Resources For Movie Folks

I've been organizing my media center recently with Plex (which is amazing) and had a pressing desire to sort out the rather large Asian movie collection I have. Turns out late 70's Kung Fu movies are almost always misnamed, and Korean movies have a habit of completely changing their English release name about a year after release. So I really needed some good resources to find the original local name (imdb only provides the English name and a transliteration, but not the original characters), the release year and the proper English name. Along the way I pulled these useful resources together:

Hong Kong Movie Database
This resource had almost every Chinese movie I threw at it. At times all I had to go on were the Romanized names of a few of the key actors and a year and I was able to sort it out.

HanCinema
The primary resource I used. It had easily 90% of the Korean Movies I needed to work with, autocomplete, aliases, release years, posters everything.

Korean Movie Database
Another good resource, but a little clunkier than HanCinema. Some of the movies that weren't in HanCinema were here.

Daum 영화
The Korean Language movie database. It's all in Korean so it's a bit tougher to use than the other two above, but can be a good last place to try.

Virtual Korean Keyboard
Sometimes, you really need to search for movie in it's native language. This is a great way to get the Korean titles written somewhere so you can copy-paste them out.

Wikipedia
A surprisingly good resource for Japanese Movies and Anime. I was almost always able to find the name of the movie in the original Japanese.

Hope these help.

Okay here's what I want (smartphones, tablets etc.)

There's lots of speculation in the phone and tablet market for what users want. Here's what I want in a smartphone, I would buy this tomorrow at the right price (none of this is crazy tech all of this exists):

• 300+dpi 1080p+ 4.x-low 5.x inch screen
• 32GB-128GB memory (honestly the memory used in smart phones is so cheap, 32GB should be the budget phone size)
• microSDXC card slot 
• quad-core ARM-ish 1.6+Ghz processor whatever
• 6,000 to 8,000 mAh battery (twice is thick on super thin phones means nothing if my battery lasts all week)
• under 6oz
• 4GB RAM
• 10+MB backside camera, 2+MP front facing
• Decent GPU
• On contract <$350

Honestly, this is mostly about the battery-life. Make the freaking phone twice as thick and stuff 2x the battery in 'em and I'll still buy it.

I

DON'T

CARE 

ABOUT

THICKNESS

As a matter of fact my favorite phone was an old analog cell phone I had around 1996,1997. It was a full inch thick and I loved every second I held it. It felt substantial and gave me incredible battery life. Call quality was awesome even on old analogue cell systems. Why smartphone makers don't think there's a market for phones at least a half-inch thick is beyond my possible comprehension. Every modern smartphone I've ever purchased I bought an extended-life battery and a new back cover to deal with the extra thickness. And still I'm in sub-4000mAh territory. I don't want to think about charging my phone under heavy use for at least a few days.

It honestly doesn't matter if a phone is .5" or .12", at some point it becomes irrelevant. So long as it isn't 2-3" thick it honestly won't affect any majority of use cases.

And why the heck is smartphone storage so small? I don't get the Nexus 4 -- at all. 16GB as the maximum for a flagship phone with no SD slots is insane. It doesn't really increase the BoM all that greatly to include an SD card slot, and honestly, 16 more GB of storage shouldn't jack the BoM all that much. For goodness sakes, a class-10 64gb SD card runs <$60. Just bury that baby under the battery housing for all I care. 16GB is an embarrassment. 32GB should be absolute bottom basement and 16GB should be for the free crap phone they include when you buy a disposable burner phone at 7-11.

It's stupid, it's like phone manufacturers don't think you have access to the internet. I would buy this phone tomorrow if it existed. Yet garbage like this is the "flagship" phone from Google.

Common! Don't just try and meet and slightly exceed "industry defining" iPhone specs. Rip 'em to pieces. 

And for heck sake, sell a bluetooth enabled physical game controller attachment with a d-pad, two analogue sticks, 4 shoulder buttons, 4 face buttons, start and select + home and whatever for <$40. It's stupid that these things cost so much and are so crappy. Why is "generic bluetooth controller" with half the specs I want $90? 

And don't get me started on tablets.

