Let the macro race begin....

or is it already over? perhaps--



Not sure who made it, but whoever you are, you earned your free beer for the day.

the wonderful world of bad Adultswim commercials

I watch a lot of adultswim. I don't love it as much as when I first discovered it, though the channel is well on its way to a golden era if the upcoming pilots are good. I think I watch it so much because my remote control is broken, so I just keep it on the one channel that delivers consistently at night (i.e. the Futurama/Family Guy hour and a half.)


It has become apparent that advertisers don't think too highly of those of us who watch it though. We are all idiots who sit around and think of how good we would be at designing or testing video games, if we could only have a chance. Lies. We are all stoned idiots with no ambition and 14 years old. Still, inexplicably, they churn out these amazing commercials that look like they were filmed in the early 90s:



I'm not sure what the exact point of that video was--that you'll go to college only to work under an oppressive boss who is constantly pushing you to the next project and completely blows you off with a sarcastic "great" when you tell her to tighten the graphics in level 3?! Or that somehow game testing is a glorious position that you can rub in your Mom's face? ("LOOK! I got somewhere!! kekekekekeke!!!1)

Sadly, this one has long been replaced with ITT Tech commercials that also have 2 dollar production values, only they try to lure the viewer in with free demos of 5 year old games and the chance to create "the world's next great videogame."

Ch'wihwason - Painted Fire

Ch'wihwason (pronounced chee-wa-son) by the legendary Korean director Im Kwon-Taek stands out from many of the amazing films that have been coming out of South Korea since the mid 1990s, when censorship under the authoritarian government ended. The movie is a biography of the legendary Korean painter Chang Seung-up, more well known as Oh-won, whose life leads up to the end of the Choson period at the end of the 19th century.

The film is historically loaded, as it jumps back to what are essentially South Korea's final moments of true independence before a roughly 100-year long series of unfortunate events that have left the national identity in limbo, among other things.* This is what sets it apart from other modern Korean films-- where many deal with lost identity, the prolific Kwon-taek (who has about 100 films to his name) covers Oh-won's life and the fall the Choson period, when the national identity still was fading away.

Aided by screenwriter and leading Korean philosopher Kim Yong-ok, Im Kwon-taek interprets Oh-won's life in a way that ties it very close to the fall of Choson. Oh-won, whose parents died young and left him to fend for himself as a homeless orphan, rose from the bottom of the barrel to earning a rank next to the King of the Choson court--certainly a one of a kind move in a society with a strict social caste. His talent for painting carried him this whole way. Starting with his improved remakes of famous Chinese paintings to his original later works, his pieces gained significance as "the last flicker of light" in the fading Choson era, as he is told in the movie. Not too much detail is known about his life, but that last comment probably isn't as hyperbolic as it seems.

It would not be too far of a leap to say that Oh-won's life is depicted as a rough metaphor for the Korean consciousness at the time (though it shouldn't be considered a 1:1 metaphor.) His struggle to shed his Chinese influence in his art mirrors a common point of tension in Choson. The Choson era was a Confucian state and many people wanted to find a way to break free of the old Confucian ways to advance their culture and country. The reformers who carried this idea were suppressed, which made way for foreign influence by the Japanese. After Oh-won had found his own style of painting in the Korean spirit, there is a scene where he is ripped away from a woman as he tries to conceive his heir. The message here is clear--Korea is prevented from having an heir after the reformers were crushed. Finally, at the end, he crawls into a kiln to die (which is a dramatized interpretation--he is said to have wandered off, never to be seen again.) Shortly before this scene, the kiln master tells him that the fire in the kiln decides how the pot will come out despite what others wish. If Oh-won is a symbol of Korea, the fire in the kiln are the foreign powers who juggle the country in the years following that moment.

Though I seem to have spelled out the whole movie, it actually has much more to say! One can easily watch the whole thing as an interesting case study of the development of the legendary artist and what his art meant to people. His role as a famous, drunken, and extremely talented vagabond in a society ruled by tradition is also particularly interesting (the title can be literally translated as Ch'wi = Drunk, Hwa = Painting, Son = Celestial, according to the prof who assigned this movie to me.)

Did I mention the acting, setting, and historical feel are all pretty much perfect? Choi Min-sik plays Oh-won and it doesn't get much better than that--he seems to be in the lead of all my favorite Korean films, playing a complex and wholly convincing character.

Anyway, yeah, highly recommended.


*Here's a quick recap of modern Korean history: Following Choson (and Oh-won's life) was the colonization by Japan, then occupation by America and Russia which divided the country into the communist North and capitalist South, starting the Korean War in which millions were killed fighting against their friends and family, after which S.K. went through a series of harsh dictators, along with compressed industrialization which saw some of the highest rural to urban migration rates ever and massive economic development, then a massacre in which student protesters were killed by their own army which spurred many to speak out and help the country eventually gain independence from harsh rule in the mid-1990s. Shortly after independence, a major economic crash followed, but in recent years, the country has been getting it's footing as a leader in the world marketplace, as well as putting out some amazing film that is worth checking out for anyone who likes deep and well made movies.