A Quiet Night

しずか な 夜 Shizuka na yoru

Okay, so I’m kind of stretching when it comes to these Japanese subtitles to my blog titles. Maybe it’s because I’m using my VERY limited vocabulary or grasp on how exactly sentences are put together properly. Okay, it’s probably a bit of both. Nevertheless, the meaning is there even if the sentences are poorly put together right? :)

Shizuka = Quiet

Yoru = Night

Anyway it’s Thursday night now, I’ve been here since 2PM and it’s now coming up on 7PM. I miss the winter months when the sun went down at 5PM and the strikers were long gone by now. But no, the sun is out and so are the fools on the sidewalk (oops…did I say that?), so my quiet night is quiet save for the sporadic yells and names or taunts I receive through the window. Oh how I wish it were already midnight…10 hour shifts are not pleasant, but thankfully I get my next two shifts cut to 7 each! Whoo! :)

Fast forward to 10:50PM. Wow…this night is long…it may be the added 2 hours but it’s quite quiet nonetheless. 40 minutes until my replacement comes in! YAY! I started watching a movie this afternoon then was called in early and so I was just able to finish watching it now. It’s called Daisy, just came out this year (a Korean movie) except unfortunately what I was able to get my hands on was a subbed version (in Chinese of all things which threw me off a bit) with VERY, VERY poorly written English subtitles. Whoever did the subtitles had a very slim knowledge of how to piece together English sentences. The way it was subtitled was as if the person took each spoken word gave it its English equivalent and plopped it down on the screen. For anyone that knows a bit about Asian languages you know first, yes, how hard it can be to translate to English because sentence structure is completely reversed and they do drop many inconsequential words that we like to fluff up our language with. Secondly, how indirect the languages seem to be to make them so polite, this is confusing to the point where you simply must scratch your head. This point may be why I’m struggling with learning Japanese! Damn our useless words, we English folk need to get to the point already!

Yesterday (or the day before I can’t remember) I watched (yet another Korean one) movie called “Windstruck”. Cried my eyes out like you wouldn’t believe!! So touching, so moving, I just can’t seem to get over how great Korean’s are at telling a drama story.

So on that note here’s a little list of Korean movies watched lately and a brief on what it was and how good I thought it was.

A Moment to Remember: AMAZING! First Korean film I watched and was NOT disappointed. Typical love story where 2 people from different statures in life shouldn’t be together but can’t help but fall in love with each other. The twist is that the woman has Alzheimer’s disease and is rapidly forgetting her short-term memories. Enter an ex-boyfriend from 2 years before who doesn’t know she has Alzheimer’s, and the struggle to make her remember each and every day the love of her life…sniff…I can’t go on! I’ll break all over again!

4 ½ out of 5 *’s

The Classic (AKA Love Story): Not my favorite so far but it may be because I was slightly distracted with thoughts and concerns about something else while watching this. I will reserve mentioning anything on this movie until I am able to re-watch it. However something that stands out are the images, beautiful setting from what I recall.

Reserve judgment until a re-viewing can be had.

Once Upon A Time in High School (AKA the Spirit of Jeet Kun Do): It was interesting to say the least. Still not too sure how so much violence could take place in a military school without more action being taken. Then again, I should reserve judgment on that since it was set in the 60’s or so in Korea, a time I know NOTHING about. Nevertheless, I kept watching which is always a good sign; the movie was decent.

3 out of 5 *’s

Daisy: Despite what was mentioned about it above, from what was understood of the storyline (yes, sometimes it WAS that hard to understand) the plot was good. It was wonderfully shot and that counts for about 90% of the movie for me.

Reserve judgment until a proper version is watched.

Il Mare: This is the original to the new Hollywood movie “The Lake House” with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. This story was amazing, the imagery was a little lost on me, because where Il Mare (the lake house) stood was spoken as beautiful and majestic, but I thought it was quite awkward looking. Although the stairs were cool. I hope still that Hollywood does it justice, because it was nevertheless breathtaking at moments.

3 ½ out of 5 *’s

Windsturck: 49 days is not long enough…beautiful imagery beautiful story! I was taken back by all of the pinwheels and even thought to myself as she was making them (not being told what they were for) that I would have done exactly that. Amazing story line, dramatic and touching like the rest. This one I will definitely watch repeatedly.

4 ½ out of 5 *’s

My Sassy Girl: Jeong Ji-Hyun at her best. A well-written drama/comedy that literally has you laughing the entire way through. With a heart-wrenching “Goodbye” to the tear-filled ending. Beautiful, another repeat viewing movie, guaranteed. I heard that there were talks about this one being remade in Hollywood as well. That would make me happy!

5 out of 5 *’s

Well that was my little Ebert & Roeper moment. Hope you enjoyed it or, well, if you didn’t…too bad to you!

Security starts tomorrow at the Hotel, which will be a GREAT RELIEF! So even if it’s quiet again tomorrow night, time will go by fast enough with less concern and distraction from the strikers.

I’ll try to remember to update this one when I wake up tomorrow morning because I’m uploading a different already written entry tonight. If I don’t I’m sure I’ll remember after work tomorrow night as I’m staying up (or at least attempting) until early morning so as to jump back on a 12am-8am schedule! We’ll see how that works out! Ha!

And so we continue a little more enlightened on Korean cinema…