April 17, 2005 Rhythm & Sound See Mi Yah (Burial Mix 2005) Track Listing: 1. w/ Willi Williams: See Mi Yah 2. w/ Jah Cotton: Dem Never Know 3. w/ Koki: Rise And Praise 4. w/ Freddy Mellow: Truly 5. w/ Rod Of Iron: Lightning Storm 6. w/ Sugar Minott: Let Jah Love Come 7. w/ Walda Gabriel: Boss Man 8. w/ Bobbo Shanti: Poor People Must Work 9. w/ Ras Donovan & Ras Perez: Let We Go 10. w/ Paul St. Hilaire: Free For All 11. See Mi Version In the 90s, with projects and labels such as Basic Channel, Maurizio or Main Street Records, the Berlin based producer team Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald have decisively influenced the development of techno-house and electronic music worldwide. Furthermore Ernestus and von Oswald have released pioneering hybrids of reggae, dub and electronica under the name Rhythm & Sound since 1996. In the last few years an utterly original and independent definition of reggae music - stripped down, rootsy, hi-tech - has emerged from their activities. For their last album Rhythm & Sound w/ the artists Ernestus and von Oswald collaborated with legendary reggae vocalists, like Cornel Campbell, Jennifer Lara, Love Joy or The Chosen Brothers (aka Lloyd "Bullwackie" Barnes). This line is being pursued consequently with their new CD/LP release See Mi Yah. See Mi Yah is a classic one rhythm album, typical format and production approach in Reggae, featuring ten vocal versions and one instrumental of the See Mi Yah rhythm, that will have been pre-released as a series of seven 7-inch singles (additionally with 3 alternative instrumental versions) - strictly roots! After Paul St. Hilaire (formerly known as Tikiman) had lent his voice to quite a few Rhythm & Sound releases over the past years, the starting point for this project was to try and work also with his brother Ras Perez, their fellow Berlin based Dominicans Koki and Ras Donovan (also known from his collaboration with Mapstation), the Berlin based Jamaicans Freddy Mellow, Walda Gabriel, Bobbo Shanti, Lance Clarke as Rod Of Iron and Joseph Cotton aka Jah Walton as Jah Cotton as singers b/w DJs. With a toasting style heavily influenced by the legendary U-Roy, Cotton was a central figure in the jamaican DJ scene of the 70s and 80s. Alongside Ranking Joe and U-Brown he performed with the Blood & Fire Sound System a few years ago. On visit in Berlin, the great Sugar Minott and Willi Williams (famous for Studio 1 classic Armagideon Time) did their versions in the Rhythm & Sound studio. For each tune the rhythm is arranged and mixed differently. On the album the tracks are lined up in a way that allows the listener to enjoy See Mi Yah as one continuous program running for about 46 minutes. It's never a bore - and goes on in the listener's head, when voices, rhythm and sound will be long gone. April 10, 2005 CDisplay Sequential Image Viewer The Windows Image Viewer 'CDisplay' was written to ease the viewing of images in JPEG, PNG and static GIF format. This was partly down to the existing programs currently available being too general purpose and thus awkward to use when simply wanting to view images sequentially. It was written using Borland C++ Builder 5.0 and has been tested under Windows 98, NT 4, 2000 and XP Tablet. It is important to understand that this program has NO file write capabilities; files are left totally untouched. A small amount of configuration data is written to the registry but apart from that the computer and its data is left untouched. Features: Loads JPEG, PNG and static GIF images which are automatically ordered and presented for viewing one at a time or two at a time. The images may be in a zip, rar, ace or tar archive file - no need to decompress before reading. Page through the images sequentially and scroll around pages with single key presses. Automatic page sizing: none; fit to screen, fit to width of screen, fit to width of screen if oversized, display at specific height, or display two pages. Resizing uses Lanczos interpolation for best picture quality. Automatic colour balance and yellow reduction if desired. No bloat caused by non-essential general purpose image processing features. April 3, 2005 Dom Um Romao The Complete Muse Recordings: Dom Um Romao / Spirit of the Times (32 Records 1999) Dom Um Romao Track Listing: 1. Dom's Tune 2. Cravo E Canela 3. Family Talk 4. Ponteio 5. Braun-Blek-Blu 6. Adeus Maria Fulo Spirit of the Times Track Listing: 1. Shake (Ginga Gingou) 2. Wait on the Corner 3. Lamento Negro ( 4. Highway 5. The Angels 6. The Salvation Army 7. Kitchen (Cosinha) Chris Hovan: According to producer Joel Dorn, customer requests have been staggering for the reissue of Brazilian percussionist Dom Um Romao?s two Muse titles which were both culled from sessions in June and November of 1973. Now available on one compact disc, The Complete Muse Recordings contains the sum total of the original albums Dom Um Romao and Spirit of the Times and as documents of a particularly fruitful period for Brazilian music they are invaluable. Way before the term “world music” was even coined, Romao was skirting the boundaries between Brazilian and jazz styles through his work with Jobim, Sergio Mendes, Herbie Mann, and Oscar Brown. At the time of these Muse dates, Romao was working with Weather Report and his own music was seeking a new plateau where the breezy lilt of the bossa nova would give way to a more assertive