Posts Tagged ‘south korea’

Review, Black Knight on Netflix

Posted: May 21, 2023 by John Ruberry in culture, entertainment, media
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By John Ruberry

A little over a week ago Black Knight, a six-episode dystopian series set in Korea, began streaming on Netflix. 

It’s 2071, decades earlier a comet struck Earth. The Korean peninsula is now a dunes-covered desert, only one percent of the population survived the disaster. Earth’s atmosphere is poisonous. Most of landmass of Earth is underwater,

The government is a corporatist dictatorship. The corporation is the Cheonmyeong Group, led by Chairman Ryu (Nam Kyung-eub), but run by his evil son, Ryu Seok (Song Seung-heon). The Republic of Korea–presumably North Korea and the Kim family didn’t survive the blast–is led by a president (Jin Kyung), but Ryu Seok is really in charge. He’s a Rahm Emanuel-style “Never let a crisis go to waste” type. 

That tiny population is divided into four groups, castes really, and the top group is the Core, which consists of the Cheonmyeong Group and the top tier of the government, and a couple of middle classes, General and Special. But the majority of the survivors are classified as refugees, who for the most part scrape out a miserable survival in the ruins of the former city of Seoul.

The Core of course enjoy a luxurious existence. 

All but the refugees have coveted QR codes tattooed on a hand that allows them entrance into restricted areas–and to purchase desperately needed supplies, especially oxygen.

Is there a way out from the misery for the refugees? Yes, the legit path is to become a deliveryman, a truck driver for the Cheonmyeong Group, transporting those vital supplies. Think of Mad Max in The Road Warrior driving a semitrailer as the wheeled army of Humongous follows him around the Wasteland, only for a post-apocalypse Korean Amazon. The greatest of these deliverymen is 5-8 (Kim Woo-bin). In the post-apocalyptic Korea, deliveryman eschew their birthnames in exchange for the numbered district they service. By the way, there are some female deliverymen.

The other way for the refugees to escape their bleak lives is the criminal path–becoming Hunters. Once again, think of the mobile gangs of the Mad Max franchise. These Black Nights fire back–and 5-8 even electrocutes a pair of them who make the mistake of climbing onto his truck. 

Yoon Sa-wol (Kang You-seok) is a mischievous refugee teen who idolizes 5-8–he even plays a 5-8 computer game–and he and dreams of becoming a deliveryman. Sa-wol is illegally living with two sisters, one of them is Major Jung Seol (Esom). The sisters, I believe, are classified as Special, one notch down from Core.

Sa-wol is an orphan–so yes, he’s yet another “chosen one,” along the lines of Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and Frodo Baggins.

Predictably, the paths of 5-8, Seol, and Sa-wol cross. 5-8 has learned that he has much more to offer Korea than being a deliveryman, even one who is already a folk hero.

Black Knight is an enjoyable Netflix diversion. There is of course an abundance of action but also some subtle humor. For instance, 5-8, despite breathing poisoned air, still smokes cigarettes. 

More direct humor is offered by Sa-wol’s pals, with the unusual names of Dummy (Jung Eun-seong), Dumb-Dumb (Lee Sang-jin), and Useless (Lee Joo-seung), who live with a clever mechanic and inventor, Grandpa (Kim Eui-sung).

But if you are looking for a romantic storyline, look elsewhere. There are no love stories in Black Knight.

If you are a connoisseur of compelling cinematography and sharp CGI, then you’ll love Black Knight. 

And if you drive a delivery truck for UPS, a grocer, and especially Amazon, then let your imagination run wild and dream away as you watch, and presumably love, this series. 

Black Knight is rated TV-MA by Netflix for violence and smoking. It is available for viewing in Korean with subtitles, in English, and several other languages. I watched it in Korean.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Hey Salon, Hollywood remaking South Korean movies is not racist

Posted: December 19, 2021 by John Ruberry in Uncategorized
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By John Ruberry

Every once in a while I come across an article on the internet that makes me want to scream in disbelief. Such as is the case with a piece on Salon by Carolyn Hinds with the headline, “Hollywood, please stop adapting K-dramas. It’s not just unnecessary, it’s racist.”

Wow, look who is woke.

While acknowledging adaptation of motion pictures from one culture to another is commonplace, Hinds, who begins one sentence with, “As a Black woman, cultural appropriation is behavior I’m all too familiar with,” unloads on the wave of Hollywood remaking South Korean movies. And she spews this awful offal, “Instead, I’m referring specifically to how Hollywood seems to be making a concerted effort to focus on South Korean – as well Japanese – content, for the sole purpose of remaking the stories to appeal to American audiences, i.e. white audience.”

But as Mark Levin so often responds on his radio show to a recording of some liberal, “Oh, shut up you idiot!”

Hinds calls the Asia-to-Hollywood artistic transfer “whitewashing.”

There are plans in Hollywood to remake the Korean thriller Parasite, a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed and one that I felt was deserving of its Best Picture Oscar. In her Salon piece Hinds brings up other movies from South Korea that were remade by Hollywood, including Oldboy, another fabulous film. The flat American version (or so I’ve heard, I haven’t seen it) was directed by Spike Lee. Il Mare was redone as The Lake House, which starred Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Moving beyond South Korea, Hinds notes that Martin Scorsese’s The Departed was inspired by a Hong Kong flick, Internal Affairs.

