Ged Carroll

Category: culture | 文明 | 미디어와 예술 | 人文

Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.

Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.

Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.

Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.

Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.

More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.

  • Arsenal defrauded + more things

    Arsenal and 30 ad agencies ensnared in alleged BYD fraudulent misrepresentation case | Marketing | Campaign Asia – More than 30 domestic agencies are crying foul after Chinese electric-car brand BYD absolved itself of payment obligations for RMB1.1 billion (US$16.4 million) worth of advertising production and roadshow fees last week. The automaker claimed these agencies have been dealing with a fake employee from an “illegal” entity carrying out marketing activities on behalf of BYD by “forging” the company’s seal. BYD made statements on its website (English) and Weibo account (Mandarin), naming a “criminal suspect” Liki Li (李娟) who managed to engineer a potentially sham sponsorship deal with football club Arsenal in April 2018, and has since been detained by the Chinese public security bureau. “Hereby we reiterate that BYD was never involved in and is not responsible for any fraud issues,” read one statement. “Please make sure to report to the authority responsible whenever you find yourself a victim.” The 30+ agencies suffering in this legal quagmire certainly see themselves as victims, with many raising objections to how BYD is handling the case so irresponsibly. The exposé party was begun by Jingzhi PR (上海竞智广告) three days ago, posting an ugly narrative on its WeChat account of how three years of creative design and test-drive execution for BYD was suddenly invalidated in this about-turn – not particularly surprised that this happened. I am surprised that it happened to Arsenal. Sports teams like Arsenal have historically been savvy in navigating the Chinese media ecosystem.

    I’m not DTF, OKCupid – Hacker Noon – great analysis of pandering advertising

    Amazon’s Curious Case of the $2,630.52 Used Paperback – The New York Times – is it merchants trying to pretend something is more rare than it is, or machine driven automated pricing errors? (paywall)

    Google Maps API Becomes ‘More Difficult and Expensive’ | Slashdot – so much that you can say about this. Google is Alphabet’s cash cow, with changes like this it’s losing developer hearts and minds. I think its part of a wider trend away from “Don’t Be Evil” to “Greed is good”. The economics of cloud services should surely be going in the opposite direction to Google’s pricing changes?

    Jackie Chan tried to replace Bruce Lee after he died, and so did Bruce Li – screen name of a Taiwanese actor behind slew of Lee rip-offs | South China Morning Post – great article on how the Hong Kong film industry coped with the death of Bruce Lee as a box office draw. I just couldn’t see Jackie Chain as a Bruce Lee analogue – thankfully he found his own way

    China’s ‘red education’ history tours and the rise of communist cosplay | South China Morning Post – from opening up under President Deng to the go go growth of President Hu, the party had sublimated into the back of Chinese people’s lives. President Hu is bringing the party back to the forefront with nationalistic characteristics. Hence Chinese citizens doing ‘founding of the republic’ style cos-play

    Salmon Theory – well worthwhile reviewing when you have a period of stuckness

  • Fall of Nokia & other things this week

    BBC 4 ran a great hour long documentary film: The Rise and Fall of Nokia is an oral history on the fall of Nokia from Nokia veterans. You can’t give a good comprehensive telling on the rise and fall of Nokia story in just one hour, but you can get a sense of what Nokia was. Some of the culture change that came with success  was really, really  dark. More on Nokia here.

    Danny Dyer nailed the zeitgeist on Brexit last week. Which led some the B3ta community to put together the Danny Dyer Presents: “Pwopa Nawty Noises!” (B3ta.com) – livens up conference calls no end.

    I was a big fan of HBO’s The Newsroom drama; it was more of the intelligent dramas over the past few years. The intro to the first episode seems even more prescient now

    I am very late to this but Techcrunch’s Bubbleproof drama from last year neatly skewers the current state of technology start-up culture (in the west at least).

    I’ll leave you with this amazing animated film from Hong Kong. It’s on KickStarter for funding and looks amazing with hints of traditional martial arts films, science fiction and psychedelia. More information on the film website.

  • Quantum computing & other things this week

    Quantum computing explained for different skill levels. The explanations of quantum computing are amazing. The simplicity of the quantum computing explanations should be must watch content.

    A video on Sony‘s old school copy protection for the original PlayStation. It is the height of ingenuity. I had a couple of CDs with black faces like a PlayStation disc. They were a Sisters of Mercy Japanese import disc and a limited edition disc by Yello that I picked up secondhand. I have got no idea where they are now.

    The black coating was a ruse from a copy protection point of view; except that it may have concealed the real copy protection system (if you had a microscope good enough to see it). The technology is down to the way wavy data lines were put down on the PlayStation disks rather than a copy management style encryption.

    An amazing video of Hong Kong’s tram system. Get Lost in Hong Kong on a 3-Minute Trolley Adventure

    My friend Stephen is travelling at the moment and passed through Bozeman, Montana. I tried to explain who Mystery Ranch and Dana Gleason was, and how they came to make the best backpacks in the world. But in the end, I sent this link to him as it explains it all so much better: Interview with Mystery Ranch Founder Dana Gleason – Dana Design Founder Returns to Outdoor Industry | The Field

    Sailor Moon’s Moonlight Densetsu as played on traditional Japanese instruments | Sora News 24 – and yes it is as good as it sounds. The mix of modern and older Japanese culture is fascinating.

  • Sicario 2: Soldado

    https://youtu.be/WSVP5BYDgAk

    I was a big fan of Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario. It conveyed the monotony and horror of the war on drugs really well. Taylor Sheridan crafted a taunt storyline, you had great actors in Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Donovan as Brolin’s foil. Alejandro Gillick as a character played really well to Benicio del Toro signature mix of pathos and violence. The music was the film’s unsung character that turned out a virtuoso performance. Jóhann Jóhannsson’s soundtrack carried a lot of the weight in the film with its dark dissonant ambience. It was in many respects a modern day spaghetti western in the grand tradition of Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci.