Wellspring - Mree and the Gift of Explosive Talent

Every so often talent flares into the universe with such intensity you almost have to turn away. I've been following Mree (Marie Hsiao) for a few years now. I don't remember exactly when I first came across her, but I originally remember her as one of a crop of talented YouTube cover artists, armed with a guitar and great singing voices, who burst onto the scene and have since moved onto bigger things: David Choi, Kina Grannis, Clara Chung and Mree.

I came across most of the singers independently looking for good covers of popular songs and these singers easily floated to the top of the heap. Clara Chung's cover of Coldplay's Yellow and David Choi's cover of Owl City's Fireflies are among my favorite videos on the site. I didn't notice till later that all of the singers I was encountering were young and Asian-American. There's been a few articles written about this phenomenon, but it's an outgrowth of the difficulties that talented Asian-Americans have getting recognition and making it in the mainstream music business. There's talent here, real talent, and as these artists have shown over the last few years, they aren't afraid of the hard, knuckle grinding, work it takes to try and make it.

Among this group, one of the artists I came across was Mree. Her first videos are of her, still in high school, sitting in front of a piano or behind a guitar in a stairwell, singing her heart out to some of her favorite tunes. These were great covers by a talented high schooler with a great a voice and lots of promise. I mentally filed away her stage name and checked in on her channel every once in a while. Then one day she posted this cover

Within the first 10 seconds I was awestruck. 34 seconds in she started to sing and I had to sit down. *instant frisson* By the end of her second phrase I had become a fan for life.

At 1:36 I realized that this wasn't just another video of a girl sitting in a stairwell, singing a song she happened to like, this was something of an entirely different sort. Layer upon layer, she built this song into a magnificent edifice, filling the space of the audio stage with drama and a sudden intensity and then at the moment of rapture pulling the phrasing back perfectly. And all this appeared to come off as effortlessly for her as breathing.

Barely able to contain myself, I listened to this song over and over again for hours.

Excited, I dove in. I found out that she had done all the filming, recording, audio and video editing, arranging and of course the performance herself. Having messed around a bit with just the audio mixing bits myself, I was stunned. Still a teenager, she was producing world class music videos from her bedroom.

A day later it dawned on me that I wasn't even familiar with the original song. It turns out to be a good song, a perfectly fine sort of catchy post-rock indie folk tune I might have found myself humming in an idle moment. But Mree's cover was stupendous. She had taken the original material and transformed it into

something otherworldly. The delta between the original and her version was a gulf as musically wide as the Grand Canyon.

I dug around a bit more and found out she wanted to do more than just sing in a stairwell, she had real ambition and conspired to be an honest to goodness recording artist. "Grow" her debut album of original songs was released in 2011 and charted well (as did some of her singles) -- for a self published entirely independent girl still in high school. To promote herself, she set up and went on a mini tour to people's houses (mostly local, she was still in school!). Recording industry be damned, she was going to muscle her way to success. If more people possessed this kind of indomitable moxy, the world would be a better place.

Without pretension she kept working, self-producing more videos, doing more covers and working out the tough bits of a solo artist with a deeply textured and rapidly maturing multi-layered sound in a live performance. Each new release was better than the last. From stairwell singer to mature recording artist with MTV ready music videos - it's simply super human. It's unpossible.

Then she hit back to back to back to back with four incredibly crafted songs/videos:

With her last two videos she once again introduced me to new artists whom she has long surpassed with not so much covers but complete recraftings of the originals. Her cover of Empire of the Sun's "Walking on a Dream" is not so much a fan tribute as a rocket ship, launched off the original into the tranquil depths of space. It was simply awesome and it blew my socks off.

I followed Mree on Facebook and saw her starting to get attention -- playing local venues, getting a reviews. She'd already accomplished more before graduating high school than most artists do in a career. Was it too much? Can somebody sing, play, write, film, edit, mix, storyboard and produce this much musical magic just by themselves without burning out? Could this wellspring of talent go on?

Then slowly little trickles started coming in -- a new project, a new album "Winterwell", I was as excited as a 12 year old on Christmas day opening a pile of toys. Little snippets on vine teased as an avalanche of delicious musical layers built a musical space that I wanted to be in.

