pick up something like The Red Shoes.

The Red Shoes is a South Korean movie written and directed by Yong-gyun Kim. The only description that the back cover has is "Mysteriously abandoned on a subway platform lies a pair of red shoes... to die for" The front cover just has the title with the tag line "one size kills all" and a bloody shoe with a decomposing foot still in it. At this point, I'm thinking "wow, this looks pretty sweet."

So, I take it home, where I decide to watch it. The movie starts on a subway platform where a young lady see an abandoned pair of shoes. She goes to grab them and put them on, but another girl saw them too. And they fight for them. And the second girl wins and walks off, wearing the shoes. As she's walking away, the shoes eat her feet!

And at this point, I'm thinking "wow, this looks pretty sweet." I was so wrong. The movie didn't make any fucking sense. The mom finds the shoes next, and her husband is cheating on her, so she turns on the humidifier and goes to find a new apartment with her daughter. Then, apparently, she meets an interior designer/squatter who is designing an office. Then the mom and daughter are fighting over the shoes, and I mean FIGHTING. And then the mom falls in love with the designer or something. And then, her friend takes the shoes and has an "accident" and gets her feet cut off. And then...I don't know, man, this movie had holes Hannibal could lead his army though. The mom really did sum the whole thing up at one point...

Yeah, what are you talking about? What the hell is going on here? The most interesting thing about this is that it feels like there's a whole Lord of the Rings thing going on. The shoes are the One Ring. The mom is Frodo, the daughter is...well, not Sam, maybe Boromir? The designer could be Sam though. And the subway is Mount Doom. In that regard, it's kinda interesting. It's like this epic quest to destroy a pair of shoes. Except, no one is looking to destroy them.

The movie wasn't very good. And, the shoes weren't even red! They were pink. All in all, I'd say it's something like 3 lone sneakers on the side of the road out of 10.

Look! I can see!

What if you were born blind, and then, through the miricle of modern surgery, you were given new, working, eyes? What would you do? Stare at everything? Look at yourself in the mirror like the vain asshole you are? What if you found out that you were the ugliest motherfucker in a three county radius? Would you gouge your eyes out with a spoon?

None of these questions are really asked in the Pang Brothers' 2002 movie, The Eye. Instead, they focus on a woman who, after receiving an eye transplant is able to see into the spooky world of Chinese ghosts. Ghosts, it would seem, are naturally kind of hazy.

It's like every so often looking into a sort of pseudo-reality. A place where Death wears a tight black turtleneck and where's mime makeup. And of course, eventually, people start to notice that you're talking to people that aren't there.

Oh, and there's a cancer kid hanging around.

And a ghost who needs to find his report card.

There is something about a good ghost story that really gets under my skin and just creeps me out. That's why I watch them. Zombies, vampires. They don't do that to me. Ghost stories do. It's funny. I don't believe in ghosts, but they scare the hell out of me. I can't understand that.

The Eye had a lot going for it. A great look. Good cast. Good acting. Great concept. The problem is the story. Typically a movie is Character A can do this, Character B needs this, Characters A and B get together to accomplish Thing. The problem here is that the movie is nearly over by the time you realize what needs to happen. For that matter, before you realize that something has to happen.

It was good though. I really dug it. It was one of those movies I've been meaning to watch for just about ever and I'm glad now that I've finally seen it. Overall, I'll give it 7 Deaths Dressed As Steve Jobs out of 10.

I like flying because I actually manage to watch movies when I fly.

There are 2 things in this world that I love. 1) Peanut butter. Creamy. Sometimes on toast, sometimes on a bagel, in hummus, in anything. Hell I'll eat peanut butter by the spoonful! Yum! 2) Pants fresh from the dryer. Especially on a cold day in mid January.

There are two other things I love. 1) Radio. 2) Japanese movies about ghosts.

Of those two groupings, only one of them is well represented by 2005's The Booth.

