THINK-O-VISION

Five Points About ‘Dark Shadows’

Inkoo — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:28:05 +0000

There’s a wonderful scene in Ed Wood, my nomination for Tim Burton’s best film, when Wood, the worst director of all time, runs into Orson Welles in a restaurant. Wood is working on Glen or Glenda, Welles on Citizen Kane, and the two commiserate about the difficulties of securing financing for their films. Wood sighs and asks the maestro, “Is it all worth it?” Welles responds, “It is when it works,” and encourages the young director: ”Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else’s dreams?”

I’d like to ask Burton the same question. I’ve spent the past week catching up on the director’s filmography, which is littered with other people’s visions: Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Batman, Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, and the latest, Dark Shadows. It’s not that Burton — or any other director — isn’t capable of leaving his own fingerprints on someone else’s work, but why bother? Did he always envision Willy Wonka as a Michael Jackson impersonator or little Alice as a sword-wielding dragon-slayer?

I wish Tim Burton would be much more ambitious, or much less so. I love his cartoonishly macabre sensibility, but wonder why he can’t marry that to a grown-up story with higher emotional stakes than “Is Johnny Depp going to get the kewpie-eyed girl?” His juvenile taste in scripts make me wary of his movies as an audience member — so much so that I wonder if he should ditch narrative altogether and just focus on making it big in the art world. Needless to say, I wasn’t a fan of Dark Shadows, a film so busy and inconsistent it should have had Jason Statham in it. Here are some lasting impressions:

1. There were too many storylines. Let’s see if I can count them all:

Barnabus Collins (Johnny Depp) is a vampire freed from his coffin after 200 years; he has trouble adjusting to life in the Groovy Seventies.

Angelique (Eva Green), the jilted witch who cursed Barnabus with vampirism, is still alive and gives her former lover two choices: love her or die.

Barnabus falls in love with Victoria (Bella Heathcote), the new nanny for the Collins family, who looks exactly like his murdered 18th-century wife.

Both Victoria and her new charge David (David McGrath) can see ghosts, and must help the ghost that haunts the Collins mansion find peace.

David’s psychiatrist, Dr. Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), is a loon who seduces Barnabus.
The Collins’ house, family business, and reputation are in disrepair; Barnabus, as the new paterfamilias, must fix them.

I haven’t yet mentioned three of the other Collins family members: matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), nightmare teen Carolyn (Chloe Moretz), and David’s absent father Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), who each have small storylines of their own. The script is like a kid high on sugar: there’s a lot of running around, but only in circles, and then it suddenly falls flat at the end.

2. It’s terribly unfunny. This is, again, largely the script’s fault. Screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith’s approach to comedy is to introduce a bad joke, then tell it several more times. The film is full of zingers and gags, but it’s really just the same five over and over again. The idea of the 1790s (Barnabus) and the 1970s (his descendants) making fun of each other is brilliant in theory, but the execution fails at every level. I felt especially sorry for Johnny Depp, a hilarious actor when given the chance, for being saddled with clunkers like, ”You may strategically place your wonderful lips upon my posterior and kiss it repeatedly!” and tired jokes about hairy hippies and Alice Cooper being a woman.

3. The vampire angle suckssssssss. One of the best things about the recent vampire trend is writers and directors tripping over one another to come up with a new twist on vampires. Barnabus’ vampirism is a crucial factor in several of the storylines, but the film explores it so superficially and glosses over it so quickly when it becomes morally inconvenient that Twilight‘s Edward looks like an ethics scholar in comparison. Barnabus claims he hates having to feed, but harbors no remorse for the people he’s already killed, because, haha, they’re just hippies and blue-collar workers! Likewise, he calls his vampirism a curse, but forces it on people he loves against their will for purely selfish reasons. And Barnabus isn’t an antihero — he’s a square, family-values, father-knows-all type who’d probably vote Republican if he could go out in the sun. That’s not moral ambiguity, just lazy character development.

4. I’m so tired of watching Johnny Depp make out with doll-faced hotties half his age. Sure, Depp looks much younger than his 48 years, but his middle age really starts to show when he declares love to an anonymous ingenue hired for her childlike looks. Accordingly, Burton’s wingmannish handpicking of doe-eyed young women for his friend to mack on is starting to feel skeezy. The persistence of the pedo-bait look in Burton’s films is all the more frustrating because neither Burton’s vampish ex-wife Lisa Marie nor his current spouse Helena Bonham Carter look like scared little girls, so he clearly finds other types of women attractive. IS THIS DEPP’S DOING?

