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

Vintage Tomorrows + more news
Vintage Tomorrows

I got a chance to watch the Vintage Tomorrows documentary the other evening. It was interesting that it had a range of practitioners such as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling in it. Cory Doctorow gave some of the explanations of the culture. There were a number of things that Vintage Tomorrows just scratched the surface on:
- How can steam punk be decolonised? Steam Punk is based on a new-liberal society that thrived on child exploitation and had colonisation at its centre. Add to that is the fact that steam punk is the very essence of Stuff White People Like.
- There is a question about the reductive dismal nature of science fiction, a theme that William Gibson has reflected on at length.
- The relationship between our own convergent technology path and gadgets. This also brings in the control that people feel with hardware that they can build. There was aspects around specialisation that wasn’t touched up on, but its into this as well.
- I thought that Vintage Tomorrows didn’t reflect more on Victorian originators of science fiction like Jules Verne beyond a name check. I would like to have heard more about William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s take on things.
I felt that there was a huge opportunity missed in not getting Neal Stephenson on camera to discuss steam punk on Vintage Tomorrows.

China

U.S. raises concerns about China aligning with Russia at meeting it calls ‘intense’ | Reuters

China insists it’s ‘not a party’ to Russia’s war with Ukraine – POLITICO

Saudi Arabia Invites China’s Xi to Visit Kingdom Amid Strained U.S. Relations – WSJ

Consumer behaviour

Scott Galloway on how consumer behaviour has been affected over time by online dating.

Design

Walgreens replaced some fridge doors with screens. And some shoppers absolutely hate it – CNN

Ethics

British publishers censor books for western readers to appease China | Financial Times

Finance

Tencent Faces Possible Record Fine for Anti-Money-Laundering Violations – WSJ

China’s Mortgage Lending Slumped Last Month for First Time in 15 Years | Yicai

Hong Kong

The Peninsula Hong Kong Dresses Up in Vibrant Irish Green to Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day | The Peninsula Hong Kong

Ireland

Intel is building a new €17 billion chip manufacturing hub in Germany – The Verge – also major expansion of Intel’s Leixlip plant

Korea

With Yoon’s Election, It’s Time for China to Rethink Its Korea Policy – The Diplomat – China remains – at least in the short to medium run – South Korea’s preferred trading partner, with the country being Seoul’s largest export-import partner, over the United States, by a substantial margin. With slowing growth rates, uncertainty over the real estate sector, and declining demographics in China as looming challenges on one hand, and surging inflation and protectionist amplification of domestic industries in the United States, neither China nor the U.S. presents itself as the natural, exclusive economic partner for Seoul in the long run. More promising, perhaps, would be the exploration of expanded options and connections between South Korea and emerging markets such as Vietnam and India, as well as the European Union. Yoon centered his campaign around the allegations that the present regime has been too economically dependent upon China

Materials

Cyanide maker suspends Europe production as energy costs soar | Financial Times – this is going to impact processes like gold refining

Embedding plastic NFC tags in reusable packaging – eeNews Europe

Media

Australia pressured Google and Facebook to pay for journalism. Is America next? – Columbia Journalism Review

Netflix Is Ad Free, but It Isn’t Brand Free – The New York Times

USA Today Owner Gannett Co. Gave Advertisers Inaccurate Information for Nine Months – WSJ

Pepsi Taps Joe Jonas For New Competitive Singing Show | The Drum

Online

Telegram: the app at the heart of Ukraine’s propaganda battle | The Guardian

TikTok stars receive White House briefing on Ukraine – The Washington Post

Retailing

Grocery Apps Hoped to Win Over Amsterdam. Then Things Turned Sour | WIRED and more from Reuters – Amsterdam puts freeze on opening ‘dark store’ distribution centres | Reuters

Security

Brian Fishman on Meta’s actions in Russia – Protocol

The secret US mission to bolster Ukraine’s cyber defences ahead of Russia’s invasion | Financial Times

TrueCaller exploited India’s weak data laws to build a caller ID empire – Rest of World

UK Camera Commissioner: Buying Dahua and Hikvision Puts ‘Money Over Values’

US officials say Russia has asked China for military help in Ukraine | Financial Times

Technology

SoftBank’s Arm to Cut Up to 15% as It Prepares IPO After Nvidia Deal Collapse – Bloomberg

Web of no web

Patients love telehealth–physicians are not so sure | McKinsey

Xerox PARC spins out predictive maintenance for IIoT – eeNews Europe – The Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) has an iconic place in the history of the electronics industry, developing the ideas behind such innovations as the computer mouse, Ethernet and laser printing. But with Xerox waning in influence in the digital age and a focus on software and services, PARC as a subsidiary since 2002 has perhaps struggled in its open innovation role of custom R&D services. One area where it has been innovating is the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). It has now launched new venture to commercialize predictive maintenance technology that reduces unplanned downtime in industrial manufacturing operations. – ok this undersells the work that Xerox PARC did in software, operating systems, distributed services, user experience and networking, but the introduction of Navity is very interesting. There are certain limits to this for instance production lines that depend on several machines will still need scheduled maintenance
March 16, 2022
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)
December 19, 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.
July 14, 2017
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.
October 26, 2015
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

June 9, 2015