The Host

Film critics always like to talk about horror films actually meaning something. The Saw trilogy is a comment on the apathy of the bourgeoisie. Hostel is about Americans' xenophobia and non-Americans' justified hatred of America. But when movies are bad (as are the above), I don't really care what they mean. To some extent, they're nice to have for cultural reference, but until they're on when I can't find anything else to do, I'll pass.

Joon-ho Bong's Gwoemul (The Host) looked pretty scary in its trailers, but I think that was partly due to the trailers' artificial lack of dialogue (similarly mute misrepresentations happen with a lot of foreign films' English-version trailers, often with comic effect). What looked like a monster-horror film turned out to be, well, still a monster movie, but also a family comedy-drama and a smart political satire.

When a monster (which happens to have been accidentally created by the American military) starts running amok in Seoul the Park family - a little girl, her idiot father, her feeble grandfather, her medal-winning archer aunt and her alcoholic uncle - comes together to try and stop it in order to preserve their lives and relationships. Much of the time, it was a lot of fun watching them run around trying to find and fight this thing, but there was something very serious about the realities of such a monster infiltrating the city and the Park family.

As they chase after the monster, the Parks run into obstacle after obstacle set in place by the government. Playing on the southeast Asian fear of SARS and other viruses, the Korean government is convinced that the monster has brought a deadly virus, with symptoms similar to the common cold and which ultimately lead to a swift death. When it seems the Koreans can't handle the situation, the American military swoops in and proposes using Agent Yellow, a biological weapon, to destroy the monster and the deadly virus it has brought with it.

At a time when the American military is being questioned domestically and abroad, a lot has already been said to the effect of, "Americans stick their noses in where they're not needed or wanted, and they need to get the hell out. The rest of the world hates them." The more helpful and as I see it, more accurate sentiment as portrayed in Gwoemul is, "Thanks for coming over to help, we really appreciate it, but why do you have to always think you know what's best? Listen to us! Our way of seeing things is different from yours, but it is valid." There was an unexpectedly poignant moment I think I'll never forget when one of the characters says, "My words are words, too!"

It's trendy, I know, for some Americans to be obsessed with southeast Asian cultures, but I can honestly say I've never had a desire to visit them until these past six months or so of watching their films. There is something I'm missing, some piece of all the films that won't fall into place until I read some history books and take a trip or two. While film might not be the best way to understand a place, Gwoemul, A Taste of Tea (which I watched recently, too) and several others have confirmed for me the indispensability of film and other media as a way to enlarge experience. I may never get to travel to southeast Asia, but film has brought me past the veneer of the place.

It's me

Just now, outside my seventh-floor window, Iz Kamakawiwo'ole's cover of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" started playing loudly. I walked to the window and a flock of white birds was flying back and forth against the backdrop of the monument and a bright blue sky.

If I had been contemplating some major life decision and at that moment had said If God exists, He will give me a sign right now," I would have found the answer. Since I know there's no such thing, at least it gave me something to smile about.

Who's setting me up here?

Of course

Whenever I write on this thing, I always find it necessary to edit myself pretty heavily. My cutting floor is full of words and phrases like "of course," "obviously," "clearly," "I think," "in my opinion," and others which turn my constant doubt of the worth and ubiquity of my own knowledge into what appears to be arrogance or over-confidence. Whatever I write, I worry that readers are either wondering who in the world I think I am to be saying these things, or that what I'm saying has been said a thousand times, and better.

I've started a little late down the path of self-examination and critical thinking, but I know I'm further down the line than some, and that my thoughts are starting to be interesting. Not everyone reads what I write and thinks, "Yes, that's just what I thought 40 years ago" or "Doesn't everyone know that already?" I will have to continue to fight against this kind of self-doubt when I go to school, finding a balance between confidence in the things I know and commitment to honest inquiry. My self-defense mechanism when people take an attitude of superiority is to pretend to know more than I do, or to start talking in vagaries. Not helpful to anyone. This blog has been really helpful in getting started writing again, even if only to start purging myself of that extreme self-doubt and to encourage my commitment to be honest about the things I don't know.

The Painted Veil

I should tell you right away: I didn't like this movie, so reading this will be a spoiler if you plan on seeing it.

In general I think I do a pretty good job at not being a movie snob; I like a lot of blockbusters, sophomoric comedies and overpriced adventure movies, but I also love tons of classics and independent films. (Ebert & Roeper are always fun to watch because of this, balancing fairly discriminating taste with very indiscriminate viewing.)