5. The movie isn’t a total loss; the production design and special effects are gorgeously creepy. The Collins mansion is a wood-paneled nightmarescape, and the seventies-era clothes are fun to look at. The biggest eye-treat, however, is the climactic fight between Barnabus and Angelique, when Angelique begins to crack and crumble like an egg shell. At least two hundred years old, she’s a hollow creature, and each blow chips away at yet another sliver of her britle exterior to reveal the blackness underneath. The sound design adds marvelously to the effect, as do Angelique’s disjointed, unnatural movements (a combination of Eva Green’s flexibility and CGI). It’s a marvelous, singular spectacle. Too bad you have to sit through 100 minutes of turgid nonsense to see it.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Dark Shadows, Ed Wood, Eva Green, Johnny Depp, Tim Burton

Five Points About ‘The Five-Year Engagement’

Inkoo — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:38:50 +0000

After reading many mixed-to-negative reviews, I was going to wait to see The Five-Year Engagement on DVD. I’m glad I didn’t. Funny, nuanced, and genuinely romantic, it’s the best rom-com I’ve seen since last year’s Beginners. Here are some lasting impressions:

1. It feels really contemporary. Several of the reviews I read grumbled about the lack of tension in the movie, given that the central couple, Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt), are already effectively married: They’re committed to each other and live together, so why bother with a ceremony? These reviews couldn’t have missed the point more. Yes, the title refers to a delayed wedding, but the film’s central conflict is an excruciating situation that almost every one of my friends has experienced, or at least contemplated: Moving for your significant other’s demanding, inflexible career, thus sacrificing your own career, leaving behind all your friends and family, and exponentially multiplying the pressure on your relationship. In Engagement, the culprit behind The Big, Bad Move is academia, but moving with your S.O. to some podunk town and hoping like hell that you don’t resent him/her for the rest of your life for it also happen to people in business, the arts, and the military. As soon as Tom and Violet move from San Francisco to Michigan, he regrets the decision, and that regret slowly but irreversibly curdles into bitterness and anger. The script is satisfyingly unafraid to explore how Tom’s second-fiddle status makes him resentful and poisons his relationship with his fiancee. Unfortunately, it completely ignores how Violet handles the move to Michigan apart from her professional success and romantic troubles — a glaring blank in an otherwise wonderfully detailed portrait.

2. It’s very romantic. I suppose mileage will vary on this one, but I for one was utterly charmed. Sure, the meet-cute is wider-eyed than a newborn puppy and the weddings that begin and end the film are practically fucking perfect, but one wrenching scene sticks out in my mind as the most tender and loving. Tom and Violet have their worst fight in bed after she admits a betrayal. Shaken, Tom says that he needs to be alone. She starts for the couch, but he stops her, saying he wants her beside him. She begins to speak, and he repeats that he needs to be alone. So they sit together in bed, silent and tense, Tom indignant but needy and Violet uncomfortable but eager to assuage. Their obvious fondness for and attachment to each other, even when things are at their worst, give Engagement its raw, quickly beating heart.

3. Alison Brie and Emily Blunt are adorable and hilarious, and they have chemistry with everyone. I was a bit distracted by Blunt’s disconcertingly Queen Mum-ish accent, though.

4. Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller’s script was well-plotted, but only some of their jokes worked. I laughed a lot, but much more at the visual gags than the jokes involving words. It didn’t help that all the best PG jokes were spoiled by the film’s trailer. (Expect to see even more of Jason Segel’s body.)

5. The film rightfully acknowledges that Asians are found in California and academia, but does quantity make up for quality? The Asian character with the second biggest role (after Mindy Kaling’s “Kelly Kapoor Goes to Grad School” character) is a somewhat stereotypical Type-A student, and all the others are random hotties. Sorry, attractive Asian actresses! You’ll have to play wordless second/third wife roles to old, white men for a while longer.

Filed under: Five Points Tagged: emily blunt, five points, jason segel, Mindy Kaling, nicholas stoller, the five-year engagement

Huh

Inkoo — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:42:10 +0000

The Internet claims that Dark Shadows was the first supernatural soap opera.

Filed under: Uncategorized

‘Wuthering Heights’ (2012): You Can’t See the Lovers for the Trees

Inkoo — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:51:16 +0000

Wuthering Heights will be released in the US later this year. This review is based on a screening at the Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.

