lukknits: November & December

I... want to say my November list is incomplete, but it might be accurate?

November

Lots of movies for December! I think I kept a better log of December, so this should be relatively accurate

December

Oh my.
I also love that Arnalds posts the scores for many of his tracks on his website for free download.

I don't really know what I was expecting, but it was definitely something less inane than this. I couldn't even get the fun, light-hearted romcom feels out of it because the characters and situations irked me so much!

SO MUCH IS GOING ON. I want to learn more about Korean shamanism (Possessed might be a good performance to go to, in that case? And that's coming up at the Toronto Fringe Festival), but also the history of Christianity in Korea. I thought it was going to be a pretty straightforward, "oh, you went after & killed the wrong person because of your racial prejudice against Japanese people (for... obvious historical reasons) and didn't even try to consider all the factors before doing so" plot that's meant to raise the discussion of racial attitudes towards Japanese in Korea, but WHOA did this ever go beyond my expectations!

It was alright. But I watched another one a few days after that also featured Hiroshi Abe and was also him in this sort of role, with a similar enough sort of non-traditional nuclear family setup situation that it made me wonder if this is a theme that's coming out of Japanese cinema right now?

This was such a fun zombie movie! I don't know what I went in thinking it would be, but this was so fast-paced and exciting and just all around a fun movie! The actors slamming full force into the glass and all that was spectacular and I loved it, and that escalator scene was pure gold.
I couldn't stop seeing the dad as the character from Coffee Prince though, since that's the role I associate him with since I watched that years ago.
So... does the zombie deer only eat other deer, or does it also zombify humans and other animals?

Not as great as I was expecting it to be considering the hype and the rave reviews about how hilarious it was that I heard from coworkers, but it was a fun movie and I'd watch a sequel. I'm hoping the huge success of this movie will spur producers & directors to create more films that have a more diverse cast!

Hmmm... it was very slow. And it didn't end the way it was meant to because of budget cuts, according to the insert (when the girl would go to the South and presumably find out more about her father's past). I also neglected to read the novella the DVD came with, so that's on me.

I'm so miffed I couldn't go to the talk by Hebb when he was in Toronto! I really enjoyed this book with its prompts and Hebb's experiences with people's answers throughout the death dinners he has hosted. I'd love to get one going in a community setting at the library!

Another Kore-eda film. Beautifully shot! And the ambiguity of where truth lies in this film was an interesting decision that reflects the judicial process pictured.

This is the other family-centred film that also featured Hiroshi Abe as the down and out father.

I loved the way this film places death firmly into the realm of the living, in the sense that it's going to happen and the discrimination people in the funerary industry face only serves to generate more pain in the face of loss than if we were to fully embrace the sendoff and have professionals who care about what they do, do the service for us.

The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit
Call Them by Their True Names by Rebecca Solnit
Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power, and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All by Jaclyn Friedman

I should probably just let the above three marinate for a bit in my head before talking about it, especially since I didn't really read the first two deeply (on e-book, in between work...)

Pages