Movie Reviews: Terminator 4, Transformers 2, and Speed Racer

Short reviews of some (sc-fi?) movies I saw in the last two or three months.

Terminator IV: Salvation (2009)

Not a bad movie, with some good action and a dark mood that follows smoothly from Terminator III: Rise of the Machines. In this movie we learn where the original cyborgs (cybernetic organism: robotic skeleton covered with living tissue) come from. Unfortunately, neither Terminator III nor Terminator IV could revive the thrilling magic of the first two, especially Terminator II: Judgement Day (my favourite). I think the missing ingredient is Linda Hamilton.

Transformers 2 (2009)

I just could not get into this film. It was just too humongous. The machines are so huge, the momentum so great, and the speeds so fast that it was impossible for me to suspend my disbelief. The special effects are very good, to be honest, and Megan Fox running towards you with sweat dripping over her bouncing boobs makes for nice viewing as well. Still, this movie just didn’t convince me.

Speed Racer (2008)

I wasn’t intending to see the Wachowski brother’s green screen film, but since Rain acts in it, I thought I’d give it a go. Let’s just say that I I’m very unlikely to watch this movie again. Unless you’re a pre-adolescence boy, give this one a skip.

Trivia: Rain acts in another Wachowski project coming out later this year: Ninja Assassin. Now this is something I am looking forward to see. (See Rain/Ninja Assassin photos.)

Mmm...

"The words of fire that from his pen
Were flung upon the fervid page,
Still move, still shake the hearts of men,
Amid a cold and coward age." -- William Cullen Bryant

The Price Korean Women Pay for Beauty

While hitting a girl over the head with a club and dragging her off by the hair to your cave is something we expect only to happen in caveman cartoons, something with a similar (albeit less violent) tang happens in Korea.



I'm curious about two things. Firstly, if these women do not like it, why don't they slap the bastard, kick him in the shin and thrust her palm into his chin? Or is she afraid to make a scene? (Saving-face being so highly prized in the Orient.) Secondly, is she seeing this as a compliment? After all, a "bikki" only harass supposedly beautiful women.

Mmm...

School is meant to be unpleasant, to prepare you for life. -- From My Family (BBC Sitcom).

I hated school.

Something smells...uhm...grapefruity

(Image Source)

Flies, quite possibly fruit flies, followed me around today.

On teachers' day earlier this year I received eau de toilette as a gift from my department. The bottle of Dunhill "Pure" cologne comes in an attractive bottle and has a powder blue hue. At first whiff it has a clear sweet floral smell. The tenor tone is lotus leaf. The base, however, although apparently white pepper, when mixed with the floral smells (lotus leaves and iris) and cardamon as the high note, causes a grapefruit after smell on my skin.

Honestly, this is not my favourite cologne. It's too florally and I don't like the grapefruity odour it has on my skin. Nevertheless, I'm not one to waste an expensive gift and will probably continue to use it every so often, regardless of the fruit flies.

The Old Taxi Driver Stalker

(Image Source)

An old taxi driver is stalking me…

It all started one day after I went to Hapkido class and wanted to go Taekwon-Do class directly from there. I thought that a taxi might be faster than the subway. I was wrong, but that aside. I got in this taxi with an old seventy-some years old taxi driver and asked him to take me to the place where the Taekwon-dojang is. We started talking, me with my limited Korean and him with his limited English. After a nice little chat, the old taxi driver asked me for my mobile phone number. For the life of me, I don’t know why I gave it to him. I’m very protective of such things, but somehow found myself giving out my number. Ever since then, the old taxi driver has called me nearly every day. He wants me to come visit him for dinner sometime. The phone conversations are unusually difficult to understand – I understand maybe 30% of his mumblings and pretend to understand less. An unfortunate thing is that my mobile phone is quite old and does not have caller ID. I therefore do not know who is calling, and often find myself answering to my old taxi driver stalker.

I’m starting to get worried for at least three reasons. First, his incessant calling, nearly every day now for the last two weeks, is making me think that this guy really has an obsession. Second, a colleague told me that many of the taxi drivers are actually ex-convicts. Driving taxis is one of the few jobs they can get after getting out of jail. So for all I know, my old taxi driver stalker may be a sexual predator with a fetish for white South African men. Third, repeatedly during his calls he says something about “baby”. I cannot figure out what he is saying and whether he wants to show me his baby (grandchild?), whether he wants to convey that he adopted me as his foreign-son (and I am therefore his baby), or whether he is romantically referring to me as his “baby” (e.g. “Hey, come here Baby, I wanna show you a good time”). It is the latter thought that’s really freaking me out.