hybrid, a mixing of samba street rhythms with the rock and fusion elements being explored here in the States. According to producer Joel Dorn, customer requests have been staggering for the reissue of Brazilian percussionist Dom Um Romao?s two Muse titles which were both culled from sessions in June and November of 1973. Now available on one compact disc, The Complete Muse Recordings contains the sum total of the original albums Dom Um Romao and Spirit of the Times and as documents of a particularly fruitful period for Brazilian music they are invaluable. Way before the term “world music” was even coined, Romao was skirting the boundaries between Brazilian and jazz styles through his work with Jobim, Sergio Mendes, Herbie Mann, and Oscar Brown. At the time of these Muse dates, Romao was working with Weather Report and his own music was seeking a new plateau where the breezy lilt of the bossa nova would give way to a more assertive hybrid, a mixing of samba street rhythms with the rock and fusion elements being explored here in the States. The more divergent of the two records, Dom?s self-titled set explores a rich tapestry of moods and hints at his many influences. For starters, there?s two modern Brazilian standards included in the guise of Milton Nascimento?s “Cravo E Canela” and Edu Lobo?s “Ponteio.” “Family Talk” features some lovely flute work and crisp harpsichord provided by Joao Donato for a feel very much akin to Jobim?s late ?60s sessions for A&M/CTI. The centerpiece is clearly the one-man show Romao puts on for “Braun-Blek-Blu,” where multi-tracking allows him to become his own samba section complete with surdo, cuica, tamborim, caxixi, and the like. It?s quite an impressive display and in a way it would foreshadow subsequent and similar-minded efforts during the ?70s from Airto (a student of Romao?s) and the group Oba. For Spirit of the Times Romao contributes two more stunning percussion monologues, “Ginga Gingou” and “Cosinha.” As he states in Robert Palmer?s expertly-penned liners, the street music of Brazil as practiced by the samba schools (not schools per se, but groups of percussionists) is really reflective of the African influence on the blacks of Brazil. Short of making your own field recordings during carnival time in Rio, Romao's recreations celebrate a festive spirit that's the next best thing. There?s a more organic feel throughout to these selections too, although electronic elements, such as Joe Beck?s wah-wah guitar, fit tastefully into the mix. Acting as a worthy microcosm of Brazilian fusion from the ?70s, these recordings should serve the uninitiated well in that they?re meaty but undeniably tuneful and enticing. Following on the heels of a recent renaissance in Brazilian music, particularly overseas and in Japan, Romao's Muse recordings have aged well and will be sure to please those individuals with a taste for the exotic and an open mind. The more divergent of the two records, Dom?s self-titled set explores a rich tapestry of moods and hints at his many influences. For starters, there?s two modern Brazilian standards included in the guise of Milton Nascimento?s “Cravo E Canela” and Edu Lobo?s “Ponteio.” “Family Talk” features some lovely flute work and crisp harpsichord provided by Joao Donato for a feel very much akin to Jobim?s late ?60s sessions for A&M/CTI. The centerpiece is clearly the one-man show Romao puts on for “Braun-Blek-Blu,” where multi-tracking allows him to become his own samba section complete with surdo, cuica, tamborim, caxixi, and the like. It?s quite an impressive display and in a way it would foreshadow subsequent and similar-minded efforts during the ?70s from Airto (a student of Romao?s) and the group Oba. For Spirit of the Times Romao contributes two more stunning percussion monologues, “Ginga Gingou” and “Cosinha.” As he states in Robert Palmer?s expertly-penned liners, the street music of Brazil as practiced by the samba schools (not schools per se, but groups of percussionists) is really reflective of the African influence on the blacks of Brazil. Short of making your own field recordings during carnival time in Rio, Romao's recreations celebrate a festive spirit that's the next best thing. There?s a more organic feel throughout to these selections too, although electronic elements, such as Joe Beck?s wah-wah guitar, fit tastefully into the mix. Acting as a worthy microcosm of Brazilian fusion from the 1970s, these recordings should serve the uninitiated well in that they?re meaty but undeniably tuneful and enticing. Following on the heels of a recent renaissance in Brazilian music, particularly overseas and in Japan, Romao's Muse recordings have aged well and will be sure to please those individuals with a taste for the exotic and an open mind. April 2, 2005 Jazztronik Samurai (Pantone (UK), 2005) Dusty Groove America: A great introduction to the work of Jazztronik -- one of the greatest groups from Japan in recent years! The package pulls together tunes from the expensive import Set Free, plus other singles and assorted bits -- into one tasty 12 track set that offers up the Japanese Jazztronik groove at a price that's a lot more affordable for those of us on the lower end of the economic spectrum! Keyboardist Ryo Nozaki is at the helm of all tracks -- working beautifully in both acoustic and electric shades of tone -- and some tracks feature full arrangements