The Booth starts off with some grainy footage of an older man hosting a call in show. A woman calls who wants to talk about a suicide pact that she entered into with someone when their parents didn't want them to get hitched. Homeboy, rockin the mic, asks her a bit about it and she says that it was 30 years ago! And the dude...LIVED. He let her kill herself and then moved on with his life. Apparently, he went on to host a radio talk show, because the announcer stood up and hung himself in the studio.

Studio 6.

Fast forward to present day Tokyo. You can tell it's modern because there's all sorts of bright lights and the director isn't using that grainy effect anymore. Shingo is a rocking late night radio host, or "jock" (as in disc JOCKey. That's an industry term for you), who hosts a show called Love Lines. A show about, you guessed it, people's love problems (that's a terrible sentence, isn't it? Ugh). Watch out Dr. Drew Pinsky.

Shingo is an asshole, or "jock." Well, maybe that's being overly judgmental. If you do a lot of shitty things to people, does that mean you're a shitty person? Scholars and philosophers have been trying to figure that out for years. And it's a discussion best left to the likes of them.

We've all done things that we regret. Or regret things we've failed to do. Ever joke with someone about their breath being fouler than...we'll something really foul? And that's what The Booth prey's on. What if it turned out that all of these transgressions came back to haunt you. The paranoia of everything coming back and biting you in the ass.

The fear of suddenly having everyone you know out to get you. All of a sudden, your phone screener with the stinky breath is giving you "weirdos" to talk to. Your board operator is "accidentally" leaving your mike open when you bad mouth a client. Your writer "is looking" for some new headphones for you. Your now ex-girlfriend shows up for work with that "scar" on her face from when you dragged her across the gravel parking lot.

All of this set against the backdrop of the "haunted" Studio 6.

And Shingo does exactly what you would do. He pisses himself. Twice.

And then he does that thing he does at the end.

I hate giving away the ending of a movie.

The Booth was written and directed by Yoshihiro Nakamura, who also wrote the screenplay for the original, Japanese, version of Dark Water. Itself an adaptation of a short story by Koji Suzuki who wrote Ringu, or the original version of The Ring. Somehow everything always comes back to Ringu.

At 74 minutes, it's a pretty short movie, and that's probably to it's benefit. It's a clever spin on the Japanese ghost movie, and if it had been much longer it may have tried to get too clever. As it is, the end of the movie was already a bit of a let down. At the same time, it was a pretty good ending for the movie. Does that make any sense? Well, watch the movie. Let me know how you would describe it.

Overall, it was enjoyable. I dug it. I'd been looking forward to it since I heard about it a year ago. So, I'll give it 7 presets on my car stereo out of ten.

Go go Godzilla

I don't care what happens in my life, or what happens when I grow up, all I know it that I hope I never get to a point in my life where I don't enjoy watching people in rubber monster costumes destroy cities and fight each other.

So, I was watching Godzilla: Final Wars again over the weekend. Oh, and Godzilla: Tokyo SOS.

Final Wars is really a pretty fun movie. My biggest complaint about it is that there wasn't actually enough Godzilla. There was too much ancillary Xmen bullshit going on to take away from the giant monster apocolypse that should have been the focus of the movie. I mean, this, according to Toho, is Godzilla's swan song. This is it. After 50+ years he's finally getting the gold watch and a shove out the door leaving a legacy of carnage and destruction that will keep Japanese contractors in business for years.

And it's a shame. I mean, here is an employee who, for half a century, embodied the Toho work ethic. His attendance was perfect, he came to the office early every morning and worked late every evening. But, such is the lonely life of the salary man...err monster.

Regardless, Toho did manage to throw one hell of a retirement party for the big guy, and nearly all of his friends showed up. Mothra, Ceaser, Ghidorah, Rodan, Gigan, hell, even his American cousin made an appearance (even if he does get called a "tuna eating monster", poor kid). The only one missing was Mechagodzilla, but, it's understandable since they sunk him at the bottom of the ocean in the last movie, so, he was occupied. I think the big guy understood though.

Hopefully he's spending his time wisely, enjoying his time, maybe finally getting to spend some time with his son. Taking him to T-ball on Monster Island. Maybe getting in a few rounds of golf. Just, living the so-called "good life", you know? Because, as the ruling King of Monsters for 50 years, Godzilla deserves some time for himself now.