The Painted Veil is a great story (based on the book by M. Somerset Maugham) with some of the best examples of people bearing the pain - and, later, satisfaction - of unwittingly making a good decision. Walter (Edward Norton) and Kitty (Naomi Watts) jump quickly into marriage: Kitty to get away from her mother (the couple almost immediately move to China for Walter's job) and Walter for love-at-first-sight. Each expects the other to behave in a way they know is inconsistent with their character and past behavior. Inevitably, the rebellious Kitty has an affair and Walter, shamed, threatens Kitty with either a scandalous public divorce or a move to the interior of China, where a cholera epidemic is ravaging the countryside. After Kitty's lover fails her and goes back to his own wife, she travels with Walter to the isolated province, Walter punishing her endlessly in every small way for her bad behavior.

The epidemic acts as a mirror, revealing to Walter his cold exterior and to Kitty her extreme frivolity. As they improve themselves they come to recognize the good in each other and begin to reconcile. As their dispositions improve, the cholera epidemic and political unrest grow worse. I'll leave it to you to guess which one of them comes down with cholera and finishes off the downward spiral of this melodramatic movie.

Yes, the story and dialogue are good, but Somerset Maugham provided that. And yes, the acting was great, but the director made bad decisions about pacing and the director of photography made really bad decisions when filming; the movie was too Hollywood, too glossy, too pretty. There was something gritty missing from their experience, the thing that made them turn into the people they were by the end. Too much emphasis was placed on costume and set design when subtlety would have made the dialogue much more striking.

Walter: I knew when I married you that you were selfish
and spoiled, but I loved you.
Kitty: I married you even though I didn't love you, but
you knew that. Aren't you as much to blame for what happened as I?

Lines that could easily be read as melodrama (and might have been when Maugham wrote them), but a skillful director could have made them powerful and subtle. Maybe this was the point, but the way the film was shot was more akin to a sightseeing show on the Travel Channel instead of an arduous, dirty, life-changing journey. What could have been a moving story was changed into a melodrama on top of a tourism pamphlet for rural China.

20 Favorite Albums

The albums below are presented in order according to how much I think I loved them, when I did love them. With the exception of OK Computer , these are all albums to which I still know every word of every song (what the hell is he saying most of the time, anyway - but I do know the words to Exit Music, and yes, I had to look them up).

1. Kings of Convenience: Quiet Is the New Loud - I put in more hours listening to this album than I have any other. Without exaggeration, I had this in my six-disc CD changer for three solid years, listening to it several times through every week. The listening culminated in going to see them in Columbus, which was one of the best shows I've ever been to.

2. Radiohead: OK Computer - Who hasn't loved this album at one point?

3. Iron & Wine: Our Endless Numbered Days - Another quiet album I connect with for an unknown reason.

4. Hootie & The Blowfish: Cracked Rearview - Soundtrack to my freshman year of high school and a trip to Poland.

5. Alanis Morissette: Jagged Little Pill - While at 14 years old, I probably wasn't the target audience for her music, this was definitely the soundtrack to my sophomore year of high school. I do find most of the songs pretty annoying now, but I like the acoustic version she released a couple of years ago; took the almost-whiny edge off and just left pretty songs sung quietly and with far less angst.

6. Elliott Smith: XO - Definitely my favorite mix of slow and fast Elliott Smith songs, and maybe his only album on which I like every song.

7. Weezer: (blue album) - Another album everyone in the world liked/likes.

8. Aqualung: (self-titled) - I'm not sure why they thought American audiences would like this cheesy cover more than this awesome one as well as liking the addition of the stupid title "Strange and Beautiful," but they were wrong. I was walking around a Virgin Records store during my semester abroad when I heard this album playing overhead. The addition of a few not-very-good songs on the American version, and his subsequent mostly-failure of a follow-up album have been extremely disappointing, but every track on this debut is worth listening to.

9. The Cranberries: No Need To Argue - I got on this train fairly late, but also loved "Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We" and "To the Faithful Departed."

10. Mariah Carey: (self-titled) - Say what you will, but she does have an incredible voice, and her debut album showcased it well (according to my nine-year-old ears).

11. Weezer: Pinkerton - I don't think there's a better summer soundtrack out there.

12. Rufus Wainwright: Poses - His only album that's pretty consistently good from beginning to end; this one almost doesn't make the list because I hate "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" which makes two appearances on the album.

13. Ben Folds: Rockin' the Suburbs - I can't stand tracks 7-11 on this album, but the rest is just so damn good I can hardly stand it.

14. Muse: Absolution - The blend of classical piano with strong melody, strong voice and heavy guitar is so great on this album, but they failed miserably with their most recent, Black Holes and Revelations.

