April 2012
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My Hypothetical Sight & Sound Ballot
So, this year will see another version of the Sight & Sound “greatest films of all time” poll. It’s arguably the single most influential and hallowed poll in all of cinema, and it would be a dream to one day vote in it. Until then, here is my list if I were voting:
1. Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955) 2. Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) 3. Play Time (Jacques...
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"Pop Utopianism" and Its Discontents
Back in January, I wrote an essay entitled “Pop Utopianism,” which was accompanied by some further thoughts about K-pop and a mix of 23 K-pop songs. This week, it appears that someone has written a rebuttal to it, entitled “We Need To Talk About (The Intrinsic Fascism Of) Manufactured Pop Music.” I don’t find the arguments presented in this rebuttal convincing—they seem merely retread...
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“Thomas has also written jingles for Gametap, Dong Energy, Lalandia, and DK TV.”
– From the Wikipedia entry on Thomas Troelsen (emphasis added).
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“True Romance (written by Quentin Tarantino, directed by Tony Scott) opens with...”
– Michael Ryan
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Frank Kogan on The Voice: American vs. Korean...
Frank Kogan, one of my favorite music critics to read and one who has consistently written about K-pop at a really high level, recently put up a post about The Voice, both the American version and the Korean version. At the end, there’s this paragraph, which I found really perfect:
As for others, Jesse Campbell is the best of the American soul bores and is a favorite to win, and it...
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10 K-Pop Songs I Loved in March 2012
Previously:
Five K-Pop Songs I Loved in February 2012
Five K-Pop Songs I Loved in January 2012
We Need to Talk About K-Pop (my K-pop mix)
1. Big Bang - “Fantastic Baby”
I wrote about this song for Spectrum Culture’s Monthly Mixtape, but to follow up what I said: it’s really astounding how great each individual singer is in Big Bang. How many songs of theirs...
“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not...”
– Andrei Tarkovsky (via theinsatiables)
I always go back and forth in my mind about the extent to which art should represent an ideal world, or a fantasy world, disregarding the connection between this world and the real world. That is to say, should art function usefully by its being connected to...
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A Radical Narrative Disguised as a K-Drama:...
What would you do if you fell in love with someone but couldn’t tell if they were a man or a woman? That’s not quite the premise of the K-drama “Coffee Prince,” but it is the question posed to its viewers. In the series, an androgynous woman named Eun-chan (played by the beautiful actress Yoon Eun-hye) is mistaken for a boy. Its other protagonist, and Eun-chan’s...
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