Base u ball

Sometimes you look at a movie and see certain names or ideas associated with it that really get your hopes up. You look at a movie like Battlefield Baseball and think, baseball + murderous freaks, how can you go wrong? Apparently pretty easily.

Start by putting in a weird musical number, then DON'T PLAY BASEBALL.

It's a real choppy story of a guy who killed his dad playing catch. Everything happens too coincidentally.

It was pretty stupid, and I really don't want to spend much more time writing about it.

That's a lot of commas

Ga-mer-a...Gaaa-mmmer-a...Guardian of the Uuu-ni-verse... sing along with me...GAAAAAAA-MMMMMERRR-AAAA.

Screw you. I'm trying to bring some excitement to your otherwise giant monster-less lives! And this is the response I get. Indifference! Hmph.

Well, I'm going to get to it, even if you don't care about my love of giant monsters. Speaking of which, did you see this? Lava Shark. Totally. The lava shark is going to emerge from Mt St Hellens and ravage Seattle. And I will be in love. No, I'm not kidding. I'm going to start the First United Church of the Lava Shark. I will worship it and sacrifice potatoes to it. I will write bad goth poetry about how I am so in love with the Lava Shark, but the slings and arrows stop him from truly loving me.

Back to the matter at hand though, Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. No, I wasn't singing it that time, just proper attribution. Right, the movie starts off like many monster movies do, at sea. A ship seemingly runs aground. But, they're out at sea! What the heck, some sort of atoll? We'll come back to that.

Meanwhile, giant prehistoric birds are attacking a small island. Where the hell did they come from??? And why are there glasses in their poop! Oh no! The professor!

Back at the atoll, there's an odd rock. Let's dig it up. It's a monolith, and there are commas EVERYWHERE! Let's take them. The excavators touch the monolith and it shatters, waking Gamera from his sleep.

The birds though are beginning to threaten Tokyo! We have to capture them...to research them. Let's lure them into the retractable roof stadium with raw beef! And then shoot them! With tranquilizers, not bullets. They're trying to escape! Here comes Gamera! Kill him!

Wait, what? Gamera is on our side.

That's sort of the gist of the movie. It's fun. It's a fun movie. I need to see the next 2 in this particular trilogy. I need to get them and maybe make a night of it with Gamera and Godzilla. My two favorite monsters.

It occured to me though that we as Americans don't really make many giant monster movies. It seems that it's just not something that appeals to the masses here. I mean sure, there was Jurassic Park, which was KIND of a monster movie. Or the remake of King Kong, which was crap. And of course the American version of Godzilla, which wasn't bad, but would have been better had they not called it Godzilla. Maybe they could have called it...Jonathon.

I think we need more giant monsters though. Massive creatures who destroy cities and fight amongst themselves. And maybe they can fight big robots. Big robots with claws.

Just a fun movie

If there was anything good that came of the Ultraviolet suckfest, it was that it ended. And when it ended, it was time to watch a new movie.

Now, I have a tendancy to rent/buy/watch movies that I know almost nothing about. Take a chance and hope for the best, you know? Sometimes it doesn't work out real well, but in the case of Kamikaze Girls, it worked out great.

I get the feeling that IMDB is going to be able to explain it better than me...

Momoko is an ordinary girl, living an ordinary life. Ordinary, that is, if you define ordinary as wearing elaborate lolita dresses from the Rococo period in 18th Century France. A complete fish out of water in her rural and sleepy Japanese town, where everyone buys their clothes (and everything else) at the same store and no one understands her, Momoko's life is one of sugared sweets and frilly treats. Desperate to make some money to pay for her expensive indulgence, Momoko tries selling bootleg Ver*ace and Uni*ersal Studios clothes left over from her Dad's yakuza (gangster) days. However, when punk girl and self-styled 'Yanki' Ichiko comes calling, her days as 'ordinary' are most certainly numbered... Road movie, buddy comedy, deeply insightful and surprisingly touching, the surreal world only further highlights the all too real friendship that brings these two unlikely girls together.