I don’t want to be mean to the guy. Maybe he is really just a lonely old man with no ill intend and I could brighten his dreary life with some conversation. Nonetheless, his persistent calling is starting to get on my nerves. Should I comply and visit him sometime?

If I suddenly stop blogging, inform the police that I’ve been drugged by an old taxi driver and he is probably keeping me hostage in his basement for perverted purposes or has chopped me into little pieces and is feeding me to his baby.

The Liminal Michael Jackson

[Image Source: Rasha]

I’ve avoided the Michael Jackson-saga on purpose. What is there too add? Then I started to think* about what a liminal being Michael Jackson was.

Isn’t Michael Jackson the epitome liminal being? What is Jackson’s ethnicity, what’s Jackson’s gender, what’s Jackson’s “age”? Throughout his career, Jackson seemed to transcendent such labels. Of course he is African-American, but we all have to agree that it is not that simple. Jackson did not look African-American. Imagine an alien being visiting Earth and seeing the Pop-icon for the first time. Seeing Jackson’s ethereal white complexion, silky wavy hair and chiselled-coned nose, the alien visitor would never have been able to guess Jackson’s “ethnicity”. Although politically incorrect and slightly distasteful, there is a reason why we find the following humorous: “Michael Jackson was born a poor black boy, but became a rich white woman.” Regardless of having fathered numerous children, many people still question his sexual orientation. In fact, he is has become an almost asexual being. And towards the end of his life, it would seem that he refused to age, not merely outwardly, because of the many plastic surgeries, but rather inwardly; as if he became a psychological Benjamin Button.

The great essayist James Baldwin wrote in the essay “Here Be Dragons” the following:

The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all. I hope he has the good sense to know it and the good fortune to snatch his life out of the jaws of a carnivorous success. He will not swiftly be forgiven for having turned so many tables, for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring, and the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo has nothing on Michael.

All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; the blacks, especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair–to all of which may now be added the bitter need to find a head on which to place the crown of Miss America.

Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated–in the main, abominably–because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.

Indeed, Michael Jackson became a freak – a liminal being in who we projected “our most profound terrors and desires”; and that’s why we hated him so much. That’s why we loved him so much.


* My thoughts about Michael Jackson’s liminality was spurred on by an article I started writing recently on the similarities in liminal spaces in Samuel Taylor Coleridge epic poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Tales of the Black Freighter: Marooned”, the comic-within-a-comic, in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel Watchmen. [Previous posts on Watchmen here and here.]

Some Good Looking Koreans

(Source)

(Source)

So who do you think are the hottest K-Pop (Korean Pop) artists under 25? If you have no idea who the hot and trendy current K-pop stars are, no worry; allkpop provides a list of the top 10 hottest female stars under 25 and the top 10 hottest male stars under 25.

I'm not much into pop-music, and therefore even less so into K-pop. Furthermore, I prefer a little more mature celebrities. Personally, I think Rain (Bio; previous post here) and Song Hye Kyo (when she's not trying to look cute), are some of the sexiest Korean stars. I think that Song Hye Kyo (when she's not trying to look cute -- I hate cute!) can easily be the Monica Bellucci of Korea.

(Song Hye Kyo -- Image Source)

(Rain/Bi -- Image Source)

Happy 4th of July!

Long Walk to Freedom

"Long Walk to Freedom" -- Cheongdam Park, Seoul

Friends at Banpo Han River Resort

Laura (not this one), a friend working on the same campus as I, had her birthday on Thursday. Since she is returning to the U.S. next week, after over two years of working in Korea, I thought it would be nice for us to go out to dinner. We went to Itaewon and had a lovely meal at a Middle Eastern restaurant. Afterwards we went to Banpo Han River Resort in Seoul where a water feature recently opened. On one side of Banpo Bridge a large number of robotic nozzles have been installed that shoots beams of lighted water, synchronised to music. It is quite a sight and reminds me of the great wings of some mythical creature. Young and Angelina met us there and later brought us home, as their own house is not too far from the campus where Laura and I work.

