시간

Time is, without question, the most valuable resource we have. It is a fixed entity. We know more or less how much of it we have (at the most, anyway), and we are aware of the milestones along the way. Once we get to a certain age, these points become marks of incremental regression in ability, facility, energy.

I’ve been thinking about time a lot lately, because I’ve been living primarily in the future for the past three or four months. It seems like everything I do lately is geared toward doing the next thing. This happens when you live by one-year contracts, and every cycle brings about a different signing scenario. I was profoundly disappointed by the last go-round, so I’m pushing myself even harder toward the next thing.

I’m applying for doctoral programs. This is an incredibly time-consuming process. It’s a bunch of maddening details made more insane by the vast body of water that separates me from my native country. Communication lags and takes the form of text, and there are certain things that need to be done in person that cannot be done. There is research, massive amounts of research. There is contact with advisors and students and program coordinators. There is contact with past professors for recommendation letters and advice. There are transcripts to be ordered (this simple thing being a strangely murderous process from my current location). There are statements of purpose to write, things to collect and package, things to consider including. And, of course, my big obsession right now: the GRE. I’m studying like a madman. I don’t know if it will help, but I’m dedicating myself to giving it my best shot. The exam requires a trip to Japan, which requires hotels, air travel, a big plan.

I also have, of course, my regular life. This involves teaching undergraduate and graduate classes, grading quizzes and projects, planning lectures, considering end-of-semester deadlines. It involves musical projects to which I’ve devoted myself. Everything else, including Korean language study, I’ve put on hold.

So this is how I exhaust my time. I’m burning that non-replenishable tank of fuel by preparing. The truth is, I’m not convinced that it will amount to anything. I don’t know yet if a) I’ll be accepted to a good PhD program, and b) I’ll accept an offer that comes to me. I haven’t decided whether or not I’m ready to leave. I like it here. Korea gives me time… to work, travel, write, play, experience. I like my friends, I like my life, I like what the place gives me. But I’m approaching that critical three-year period. From what I’ve seen of the foreigners here, this is the threshold. People who have been here two years talk about a future back home. People who have been here for three don’t. And if I do decide to stay, Plan B involves me staying for a very long time.

This mindset is what’s playing with my brain right now. It’s what has me thinking about time. Even if I wasn’t applying for doctoral programs, I’d still be using my time living in the future. I’d be studying Korean language (a long-term future endeavor), or I’d be re-writing my textbook (for future publishing), or I’d be thinking about new job opportunities.

It’s also got me thinking about the other things I could otherwise be doing with the time I’ve been given. I could be learning to play guitar. I could be expanding as a drummer. I could be mastering MAX/MSP. I could be writing a novel. I could be creating an ambient soundtrack to a non-existent film. I could be… Dancing Nancies.

아이폰

The iPhone is coming to Korea. This isn’t really that big of a news flash, because it was expected to happen. But now it’s pretty much official.

The speculation on that article up there is about how much it will penetrate the market here. I expect it to be pretty much a status symbol. In South Korea, Apple is an image thing. Microsoft is so ubiquitous that people gravitate to Apple things to present status (a very important thing here). It’s big at my workplace. I know one Korean colleague who has a Macintosh in his office, but it just sits there. He doesn’t actually use it; he’s got his Windows machine for actual work. But damn, it looks good. I know another who bought a Mac and only runs Windows through Boot-camp. And I’d say there are about five or six people in my department who have Apple monitors running Windows machines. That nice bold Apple icon oozes coolness.

It will be interesting to see how the iPhone does. It’s not really needed here, because while it might be a big technological breakthrough in the U.S., it’s not that big a deal here. Through Samsung and LG, people already have phones with huge hard drives to store and play all their music and a bunch of quirky apps. And because of DMB broadcasting, people can (and do) watch TV on their phones, something the iPhone doesn’t allow (at least I don’t think). The Samsung phones are pretty sweet, with touch screens and a bunch of cool features.

It will be interesting to watch how app development goes. I’d like to see some Korean-based apps come out. But again, from what I’ve seen, the interest in Apple is in the packaging (the hardware). Few people use Macintosh software, and I would suspect there are only a tiny number of people who could program for it.

If it does well, I suspect it will be because of the Apple brand more than the actual product. I probably won’t get one. I have a new iPod Touch that I’m happy with. Also, the iPhone requires a two-year contract and I don’t know whether I’ll be here that long. I’m not a bleeding edge kinda guy anyway. I’ll wait for the other foreigners (who are ready to make the leap) to test drive the situation before I consider it.

