The Host: It's a Korean movie, you know

warning: this may well be the most half-assed review I've ever put written, somehow even managing to top my splendid "effort" for The Gauntlet seven years ago when I reviewed a movie that I didn't bother to see. I'd post the link to it but I figure what's to follow will have to suffice as far as shameful criticism is concerned.

~~~~~

When I first arrived in Korea thirteen months ago everyone was talking about a film about two men caught in the throes of forbidden love. No, not Brokeback Mountain, a picture that seemingly opted for the shock value of cowboy-on-farmhand action while leaving aside gauche elements such as feelings - and I'm guessing that there was supposed to be more than a "friends with benefits" thing going on there. No, the film I am referring to is The King and the Clown, itself every bit as compromised, though this time in favour of love at the expense of the Chosun Court Jester being used as Plaything by Royal Decree. At the time it was easy to get caught up how brave this film was (to a great many Koreans Fan Death exists but homosexuality doesn't) but hopefully this didn't obscure its greatness.

The King and the Clown seemingly came up in conversation at every possible opportunity and made me fondly recall a time when the release of a movie was an event in Canada too. But towards the end of July it suddenly became old news as Korea's summer blockbuster came out. The Host had not only stolen all of Clown's thunder, it had usurped it at the box office as well.

I'm certainly no expert on the subject having (a) only seen four Korean films so far (can't seem to track down Peppermint Candy) and (b) admittedly harbouring a bias against movies in general (I just can't get excited about them the way the books and music excite me) but there's something distinctly empty about The Host - and this is ignoring the deflatting, insulting ending. Is it too colonial of me to expect something distinctly Korean from a Korean picture?

There's something - mind you, I can't quite figure out what - that links the three other Korean movies I've seen, hugely different though they all are from one another: My Sassy Girl, a romantic comedy unlike any other I've ever seen, Oldboy, a superb gangster vengence romp and The King and the Clown, the only one not slated to be canibalised with an American remake (apparently there was a time when Americans were able to come up with their own ideas for watchable movies and TV shows but not in my lifetime). The director has even admitted that there's very little about it that is Korean.

As for the movie itself, it's not bad. The shoestring budget doubtless contributes to the Spartan effects but that probably also makes the Han River monster look more realistic. The acting is at best rudimentary (though Go Ah-sung is pretty good as the little girl), the nadir being Song Kang-ho in the lead, although if he was going for the David Schwimmer-guppy fish look then his performance can be deemed as nothing but a complete success. Most worrisome is that I found myself completely unconcerned for these people despite the nightmarish conditions they were facing. The same kind of indifference with which I've written this review.

Coming Soon: Dispatches of an Intrepid Globetrotter...uh, some stories from my upcoming travels

Just five more weeks to go and this whole Korea experience - eating strange foods, titanic drinking sessions, teaching and re-teaching challenging concepts such as the difference between "he" and "she" and the pronounciation of words with "qu-", trying to block out the din of the neighbours beating the shit out of one another - will draw to a close - or be put on hold - so I may take a break from all this ennui.

The current plan is for Kristina and me to fly from Incheon to Bali on May 1st, spend about three weeks in Indonesia and then head up to Singapore for a six week overland journey up to Vietnam. We head back to Korea on July 5th and then ought to be back in Calgary a couple days later in order to celebrate Bastille Day and my niece's first birthday in my hometown where I belong.

Very little else has been planned but I'm looking at filling up this blog with about as many travel pieces as possible. Any suggestions as to what we should see or what I should write about would be appreciated. Let the planning commence!

What a croc!

Having been otherwise preoccupied as of late, I've been trying to get reacquainted with some of my old favourites on the web this week (insert joke here). Normally a visit to Kai's blog is a useful way to remind myself of just how technologically imbecilic I've been ever since Turtle became passe but his recent thoughts on the corrupt Croc footwear industry have given me pause for thought (I really must open a book one of these days).

Not to downplay an obvious price-fixing scheme concocted by the shoestores of Cornwall (you've gotta believe it has spread to Devon and Monmouthshire by now) but old Kai's discovery has uncovered a far more serious social problem: there are still people buying bloody Crocs!

I know I shouldn't judge given that I was still wearing acid-wash nut huggers as recently as 1994 (yeah, so what if Wheels was my favourite on Degrassi?) but Crocs have to be one of the most absurd fashion trends since leotards and Chip 'n' Pepper shirts. When Kristina returned to Korea from Calgary last summer, I couldn't believe she was sporting a navy-blue pair of these eyesores and was aghast to learn that they were the hot item of 2006 throughout North America. And, indeed, so too were the Koreans we'd encouter: they were doubtless wondering why this lovely Weyguk was walking around in her bathroom slippers.

On the other hand, a country with men who wear pink might not be in any place to judge.

Is there Something/Anything else I can do?

The results are in and now I can go back to despairing about my literary future instead of dreaming wistfully about it. But the summer of 2008 isn't all that far off and, assuming the upcoming Van Dyke Parks and Nas books don't drive the whole enterprise into the ground, there's no time like the present to keep the fantasies alive...

...not to mention some early planning selecting the perfect title they simply won't reject this time round. That's right, I won't be pitching Chips from the Chocolate Fireball again (though I'm thinking about doing something with it): no, I'm not that bullheaded and stubborn. I've already begun handicapping the (very) early favourites:

- Eli and the Thirteenth Confession by Laura Nyro
- Eskimo by The Residents (or, possibly, Third Reich and Roll)
- Reading, Writing and Arithmetic by The Sundays
- Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band
- Pirates by Rickie Lee Jones
- Something/Anything? by Todd Rundgren (nb: this one's contingent upon me (a) buying it, (b) listening to it, (c) liking it, (d) deciding it's worth writing about and (e) feeling sufficiently inspired to bother doing so; as such it would appear to be the early favourite)

In the meantime perhaps I should, like, write stuff. It might help me out next time round. Look for this blog to move away from music and towards expressing my literary frustration in the fields of travel, fiction and essays as well. They say it's good to diversify, you know.

My exercise in literary-musicologist pastiche, not coming to a bookstore near you

My 33 1/3 pitch got rejected this past week. I can't say I'm particularly surprised given that (a) my topic's commercial potential is pitiful and (b) I'm a complete nobody. Still, I stand by my porposal and just to be sure it doesn't just amount to a courteous form letter get stuffed rejection here it is:

