"Natural City" - A Great Korean Sci Fi Film....

Dreary weather seems to get me to watch DVDs more than anything else, and this weekend was no exception. Among the other films I saw was an interesting Korean scifi film, Natural City, which not only looked great, but had an intriguing plot as well, one that would take far too long to recount here, so just go see it. It's got futuristic stuff, cyborgs, clones, and the like.

Now, if I may, I'd like to engage the flamethrower a moment at the myriad of morons who posted "reviews" at Netflix ,. in particular the charge that this was nothing but a "remake" (or worse, a "copy") of Blade Runner. First off, yes while both films share a dystopian future, a vague sharing of the concept of cyborgs who start to get "feelings" and the like, such superficial similiarities don't mean that "Natural City" is a cheap knock off.

I find it a) insulting to the filmmaker to suggest this, and b) more than a tad racist, or at least just plain stupid, simply because it suggests that somehow Korean filmmakers (who, by the way, have been making some great films of late) somehow aren't original enough to come up with a decent sci fi film.

Meanwhile, American critics were literally going gooey over Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" and yet....it's a cheap knockoff of a great Hong Kong film, Infernal Affairs. Yet I didn't hear anyone dismiss his work as a cheal knock off - instead people were going off on how it was The Greatest Film Ever Made. I saw it and liked it just fine, but since I'd already seen it years ago, the big "surprises" in the plot were no big deal to me. (Don't even get me started on the constant remaks of Japanese horror, such as "The Ring"...)

Anyway, go see it on DVD sometime, if you like your futures dystopian and your cyborgs rebellin', you won't be disappointed.

PS: Is it just my computer or is typing an entry on VOX incredibly slow? Every time I use this editor to compose I find that I type far faster than it can handle, and inevitably I get a ton of typos...