with lots of jazzy instrumentation, while others kick back into a more atmospheric groove. Titles include "Muddy Muddy", "Samurai", "The Piano", "Dance With Me (dub)", "Colour Of Days", "Livin High", "Arabesque", "Nana", "Things We Like", "Phoenix", and "Froro". Lee Perry & The Upsetters Super Ape (Island/Hip-O Select 1976) Dusty Groove America: The King Kong of dub albums, and we're not just saying that because of the freaky deaky cover image of a super ape with a belly full of roast fish, cornbread and makka stepping on a croaking lizard with a tree in one hand and a "tree" in the other! Classic Lee Perry and an essential dub album, rendering Scratch's dense, multi-layered Black Ark rhythms in all their raw, glory, with toasts and vocal snippets darting in and out of the dubs courtesy Prince Jazzbo, the Heptones, Dillinger and Scratch himself. With 10 essential tracks from the original release: "Zion's Blood", "Croaking Lizard", "Dread Lion", "Patience", "Dub Along", "Black Vest", "Underground", "Curly Dub" "Three In One" and "Super Ape", plus 3 top notch bonus cuts, all b-sides from singles released during the same era: "Rastaman Shuffle", "Magic Touch" and "Corn Fish Dub". Sun Ra Sleeping Beauty (Saturn/Art Yard (UK), 1979) Dusty Groove America: One of the most soulful Sun Ra albums ever -- very much on the Lanquidity tip, and done with a great mix of electric and acoustic instrumentation! The vibe here is really mellow, spiritual, and warm -- and the album actually feels a lot more like a session recorded for the Strata East label than it does for Saturn! Keyboards pervade the session -- electric piano and organ drifting around in moody, laidback lines -- augmented by occasional vibes, bits of guitar, and some wonderfully well-blown sax solo work by Marshall Allen and John Gilmore! The title track "Sleeping Beauty" runs for all of side two of the album -- and it's an amazing little number that mixes instrumental passages with some great mellow Roy Ayers-styled vocals. "Door Of The Cosmos" is a bit of a groover, and even gets a bit funky at times -- and the album also features the laidback spacey number "Springtime". (Very heavy pressing -- and in a great package with an added inner sleeve!) Chris Trent: "By the late 1970s the Saturn record label had become a musical newspaper, keeping the world abreast of the latest developments in the Sun Ra story, for those people lucky or persistent enough to find the few outlets where the albums were appearing. Sun Ra was releasing more records on his own label than ever before -- at least six Saturn LPs document his activities in 1979 alone. This however, is the first reissue of any 1979 Saturn album, and will be widely welcomed -- Sleeping Beauty instantly became one of Sun Ra's best loved records, and remains so to this day. At this period, compared to previous years, Saturn records tended to document more of Sun Ra's current work rather than older tapes. This was certainly true of one particular group of four albums released simultaneously into Saturn Records' distribution channels within a year of being recorded: 'God Is More Than Love Can Ever Be', 'Omniverse' and 'On Jupiter', and 'Sleeping Beauty'. These all represented facets of Ra's work during 1979, and between them include everything from piano trio compositions to conducted improvisations to disco music. Sleeping Beauty features the funkier end of the Sun Ra spectrum. It is a studio recording featuring at least twenty-eight musicians, an enlarged version of the Arkestra which had just crossed the Atlantic to play the 1979 Moers festival. The line up includes both acoustic and electric bass players, and electric guitarists, and the reed and brass sections are both augmented beyond the core members of the Arkestra." -- Chris Trent. [...] Sun Ra Lanquidity (Philly Jazz, 1978 ) Dusty Groove America: An amazing album from Sun Ra. The record's actually a bit funky, if you can believe it, and was recorded with electric keyboards, bass, and guitar (played by the mysterious Disco Kid!) The album originally came out on the Philly Jazz label and was quickly dismissed by many Ra fans for being a funk sell-out album -- but over the years, it's become a prized album for its cosmic sense of soul and appealing jazz dance style. In fact, it's probably the album that most folks expect when they've heard one or two Sun Ra tracks on a funk compilation and expect all of his albums to sound like that. Titles include "That's How I Feel", "Where Pathways Meet", "Twin Stars of Thence", and "There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)". Tough stuff, and a very unique Sun Ra LP! Amazon.co.uk Review The 1978 session Lanquidity, coming relatively late in Sun Ra's creative history, is another extraordinary venture into uncharted musical terrain. As the name suggests, it's a liquid and languid musical state, from the lounge area of Ra's cosmos, but it can also be resiliently funky and subtly dissonant in ways unheard outside the orchestra's precincts. The rhythm section of electric bass, two guitars and three drummers creates deep pulsing grooves for Sun Ra's assortment of ethereal organs and synthesisers and a horn complement of two trumpets and five reeds that are used sparingly for maximal effect. There are some elements of commercial crossover funk and even Miles Davis's electric period, but this is highly original music, an