Death Note

(sorry I couldn't find a big movie poster)

I saw Death Note (デスノート) over the weekend, part 1 and 2. I never seen the anime or read any of the manga. Actually I thought the films were pretty good. The film stars Tatsuya Fujiwara (藤原 竜也) as Yagami Light and Ken'ichi Matsuyama (松山 ケンイチ) as L. First I want to talk about the bad stuff of the film. It seemed to me like it was a medium budged film, and some of the acting from some of the other actors wasn't that good. It seemed more like a TV show movie, I mean like a Sentai or Kamen Rider movie. Where they just add more effects to make it look different from the show. (gotta go right now I'll rewrite this post later)

Am I crazy?

After I first heard RIP SLYME I started to look for Bathing Ape Clothing or BAPE for short. Some of the T-shirts I found on line cost as much as $50 and I thought I had to be crazy to pay that much for a shirt, But I would pay $60 for a hoodie. Anyway I recently started looking for David Beckham's LA Galaxy Jersey. I found them but they coast $80. I really want one and now I started to reconsider paying $50 for a BAPE shirt. Why wouldn't I if I'm will to pay $80 for a Beckham shirt? Am I crazy?

A List for George

George, just in case you can't read the characters I put in your e-mail here are the pics so that you can know what I'm talking about.



Dalja's Spring - 吳達子的春天


When Spring Comes - 春暖花開的時候


Hana Yori Dango 2 - 流星花園 2 (又名-花樣男子 2)

New Top Ten list

This is my Top ten list, like I said I like to ask people that I first meet what their fravoite 10 movies are. This list isn't permanent, it changes from year to year depending on when I see a good film. The only film that is in the right place is my #1 choice, which I think is the best movie I've ever seen. The rest or just on my list and their rankings don't mean that I like one more than the other.

1) Le Pacte des loups - The Brotherhood Of the Wolf (France)
2) Jade Warrior - 玉战士/Jade Soturi (china/Finnland)
3) A Bittersweet Life - 달콤한 인생 (South Korea)
4) Infernal Affairs 2 - 無間道 2 (Hong Kong)
5) Matando Cabos - Killing Cabos (Mexico)
6) Boonedock Saints (USA)
7) Blue Spring - 青い春 (Japan)
8) Hero - 英雄 (China)
9) Beat - 비트 (South Korea)
10) Shiri - 쉬리 (South Korea)

Jade Warrior

One of the few films I picked up at the Convention over the weekend was Jade Warrior. Which I actually thouht was really good, good enough to earn a spot on my top ten list. Anyway, I had first heard about this film while reading an article on KFCCINEMA.COM that talked about a film being made between Finnland and China. Sounded interesting so I waited to hear something about it and I didn't hear anything. Luckaly I saw it at the convention and picked it up. I'm glad I did, the film is the not really orginal but the collaberation between the scandinavian country and China made this film seem like a breath of fresh air. The fight scenes are decent, nothing spectacular to get excited about. It's really one of the only down falls I found to the film, which to me seemed to try really hard to be the next Matrix. Which were done in that slow-mo effect and added in cgi to show the strenght of their movements by showing dust blow in the wind etc. The film stars Tommi Eronen (from Finnland), who plays a foreigner who goes to China to fight an evil force. His father was suppose to be an Asian man who went to a distant land and fell in love with a foreign woman. Anyway his farther was a blacksmith who made a devise called the "sampo" which could unlock "the oassis the human universe" but this evil force wants it to make it his own (basically he wants to form oassis as he wants which would be hell on earth). This evil force kills him and takes the box from him as he tries to open he finds out there is a saftey that would only allow his son to open the box. Kai/Santi (Tommi Eronen) is the only person who can defeat this evil. I forgot to mention that when he defeats his evil he will become enlightened and will no longer be reincarnated. He defeats the evil, but did not kill him, when he returns to the village of the woman he suppose to marry he finds out that she was in love with his best friend before she even met Santi. After he hears his love played by the very beautiful Jingchu Zhang (张静初) confess her love for his best friend he walks away. The evil then trickes him into opening the box only to find it empty. He puts the evil inside and locks him away, only to be reincarnated over and over in body not in mind, forgetting his purpose. The evil is released accidently by a scholar who know about the legend. The evil force is then released in our modern era. Knowing he can't open "oassis" with out santi he helps him remember his purpose and tricks him to open the box again revealing "oassis". By then Kai knows who he is and must fight the evil again before he brings hell to earth. I totally recommend this movie, the cinematography is nicely done and the soundtrack is beautiful.

New Videos

This weekend I went to the "Wizard World" comic book convention here in Chicago over the weekend. I've been going to the convention for over 10 years now. Last year I help a vendor sell videos and I didn't get to see much that year. Which took some of the magic out of it. I helped set up and later took apart the booth and help him move his product by giving recommendations. Which left me little time to actually look around the convention that year. That's why I was excited to go this year. As always I went for movies but found they're selection very disappointing. Every year is the same films: Storm Riders, A Man Called Hero, Versus, Alive. It's as if they don't know about all the other good films Asian cinema has to offer. Two movies that I picked up were Hero and Princess Blade. I already had them before but only on video and VCD, I thought it was time to get them on DVD. I did ask if anyone had the new Japanese movie Dororo (どろろ) but everyone said it wasn't out yet. I told them that it was and I knew it for a fact. They quickly replied that it wasn't distributed here yet,

I knew that, just because it wasn't out here yet doesn't mean that it's not out. That's because they were bootleggers and only bought Chinese disk or Thai disks, burned them and sold them again. Buying a Japanese’s disk for $50 bucks would be too much for them. Then they tried to say that most of this stuff isn't licensed here in America so they had to sell the Chinese imports. I had to bust them out by pointing to videos like The Host which i know is out in America distributed by Magnolia, along with other like Alive, Versus, which is releases by either Tokyo Shock or Media Blasters. OldBoy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance by Tartaran. But as anyone knows when you go to a convention or buy off of e-bay more than likely it’s a boot. I also found the second season of Hana Yori Dango (花より男子), but the vendor was selling it for $35 bucks. I said no way because I knew I could buy it off the next for at least $20 cheaper and it would be the very same disks.

