Cold Blooded & Hot-Headed

It occured to me that the cold has struck again. Global warming took a break today, it would seem, to leave its place to a minus 42 000 degrees celsius weather. The wind is not helping, and it would seem that it is, for a 10th of Jan., a pretty average figure. In Miami, however, is it currently 72 Farenheit. With some clouds.



What's happening in Miami these days ? The city's in the middle of a building boom. Humans face crises. Like in every city on the surface of this earth. The everyday drama. The boring and the beautiful. The surprising and the typical. As much as I'd love to be there a couple of months a year, there's nothing that will convince me to move away from Montreal... for now. So, what's up in Miami ?

Yesterday Sharlyn Singh, 29, put her crying baby in the oven and turned it on, while fighting with her boyfriend. She walked out of the house when he asked her where the baby was. A few minutes later, he heard the cries and rescued the toddler. Little Singh was safe and unharmed.



Danny Robert Villegas, the same day, entered the Kennedy Space Center Federal Credit Union and told the teller he was robbing her. He added : "You might as well call the police now". He then went to sit on a couch and waited for the cops to show up. Apparently, he was tired of his job as a roofer, that he had been occupying for the last five years. He fondly remembered the 70 months he had spent in a federal penitentiary many years ago and longed to go back there. Way to go !

In Miramar, a woman coming back from the grocery store put her 2 years old baby to sleep and got into her kitchen only to find a stranger in there, waiting for her. The man proceeded to put a blanket on top of her head, drag her to the living room and rape her while repeatedly telling her that he was doing that as revenge. "Your husband owes me money". The name he mentioned, however, was not the lady's husband's name. He has not been caught so far.



Pedro Agudelo, 63, owner of LeJeune Liquors, on 42nd Avenue in West Gables, was quietly working around 10 PM when Dusviel Hernandez, 22, came inside his store, pulled out a gun and demanded the content of the cash register. Agudelo instead pulled out a gun from behind the counter and shot him dead.

This morning, behind a North Miami Beach U.S. Navy recruiting site, a suspicious package was left by a strange man. Prior to leaving it, he entered the recruiting facility, made a comment about the war in Iraq, stepped outside, and snapped a picture of the building. The street was shut and the FBI Bomb Squad was called in. Deciding the package posed no threat to public safety, the streets were re-opened to the public around 1 PM.



Tonight, after dusk settles, an emergency crew dressed in protective bee suits will creep up to some trees in Arch Creek Park, in Northeast Miami-Dade, and spray foam on close to 30 000 bees that have decided to settle there a few days ago.

A quiet 24 hours in South Florida.

*

Which brings me to a beach, a beach with sand that could turn red, a beach where lots of persons walk by during the day, but where a few of them also disappear at night... a BLOOD BEACH. A movie which tagline is : "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water - you can't get to it.". About it, a IMDb user comments : "Jaws will keep you out of the water but Blood Beach will put you back in the car and send you home."



It is the second film I have "watched" during the last few months with both the word "beach" in its title and John Saxon playing a cop in it. And even though NIGHTMARE BEACH wasn't a highlight in my film fan carreer, BLOOD BEACH is the worst of the two. Big time. No doubt. No questions asked.



One fine morning, a lady takes a walk with her dog. She is "swallowed" alive by the sand. Reported lost by the local cops, her daughter flies in to look for her. A few days afterwards, a girl who's half buried in the sand feels "something" grabbing her legs, and then feeding on them. She is dug out by her friends just in time for them to look at her fake blood-covered legs with a look of horrified disgust. At this point, I was more than bored and started heavily using the FFW button, but even this hope of salvation couldn't redeem how bad this movie is, so the "Stop + RWD" method had to be used.

Blame it on the mood - or on whatever you feel like blaming it on. The large shots, the boring plot, the bad performances, the sloppy effects - I lost my temper. John Saxon appears after 30 minutes. There's a rather tame sex scene between some hero and his flight attendant wife - filmed in the dark. How captivating.

Jeffrey Bloom is not a very good director, and his filmography will not contradict me; it comprises only of titles you've never heard anywhere but in whispered conversations among "special people". If you ever cross that movie on a sidewalk, you might wanna move to another city.

*

"Haunting and beautiful" is a combination of clichés we could apply to a wide range of oeuvres, but I find them particularly fitting to describe Kim Ki-Duk's SAMARIA (2004). Ki-Duk has mostly gotten used to rather odd movies where violence suddenly explodes without warning and where the moral aspects of relationships between men & women are sometimes questionable. Three of his most widely distributed movies in Québec are THE ISLE, BAD GUY & 3-IRON.



The mood, here, is as contemplative as it is violent. But at the same time, it's a very beautiful violence. Young girl Yeo-jin sells herself to various men while her friend Jae-yeong manages her "carreer". They seemingly are raising money to fly to Europe and escape Korea. Yeo-jin is busted by the cops one day, and throws herself out of the third floor window of the hotel she was in, rather than getting caught and dishonoured. She cracks her skull open and dies. What follows is as incredible as it is well plotted, and you'll have to see for yourself if you wanna know what's up.



Korean cinema shows some promises, if it can steer clear from its numerous "americanisms". Both Kim Ki-duk and Park Chan-wook (OLDBOY (2003), SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE (2005)) shoot very distinctive movies, have a style of their own, and a very particular voice. If they can generally avoid trying to "hollywoodise" everything and inserting their particularly immature "bully" humor - such as the one over-employed by Kim Sang-Jim in movies such as ATTACK THE GAS STATION (1999) and KICK THE MOON (2001) - in everything they export, my belief is that Korea will be a major player in the cinematic field, in the very near future.