acid jazz prototype in which groove and electronica intersect with muted brass and a heady assortment of reeds and percussion. Sudden squiggles of funk guitar mix with strong improvisation from Sun Ra and his regular soloists, including saxophonists John Gilmore and Marshall Allen, who are always ready to bend the music into some new pitch zone. The lyrical title track bears a resemblance to Mingus's "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," and "There Are Other Worlds" is supplemented by overdubbed "Ethnic Voices" and additional percussion and electronics, creating an eerily engaging tapestry. Recorded in a New York studio with the sound further improved by Evidence, this is unusually well recorded for Sun Ra music of the period; a warm bath in music both lush and exotic. --Stuart Broomer robhancock@kbnet.co.uk from london UK: Recorded in 1978, this is the most accessible of Ra's cosmic explorations. Despite being more groove-orientated than much of his other work it will not disappoint even the hardest fans of his further out recordings. No Pat Patrick on this one unfortunately, but the rest of the crazy gang are very much in evidence, including Marshall Allen and John Gilmore. The album contains all the greatest elements of Ra's sound. The creeping, interweaving horns, dramatic, tumbling percussion, ethnic chants and of course the keys of the original Afronaught himself. 'Lanquidity' finds Ra at his eerie and atmospheric best. Overdubbing flowing piano lines with creepy moog stabs to great effect. 'Where Pathways Meet' is a rollicking funk workout, with booming horns riffing under spellbinding soloists. 'There are Other Worlds ...' is an amazing soundscape blending echoey electric piano, synth washes and long winding solos. Overdubbed by members of the Arkestra sharply whispering, 'there are other worlds they have not told you of..' which, at two in the morning when you're a bit worse for wear is frankly terrifying. This record is really compelling record, an absolute must have that you won't be able to stop listening too. Welcome to the loving freedom of Ra's jail. April 1, 2005 Sympathy For Mr Vengeance (Boksuneun naui geot) (South Korea 2002) Director: Chan-wook Park ~ Ha-kyun Shin | Kang-ho Song | Doona Bae | Ji-eun Lim Review by Heimdal: I have this thing with Asian popular culture. I love Japanese role playing games. Recently I have ventured into the world of anime and think those exaggerated martial arts movies are fab. I greedily watch the haircuts, the fashion and find the incomprehensible phonetics pleasant to the ear. A few years back, I saw a Korean action film at the annual Stockholm film festival. It was called Volcano High and featured bright coloured characters with hysterical facial expressions, battling it out in a Korean Hogwart-type school for adolescents. The action was frantic, the special effects amazing and the characters totally over the top. Needless to say it was a great deal of fun. Back to our current film of choice. If you have drawn any conclusions from my brief notes about Volcano High, you are in for a surprise. Sympathy For Mr Vengeance is as far from ordinary Korean action film as The Royal Tenenbaums is from Dumb And Dumber. Both can be associated with comedy, but that's it. Likewise, in Sympathy For Mr Vengeance only the dim semantics of the word action, or rather action thriller, can be linked to other contemporary Korean fare. The film made an uproar in its home country by dismissing the popular conventions of the genre. Sympathy For Mr Vengeance is dark. It's as unsettling as waiting on a operation table. After watching it, you do not feel entertained, only relieved that it's finally finished, which does not mean it's bad; it means it robs you of hope. If you havent seen the all-too-revealing DVD case you wouldn't even suspect what is to come in this neatly shot, esthetically tasteful film. The story of deaf mute Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin), his lethally ill sister and spunk girlfriend, Cha Yeong-mi, devolpes in the most unsettling way. It starts as a crossover between drama and comedy. We get to know the central character, as well as his troubles (sister needs kidney transplant) and joys (his girlfriend, played by the charming and tres cool Doona Bae.) When Ryu gets involved with illegal organ dealers, trying to pay them off to remove one of his kidneys - its supposed to be transplanted into his sister in order to save her life - the journey downward begins. The organ dealers are a bunch of lowlife criminals. While accepting the money, they con Ryu, leaving him naked to die. Then Cha Yeong-mi comes up with the idea to kidnap the daughter of Ryu's former employer to press him for the money needed for the transplant. When they carry out the plan, the film descends into a territory where one of the most primitive of human impulses will shatter the fragile existential hut in which we collectively huddle. Here something interesting happens with the narrative structure. Instead of keeping the focus on Ryu, it switches to Park Dong-jin, father of the kidnapped girl Yoosoon. When Yoossoon accidentally dies before she is handed over, her father is devastated. The subtle facial expressions of actor Kang-ho Song are mesmerizing and he is immensely credible and present in every scene. From now on, when the film alternates focus between the