Words, words

OK, so that previous post was the angry, negative outlook on things. On the positive side, all this GRE studying is giving me a nice brush-up on vocabulary. Words are funny things. When you study them and stare at them over and over they become like little living creatures. They have personality (sound funny, sound strong, etc). And a word can change when placed in different contexts.

GRE study guides usually have some proprietary version of their “Big 500.” My Kaplan guide has its 500 and my Watermelon guide has its 500. There’s a lot of overlap. As I study, I’ve been writing down the words I don’t know or that I like and forming them into my own sentences, or putting them into relationships, all in an effort to remember them. Things like: “He expatiated a speech meant to expiate for his wrongdoings.” or “His irascible personality is implacable.”

One of my sections has “Words that I thought I knew but didn’t.” As follows:

GRE venting

So I’m taking the fucking GRE again. As I said a while back, I completely bombed it over the summer. For some reason I thought that taking a massive, potentially life-altering examination on summer vacation was a good idea. I didn’t respect the exam, so I didn’t study.

I still don’t respect it. I think it’s worthless. Universities are massive bureaucracies, tiny pockets of Soviet style objectivism. The GRE only encourages them to be even more unimaginative and lazy. Strange that the great institutes of higher learning would choose something so inane as their threshold of determining candidacy. Yes, letters, SOPs, background, accomplishments, work all matter. But the GRE, developed by a for-profit private sector company, is their gateway. Many universities aren’t even shy about it. They proudly state that one must get a combined 1,100 or 1,200 to even be considered.

Why do I hate the GRE so much? Because it’s a measure of neither creative nor intelligent thought. It’s a means of getting people to fall in line with everyone else. Getting a good score does not require intelligence, it requires obedience to a structure. My theory is that universities want to see that you are willing to dedicate yourself to something ridiculous for a lengthy period of time to prove that you’re willing to work on some equally ridiculous research project for your adviser over a prolonged period of time. The GRE requires two things: time and discipline. You study nothing of significance. You study how to take one particular exam.

But okay. This time I’m playing your stupid game. I bought one of these very positively reviewed GRE prep guides. It cost me $25 and I downloaded it directly to my iPod Touch. Actually, it’s a groovy little app, and it’s been very helpful. But it is essentially a bloated cheat-sheet, full of tricks designed to inure you to the test structure. Now, right there, something’s already not right. If it was really about intelligence, no one would have access to the rules; these books would be banned. We’d all have to go in like newborns and figure the damned thing out on the spot. But instead I see things like “The analogies portion of the verbal section falls into X number of basic question types. Here is an explanation of all the different question categories…” and on and on like this. I feel like a pervert reading this shit.

Incidentally, this is the exact same problem Korea has with English. Koreans fervently study English. But they don’t learn how to talk or write; they learn how to pass the TOEIC. They take classes whose specific aim is how to beat the structure, how to crack the code. This is why the overwhelming majority of Koreans can’t engage in a simple conversation in English. They don’t learn the fucking language. They learn how to beat the exam.

I take the GRE in 10 days in Osaka. I’ve been studying my ass off, and becoming bitter and resentful in the process, because I’ve got far more important things I could be doing right now. If I get 1,200 it will be a miracle. But if somehow I do, I’m not going to be proud. I’m going to feel broken, because I’ll know that the only thing I did was waste my time jumping through someone else’s hoops.

Document

If a blog has its own identity then this one is in an existential crisis. I say this because 1) it’s an exercise in free will, and 2) I’m wondering what the point is. To put it another way, I’m considering committing blog suicide. Ending it, putting it out of its misery, sending it off to the big sleep.

I’ve been in Korea for two years and eight months. I’ve had this blog for all but four months of that time. I’ve used it primarily as an opportunity to share my impressions of living in this culture. I have a particular audience in mind when I write, that being my family. Actually, when I write, I usually have my mom in mind, because I know she reads all the time and I know she enjoys it. But there are two reasons why I think it’s time to end it…

Winners of the 2009 PIFF festival

Here are the winners. (The only one I saw was Paju.)

PIFF report: Paju

My final screening at the 2009 PIFF festival was a Korean melodrama called Paju. This was also the last PIFF screening at the Haeundae Megabox theater, so the entire staff of volunteers came out to bow to the packed house of patrons. It was all very cute.

Paju was not cute; it was pretty damned intense. This was yet another taboo romance, with director Park Chan-ok successfully putting her audience through utter hell. As is typical with modern Korean melodramas, a tragic event has occurred, leading to a misunderstanding, and thereby throwing everyone into self-inflicted conundrums of Shakespearean proportions. The story is intended to induce suffering, from the three tragic central characters to the backdrop of forced relocation of homes to a rural community with seemingly no future.