15. Bright Eyes: I'm Wide Awake It's Morning - With four songs I really don't like on the album (sorry, Emmylou Harris, but I don't think you really contributed anything), this one barely makes it on the strength of the four songs I love ("At the Bottom of Everything," "Lua," "First Day of My Life" and "Road to Joy").

16. The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots - An album put together nearly as well as "OK Computer," with the title track leading the way.

17. Band of Horses: EP - I saw these guys by chance as the opening act for Iron & Wine, and they blew me away. Their more polished album lost the intensity and sincerity of the EP.

18. Alanis Morissette: Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie - As good a follow-up as I could have hoped, at the time. I really did love all 17 songs.

19. Portishead: Dummy - Love every song.

20. MxPx: all albums up to Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo; Slick Shoes: Rusty; Ninety-Pound Wuss: (self-titled); NOFX: Punk in Drublic - I have to put all of these together because they're all so ridiculous. I still feel naughty when I listen to NOFX's "Perfect Government." (And who the fuck are you, anyway? Who the fuck are they? Who the fuck am I to say? What the fuck is really going on?)

Look At Me

When I was a kid living out in the middle of nowhere, trips in the car meant a lot of time to pretend fight - always followed by real fighting - with my brothers, to play the alphabet game or 20 questions and mostly to stare at other cars. Passing cars were my first glimpse at a world bigger than myself, hinting at the enormous number of lives I wasn't a part of. I still have that feeling when I look over at another driver and am amused (sometimes scared) to think that they believe their lives are just as important as mine (probably more important), they have huge networks of people they love, hate and work with, and they have likes and dislikes similar in quantity - if not quality - to mine.

Reading Jennifer Egan's Look At Me felt like getting to see into the lives of the people in those cars. I was fascinated by the the way the characters used their own images and those they projected onto others to interact with everyone around them. They looked at themselves and others and thought about what it means to be pretty, ugly, average, sick, fat, foreign or famous, hiding those characteristics or desperately hoping they get noticed by others. If someone were to look inside my brain, I sometimes think they might be appalled by how much I think about my own image, but I wouldn't believe most people if they said they didn't do the same thing. Every person considers their own image and is at least aware that their outward appearance says something, even if they are mistaken about what they're really saying.

Several characters in the book were constantly on the lookout for "shadow selves," the person underneath the image. (These same characters were also practiced in appearing outwardly calm and uninterested.) On top of reading someone's clothes, expressions, gestures, haircut, glasses and facial hair, they look for whatever it is in someone's voice, eyes, stride and mannerisms that gives away their true selves. After reading the book I had begun to do the same thing, but being inexperienced I found I could only think about it in regard to myself. I am not usually very careful about letting my emotions and thoughts be read pretty clearly through my expressions and behavior, but it's interesting to think about the power that gives to other people.

My mom is fond of the idea that you shouldn't cast pearls before swine, and that to tell someone how you feel and what you think is often to open yourself up to someone who doesn't deserve it. While I don't usually buy into that thought, I have started warming up to the idea over the past few years. I spend a lot of time worrying about whether the average person on the street would find me attractive with my glasses on, or whether I could make my coworkers really like me if I tried hard enough, or whether or not my dad knows I'm right and he's wrong, or especially whether or not people know where I stand on important issues. While I hate to close myself off to the world even more than I already have (partly for fear that I'll never be able to be vulnerable with anyone), there is something to the idea of keeping myself to myself. It borders on the adolescent feeling, though, that "no one understands me," and seems likely to lead towards alienation.

Every person wants to be seen by someone: parents, siblings, the cool kid at school, a good-looking person, the media, the world. Look At Me explores what it means to be a person in 21st-century America through the eyes of idiots, geniuses, the mediocre, those outside our culture and those who embody it. While it might not withstand a lot of critical scrutiny, I highly recommend it for a solid, entertaining, fast read that's also pretty insightful. (Also - and I won't spoil it for those who haven't read it and want to - Egan created a character who makes her seem just short of clairvoyant. If you are interested in reading this book, don't dig too deep about it before you do.)


Side note: As so many contemporary books are, Look At Me was nearly ruined by a completely unnecessary epilogue. I empathize with the need to wrap things up neatly, but have come to realize that I, as a reader, am usually better off imagining for myself how characters end up. Most epilogues are just evidence of not trusting your readers to be thoughtful people, and this one epitomized that idea.

Pan-Blog Title

We are a group of clever people, if ever there was one, so we should come up with a good name for this thing, something that sets a tone. I'm horrible at coming up with names on my own, but with a group, I think we'll all feed off each other nicely.

So, first suggestion?