Don't drink the water. Or do.

OK, maybe I'm a little late, given that it opened in the U.S. a month ago. But I've been meaning to write about the most joyous movie I've seen in a long time, Bong Joon-ho's The Host. The soundbite pitch is Godzilla meets Jaws meets Aliens meets The Simpsons. In Korean.

Really, I shouldn't have to say anything after that.

But in case you're still not convinced: This is the scariest, funniest, smartest giant-monster-on-the-loose movie I've ever seen, and maybe the only example of that subgenre besides Jaws and the original King Kong that's a flat-out great movie, a classic. (Yes, yes, I like the original '54 Godzilla just fine, but really, it ain't up to these standards.) And if the USA had a sane film culture, people would be packing multiplexes across the country to see it, like they did in South Korea last summer when it ate every box office record whole. When I saw it at the New York Film Festival in October, the enormous, packed auditorium screamed, laughed, cheered and applauded all the way through.

But it's got subtitles. So its American release, while unusually broad for a foreign-language picture, has still been typically half-hearted. Contrary to my briefly entertained fantasies, it hasn't exactly done Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon business, but sturdy little Magnolia Pictures appears to be forging ahead with it - at least the official schedule for the gradual rollout hasn't been cut back noticeably.

In a nutshell, the story has chemical dumping by the American military resulting in an amphibious mutant crawling out of the Han River right in the middle of Seoul to snack and stomp on the residents. Cue the requisite mass panic, military quarantines and grim-faced officials and scientists pronouncing from TV sets. But instead of the usual suspects, the movie centers around an ordinary-at-best family caught up in the chaos - a shlubby, loudly dysfunctional and not terribly bright brood you might not trust to catsit for a weekend, let alone battle a maneating monster. (Thanks to bikoy.net for the family portrait.)


But the Parks are endearing and entertaining enough to carry a movie all by themselves, even if there weren't a creepy-cool creature for them to share the screen with (it doesn't hurt that the family includes my two favorite Korean actors, Song Kang-ho and Bae Doo-na). They're the heart of The Host, the single most important factor making this ordinary-in-outline movie extraordinary. Which isn't to discount one of the most convincing and paradoxically beautiful digital monsters to date; the "look-behind-you" suspense and popcorn-spilling jolts; the snarky satire aimed at the fecklessness of the South Korean government and the arrogance of U.S. power abroad; and the crafty writing, shooting and editing, packed with little surprises and fulfilling all the mandates of the monster movie form while refreshing them at the same time.

While I'm happy that Host is getting any attention stateside, I can't help but feel this is a missed opportunity. I don't (entirely) believe the condescending, self-serving assumption of our media-industrial complex (to borrow a phrase I learned from critic Jonathan Rosenbaum) that the American mass audience just doesn't like reading subtitles. Of course, there's strong resistance to "reading movies," and there are people you'll never convince to do it. But... well, Dances with Wolves, Life Is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger, Hero, The Passion of the Christ, those Klingon scenes from the Star Trek movies...

Anyway, The Host is just the latest Asian import that I feel, maybe naively, could and should have been a crossover success, if it had benefited from bolder and better distribution and marketing (other examples including Shaolin Soccer, the recent work of Hayao Miyazaki, and Infernal Affairs, although the latter sort of did in the form of The Departed). So fight the power... um, don't be another brick in the wall... uh, just go buy your ticket to The Host right now and strike a blow for the blockbuster we deserve.

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A NOTE: I've admired the nifty Korean teaser poster reproduced above for a while and finally got it translated, courtesy of Kwangwoo over at the Mobius Home Video Forum's Asian Cinema discussion board. For what it's worth: "Dad! Save me!!" And at the bottom, "Family, Han River, and... MONSTER." (The movie's Korean title, Gwoemul, translates simply as Monster or Creature.)

The image itself is taken from my friend Grady Hendrix's unique and now sadly defunct Asian cinema blog, Kaiju Shakedown. Grady may not be posting anymore, but a couple years' worth of hilarious, informative and irreverent material is still there as of this writing, so do yourself a favor and check it out.

And for good measure, here is an interview with director/co-writer Bong Joon-ho, a neat guy.

Thou Shalt Watch Lots of Movies

I'm not sure what to do about movies on this blog, frankly. Sometimes I feel like I ought to have a blog devoted to film, as a number of friends do. Supposedly I write about movies (although I haven't done it for publication or mammon in quite a while) and many of my posts here are likely to be on that subject. I'm considering having a second blog to collect my film-related blatherings, a sort of edited mirror of this one. But once I declare myself a film blogger, am I suddenly obligated to start putting more thought and effort into my rantings? And, as Robin Williams once remarked in a very different situation: "It's like peeing in velvet pants. It might feel lovely, but will anyone want to watch?"