The title song, "Into the Well" is a masterpiece. It hits with layers of acoustic guitars and builds into a rich fantasy. A complex but subtle polyrythm drives it along. The video Mree produced (shot by fan and photographer Joey Cardella) is no less astonishing for something shot partially in a neighbor's pool and using string and colored paint as a special effect. This is music making, no that's not the right word, this is art making at its absolutely best. Limitations and resources be damned, this will exist.

She's followed up with more shows, a band, guest editor spots and even a tune making it onto a popular TV show. What next? I can only imagine, but she's only got to keep working, keep maturing, keep advancing her art and it'll spread itself out to the right people. She'll be on Conan before you know it and a household name before she's 25. It's been such fun watching the girl in the stairwell grow (just like her first album's namesake) as an artist, I can't wait to see what's next...and then what's next after that.

Go buy her stuff, buy both albums, buy them on iTunes and get the physical disks too, seriously, they're that good, and in the interest of advancing the human species by supporting the best of the arts and the best of the artists, it's just the right thing to do. We're only going to continue to see amazing stuff out of this young artist and it makes me wonderfully glad to be around to see it happen.

A Man of Steel meta-review/review

I'm frustrated. Frustrated at movie reviews written by reviewers who either hate action movies, or didn't even bother to watch Man of Steel. Frustrated at reviews that have barely mentioned actual problems with the film (opting to point out perceived issues available to anybody who's seen the trailer), and ignoring some of the magnificence of this film.

Superman, as a character, is both delightfully complex and wonderfully simple. He's an amalgam of the original Siegal and Shuster car lifting creation, expanded through the cold war as an unstoppable living symbol of benevolent omipotent American nuclear power, diminished and capped in the late '80s, revisited as a modern Greco-Roman god in Ross and Waid's beautiful Kingdom Come, been the subject of both a romantic drama and a romantic teen drama. The Superman we come to in Man of Steel must be viewed through this lens.

The Goyer, Snyder, Nolan Superman is a good-hearted Kansas boy with a complex and difficult childhood, struggling to understand his differences and his growing powers, given strength and focus by adopted parents trying their best to keep their son safe, show him right from wrong, but give him the agency of choice. He's a young man struggling with identity, hidden and overt, and with the gift and burden of the choice the Kents endowed him with. He's a complex hero, drawn towards good, but frustrated with his hidden identity and the shackles it puts on him to stop wrong in the world. He's Hercules struggling through god-sized labors.

This character is beautifully revealed through a series of easy-to-follow flashbacks and connections to the Clark of the present, bedded on one of the best scores I've heard in a generation. It's a natural evolution of Zimmer's Inception musical language, given subtlety through constant plays on a few lietmotifs, the theme of right and the theme of wrong -- so well structured that the same motif is used in a quiet inspiring single-note piano theme hinting at the coming of power, then seamlessly expanded into triumphant horn blasts, electric guitars and intense percussion to shake the firmament. The expanded soundtrack also includes a stunningly beautiful half-hour sketch that shows some different directions the score could have taken. I have a feeling that this is a soundtrack that will reward repeated listens over the next few months.

Like music, the film is structured to start slow, visiting Krypton and giving motivation for the antagonists. Then visiting with the different Kal-Els as he comes to terms with the different stages of his life -- the one we know will result in the hero Superman, but beautifully told. How young Clark, in the end, couldn't choose but had to follow the path of good. This is all revealed in a series of non-linear pieces from different time periods of Clark's life, slowly opening like petals, each offering a piece of the whole. From there it crescendos into the kind of epic battle of the gods that Superman deserves to have put down on film. A man that can throw a train without breaking a sweat has the power to destroy a city block, an enemy space ship, a bank vault and more. We see the what super powered beings of this nature could really do if let loose in the middle of a populated city.

The action is fast, and huge, but unlike recent Michael Bay movies, is coherent and easy to follow. Super-powered mega punches are followed with Newtonian ballistic trajectories, military equipment moves in a way that makes sense, and when it doesn't make sense it still makes sense.

