Daily Archives: July 7, 2017

Okja

Movies

Director Bong Joon Ho’s last film, Snowpiercer knocked my socks off so I was really looking forward to this one. As a whole, it delivered, but there are some weird choices.

Okja is a super pig, a new kind of animal that its owner, the Miranda Corporation, promises will be a world changing animal. Non-GMO, terrific for the environment and a new source of food for the growing world population. Over 10 years, the Miranda Corp has rolled out a plan to introduce this new species to the world. A few of these infant animals are sent across the globe to farmers who will raise them and then a “Worlds Greatest Super Pig” competition will be held to celebrate this wonderful project.

Mija is a young woman in South Korea who, with her uncle (grandfather?), raise Okja. Then the Miranda Corp comes a calling and it becomes immediately clear that the Corporation has been less than truthful. This film takes a look at how the human population survives and thrives today and the morals that come with it. There are so many people consuming so many resources that it’s a constant race to keep ahead of it all. Marketing and profit rule our capitalist planet and any lie is worth telling to sell a product.

Much of the movie is about the ethics of the meat industry. Okja is designed to tug at the heart strings. She’s super cute, gentle and smart to the level of being problem solvers (these super pigs are not cows or chickens in the brains department). There’s a personification to Okja where she has a personality and the visual FX are good enough to make you think that she’s real.

Once Okja is taken from her home, Mija is on a mission not to rescue her pet, but her family member. You got all the battles of humanity here. The Miranda Corporation is heartless and gross who frame everything as they’re doing all this for the great good of humans. Ethics and compassion be damned, these critters are made to be delicious and profitable. The Animal Liberation Front is the animal activists on the case to stop Miranda and expose what they are really up to (Okja is genetically modified and these sentient beings are being made simply for mass slaughter).

Okja is a really well story that is all things you’d expect in a tale like this. Touching, exciting, heroic, maddening and crushingly sad. The last act of the movie is some crushing stuff, it can get hard to watch. While the special effects bring Okja to life, the live cast makes everything believable. Tilda Swinton, Giancarlo Esposito, Steven Yeun, Paul Dano and Jake Gyllenhaal round out the well-known cast members. Korean actress Seo-Hyn Ahn as Mija is easily the best though. Her journey is a harrowing one and every step, jump, slide, crash, and plea is a meaningful one.

Now for the two things that stick out to me. The way the Super Pig Competition goes down in New York City is really half baked. Sure the event was a sham in the end, but I don’t see how putting up a clearly stressed animal (even under the ideal circumstances the Miranda Corp thought it was going to go down) was going to give the public good feels about it. Then we have Jake Gyllenhaal as Johnny Wilcox, a Steve Irwin type animal TV personality. I don’t understand why they had this character act that way. He doesn’t match what’s going on at all. He sticks out so much from the rest of the movie it’s like Willy Wonka showed up on the Titanic. Distracting and ultimately useless, the character could have been cut entirely and not be missed.

The ending is probably the only way that it could have been done to make it satisfying and complete. I’d call it realistic as it straddles the line of being too happy to be believable and too upsetting that it would turn off a large part of the audience. Plus, Mija gets in done in a way that fits one of the major themes of the movie. It makes sense and it works.

Overall an effective and well made movie. Recommended.

TV and movie round up

Movies, Netflix Original, TV

Orange is the New Black- Season 5 was overall good. It felt rather slow as a whole (a problem of too many characters) with bits of greatness spread around. The last three episodes felt like the best and most engaging part of this riot based season. You’d think there would be more suspense in a three day stand off but it is what it is. I’d say it keeps a solid show running well and the end is especially good.

Trollhunters- I really, really liked this. Some terrific animation and the main cast of characters is fantastic. It tells a full and satisfying story in it’s 20 something episodes that were really well paced and changed the stakes often enough to keep the story fresh. Great show for all ages, something parents can watch with their kids.

Blame!- Cookie cutter anime that brings nothing new to the table. There’s some good animation but there’s nothing here to save it from mediocrity. Skip.

Attack on Titan- It took season 2 forever to come out and I gotta say it was disappointing. Not enough happened for my taste. I’m not a mega fan (season 1 has serious and repeated anime cliches holding it back) by any stretch and was hoping for more. Not sure if I’ll bother with season 3.

GLOW- From some of the creators of Orange is the New Black, GLOW shares a lot of feeling with that show. The nearly all-female cast being the main one. I think this is way better than Orange. It’s the perfect tone from start to finish. Giving respect to the sport and the people who devote their lives to it was the right move. The cast is big but manageable so cast members and plot lines don’t get lost in the shuffle. Superb casting, it’s often very funny and always has a lot of heart. The show looks like it was shot and made in the 80’s which is a major achievement and is a major selling point for me. Women’s wrestling is often overlooked so giving the Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling a chance to (fictionally) shine makes for a unique show. I ran through season 1 really fast and hope for more to come.

John Wick 2- I’m a big fan of the first movie with it’s more simplistic but professional take on assassin/action genre films. The set up is really simple (assassin Wick is brought out of retirement when the idiot son of a crime boss crosses the line with Wick’s family) and it’s just an hour and 15 minutes of long, wide angle shot action set pieces. So Wick 2 surprised me in how it didn’t try to push any of what made the original great. The set up is even simpler if that’s possible, and more bare bones from start to finish. Wick is a man of few words and I think he says even less in this one. It’s just loosely strung together action scenes that all feel more of the same. Not terrible, I was just expecting a lot more. I kept saying, “That’s it?” Not a good take to have.

Where is the wisdom in this?

Life

Last Friday I had my bottom two wisdom teeth removed. While not the horror show I thought it would be, the experience can still be summed up as: it sucks.

Novocaine was used, no knock out juice. The procedure itself was fast, I think 20 minutes. While there’s little to no pain during it, the sounds are super gross. The smell of ground teeth from the drill is horrific.

Pain-wise, it’s not bad. I’d say it’s uncomfortable and Tylenol with Codeine takes care of the worst of it. I’ve had strange flare ups of pain, but it feels more like I’ve been punched in the face one a day for the past week. The swelling is the worst as it just makes you feel annoyed more than anything else. The weird thing is that where the teeth were removed from has hurt the least. The swelling is all over the bottom gums. The whole mouth freaks out from the trauma. Speech has been impaired and eating has lost all of its joy. I’m very conscious of chewing differently to keep food away from the back. My biggest problem is that that I haven’t regained feeling on the lower left side.

My biggest problem is that that I haven’t regained feeling on the lower left side. The entire lip from corner to middle of my face and down about an inch and a half is numb. Two teeth in the front feel super weird like the novocaine hasn’t worn off yet. The nerve on that side is all goofed up from the swelling (most likely, it better be) so I’m basically on a wait and see how everything heals for everything to come back to normal (the stuff on the consent form is some nightmare stuff).

It’s been a week today which seems to be the major milestone for this type of surgery. Everyone is going to be messed up for that long so the next few days should see the biggest improvements. Monday I get the stitches out, looking forward to that.

Now, how stupid is this whole thing? Our jaws aren’t big enough for all the teeth we naturally grow. Over 90% of people need their wisdom teeth removed or they cause serious problems. And who’s the dope that named them ‘wisdom’ teeth? Where is the wisdom in this useless and miserable body part?

I still need the top two out. Maybe I can convince my body to absorb them.