I’ve seen enough Korean movies now. Once I got the Big Answer halfway through the film, I knew what was coming. I won’t give anything away, but it has to do with that very Korean form of sacrifice and heroism. And, as with other Korean melodramas, there is always, always the beautiful girl who makes it all worth it. Actress Seo Woo is indeed almost impossibly adorable, but her character is no saint. She’s selfish and detached, with a bit of a mean streak. Granted, her situation has played a role in making her that way, and she does have a sweet side to her. But it pains me to see what these men go through for the doe-eyed “innocent.”

Still, this is a complicated character and a complicated set of circumstances. Even if the misunderstanding could be worked out, we’re still left with a forbidden love in a hopeless town. Like Romeo & Juliet, even if the message arrives, even if they could come together somehow, reality is still against them.

If I sound like I didn’t like this movie, that’s not it at all. In fact, I’ve really come to like these heartbreaking Korean yarns. Paju is well made, with a very effective time-shifting montage that provides mysteries and then reveals them in a manner that works. This is an edgy art film with big budget production values and an excellent ensemble cast.

And with that, I think my PIFF blogging is done. I lost count of how many movies I saw — 11 or 12 I think. The atmosphere, the films, the weather, the parties, the conversations… all added up to another wonderful week. But I’m tired. I haven’t slept much, I drank too much, and my apartment is a disaster. I feel the need for a weekend of social inactivity, to calm down and get back to normal life.

PIFF: Dust to Dust

In travel, as Spalding Grey used to say, you’re always holding out for that “perfect moment.” With this year’s PIFF festival, I’ve been waiting for my “perfect film” to come along. It almost happened yesterday. For me to really love a film it has to be what I feel is exceptionally well-made and also hit me personally. In short, I want to be impressed and moved at the same time. Dust, a movie out of Luxembourg, accomplished about 95% of each.

Dust is what good cinema is all about. The great thing about movies as a storytelling device is the way they reveal a story through images and sounds. Film is not really about dialog; it’s about presentation. Books can’t do this, and neither can theater. Director Max Jacoby utilizes the full spectrum of what is available in the form to his advantage. Little is said in this movie because the camera and soundtrack take up that narrative role more than any dialog could. Jacoby, through cinematographer Fredrik Bächar, is an expert in blocking and framing. Every shot seems intended to give you a clue about what these three characters are thinking and feeling. It could be choice in focus, a slow dolly into one character’s face, someone intentionally cropped out of the frame, or someone moving in or out of the frame. The sound design also plays a strong role, with liberal use of offscreen sounds. We hear a door open and we wonder; we hear the crackling of glass under footsteps and realize something happened here; we hear the arrival of a car and we feel what that means.

In essence, Dust is a post-apocalyptic love triangle. But the setting is not simply a device. The environment and situation almost acts as a fourth character. It’s something the other three must contend with. It has a say in their decision-making and it forms the particularites of the relationships that have developed and will develop. Jacoby presents the landscape as monumental in size and scope, both containing and reflecting their own dilemma. This space and setting, combined with the sparse dialog, also gives the audience plenty of headspace to wonder how all of this is going to work out. I found myself a lot of times thinking “well shit, they can’t…” or “oh right, so how…?” The slow pace kept me in suspense and kept me wondering. And when that happens, when you realize how involved you are, that’s when you know you’re watching a great movie.

Which brings me to the remaining 5% of this movie that I didn’t like, that being the ending. Again, it’s revealed by the camera, and it was… not hugely disappointing, and not unexpected. But it wasn’t enough. We needed a third act and we didn’t get it. The director had done such a fine job of telling this story and creating an atmosphere of tension, and three minutes before it ends I’m thinking, oh crap, now they have to deal with x. But Jacoby let me off the hook. He had me in suspense and I was gearing up for an interesting final 20 minutes or so, but then he let me go. In short, we needed a conflict and we didn’t get one. I warn you that the next sentence is a bit of a spoiler: Yes, the penguin kept the ring, but the spell was broken without the penguin having to face the consequences of that, so it didn’t really matter anyway.

Still, good lord what a beautiful work of art this movie is. Unfortunately, the movie I saw afterward, The Dust of Time, wasn’t. It was horrible. Seriously, my god, I hated this movie. That wooshing sound you hear is the sound of this movie going right over my head. I had no clue who these people were and what was going on. Well, I did eventually, but by the time I caught up to what the director was trying to do, I didn’t care. Willem Defoe is laying it on so thick that it’s almost campy. This movie has so much melodrama — heavy moments, crying, slow motion — that was empty because I didn’t give a damn. It’s so strange to be watching actors on screen pouring it all out and I’m just empty. And I had to endure this for over two hours. I kept thinking “it has to end sometime it has to end sometime it has to end…” but it just kept going and going and going. After a while I’m just staring at a point in the center of the screen like a laser, not looking at anything, just waiting for the damned thing to end. When that didn’t work I tried to open up some latent telekenetic ability so I could peel the corners of the screen in order to make a paper airplane out of it. Anything just to end the damned thing.

