Taken In

I’ve seen my share of bad films.  Really bad films. 

Not bad as in...

Drug references.  Nudity.  Sex.  Foul language.

But genuinely bad.  Bad acting.  Bad story.  Bad cinematography.  Bad directorial decisions.  Bad...art.

Twilight.  Fireproof.  The Tourist.  Thor.  I could go on, as this type of Hollywood "blockbuster" saturates the movie business.  But I'm encouraged by the fact that independent film makers are gaining steam.  Real artists.  Visionaries.  They produce meaningful, thoughtful, realistic films.  

Real people.  Real problems.  Real solutions.  Real life.

Chris White's TAKEN IN is one such film.  Over the course of a weekend, a father and daughter are bound by the confines of a roadside motel and theme park.  It is obvious from the beginning that neither of them has any interest in being there, much less talking to one another.  The limited boundaries of time and space force Simon and Brooklyn to become honest with each other, and their respective pasts.  

TAKEN IN is an honest film.  Life comes in various forms, both good and bad.  Ups and downs.  This father and daughter are presented with an opportunity.  What do they do with it?  See for yourself.  

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You can be a part of another feature length film by Greenville, SC indie film maker Chris White by visiting the link on the right at KICKSTARTER.  

Photoblog 6

photo by Jessica Hollingworth

Currently reading...

Our national tendency is to inflate and thereby sound important.  The airline pilot who announces that he is presently anticipating experiencing considerable precipitation wouldn't think of saying it may rain.  The sentence is too simple -- there must be something wrong with it.

William Zinsser
from On Writing Well

Wide

Look outside and you’ll see Korea.  Not to be confused with Seoul.  Not the zoo of sleek, modern office buildings.  Not the Armani, Prada, or Lexus retailers. 

But Korea.  Real Koreans doing real Korean things.  The street outside is narrow.  The buildings old.  Retired men ride bicycles.  Elderly women walk permanently hunched from years of planting, picking, and planting (again) in the rice fields that constitute the nearby countryside.

Across the street, past the bicycles mounted with baskets carrying stacks of cardboard, past the scores of motorbikes, past the Korean school children and shopkeepers, men and women sit in a cluttered restaurant advertising fresh octopus, squid, and all the rice you can eat.  They look hot.  Sweaty.  Some eat iced noodles to keep their bodies cool.  All use the typical stainless steel chopsticks, a matter of pride on the peninsula, as they require more finesse than those used by their neighbors across the sea, whether to the east or west.  This is Korea.  Yeongju to be exact.

But from where I’m sitting, it’s a different story.  On my side of the window, the line dividing the old and the new, the humid and the cool, the Asian stereotype and the artsy, vintage, espresso filled air of my favorite café, I hear bouncy jazz.  I envision a cozy club in lower Manhattan.  My foot is tapping, but it’s not from the iced Americano.

This is Café Wide, tucked away on a side street in my small Korean town.  Inside are shelves of 1960’s era electric fans, alarm clocks, and tea sets, reminiscent of June Cleaver’s make-believe kitchen.  Across the cafe is a display of vintage cameras.  Big.  Bulky.  Boxy.  An era of technology long gone.  To my right is a shiny pastel blue refrigerator, stolen from the year that Beatles made it big.  On the wall behind the espresso machine, painted in black and white, is Vultron.  One part artsy.  One part eclectic.  Throw in a little big city feel and cozy atmosphere, stir well, and you've got Cafe Wide.  My home away from home.

Foreign Film Friday

a foreign film review by Chris White

THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Written & Directed by Florian Hinckel vonDonnersmarck

Growing up in Reagan’s America, we pitied those who were living behind the so-called “iron curtain.” We spoke of our freedom and democracy as people who know only what has always been.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS gives us a glimpse behind that storied curtain—twenty years or so after the fact—and in doing so, reveals a passion for free expression…for a life lived without state-sponsored oppression, that neither I nor any of my freedom-loving, American neighbors could have possibly known.

East German artists in the 1970s and 80s served at the pleasure of the state. The state monitored their artists—both publicly and privately—to keep tabs on how pleasing an artist’s behavior was.

In the film, an acclaimed playwright abides his benevolent keepers. Lives in relative peace with them. Until…his actress girlfriend becomes a person of increasing state suspicion. And it is here, under the oppressive monitor of the state, that their lives are forever changed.