The new Wuthering Heights adaptation by writer-director Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank) won’t help any high school students looking for shortcuts. The film captures the breathless, wordless attraction between its wild-hearted protagonists, but discards the second half of Emily Brontë’s novel, as well as its intricate narrative framing device. The dialogue is spare, and the actors’ North English/Scottish accents are hard to make out at times. The script employs anachronisms like “What the fuck?” and “Fuck off, you cunts” (convincingly), introducing a modicum of jocundity to the film’s somber, meditative atmosphere. Plot addicts are likely to find the shots of soaring birds, dancing grass, restless dogs, wandering ants, and curling lambswool blankets, which interrupt every scene with humans, tedious and unnecessary. But that slow simmer of silent disquiet is Arnold’s aim, and patient viewers should enjoy the film’s measured pace and bleakly beautiful landscapes.

The feverish, violent love affair between Heathcliff and Cathy (played by marvelous first-timers Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer) begins when Cathy’s father (Paul Hilton) brings home the dark, orphaned, foreign boy to the crumbling Wuthering Heights estate out of Christian charity. Cathy spits on Heathcliff at first sight, but soon treats him as a brother. Her actual brother, Hindley (Lee Shaw), on the other hand, never lets Heathcliff forget his skin color, regularly calling him a “neeger” and beaten by his father for it. (This is the first Wuthering Heights adaptation with a black Heathcliff. Brontë imagined him as racially ambiguous but definitely nonwhite.) The spiritual kinship between Heathcliff and Cathy, as well as the violent and proto-sexual attraction that unites them, is clear to everyone but their father. In one scene, Cathy brutely embraces her adopted brother, then wraps her small fingers around his hair and yanks out a tuft of it. But Cathy accepts the proposal of their besotted neighbor, Edgar Linton, out of practicality and social ambition, and Heathcliff flees the Heights.

Some years later, Heathcliff (now played by James Howson) returns to his old home, wealthy, vengeful, and more in love with Cathy (Kaya Scodelario) than ever. She returns his affections, but is now married to Edgar (James O’Keefe-lookalike James Northcote) and pregnant with his child. When Heathcliff realizes that Cathy will never leave her husband, he begins to retaliate against everyone who had hurt him in the past. He marries Edgar’s sister Isabella (Nichola Burley) to make Cathy jealous, mistreats Isabella to anger Edgar, and lends a drunken, dissolute Hindley money until the latter’s forced to sell Wuthering Heights, his birthright, to his hated brother. Finally, he leaves Cathy once and for all in a bitter reununciation that kills her.

Arnold’s adaptation skillfully translates the lovers’ initial passion and later acridity to the screen, with much aid from stunning cinematographic work by Robbie Ryan. The actors and the moors are shot with white and brown so starkly that some scenes could almost pass as black-and-white, while others are generously ripened with fresh and dusty greens. As the grass shoots that periodically appear on screen reveal, however, the film is only concerned with the novel’s spring and summer; it disappointingly ignores the text’s pulpy, putrescent fall and winter, when Heathcliff phases out of the obsessive stalking of his youth and becomes a sadistic monster that psychologically and physically tortures innocents like his wife Isabella, their fragile son, Hindley’s son, and Cathy and Edgar’s daughter.

It’s worth considering how the adaptation process, in particular Heathcliff’s character, was affected by Arnold’s choice to cast black actors in the role. In the novel, Heathcliff’s resentments turn him, after Cathy’s death, into a black-hearted villain with no hope of redemption. Perhaps the film ends soon after that death because Arnold was (prudently) afraid to make her sole black character into a moral abomination. Her Heathcliff acts cruelly on occasion, but is ultimately a winsome, romantic figure. He’s not to be loathed like the novel’s character, but pitied for the racist treatment he receives, several of them Arnold’s creation. The men around him, with the exception of his adopted father, are openly prejudiced against him (though all the women are peculiarly immune to this prejudice). His adopted brother Hindley calls him vicious names at every turn, and his young back is covered in thick scars. Cathy’s marriage to Edgar, and thus her rejection of him as a potential mate, becomes not only one of class and breeding, but also of race. And he shares, with the young sons of many a servant and slave throughout history, that precipitous transition from the Little Master or Mistress’s brother to the help. Arnold handles Heathcliff’s black identity with racial sensitivity and paints a nuanced social portrait as a result thereof, but simultaneously flattens her male protagonist to just another brooding Byron.