I also bought a “Son of Godzilla” t-shirt, and a few other movies. Over the last few years I noticed a drop in Japanese toys being sold at the convention. I think one of the main reasons is that lots of comic books are being made into films again. Such as Punisher, Fantastic Four, and I mean again because if you know films you know that those films were made in the early 80’s and are still just as bad as they were then. Other movies already out are X-men (1 – 3), Spider-Man, Superman Returns, Batman Begins, etc.
You get my point. Also Japanese toys were always expensive and still are.
Nobody sold J-pop, which really surprised me. Only anime soundtracks, but I’ve never been big on too many animes.

Just in case you guys want to know what else I bought here’s my list:
Concent, Gun Crazy, Gun Crazy 2, Ghost in the Shell (SA.C.) 2nd GIG, Jade Warrior, Sazer X, Swordman 2, Time and Whispering Corridors.

Trends

If you know me that you know I hate trends, one of the reasons I quit skateboarding was because everyone started to do it. But usually I'm one of the last persons to follow them. Meaning that I get into them only when most people are getting out. Anyway I recently noticed that I'm getting more into the hip hop trend. Now we all know that hip hop's been around for a long time now, but I guess you can say that I'm recently getting into the fashion part of it. I listen mainly asian hip hop like EPIK HIGH, 지누션, MC 몽, M-FLO, K DUB SHINE, Midicronica. Just to Name a few recently I found out about RIP SLYME and I've been trying to find more asian Hip Hop to listen to. Anyway as I said I noticed that I started to pay attention more to the fasshion.


I just can't seem to get enough of Nike shoes right now and looking every for a a pair of MJI (Air Jordan 1's) in four different colors. I've been paying more attention to Ecko Clothing and looking online for Bathing Ape clothing. The one thing I can't get into for now are the shiney shoes. For some reason they just look too cheap, I showed a pair to my friend Kimmy and she agreed with me. Actually she said they look kind of childish, like something a kid of about two would wear.

Actually clothing I wear right now isn't that different from what I wear now it's just now there are brands that i'm looking for in paticular, I remember when I went to fill out an application at Corner Bakery and the manager who hired me at the time asked if I skated (as in skateboards, none of that fruit booting for me), I said yes and asked how he knew. He said I was dressed like one. But I was only wearing a pair of cargo pants and my fravoite NYU hoodie. Anyway the point is he classified me just by my cloths and was right, which is one of the reasons why I hate trends. Well, my point is.... I really don't have one. I'm just saying that I'm buying a lot more shoes (mainly NIkes) that I actually need and trying to match the rest of my cloths with my shoes. I'm such a lame.

Book Review

I recently bought a new book on Korean Cinema called “Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity-Culture-Politics”. I haven’t gotten a chance to read it fully, but it mentions a few early Korean films from as early as 1962 and how they impacted Korean Cinema. Reading this book reminds me of some of the other books that I have that I’ve recommend to the group that I’ll talk about again.

The main book I want to talk about right now is “Korean Cinema: The New Hong Kong”. The first comment I’d like to make is that Korean Cinema is nothing like Hong Kong Cinema so comparing the two is really absorb. The thing that made Hong Kong Cinema so popular was their action film. Mainly a lot of action film from John Woo staring Chow Yun-Fat or Jackie Chan, other directors as well like Jonnie To or Benny Chan. Followed by their drams with directors like Wong Kar-Wai and others. (I don’t want to name them all, there’s just too many). The Thing about the current “Korean New Wave” is that they were mainly controlled by government censors which have been loosened which is why were getting so many great Korean Films now.

As I read the book I found it of very little use for my report I was writing for a class. As I read it seemed to me like it was just a collection of reviews of Korean movies. At the very back of the book they list some of the Authors credentials as being a part time film critic with 750+ movie reviews. Bottom line this book is a collection of reviews for Korean films he either like or didn’t.

Some of the highlights of the books as stated in the book are
- a brief history of South Korea and it’s Film Industry
very brief indeed, with only a mention about Japanese occupation,
Government censorship and reform in the 80’s

- a look at present state of Korea’s filmmaking industry and how it resembles the dot com era
it just normal business I thought, companies won’t invest until they know they’ll make money off of the project.

- an examination of Characteristics of the newest “Korean New Wave”
As in any “New Wave” movement in film it just means that they’re showing more films about the social/political changes happening within the country.

- A look at the stars of Korean Cinema,
I hated the part when he compared actors to Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts. I believe if you’re watching foreign films you don’t want to compare them to “American Actors”

- How moviegoers can go about seeing Korean Movies
All he say is here is go to film festivals and shop on the internet for DVD and make sure to by an all region DVD player. Not the most helpful information, I thought.

Your’re best bet would be to find it at a used bookstore if you’re lucky or look for it at your local library but if you want to have it then go ahead and get it.