three main characters, we feel uncomfortable. The trouble is that one of them has made up his mind to kill the other two and what's worse, given the circumstances, it is understandable. The outcome will satisfy gore fanatics and Nietzschan misantropes. The film features some of the most unbearable violence on screen and although it won't burst, the impression it leaves will last and kick your brain right where it hurts. Afterwards you may feel sick, even regretful that you watched it. But that is the point. Sympathy For Mr Vengeance is supposed to be intimidating and not pat its audience on the back. It even dares to take a humorous approach to its heavy subject matter. Like Dutch director Michael Haneke, there is also social criticism. Some will surely be put off by the gore, or the controversy. Others, like myself, will be somewhat confused by the infusion of absurd, surreal elements - there is a real comic jerk off scene at the beginning, a David Lynch-type crippled character and an unnecessary flirtation with Japanese ghost themes - that verge on cool-without-substance. The film feels fashionable and style-conscious, with Ryu's green hair and his lively Communist It-girl. She's the unattainable ideal of thousands of adolescent indiepop girls. Here is a director who knows how to avoid the American habit of being too obvious in both action and moral. Sympathy For Mr Vengeance is an eclectic fusion of different genres and a modern installation of Macbeth. It is also a film that has no feelings for its characters, leaving the viewer in a state of disgust and resentment. Most of all it is a skillful, stylish kick in the head, aimed at those who see violence as the answer to every problem. And although it lacks hope and redemption, I suggest you give it your full attention. [...] The notes are integral to the plot in Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, but they are not translated: - the file that Ryu's girlfriend is typing on PC at the beginning of the movie, Sentence: The accused, Minister of Labor, last July, have requested the police to quell cruelly a strike, as the result, 2 laborers, Lee and Ahn, have died. So we all judges agree to sentence him to death. Revolutionary Anarchism Alliance. - Ryu's sister's suicide note: ...because my kidney transplant... kidnap is the worst thing to do.... there's no use...make you to do the bad thing... want you to let Yu-sun go home in a piece by all means...it's my the last wish... Love. So long. - the note pinned to Dong-Jin's chest at the movie's end. Sentence: Murder case ... alliance member, Yeung-mi Cha,.... ... we all judges agree to sentence to death in the name of Revolution. Oct 23, 2001. Ryan Gilbey (Sight & Sound July 2003): Synopsis Korea, the present. Ryu (Shin Ha-gyun) is a deaf-mute who is laid off from his factory job. After discovering he is the wrong blood type to donate a kidney to his ailing sister, he takes his redundancy pay to organ dealers, proposing to swap the money and one of his kidneys for a compatible match. When he regains consciousness in their now deserted premises, he is ten million won and one kidney poorer. Encouraged by his anarchist girlfriend Young-mi (Bae Du-na), Ryu kidnaps Yu-sun (Han Bo-bae), the daughter of his former boss, Park Dong-jin (Song Kang-ho). Dong-jin delivers the ransom. Returning home with it, Ryu finds that his sister has killed herself after realising there was no cash left for a transplant. He takes Yu-sun with him to bury his sister, but the child accidentally drowns in a lake. Ryu visits the new offices of the organ dealers and brutally murders them. Dong-jin, who has sworn to avenge his daughter, tortures and kills Young-mi. Later, he drives Ryu to the lake where Yu-sun died and drowns him. As Dong-jin is preparing a grave for Ryu, he is stabbed by Young-mi's terrorist accomplices. Review The Korean thriller Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance deserves some kind of recognition for its remarkable inventory of cruelty. The director Park Chan-wook (whose last film Joint Security Area was a thriller set in the demilitarised zone between South and North Korea) never chooses a simple shock effect when there is time instead for a shock-within-a-shock-within-a-gross-out-gag. Before the film's harrowing two hours have elapsed, we will have witnessed a dying man spraying blood from his neck and excrement from his anus, after being caught with his pants down, preparing to rape an anaesthetised patient who had come to flog him a kidney. A woman cannot merely be electrocuted to death; there follows a gloating shot of her urine puddling on the floor where her killer is slurping noodles. And it isn't enough that the camera tracks the progress of a tiny marshmallow-shaped casket along a crematorium conveyor-belt. We must then be taken inside that casket, to see a dead child and her beloved doll bubbling in a fondue of flesh and plastic. Beneath these lunges at prevailing taboos lies a chain of misunderstandings that delivers the film to the edge of farce. The first half focuses on Ryu, a deaf-mute factory hand with a splash of blue hair and a crestfallen face; the second half traces the attempts of the businessman Park Dong-jin to hunt down the killers of his daughter, Yu-sun. Ryu has learning difficulties, and the plot relies heavily on his naive assessments of hazardous situations. When he sees