Auspicious Objects

I’ve been struggling to keep this blog interesting and eclectic in terms of what topics I discuss on here. I don’t think it should be just a journal of what I do nor should it be a “film blog” or “music blog,” but some sort of general mix of all of these things – and more, of course. Thus, I regret that most of the recent posts on here are exclusively about foreign film, and I’d like to throw out some more personal entries about what has been going on in my life lately.

This post, however, will be a little mix of film talk with diary talk. The fall semester started last week and the transition back to school life has been slightly tumltous, being that I’m at a new university, but adjusting has been easier than I originally predicated, thankfully. Since I have some new gen-ed requirements to take care of, I have a few classes that are mostly made up of freshmen students, and I feel a little old. It’s hard to believe I am a junior already! I think, now that [most of] my friends and I are twentysomethings, we have reached the start of the stage in life where time passes you by without you realizing it. Time is a constant, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way when you look back on your memories. Maybe time just goes faster as you get older because you wax philosophic about it more than when you’re young. Not that I think I’m really that old, but situational factors sometimes make me feel ancient. For instance, last Thursday evening my friend Jess had a party in her apartment to celebrate her turning 19. I’m a stone’s throw away from being 21 (in October), but I was, of course, surrounded by freshmen a few years younger than me who were still green to the dorm experience and college life as a whole. They were donning gowns for graduation only a few months ago…

As for the classes themselves, I can’t comment too much on them so far. We started the semester a week before labor day, which screwed things up schedule-wise. Being that I have Mandarin everyday, however, I already have proper expectations for what it will be like all semester. We’ve been having fun, but there is an air of precariousness looming over everyone, which is well summed up by this conversation I had with some fellow classmates yesterday:

Classmate #1: So, we’ve lost a few people since we started.
Classmate #2: Yeah…
Me: I remember a dude who was here in discussion and lecture the first day. I haven’t seen him since.
Classmate #1: He must have dropped.
Classmate #2: Smart guy.

Besides the fear factor, Mandarin has robbed me of a Friday without classes. It’s a small complaint, but when all of your friends have Fridays off and hang out well into the night on Thursdays, you can’t help but feel left out. It will be the same situation next semester. Maybe I should try to convince my friends to take Friday classes. Misery loves company.

That’s about all I have to report, but I’d like to start sharing some “great moments in cinema” on here. I figure that even if you don’t get anything out of my foreign film reviews, you might be able to appreciate small clips of what I find to be memorable moments from the foreign films I partake in. Most people walk out of the theater after a movie and have a few distinct scenes stuck in their mind – I’d like to share these types of sequences. And, when we’re talking about film, images and sounds are always going to be more emboding and impacting than words.

To kick off this informal “series,” here is the “40 Steps Murder” sequence from the 1999 South Korean picture Nowhere To Hide. Nowhere To Hide is not only an archetype of the Korean New Wave movement, but also a complete embodiment of the “style over substance” mentality – much in the same way that the later City of Violence is. While Nowhere To Hide is devoid of a plot (try finding one if you watch it), it’s action and montage sequences are thoroughly entertaining and make up for the lack of things like character motivation and logicial story progression. In particular what stands out in the minds of many viewers is, in fact, the opening sequence of the film, where the murder that fuels the rest of the film is committed.

While the entire film oozes style of this sort, the 40 Steps Murder is memorable for it’s vivid color scheme and the underscoring provided by the Bee Gees’ early melancholic hit “Holiday,” which is an interesting and powerful choice since the song seems neither happy nor sad. “Holiday” is used again (in orchestrated form) to score the climactic fight at the end of the film, but sadly it’s magic is not replicated in that sequence, and it’s use comes off as a weak and forced attempt to make it seem like a leitmotif of the serial killer. Still, the hindrance of the ending does not in retrospect dilute the awesomeness of the opening.

David Blog college