All of this comes to mind because I've just finished half paying attention to an old Passover/Easter weekend tradition, the annual ABC broadcast of Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 version of The Ten Commandments. This was DeMille's last movie, widely regarded as his crowning achivement. It has got to be one of the most popular and most watched works in cinema history, and one of the most beloved among a large segment of actual moviegoers (as opposed to us critic types).* But, Jesus, Mary and Moses, what a cruddy film.

DeMille had been one of Hollywood's behemoths, a sort of Spielberg-Plus without the cinematic instincts, since the silent era. But even by the time he made his first Ten Commandments movie in 1923, he was a staid filmmaker. Judging from the '56 movie, he didn't grow much after that, beyond the inevitable additions of sound and color. Aside from the state-of-the-art special effects, this often seems little more than a filmed stage spectacular, with its ornate and blatantly phony sets, its barnstorming, declarative acting, and camerawork and editing that's... well, not static, downright straitjacketed. And DeMille clings with endearing nostalgia to the mustiest version of the silent intertitle tradition with voiceover narration that takes over any slightly difficult narrative duties and carefully tells the audience what to think and feel about the onscreen events.

Watching this lavishly budgeted church youth group production, it's amazing to remember it was made when the French New Wave was at the starting gate. When Orson Welles had been setting the standard for visual dynamism and artistry in Hollywood cinema for fifteen years. When the late-silent German filmmakers (F.W. Murnau, for example), who brought the moving camera, wordless storytelling and mute emotional expression to new heights of subtlety and power, were already a dusty memory.

So, confession time: I kind of liked it. I think, maybe. Some of the time. Some crud has a certain je ne sais quoi, which is French for "What the hell?" I didn't turn it off, and sat through the whole three hours and forty minutes, although I did other stuff the whole time, including typing up that Harold Camping post below. A lot of its appeal is good old-fashioned camp value, much of it generated by the hypocritical clash of high-minded piety and showbiz luridness, a blend that was DeMille's stock-in-trade. [EDIT AFTER A NIGHT'S SLEEP: OK, actually, I'm not sure I want to follow the standard critical line that this is an amusing hypocrisy on DeMille's part. The Bible, or at least the Old Testament, displays a very similar blend of the lurid and the high-minded, and maybe even for the same reason - a lot of these stories, or versions of them, were first auditioned by oral storytellers who needed to "give the public what they want" in order to hold audience attention. So I'm going to say DeMille is just following the example of his source material.] Another factor is the warm, fuzzy peacefulness of cinematic comfort food; for all its calculated exoticism, The Ten Commandments is redolent of sleepy evenings in front of the TV at the grandparents' place, after a big family dinner. Beyond all that, the film sometimes makes it into the realm of head-snapping lunacy, candy-colored, "ya gotta see it to believe it" surrealism.

All of which is to say that even crud can have its virtues, some of them beyond the reach of mere talent or quality. Maybe I'm the only one who needs to be reminded of that.

*[Irresistible historical footnote with tendentious undertones: At the time of the making and release of the movie, DeMille was deeply involved with a project to place granite Ten Commandments monuments at public buildings around the country, where they continue to inspire trouble and controversial court decisions. More details here.]

(And acknowledgments to PersonalityPhotos.com for the image of Charlton. A little ironic, considering how little personality he has.)

Reasons Why I Moved to New York, No. 5,047

Last night, I was walking in the East Village, looking for hookers and blow, although those are harder to find there than they were a few decades ago. I hear tell. Anyway, on 2nd Ave., just below St. Marks Place, I walked past this sleek, hip-looking little restaurant that serves "soul food with a Chinese twist," called... yes... YES... "Hip Hop Chow"! [GOOGLE DISCLAIMER: I did not remember the name; I had to google it.]

I glanced in the window and there was an old-school-looking kung fu movie playing on a flatscreen at the back. Now, I like me the kung fu [UNDERSTATEMENT DISCLAIMER: The foregoing was an understatement], so I paused, thinking to do so only momentarily. But then I saw the half-frog/half-crocodile-looking monster with red eyes played by the guy in the rubber suit. He was jumping at some people and trying to bite them. He shot spiny things out of his mouth that stuck to the heroine's face. He hopped around and at one point there was a guy in a red cape hopping along behind him, in perfectly choreographed unison.


Finally, even my native reticence with unknown fellow prowlers of the urban jungle could keep me in check no longer. I entered this establishment and was approached by an eager and fresh-faced young server (that is not him to the left).

"Table for one?" he asked.

"Actually, I know this makes me a pain in the ass," I said, "but I just want to know what that movie is."

"That one?" he said, glancing back at it. "That's SHAOLIN DRUNKARD." (Although there was not a hyperlink in it when he said it. That would be fun if you could do that, wouldn't it?)

"SHAOLIN DRUNKARD," I said, musingly. Of course.

There shall be a review posted in this space in the near future.

The menu looked pretty tasty, too.

(Thanks to Kung Fu Cult Cinema for the pic.)