In the end, Arnold has created an adaptation of Wuthering Heights as people tend to misremember it – a Sid and Nancy for the Downton Abbey set. The contrast between Heathcliff and Cathy’s passionate conflagration and the coarsely elegant landscape that surrounds them is a singular vision of love, hate, and obsession, by turns otherworldly and soapy. But too much of that vision is edged out by shots of cliffs, plains, horses, goats, rabbits, rain, and mud. The images are coldly beautiful, but the love story needs some more heat.

Filed under: Class Issues, Movie Reviews Tagged: Andrea Arnold, Wuthering Heights

“Jiro Dreams of Sushi” and Other Fantastic Movie Titles

Inkoo — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 23:16:25 +0000

I have no intention of seeing Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the new documentary about world-famous sushi chef Jiro Ono, but I suspect I’ll be thinking about the film for years to come, on account of its fantastic title. Movie titles are too often comprised simply of

The [NOUN]

(The) [ADJECTIVE] [NOUN]

(The) [NOUN] and (the) [NOUN]

(The) [NOUN] in/of the [NOUN].

The effect is mundane, utterly forgettable.

But add a verb in the present tense (thus forming a complete sentence and thought), and suddenly there’s movement, desire, action, narrative:

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

The Kid Stays in the Picture

Horton Hears a Who

Mars Needs Moms

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle/Escape from Guantanamo Bay

These evocative titles inform potential audiences about the movies’ plots, while lending a sense of immediacy about the characters’ wants.

Some qualifiers:

Negative verbs (e.g., Boys Don’t Cry, This Film Is Not Yet Rated) don’t add movement or action.

Linking verbs also make verbs moot (The Kids Are All Right, I Am Legend).

Gerunds are generally good (Raising Victor Vargas, Finding Nemo), but not necessarily so (Seeking Justice).

Imperative statements are a toss-up. Oblique but plot- or theme-specific titles work (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Let the Right One In, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead). Vague ones don’t (Whip It*, Step Up, Pump Up the Volume).

Filed under: Uncategorized

What If Leo and Kate Hadn’t Boarded the Titanic?

Inkoo — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 16:08:02 +0000

Have you seen the wholly unnecessary yet totally necessary movie event that is Titanic 3D? Were you so eager to re-experience The Biggest Movie Ever* (TBME) that you risked feeling more seasick on land than the characters who are actually on a boat, just to feel the spine-shivering, reflexive-moan-inducing thrill of Leomania once again? Do you wish to celebrate the centenary of the Titanic’s doomed voyage, except what kind of celebration is watching three hours of disaster porn with a lazy love story thrown in to make you care about the deaths of thousands of people? Most importantly, are you prepared for the inevitable introspection and consequent self-loathing that’s sure to follow the movie: wondering what the hell you’ve been doing with the last fifteen years of your life?

Thankfully, we can briefly distract ourselves from our follies and endless regret by catching up on what and how the folks involved in Titanic 2D have been doing: Leo and Kate are collecting Oscar noms like it ain’t no thang, Bill Paxton and Kathy Bates got their own TV shows, James Cameron made the highest-grossing movie ever (that, paradoxically, no one loves), and Billy Zane, uh, is doing some things also. Let’s return to 1997 and see what Leo et al were up to fifteen years ago, what they’ve been doing since, and what they’d be doing now if they hadn’t boarded the Titanic.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Who was he in ‘97? After Romeo + Juliet, DiCaprio was the golden boy who’d came out of nowhere to bump JTT and Devon Sawa off the covers of Tiger Beat. The Beat warned, though, that he was a Serious Actor who played Serious Roles in Serious Movies like What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? and Marvin’s Room.

What’s he done since TBME? Leo graduated from being Hollywood’s boy-king to king proper, becoming the male muse of Hollywood heavies like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, and Quentin Tarantino.

And if he hadn’t boarded the Titanic? It’s easy to see Leo’s mainstream appeal fizzling out after R+J. After all, he didn’t star in a single successful movie for five years after TBME. With his widening face and apparent love of spotty facial hair, Leo would’ve transitioned to character actordom like Donal Logue, eventually becoming that guy in the Pussy Posse (because he would’ve done that no matter what) that the 18-year-old models who grew up watching High School Musical can’t quite place.

Kate Winslet

Who was she in ‘97? Sad to say it, but Winslet was a nobody as far as most of America was concerned, despite making critics swoon in Heavenly Creatures and Sense and Sensibility.

