Archive
Movie Review: The Host (2006) South Korea Gwoemul
Summary:
In the city of Seoul a haughty American military officer makes a Korean worker pour formaldehyde down the drain, which empties into the River Han. Shortly a creature mutates and turns into a beast that comes up out of the river and terrorizes the peaceful people living and working beside the river. The government cracks down on everyone who came into contact with the beast, claiming that the mutation is contagious. Meanwhile, the beast captures a little girl, and her whole family escapes quarantine and goes in pursuit of her.
Review:
I’ve developed a fondness for foreign movies, but this one was epically confusing. In fact, I live tweeted it, and my tweets were mostly ones of confusion. I’m really not sure how this movie crossed over abroad the way it did. Think of the worst American horror movie you’ve seen in the last couple of years and think about someone bothering to translate it into Korean. That’s what watching this was like.
First, there’s the main issue of formaldehyde turning only one creature in the whole River Han into a beast. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Period. Then there’s the beast itself. Although the cgi is very good, how it just doesn’t look particularly frightening. It can run around on land, swim, and hang by its tail off the bridges. It frankly looks a lot like a giant fetus running around. I couldn’t stop laughing.
Then there were just a bunch of odd, confusing moments. Maybe it was a cultural thing? Maybe the translation was bad? I’m really not sure. For instance, when the beast first appears, someone calls out that it’s a dolphin and gets all excited. I’m sorry; it looks nothing like a dolphin at any point in time. Wtf? Then there’s the main family. For the longest time, I thought that the little girl and her father were actually brother and sister with a slightly incestuous relationship. They look practically the same age! He gives her beer because she’s “in middle school now.” In fact, the whole family’s relationships with one another were completely baffling. Then there’s one of the weapons used against the beast that was some sort of inflated thing hanging down from a beam or something, and it, swear to god, just looked like a giant, yellow penis. Wtf? There were just too many wtf moments to get into the movie.
The one good thing I can say about the movie is that it reveals quite clearly the anti-American feelings in South Korea. I’m sure it would be interesting as a cultural study for that alone. I guess it was also entertaining, ableit in a wtf way. Given that, I’d recommend it to people with an interest in Korean culture or an enjoyment of bad horror movies.
2 out of 5 stars
Source: Netflix
Book Review: The Devil You Know (Felix Castor) by Mike Carey
Summary:
In the near future London, supernatural creatures, particularly ghosts, zombies, and demons, have suddenly shown themselves. Naturally the religious find this to be a sign of the coming apocalypse, but most people take it all in good stride. Some even discover that they have exorcism abilities. Felix Castor is one of these people. A staunch atheist, he works for hire, rather like a private detective in a Raymond Chandler novel. He takes a case of a haunting in an archive, but gets more than what he bargained for in the form of an overly-interested pimp, a succubus, and a competing exorcist who oddly bound the ghost so she can’t speak in lieu of sending her off to the after-life. Although his employers just want him to exorcise the ghost and be done with it, Castor refuses to do so until he discovers just what exactly is going on…., and he just might become a ghost himself in the process.
Review:
This book held a lot of promise to me. I’m a big fan of both the old-school private detective novels and the more modern paranormal books, so I thought this would be right up my alley. It fell flat for me, though, although I think that has more to do with me than the book.
First, it contains a very British sense of humor instead of the American kind found in Chandler books. I know some people find British humor absolutely hilarious, but it always completely fails to strike my funny bone. I’d read sentences in Carey’s book and know they were supposed to be funny, but they just aren’t to me. That becomes frustrating the more times it happens in a book, and it happened a lot.
I also, frankly, didn’t like the whole archives setting. Maybe it’s that I’m in library science and know archivists personally, but it just wasn’t escapist enough for me. The extensive descriptions of the archives, reading room, and storage, and the librarians’ spaces were dull to me. I wonder if this is the case for anybody reading a book that takes place largely in a location similar to where they work? It could also just be that I find archives dull. I am a reference librarian, after all.
