Still drawing, still reading about random things.
HOT TAKE: Song Kang-ho represents humanity. Hopefully, by now, many people know him from his awesome role in Bong Joon-ho’s fantastic Oscar-winning 2019 film Parasite. Thanks to the Criterion Channel and random stuff on Amazon Prime, I’ve been lucky enough to familiarize myself with more of Song’s work and dude…. if he doesn’t effortlessly embody pure emotion in everything he does, I know nothing.
He can do anything, really, but it’s his everyman characters who shine most in my mind. From what I’ve seen, there’s a certain tendency toward genre-bending in new Korean cinema from the last few decades, so prolific actors like Song must necessarily bring a strong and broad acting range to their work. I wish I had more access to his films, but it’s clear even from the limited tasting menu I’ve had access to that Song is a singular talent. From his bumbling voyeur/unintentional murderer in The Quiet Family (1998) to his warm-hearted and cautiously courageous down-on-his-luck single dad caught up in a violent political uprising in A Taxi Driver (2017), Song brings genuine soul to even his most unusual characters.
In the future, whenever I come across one of his films, I will be on it like Branagh on Shakespeare.
Anyone who knows me knows I am hopelessly out of the loop when it comes to popular music outside perhaps the few years in the 90s while I was in high school and actually gave half a crap about MTV countdowns. SO this week’s song obsession is appropriately the latest hit from September of 1869: the prelude from Wagner’s Das Rheingold opera. Its extended, continually rising arpeggio begins so quietly that you don’t even really hear it for the first 20 seconds, and then it just ebbs and flows like the river it’s meant to represent until it comes to a crescendo at the end and some water nymphs break in and begin their repertoire. It feels like hearing a glorious dawn, or the beginning of universal creation itself.
I encountered it while re-watching Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005). The piece is played over some of the beginning shots of the English explorer ship arriving onshore of what would become the Jamestown settlement in Virginia. It’s one of the best uses of classical music as cinematic score I’ve ever encountered. It’s another of Malick’s painterly films with cinematography by the nonpareil Emmanuel Lubezki, who is always top-notch. The cast isn’t bad either, which is my understatement for the day. It’s admittedly lengthy and has a meandering plot, but who’s watching this for plot? Come for the visual poetry and you’ll be mesmerized and forget about the dumpster fire that is the real world for 2.5 hours.
My Valentine’s Day consisted of “Galentines” activities—i.e. me and my bestie drinking palomas while watching the fascinating and touching Some Kind of Heaven (2020) documentary about some of the misfits who live in The Villages—and rounding out the evening with an Almodóvar that just appeared for free on Amazon Prime. Los Amantes Pasajeros, aka I’m So Excited! (2013) is just what the doctor ordered. The lightest of comedies to ever come from Pedro’s oeuvre, it combines all his usual ingredients: gays, bisexuals, singing, dancing, drugs, alcohol, costumes as colourful as his characters, multiple twisted plot lines, and a woman with quirky clairvoyance. You know, pure fun. And it had cameos from—you guessed it—BOTH Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas!
Of course, I felt compelled to honour dear Pedro with a drawing. I adore the photo I used as inspiration, as it really captures his cheeky appeal in one shot. I hope this portrait does him some justice :)
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