Well, I pretty much broke my "at least one post a week" rule last week, so I just thought I'd throw up this general update.
Work has been crazy busy and my desk seriously looks like some giant vomitted Blackberries and aircards all over my cramped cubicle, but hopefully this will be under control soon. Last October or November we started more clearly defining our jobs/positions and now we are starting to refine those even more, so a lot of the extra stuff that I do that has nothing to do with what I was hired to do will be going to other people and our current filer is going to become my assistant. I think this will be good for me because it's going to force me to be more assertive and really be a supervisor.
I hope that this also helps to establish some sort of heiarchy in the office because right now if our project manager leaves there's no one here with the knowledge to take her place.
One of my co-workers quit/got fired -- yeah I didn't know both could happen at the same time, but hopefully it will be a blessing in disguise. He did need to go, but he also wasn't the biggest problem either. So we shall see. Seems like this should be a good evolution on what we started last year.
I have been working on several stories and I was about ready to go all Gallahger on my laptop this weekend. I had written this really, really good 25 page story that I was almost done with and my computer did this crazy thing that it does sometimes and wouldn't save it. It does this every now and then and I don't know why, but there's some sort of glich when I go to save something and it erases the document completely off of my thumb drive. Usually, I can just turn around and resave it, but this time when I tried there was another error and turned my 25 page masterpiece into jibberish.
I was livid. This is probably insane, but I actually think I'm feeling spiteful toward my computer right now, because I don't really want to even look at it. I mean, this is probably one of the better things I've written in a really long time and now I have to start all over and pray that I remember at least 70-80% of what was written.
Arg.
I guess, I just need to break down and call geek squad because something has not been right with my computer for a while now.
But on happier notes...I've been feeling really good. It's amazing what eating right and getting rid of 22 pounds can do. I can't wait to see what I feel like when 70 some is gone. I'm still having problems sticking to an exercise plan. I guess I need to get a membership somewhere with a pool because swimming is the only exercise I love, but there's the whole bathing suit in public thing and being in a pool that God only knows how many other people have been in and what they did in said pool -- it's a little eww.
But off to do real work now...
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
And the Computers will Inherit the Earth
A discussion over at majorcase-ci about the love/hate relatinship people have with their computers made me think of this essay I wrote several years ago for a intro to writing class I took in college. I never have been able to find a good way to end it, so any ideas and/or constructive criticism is welcome.
Have you ever been convinced that your car is secretly trying to drive you clinically insane? Has it ever broken down for no apparent reason, then miraculously (just when someone else is around to inspect the problem) starts ever so gracefully? Have you ever contemplated the idea that your seemingly harmless computer is in cahoots with your car; that the accident with your nearly finished twenty page paper was a calculated move to short out what working circuits you have left?
The assumption that I have considered all these possibilities would be an understatement. My rational mind tells me that all of the disappearing papers and the cars that won’t start for no reason are just simple accidents, but my outlandish, and maybe a little paranoid, mind screams that even though these incidents may be coincidence now, in the future our cars, computers, or whatever man might create that is close or identical to human will eventually turn on it’s creator. The interesting question, though, is why will they turn against us? Will it be because these humanoid, walking, talking, maybe even feeling computers were made (at no fault of the maker, of course) evil? Or will that be man’s story when the creation wants freedom from the job it was made to do?
Let’s imagine this future.
The year is 2021. The third World War (the apocalyptic one everyone’s been debating since World War II) has ended, leaving Earth in turmoil and nearly obliterating all living creatures, and making the few that remain a prestigious sign of wealth. For those who are too unfortunate to afford or find a real animal can have a nearly perfect replica made. You want it, they build it: a cat, a dog, a mongoose, or even a human.
Yes, that’s right a human, or at least a sophisticated android that could easily pass as a real person. They were made to be servants to the real humans who fled Earth to the new colonies on Mars. These creations or creatures are feared by the government and have been banned from Earth.
But, as with any system, there are those who fall through the cracks and make their way to Earth only to be hunted, found, then killed…oh excuse me, I mean “retired” by bounty hunters in a police unit designed solely for this purpose.