No society exists in a vacuum, not even North Korea, which is it should be. Culture crosses borders, as does science as well as political notions. The modern version of democracy comes from the European Enlightenment. The greatest form of government is utilized not just in the United States, but also in South Korea and Japan.

Another South Korean film I enjoyed is The Good, the Bad, the Weird, which as you probably guessed is a remake of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And weird it is–instead of an American Civil War setting, this Western takes place in Japanese-occupied Manchuria in 1939. Hinds ignores this specific cultural transfer in her Salon piece. The soundtrack of The Good, The Bad, The Weird includes an instrumental rendition of the Animals’ 1965 hit “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” The original was recorded by Nina Simone, an African-American woman.

Moving on to television, do you know that there is a Korean version of the American television series, Designated Survivor?

What about Japan, which Hinds mentioned earlier. The stellar collective of writers here at Da Tech Guy is known as Da Magnificent Seven, a tip of the hat to the 1960 Western that starred Yul Brynner and many others. That film is an acknowledged remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. The first movie of Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy,” A Fistful of Dollars, is an unacknowledged remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.

Kurosawa, who named John Ford as one of his major influences, filmed a Japanese warlord version of Shakespeare’s King Lear, a brilliant epic, Ran.

So now you know why I called Hinds an idiot.

Dan Bongino on his radio show often notes that the unhinged left run will run out of enemies, so it is doomed to devour itself.

Hey Hollywood: Remake more South Korean and Japanese movies.

Hey South Korea and Japan: Remake more Hollywood movies.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

North Korea Keeps Testing Obama, will he fail?

Posted: November 23, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news, war
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Well here is another test for our president:

Thick plumes of black smoke were rising from a South Korean island on Tuesday afternoon after an unexpected attack by North Korea, killing several people.

The attack began around 2.30 p.m. local time when North Korea fired more than 200 artillery shells near the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, which has a population of nearly 1,200. As many as 70 houses were reported to be on fire, sending huge plumes of black smoke into the air.

The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) reported that at least several people had been killed in the attack, while the South Korean Yonhap news agency reported that at least 14 South Korean soldiers had been injured, including four who were seriously injured. At least four civilians were also injured.

Seoul confirmed it responded with artillery fire and scrambled F-16 fighter jets to respond to the sudden attack, which comes days after North Korea unveiled a vast new facility it secretly and rapidly built to enrich uranium.

Let me explain how you respond: YOU SHOOT BACK!

As long as you let NK shoot at you and don’t shoot back, they have a license to shoot at you.

Is there a danger of a full scale war? Yes, and the result of said war. The destruction of North Korea and NK knows it. This is a little dictatorship, they aren’t looking for a war, they are looking for a payout, but if they can squeeze SK they will.

And apparently South Korea gets it:

South Korea says it has returned fire after North Korea fired dozens of artillery shells at one of its border islands, killing two marines.

The South’s military was placed on its highest non-wartime alert after the shells landed on Yeonpyeong island.

The North said it did not fire first in the incident. Two South Korean marines and four civilians were also injured.

Sure and the North Koreans are feeding their own people fine too.

Liberty Pundits has an interesting opinion:

OK, so on October 13, 2010, North Korea unveiled their new missile with launching platform for submarine launched missiles. On November 4, 2010, the Military Chief of the North Korean military arrives in Cuba for a meeting. On November 8, 2010, a still-unidentified missile was launched from a submarine at rush hour off the coast of LA, and given all the “cargo ships” from North Korea that have been visiting Cuba this year…well, do I really need to finish that thought? Then, 4 days ago, NK revealed that they were doing what everyone with a pulse knew they were doing: making potential weapons grade plutonium from a nuclear plant. And today, they sent 200 missiles to the South Korean Island Yeonppeyong, killing several people.

200 missiles.

They got away with an act of war off our west coast…of course they feel entirely comfortable going after North Korea! And Japan…you’re on their list too.

Well President Obama, you wanted this job, what are you going to do about it?

Update: PJM gets to the heart of the matter:

In March of this year, the South Korean Pohang-class corvette was torpedoed by a North Korean submarine. Hillary Clinton responded by sternly warned North Korea that it would face consequences.

In warning Pyongyang, Secretary of State Clinton aimed to send a “clear message” to North Korea. “We cannot allow this attack on South Korea to unanswered by the International Community”. Whatever the message sent was, it didn’t deter North Korea from this latest attack. But don’t worry. The odds are that Secretary Clinton is consulting with allies to determine how to engage Pyongyang so that this doesn’t happen again, at least not in the next few months.

As a famous sea caption once said: “Cringing to these fellows will never do!”

Most soccer matches you don’t have 3 goals scored in the whole game.

Posted: June 17, 2010 by datechguy in Sports
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But Gonzalo Higuain of Argentina has just managed a Hat Trick against South Korea in the World Cup.

The Score is 4-1. You would never know this was soccer.

Update: If you want to see why Americans aren’t interested in soccer check out the France Mexico game if you can stay awake.