Ged Carroll

Category: on the sofa | 影評 | 영화를보고 | 映画レビュー

What does on the sofa mean? So a sofa is a couch in American parlance, or may also be called a settee or chesterfield in other English speaking parts of the world. Its the big chair in the living room that people tend to view their TV set from.

By using on the sofa as a title I wanted to imply content that I had reviewed at home rather than having gone out to watch it at a cinema or attend an event.

I have tended to review material on DVD or Blu-Ray rather than streaming media, usually because I have acquired them with an intent, whereas streaming is more like content grazing, often little more than visual wallpaper for my living room.

This section has been made up of a hodge podge of films, documentaries and anime.

Films that I have seen at festivals or on trips to the cinema are more likely to be in the out and about section. So there isn’t a consistency there in that respect.

I have covered a wide range of content here including

  • Safe House – a surprisingly good Ryan Reynolds film that isn’t a comedy one
  • Bitter Lake – I am a huge Adam Curtis fan and his work is the exception that proves my rule about streaming platforms in this section mainly because I can’t get his documentaries on disk
  • The Raid 2 – which added a bit of storytelling to the mix of The Raid.
  • The Man from Mo’Wax – a documentary about the rise, fall and reinvention of James Lavelle.
  • No blood no tears – An excellent Korean heist drama

  • Vivienne Wei + more things

    Vivienne Wei

    WeChat consumer perspective  by Chinese video blogger Vivienne Wei. Vivienne Wei put together this great video about how WeChat is the Swiss Army knife of apps in China. It is a great consumer perspective on how WeChat works.

    Carl Jr resets

    Carl Jr is a casual eating restaurant chain in the US. It is owned by the same people who won Hardee’s. Carl Jr is known for producing frat boy / brogrammer-friendly adverts like these

    Wiser heads seem to have prevailed in the marketing department, so they came up with this ad to press reset using humour rather than the indignation of political correctness

    Vice, New Balance and footwork sub-culture

    Vice and New Balance have put together a documentary on the Japanese adoption of the footwork sub-culture. Japan has a history of adopting a subculture (like dancehall) and elevating it. Chicago’s footwork skills look like they are getting the same treatment

    Godzilla

    The King of Monster Island Godzilla is back in an anime film. The plot looks like Avatar – humans coming to wipe out planet for commercial / political benefits. Of course all of that plan will go to shit when they find out the inhabitants aren’t lanky blue people but the original kaiju bad boy and friends.

    Baby Driver

    I got to see Baby Driver. It is a curious mashup of a couple of film genres

    • 1980s style films popularised by John Hughes.
    • 1990s to the present day gritty heist films

    I was also reminded of the Tony Scott film True Romance

    The iPod Classic makes a come back in the film in a spectacular way, expect a minor cultural backlash against ‘radio’ as music service currently popular. Personally curated, shareable music and physical artefacts come to the fore. (Though I still can’t see young men proudly carrying rhinestone encrusted pink iPod Classics just yet). More related content here.

  • On the sofa: No blood no tears

    No blood No tears – One of the best kept secrets in London is the free sessions put on by the Korean Cultural Centre just off Trafalgar Square. I caught the last film of the year to be shown at the centre. No blood No tears is a Korean heist story. Gyung-Sun is a former safe-cracker who has reformed and become a taxi driver.

    Her husband is in the wind and left behind a lot of gambling debts that local loan sharks try to collect on. She doesn’t know where her child is and to cap it all Gyung-Sun has a difficult relationship with the police and her short temper.

    A chance car accident brings her into contact with a petty gangsters moll and a plot ensues to rob the dog fighting arena where illegal gambling takes place. What ensues is a film that is part comedy, part Thelma & Louise and a healthy dose of ultra-violence that would be familiar to Hong Kong cinema and Tarantino fans.

    Over the next few weeks I will be getting my fix of Korean cinema at the London Korean Film Festival. I can recommend from personal experience:

    • Raging Currents
    • The Man From Nowhere
    • The Classified File

    More Korea-related posts here.

  • Brand storytelling: a bitter pill to swallow?