This prophetic and grim proposal for our future was conjured by Philip K. Dick in his 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The story of the struggle between humans and androids could be very cut-and-dry, with the humans playing the never wrong or flawed heroes and the androids as the diabolical machines that are simply hell-bent on obtaining domination over man. Instead of using this predictable and boring set-up, Dick blurs the line between man and machine and dangles in front of the reader the question: what does it mean to be “human”?
Dick intertwines the ideas of what it is to be human and what it means to be mechanical or methodical in all of his characters, lacing thoughts of natural human wishes and rights into the minds of the androids, while leaving the humans unable to feel anything unless hooked up to a machine. Man can change his moods at a push of a button with an “Empathy Box” and have every emotion planned that is necessary for that day.
Rick Deckard, the protagonist of the novel, starts his morning not by picking out a suit, but by picking out his attitude. “‘I’ll dial what’s on my schedule for today.’ Examining the schedule for January 3, 2021, he saw that a businesslike professional attitude was called for” (4). In some ways this could be rather useful; you could without force simply smile and nod at a screaming authority figure, but all the possible emotions that could boil over at any given time to any given incident would be inactive. Iran, Deckard’s wife, upon thinking of death cannot feel any sadness: “‘So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn’t feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life […] and not reacting’” (5). Man in Dick’s created world has made an android of himself by surrendering the outburst of emotion that is so typically human.
The androids on the other hand just simply want to know what it is like to be human and wish to feel the emotions and experiences that man is so quick to neglect. “‘Androids can’t bear children,’ she then said. ‘Is that a loss?’” Rachel, an android, reflects on the life of an android. “ ‘How does it feel to have a child? How does it feel to be born, for that matter? We’re not born; we don’t grow up; instead of dying from illness or old age; we wear out like ants,’” (193). Even though she is physically incapable of experiencing the full emotions of humans, she knows they are vital to what it means to be human.
Have you ever been convinced that your car is secretly trying to drive you clinically insane? Has it ever broken down for no apparent reason, then miraculously (just when someone else is around to inspect the problem) starts ever so gracefully? Have you ever contemplated the idea that your seemingly harmless computer is in cahoots with your car; that the accident with your nearly finished twenty page paper was a calculated move to short out what working circuits you have left?
The assumption that I have considered all these possibilities would be an understatement. My rational mind tells me that all of the disappearing papers and the cars that won’t start for no reason are just simple accidents, but my outlandish, and maybe a little paranoid, mind screams that even though these incidents may be coincidence now, in the future our cars, computers, or whatever man might create that is close or identical to human will eventually turn on it’s creator. The interesting question, though, is why will they turn against us? Will it be because these humanoid, walking, talking, maybe even feeling computers were made (at no fault of the maker, of course) evil? Or will that be man’s story when the creation wants freedom from the job it was made to do?
Let’s imagine this future.
The year is 2021. The third World War (the apocalyptic one everyone’s been debating since World War II) has ended, leaving Earth in turmoil and nearly obliterating all living creatures, and making the few that remain a prestigious sign of wealth. For those who are too unfortunate to afford or find a real animal can have a nearly perfect replica made. You want it, they build it: a cat, a dog, a mongoose, or even a human.
Yes, that’s right a human, or at least a sophisticated android that could easily pass as a real person. They were made to be servants to the real humans who fled Earth to the new colonies on Mars. These creations or creatures are feared by the government and have been banned from Earth.
But, as with any system, there are those who fall through the cracks and make their way to Earth only to be hunted, found, then killed…oh excuse me, I mean “retired” by bounty hunters in a police unit designed solely for this purpose.
This prophetic and grim proposal for our future was conjured by Philip K. Dick in his 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The story of the struggle between humans and androids could be very cut-and-dry, with the humans playing the never wrong or flawed heroes and the androids as the diabolical machines that are simply hell-bent on obtaining domination over man. Instead of using this predictable and boring set-up, Dick blurs the line between man and machine and dangles in front of the reader the question: what does it mean to be “human”?