Yu-sun, whom he has kidnapped in order to finance his sister's kidney transplant, floating in a lake, he decides not to wade in and save her because the water would cover his head, and he too might drown. Only subsequently does it occur to him that the water would in fact have barely reached his chest. His evaluation of the danger was based on a childhood memory of the lake: as a boy he would indeed have been submerged. Other misreadings are less contrived. When asked why he had not contacted the police about his daughter's disappearance, Dong-jin, who had complied fully with Ryu's ransom demand, replies sadly: "I thought lots of kids returned safely, if you do what they tell you." Placing so much privileged knowledge in the hands of the audience can encourage our sense of distance and superiority, but in this instance our insight lends extra poignancy to Dong-jin's response, since unlike him we know he played no part in Yu-sun's death. Sometimes the camera will tilt upwards from the action, towards the crowded rooftops that stretch into the horizon, as though contemplating further misunderstandings too numerous to investigate. But Park is not generally so assured at controlling his film's tone. In one ostentatious scene, the camera drops in on four boys masturbating to a symphony of female gratification emanating from the neighbouring apartment, before gliding through the partition wall to reveal the source of those sounds - Ryu's sister, writhing and wailing in bedridden agony, while an oblivious Ryu eats dinner with his back turned. Perhaps Park is arguing here that the tiniest drop of pleasure must be balanced by a corresponding portion of pain. (Certainly the idea turns up again, when Ryu goofs around sweetly with Yu-sun, only to be interrupted by the discovery of his sister's suicide note.) But whatever Park's intention, the masturbation scene plays like the party piece of a smarty-pants; the boys' innocent titillation is sullied, while the suffering of Ryu's sister, which in all other respects we are expected to take seriously, is baldly exploited. It calls to mind a moment in Sharon Olds' poem 'What Shocked Me When My Father Died' (from her collection The Father), in which the poet's husband smothers her sobs of grief in case they are mistaken for orgasmic panting by relatives in adjacent bedrooms. Olds is in control here: her comprehension of the multiple readings of that situation, and the way she shares her omniscience, is the poem's subject. But in Park's frame, it is only the director who comes out on top, and there is nothing in his crowing triumph that we can take for ourselves beyond a crumb of second-hand smugness. This recourse to cheap tricks characterises Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance far more than its poker-faced brooding on issues of justice and forgiveness. It's what finally prevents the film from earning the right to be as morbid and portentous as it would like to be. [...] Sympathy for Mr Vengeance is without doubt one of the most disturbing and gruesome film I have ever seen and I have tried to understand WHY a director would want to depict violence in such a relentlessly and realistic fashion. Why do we need to see all the details and effects of violence? An interview in arts.telegraph with Chan-wook Park when Oldboy, the second film in the revenge trilogy, (Sympathy for Mr Vengeamce 2002, Oldboy 2003, Lady Vengeance 2005) was shown in Cannes sheds some light on the issue: arts.telegraph "Sadism means getting pleasure from the suffering of others," says Park. "I never got that kind of pleasure when making it. My intention is to show pain, and I want the audience to feel pain." Why would a director want his audience to feel pain? "Violence should be portrayed as painful, not as beautiful," he explains. "I'm often misunderstood as a director who enjoys violence, but really I want to show how violence makes the perpetrator and the victim destroy themselves. I think I give more moral lessons to the audience than Disney!" Park studied philosophy at university, and his films show a preoccupation with ethical questions, as well as a fascination with violence, vengeance and taboos. [...] Of the film's many strengths, the first to stand out is its cast. After playing the two North Korean soldiers in JSA, Song Kang-ho and Shin Ha-kyun return, this time aligned against each other. They are joined by one of the hottest young actresses in the industry, Bae Doona, in the role of Ryu's girlfriend. All three actors possess great talent, and are well-directed by Park. The film's cinematography is remarkable too, achieving an ordinary but utterly distinctive look. The movie is shot almost entirely in daylight, with little camera movement and almost no music. Before this film was released, word leaked out about its grim tone, and viewers who may have originally hoped for JSA 2 largely stayed away. The local critical response was highly mixed; some gave the film great praise, while others criticized its excessive violence. Joint Security Area also contained a fair share of pessimism and violence, however that film balances the dark moments with episodes of humor and warmth. Sympathy, however, does no such thing: it begins relentlessly pessimistic, and only grows more savage towards the end. It is ironic that much of the violence in this film finds its roots in love. This is no way dulls the