    I have been thinking about brand storytelling after watching Adam Curtis’ Bitter Lake over the weekend which is ostensibly trying to tell the story of Afghanistan from then end of the second world war to today. But it is also a parable on how the simplicity of storytelling used by the political classes to get the populace on side in the west has been ultimately counterproductive. This counterproductive nature of it, made me think about brand storytelling, that is often simple to aid both delivery and effectiveness.

    I have worked for businesses since the mid-noughties that put brand storytelling at the centre of offerings – often using simple mono-myths as models. In addition, my colleagues at one agency took this a stage further and sold their services as building on the ‘best practice’ of winning political campaigns – if you like Ogilvy on Advertising but written by Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and George W Bush.

    The truth is that our relationships with brand is often more complex and shifting than we has marketers let on. Brands have symbolic and status power which changes over time. The question that Bitter Lake seeded in my mind, is brand storytelling actually going to breed a future set of consumers with little to know brand engagement? Where brand values become a mill stone rather than a touch stone? It’s too early to tell and I don’t know the answers if it did happen, though my gut says going to an approach of radical honesty. More branding related content here.

    More information
    Bitter Lake | Wikipedia

  • Umeng & other things this week

    Umeng

    Umeng have put together a great presentation on consumer behaviour and mobile in China’s tier 3 cities. Most of what you read focuses on tier one and tier two cities in China. Umeng provides insight into large yet untapped markets just below the biggest most-developed cities in China. The tier three cities that Umeng covers are the cities were China does much of its manufacturing now as places like Shenzhen and Shanghai have become too expensive

    Fukushima Happy

    This beautifully shot version of Pharrell Williams Happy done by the people of Fukushima prefecture showing everyday Japanese life and shot by Fuji TV.

    I particularly like the lucho libre masks and the winking Shibu shot. There is also a great outtakes / making of video

    Red Fuse x Colgate-Palmolive Myanmar

    Red Fuse Hong Kong’s work with Colgate-Palmolive in Myanmar to educate children about oral health (and sell more toothpaste) was a Cannes Lion winner and an inspired way of rethinking how packaging was used. The mobile toll-free number was particularly interesting given how nascent mobile phone usage is in Myanmar. There isn’t much of an online component as internet penetration is low and concentrated in richer urban areas of the country.


    Richard Feynman – The Character of Physical Law – 5 –

    The Distinction of Past and Future lecturing at Cornell University. Feynman was a great physicist but he was greater at making physics accessible to a wider range of people through his lectures and writing. Take a lunch time to enjoy this video

    Guardians of the Galaxy

    Yet another new trailer for the Guardians of The Galaxy, we get to see Rocket‘s character slightly more developed in this version and he seems brilliant in a Spaghetti Western anti-hero kind of way, if Eli Wallach (God rest his soul) had been a wise-cracking raccoon bandit.

  • The Raid 2

    Coming back to the UK reminded me of how much Hong Kong is a cinema-centric culture despite the technology, mobile devices and amazing restaurants. Going to the cinema there was literally half the price of London, which means that I am much more critical of the entertainment shown. The first film I have seen that was actually worth it’s ticket price since I have got back is The Raid 2.

    The Raid put the Indonesian martial arts scene on the map with a highly kinetic film that owed much of its visual intensity to computer games. You can see shades of vintage Bruce Lee films and the ‘gun fu’ popularised by John Woo in these films. Whilst there might be a Hong Kong influence, the Indonesian martial artists definitely carve out their own path. 

    The Raid 2 follows on just hours from the first film; but is an entirely different beast.  It is much more polished. The plot is even better developed. The acting has improved. But if you love the original film  you will still have plenty to keep you happy in The Raid 2. They have added to the original formula, rather than having taken anything away. As you can see from the trailer, there is still lashings of Indonesian-style kinetic action in the second film.

    But the film’s pace ebbs and flows in order to tell a more detailed story this time around, which feels very much like an early John Woo, pre-Hollywood. There is a nod to Quentin Tarantino with some of the gimmicky characters such as the Hammer Girl character. The plot is a similar structure to A Fistful Of Dollars. Our hero goes under cover to gain the trust of an organised crime family and ends up between two factions within the one criminal organisation bent on gaining power.