Sorry, I tried summing it up like 3 times and it just wasn't making any sense. So, I cheated.

Moving on. The movie is just fun. It's ridiculous, but in just the right way. It's the kind of movie that I would probably just look past on most days, but I'm glad I took a chance on it, because, honestly, it's one of the best movies I've seen in a while. It was just a fun movie. It moves at a fast pace and there's always something bizarre going on, Momoko's dad farting in her face or her friend Ichiko attacking her. It's constant and hilarious. And it's very much like a live action cartoon like Kung-Fu Hustle.

Seriously, check it out.

Here's the trailer, see for yourself.

So far, yes I am remembering

I still think you should see Lady Vengeance. I know I want to see it again. And, I remember, I posted a thing about the Detroit Film Theatre showing Lady Vengeance May 5-7. That's going to be $7.50 well spent.

I don't know where, or when it's playing in your area. I would tell you if I knew. April 28th maybe? Damned limited releases!

Now, to find out where I can buy that poster...

Only thing missing was Alice.

After this, I'm all caught up. This feels like a rush job, doesn't it? Dammit. I'm trying to take my time. Write what I want to write. *sigh* Well, let's get on with it.

Into the Mirror. Korean movie. A lot of supernatural stuff, but not really a horror movie. It's more of a detective story. You see, there's this department store called Dreampia and a year ago, there was fire. And one of the employees died. And now, she's haunting the store. Ok. I'm in. Tell me more.

Well, the woman's body was identified by four coworkers. Her sister was in a mental hospital at the time and couldn't do it herself. Did I say sister? I meant TWIN sister. That's right. Identical twins. Same face, same dna, same blood type. You name it.

Meanwhile, head of mall security is a former cop (and excellent marksman) who one year ago, in an attempt to save his partner who was being held at gunpoing, took a chance at tried to shoot the hostage holder. Unfortunatly, he shot a mirror. His partner was killed.

A mirror! That's how the ghost is now killing the ones who "identified" her body. One by one, their reflections attack them.

The whole premise is that there are two worlds and that mirrors are the divider. Following? Good. You see, if you die on one side, you can stay alive on the other. Vampires for example, have no reflection, because they DIED on the other side of the mirror. DiVinci, according to the movie may have been the opposite, perhaps coming through from the otherside (speculation because he wrote his name backwards).

And I'll tell you this, the mirror thing is done real well. It looks good when the mirror image is not doing what the person is doing. Like, the reflection slitting it's throat with a pizza cutter and the person's neck starts to bleed. In the reflection, there's blood on the pizza cutter but on the floor, it's clean. Those sort of things are done consitently well through the movie.

Oh! I said this was a mystery, right? So, what's the mystery...well, it's who's killing these people and why. Pretty simple. But, we know who like halfway through, so it becomes a what happened kind of thing. If I say more, I risk giving things away. So, we'll stop the play by play there.

Overall, it was good. I really enjoyed it, which was a relief after being pretty disapointed with the movies I've seen lately. It was definatly a relief to see something that I not only enjoyed, but it made sense. Everything came together well. This is something that I would definatly recommend.

All the budget of a porno, but none of the fun.

I'm just flying through posting today. Gotta catch up on that backlog. One more after this and I might be done for the day.

Friday night, I watched a movie. It was called...I don't know. Apparently, it is SANADA KUNOICHI NINPÔ-DEN: KASUMI. Or, as it was advertised on eBay when I bought it, Azumi 3. Or Kazumi. It's a female ninja story, in the vein of Azumi, which is a terrific movie if you get the chance to see it, it's sequel is very good, too. This movie, however was a massive pile of crap.

Low buget, that's fine. I'm cool with that. The acting was...like I know, it was subtitled. And this is the fun part. Apparently it was "machine subbed" which as far as I can tell means that the loaded the subtitles into a machine gun and let the words go where ever they felt like. It made no sense. Remember that homeless guy you met downtown? The one with 3 teeth and a radio playing static arguing with himself? Made him look like a mensa member. If you translated something to english with no consideration for tenses or sentance structure, you'd get something like this.