What’s she done since TBME? After being fat-shamed for, like, two whole years after Titanic, Winslet went Hollywood (albeit gradually) by slimming down, bleaching her hair, and ditching the indies for prestige pics like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Reader, and Revolutionary Road, which reunited her with Leo.

And if she hadn’t boarded the Titanic? Winslet’s too beautiful and too talented to have toiled in obscurity, but she might have stayed a voluptuous redhead without the post-Titanic scrutiny and ended up an indie staple like Chloë Sevigny or Catherine Keener instead of becoming the award hoarder/overachiever she is now. You’d love her because she was that really pretty chubby chick who’s always in adaptations of the dreary 19^th-century British novels that keep piling up on your bookshelf, but then you’d wonder why every third movie she does is about the Holocaust, since she’s too much of an unknown to get nominated for an Oscar anyway.

Billy Zane

Who was he in ‘97? Zane had a list of credits a mile long, but was never in anything anyone had heard of (Flashfire? Running Delilah? Betrayal of the Dove?).

What’s he done since TBME? The same thing he’s done since the early nineties – working nonstop and under the radar, being featured in three films a year but in nothing you’ve seen (Fishtales? Alien Agent? The Man Who Came Back?).

And if he hadn’t boarded the Titanic? Zane would still be the guy with the star-ready name and the non-starring roles. You and your sister would see him at the grocery store and note how much he looks like young Stanley Tucci, then go back to your place and watch Julie & Julia again because Stanley Tucci was really awesome in that.

James Cameron

Who was he in ‘97? Cameron was a blockbuster factory with sci-fi/action mega-hits like Terminator, Aliens, and True Lies.

What’s he done since TBME? He went full-on geek by making another movie about the Titanic (a 3-D underwater documentary), made a small indie with an unknown cast called Avatar, and recently became the first man to tweet from the bottom of the ocean.

And if he hadn’t boarded the Titanic? With the piles of money he made showcasing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s muscles, Cameron could’ve retired from showbiz and become Branson But Better, using his riches and tech-wizardry to fulfill every fantasy he had when he was twelve, like creating evil mutant hamsters in a lab so he can hunt them down on his private island with a custom-made laser gun and wise-cracking nunchucks (they’re sentient; it’s science). And you’d never see him waterskiing with a naked chick on his back.

Celine Dion

Who was she in ‘97? Dion was already on her way to divahood on the strength of her thin blond ladyness, five-octave range and audiences’ never-ending love of cheese.

What’s she done since TBME? She released some more albums, became a Vegas attraction, and revealed the icky secret that she met her husband-manager when she was his twelve-year-old client.

And if she hadn’t boarded the Titanic? She was already a star, but she wouldn’t have become a superstar without “My Heart Will Go On” – certainly not enough to do five shows a week in Caesars Palace. Celine’s always craved stability (see above: daddy issues), so she would’ve landed a steady gig as an America’s Got Talent judge (what producer wouldn’t want that accent on his show?), with the cameras capturing every instance of her punching her chest, clawing the air, or doing the Arsenio.

* Technically, “the biggest movie ever” is James Cameron’s Avatar, but it loses the title by default because it doesn’t command the adoration and obsession that Titanic does. Also, because Avatar didn’t come out when you were thirteen and losing your shit every time you saw Leo’s face.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: billy zane, celine dion, james cameron, kate winslet, leo dicaprio, titanic

Can Classical Music Critics Be Saved From Their Asinine Generalizations?

Inkoo — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:55:00 +0000

Slate published a highly annoying and analytically unsound article today about the popularity of classical music among Asian Americans. The half-white, half-Korean author, Michael Ahn Paarlberg, cobbles together some random anecdotes and things any Asian American Studies 101 student – or thinking person – knows not to do (conflate Asian and Asian American cultures, recycle tired stereotypes about “Asian” materialism, un-coolness, and roboticism) to slam Asian Americans for the supposedly racially unique way they engage with classical music. Here are the five stupidest things the article says, followed by my responses:

1. This [Asian Americans’ enjoyment of classical music] reflects what can be observed at most American concert halls today: a sea of white hair, broken only by the black, unflattering bowl cut given to all Asian kids by their parents.

My parents aren’t terribly fashion-conscious, but neither I nor my brother ever had an unflattering bowl cut. Also, Asian kids don’t all have the same hair, because despite what the Paarlberg may think, we don’t all look or dress alike.

