3 months later...
I have been very lazy in updating this thing. It is really quite appalling, because it only takes a few minutes to write something. In late June I travelled to Calgary, Canada for the annual OpenBSD Hackathon. There I met many of the people I have only known by the email addresses for the last 5 or so years and saw some of the most beautiful scenery of my life, during quite a difficult hike around Lake Louise. During the hackathon, I got a bit of work done on OpenSSH (now released in openssh-3.9), but I spent too much time fighting jetlag from the ~24 hour journey from Melboure (the return leg wasn’t nearly so bad).
Sadly, I returned to find that my paternal uncle, Don, had passed away after his struggle with cancer. He went peacefully with his wife and daugther at his side, which is as much as one could ask for. Don was an intelligent and sensitive man, with a strong sense of social justice. I wish I had taken the time to get to know him better before he got sick - in retrospect we had much in common. Because Don was something of a serial guest in the newspapers’ letters section, I thought that it would be fitting to honour his passing with one of my own. I’m sure he would have liked it.
The Melbourne International Film Festival was on last month. The program was a good deal better this year than the last couple, with a strong showing of the New Asian Cinema that I love. Due to my disorganisation and procrastination, I only got to see two films, but a few of the others that I want to see are heading for theatrical release anyway.
The first of these films was Silmido (this link is to the IMDB page which is pretty content-free, but more intelligible than the Korean or Japanese advertising pages, both of which require horrid Flash™). Silmido was based on a true story of a South Korean incident, where an assassination attempt by a North Korean commando squad provoked the government to return the favour, by assembling a squad of death-row inmates. The movie follows their brutal training on the eponymous island of Silmido, their betrayal by the government (who belatedly realised that death squads are frowned upon in the democratic world) and the havoc that unfolds when they escape. The story was told using a mix of styles: prison movie, war movie, political thriller and Peking opera slapstick. The film reflected upon the redemption of the prisoners, most of whom embraced the second chance offered to them. I won’t risk spoiling the film by describing their betrayal and the consequences, because I recommend that you see it for yourself. I am still wondering about some misogynist undertones that I couldn’t quite figure out: the only two depictions of women were as Mother and Rape Victim. The only thing that was slightly awry was the soundtrack, which was a bit too “Pirates of the Caribbean” for a little too long - it worked during the amazing action sequences, but not so well at other moments. Despite this, a great film: 8.5/10.
The other film that I saw was Nine Souls a sort of Japenese existential road-movie. It had a really good soundtrack, but was a little slow in parts (and a little long). It follows a gang of Nine prison escapees as they seek first a stash of counterfeit money, but ultimately atonement or release for their crimes. I still haven’t figured all of its symbology out to my satisfaction. 8/10. (I’m not doing this film justice with this short blurb, I’ll try to update it later when I have more time).