And then there was the sex scenes. And I have to bring this up...it wasn't enough to be considered pornography. Just some boobs. And, trust me, you've seen better (or worse depending on your perspective) on Cinemax. And here's the worst part, it was boring. Like, skip over it boring. As in "can we get back to the funny dialouge" boring.

So, it was bad. It was nonsense. It wasn't Izo bad...but it was close. So, if you ever get the chance...watch it. No, really. I'm not suffering on my own. You have to watch this. It's worth trying to read the subtitles after a few beers with your friends. You'll get alaugh out of it. And at less than an hour and a half, it's not a horrible waste of time.

But, no, don't, it sucked.

Woo! Fun!

I think some people put too much emphasis on a movie having to be serious. Sometimes a movie is just junk food for your brain. No, maybe you can't live off of goofy kinda stupid movies. But to me, Twins Effect II is sort of the equivilent of cheating on your diet. You can eat healthy constantly, but sometimes you just have to break down and have that milk shake. Fuck what the doctor says, fuck your lactose intolerance, just go for it.

Right. Twins Effect II, a sequel in name only really. Like the first movie, released stateside as Vampire Effect, it stars pop duo The Twins, Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung. Where the first movie was about vampires, kind of, the second does not. So, luckily you don't have to see one to understand the other (unlike The Matrix, which I still don't understand...). This time the Twins (who look nothing alike) get to travel through a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-like landscape. A world in which men are enslaved and women rule and headed by an evil queen who hates men and casts spells to give them...breasts. Like I said, it's not an Oscar contender.

The characters are on a mission to retrieve a sword called Excaliber (I think they got that from somewhere else, but I can't think of where). It's all bright colors, funny faces, cgi, wire work and weird characters with names like Blue Bird and 13th Young Master and Blockhead and Charchol Head. Yeah, this is serious cinema. This is what you discuss in your disertation on asian film and it's influence on western culture. Right.

And where, Vampire Effect had Jackie Chan, this one had doubled the Chan by including Jackie and his son Jaycee! That's right, 2 generations of Chans for the price of one! And 1 of them becomes KING.

Yes. It's a stupid movie, but it's stupid in such a fun way that I can't hold that againt it. And really, when you get down to it, isn't that WHY you watch movies? For something fun? At least once in a while? Twins Effect II is 106 min of goofy fun. Enjoy it while you can, I hear you have to watch something serious soon.

At least it's something that I WANT to watch again.

I'm not really sure what I expected out of Pulse, and to be honest, I'm not sure what I got from it either. I mean, I think I knew what was going on, but there's still this thing where, maybe there was more to the whole thing.

What I'm really curious of though it was the remake will be like this summer now. From what I've seen in the trailer it looks like a very "based on a true story" kind of remake. Some of it looks similar, most of it looks very different. I guess though that too coud be a technological difference as well. All of the internet stuff was dial up, and we're full on into broadband now.

I think it's the kind of movie that I'll end up needing to see again to really get it. I will say this though, I liked the way it started with a bunch of people who knew nothing of each other and had seperate stories and gradually they were either kind of brought together or killed off. Much lke the computer program in the movie...these dots that if they get too close they die, but if they get too far apart they're drawn closer together.

I was expecting a ghost story I think and got more an end of the world movie that at times reminded me a little of Dragonhead. And while that's not a BAD thing...I don't know, I think I'll need to watch it again.

What are they SAYING

After a bit of thought, I really think that DVDs were designed with me in mind. Ok, not ME me, but me as in people like me. Which makes it much more plausible and a bit less conceited. What I mean is, the ability to not just have a movie, but to have the special features along with it. Making Ofs and Deleted Scenes. Trailers for other movies, gag reels, easter eggs and of course audio commentaries.

And you know what? I love the commentary tracks. It started with Kevin Smith's Mallrats commentary and then Lord of the Rings. The thing is, sometimes, I'm not even sure what it is that I like about the commentaries. Hell I've listed to Eddie Izzard do a commentary for one of his stand up dvds! That was...weird.