2. In Musicians from a Different Shore, University of Hawaii professor and pianist Mari Yoshihara describes her upbringing in postwar Japan. … Through her years of practice, she writes, “I never asked myself why I was learning music or whether I even liked playing the piano. Such questions never even occurred to me. Music was not something I had the option of liking or not liking; it was just there for me to do.”

This is one of the several examples Paarlberg uses to describe the (apparently universal) coerced and automated ways in which Asian American children learn to play an instrument. I have several responses to this excerpt, but the primary one is that of disbelief. Children listen to music from a very young age – probably from the very first day of their lives in our era of car radios and ubiquitous TVs and iPods. As a kid, I distinctly remember wanting to play the piano so I could magically make pretty sounds by pressing my fingers on a giant, hulking box, and I imagine a lot of children have the same creative desire, even if they don’t articulate that wish or are even conscious of it. Moreover, the children of even the most traditional or nostalgic of Asian immigrant parents will be Asian AMERICAN. It’s unfair to use an example from postwar Japan and extrapolate that experience onto non-Asian kids.

3. Asian and Asian-American performers gravitate almost exclusively to strings and piano: Those instruments which, within a genre that symbolizes class mobility in Asia, are at the top of the heap. Rarely does one encounter an Asian conservatory student playing the bassoon or trombone, or any instrument that does not afford the possibility of soloist superstardom.

“Almost exclusively? “Rarely?” Where are the numbers to back up these adverbs? And not that my anecdotes count for much toward empirical evidence, but I definitely remember seeing plenty of Asian American trumpeters, flautists, clarinetists, guitarists, even drummers (GASP!) while growing up.

4. Asian music education is not famous for its music theory. The Suzuki method, Asia’s most successful classical music export, is a highly mechanical training regimen based on drills and rote memorization, with no emphasis on “feeling” the music.

I don’t know why Paarlberg is knocking “Asian music education” – an incredibly general term – for not focusing on music theory. I studied music theory for several years, and I can think of few things mustier and more rigidly codified than music theory. And an incredible amount of theory is highly intuitive, anyway – I can’t imagine why anyone would need to learn it from a textbook. And again, where are the statistics to back up the assertion that the Suzuki method, which I never encountered in my 17 years of piano lessons – 12 with Asian teachers – is “Asia’s most successful classical music export”? And even if many music students learned to play the piano or the violin or the French horn using the Suzuki method, isn’t it supremely likely that their teachers also taught them to pay attention to the emotional, dramatic, and harmonic aspects of the music?

5. If there’s any irony to the most quintessentially Western music tradition being kept alive by the East, by now it’s a moot point.

There is no irony here. A lot of Asian Americans like classical music,as well as hamburgers, basketball, Facebook, and other mainstream American things. Why is any of this noteworthy?

Filed under: Uncategorized

Presented without Comment: A List of 2011 Movies with Female Writers

Inkoo — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 02:35:09 +0000

The Help

Hugo

Leap Year (trailer)

Our Idiot Brother

Poetry (trailer)

Young Adult

Filed under: Uncategorized

Want Ad Wednesday

Inkoo — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:06:31 +0000

Sometimes literary/film characters use the personals section too. Which leading man posted this want ad?

SWM seeks able governess. Not looking for romance; been BURNED before. Hobbies/skills include horseback-riding, international travel, abrupt changes in mood, and surviving multiple arson attempts. Enjoys scowling at servants and darkly brooding on the moors. Appearance unimportant, as house is ill-lit and shadowy. NOT MARRIED.

Filed under: Want Ad Wednesday

LINK-O-VISION 11/26/11: Whitney Cummings, Rin Tin Tin, and the Muppets

Inkoo — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 04:43:02 +0000

This week, I saw nothing because it was a holiday weekend and I spent 14 hours driving up and down the Eastern seaboard (blurgh). These links, however, made my life better:

–This 2004 New Yorker profile of Grady Hendrix is DELIGHTFUL.

–Hendrix-san lists twenty of the best Korean movies available for streaming on Netflix.

–Having grown up during the 90s (and therefore never having seen a Muppets movie), I was utterly indifferent to the new installment until I read this review – now I can’t wait to see it.

–This smart Whitney Cummings write-up makes me wish 2 Broke Girls was more interesting and funny and a LOT less racist so I could STAND it.

–If Susan Orlean can make orchids interesting (supposedly), I’m sure she performed wonders in her biography of Rin Tin Tin.

Filed under: Korean Films, LINK-O-VISION Tagged: 2 broke girls, rin tin tin, susan orlean, the muppets, whitney cummings