film's edges, though -- viewers will find it very difficult to watch, but those with the stomach to sit through to the end will be treated to a rare artistic achievement Old Boy (South Korea 2003) Director: Chan-wook Park ~ Choi Min-sik | Yoo Ji-tae | Kang Hye-jung | Chi Dae-han | Oh Dal-su | Kim Byoung-ok | Lee Seung-shin | Yoon Jin-seo | Lee Dae-yun | Oh Gwang-rok | Kyu Hyun Kim: Watching this sucker-puncher of a movie in the venerable-but-revamped Hollywood Theater in Seoul, I felt like an old safari hand gazing in a mixture of ecstasy and awe at a Manchurian tiger sauntering out of a bamboo grove and locking its yellow-green eyes on mine. It is a rare thing these days that a motion picture transports me back to the times that turned me into a lifelong film fan, when I felt in my bones the pleasures of discovering a new work, that spoke new languages and showed the things I had never seen before, yet did so in the manner that was also deeply familiar, because it was so solidly grounded in the idioms and conventions of the cinematic works that had come before it. A film that gives me the same sense of shock and pleasure that I felt when I saw Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) or Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) for the first time in my life. Old Boy is one such film, sometimes thought to have become extinct in this age of mobile phones and video games. The diabolically talented writer-director of Joint Security Area (2000) and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Pak Chan-wook, determined not to repeat the commercial failure of Sympathy, has carefully plotted his counterattack, recruiting Choi Min-shik (Chihwaseon, Failan, Shiri) and Yu Ji-tae (One Fine Spring Day, Ditto, Nightmare), organizing the movie around their star personalities, and devising a mystery plot that revolves not around the question of "whodunit" but that of "whydunit." Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-shik), a grumpy businessman with a wife and a toddler daughter, is kidnapped by a group of gangsters. It turns out that they operate a private prison, and someone has paid them an astronomical amount of money to incarcerate him indefinitely. Compelled to rusticate for years and years inside a dingy, dark cell, with fried dumplings his only choice of menu, Oh is overcome with the desire for revenge. However, just when he is about to break free from his prison, he is dumped into the street. He hooks up with a young female sushi chef Mido (Kang Hye-jeong, the teenage guide from Nabi: The Butterfly), to locate the man responsible for robbing him fifteen years of his life. The basic setup and title of the movie are derived from Tsuchiya Garon and Minegishi Nobuaki's Japanese manga, but the plot, characters and everything else have been completely re-worked. The movie blows away the ijime-obsessed faux-existentialist machismo of the original and instead plunges into the themes far more universally resonant, as ancient as the scarred bones interred in our ancestral tombs: the unrequited (and unrequitable) love and the Biblical suffering that such a love brings to the hapless, hypocritical animals that we are. Choi Min-shik, looking like a mangled lion with a hyena-chomped black mane, gives the most electrifying performance of his career. His role runs the gamut from the Lee Marvin-like taciturn heroics of a seventies crime thriller to the spectacular implosion of a broken man, pitifully wailing and literally licking the shoes of his enemy, and everything in between. The film's final image, Choi's vacantly joyful, yet infinitely sad smile, will etch itself into your retinas and refuse to fade for a long, long time. Yu Ji-tae uses his lean, equine physique and contemptuously bland voice to illustrate an almost surrealistic character, part a villain in a James Bond movie, part a Greek God fallen from Mount Olympus and releasing his pale furies against the mortals. The movie's real acting revelation, however, may well be Kang Hye-jeong, at turns dangerously sexy and achingly vulnerable. There is little doubt that this role will launch her into stardom. One could easily compile a book analyzing shot by shot the techniques used in Old Boy, its multiple parallels, extravagant leaps and surgically precise abbreviations. There is something ingenious, interesting or at the very least eye-catching in practically every shot of the film. The dialogue is also amazing, the previously unheard-of Korean that somehow combines the rhythm of Bond-film one-liners, the tone of lyrical poetry and the dry wit of the narrations in a hard-boiled crime novel, arch and fluid one minute, pitiless and cutting to the bone the next. Old Boy is definitely not the kind of film that can win the endorsement of every viewer. A sizable number of the audience will no doubt find the film's resolution or even thematic material repulsive. Others may be turned off by its excesses that occasionally slip into plain weirdness (Do we really have to see Choi Min-shik chowing down a squirming, live octopus headfirst?). Its violence, while not as unblinkingly brutal as in Sympathy, is still disturbing enough to generate an NC-17 rating if turned over to the MPAA. In the end, though, even its excesses and manic quirkiness are part of Old Boy's design. Unwatchably ugly and breathtakingly beautiful, gut-wrenching and delicate, heartbreakingly