Jpeg Corner #4 - April 2024

The one where I discovered Korean Spaghetti Western

Starting writing this I thought I had less content than usual, due to the fact I’ve watched less movies this month and travelled and felt like quite a quick month. But eventually I think I got not a too bad list of topics people could dig into. Hope you enjoy them.

Cinema and Series

The good, the bad and the weird: a total surprise for my first Korean spaghetti western (I didn’t even know it was a genre). It’s like Tarantino meets Guy Ritchie meets Sergio Leone: crazy, splatter, epic. Maybe a little bit too long in some scenes, but so funny and entertaining. Three quite different characters on the trace of a treasure map in the Japanese occupied Manchuria of the 30s.

Civil War: the highest A24 budged movie reminded me of The Last of Us and The Road at the same time. It’s part apocalyptic, part travel, part coming-of-age story in a messed up distopic secessionist US, with 4 journalists moving from NY to Washington to interview the president before the capital fell captured by secessionist troops. It’s an hard, graphically violent, intense and quite divisive movie, which the production and setting quite appreciated, but with some quite some criticism on the way the story is told and what is actually the meaning of it. I think the main theme is the photo-journalist approach of showing more than telling, and I did actually liked that. I would have taken different choices on the ending, but overall an intense, well directed and well acted movie. Jesse Plemons doing Todd Alquist stuff is both sublime and terrifying in the handful of minutes he’s on screen.

Half Nelson: beautiful independent movie from the past, with a pre-fame Ryan Gosling at his first Oscar nomination. These small movies he did in that few years between 2006 and 2011 (this one, Lars and the real girl, Blue Valentine and Drive) paved the way for his current status, even outside the success. They are one better than the other and definitely worth a watch. In this one he plays a very sad and lonely part of a drug addict mid-school teacher that become friends with one of his students.

Nothing new on the tv series side, but this Godfather citation from Modern Family made my day. Brilliant!

Music

I’ve been trapped by the soundtrack of Half Nelson, specifically from the songs of this Canadian collective, called Broken Social Scene, specifically this album from 2003

Boardgames

I’ve been playing quite a few good games lately, particularly the ones I called out in the latest newsletter. But I’ve also organised a board game night at work and came in contact with a couple of nice one

Camel Cup: a quite silly but funny race between camels, where the scope of the game is actually to bet and win as much money as you can betting. Purely random, with plenty of change of leads, easy and fun, good for also people not too much into boardgames.

Tinderbox: small, fast and nice party game, where the scope of the game is piling up pieces in a fire using tweezers and avoiding to make them fall. It’s like Jenga, but in reverse, building it up instead of tearing it down.

Something to read

• Mario Draghi’s speech on the state of EU and needed actions https://geopolitique.eu/en/2024/04/16/radical-change-is-what-is-needed/

• I’m still talking about Dune, I know, but here’s a very interesting interview with Villeneuve about its directorial choices for the movies https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/movies/denis-villeneuve-dune-part-two.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb . If you’re still in the rabbit hole and want to know more here’s a couple of very well written Quora answers about the lore of the universe and on the golden path.

• Why newspapers do have games but barely talk about them https://aftermath.site/new-york-times-wordle-connections-puzzmo-games

• How Google became what they initially wanted to take down https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

• We may be living in the distracted age https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/the-battle-for-attention

Quote of the month

Jessie - I didn't take a single photo. I didn't even remember I had cameras on me. Like, oh, my God, like, why didn't I just tell him not to shoot them?

Joel - They were probably going to kill them anyway.

Jessie - How do you know?

Lee - He doesn't know, but that's besides the point. Once you start asking yourself those questions, you can't stop. So we don't ask. We record so other people ask. You want to be a journalist? That's the job.

Civil War