Movies vs Video Games: An irrelevant debate I will engage in anyway

Sometimes I see articles comparing movies to video games and arguing for which one is better. Perhaps it’s simply because video games are big money now or that video games often have cutscenes that are pretty much exactly like scenes or sequences in films/movies and TV series. Prime examples of this being the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series of games and Sleeping Dogs.

In regards to which medium is better, I’ll first start with something more specific. Which medium can do the most things? Clearly the video game can do more because by definition is it a game that requires direct interaction from the player in order to progress. No interaction is possible with movies, it just plays from start to finish. If one uses this criteria then video games are objectively more versatile and by someone’s criteria that could automatically mean better/superior. It would be possible to essentially create a movie in a video game. But you could not create a video game in a movie. The only limitation of video game is that graphics cannot replicate photorealism particularly for humans. But graphics are so good these days it’s not really much of a limitation. This is something that continually improves and develops over time as technology progresses. It will be very interesting when we get to a point in time where a video game screenshot cannot be distinguished from a still frame from a live action movie.

The beauty & the ugliness of “everyday life” in East Asian cinema

For a long time and still to some degree now, it seemed the only East Asian movies or TV that became popular in North America were martial arts, horror, Japanese anime, and crime (triads & yakuza). There was a bit of change when Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries got a bit into martial arts and horror. The biggest change has been the Hallyu wave spilling over from East Asia to the rest of the world. South Korean TV dramas aka Kdramas (especially romance ones) have become hugely popular alongside Kpop, in a way displacing the positions that Jdramas and Jpop had in the past. South Korean movies have also dabbled in horror, action, crime, and thriller genres too. Of course there’s that one Korean film that won four academy awards including best picture in 2020.

While there are many excellent movies in these genres, when I started actively trying to discover more East Asian movies, I deliberately tried looking for more “everyday life” or slice of life type movies. Movies that were about regular people living their everyday lives in a more realistic setting and mostly without sensationalist or thriller elements. I’m glad I did because some of my strongest emotions as a movie-goer were felt when watching these sorts of slice of life human dramas. These were films that made me gain a new perspective on an issue or made me feel empathy for someone or a situation that I wasn’t familiar with or with something I was all too familiar with.

No More Martial Arts Movie Stars

There seems to have been some discussion on the internet about the lack of martial arts stars in recent years or asking the question, who will be the next big martial arts star. By martial arts star I mean someone who trained in martial arts when they were young and won competitions or showed exceptional skill in martial arts before making movies. Or at least a relative newcomer specifically scouted and trained to make multiple martial arts movies.

Donnie Yen is probably considered to be the last martial arts star but he’ll be 60 years old soon. He never quite reached the heights of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li or debatably even Tony Jaa in terms of peak popularity. Despite being able to speak English fluently, he has never been the main lead in a USA made movie. But he definitely paid his dues and eventually became a lead martial arts star in Hong Kong movies. I believe his lead role in SPL / Killzone (2005) was his breakout role. I think that movie still has some of the best fights in his whole career. Then he really gained a giant leap in popularity with Ip Man (2008) and its sequels.

The Ghibli & Miyazaki question

The question of whether Ghibli can continue without Miyazaki, and my thoughts on the answer is something I started writing years ago but never finished. I think I originally intended it to be posted after Isao Takahata passed away in 2018 but before the release of Goro Miyazaki’s first fully 3D CG film for Ghibli. Since Hayao Miyazaki has once again come out of retirement to make one last movie that was announced in 2023, I decided I should finally get this out of my head and posted on the blog.

My answer to this question is no, at least not in terms of making movies in the style that made the studio famous. Ghibli will likely exist forever to handle distribution rights, merchandising, and their theme park/museum. But I don’t see them making movies after Miyazaki stops. If we look at Disney, the company that made classic hand-drawn 2D animated films based on public domain fairytales, those type of classic animated films have not been made for decades. While Disney continues to make movies they are very much different with focus on CGI graphics used in making hit movies like Frozen 2. And apparently there are plans for Frozen 3 in 2024.

Fantasia 2023 – Third Wave

The Fantasia International Film Festival has released their third wave of film announcements and also the full schedule is now available on their website. The festival runs from July 20-August 9, 2023. Recent movies from Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as some old classics (especially from Hong Kong and South Korea) will be screening.

Official Press Release

Fantasia 2023 – Second Wave

The Fantasia International Film Festival recently announced their second wave of film screenings. The festival will run from July 20 to August 9, 2023. Here are the East Asian Films that were announced.

Kurayukaba
Insomniacs After School
Time Is but a River
Killing Romance
The First Slam Dunk
Manhole
As Long as We Both Shall Live
Deep Sea
In My Mother’s Skin
Journey to The West
Mad Fate
Marry My Dead Body
Shin Kamen Rider

Official Press Release

First Wave

Some Trailers below:

Next Music From Tokyo vol 15 tour

This post was originally posted in early 2020 just before lockdown and obviously the show had to be delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The show has finally been rescheduled in 2023 with a few changes to the lineup. It’s great news but at the same time bittersweet because this will be the last show that the organizer will run. It’s not too surprising as everything is way more expensive now.

Next Music From Tokyo vol 15 will have live shows in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. The lineup consists of five different bands from the indie/underground Japanese music scene. Three of the bands have remained the same in the lineup and they are heliotrope, the hatch, and BATROICA METAL SUMMER JACKET. The other two have been replaced. There’s no skillkills or SEAPOOL but in their place are arigarnon friends and FURUTORI. The Montreal show will be on Monday, May 22, 2023 at Le Petit campus. Three months away may sound like a long time from now but you will want to clear out your schedule for this show. It will be absolutely worth it!

Pachinko – book review

I’d heard about the TV/Streaming limited series adaptation of the same name but without having any access to watch it I decided to buy the book by author Min Jin Lee. It’s a fairly thick book (at 479 pages with up to 34 lines per page), which was a bit intimidating for someone like me who’s not an avid reader. The book is separated into three parts or three books as they are called within the pages of this novel. But what helped me is that the chapters are all mostly pretty short. Often around 10 pages give or take so it was easy to read just short bits here and there when I could.

I was slow to get through it at the beginning. It wasn’t out of disinterest as there were interesting little things that I would learn about the lives of these characters but not a whole lot happens in the beginning in terms of plot. Each chapter feels like a sort of episode in the mundane lives of the characters. But it does help to really establish the characters, their living situation and social status. It also jumps around in time sometimes between chapters, which confused me a bit but it pretty much settles into a straightforward chronological order before the end of book 1.

The back of the book does spoil the book 1 part of the story so you might want to avoid reading it if you care about such things. You have to read most of book 1 to discover those things but it doesn’t affect the enjoyment of the story but it did make me wonder…”hey when is this thing mentioned on the back going to happen?”