emotional and coldly manipulative, mind-bogglingly entertaining and almost arrogantly artistic, Old Boy is a mass of contradictions that nonetheless coheres as a whole. It is unclear at this point whether the movie can eventually claim the position of a world-class masterpiece, but one thing is certain for me: Old Boy is without doubt the most purely cinematic (both in form and content) piece of work, the truest motion picture, released in South Korea this year. [...] Reviewed by MacLeod: If you've heard anything about Old Boy, it is probably about how violent it is. With multiple stabbings, slashings, beatings and various appendage removals, it certainly can't avoid the charge. But instead of being a straightforward revenge thriller, South Korean director Park Chan-wook has managed to graft on aspects of beauty, pathos and tragedy - lots of tragedy. In the process he has created a film both extreme and tender, yet tremendously entertaining, and with so much more to offer than most action movies. When we first meet Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) in a police station, he is all too recognisable, the kind of bumbling, annoying middle-aged drunk, trying not to piss himself, who pesters you every other weekend. Towards the end, he has been transformed into a man, constantly on the move, containing a barely suppressed rage, which allows him to take on dozens of armed men with only a claw hammer and make threats like no one else. For instance: "Whoever it was, just wait. Wait a bit more. I'll rip your whole body apart and no one will be able to find your body anywhere. Because I'm going to chew it all down." Fifteen years in solitary for no reason will do that to a man. Suddenly released, with the same lack of explanation, Oh Dae-su does the only thing that makes any sense to him. He goes looking for answers and to hurt those responsible. Choi Min-sik comes across as a punch drunk, revved up Robert Mitchum. With a character arc taking in bumbling oafishness, bloody-minded vengeance seeking, redemption and humbleness, he never hits a false note. What is great about the film is that the direction, music and characterisations also display a similar range. No two scenes resemble each other and when placed together, Park Chan-wook ensures that they make perfect sense. In a film that features hypnotists, lonely giant ants riding the subway, super strong albino henchmen and suicidal poodle owners, he has given us something that is extreme and enjoyable like none other. [...] Reviewed by El Topo: This is a fascinating exploration of the underlying complexities of one of the most extraordinary films to have emerged from South Korea in recent times. The DVD comes packed with lengthy interviews with the stars and the production team, for whom many of the questions were formulated by members of the Old Boy fan club. The director's commentary establishes a mood of earnestness that is reflected throughout the piece. What had initially appeared to be bizarre enunciations of Korean culture, as expressed through Choi Min-sik's raging character, Oh Dae-su, are laid bare. This is especially rewarding for anyone who wants to retrace the twists and turns of a plotline that, on further investigation, is riddled with clues pointing to the final, most shocking, revelation. It is also intriguing to gain an insight into the methodology of the lighting and design teams and the extent to which their contribution affects the twisted realism of the film. Initially adapted from a comic book, Old Boy delights in the contrasts between the subterranean world of the private prison facility and the distorted perspective of the real world that Oh Dae-su is confronted with on his release. This is certainly required viewing for aficionados of the genre, as well as being a master class in a South Korean film industry that is at the top of its game. [...] Comments from the director and actors on Oldboy: Park Chan-wook on the theme of revenge: “In society, revenge is strictly forbidden. And the forbidden is the artist's area. That's why the theme interested me.” Park Chan-wook on the scene in the corridor: “At the beginning, the fight in the corridor was going to be made up of 100 shots. But I preferred to place more importance on the character's solitude rather than the exciting side of the fight. So in the end we filmed it as a really long shot.” Choi Min-sik on his role: “I worked mainly on how I'd look because of my imprisonment. The stylists helped me with my hair, the clothes, but the most important work was the physical work. I concentrated on the before and after. A stressed person can't put on weight, so I boxed as well. To get out of the role, I just drank a lot of alcohol. [Laughs]” Park Chan-wook on gratuitous violence: “Violence can be visually very beautiful, really exciting. But what's important is what's hiding behind the violence. I prepare the ground beforehand so that the violence doesn't seem gratuitous.” Choi Min-sik on South Korean cinema: “Without being political, it's clear that Korean cinema is evolving thanks to its recent freedom, something that's indispensable to a culture's enrichment. There was a dark period under the dictatorship, but the return of our freedom has sent our collective imagination soaring.” frontpage The Webpage 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 dubmusiq You are internaut #