See if you can get all the movie references… (video takes a long time to load).

The second part of my picks for the east-asian film genre are much less shocking than their Japanese counterparts, yet they are wonderfully strange and must-sees for anyone who’s looking for some variety in his/her weekend viewing.

1. ‘Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… And Spring’: One of the simplest but most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. I would compare it with ‘The Seventh Seal’ for its straight-forwardness but the amount of monologues, dialogues and conversation in ‘Spring, summer…’ is much, much lesser. There are no flashy gimmicks, no technical wizardry. If there was a movie that could be called the perfect Buddhist film, then this would be it. Much of the story takes place on a lake. The lake with the surrounding scenery becomes a metaphor for life. If you don’t want any surprises in a film, but a linear, no-frills story that speaks to you in powerful, simple ways, then this is the one for you.
My Rating: armchairs out of 5

2. ‘3-Iron’: Another movie by the director of ‘Spring, Summer…’, Kim Ki-Duk. Kim takes on the weird this time, and plays with ideas that are bizarre but pleasing at the same time. A hero who never speaks with the heroine, more buddhist imagery, and death by golf-balls – these are the elements that make this a delight to watch.
My Rating: out of 5

3. ‘Oldboy’: I saved the best for last. It’s the movie Tarantino would’ve made, if Tarantino had been a philosophy professor. The director of Oldboy, Chan Wook Park, used to be one and it shows through in his creation. It’s as exciting as a whodunit, but the story revolves around the whydunit. When the revelation comes, you realize that no one has gone this far before. Even if the setup seems too fantastic, the payoff in terms of action and style is well worth it.
My Rating: out of 5

Occasionally, I browse the forums on Rottentomatoes, where everyone’s an armchair film critic and rates movies, as if it mattered to the rest of the world what he/she thought about ‘Madagascar’. For example, in this deep thread about Colin Farrell’s and Vin Diesel’s acting credentials:

I figured it’s time I rated my own list of movies, and I wanted it to be about ones that come from a certain portion of the world: East Asia. We’ve all seen the Ringu’s and the Grudge’s and the Dark Water’s that get remade, but there’s a whole slew of them that are just too disturbingly strange to be forgotten.

Here’s my favorites:

1. ‘Audition’: My first Takashi Miike film. What starts out as a romantic melodrama, turns into an absolute nightmare halfway through. Miike uses an interesting gimmick at the end. In horror movies, there’s usually a scene that’s extremely scary, but turns out to be a dream. In Audition, he does the reverse, and uses an idyllic dream sequence in the midst of … well, you have to watch it.

What I learnt: When a cute Japanese girl says ‘Kuru Kuru Kuru’ to you, STAY AWAY!
My Rating: armchairs out of 5

2. ‘Ichi the Killer’: Miike’s obsession with the Yakuza continues, and the movie’s filled with blood and gore, the way Quentin Tarantino’s movies are not; the blood-letting is not fun to watch. Here’s a review that summarizes the movie well.

What I learnt: Man-seed can be put to creative use in the opening credits sequence of a movie.
My Rating: out of 5

3. ‘Visitor Q’: If you’ve watched this , you can be sure that all other exploitation movies made in the future will pale in comparison to the number of taboos depicted and broken in this single one. The strangest thing about Visitor Q is that the actions of the characters make perfect sense in the logic of the movie. Beneath the jaw-dropping scenes, lies a logical solution to a family crisis.

What I learnt: Necrophilia, coprophilia, incest, and a lactation fetish can make a perfectly sweet ‘family’ outing.
My Rating: out of 5

via SepiaMutiny: The desi/asian answer to MST3K – Uncle Morty’s Dub Shack. Check out ‘Goatman’.

Here’s another reason why Canada rules – Smart cars. I thought the car I had spotted during my trip was a custom-ordered model. I was planning to google it up but had no idea what it was called. In one of those happy coincidences in life, it turned up on MeFi today. Turns out the smart car is marketed in Canada exclusively and outsells Minis and Beetles.

The last line of the article was particularly apt. It took all my motor skills to drive at 70mph and get a proper picture of the Smart Car.

He wore black. He had white hair. And he had a square face. Except for the glasses and his height, he looked a lot like Johnny Cash. He was going to drive me to the airport.

It was a sunny day; as sunny as it gets in October in Calgary. Being the only two people on the bus, we found common ground on the time-tested subject of Weather. Johnny Cash told me of the drought six years ago, when all the grass was burnt to a crisp. He spoke of the melting ice-caps and the extreme phenomena all around the world.

“It says in the Bible that Man will destroy himself.”, he said. “Yes, but we can’t just give up”, I said. He softened. “That’s true, we just have to live it one day at a time, and that’s what we do.”, he said. I agreed, and I arrived at my gate.

While I was there, it snowed. After a while, the sun shone. It could be the next ice-age in a few decades, or global warming could melt the ice-caps into oblivion; but looking at the lake, it felt good to live today.

My globe-trotting friend Janet is in Yemen this year. Check out her new blog with cool pictures of life in Yemen.

Losing a room-mate is a lot like going through a divorce: Silence fills your apartment, and half the furniture disappears. I probably missed his 27-inch flatscreen TV more than my ex-roomie, so I went to Walmart to get me a decent-size flat-screen of my own. (‘Decent-size’ here meaning ‘not portable-size’) I decided to get a 20-inch and found that the brands that matter the most in Walmart — the Durabrands, the Emersons and the Magnavoxes — were completely sold out. The salesperson told me that a shipment was due that very evening and I was amazed at how quickly Walmart responds to customer demand.

I remembered someone posting on /. about Walmart’s data-mining on crisis-shopping. I googled for it and found this blog on Gartner:

For example, in between the two Florida hurricanes of last year, Wal-Mart analyzed which products consumers purchased. With Hurricane Frances not yet arrived, Wal-Mart analyzed sales data from Hurricane Charlie to get a better sense of what consumers would need for Frances. In addition to the usual items such as flashlights, Wal-Mart discovered that Pop-Tarts were a big seller.

It’s surprising what you can deduce from good statistics; makes me want to make ‘Freakonomics‘ my next read.

So I was doing my usual blog-hopping today, when I came across celebrity journalism via something Anti had posted on Hathirpithi’s blog. The thought of George Costanza being married to Britney Spears is funny enough, but I came across something else that was interesting – the Bianco ad campaign.

The reason I found this interesting was that I’m a regular reader of SomethingAwful. I’m no wonderful specimen of human perfection, but it always gave me a sense of schadenfreude to look at faces that are uglier than mine. That’s where I saw the same face, only this time it was posted on HotorNot.

Someone must’ve deliberately done this, but still goes to show the Internets are a small world, after all.

Thanks to Anti‘s ‘View Source’, I now have a favicon : . Thus unbridled narcissism abounds.
If anyone has a good idea for an icon for their blog but needs someone to execute it, let me know. I’m interested in doing micro/mini projects on the GIMP.