Admittedly, I am going to miss Laura; she is returning to America to commence aPhD in Old Testament studies.

Directions to Banpo Han River Resort:

At Express Bus Terminal Subway Station (Line 3), take exit 8-1 or 8-2 and cross the main street. Just continue to walk through the suburb until you see the Han River ahead. It’s about a 600m walk.

Ask for directions: “Banpo Hangang Gongwon odi-eyo?”
Or take a taxi: “Banpo Hangang Gongwon ga-juseyo.”

The water feature is only active for a certain time in the evening -- I think from around 20:00 to 21:00.

Sabbath Trip Down Memory Lane

Today, I reluctantly got out of bed. I really felt like sleeping in, but I got this consistent impression (Holy Spirit?) that I need to go to church. It is not my custom to skip church – it is one way in which I keep the Sabbath. So I eventually got up, took a quick shower, gulped down two glasses of water and a banana and dashed off to the Sabbath-keeping church close by. While the sermon itself did not speak to me that much, it was still a blessing because I saw some old friends.

I worked with both Robert (American) and Sharon (Korean) a couple of years ago at the language institute where I worked the first time I came to Korea. In fact, Robert and I were room mates. At that time he and Sharon started dating and sometime after I returned to South Africa they got married. Today was the first time for me to see them again since then. They both have a pleasant glow about them, which is nice to see.

After church we sat together during potluck and had a great time catching up. It turns out that Robert taught at the same university and the same department, where I’m teaching now. Actually, he was professor to the current chairperson of my department – Division of English Studies – back in the 80s.

It was superb talking to Sharon as well. Sharon, Kay (a friend from Italy), and I often hang out together talking about such varied topics as being single and our concepts of heaven. Of the three of us, Sharon is the only one to have gotten hitched in the meantime. Although both Kay and I were respectively in serious relationships since then, we are both single again. While romance and relationships were occasional topics of discussion, it was especially the topic of heaven that intrigued us the most. We’d spent hours contemplating what it would be like, the things we’d do and see, and the fun we’re going to have. All three of us believe in a post-resurrection heaven, with physical, albeit glorified, bodies. Whenever I think of Sharon or Kay, I tend to think back to those times and our cheerful meditations.

University is not the Gospel

“So could you give me [a] second chance to rewrite the paper? I don't think you want your student […] not to be able to graduate because of this class.” So wrote a student of mine in an email I received last night. I gave her 0% for her research paper in my Research Methodology class because she plagiarized the paper in its entirety from the Internet. Apparently failing this class will keep her from graduating.

Her assumption “I don't think you want your student […] not to be able to graduate because of this class” really bothers me. It bothers me, not because she won’t be able to graduate; it bothers me because she is shifting responsibility – as if it is my fault that she won’t be able to graduate. She is not the only student to have approached me with similar sentiment. The underlying premise is that it is I that failed them; not that their failure is a result of their own doing. One student emailed me, saying that because he got an F in one of my classes he won’t be able to stay in the dormitory next semester and hopes that I will change his grade. Another student requested me to raise her grade because she wishes to become a teacher and a C-symbol will reflect badly on her transcript. So too, yet another student complained that he has never received a C, even when he didn't study. And so the list goes on. The majority of them has this attitude that I can merely swing my magic wand and change their lives, they don’t have to deserve it, they only have to beg persistently enough.

I’m sorry, but that is not how it works. Actually, I’m not sorry. I feel indifferent, to be honest. They had opportunity to come see me throughout the semester. There were extra credit assignments. I gave them hints for the exam. You get what you deserve. University is not the Gospel.

Nail Art

A friend sent me a link to "Nail Art", by photographer Vlad Artazov. It's amazing how much can be suggested in this minimalist medium. "Loneliness" seems to be one central theme in Artazov's work. I like how his photography seems to tell stories.

Impulsive Deletion

Image from Microsoft.Com

Just now, I took a bold step and indiscriminately deleted all the emails in my Inbox. There were about 430 emails that needed to be read, sorted or deleted. And I knew that the likelihood of me working through them all is most unlikely – in any case, they just keep on adding. So, in a moment of impulsive delirium, I selected them all and pressed delete.

Unfortunately this will not solve my problem. This was just one email account. I have several.