Dick intertwines the ideas of what it is to be human and what it means to be mechanical or methodical in all of his characters, lacing thoughts of natural human wishes and rights into the minds of the androids, while leaving the humans unable to feel anything unless hooked up to a machine. Man can change his moods at a push of a button with an “Empathy Box” and have every emotion planned that is necessary for that day.
Rick Deckard, the protagonist of the novel, starts his morning not by picking out a suit, but by picking out his attitude. “‘I’ll dial what’s on my schedule for today.’ Examining the schedule for January 3, 2021, he saw that a businesslike professional attitude was called for” (4). In some ways this could be rather useful; you could without force simply smile and nod at a screaming authority figure, but all the possible emotions that could boil over at any given time to any given incident would be inactive. Iran, Deckard’s wife, upon thinking of death cannot feel any sadness: “‘So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn’t feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life […] and not reacting’” (5). Man in Dick’s created world has made an android of himself by surrendering the outburst of emotion that is so typically human.
The androids on the other hand just simply want to know what it is like to be human and wish to feel the emotions and experiences that man is so quick to neglect. “‘Androids can’t bear children,’ she then said. ‘Is that a loss?’” Rachel, an android, reflects on the life of an android. “ ‘How does it feel to have a child? How does it feel to be born, for that matter? We’re not born; we don’t grow up; instead of dying from illness or old age; we wear out like ants,’” (193). Even though she is physically incapable of experiencing the full emotions of humans, she knows they are vital to what it means to be human.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
"Pregnant for 46 Years"
Since I'm a nerd I watch Discovery Health, TLC and other channels like that on a somewhat regular basis and I found this program the other night on TLC called "Pregnant for 46 Years." Now the idea of that being possible made me cringe since I find pregnancy more weird than beatiful and so I had to see what it was about.
The show was about atopic pregnancies, which I learned is when an egg is fertilized outside of the uterus -- usually in a filopian tube. So there was this woman from Morroco, I think, who forty-six years ago was pregnant with an atopic pregnancy but she fled the hospitial after witnessing another mother die. Then at 76 (46 years later) she begins to have pain in her abdomen and the doctors perform a scan revealing this calcified baby still inside of her.
This particularly stuck out to me because there was an episode of LOCI, where a woman had a calcified baby inside of her, which I thought was pretty odd and never imagined it happening in real life. But apprently it can and they do actually call them stone babies because once they surgically remove the baby from the mother it's literarly hard as stone from the mother's body protecting itself from a foriegn body. It's also a very dangerous procedure for the mother to have the baby removed because it becomes fussed with the mother's organs.
Some of the imagery they used in the documentery were similar to those used in the episode. For example, the doctors in the documentery said, "remove the baby from it's tomb" and the woman in the episode refers to herself as a coffin.
It was pretty interesting and I mean talk about ripped from the headlines...
The show was about atopic pregnancies, which I learned is when an egg is fertilized outside of the uterus -- usually in a filopian tube. So there was this woman from Morroco, I think, who forty-six years ago was pregnant with an atopic pregnancy but she fled the hospitial after witnessing another mother die. Then at 76 (46 years later) she begins to have pain in her abdomen and the doctors perform a scan revealing this calcified baby still inside of her.
This particularly stuck out to me because there was an episode of LOCI, where a woman had a calcified baby inside of her, which I thought was pretty odd and never imagined it happening in real life. But apprently it can and they do actually call them stone babies because once they surgically remove the baby from the mother it's literarly hard as stone from the mother's body protecting itself from a foriegn body. It's also a very dangerous procedure for the mother to have the baby removed because it becomes fussed with the mother's organs.
Some of the imagery they used in the documentery were similar to those used in the episode. For example, the doctors in the documentery said, "remove the baby from it's tomb" and the woman in the episode refers to herself as a coffin.
It was pretty interesting and I mean talk about ripped from the headlines...
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Two to Go
Well there's only two more episodes left of Law & Order: Criminal Intent for this season and then it's bye-bye Chris Noth and 99% of the production/writing staff.
