#mercypost

[grandcentralcity]

How did YOU get HERE?! YOU didn't fall in... Did YOU..?

(sometimes I get lost in my brain and find these little nooks and crannies to take pictures)

[jenphibian]

man i love abandoned building

[notacullturaljournal-blog]

Dream High Mercypass

Jake Shuptrine

Professor Kirstin Bone

EN103-011

26 April 2015

Dream High Mercypass

           In my high school years, I had seen shows like Glee and movies like Mean Girls that followed high schoolers through the troubling times that they face. Dream High is like these American made pieces in this way, but it has an added twist. The main character ends up making a deal with a threatening man about money that her father owes. Her father has fled the country (Korea) due to his failed business, and it is up to the protagonist to fulfill his debts to this strange man. The man owns a record label company, so he struck a deal with our main character-- she can sing, and she can sing well. To gain back the money her father owes, she is charged with making the audition to get into a small arts school in Korea. Once in the school, she will make stellar grades and graduate at the top of her class. She will then sign a record deal with the shady man’s company and release an album, selling enough copies to make up the losses. Then, she will work 3 more years to work off the interest debt. So, our main character’s quest is clearly defined in the beginning of the first episode, but it also has some wild cards.

           During the first episode, the female main character is saved by the male lead, a breakdancer and parkour pro. They have a moment on the subway when I swore I thought that they would kiss, but the female lead turns him away. Another wild card is the female lead’s friend, whom she betrays. It seems to me that the female lead is very mean and doesn’t seem to have any compassion or care for others. All of the characters seem well put together, and the writing/script for the story is well organized and thought out. It is a very unique show, the likes of which I have never seen. The only thing that hurts this show (and it’s a big one) is the acting. I don’t know what it is about these Asian TV shows, but I never seem to enjoy the acting in them. It’s just not believable. The characters in Dream High have depth, but that depth does not translate onto the screen. My perspective of this poor acting may be skewed due to my need to look at the subtitles 90% of the time, or the fact that I am used to English speaking actors/actresses, but I still think that it could be improved because bad acting is completely immersion-breaking and makes the piece hard to watch.

           All of this aside, I definitely like the plot of this show. I think that it has potential to go in interesting places and take the viewer on some real drama rides. The camera work and stunts were also well done, and the action scene on the parking garage had a good fight setup and execution. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this show, but it wasn’t bad.

[asiainmylife-blog]

Hayao Miyazaki’s timeless classic Spirited Away, tells the story of a little girl, Chihiro, who gets lost in a forest and ends up stranded in a world inhabited by the spirits lost from our own reality. She wanders into a bath house and is enslaved by the spirit Yubaba. After meeting a friendly spirit named Haku, Chihiro is immediately warned by her new friend that she must be mindful of her words in order to get what she wants from Yubaba. Repeatedly throughout the movie Chihiro is mindful not to say too much or too little when talking to the spirit, which in turn saves her life, as well as the lives of the friends that she makes along the way.Words are and extremely important aspect of Spirited Away, as they are in Japanese culture. Chihiro is told to say only the things most important to her when speaking to Yubaba, or the evil spirit will play a costly trick on her. After stumbling through her initial face-to-face encounter with Yubaba, the spirit steals part of Chihiro’s name and is known to the spirits as “Sen” from that moment on. Haku tells the newly named Sen to never forget her original name or she will be trapped in the spirit world forever and never be able to return to her home in the realm of the living. Only character with the strength to remember their original names are able to leave.Food is as critical to the story of Spirited Away as it is to Japanese society. Throughout history, food has been used as entertainment as well as a gauge of societal standing in Japanese culture. In the film, food holds great power for the characters trapped in the spirit world. At the beginning of the film, Chihiro’s parents gorge themselves on food found in an amusement park in the spirit world and turn into pigs. Chihiro’s main quest throughout the movie is to find a way to reverse the spell cast on her parents. The spirit No-Face is a somber character that is never able to feel full, no matter how much he eats. No-Face uses the comfort of food as opposed to the comfort of companionship and as a result can never obtain a feeling of satisfaction.Throughout the film, each character does good things as well as bad things. This blurs the line of “good and evil” and helps to make a remarkably poignant commentary on modern Japanese society. One of the main points that the film brings up is consumerism within Japanese society, and how it has negatively impacted the culture as a whole. Hayao Miyazaki uses the film to analyze actions within society that disrupt order and the environment. When the family in the movie finds the amusement park, Chihiros father explains how amusement parks were built during times of great progress and economic advancements. The amusement park at the beginning of the film is a representation of how society has forgotten about the “good times,” so to speak, and is focusing on selfish desires. As a result, the director feels that the society as a whole is doomed to fail in its current state.

[notacullturaljournal-blog]

Jiro Dreams of Sushi Mercypass

“Ultimate simplicity leads to purity.” This is the premise of Jiro’s sushi in Tokyo, Japan. Meet Jiro, a Japanese sushi chef that has surrounded himself by his work and made it his life. I believe that balance between work and play is key to a happy life, but Jiro thinks quite differently. He is happy because he devoted his life to making the best sushi that he could possibly make-- and he has succeeded in more ways than one. Critics rave about Jiro’s sushi, saying that it is the best in Japan. But, because of watching this documentary, I am convinced that Jiro runs the best sushi restaurant in the world. This documentary does a wonderful job of making me believe that because, for all I know, Jiro could be a fake Hollywood character and they could have shot the film in Chinatown, New York. But the people that made this beautiful work of art have convinced me that a man that I’ve never heard of makes the best version of my favorite food in a place that I’ve never been with methods that I’ve never heard of. It’s absurd when you think about it.