With, perhaps, the most satisfying ending in recent cinema history, THE LIVES OF OTHERS fascinates and compels at every turn. It is a deeply human film. One that may be, in fact, the most accomplished first feature since Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE.

2006 \\ Color \\ 138 min.

Sony Pictures Classics

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Germany

...not in Korea

Success?

I was a weird kid. 

I can remember one Christmas afternoon when I was in elementary school building a Lego train station in my bedroom.  I had received the set via Santa Claus.  I don’t remember exactly what triggered my thoughts, but I was struck then and there by the idea that time moves at a speed too quickly to grasp.  Unstoppable.  Fast.  Very fast.  Too fast.

Maybe it was because the train station didn’t take as long as I thought to build.  The fun part of Lego sets is the building, not the finished product.  For me, once the police station, or hospital, or whatever, was constructed, that was it.  Done.  What next?

Or maybe it was because it felt like just 5 minutes ago my brothers and I were waking up early and anxiously waiting in the hallway for our parents to say we could survey the loot.  And now I found myself realizing that it was over, and would have to endure 365 more days before I got to do it again.

Time flies.  Not just when I’m having fun.  Everyday.  I don’t know why this idea took a firm hold of me at such a young age.  But it did.  And I’m happy about it.

As an adult on the cusp of 30 years of existence, I am terribly afraid of wasting time.  I’ve wasted my share.  It depresses me if I think about it too much.  So I find myself constantly (obsessively) evaluating my life every few days.  Have I been active in chasing my dreams?  Has the past year been a success?  Have I grown as a person?  Have I learned anything new?  Have I written that book that I said I would if I could just get to the other side of the world?

Photoblog 5

Postage

by Jessica Hollingsworth

Currently reading...

One of the interesting things about living in the United States is that
you know, just know, can feel it in your bones, that you inhabit the
beating heart of the world.  This isn't true, of course.  Nevertheless,
we take it for granted that when we have our Super Bowls, 3 billion
people around the world upend their work schedules and forgo sleep
so that they, too, can watch.  We assume that as we view the colossal
fuck-up that is the life and times of Britney Spears, people abroad
care as much as we do when the sad, bloated Mouseketeer decides
to shave her head.  We are told that when our economy sneezes,
Canada, Europe, Asia, wherever, catches a cold.  When we screw up,
it's the rest of the world we screw up.  And when we triumph, the rest
of the world stops to admire the great shining city on the hill.  We are,
we believe, the prime movers and the rest of the planet just rolls
along on the ride that is America.


J. Maarten Troost
from LOST ON PLANET CHINA

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English Island Field Trip 

by Jessica Hollingsworth

Warning: No Politically Correct Statements Here

It really shouldn’t surprise me.  Korea, after all, is a very uniform place.  Every mid-size town (and if your town is not referred to as Seoul, it’s a mid-size town) is the same.  Mirror images of each other. 

Mr. Pizza.  Paris Baguette.  3^rd floor Billiard rooms.  Homeplus.  Lotteria. 

And...

RACIAL INSENSITIVIY ALERT: Everyone looks the same.  Really. 

It’s not a slight to Koreans.  Rather it’s a matter of pride.  An ethnic identity.  Same black hair.  Same basic facial features.  Same semi-flattened nose bone and same “slanted” eyes.  Rarely will you find a Korean with facial hair. Or hair on the forearms. 

On a few occasions, Jessica and I have tried to describe to each other someone we met, or a teacher or student at school.  It always begins (and ends) the same way...

Ummm...he has black hair, and olive-ish colored skin, about 5 feet, 5 inches tall, and...ummmm...well he just looks Korean.

Visit any of the numerous walking paths in Korea and the scene will inevitably be identical to the last.  The trailhead will be liberally sprinkled with men and women of all ages wearing black nylon hiking pants.  Each will have a backpack, hiking poles, a ventilated hat with the brim extending a full circle around their head, a colorful moisture wicking shirt, a bandana around the neck, and (my favorite) a small tin cup attached to the shoulder strap, dangling in the non-existent breeze.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say that all of these people were headed off on a multi-day trek in the Alps.

Koreans do not wander far from the norm. 