Every movie experience is like a relationship between the maker and the audience member. And in this relationship, maybe it’s not about you, it’s about me. Maybe I just missed what all this passion was about. I’d like to give some benefit of doubt and think that. But I could see other people squirming. And when it finally faded to black and those first text images started to roll onto the screen, people practically lept out of their seats heading for the exits. Usually PIFF-goers will wait for the credits to end, clap, and then leave. But not here.

Luckily this isn’t my final film. I’m seeing my last one tonight, the one I was hoping to see — Paju.

PIFF Day 5: Zero

As the PIFF festival winds its way into the final lap, I’m thinking about the things I missed. There were seminars I had every intention of attending but simply could not find the time. But mostly I’m thinking about the films I wanted to see but couldn’t, partly through scheduling but mostly through sell-outs. Sorum only had one screening. But I believe this is because it was a last minute addition to commemorate the death of actress Jang Jin Young. Then there’s surrealist Taiwanese film Face (sold out every time), Air Doll from Japan (one scheduling conflict, one sell-out), and I Come With The Rain starring Josh Hartnett (no surprise, also sold out every time). Then there are Korean films In My End Is My Beginning and Paju (both always sold out). The one I really want to see is Paju. It has one more showing on Thursday, so I’m holding out hope that I can see it. If not, Air Doll is there as well. Fingers are crossed.

Last night I saw one movie, another Polish joint called Zero (dir. Pawell Borowski). It’s up for the festival’s Flash Forward award. The director was supposed to speak before the movie, but got caught up in traffic (and the lift — jeesus, the PIFF organizers have to do something about the crazy busy, slow-ass elevator problems). He arrived, out of breath, and simply said something to the effect of “this movie is not for everyone, but I hope you like it.”

Whereas many arty films are constructed nonlinearally. This one is the exact opposite. It is completely linear, in that the whole thing happens in a forward progression of character interaction. A character does something, meets with another character and that new character then moves on to the next stage of the story. On an on we go, twisting through 24 different characters (according to the trailer above). In a sense, that means there are 24 stories, but there are really about a half dozen core events going on. While the progression may be linear, the story does circle back on itself, so we’re able to revisit the central characters in new situations with new aspects layered onto their stories.

Yes, this is a blatant construct, and you could even call it a gimmick. But it works very well, almost too well. Ten or 15 minutes into the film, we’re well aware that we’re being subjected to this construct, and for the rest of the film you’re wondering what the director’s next move is going to be. It’s a little distracting, and at 2 hours, it gets somewhat tiring after a while. The best scenes are those when you don’t think about the trick. These are the moments when the director slowed things down and we got to witness the actors and their characters breathe a little. The acting is outstanding throughout. It’s a credit to their talent and the director’s that the movie is able to bring to life so many genuine, human characters. When we get a new interaction, we don’t feel like we’re getting introduced to another new story (that would be too tiring) but instead we feel like we’ve come across someone in the midst of a story in progress. I was impressed by how I never felt abandoned or lost. There are so many characters, but I could remember each one because each was so distinct and so well-defined.

This is not a perfect movie. The stories themselves are not nearly as inventive as the sequencing device. And again, even the device gets distracting after a while, mostly because the movie is too long to sustain it. But it’s a fun ride, and it ends right where it should, and in doing so offers a subtle, self-reflexive twist on everything you’ve just seen. Do I feel manipulated? Sure, but it’s cinema, that’s what it’s for.

PIFF: Day 3&4

I’m finding it difficult to get the time to write. My first priority is to watch as many films as possible. The second is to meet up with people. I’m accomplishing these with some success. But my other objectives — sleeping and blogging — sometimes get left behind. Oh yeah, and there’s that job thing too.

Last night (Sunday) was another night of meeting and drinking. I caught up with my friend at the soju/seafood tents at around 10:30. I met a American-born Korean actor named John, an actress (again, the name escapes me dammit), and a producer of one of Korea’s most popular movies, Taegukgi. All of them were very cool and, thankfully, spoke good English. In my small petri dish of industry people I’ve met they’ve all proved to be very un-diva like. They’ve been well-traveled, friendly, good humored people. We drank several rounds of soju and ate things that moved. Then it was time for me to hit the sack.

I took in four films over the past two days: Sleeping Songs, An Aimless Bullet, The Forest, and The Fair Love. Reviews follow…