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Molly Cowan-Johnson.
AnonymousI've just returned from seeing the Korean film, "The Host." It was a weird mix of horror movie and comedy, very uneven, overlong, but mildly entertaining. The premise is very Godzila-like. A mutant fish-lizard creature grows in the Han River--the result of chemical dumping from an American military base. The creature wreaks mayhem and captures a beach vendor's daughter. The movie, then, is his (and his family's) attempt to rescue the girl. Along the way there's references to SARS, government cover-ups, and ecological irresponsibility. The film suffers from identity crisis, I think. THe director should have full out for farce especially with such a cheesy monster. I did like the unexpected touches (such as a HAZ-MAT official trying to use the television newscast to give an official update). I understand the movie is loosely based on an actual incident that occured in Korean in 2000 when formaldehyde was dumped into the sink's in a mortician's lab. The chemicals passed through a treatment plant but there still were protests. Try this link for a trailer: http://www.hostmovie.com
AnonymousI've recently read A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park. It is the story of Tree-ear, a Korean orphan living near what is now Seoul during the mid to late 12th century. Tree-Ear manages to get himself apprenticed to Min, a master celadon potter. The story is a Newbery winner about the artistry of the potters and the importance of celadon stoneware. This is a very accessible story that would middle school students would enjoy. It would be a great read-aloud. Park gives a great deal of detail about life in Korea and provides notes about the historical context (referencing China and its relationship to Korea) and the ancient process of making and firing celadon pottery.
AnonymousSunday March 18, 2007, 7:00 pm
THE EMPEROR'S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON (Yuki Yukite shingun, 1987)
Los Angeles Filmforum will be screening the documentaries directed by
Japanese filmmaker Kazuo Hara. This is a rare opportunity to see
these remarkable films, none of which are in regular theatrical
distribution in the United States. This set of four films has been
touring the United States, and this will be their only Los Angeles
appearance. One film, "The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On," will be
coming out on DVD in March from Facets video. All of the films will
challenge the viewer's ideas of decorum, personal revelation, and the
possibilities of relentless cinema verité.
Screening Details:
All screenings at the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712
Hollywood Blvd. at Las Palmas. $9 general; $6 students/seniors; free
for Filmforum members. Cash and check only.
Parking is available at the Hollywood & Highland complex, $2 for 4
hours with validation, available at the Egyptian Theatre. Street
parking is often available as well. Or take the Red Line to Hollywood
& Highland. Email us for a reservation at [email protected]. We
aren't able to presell tickets, but will hold reservations until 6:45 pm.
Sunday March 18, 2007, 7:00 pm - THE EMPEROR'S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON
(Yuki Yukite shingun, 1987, 122 min.; 35mm, color)
Sunday, March 25, 2007, 7:00 pm - EXTREME PRIVATE EROS: LOVE SONG 1974
(Gokushiteki erosu: Renka 1974; 98 min,16mm, b&w )
Wednesday, March 28, 2007, 7:30 pm GOODBYE CP (Sayonara CP, 1972, 82
min., 16mm, b&w)
Thursday, March 29, 2007, 7:30 pm - A DEDICATED LIFE (Zenshin
shosetsuka, 1994, 157 min., 35mm, color)
"I make bitter films. I hate mainstream society." Kazuo Hara
Born in 1945, Kazuo Hara made a debut with Goodbye CP (Sayonara CP,
1972), and shocked audiences with its frank portrayal of handicapped
with cerebral palsy. Two years later, Hara again sent a shock wave in
the Japanese film industry with Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
(Kyokushiteki erosu koiuta 1974, 1974). The film chronicled a
love-triangle between Hara, and his ex-wife Takeda Miyuki (the main
subject of the film). Hara's third film The Emperor's Naked Army
Marches On (Yukiyukite shingun, 1987) won awards at Berlin Film
Festival and Rotterdam Film Festival and it was the most talked about
film of the year in Japan. Five years in the making, the film traces a
crusade for truth of Okuzaki Kenzo, a radical left wing activist and
also a survivor of the battlefields of New Guinea in World War II.
Hara also has directed various TV documentaries and worked as
assistant director in feature films such as Kei Kumai's Berlin Silver
Bear winner, The Sea and Poison (Umi to Dokuyaku, 1986). The Many
Faces of Chika (2005) is Hara's first fiction feature film.