So, as noted earlier, I should not have thought it odd that when my school went on a field trip yesterday to a local swimming pool all of the children emerged from the changing rooms dressed alike. 

Swim caps, goggles, spandex Olympic-ish swim trunks.  ALL of them.  Swim caps.  (What?  Why?)


Koreans, I've learned, know who they are.  What they look like.  What Korean food is.  Ask me what an American looks like, and I can't give you a definite answer.  White?  Black?  Hispanic?  Asian?  Ask me what American food is...another ambiguous answer.  Koreans, on the other hand, are a bit more certain.


Diversity is not on the list of Korea's strengths.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Foreign Film Friday

a foreign film review by Chris White

NIGHTS OF CABIRIA

In the aftermath of World War II, many Italian filmmakers pursued a much more sobering and truthful kind of cinema.  Known as "Italian Neorealism," the movement spawned a generation of non-romantic dramas about the harsh realities of life.


Federico Fellini, who would later be known for cinematic theatricality, free-flowing style, and plot whimsy started in this movement.  In the heartbreaking NIGHTS OF CABIRIA we see him true to that form...while straining to transcend it.

CABIRIA stars Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina, in the title role.  As she was in her husband's LA STRADA (1956), Masina is a female Charlie Chaplin...a screen comedienne for the ages.  And it is within her flawless performance we find a character of true pathos, not a cartoon.  Though Cabiria (Masina) lives as a prostitute on the streets of Rome, she always seems to find the goodness in others and in the dark world she inhabits.


Facing endless disappointment and humiliation, Cabiria is broken, and beaten and then broken again.  And yet...she never stays down.  Always, always, she rises to the next occasion.  She perseveres.  "Dum spiro-spero."

Underscoring the pathos and pain of Cabiri's hard life and positive outlook is Nino Rota's (THE GODFATHER) stirring theme.

1957 // BW //110 min.
Criterion Collection (Janus Films) 
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Italy

Class

Wednesday morning my 1st grade students made birthday cards to mail to my mom in America.  

10 months

10 months to the day.  Greenville was behind us.  Yeongju was on the horizon.  

We crossed the ocean of no return.  Bound for a new world, full of new people.  New foods.  New languages.  New toilets.  It was an exciting time.  Everything was changing.  Everything had changed.

Together we stepped off the airplane and saw...McDonald's.  And then Starbucks.  And Americans.  Too many to count.  (Did we transfer to the wrong plane back in San Francisco?)

10 months ago (and 2 weeks into our marriage), Jessica and I exited the International Arrivals gate at Incheon International Airport with a trail of luggage.  Our lives jammed into several large suitcases.  We just stood there.  

          Well what do we do now?

It was Sunday evening.  Someone from the recruiting agency would be by the airport to pick us up in the morning.  But until then we had to figure out what to do with ourselves.  I had $80 to my name.  So naturally we opted for coffee at the Dunkin' Donuts kiosk.  After that we counted what was left, guessed we had enough for a hotel, and boarded a shuttle bus into a very unfamiliar night.

In the time since that night I've learned a lot.  About myself.  About Jessica.  About us.  About people.  I've learned that beans on your ice cream isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I've learned eel and tomatoes for dinner is good for stamina.  (If you know what I mean.  wink wink.)  I've learned that children are children.  America.  China.  Taiwan.  Korea.  People are people.

But most importantly I've learned that Jessica and I can do anything.  At home or in Asia.  Whatever we set our mind to.  We're a great team.  We work well together.  We share goals and dreams.  We're best friends, which has been our secret to a smooth first year of marriage away from home.

          .....that and a steady diet of eel and tomato soup.

2018

So what exactly does the mountain region of Pyeongchang have to offer? Here's an inside look just a few years before the Olympians start packing their bags.

Figure skater Kim Yu-na may have drawn attention to South Korea with her cool choreography and winning smile, but when it comes to winter sports in the country, the world knows little else.

The good news is that Pyeongchang -- the mountain resort region with 40,000 permanent residents that’s just secured its bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics -- has plenty of time to repackage itself as a world-class winter sports destination.

Located 182 kilometers southeast of Seoul, in the spectacular southern part of Gangwon Province, Pyeongchang sits at 700 meters above sea level in one of the most rugged, mountainous regions of the country, an area often referred to as “Korea’s Alps.”