 The shots in this movie are all of Jiro and his team making sushi, a process which involves the preparation of raw fish and rice to create something that I love with all my heart. The directors and producers of Jiro Dreams of Sushi have done a wonderful job creating high definition shots of raw fish and rice that make my mouth water at 9pm on a Friday night alone (sigh). Now I want sushi.

 Okay so I just drove to a gas station and back for gas station sushi (oh how I’ve missed you so)… I haven’t tasted the delicacy in so long that I was blinded by desire and hunger and forgot never to buy raw fish from a Chevron. Nevertheless, I regret nothing.

 Back to the movie. Reservations for Jiro’s sushi restaurant are made a month in advance and the rates start at 30000 yen ($252.28). That’s probably the most expensive rate for food that I’ve ever heard of, but I think I’d pay it to eat there. THAT’S how good of a job the movie’s development team did on this film. I would pay that much for food I could get for $20. They even made me go buy sushi. From a gas station. What is life?

 Overall, Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a very impressive documentary that I enjoyed most of the way through. It had some lull points where I found myself asking how someone could talk about one specific type of food for over an hour and a half, but other than that it made me very impressed and very hungry. I think that the goal of this documentary was to display Jiro’s devotion and work ethic to a greater cause than himself, and it accomplished this very well. I hope to one day visit Japan and eat Jiro’s sushi. End of the year class field trip?

[notacullturaljournal-blog]

The Act of Killing Mercypost

Never in my life did I think that a movie like The Act of Killing existed. The highly rated film came out in 2012, and it still holds a score of 8.2 on IMDB and lies in the database’s Top 5000 list, but this is not what makes it unique. The documentary follows Anwar Congo among his fellow Indonesian brethren while they make a film themselves, about themselves... killing others. Before hitting the big screen, Anwar Congo and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters to death squad leaders by the new Indonesian government-- the new paramilitary-led regime needed people to execute alleged “communists” and non-followers to teach the Indonesian public not to mess with their new leaders. Congo and his buddies happily agreed to take payment to kill innocent people; it was an upgrade from being small-time gangsters whom sold movie theater tickets on the black market. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar killed hundreds of people with his own hands.

 The film that Anwar and his friends have made is a reenactment of their memories of being on the death squad. They torturously toyed with Indonesian people, and celebrated after the fact. The Act of Killing is about these men, these killers who have gotten away with it all. They built a society where it is acceptable to joke about crimes against humanity on TV and celebrate moral disaster with no empathy for the situations that they have put innocent people in. They enjoy these memories so much that they have agreed to act their crimes out on the street (with the help of some impromptu-recruited citizens).  They wander looking for crowds of people to terrorize for the camera… and the rest of the people around them applaud. It’s sick. It’s unbelievable.

 There’s one scene early in The Act of Killing that was particularly disturbing. In my mind, someone who has killed as much as Anwar Congo would be disturbed or depressed or something. Anwar, however, seems to have moved on from his past quite easily. Anwar talks of his past while doing a little dance number, throwing around the word murder like it’s nothing to him. He goes on to talk about his relationship with alcohol and drugs, saying that he just gets lost and floats on with the flow. He doesn’t seem to mind taking lives at all, which I can’t really fathom.

 Overall, the movie is very long and I don’t really care for documentaries anyway. It has a great rating on many websites, but I wasn’t a huge fan. I liked the way that it portrayed the fact that these murderous militant Indonesians have won over the land, but overall I thought that the movie was slow. I don’t particularly enjoy shows or movies that don’t have a plot, and this wasn’t really an exception. To anyone who enjoys any sort of documentary however, I would recommend this to you. It is very well made for what it is.

[notacullturaljournal-blog]

Running Man! Mercy post #2

My relationship with Japanese television shows is like this: I either love it and die laughing every time I watch, or I sit and think about why anyone would ever be entertained by such a strange piece. One of the laugh-out-loud hits is Ninja Warrior, an obstacle course show that challenges contestants to their physical limits. It makes for some great wipeouts and laughs, but I may have a new favorite: Running Man is a Japanese variety show that pits a set cast of players (the Running Men) against a group of well known artists or celebrities in some sort of game or competition. I watched a two-part episode of Running Man in which they played against musician G-Dragon and his crew, Big Bang. The teams competed in a hide-and-go-seek scavenger hunt hybrid. The “attacking” team had to find and rip the opposing team’s nametags off to eliminate them while the “defending” team had to find certain hidden objects around the area of play. This time around, Running Man and Big Bang faced off in a museum and an office building. The show filled its time with chaotic chases, witty humor, and many other comical moments that I enjoyed.

 The game that they played has a twist: the attacking team members wear bells on their ankles so that they cannot sneak up on the defending team. There were many moments in the show in which a defender heard an attacker before seeing him, which prompted him to quickly hide. This made for great suspense-humor moments in the show. Each contestant had their own personal cameraman that followed them around to capture these moments. There were also cameramen in select rooms, and the producers even made use of the CCTV cameras in the buildings. The whole show had great shots, which displayed the skill of the directors and producers of the show. The only problem that I had with these cameramen was their interference in the game. When one of the defenders was hiding from an attacker, he had to take the camera away from the cameraman in order to properly hide himself. The attacker still found him and eliminated him, which shows the flaw in having these personal cameras. There were other moments in which the guys on set gave away hiding positions, but there was one time in the 2nd part of the show when a cameraman brushed past a contestant and almost ripped his nametag off. The contestant could have been eliminated, potentially costing his team the victory.

 I do understand that this is a variety show and that the outcome of these games does not really matter-- the show’s goal is to make viewers laugh, and it does that very well. I was laughing the entire time I watched Running Man, and I will definitely watch more episodes in the future. That really says something about the show because I do not like many Japanese shows of its kind. I highly recommend watching it if you want a laugh.