old boy - park chan-wook

sprout angel wings with this movie, the strange happiness i felt after seeing this, a knucklepunch that left me smiling. don't be surprised if every college dorm room has a poster of old boy up a year from now. don't mean to add to the hype, there's plenty of it here and here. we have a man who is kidnapped and imprisoned for no apparent reason and is set free 15 years later without a word of explanation. what happens next is something both gorgeous and vicious, like a butterfly with wings made out of shrapnel floating through your stomach. and damn, choi min-sik, who plays the main character, is insane (his performance in the first and final 10 minutes of the movie are unbelievable.) gnaw on a squid and give me a smile, see this movie and then have some coffee with me. i want to see some harry potter 3.

[update: 2/9, 2:14 am]



jsa - park chan-wook

oh, and have you seen park chan-wook's first film, jsa (joint security area)? i caught it one free evening during finals week, and i still remember that evening clearly, mostly because i got the chance to spend it with s, the first time we could hang together in too long a while. fascinating stuff, not only because i'm an ignorant ass who knows next to nothing about the north-south political situation there (see, all i knew about the korean demilitarized zone was taught to me by the drunken babbling of one mike nguyen at a party at steve's once) but also because it's a damn fine mystery too.