Read more about Pyeongchang and preparations for the 2018 Winter Olympics at CNN GO

Cap(s)

Let's Make a Robot

I hear it every day.  My classroom sits between the two Korean co-English teacher's classrooms.  To the right, children are belting out...

             Bah bah black sheep, have you any wool?

             Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.

             One for the master, one for the dame,

             And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

To the left…

             Let’s make a robot

             Let’s make a robot

             Ok, ok, ooooookkkkk.

             Let’s make a robot

             Let’s make a robot

             Ok, ok, oooookkkkkk

I must seem like a painfully boring teacher to my students.  I teach them things like…

             Excuse me, where is the bus station?

             It is two blocks away.  First, walk straight to the end of the block.

             Turn right at the corner.  Walk two more blocks.

             The bus station will be in front of you.

                          …or

             Yesterday was Wednesday, July 6, 2011.

             Today is Thursday,July 7, 2011.

             Tomorrow will be Friday, July 8, 2011.

                         …or

             I need one ticket to Seoul.  What time does the train leave?

My favorite travel writer, Bill Bryson, while sitting in a cafe in Belgium, put it this way...

...but hardly anyone in Wallonia (southern, French-speaking Belgium) speaks

English.  I began to regret that I didn't understand French well enough to

eavesdrop.  I took three years of French in school, but learned next to nothing.

The trouble was that the textbooks were so amazingly useless.  They were always

written by somebody clearly out of touch with the Francophile world -- Professor

Marvis Frisbee of the Highway 68 State Teachers College at Windsock, North

Dakota, or something -- and at no point did they intersect with the real world.  They

never told you any of the things you would need to know in France -- how to engage

a bidet, deal with a toilet matron, or kneecap a line-jumper.  They were always

tediously preoccupied with classroom activities: hanging up coats in the cloakroom,

cleaning the blackboard, opening the window, shutting the window, setting

out the day's lessons.  Even in the seventh grade I could see that this sort of

thing would be of limited utility in the years ahead.  How often on a visit to France

do you need to tell someone you want to clean the blackboard?  How frequently

do you wish to say: "It is winter.  Soon it will be spring."  In my experience,

people know this already.

from Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

Maybe I'm just a little too critical.  The children are, of course, learning useful things.  Pronunciation.  Tone.  Vocabulary.  Show tunes.  I used to wonder why taxi drivers would sing the theme songs to the Lion King and Alladin as they carted us off across town to do our shopping.  I thought he was trying to impress me, and be rewarded with a gracious tip.

...or maybe Disney is implementing a new marketing scheme in rural Korea.  Sneaky.

Foreign Film Friday

a foreign film review by Chris White

I DO (PRETE-MOI TA MAIN)

Directed by Eric Lartigau

Romantic comedies.

Love ‘em, or hate ‘em, most of us have been wooed by a tale of cutes falling in love on screen. No matter how far-fetched the premise, how dumb the dialogue, or how predictable the plot, most of us have fallen for a romcom.

I DO (or, “How to Get Married and Stay Single”) is a guilty pleasure to enjoy without shame. It is a smart, well-written, well-made comedy. It’s populated with terrific characters and plausible complications that keep you guessing.

Luis (Alain Chabat) is the little brother in a family of older, domineering women. He has been unsuccessful in securing a wife. This fact is fine with him, but not with his mother and sisters who constantly nag him to find a nice woman and settle down.

With the help of a friend, he hatches a plan. He will meet and become engaged to the fetching Emma (Charlotte Gainsbourg). And she will dramatically leave him at the altar, thus indelibly breaking his heart. This trauma, he feels, will quiet the nags for once and for all.

But it won’t work out that way, of course. You can probably guess how it will end…still, what a charming ride.

2006 \\ Color \\ 90 min.
Studio Canal
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: France

English Island

Ninja practice

Chillin'

Birthday party

Pyeongchang 2018

DURBAN, South Africa (AP)—The victory margin was massive and the message loud and clear: Persistence paid off for South Korea in its third consecutive bid for the Winter Olympics.

After two stinging defeats in a decade of trying, the South Korean city of Pyeongchang finally won its Olympic prize Wednesday, burying two European rivals in a landslide vote for the 2018 Winter Games and bringing them back to the lucrative Asian market.

Read the rest of the story at Yahoo! Sports