    Sicario 2: Soldado had a lot to live up too. Denis Villeneuve handed over directorial reins to Stefano Sollima: one of Italy’s best crime film directors. Sollima kept close to Villeneuve’s style from the previous film. Jóhann Jóhannsson was replaced on soundtrack duties by Hildur Guðnadóttir. This wasn’t due to Jóhannsson’s deadly cocaine overdose in Berlin; but a decision by the director to recruit an entirely new team.

    She went from playing cello on the first film soundtrack to taking over the composition and performance of Sicario 2. Guðnadóttir kept a similar formula in the soundtrack, all be it with an even harder edge to the film. Most of the main players are back the exception of the FBI agents from the first film. Given the ending of the first film where Gillick made it clear to the Emily Blunt character that she wasn’t morally flexible enough. Sheridan Taylor takes on writing duties again.

    Plus points
    • Matt Craver (Josh Brolin) and Steve Forsing (Jeffrey Donovan) chewing the fat, in classic spaghetti western cornball dialogue; that reminds me a lot of the

    Nice day for a drive ha?

    Aww, beautiful day. Blue skies, large calibre weapons. I love getting out of the office.

    • The film starts with a grand vision that feels very zeitgeist with illegal immigration being front-and-centre
    • The film does action exceedingly well. The assassination, kidnapping, bombings and shootouts are all incredibly well choreographed
    Minus points

    The Plot, the plot and oh did I mention the plot? ***Spoilerish ahead***

    • At the beginning of the film it paints a big canvas as the film moves from the border, Kansas city, Somalia, Djibouti and Washington DC over the first half hour. This grant vision fizzles out
    • The plot lacks morality centred in one person like the first film and the director compressed with the story arc. So that leads to….
    • Character inconsistencies. del Toro’s character Alejandro Gillick kills a cartel leader, his wife and his kids at the dinner table at the height of the first film. In Sicario 2; the film hinges on him having a massive change of heart and going soft. Matt Craver’s ‘the end justifies the means’ viewpoint suddenly goes soft, when he is required to have a cartel leader’s child killed
    • Plot logic: they are obviously going after the head of the Reyes cartel, with a view to understanding the organisation structure and operational methods. They are keen to find key decision makers. They find one and then abruptly drop it. Maybe it was editing and what we are seeing is a film pared down into just over two hours in duration
    • A weak flip-flopping president who is concerned that the deaths of corrupt Mexican federal police officers will impact his standing amongst 50 million Hispanic voters. In sharp contrast to signing off on covert action just a short time before to combat foreign terrorists using people smuggling rat lines to get into the US. Chances are he’s probably already screwed by his law-and-order stance a la Trump
    • Injuries that should have caused nasty disfigurement, don’t
    • The weak ending that is obviously setting up a franchise a la Marvel. That’s if Marvel allowed itself to go as dark as say Garth Ennis’ interpretation of The Punisher

    I felt divorced from this film rather than numb from the grimness of the original. It’s hard to maintain power and impact, but Sicario 2 had so many doors that it could have gone through with the start of the plot, that the last half of the film felt like a cop out.

    In summary

    Modern day narco spaghetti western Sicario 2: Soldado is faithful to the original. It has bags of style and the kind of kinetic experience that you’d forget. A worthy successor to the original film with the exception of a story line that fizzles out and then comes back at the end to set up a Marvel-type franchise. Sicario 2 won’t have me watching it several times in the way that the original film did. I just hope that this is the movie making equivalent of a difficult second album and Sicario 3 will raise the bar again. Maybe hand the reins back to Denis Villeneuve and support Taylor with a writing team that will collaborate and challenge him to do better with the story, rather than the reductive process that Sicario 2 seems to have gone through. Stefano Sollima’s admitted as much in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter

    We condensed the script’s narrative arc in order to preserve and pronounce the soul of the movie. The script was a bit wider in scope at first. Then, we organically pit the two lead characters [played by Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin] against each other, something that wasn’t present in the first draft. Story-wise, I felt it was a really important and interesting turning point

    More related content can be found here.

  • The Bureau season 3 & other things

    The Bureau season 3 on Amazon. It is one of the most well written series I have watched in a long time. The Bureau season 1 and 2 where taunt thrillers that were James Bond reimagined by John Le Carre. It is the show that Spooks should have been. The ending was on a cliff hanger and I didn’t think that we’d see The Bureau season 3 The Bureau season 3 sees our protagonist captured by ISIS. Guillaume Debailly is captured by ISIS who know him by his former cover of Paul Lefebvre.

    A brass band cover  of Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name

    This amazing episode of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert featuring Rakim (of Eric B & Rakim fame). What people tend to forget is the difference that Rakim made to hip-hop. Before him, most rappers rapped on the beat. Rakim used his rhymes the way a jazz musician plays their instrument. They go around the beat, yet are in time.

    With Amazon delivering analytical data like this, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot more sites signing up to Amazon’s affiliate marketing scheme, even if they don’t want to sell anything for the beast of Seattle. The recommendation areas draws from its massive retail data set that shows what consumers are interested in across various different product categories.

    This week I have mostly been working my way through John Kelly’s Mystery Train for my listening pleasure.  Kelly is a veteran Irish DJ who has a rare skill in the quality of his sections. Naturally this is all backed by the massive music library of RTÉ. The original run of it in the mid to late 1990s was legendary and thankfully Irish state broadcaster resurrected it. Kelly just nails music selection. More culture related content here.