Next week is Chris Noth's final episode and you can definitely see the build up of Logan becoming disenchanted with his job, but I'm honestly not sure if I'll be able to buy him just walking away. After 20 some years as a cop, what could he have not seen yet that would push him to walk away? Though I think it's either that (cause Logan doesn't seem like the kind to go gently into retirement) or that they kill him off. Now, I realize I'm in the minority, but I honestly would be okay if he went out with a nice, poignant (not soapy though) death scene. Maybe, I have just gotten used to watching characters I love die because of being so in love with Joss Whedon's series -- I mean jeez there was hardly anyone left at the end of "Angel," which is actually a pretty poignant message because all the human characters were either dead or hanging on by a thread and the characters with a bit of demon in them were the only ones left standing.
But I digress...
Either way the last two episodes of CI are going to be nail-biters. The season finale the following week, I think, has even higher expectations. For one it's Leight's and his writing team's parting gift to us. Plus I'm assuming there will be more Goren angst and the delightfully evil Nicole Wallace may be making an appearance. I think a wonderful gift Leight could leave us with would be to wrap up the Nicole storyline. I hope they can pull a story together that had the same grace as "Endgame" and not leave us with an unsettling and slightly disjointed episode like "Untethered" that really just had too much personal information crammed into one episode. Plus I think many of us fans are already a little unsettled about only one current writer returning for season eight.
I have to admit I am a little nervous about where the new showrunners will take the series, particularly the G/E episodes. Really, their new showrunner will have a much more difficult time I would think, since he has the veteran characters. Wheeler is still new enough and Goldblum's character will be completely fresh that their showrunner will be starting more from scratch than the G/E one (sorry their specific names escape me at the moment -- and for any who don't know Leight is being replace by two people: one for the G/E episodes and another for the W/unnamed Goldblum character).
There's alot of speculation on the CI forums about CI losing some of the depth that it has always had and turn into a straight procedural. I can see why people would worry about this, but being on USA, I think, would deter them from falling back on that, since USA is not about procedural dramas -- it's about characters.
The switching of writers doesn't bother me as much as the switching of the showrunner, though I really am going to miss Charlie Rubin and the other writers too. Most of the other shows I watch the creator and the showrunner are one in the same and usually write and/or direct a handful of episodes each season. But every episode passes through their hands at some point and time. Dick Wolf is credited as the creator of the series, but seems to be more a business man than a creative force behind his series. Granted he has a lot of talented writers and executive producers under him, but I wonder for character continuity if this will be a good thing or a bad thing.
I'm definitely willing to give season eight a chance and hope that I will be pleasantly surprised...and if not Joss Whedon has a new series coming out, so I'll just have to make due with that.
Next week is Chris Noth's final episode and you can definitely see the build up of Logan becoming disenchanted with his job, but I'm honestly not sure if I'll be able to buy him just walking away. After 20 some years as a cop, what could he have not seen yet that would push him to walk away? Though I think it's either that (cause Logan doesn't seem like the kind to go gently into retirement) or that they kill him off. Now, I realize I'm in the minority, but I honestly would be okay if he went out with a nice, poignant (not soapy though) death scene. Maybe, I have just gotten used to watching characters I love die because of being so in love with Joss Whedon's series -- I mean jeez there was hardly anyone left at the end of "Angel," which is actually a pretty poignant message because all the human characters were either dead or hanging on by a thread and the characters with a bit of demon in them were the only ones left standing.
But I digress...
Either way the last two episodes of CI are going to be nail-biters. The season finale the following week, I think, has even higher expectations. For one it's Leight's and his writing team's parting gift to us. Plus I'm assuming there will be more Goren angst and the delightfully evil Nicole Wallace may be making an appearance. I think a wonderful gift Leight could leave us with would be to wrap up the Nicole storyline. I hope they can pull a story together that had the same grace as "Endgame" and not leave us with an unsettling and slightly disjointed episode like "Untethered" that really just had too much personal information crammed into one episode. Plus I think many of us fans are already a little unsettled about only one current writer returning for season eight.