So, imagine my disapointment when I tried to check out the commentary on Kung Fu Hustle and The Grudge. Why was I disapointed you ask? No? What do you mean, no? Are you trying to say you don't care? Well, fine. Be that way.

The commentaries aren't in English! No, I can understand that in Kung Fu Hustle. Hell, I kind of expected it. It's not exactly and English language movie to begin with. But The Grudge was!

I saw The Grudge in the theater. I bought the DVD right when it came out. Never once have I put the dvd in to watch it again. Not sure why, just haven't gotten around to it. Part of it was my anger when the Director's Cut came out a couple months later. Last week, I found the DC used for cheap, so I bought it. And, I'm not impressed. For being a DC, the second dvd of the same title, there's not a lot on the disc to entice someone who bought it once to buy it again. And with the commentary in Japanese, it's even less reason. And, I understand that the crew was Japanese. The director was Japanese. It was shot in Japan. I get that. I understand that. But, why not put a cast commentary on the disc, Sony? Huh?

If you're going to put out version after version after version of the same movie on dvd, one of 2 things needs to happen. The dvd needs to get better (have more stuff, a better video transfer, etc) or it needs to get cheaper. And since things don't get cheaper in this world, then they need to have more stuff on them. At the point that you are reasleasing a movie on dvd for the second or third time you are going for a market of people that have either already bought it once or twice, or the people who are holding out for the ultimate experiance. (I'd be the former. I can't wait for ANYTHING. That's why I buy so many imported movies. I hate knowing that a movie I want to see is out on dvd in another country, but may never see dvd here, but that's a whole other subject.)

So, with the two movies, I try listening to the commentary, only to have no idea what they're talking about. Yeah, it's subtitled, but I tend to be lying down without my glasses when I listen to the commentaries. So, that does me no good. I may never know what was going through Stephen Chow's head while he was making Kung Fu Hustle!

Just leave the kid out...or at least explain it.

Hot on the heels of my glowing, review I guess, of Infection, word is that New Line has picked up the rights to remake it, American-style.

I'm curious how they'll cast this, a group of up and coming young stars, a la Pulse. Or just with 1 kinda of well known name like most of these remakes. Or maybe they'll just sell it to NBC as a Very Special Episode of Scrubs. Personally, I like the third one.

Call the CDC, or go to confession?

Yeah, I've been trying to catch up on my movie watching lately. The sad part is that I still have like 75 movie to watch, just in my collection. I either need to stop adding to it, or admit I have a problem.

Infection. I knew nothing about it when I bought it. Only that it was an Asian horror movie and that was enough for me. Oddly enough, that's how I bought Spider Forest, too...

Infection takes place in a poorly funded hospital that is miraculously operating with 3 doctors and 3 nurses and a half dozen patients. IN THE ENTIRE PLACE. And then a patient dies. How, you ask? He was injected with calcium chlorate or some such thing. *gasp* Didn't the doctor ask for calcium chloride? No one knows. Time to hide the body!

Than an ambulance tries to drop off an infectious patient, but the doctor says, no, you can't leave him. Then the doctor leaves to do something else. Then a nurse sees that the ambulance driver LEFT the patient in the hallway. And I swear to you, it keeps going on like this.

I'll skip the rest of the story for you and get to what REALLY bothered me. You read that right, the story made sense until I started writing about it. It's in retrospect that it's bothering me. What I didn't get was the ending. They went for a sort of twist ending. Then they tried to do a twist on that, and then switched it up again. And WHAT THE FUCK WAS THE POINT OF THE KID?

All of this got my friend and I thinking. What if the movies being brought over here are really their crap? Kind of like if we translated and released House of the Dead in Japan. So, what if there's a bunch of people over in Japan talking about how GREAT some of these movies are and laughing as we watch them. Because, lets be honest, one of the biggest problems I've seen is that the endings in a lot of these movies don't make a much fucking sense.

The saddest part of all of this? I can sit here and bitch about it forever, but I really kind of liked Infection.

I think I have a problem.