Kazuo Hara has been making scandalous films about scandalous people
since 1972. He made his debut with GOODBYE CP, which shocked Japanese
audiences with its frank portrayal of people with cerebral palsy. He
describes his work as "overstepping the boundaries set by society in
order to approach my subjects in close-up." Having left the Tokyo
Technical Institute of Photography because "photography only allowed
me to get to know people on a superficial level," he decided instead
to start an independent career which would bridge the gap between the
two great extremes of documentary filmmaking of the last thirty years:
the collective documentary of the 60s and the private films of the
90s. Hara's work reveals how life stories are constructed across the
border between fiction and reality.
Tonight:
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
(Yuki Yukite shingun)
1987 / 122 min. / 16mm / Color
Director/Cinematographer: Kazuo Hara
Producer: Sachiko Kobayashi
Berlin Film Festival 1987
New Directors / New Films 1988
"THE EMPEROR'S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON is a brilliant exploration of
memory and war guilt, a subject often ignored in modern Japan. In this
controversial documentary, Kazuo Hara follows Kenzo Okuzaki in his
real-life struggle against Emperor Hirohito. He proudly declares that
he shot BBs at the Royal Palace, distributed pornographic images of
the Emperor, and once killed a man for the sake of his strange
crusade. As the film progresses, Okuzaki reveals a gruesome mystery:
why were some Japanese officers killing their own soldiers during
WWII? What happened to their bodies? Okuzaki begs, cajoles, and
occasionally beats the story out of elderly veterans. When these old
men do break down and talk, their testimonies are some of the most
chilling, riveting descriptions of wartime desperation ever committed
to film. In his desire to unearth these horrors, Okuzaki's behavior
grows increasingly extreme and bizarre. By the film's end, Hara seems
to ask whether the terrible nature of this buried incident is worth
the violence of Okuzaki's methods. Jonathan Crow, ALLMOVIE GUIDE
"The most invigorating thing about `The Emperor's Naked Army Marches
On' is its consistent irreverence. It doesn't mean to be polite or
nice or soothing. It means to provoke and disturb - and let the devil
take the hindmost."
- Vincent Canby, The New York Times
"SENSATIONAL IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD!...
one of the most astonishing documentaries I've ever seen
Absolutely not to be missed."
- John Powers, LA Weekly
"The Emperor's Naked Army makes you think the incredible power of
truth-seeking."
- Errol Morris
REVIEWS:
The New York Times Review - Excerpt
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
By VINCENT CANBY Published: March 15, 1988, Tuesday
The New Directors/New Films festival is presenting a number of
unconventional documentaries, but none as alarming and significantly
lunatic as ''The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On,'' conceived by
Shohei Imamura (''Vengeance Is Mine'') and directed by Kazuo Hara as
his first feature.
Its central figure is Kenzo Okuzaki, 65 years old, a World War II
veteran who lives in Kobe with his pliant, uncomplaining wife, whom we
later learn is dying of cancer. At the start of the film, Kenzo has
already spent 13 years 9 months in jail. His crimes: plotting to
assassinate a former Prime Minister, attempting to hit the Emperor
with lead pellets fired with a sling shot and distributing
pornographic pictures of the Emperor to people outside a Tokyo
department store.
Kenzo is a political activist. He's also a marriage broker. In an
astonishing and funny precredit sequence, we see him delivering a
wedding feast homily in which he recalls his years in jail and
suggests that all countries and, indeed, all families are barriers to
the true brotherhood of man. The bride and groom listen with eyes
lowered, as if this were the sort of thing every bride and groom
expected to hear on their wedding day.
From everything the audience sees, Kenzo Okuzaki is a certifiable
psychotic, though ''The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On'' never
addresses this suspicion. He's the sort of fellow who writes long,
crazily incoherent letters to editors, confronts people on street
corners and harangues them with a loudspeaker from his van. It could
be that Mr. Hara thinks the psychotic state is the only sane response
to the contradictions in contemporary Japanese society.
Whatever the film director thinks, he never says. Instead he follows
Kenzo around Japan as the former soldier tries to get at the truth of
something that happened more than 40 years ago - the execution of
three of his army comrades when they were serving in New Guinea at the
end of the war.