I have to admit I am a little nervous about where the new showrunners will take the series, particularly the G/E episodes. Really, their new showrunner will have a much more difficult time I would think, since he has the veteran characters. Wheeler is still new enough and Goldblum's character will be completely fresh that their showrunner will be starting more from scratch than the G/E one (sorry their specific names escape me at the moment -- and for any who don't know Leight is being replace by two people: one for the G/E episodes and another for the W/unnamed Goldblum character).
There's alot of speculation on the CI forums about CI losing some of the depth that it has always had and turn into a straight procedural. I can see why people would worry about this, but being on USA, I think, would deter them from falling back on that, since USA is not about procedural dramas -- it's about characters.
The switching of writers doesn't bother me as much as the switching of the showrunner, though I really am going to miss Charlie Rubin and the other writers too. Most of the other shows I watch the creator and the showrunner are one in the same and usually write and/or direct a handful of episodes each season. But every episode passes through their hands at some point and time. Dick Wolf is credited as the creator of the series, but seems to be more a business man than a creative force behind his series. Granted he has a lot of talented writers and executive producers under him, but I wonder for character continuity if this will be a good thing or a bad thing.
I'm definitely willing to give season eight a chance and hope that I will be pleasantly surprised...and if not Joss Whedon has a new series coming out, so I'll just have to make due with that.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Arg...
It's interesting how a person can be overwhelmed and underwhelmed all by the same thing. That's a pretty accurate description of my job -- not mentally very stimulating, but I have alot of boring, systematic things to do. I'm actually pretty good at systematic things and creating my own processes to get things done, but that doesn't mean I find it highly interesting.
My desk is over flowing with phones right now and I almost get caught up just before a new shipment of defectives comes in. So I basically can't get completely caught up right now. Plus it's commission week.
See all of our sales reps are independent contractors and once a month their sales from two months ago get commissioned out, which means us of the administrative staff all have something to keep track of to know which sales reps have turned in all their paperwork and which ones haven't, so we know whose checks to hold. I handle what's called Datascape, which is a system for customers to come in and pay their bill with cash. The sales reps turn those into me and then I do a deposit twice a week. This is one of those random tasks I got when i first started because at the time I had more idle time, but when my returns load is heavy like it has been it is very hard to do all of the maintenance stuff for datascape.
Then on top of all of that, we had a recall on a certain phone and have a week to call sales reps to get them shipped back to us, so I can then send them back to the vendor. Now the issue is it's not really my job to organize the collecting of the phones -- it's the Inventory supervisor. Of course he doesn't give me any great detail as far as when I should be expecting them or who's collecting them or even how many I should be expecting. I mean this could be a considerably time consuming project depending on how many there are and I'm the one that's going to have to do the bulk of the work once they get to the office and will only have a couple of days to do it.
So today I went in to talk to my boss, well one of them, and she pulled the list of how many there were that needed to be sent back and over half of them were sitting in the inventory closet in our main office. Why the inventory manager didn't give these to me Monday or Tuesday -- I don't know. He also had ones that were pulled from our local locations and never even mentioned it to anyone.
This is 20 grand worth of phones that if we don't get a request in to send them back by Friday, we loose. It and the phones become completely useless, and the IC manager doesn't even have a clue what he's actually gotten back.
So he brought the phones down to me, after my boss told him to because she doesn't trust him to get the return done, and then the project manager and I pulled the reports to figure out what we should have and what we still need from the other locations. After going through the phones that he had and the list we pulled there were a handful of phones that he assumed he got, but where actually still at their original location. If he had pulled a list and actually kept track of it, he'd know this.
I'm sorry but I'm the type of person I need a list and I need to check to make sure I have everything on that list because otherwise, I guarantee something has fallen through the cracks. I want a list and god dammit, I'm checking it twice. Well, I'll probably check it three or four times, but I'm a little OCD (not Monk OCD, but I do alphabetize my DVDs).
