the ashtray bible

Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

Later this afternoon, I'll be heading off north towards Sokcho. I've been wanting to do some hiking around Seoraksan National Park ever since I first arrived, but never really got around to it. This weekend I'm determined...

Apparently, there's a big foreigner get together at some bar in Sokcho that a few of us will be going to. I just hope I don't overdo it and then have a shitty time hiking tomorrow...in the immortal words of The Gandharvas "...moderation is the key..."

Last night, I contemplated going out to the Warehouse...I had my shoes on, ready to leave, but decided on one last smoke with a little TV for company, of course you don't want to show up too early. Surfing, I found some movie called The Secretary on CatchOn. This girl really reminded me of a girl I had a crush on in high school...TR, so I started watching. It was fucking weird! She was back in her home town at her sister's wedding. Her dad was drunk and she ran up to her old room in the house and took out a small box under her bed. It was filled with cuticle scissors, drill bits, razor blades, needles and Iodine. So she was a masochist who cuts herself. Her mom had to keep all the knives in the house under lock and key.

Later, she gets a job as a secretary for this strange lawyer played by James Spader. To make a long story short, her constant typing errors drive him to eventually spank her, bent over his desk...she likes this, gives up cutting herself and becomes his dominated love slave. It wasn't porn of anything...in case you're wondering. Anyways, it successfully prevented me from leaving until midnight when the phone rang and I was called out to the bar...


CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM!

I've really been missing, Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm lately. Luckily, Dylan, a teacher here, is going to d/l the new season for me and pass me some discs...Pritt-tee, Pritt-teeeeeee, Pritt-tee, Pritt-tee GOOD!

Oh yeah, and I've shaved my head. I haven't had hair this short since grade four... you know everyone gets that urge sometimes, girls go through it, wanting to cut their hair short...."pixie style"....blech!
It has been nice to not have to do anything before I leave the house....
So...for everyone back home, you can laugh at me in new pics that I'll post when I get back from Seoraksan...

Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

So last weekend, I took the plunge and bought a DVD Player. Luckily, I found one at E-Mart for 129,000 won...which is much less than I was prepared to pay. It's not name brand or anything, but does the job and matches my silver TV and SkyLife box very well. I got home and spent the night watching "Dustin and Kiran Do Canada" on VCD....which was great, I can now watch it from the comfort of my living room, instead of in the cold office at work, on the computer.
On Sunday, I made my wat to a video rental store in Kyo-dong and was disappointed with the selection. My main objective was to find Korean movies, that I could now watch with English subtitles. The store was in the basement of some building complex and when I walked in I saw what looked like hundreds and hundreds of DVD's on the wall. They were actually just "graphic novels" which you can rent from the same store. I found the DVD shelf, there were only about 50 and none of the titles I was looking for. Even the Western movies they had were lacking in quality. I ended up renting "Equilibrium" which was not as good as the posters proclaimed....they read something like "Forget the Matrix, here's Equilibrium." The opening sequence was really good, although I was expecting a complete rip-off of the Matrix's bullet-time sequences, I was instead treated to something quite different. Apparently, in the future, after a Third World War, the surviving world leaders have decided that "the ability to feel" is the greatest problem facing manking. So they outlaw all feeling and anything that may cause someone to feel, including poetry, paintings, music and color. The last great city on earth is called Equilibrium, and there is a special police force who have developed extra-sensory skills that tell them when people are feeling. An interesting premise, but poorly executed. Christian Bale, one of my favorite actors (expecially for his role in American Psycho) plays the main character. They have learned this special art of aiming their weapons (taught by "The Father" and based on geometric principles) that allows them to kill a bad-guys while standing in the middle of a dark room and not even getting scratched by a stray bullet. It was the only thing, I would say that was done well and used as the opening sequence...after that, the movie went downhill, and nothing could save the weak plot line and weak characters.

I also rented X-Men 2, which was decent. I was most interested in seeing scenes of Vancouver, but they were so well disguised that my city was virtually unrecognizable.

This weekend I went to another video store downtown which is owned by the parents of one of my students. They had a much larger selection and I ended up renting "장 화, 홍 련" (Jang-Hwa, Hong Ryun) or a "Tale of Two Sisters." It was a confusing, psychological thriller about two sisters who go to live with their father and step-mom at a house in the country. We learn that one of the sisters is actually dead, and the other believes she is still alive. This other sister is "sick" and often confuses her step-mom with herself and herself with her sister. It really doesn't come together until they end, but was shot very well and is really creepy. I also rented "주온" (Ju-On) or "The Grudge" which is a Japanese thriller. It's about an ancient Japanese curse. If you kill someone you love, you become cursed and then die and the last person to see you live, dies as well and on and on and on. It was beautifully filmed, and also very creepy. Opening shot was a black screen, with the name of the character to die scrawled in script, and on and on and on. Each five minute or so sequence features the death of one character that has been cursed. The story follows each person that has come in contact with the characters, all originating in this house, inhabited by the ghost of a dead boy (the son of a murdered woman) and the ghosts of each person who has previously died of the curse. It sounds a little confusing and was at times, because the time-line didn't quite sync, generally attributable to poor editing.

One thing I have noticed is the prevalence of female ghosts, which all look pretty much the same as the one featured in the recent Japanese thriller "Ringu" or (The Ring). The Ring is one of my favorite movies. But the image of the young girl, face covered by black hair, in a dirty dress and crawling, knuckles clenched on the floor was used in both of these two other films. I hope they don't start over-using it, to the point where it becomes a parody of itself. One of my favorite scenes from the American version of "The Ring" is when she comes out of the TV near the end and how the image is slightly fuzzy and jerky. This too was used in "Jang-Hwa, Hong Ryun" and "Ju-On", as well as the idea that once someone is cursed their faces appear distorted in photographs. In "Ju-On" this means that your eyes are seemingly cut out of the negative leaving a black hole. Instead of saying "seven days...," the phone calls in "Ju-On" featured that creaking sound you can make by closing your airway and vibrating your throat.

All in all, I'd recommend both movies....but they really could've been called The Ring 2 and 3. No creepy videotapes though!!