Hindsight

Long story short, it’s been a little over a month since our breakup. I’m not the same blogger I used to be years ago and have kept more personal issues to myself, reasonably so. Some things change. Even slightly.

Work has been good and I’ve been doing a bit here and there. I signed up for an Orange Savings Account as well as started to invest in a Roth IRA. Additionally I enrolled at my company’s retirement plan (finally). From a spontaneous standpoint this is the worst thing to do right before the launch of Metal Gear Solid 4 and the reported PlayStation 3 bundle. But let’s get serious: that stuff isn’t going anywhere and I have a few friends with PS3s. Right now there are a lot more important things to worry about.

The “Survival Edition” of Fallout 3 (an Amazon.com exclusive) includes the Collector’s Edition goodies plus a Pip Boy 3000… which essentially looks like an alarm clock:

Will the game actualy ship in October ‘08 though? For $129.99, money is better spent on, oh, an entire Rock Band set. It’s a $50 alarm clock! Are you kidding me?

I ran across two decent films on my Netflix run.

Hot Fuzz (Dir. Edgar Wright / Simon Pegg). When Clay asked me to go see this (long ago) I was very hesitant - I just don’t watch enough comedies. Turns out that this film was really entertaining and just silly-funny. Recommended. I’ll have to rent “Shaun of the Dead” next.

One Hour Photo (Dir. Mark Romanek / Robin Williams) was an interesting and cold film. Sy the photo guy is calm, creepy and sometimes pathetic. But I can’t help but feel sympathetic. What also stood out for me was the films soundtrack. I ended up picking it up in the iTunes store. Haunting, sad, but very compelling. Music for the darker corners of your mind.

I’ve been jogging every other morning at work. We have a fitness room that has two treadmills. One of them is helping me meditatively jog for 2 miles a few mornings of the week.

I’ve been in a very big creative lull for obvious reasons - but I am keeping myself busy.

Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” (2003) was showing at the University Edwards theater, across from where I used to attend college.

Well aware that this film was available as a bootleg, I preferred to catch it on a big screen. I’m glad i did.

“Oldboy” is very twisted and ultra-violent. The squeamish may find themselves looking away from the screen ever so often to avoid the [understated] painful bits. But those others who enjoy violence and stories without restraint will get a big kick out of it. Mari and I were pretty much floored and were still bringing it up later that night.

Lead actor Choi Min-sik is in his prime here. I expected no less.

After catching the film, we had a hankering for Korean food. The kimchee soondobu (Tofu Soup) that I ordered was very spicy - next time I will not ask for “medium” as the spice strength…

Now one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, or any other year for that matter. I enjoyed it so much. My friend brought it by on DVD. He told me there was a time when he watched it every day and never got tired of it.

I was on the phone with my friend Kevin, its owner, this evening.

“Would you erase your memories like that?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. How else would you learn from your past?”

My moviegoing experiences have, lately, always come with some sort of catch: this time it was a couple who would speak the obvious during the film. It really shuts me down when I’ve focused my energy into a film. People talking during the movie, sly remarks and cel phone displays glaring at random times. I’ll be frank - these people need to stop.

Despite all this, Collateral delivered.

I’m a little different. Tangentially, I know American Pie star John Cho (Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle) for his performance in Better Luck Tomorrow. So, in that same general fog, I’m not all that familiar with Jamie Foxx’s comedy. It was easy for the movie audience to let out some laughs when Foxx was supposed to be serious. I found this a little bothersome and was actually filtering the movie through the laughs from one of the first intense scene.

As the film picked up, though, most everyone seemed to acclimate themselves to his more serious side.

Cruise performs well as an articulate hitman of sorts. Foxx, the cabbie who doesn’t push himself enough. I didn’t need convincing - both Fox and Cruise’s interplay delivered.

In several instances, we see the Los Angeles cityscape from directly overhead. Shots like these are concepts that I dream of executing someday. To see them in this film manifested some envy and jealousy in me. But, damn, the shots were beautiful. Lines and symmetry. Veins of the city, cars as cells…

Amber… shades of mint… these colors have never looked so good. It’s exactly what I was hoping to see, especially for a Michael Mann film.

I bought the soundtrack on Sunday. I am wondering if Mann was forced to choose a song for a key sequence in the film (Dreamworks + marketing) or if he decided to put Audioslave in because the lyrics matched well with the visuals. I wasn’t expecting it. Honestly, I would have preferred that a non-vocal song be used for that scene. Keep it even more enigmatic.

This is the second Mann film I’ve seen: my first was Heat. I’ve seen that well over five times and it remains one of my all time favorite films.

Collateral romanticizes the city… studies character… breaks from the action and a snaps back into it. Recommended.

Several weeks ago I casually browsed the new release of DVDs at a local Target. I should have expected some n-th edition of “Field of Dreams” to be released. This time, it was a two-disc “Anniversary Edition”. I bought it, of course.

When I was in junior high school I remember catching “Field…” on network television. I was drawn in for some reason and I thought the story was fascinating. Soon after I bought a VHS copy - at the time, DVD wasn’t a consumer format.

I also ended up getting the DVD when it was finally released on the format.

This Sunday evening, after an overtime shift, I decided to let the remastered edition run while I was computing. I found myself glancing over for long periods of time.

Field of Dreams is one of my favorite films. This latest release of the film is vivid and crisp.

Ray Kinsella is in his mid-thirties and hasn’t done “one spontaneous thing in [his] life”. So he does the unthinkable: he destroys a portion of his corn field to build a baseball field. Unexplainable things occur and he finds himself travelling to Massachusetts and Minnesota to find others who have had similar passions.

This film has always arrested me for its theme: the pursuit of one’s dreams… Dreams and the things people do to find out more about themselves and their hopes.

Wait for it on video or watch it for free. Nothing too fantastic, unless the idea of instant, deep-freeze will put you on the edge of your seat. I had the fortune of watching it for free (work/group noon outing).

It’s not a terrible film. But I thought about all that money spent on the visual effects and how all that money could have been distributed to produce other films that would have been more fantastic efforts. You know?

Epic disaster films and love stories together are hard to believe (especially on this film’s scale) and, well, I’m not really compelled. The greatest moment in this film is its opening - I’m a sucker for a good score and the opening orchestration was quite nice. I’ll have to hunt the track down.

Watch “Man on Fire” instead. Or maybe “Shrek 2″ (I finally saw the first one on DVD this week).

I had to keep reminding myself that this film was not directed by Kevin Costner in the sense of storyline. This man carries a journal and narrates shortly as the film goes on. There is a character in the village who dislikes but later respects the foreigner that has been captured. No, this is an Edward Zwick film. I have always enjoyed watching Glory. But “The Last Samurai” is not Glory.

Maybe this is an unfair comparison. I nitpick at details. How does Tom Cruise’s character pick up Japanese in one season like that? Amazing.

Allow me to criticize things. I still enjoyed watching it. Hence, entertainment.

“It’s like seeing someone for the first time, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there’s this kind of recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person’s gone, and it’s too late to do anything about it.” - Jack Foley (George Clooney)

http://www.apple.co.jp/quicktime/trailers/appleseed_large.html

Animation does not need to look photo-realistic when it looks this gorgeous.

I don’t know anything about the manga (comic) that this film, Ping Pong, was based on. But what I just saw was grand. A feel-good film that came along at just the right time - while I’ve been down and out.