This marks the third film we’ve watched by director Lee Chang-dong though it’s of his earliest works. It’s a bit of a coincidence that the same Gwangju Uprising that was covered in A Taxi Driver we’ve seen only recently is also a key event here but it makes sense that such a pivotal moment in the history of modern South Korea appears frequently in the country’s creative works.
So this is the film adaptation of the famous novel made by the famous director Stanley Kubrick. I have neither read the novel nor watched any adaptation, but Lolita is very much part of the cultural background everyone is familiar with so there’s nothing very shocking or surprising here. While this is a solid film and the material itself is extraordinary, I found this to be a straightforward, uninspired adaptation that has few signs of Kubrick’s usual genius.
It’s that time of the year again when I do a round-up of the winners of the scientific Nobel Prizes. If nothing else, writing these posts helps me remember and understand what they are for. This task is a little more difficult this year as the prizes for so many categories are split into two fields that aren’t really closely related. But let’s get on with it.
We’ll begin with the prize for Physiology or Medicine as it’s closest to being the same research topic. It goes to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation. Researchers have long known the immune system, in particular a type of white blood cells known as T-cells, are regulated by accelerators and inhibitors to ensure that they attack only foreign microorganisms. Allison studied the T-cell protein CTLA-4 which serves as a brake and wondered if using an antibody to block its function would release the immune system to attack cancer cells. Indeed it worked and would eventually be developed into a new treatment for skin cancer.
This was a recommendation from our cinephile friend and I only realized later that it was directed by Peter Greenaway whose wonderfully named The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover is very famous and something I’ve always meant to watch. Though the title for this film is less impressive, it’s still a very odd work that is very hard to classify, skirting as it does between being a stage play that is captured on film and a film that is about a stage play being performed for an audience.
I’ve actually run into mentions of this New Zealand film more than once, on at least one occasion about how it is a realistic depiction of how a person’s personality can suddenly and shockingly shift under the influence of alcohol. This was director Lee Tamahori’s debut feature and he later went to make many well known commercial films in Hollywood but I don’t think that any of them has quite the impact of this one.
This is a very old Chinese film that I added to the list due to its classic status and its international reputation as one of the finest Chinese films ever made. However it predates the Communist victory by just a hair and as such it lacks the leftist sentiment that pervades the Chinese films of its era. This caused it to be sidelined by the Communists and its celebrated status today seems to be a relatively recent affair.
More stuff, a mixture of following along on Internet tutorials in addition to trying stuff out on my own. In particular, since a lot of my stuff so far have been very lacking in surface detail I’ve been trying to learn to do that. First is by faking it with normal maps and then by actually trying to model the detail. I haven’t been entirely successful but it’s been fun learning. The amount of work that goes into modelling decorative elements and I found it amusing that I had to look up reference materials for antique furniture and construction for the designs.