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

  • On the sofa: The Man from Mo’Wax

    The documentary The Man from Mo’Wax was something that I’d been looking forward to watching for a while. James Lavelle made his name as the guy at Honest Johns who was the go to guy for Major Force Records releases. Major Force was a Japanese hip hop label that featured the likes of

    • Hiroshi Fujiwara
    • Takagi Kan
    • Masayuki Kudo
    • Milo Johnson (who was part of the pre-Massive Attack group The Wild Bunch)
    • “Tycoon” Toshio Nakanishi
    • Scha Dara Parr
    • Ishida Yoshinori

    These were the people who influenced 

    • Bomb The Bass’s first album Into The Dragon
    • The subsequent trip hop movement
    • Japan’s streetwear scene (Goodenough, Fragment) which has a continuing impact on the global streetwear scene

    Lavelle’s impact before Mo’Wax was huge. His column that had the Mo’Wax name and identity was huge. Mo’Wax the record label in its tunes and championing the designs of Swifty and Futura’s art have been hugely influential. Lavelle was the tastemaker that drove BAPE before the Americans like Pharrell Williams got hold of it. He did things in collectable figures and fashion that other labels still haven’t done. Surrender was a great streetwear label. The first UNKLE album was brilliant. 

    But he lost it; drugs and self indulgent projects that burned money and credibility. He was sufficiently narcissistic to document his life two decades before social media, which is the reason why you have a lot of warts and all material that has elements of Spinal Tap. Lavelle lacked the introspection and self examination in the documentary to make a real turn around. It ends up coming across as a two-hour pitch video for James to take part in a pop star re-invention on VH-1 a la Remaking Taylor Dane. The Guardian’s review summed up Lavelle and The Man From Mo’Wax really well. 

    …from superstar DJ to rock bore

    Cath Clarke, The Guardian (August 30, 2018)

  • 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.