There's just no communication from one end of the hall to the other in my office and it ends up being very frustrating. Since I handle the returns and they handle all of the initial ordering for all the locations our jobs intersect alot and it always grates my nerves when I have to depend on them because they just aren't very organized. They think they are, but they're not. I liked it better when the project manager was the one organizing people to ship non-defective phones back to us -- it's a lot easier to start a good system if there was already a well thought out system in the first part of the process.
But what can I do, it's not her job and she shouldn't have to do it.
Well my laptop battery is running low and it's probably time to end this rant. Here's hoping for a smooth, productive rest of the week and a relaxing weekend.
My desk is over flowing with phones right now and I almost get caught up just before a new shipment of defectives comes in. So I basically can't get completely caught up right now. Plus it's commission week.
See all of our sales reps are independent contractors and once a month their sales from two months ago get commissioned out, which means us of the administrative staff all have something to keep track of to know which sales reps have turned in all their paperwork and which ones haven't, so we know whose checks to hold. I handle what's called Datascape, which is a system for customers to come in and pay their bill with cash. The sales reps turn those into me and then I do a deposit twice a week. This is one of those random tasks I got when i first started because at the time I had more idle time, but when my returns load is heavy like it has been it is very hard to do all of the maintenance stuff for datascape.
Then on top of all of that, we had a recall on a certain phone and have a week to call sales reps to get them shipped back to us, so I can then send them back to the vendor. Now the issue is it's not really my job to organize the collecting of the phones -- it's the Inventory supervisor. Of course he doesn't give me any great detail as far as when I should be expecting them or who's collecting them or even how many I should be expecting. I mean this could be a considerably time consuming project depending on how many there are and I'm the one that's going to have to do the bulk of the work once they get to the office and will only have a couple of days to do it.
So today I went in to talk to my boss, well one of them, and she pulled the list of how many there were that needed to be sent back and over half of them were sitting in the inventory closet in our main office. Why the inventory manager didn't give these to me Monday or Tuesday -- I don't know. He also had ones that were pulled from our local locations and never even mentioned it to anyone.
This is 20 grand worth of phones that if we don't get a request in to send them back by Friday, we loose. It and the phones become completely useless, and the IC manager doesn't even have a clue what he's actually gotten back.
So he brought the phones down to me, after my boss told him to because she doesn't trust him to get the return done, and then the project manager and I pulled the reports to figure out what we should have and what we still need from the other locations. After going through the phones that he had and the list we pulled there were a handful of phones that he assumed he got, but where actually still at their original location. If he had pulled a list and actually kept track of it, he'd know this.
I'm sorry but I'm the type of person I need a list and I need to check to make sure I have everything on that list because otherwise, I guarantee something has fallen through the cracks. I want a list and god dammit, I'm checking it twice. Well, I'll probably check it three or four times, but I'm a little OCD (not Monk OCD, but I do alphabetize my DVDs).
There's just no communication from one end of the hall to the other in my office and it ends up being very frustrating. Since I handle the returns and they handle all of the initial ordering for all the locations our jobs intersect alot and it always grates my nerves when I have to depend on them because they just aren't very organized. They think they are, but they're not. I liked it better when the project manager was the one organizing people to ship non-defective phones back to us -- it's a lot easier to start a good system if there was already a well thought out system in the first part of the process.
But what can I do, it's not her job and she shouldn't have to do it.
Well my laptop battery is running low and it's probably time to end this rant. Here's hoping for a smooth, productive rest of the week and a relaxing weekend.
Monday, August 4, 2008
"Oldboy"
There are several Japanese and other Asian produced films that concept wise really fascinate me and make me want to watch them, but I also I'm a little timid to do so because they have a reputation of being unsettling. I think some American horror film directors would argue that Japanese cinema is probably producing the most innovative films out there right now, which is why almost all of the current American horrors films are remakes of Japanese ones.
"Oldboy," which is actually a Korean film, not Japanese, was a film I heard about because it was on Bravo's countdown list of "30 More Scariest Films" and was intrigued by the story but never really sought it out to watch. This weekend it popped up on my OnDemand menu and I decided to give it a whirl, because if I found I couldn't handle it it wouldn't be a waste of money to not watch all of it.