The bad guys, bred and trained warrior Kryptonians, Zod (Michael Shannon) and Faora-Ul (Antje Traue) and some cronies are magnificently played. Traue in particular exudes a kind of exotic icy cold ruthlessness that's damn near terrifying next to Shannon's more expected rage filled heat. Faora-Ul is the cold winter that freezes you to death while Zod is the hot fire that will burn you alive. Major supporting cast are credible, decent, warm people. Costner's earnest Kent was easily the actor's best performance in years, and beautifully played. Adams' charming Lane is the reporter you want to know better. Diane Lane plays a doting mother, Russell Crowe a powerful and conscientious Jor-El figure, Harry Lennix a very serious General Swanwick, Christopher Meloni's honorable Colonel Hardy and on and on. Great performances from even minor characters.

And then Cavill performs what will be the new template for the character. He derives and owns the part, finally breaking it away from the Reeves portrayal. He's a dash of the Kingdom Come Superman, but freed of the late 80's power caps. He struggles with his labors, but doesn't know his limits. There's no tossing of islands full of Kryptonite into space. We're literally finding out what Superman can do as he does. His Clark is relatable, with a light humor, a trustworthy guy you want to know, but with hidden struggles.

And then it's over, and the film decrescendos, strings are tied off, sequels are set up and we end introduced to Clark Kent post crucible. His identity struggles sorted out as he's decided to embrace both Clark and Kal-El, but as two sides to one man, pulling in the same direction instead of in conflict.

It's not perfect, there are issues, minor quibbles really: the macguffin that drives Zod and his cronies to Earth is almost as dumb as midichlorians (even if it does give Zod a raison d'être), the fall of the Kryptonian civilization after the destruction doesn't make any kind of sense upon close inspection, the Kryptonian's new weakness (gone is Kryptonite as a plot device) is weak, Jor-El as a mainframe virus is inconsistent, Zod's pirate TV station broadcast is mostly unnecessary, some of the plot is told through ham fisted dialog, Jor-El is a surprisingly kick-ass scientist, there's some significant rewriting of Superman canon...aaaand....that's about it.

So why am I frustrated? Let's try an experiment:

1. Watch all of the Man of Steel trailers
2. Go to Rotten Tomatoes and click a random review
3. Read the review, is there anything reviewed that doesn't come from the trailers?

If so does it follow on the following complaints?:

• There's too much action...in an action film.
• There's not enough Romance between Clark and Lane.
• The story uses flashbacks and apparently reviewers are confused about this technique having never seen it in a story ever in their lives.
• Superman wasn't funny. Seriously.
• Clark Kent wasn't a bumbling fool, a characterization which only exists in the 80's movies.
• Clark isn't a complex character.
• Endless whining about it being too long.

Some of the reviews are factually incorrect: I've seen reviews that mix up Jor-El and Kal-El, claim the Clarks come from Texas, that Zod destroyed Krypton and on and on.

At this point I'm pretty sure that almost none of the reviewers have actually watched the film. The days of well written, well considered reviews a la Ebert really are gone.

Some examples:

• Here's a review by the Atlantic's Christopher Orr that literally doesn't make any sense. For reference here's his gushing review of Superman Returns. I mean really, which is the better movie? Orr vs. Orr comes down firmly on the 2006 movie's side, which as any person who actually likes movies would find abhorrent.
• How about Newsday's Rafer Guzman? "...this reboot skimps on fun and romance..." and "Krypton is needlessly refashioned into Middle Earth, with dragons and wizards" I don't think I need to say anything else. Guzman really just wanted to see a 90 minute Lois & Clark movie.
• Kaplan vs. Kaplan: A review written by people who really honestly just hate seeing action on screen and pine for longer romance and family relationship scenes (which decidedly don't involve Superman doing super things) and can't sit still for an entire 2 and a half hour movie and can't get over why there's no Lex Luthor in this movie.

Disgraceful

For reference: Rotten Tomatoes viewer rating is over 80% and IMDB viewer rating is at over 8 out of 10.

Here's a discussion I think is well considered, reasonable panel review, with dissenting opinions I can even understand and get behind.

I can't wait for the sequel.