The mystery itself was good and kept me guessing, although I slightly suspect that part of that was due to the fact that the rules of the supernatural are unclear and so Carey has some leeway in taking unexpected turns. It was the mystery that kept me reading, though, so it was well-written.
Overall, although this book wasn’t for me, it was well-written, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys British humor, detective novels, archive settings, and the paranormal.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Friday Fun! (Busy Week, Rain, Award)
Yes, another week with only one review. Sorry guys! Life just keeps….happening. Thankfully, there’s just about 5 weeks left of grad school, so things should start to drastically improve stress-wise in my life shortly. I promise to catch up! Thanks for being patient.
This week was full of yet another cold and hanging out with friends. I tried out two new pubs, watched a horror movie, ate Thai food, ate sushi, and randomly bought a book at the Harvard Coop in spite of having a 55 book tbr pile. I also may have accepted two more books from PaperBackSwap….. I also came to the realization with the deluge that hit Boston the end of this week that I am in dire need of rain boots and a rain coat. Hopefully these will be acquired this weekend. Also my closet is in desperate need of reorganization, and I’m mandating that this be done before I’m allowed to buy more clothes. Sometimes tempting yourself with rewards is the only way to make yourself be an adult.
In rather exciting job news, my team that built the intranet for my hospital won one of the more prestigious awards my hospital gives out! This means that I officially won the award, albeit as part of a team. But since when is website building not a team event? This was totally out of the blue and really exciting to come into work to discover. Since reference, programming, and computers are my library science specialties, it means a lot to me.
I hope you all have lovely weekends! Be expecting an outpouring of reviews next week. :-)
Book Review: Room by Emma Donoghue
Summary:
Most of the time it’s just Jack and Ma in Room. Jack likes watching shows on the planets on the television, but Ma only lets him watch two a day. She says his brain will turn to mush if he watches it too much. So instead they have phys ed where they run track in a smile around the bed or Jack plays trampoline while Ma calls out his moves. Sometimes Ma reads to Jack or they lay in the sun that comes in through the skylight. All day things are good in Room. But every night Old Nick comes, and Jack has to stay in Wardrobe while Old Nick spends time with Ma. Ma doesn’t like it when Old Nick comes. Neither does Jack. Jack’s whole life Ma has told him only they are real, and everything on television and in books is just stories. But one day she tells him those were lies. And now she’s unlying. Because they have to escape soon to Outside. Outside Room.
Review:
This is a mind-blowingly powerful book. I totally devoured it. It was impossible to put it down. Told entirely from the perspective of 5 year old Jack who was born in Room, it puts an incredibly heart-wrenching and revealing look into what has unfortunately been all over the news in recent years. Cases of women kidnapped and then locked up to be used by their kidnappers as, essentially, sex slaves. These cases often result in the births of children, and although stories have been told from the woman’s point of view, I am unaware of any others that tell them from the child’s point of view.
I have no idea how Donoghue was able to sound so completely like an actual 5 year old, but not just a 5 year old. A 5 year old going through such a unique and painful situation. From the very first page, I entirely believed that I was listening to what was going on inside Jack’s head. That means sometimes there are a few paragraphs about playing, and how Jeep and Remote Control play and fight with each other. But it also reveals what incredible insight children can have into life. That children are in fact little people and should be respected as such. For example, at one point Jack says:
I have to remember they’re real, they’re actually happening in Outside all together. It makes my head tired. And people too, firefighters teachers burglars babies saints soccer players and all sorts, they’re all really in Outside. I’m not there, though, me and Ma, we’re the only ones not there. Are we still real? (Location 1257-1261)
Jack is simultaneously childlike and insightful, and that lends a powerfully unique touch to a tale of evil inflicted on others. I honestly cannot think of anyone I would not recommend this book to, except perhaps someone for whom the events in it might be triggering. Beyond that, everyone should have the experience of reading it.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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