After seeing it, I wouldn't classify it as a horror film, but more of a morality play about how a sin that is insignificant to you could be very profound to someone else. It actually won the grand prize at Cannes one year and is a very well done film about revenge and redemption. Visually it is a very beautifully done film and the dialogue (even with having to go by subtitles) was both dark, angsty, but humorous in places too.
Dae Su, the protagonist, is kidnapped one night and held hostage in this little hotel-like room with no explanation as to why or who is holding him there. Then, with just as much explanation, he is released after fifteen years and sets out to find and exact revenge on the people who took those fifteen years away from him.
There's an internal struggle with in Dae Su between the man he used to be, who wasn't the greatest person in the world, but still an average guy, and the monster that the isolation and need for vengeance has turned him into.
Along the way he meets a young woman, barely eighteen, who takes him in and who falls in love with him. She, Mi-do, begins to help him in trying to find the people who did this to him and to locate his daughter that was only three when he was taken.
Unknown to either of them, all of this is an elaborate revenge plot by a man, who Dae Su doesn't even remember from his youth and Dae Su learns that his fifteen years of captivity was not his real punishment, but the events he is manipulated into after his release.
There are definitely some difficult parts to watch, but if you can get through those it really is worth seeing and is an excellently done film that isn't afraid to explore how a quest for revenge can turn you into this monster that has no moral compass and leaves you capable of doing horrible things that you otherwise wouldn't. Of course, once one has had his vengeance the question is: do I have anything to live for now? For one character the answer seems to be no, where the other seems to find some sort of redemption. The ending, though on some level happy, is also a little disturbing. I don't want to give anything away just in case any of you decide to watch it.
A little side note for my LOCI friends: there is a scene where Dae Su eats a live octopus and the tentacles do in fact try to go up his nose -- EWW.
"Oldboy," which is actually a Korean film, not Japanese, was a film I heard about because it was on Bravo's countdown list of "30 More Scariest Films" and was intrigued by the story but never really sought it out to watch. This weekend it popped up on my OnDemand menu and I decided to give it a whirl, because if I found I couldn't handle it it wouldn't be a waste of money to not watch all of it.
After seeing it, I wouldn't classify it as a horror film, but more of a morality play about how a sin that is insignificant to you could be very profound to someone else. It actually won the grand prize at Cannes one year and is a very well done film about revenge and redemption. Visually it is a very beautifully done film and the dialogue (even with having to go by subtitles) was both dark, angsty, but humorous in places too.
Dae Su, the protagonist, is kidnapped one night and held hostage in this little hotel-like room with no explanation as to why or who is holding him there. Then, with just as much explanation, he is released after fifteen years and sets out to find and exact revenge on the people who took those fifteen years away from him.
There's an internal struggle with in Dae Su between the man he used to be, who wasn't the greatest person in the world, but still an average guy, and the monster that the isolation and need for vengeance has turned him into.
Along the way he meets a young woman, barely eighteen, who takes him in and who falls in love with him. She, Mi-do, begins to help him in trying to find the people who did this to him and to locate his daughter that was only three when he was taken.
Unknown to either of them, all of this is an elaborate revenge plot by a man, who Dae Su doesn't even remember from his youth and Dae Su learns that his fifteen years of captivity was not his real punishment, but the events he is manipulated into after his release.
There are definitely some difficult parts to watch, but if you can get through those it really is worth seeing and is an excellently done film that isn't afraid to explore how a quest for revenge can turn you into this monster that has no moral compass and leaves you capable of doing horrible things that you otherwise wouldn't. Of course, once one has had his vengeance the question is: do I have anything to live for now? For one character the answer seems to be no, where the other seems to find some sort of redemption. The ending, though on some level happy, is also a little disturbing. I don't want to give anything away just in case any of you decide to watch it.
A little side note for my LOCI friends: there is a scene where Dae Su eats a live octopus and the tentacles do in fact try to go up his nose -- EWW.
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