The audience never understands just why, at this late date, Kenzo
decides to investigate these events, the details of which remain
fuzzy. With Mr. Hara and a camera crew in tow, Kenzo calls on former
officers and enlisted men he thinks were responsible for ordering the
executions. There are suggestions that the men were condemned for
desertion or for cannibalism. There's the further suggestion that they
were executed to provide meat for their starving comrades.
TIME OUT LONDON REVIEW
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
A documentary portrait of Kenzo Okuzaki, a 62-year-old WWII veteran
who acquired a prison record (for killing a man and for firing
pachinko balls at the Emperor) in the course of his fanatical campaign
to lay the blame for Japan's conduct of the war on the Emperor. Here
the self-proclaimed messenger of God seeks to uncover what truly
happened in New Guinea in 1945, 23 days after the war ended, when two
Japanese soldiers were killed by their colleagues in very mysterious
circumstances. The outcome of his investigations is gruesomely weird
(cannibalism figures heavily), but stranger still is his style of
interrogation, a volatile mix of apologetic politeness, deceit (his
wife and anarchist friend pose as victims' relatives), and sudden
violence, so relentless that one of his many ageing interviewees,
fresh from hospital, ends up in an ambulance. Kazuo Hara's
fly-on-the-wall documentary fascinates both for its bizarre
protagonist, and for its brutally frank portrait of a society
constrained by notions of shame rather than guilt. Jigsaw-like in
construction, alleviated by mad wit, the film is unlike any other:
rough, raw and sometimes surprisingly moving, it's absolutely
compelling. GA
__._,_.___
AnonymousDefinitely worth recording. Students will really enjoy it. Highlights engineering feats from the beginning of the empire.
AnonymousDoes anyone know of a good resource for finding middle school level myths and legends from Asia? I want to do a unit comparing similar stories from around the world and recognizing universal themes. I already do this unit on a small scale when studying Greek mythology, but I want to expand and include myths from all over the world - I'm hoping for book or internet site that will give me a good list to go off of.
AnonymousA book that I have read that I would like to recommend is An Introduction to the Buddha and His teachings edited by Bercholz and Kohn. ( ISBN 0-7607-0636-0 ) The book uses several masters on variety topics to “Introduce” the reader to Buddha. The book is divided into four parts. The first two and the glossary are the one’s that provided to be the most helpful for me in the class. I have used it for personal enlightenment and in the classroom. I think it is the classroom use it has been the greatest use to me.
It’s in the first part is focused on the life of Buddha or Siddhartha. I have used this information and other resources to develop a project for my class to compare Siddhartha’s life to that of Jesus. The timeline of Siddhartha is just before birth to his enlightenment. As for Jesus it is just before his birth to his death as the timeline. It was not till after I read the story that I realized that both lives were so similar. My students find the lives of these two to be remarkably similar. It is in this comparison I believe the students gain a new insight that this once foreign religion may be not as strange as they once thought. I will not go into the comparisons, but to say that both believed in reincarnation in one form or another.
The second part goes into the basic teachings of Buddha. It is in this section I lecture to the students about the similar messages Jesus and Buddha had on moral conduct. I use the “Middle Way” from Buddha because it is this concept that the students can easily understand. The main message for both I believe is to be a good person.
The last two parts are on the other schools of thought, Mahayana and Vajrayana, and meditation. It is these two sections I have spent the least reading and with the class. It is the glossary I find to be the most important. It has helped me in understanding this book, but in my other readings of Buddha. I find the explanations easy to understand and it is quite comprehensive.
If you are looking for a book that focuses on the basics, written towards the novice, and has a comprehensive glossary about Buddha then this book is for you. If your desire is to have a resource for the classroom then this book can be that too. It is in reading this book that I discovered the movie Little Buddha, in which I use in conjunction with this text.
AnonymousI also saw this movie this weekend in Pasadena at the Academy Theatres. It is, like the previous poster mentioned, a Korean film that has a strange mix of comedy and horror. Being a horror film fan, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, but I understand not everyone has this strange fascination with horror films.
