Giving Back

Good heavy metal has demands like no other genre: uncompromising skill and uncompromising attitude. Here are a few pieces of good news for its appreciators:

The Colony Spreads! Power Metal Infects Mainstream Rock:
Lately the press has made some comment about how critically respected adult rock acts are confessing their admiration for contemporary metal bands like Mastadon. That trend is still alive:
Some of you may remember the band Muse from my earlier entry with links to free music on the web. Muse was the band that has made a career out of mimicking the music Radiohead was making circa their sophomore album, The Bends. Most of Muse's newest release, Black Holes and Revelations, still sounds like it was made by a Radiohead cover band. The last song, though, sounds very close to European power metal bands like Gamma Ray and Edguy. Can't be a coincidence.

Despite the continued languishing of all genres in China that aren't syrupy corporate pop, I've found a couple of very good up-and-coming Mainland metal bands to recommend: Hei Zuanshi 黑钻石 ("Black Diamond") and Chunqiu 春秋 ("Spring and Autumn"). Hei Zuanshi shows clear influences of European melodic metal, while Chunqiu moves back and forth intriguingly between folkish acoustic and electified metal.

Squeezed by the Financial Empires

Visa and Mastercard themselves now charge an extra 1% on all purchases made to merchants outside the US. The companies who actually retail to the cards - MBNA, Citibank, whatever - pass on that cost to us consumers, adding on an additional 2% fee of their own just to punish us for giving money to people on the other side of the Wall.

I'm out of the country a lot. Money must be spent on those occasions, or I starve and (worse) the materials I need remain out of my possession.
So last year I switched credit cards after being assure that the new one had no Foreign Exchange charge. But a year later after I took the bait, the company (MBNA) switched the terms of my card's contract. They have - twitching with patriotic fervour, one guesses - added a 3% charge after all, hoping to hide it in fine print.

I had trouble finding a card without a Foreign Ex fee, finally choosing one from Capital One. Capital One seems the only company that doesn't yet screw its customers in the above-described manner, so I suggest it to the rest of you who need to buy unAmerican sometimes. A number of columns on the web explain clearly that it doesn't actually cost the credit card company any extra to process charges made abroad; they add the fee simply because they can get away with it.

Obligatory movie attack

Japanese cinemas continue their quest to screen the worst movie ever made. Having treated packed houses to A Sound of Thunder (hailed by many American film critics as the worst Hollywood film in recent memory), they now mount a colossal advertising campaign in support of this Korean effort, Guemar, about a monster that crawls out of a river and. . . well, you see the photo. The Japanese text next to the red arrow says, helpfully, "That's Guemar!"

Let's hear it for ice!

For some years now, Slate.com has been carrying on a campaign to discredit media reports about the dangers of methamphetamines. This War-on-the-War-on-Meth (War for Meth?) has often seemed to me an odd brand of quixoticism.
But their latest salvo, this past week, gets in some very good shots. They skewer the laws passed in an increasing number of states requiring convicted meth dealers to have their names and addresses listed on a Government-run online database.
Slate points out: whose bright idea was it to make it easier for drug addicts to find dealers?
The State protests: But the information on the web sites may well not be accurate, because they don't double-check it.

Let's hear it for the Government.

[Sympathy for] Lady Vengeance

I finally saw this movie. Like Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (the first 2 films in the trilogy), it's a tale of convoluted revenge for past injury.
The Plot: our herione, Geum-ja, has just been let out of jail after 13 years for the kidnapping and murder of a child. 13 years sounds kind of short. But Geum-ja was only nineteen at the time, and confessed her guilt right away. More importantly, she was a model prisoner, always going to bible study and doing nice things for the other inmates.

But as we learn very early in the movie, the "angel" image that Geum-ja projected in prison was only an act. She's been planning revenge for every moment of those 13 years. Learning why a confessed killer would want complicated revenge, and on whom, is the unfolding mystery of the movie.
Overall the movie is pretty good. I'm proud to say that the other young men renting this house found it "very disturbing." But it's not great, and not even as good as the first two in the trilogy. The problem is that it eventually delivers a real villian, and with it a tidy and satisfying Hollywood ending. Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance let us understand the motives behind their revenge stories without making us cheer for their executors. So in that respect, Lady Vengeance is a bit of a sellout.
But it is atmospheric, and so I've been enjoying the soundtrack.

Talking to Strangers

One often hears white visitors to China grumbling that strangers often call out "Hallo! Hallooooo!" to them on the street. These days, residents of Beijing and Shanghai see too many white faces to give them special attention. But there are still plenty of people in or from the countryside who are jubiliant at a chance to use the one word of English they know.
"No one would be so crass in America," the complaint goes.
So today I was walking down the street in Princeton, NJ. It's a wealthy town where, as in much of America, most of the real work is done by immigrants from Latin America. They're not hidden - I see them every day. So I'm walking down the street, and out of a sandwich shop a short distance ahead of me step two dark-haired men, conversing in Spanish. Walking right in front of me are two girls with blondish hair
who look to be college students; they're talking in English. Catching sight of the two men, one of them calls out "Hola!" The men look embarrassed, and one of them mutters "hola" in response. Both groups continue in opposite directions.
I think the girl was doing exactly what so many American visitors to China complain about. For one thing, the vowels of her "Hola" were the flat American variety. For another, the two men didn't show any of the reponse one naturally gives when greeted by an attractive young acquaintance. They acted like people who are being harassed.
Something to keep in mind for the next time you hear complaints about China.

Songs for Working

A prize, for those among you who (like me) are connoisseurs of background music. The entire soundtrack to Lady Vengeance is available in high-quality MP3s on the film's official website.
Lady Vengeance is film #3 of the Korean "Revenge Trilogy" that began with Oldboy, the revenge movie that I reviewed in January. Oldboy has a richly complex plot, shockingly cruel violence, and a lot of moral confusion. Yet its soundtrack is a mix of blandly mournful music, with Vivaldi, waltzes, and Minimalist tracks that remind me of Philip Glass. The film itself rates no better than "Good," but the score calls up pleasantly conflicting emotions thanks to the conflict between the feeling of the music and the feeling of the film.
The Lady Vengeance soundtrack is less varied than Oldboy; it seems to be all selections of classical and baroque music. So the music can be enjoyed simply as something nice to listen to. I won't listen to it all the way through until I have a chance to watch the film, and pick up some emotional baggage to enrich my experience of the soundtrack.

Also: A stirringly anti-jingoistic performance of the Star Spangled Banner can be dowloaded here. Those of you who appreciate politically aware indie music should pick it up before the link goes bad.