~~~~~


The Dukes of Stratosphear’s Chips from the Chocolate Fireball is remembered – if it’s remembered at all – as a diversion, a stopgap, a bit of fun on the side, as XTC moved from their commercial decline in England and onto their second great period of the late-Eighties. Among their devoted following it is liked but few adore it. Good, certainly, but not teeming with the kind of originality that bursts forth from their key works.

Or so you’d think. Chips is, in truth, a flowering of the imaginations of Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding, a work which far more effectively demonstrated their abilities and range than any album made under their own name in the period between 1980’s Black Sea and ‘86’s Skylarking. Their occasional penchant for earnestness is missing and it’s their first attempt at pop craftsmanship since their modest run of UK Top 40 hits in the late-Seventies and early-Eighties. By the time of Oranges and Lemons in 1989 it was as if XTC were suddenly parodying the Dukes of Stratosphear parodying Sixties pop – and, ultimately, unable to do so as effectively as their alter egos.

The approach I’m going to take with the Chips from the Chocolate Fireball 33 1/3 book is through the axiom “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” but not by imitating the Dukes themselves; rather, I’m planning to imitate famous authors and critics as they weigh in on this album in one way or another. A Lester Bangs review of Psonic Psunspot, for example, or Ian MacDonald analyzing 25 O’clock (the album and E.P. respectively that comprise Chips). I’m also going to include a mock Kenneth Tynan (the wag who labeled Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band a “decisive moment in Western civilization”) review of a mythical album of songs that the Dukes parodied – the Sixties Chips, as I’m calling it – as though it were a Nuggets-like compilation.

In addition, I’m preparing to compose pieces imitating the style of certain writers of significance who I am fond of and comfortable imitating. Barring some sort of brilliant new idea for another parody, I have decided to limit these chapters to the following:

- Telling a mythical tale, in the style of Jorge Luis Borges, all about the Dukes that completely disassociates them from XTC and posits an endless series of songs, stories and paintings that exist to mimic what came before – an infinite parody – and that this is the highest form of expression.

- A Huxley-esque fantasy that imagines a parallel universe where Chips – not Pepper – is the soundtrack to the summer of 1967 and the kind of world that would result.

- A fragmentary collection of terminology, phrases, ideas and lyrics that apply in some way to Chips, deliberately aping Roland Barthes in A Lovers Discourse and Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes.

- A bit of Gonzo Journalism where the Hunter S. Thompson-like author acts as a fly on the wall during a Dukes rehearsal.

(As a pseudonymous work, I’m contemplating not mentioning the name XTC in this book (one exception might be in the Bangs review when he discusses rumors of the Dukes’ true identities and sniffs “much as it sounds otherwise, I hope they aren’t fucking XTC: if they’re able to put out an album free of embarrassing political sloganeering under an assumed name then why can’t they do so under their own name?” or thereabouts) nor the real names of members Partridge, Moulding and Dave Gregory. It’s retrospectively been labeled an XTC album (the 2001 CD reissue gives songwriting credit to Partridge and Moulding) but Chips could never be credited to anyone other than the Dukes of Stratosphear)

Using parody to write about parody: a neat little parlor trick to be sure. But this technique is not going to be used for mere window dressing; I will use imitation as a means of arguing that XTC’s mask freed them from their identities and inhibitions and allowed them to record some of the finest music of their careers. Each section – either mock-review or literary pastiche – will deal with that point.

~~~~~

I'd like to think this pitch caused a bit of headscratching down at 33 1/3 headquarters in NY. Maybe screwing with the minds of publishers is the best I can hope for. For now.