What I found most interesting was that I had never seen a Korean film before and I didn/t know what to expect. According to the New York Post writer V.A. Mussetto, it is "South Korea's biggest box-office hit ever." As of date it has surpassed two million dollars in the American theatres. There are also plans for an American remake of this tale, which will probably be much less entertaining. (At least that's been my experience with American remakes of various foreign films.)
This website has various clips and trailers related to this movie.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/host/trailers.php
I enjoyed the mix of horror and humor, but it was a little tiring in a psychological sense. I would definitely recommend it to anyone, especially since it is at the very least entertaining and fun. It's a good movie to watch with friends and have fun commenting on it.
According to http://www.rottentomatoes.com, The Host "also works as a poignant family drama and a biting critique of America's invasion of Iraq." I can definitely see this being used as a discussion starter for creating analogies about the current war. The only thing is I wouldn't be able to show this rated R movie to my students. Maybe I could write a summary of certain scenes and we could discuss various analogies using this. I would definitely use it when I work with my community college students on the weekends.
AnonymousWow! "The Host" is a top seller in Korea? It makes me wonder about Korean cinema in general. Not that a "monster" movie would be number one--it has been compared to "Jaws". I just wonder about other Korean films. Do you know of any others? I've seen more than a few Japanese, Indian, and Chinese movies but I can't think of any Korean movies. I read somewhere that there's talk about remaking it in this country but "...they’ll do it all wrong, because in the end, “Gwoemul” is not a monster movie. It’s about a monster that comes between a family." I wonder about that. I bet the CGI will be more sophisticated but I wonder if the movie will retain it's weird and wonderful mixture of horror and humor.
AnonymousHowl's Moving Castle is an anime film by Hayao Miyazaki, and it is one of my favorite movies he has created. Another film of his titled Spirited Away is much more popular here in the US and can be found in most major movie rental locations.
I have shown this film to my students the past two years and they have been captivated by it. I use it for my after school movie club, which meets once a week and views a movie I select once a month, which is then followed by discussions and various projects, including weekly essays, reviews, character analyses, and paintings, among others.
If you haven't seen this film, I highly recommend it. Not only is the story ethereal and thought provoking, it is escapism in its most beautiful form. Huh? 😛
I found some links to this movie on this website. Once you visit it it will take you to the first part, but all the other parts of it are also listed and you can preview the movie in its entirety before you decide to use it with your students. Since it is youtube, you can only view it on non-district computers.
AnonymousI didn't know this but CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER was loosely based on the "Thunderstorm" by Cao Yu whose one of China's most celebrated twentieth century authors. Can you imagine this movie as a play. Would anyone be left standing from the audience after the play. The movie was visceral enough! The original play was set in 1930's and the main character was a coal-mining company. Yu was influenced by an ancient Greek tragedy. This play could open today in Bejing and feature the kiln factory's boss whose workers were abducted as young as eight years old for slave labor. Charles Dickens and Yu where are you when we need you? Some have reported on other threads about the labor camp. It was also reported in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday June 16,2007 on Page A-3, should anyone wish to reference the author Ching-Ching Ni. [Edit by="jcsmyth on Jun 21, 4:41:02 PM"][/Edit]
AnonymousIn the August 4,2007 edition of the Los Angeles Times, a young Vietnamese Physician left a very intense , emotional, and riveting diary on the period during the Vietnam War. It is on the first page of the Times. As described by Richard C. Paddock, the reviewer, it is simliar to a Vietnamese version of the "The Diary of Anne Frank". The diarist's name is Dr. Dang Thuy Tram. She was killed by American forces at the age of 27 by taking grave personal risks to her personal safety. The diary has become a runaaway bestseller in Vietnam. It may be a good book to check out for some light summer reading since Vietnam is part of East Asia and we did not have the time to devote the time to such an intersting Country.
Here is a quote from the diary: "Sadness soaks into my heart just like the long days of rain soak into the earth." She writes this after treating the Viet Cong wounded.
Somehow the diary disappeared and then resurfaced when former U.S. Army intelligence officer Frederic Whitehurst gave it to the Vietnam Center at Texax Tech Univerity in Lubbock.
Many of the purchasers of the book are young people who did not believe their parents stories about the War. Nhan,63 said ,"Old people want to relive memories. Young people want to know how their parents lived during the war."