Oh no, there goes tokyo

All my life there have been these movies that I've wanted to see. In some cases I've even managed to get these movies and proceed to NOT watch them. For example, late last year I got a copy of the 1954, original Godzilla. You know, the way it was BEFORE they added Perry Fucking Mason and fed it to America.

You know, for being 52 years old now, it's held up really well. I mean, sure, over the years movie making has changed quite a bit, and it would never look like this now, but over all, it was a really good movie that I couldn't understand WHY I'd never seen. And the tone of the film is just so different from modern Godzilla movies. If you watch Final Wars it's much more comic book-y, where the original had such a serious feeling to it.

But it HAD to be serious. Less than a decade prior, Japan had 2 nuclear weapons detonated on them. Everything from the monster to the oxygen destroyer was ultimatly a critique of nuclear weapons.

I can't imagine what it would have been like though to see this in 54. though, if I ever get a time machine, I'd like to find out.

Full circle back to Korea ...kinda

Over on the Lady Vengeance Myspace page you can download a selection of Lady Vengeance wallpapers for your little computer there.

Go on. You know you want to.

Ha! I'm not the only one bothered by it!

From Bloomberg.com:

South Korean Actor, Star of `Oldboy', Returns Medal to Govt

By Heejin Koo

Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) -- A South Korean actor who played the lead role in the international hit movie ``Oldboy,'' handed back a medal awarded to him by the government in protest over a cut in screening quotas for local films.

``The medal was personally my pride and honor,'' Choi Min Shik told reporters in Seoul today as he held his Jade Crest Cultural Medal, carefully wrapped in pale green satin. ``Now it is a symbol of the government's betrayal.''

South Korea's government announced Jan. 26 it would halve the number of days that cinemas must show local movies to 73 from 146, in response to demands by Pixar, Walt Disney Co. and other Hollywood studios. A week later, South Korea and the U.S. agreed to begin negotiations for a free-trade agreement.

``The government's decision to cut the quotas is equivalent to giving up our culture,'' said Choi, who received the medal, the fourth-highest honor awarded to artisans by the government, in July 2004. ``I don't need a medal from a country that chooses to stamp on our own cultural rights.'' The actor was speaking in Seoul just before his one-man protest in front of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism today, at which he returned the award.

Clad in a thick coat, turtle-neck sweater and gloves, he planned to stand in the sleet and snow holding a sign that read: ``Oldboy would not have existed without the screening quota.''

The film, directed by Chan Wook Park, was the second most successful film in the country in terms of ticket sales and won the grand jury prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Other prominent local actors also demonstrated against the government's decision, with Ahn Sung Ki, Park Jung Hoon and Jang Dong Kun taking turns to stage daily lone protests in downtown Seoul or in front of the National Assembly. The moviemakers' coalition plans to hold a march in central Seoul to protest the free trade negotiations.

The U.S. wants to expand trade with South Korea, its seventh-largest trading partner, which in the first 11 months of 2005 totaled $25 billion in U.S. exports and $40 billion in Korean imports. An agreement with South Korea would be the most significant accord since its North American Trade Agreement, Nafta, signed with Canada and Mexico 15 years ago, said U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman.

I used to work with a guy named Hollywood.

South Korea is LOWERING it's quota of Korean made films that must be shown in it's theaters. This move will allow more Hollywood crap to be shown in the country.

"Under the quota, introduced in 1966, local cinemas have to screen South Korean movies for 146 days a year to protect the local film industry. As of July 1, the quota will be reduced to 73 days, the finance ministry said."

Personally, I've seen too many bad Hollywood movies and too many good Korean movies to see this as a positive. Maybe, I'm just being biased, but anything that potentially limits the number of good movies being made is a bad thing to me. And if Korea needs to show fewer Korean movies, then logically, they'll make fewer movies and potentially take fewer chances and I think you could see more American style crap. Christ, Hollywood makes movies like The Dukes of Hazaard and Starsky and Hutch and they remake movies and they do very few unique movies, and I think it's a shame for that to spread to other parts of the world.

Read more at the Guardian