I broke my promise to you guys.  I didn’t watch the movie about the Korean ski jumping team on my flight to Seoul, so I can’t report back.  But I did finally get to (500) Days of Summer, which I thought was fine, though I still think Emily Deschanel is more interesting and less irritating than her sister, and that the movie as a whole while somewhat accurate to how some people in some age, race, and socioeconomic groups approach relationships, generally wasn’t worth the fuss.  I tried to watch The Brothers Grimm, which for some reason the in-flight entertainment system and magazine were pushing really hard, which seemed incomprehensible to me because the movie is literally unwatchable, even if one is putting some genuine effort into seeing any Heath Ledger outings one hasn’t watched to date.  The Ugly Truth remains better than it was given credit for, both in its acknowledgement that artificiality in relationships doesn’t make women very happy, and that men who act like jackasses towards women may actually be quite unhappy.

But really, the best thing I watched on the trip was Ashes of Time Redux, forming part of my slow but steady Wong Kar-Wai education.  I think one of the things I liked most about the movie was the fight scenes.  Unlike the fights in a lot of martial arts movies, which are very much about styles in virtuosity, or the fights in say, Ong-bak, which have moments that are replayed multiple times frequently for their sheer, ass-kicking awesomeness, the fights in Ashes are really all about the perspectives of different characters, who come into the narrator’s life as the seasons of a single year pass.  The first interloper, a schizophrenic swordswoman who lives alternating between the personalities of a jilted and heartbroken princess and her vengeful and jealous brother, doesn’t actually fight an opponent (she stabs the swordsman who jilted her, but the blow is cut such that we don’t see the full scene).  Instead, we see her practicing with her own reflection on a lake, jettisoning the water around her in fantastical patterns–she is literally walking on water, her entire view turned inwards.  The second swordsman, played by Tony Leung (whom I adore), is going blind, a condition that plays a critical role in his battle against a group of bandits who are terrorizing a desert village.  The fight is beautifully shot, but choppy and chaotic, since the hero can only really see in the sun.  And a third defeats the same bandits in a battle that’s a rough mirror of his country upbringing.

It’s a really gorgeous movie.  And as much as I’m a sucker for arty wuxia movies, I sometimes get sick of the stunty nature of the fighting.  This is a different approach, and one that makes a huge amount of sense for Christopher Doyle, Kar-wai’s long-time cinematographer, who does amazing, hallucinogenic things with color and perspective.  But even without Doyle at the helm, I think martial arts movies benefit when their fight scenes have more nuance.  It doesn’t just have to be about discipline, who your master was, what style you prefer: a person’s whole self comes out when they fight, and it makes sense to explore that on film.

I didn’t see the original Death at a Funeral (2007), but my fondness of Alan Tudyk, who starred in the film, means that it’s hard for me to see the necessity of a remake just two years later, although I do find the translation into an African-American family interesting*:

I’m not sure there’s actually an “urban” twist on the scenario of a family reuniting for its’ patriarch’s funeral to find they’re being blackmailed by his secret boyfriend, or even in this remake of it just because the actors are black, but I suppose if the studio wants to sell it that way, that’s fine with me.  One thing they kept the same though struck me: Peter Dinklage plays the father’s lover in both the original and the remake.  Or, as Chris Rock puts it to Martin Lawrence in the  ”Our father was bromantically involved with a guy that could fit in his pocket, and you’re mad because he’s white?”

I think this is smart.  Dinklage is an exceedingly fine actor, and incredibly sexy dude.  I think his attractiveness throws a lot of people for a loop, given that he has a condition that causes dwarfism.  And I think frequently when we see actors with physical or intellectual disabilities on television or on film, we think of them in terms of those conditions, and in terms of issues of representation.  Dinklage shatters that.  He is not an affirmative action hire, and he is not a plain guy.  He seems entirely capable of seducing older men, Liz Lemon, or anyone else who passes him by.  And I think that’s useful, in a way that goes far beyond mere representation.  True embrace of people with bodies that differ from our own comes in multiple stages: we have to learn to look at people, whether they’re of small stature, of different skin color, or of different mobility, etc. as we do everybody else, and then we have to learn to look upon people different than us with desire.

Dinklage’s sexiness is, in addition to being enjoyable for all of those of us who get to watch him act and find men attractive, a kind of radical act.  He has refused to simply be the small guy who gets the very few roles available for men who are not of standard height.  He’s transcended the slot, to become very much himself, an act that will benefit a lot of other people.