Like I said this is some light summer reading ,or you may wish to wait for fall and introduce it to an English Literature class where one could explore points of view. [Edit by="jcsmyth on Jun 22, 3:44:47 PM"][/Edit]
AnonymousChinese Movie Review—I Not Stupid
This movie is a Singaporean movie which reflects Asian educational philosophy and Singaporean educational system as well as the unique political situation in Singapore. It is a sweet and bitter movie with hilarious dialogues reflecting some students’ frustration within this educational system.
The story is about three Singaporean students who have low academic achievement and are considered as hopeless ones by their parents, some teachers in the school, and other people in the society. Therefore, they don’t have self-confidence and self-esteem at all. However, each of them has ones own unique talent and character that help them to earn people’s respect and to build up their confidence after they went through a lot of incidents. This movie reminds me all the time that as a teacher I should not label any child and should give all students equal opportunities to succeed. Any positive encouragement we give to students may impact their learning or even their lives.
This movie is the most popular one among all my students in the Chinese classes from grade 6 all the way to seniors in the high school. Somehow they all find a way to relate this movie to their real lives. After watching the movie, many Asian students told me that their parents are very like the parents in the movie. Many students of other ethnics compared and contrasted the Asian educational system to our educational system in the US. A lot of them were curious about my educational background in Taiwan and also asked me questions about the educational situation in China. This movie increased students’ interests and curiosity in learning more about Asian education and a great class discussion arose after watching this movie. Therefore, I highly recommend teachers to watch this movie and let your students to watch it too.
AnonymousMovie Review-I Not Stupid Too
After the extreme success of “I Not Stupid” in Singapore as well as in other Asian countries, the director of the movie continued to produce another one, I Not Stupid Too, to discuss the high school education in Singapore. As the first one, this movie is also a bitter sweet movie to reflect the sadness of some struggling students with low academic achievement in Singaporean educational system. This movie also focuses on the conflicts between parents and teen-aged children and the relationships between school teachers and their teen-aged students. It also reveals two sides of viewpoints about a reasonless punishment, caning in public that exists only in Singaporean educational system. When my students saw this punishment in the movie, they all had confusion and questions about why this kind of punishment still exists in such a modern society. Maybe it will be a good topic to discuss in the class after watching this movie. I highly recommend this movie to teachers who have watched “I Not Stupid” before. You will be touched by the story and will think deeply what a teacher can do to help those students who have really low self-esteem and are looked down by this society.
AnonymousThis novel is written by Lisa See. Although she is the fifth generation of a Chinese American family and doesn’t look like a Chinese at all, she was educated in a very traditional Chinese way and grew up hearing “When a girl, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son.” Therefore, she chooses to describe a story of a traditional Chinese girl, Lily, who endured the agony of foot binding, arranged marriages, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood in nineteenth-century China. Lily, at age of six, was paired with another girl, Snow Flower, who sent Lily a silk fan on which she had written a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women in Hunan province created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. Through the back and forth nu shu, they both shared loneliness and joys and found solace, developing a bond that kept their spirits alive. However, when a misunderstanding arises, their deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.
While reading this story, I feel like to be drawn into a time not as ancient as it seems. I am also deeply touched by the beautiful portrait of female friendship and power in this story. The most vibrant part to me is when Lily described how she and her sister’s feet were bound when they were very young. The excruciating pains are not only their eternal pains but also a very shameful dark page in the Chinese history. As a Chinese female, I can feel those women’s pains while I am reading this chapter of Lily’s life. Although this page of history had been turned, nowadays, Chinese women are still struggling to shake off the binding from the tradition and culture to find their own positions, values, and self-esteem. There are also a lot of questions at the end of this book for readers to discuss. If the teacher wants to use this book as a required reading, these questions may be worth for students to think about and discuss in the class.
AnonymousThis is a wonderful and delightful comedy. The year is 1998 and the World Cup has just been kicked into high gear. But for four young monks living deep in the Himalayas, watching their favorite sport isn't only difficult-it's forbidden. As soccer fever heats up, the young monks break the rules, sneak out of their monastery and risk futures in a madcap adventure that's all for the love of the game. However, the story has a surprised but a very touching ending. This movie is full of the philosophy of Buddhism. It's a must see movie for anyone who has ever been passionate about sports, or life.