윤

Not as strange a segue if you consider that I happened across it again a few weeks back on the ファミリー劇場 channel and it’d been sitting at 83.2% all this time. Wait, wasn’t Ken also 笑わない男 in The Yakuza? I’d like to think it’s some kinda wild coincidence in the tiny universe that I’ve carved out for myself here, but come on, it’s like their signature trade-off for superhuman capabilities. Inquiry on a higher level, perhaps, would be comparing the 수상한 (“suspect”?) 가정부 Korean remake for differences both cultural and superficial like the ones between their Signals. The additional episodes provided valuable main cast connections to the serial killer timelines, but are almost twice as many necessary to draw out side characters and let 최지우 explore Sadako Mary Poppins?

Netflix has certainly struck gold with their Korean co-productions lately, with Kingdom (what was that last outing but another Joker), Move to Heaven and now this Parasite-cum-live-action Fall Guys, which should one-up their investment in comparatively ludicrous Alice in Borderland.Weebs claim that the concept was lifted from 神さまの言うとお, but seeing Miike’s adaptation, I realized why I let 13 years pass. Seems boredom is always the given reason for the powers that be to cycle back Adams’s course of history, but maybe we’ve reached a point in our “civilization”, too, where instead of allowing teenage superheroes overcome all the challenges it’s become more entertaining to see the players suffer and beg them for their lives—at which Koreans excel.

엄마 was more excited by the casting of 전도연 than in her new JTBC series 인간실격, but after the first week’s two episodes I fail to see the connection with the source material other than the title. Unless the story pivots back to the character who drowned (successfully, I might add) but otherwise wasn’t shown outside a few scenes to let his friends prepare his funeral, I doubt even the Cannes winner will reveal herself as Dazai’s hapless wretch.What’s more intriguing to me is that upon reading the original work—or revisiting it, I did dabble in this kind of thing in my late teens—how much I’m reminded by the narrator of 윤대섭’s own “negative man” concept; was this was his inspiration all along? Might have been Catcher in the Rye for 東大 students at the time.

I couldn’t remember how substantive a role Mie Hama had in the spy flick Woody Allen dubbed, so I unearthed the DVD—the problem with P2P is that you rely on someone else out there catering to your nostalgia, and mine is ever-so extemporaneous. The 鍵の鍵 original may require patronizing a shady bootlegger, it’s even harder to come by, but honestly, apart from the two Bond girls and a guest appearance by Dr. Who himself as a snake handling henchman, the other entries in the series looked more exciting from the introduction.

Sometimes I check out what’s playing on the ファミリー劇場 retro channel because once I happened upon Ultraseven there and hope that I’ll get lucky again with an old favorite like オトナの男, too, but last week they broadcast a 2005 crime series called 新米事件記者・三咲 featuring an actress who struck me as an older version of my niece. I’m usually way off¹ with these connections, but I insist upon them, like the lead singer of the Blow Monkeys and the kid who plays Jason Todd on Titans, and this time I had a captive audience, especially a few days later when a Godzilla marathon included Final Wars:
I think it’s great to resemble someone that’s come before, not only because of the odds against it (or for simulation conspiracies), but also as it’s proof the model was successful enough the first time around for the designers to bring it back.

¹The Barbarella and Cleopatra 2001-like track in the long-broken link starts around 3:48, and how I’ve missed SPEED☆STAR! Off to the CD boxes I go!

Rebound after the Line of Duty series (6) finale, police drama in the other part of England that give or take an iPhone, looks like it hasn’t changed in 50 years. I couldn’t find but the last episode of the second season—er, series, but it seemed more of the same, protagonist and criminal bumbling along, no grander scheme in mind other than self-preservation. Which I suppose is alike everywhere, even at work, where I was in my dream, fulfilling more of my staple IT duties, stopping with my bundle of paperwork at various stations throughout the office to take short naps, my way of distributing them without overindulging and maintaining the all-important appearance of industriousness. One of the characters jumped to his death at the end of Happy Valley, which carried over to a sad fellow who did the same in my building, except he did so with a bomb strapped to his chest and triggered it just as he passed my window. The explosion sent me flying headfirst in slow motion toward the remaining wall and I hoped it would at least be enough to get me out of the rest of the day.And if I were ever to return to a desk that’s dusted by the cleaning staff at night, I’d like to resume my reputation for techno-macabre with a faux body mod like this attachment, which reminds me of Zaphod’s third arm being used to operate a digital watch スマホ while my left could be free to help open sauce packets.

“We’ll escape, we’ll escape into the future—into that dimension we’ve never seen… all of you join me, in escape!”Kid’s interest in Godzilla piqued by the latest CG fests afforded me the opportunity to revisit and share my 昭和-era favorites, including the psychedelic Smog Monster with that startling sight of the big guy from a roller coaster and this denouement of the would-be conqueror from Planet X. I’d later learn many of the stark final moments of characters in Japanese film and television (see Star Blazers for more egregious examples) were edited out of our impressionable young minds, but listening to the original audio at last, that doesn’t seem to have been the case, and the meta-dread following me all these years seems justified.