*As a total aside, does anyone find it as strange as I do that studios will just throw together large numbers of black comedians in movies and assume they look–or have chemistry like–family?  Just an odd peeve.

It was awful to hear about the layoffs at The New Republic yesterday, both because I have good friends working at the magazine who have provided a generous home for some of my policy-oriented writing, and because no matter what one thinks of the magazine, layoffs don’t just mean that some people who may or not be popular lose their jobs: it means the total number of jobs available to hardworking journalists shrinks.  And I was particularly disconcerted to hear that Christopher Orr, a senior editor and the magazine’s film critic, had been let go.  Orr is a very good critic, and I very strongly hope he lands on his feet.  But I hope that TNR has the good sense to continue with film coverage.  There are already too many magazines in Washington that focus exclusively on politics and policy.  Strong coverage of popular culture grounds and rounds those magazines out to include the world beyond the capitol.  It’s a shame whenever one of those connections is severed.

First, huge, huge thanks to Bryan, Rachael, Ian, Shani, and Dylan for holding things down while I was gone.  I’ll admit to having dipped out of my self-imposed vacation internet moratorium occasionally to check in on them, and I hope you had as much fun reading them as I did.

Second, I was sitting in the airport in Seoul yesterday morning (well, it would have been the night before last here then, but it was morning there, so I’ll count it as such), dazed from lack of sleep, disoriented by the sudden cold, and scribbling down a few notes from my last ride on the back of a moto through Phnom Penh (this was a trip for stretching limits, people), when it struck me what a fantastic album about travel official blog obsession Bishop Allen’s The Broken String is.  ”Like Castanets” isn’t my favorite track on the album, but it’s a good evocation of what it’s like to explore a city.  And goddamn is “The Chinatown Bus” an astonishing encapsulation of the kinds of things big travel does to your brain:

Perhaps it’s just me, but this feels exactly like how my thought processes work when I’m disoriented and on the road:

“And I remember Shanghai
How I wasn’t sure just what was safe to eat
The chickens pecked and wandered
At the barefoot ankles of the children hawking figurines
Of workers smiling
What’s the Chinese word for cheese?
I watch the sidewalk butcher
His instinctive understanding
Made the carcass snap and clarify
Beneath the nimble hands that held the knives…
Two AM in Tokyo
And still too soon to call back to the people
Who will soon begin the day I polished off
And I will walk a mile amidst the neon lights that advertise
I don’t know just what they sell.
I tell the taxi driver ‘To the Parker Hyatt-o’
And his gloves are pristine white
Just like the girls I used to know would wear
To dance their first cotillion.
Everyone of them named Jennifer.”

In Seoul, I wrote in my travel journal (yes, I am an old lady.  I am so painfully aware.) that the song “captured my feelings on my moto ride back to Julia’s house last night, the overwhelming combination of the rush hour traffic; and the decaying block of apartments festooned with cheerful drying laundry that may be the most archetypal slum I’ve ever seen; and the huge new building behind it that’s outlined its skyline in yellow neon; and the row of stores selling Cambodia’s ubiquitous wicker furniture; and the puppy, named, of all things, Dino, who wrote in the backwards-facing seat of the tuk-tuk Julia and I took home from dinner; and stopping on the moto ride to buy a liter of gas from an old glass Pepsi bottle; and the general overwhelming sensation of this insane mishmash clicking into place, something that changes Phnom Penh, and Cambodia, and Cambodians not at all, but me quite a bit.”

And this line: “And I / I am no passenger tonight / I watch the world from inside” is the perfect encapsulation of what you achieve on an ideal trip: you stop watching, and are part of whatever it is that you’re experiencing.

Of course, and this is one of my continual frustrations about solo travel, you can never quite explain to someone else what it is to be there.  And for that feeling of slight isolation, you’ve got the lovely and sad “Flight 180″:

That repeated chorus, “If you feel like dancing / dance with me” is a lovely expression of universal desire.  Of course, the song’s about travel only in so much as it’s set on a plane, but I think travel is a process during which a lot of us feel a bit lost, even when we’re on our way home.

In an effort to share and express what I can, though, there will be a fair bit of Cambodia culture-blogging here over the next couple of days, along with the regular menu of things.  I’m so glad to be back with you guys.