Busan Film Festival........meh

Nothing terribly exciting happened during the week, so I’ll quickly hop through it and get on to the weekend. Classes with the primary co-teacher went well (as usual), classes with the other co-teacher went poorly (as usual), Korean class was easy but enjoyable, I didn’t get as much sleep as I would like, and several students told me how handsome I was. Just another week in the life of me.

As for the weekend, that was different. Not always good, but it was different. This particular weekend we decided to head down to Busan to catch a small portion of the Busan International Film Festival. After indulging in the Korean culinary experience that is Pizza Hut and soaking in the global cultural experience that is drunken middle aged men, we hoped the 10pm train to Busan and were off. We were more than a bit perturbed when our group were the only ones warned to quiet down during the ride, despite the fact that the people sitting directly in front of us were as loud as us, if not more so. Coincidentally, we were speaking English and happen to not be Korean, while everybody else was Korean (maybe there’s a connection there?). Annoying? Yes. Unexpected? Hell no.

We arrived in Busan around 1am and instead of sleeping (stupid, stupid, stupid), we went out and wandered around the station area, as our hotel was within spitting distance of the KTX station. We soon learned that behind every major Korean hub of transportation, there is an alley (or two) filled with women willing to lick on your testicles (among other things) for a nominal fee. Chris and I found the one near Yongsan Station in Seoul (brief lowdown: around 70 dollars for 15 minutes, 140 dollars for 15 minutes if drunk, no non-Koreans allowed, and the ladies wear the longest skirts found in all of Korea), but this one had a much more international appeal. Here we finally met the Russian prostitutes that so many stereotypes are founded on (namely that any white, blond female is Russian, and thus a prostitute), as well as some Filipino prostitutes as well. There were also plenty of Russian and Filipino restaurants, which I was dying to try (to say that I’m over Korean cuisine would be an egregious understatement), but we didn’t find the time. After we were sufficiently weirded out by the prostitutes and the middle aged white men who always seem to be around such places, we headed back to the hotel, where we should have gone to bed, but didn’t. Finally, at 4am (mind you, the first films of the morning start at 10:30am), we settled in.

It was no surprise that we didn’t make it to the first showing we wanted the next day. Though we did fail valiantly, for whatever it was worth. We arrived at the Film Festival venue (it was split up into 2 sections, one at the lovely Haeundae Beach, the other near the train station) more or less in time. We chose the train station venue, as it wouldn’t take us an hour on the subway to get there. We had chosen a film about Israel and Palestine by a director whose first movie won some awards at Cannes (aka it wasn’t gonna suck) and I was excited. We first had to decide which theater to try and buy tickets at, as there were two directly across the street from one another, so we decided to ask for help at the information booth. It was there that Chris and I met the love of our lives, or at least for the next 10 minutes. The young lady that assisted us was gorgeous and spoke gorgeous English. Looking back I was probably more in love with her incredible English. Sad, really, that good English ability has become a turn on for me, but that’s how it is. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to walk down the street in the States without creaming my jeans when I get back….on second thought, Americans normally speak terrible English. I’ll be fine. Anyways, she directed us to a theater, where we got in line and waited, only to find out it was the wrong line. I still don’t know what ticket-distributing line we were in, or how they separated the patrons, but it was the wrong one. Perhaps it was the left handed customers line, or maybe the AB blood-type line or the people born during a leap year line. God, I have no idea. Anyways, they tossed us into a different line where we could have bought the ticket, had the movie not started 3 minutes ago. Crap. We just randomly picked one of the two 11:00am movies (I won the paper-rock-scissors throwdown to chose the flick and it will haunt me for the remainder of my years) and were off. The flick we had chosen was “The Dust of Time”, which featured Willem Dafoe and was set during the Stalin regime in the Soviet Union. Sounds like win, right? Wrong. For starters, the dialogue was really stilted, cliché and just plain bad from the very get go. The story never got interesting, although it did get weird, which didn’t help, and it lingered on for about 40 minutes longer than we wanted. And Willem Dafoe kinda sucked (never thought I would say that, but I just did). We were released eventually and then had to make a decision what to do next. Since the movie we watched ran much longer than what we had intended, we didn’t have time for the 45min-1hr trip to Haeundae in order to catch the 2nd round of flicks. To help us answer our questions we went back to our favorite information desk lass…again and again and again. We just kept coming up with different questions to ask her. We were just really confused that day. After she sadly informed us that they were out of the guide books that have the times and descriptions of every flick and we left rather despondent, she went out of her way to find a booklet for us somewhere. That might as well be foreplay, at least in my book. Your move, information desk girl.

We eventually decided to move to the Haeundae area and catch the 3rd block of films after eating lunch during the majority of the second block. We made our way to Busan’s new Shinsegae department store, which I’m told is the largest in the world….just what I wanted. We grabbed some grub which was good, despite a few misgivings (if they are gonna put your soup in a mug, instead of a real bowl, they can at least fill the mug to the top. It’s not like it was freaking panda soup or black rhino soup, it was potato soup. You can afford to fill it up) it was pretty good. Our bellies filled, we moved to the information desk where another set of attractive young ladies had to give us bad news. Perhaps that’s why they choose pretty girls in the first place. They are just so hard to be angry at. Anyways, they informed us that all the tickets for the 3rd and 4th block of films were sold out at all the Haeundae theaters. It was about 30 screens in all, all sold out. So we got to see only one film…and it sucked. We wandered around the mall to waste time, stopping off at the bookstore (the only place I’ll actually go into at most malls/department stores) for me to buy some jazz CDs to get myself pumped for this weekends jazz festival, while Amy got to met, take pictures with, and have her book signed by a famous Korean singer that she especially adores.

For dinner we headed to Haeundae for extremely tasty and heart stopping burgers and chili cheese fries. You can imagine that the rest of the evening wasn’t terribly exciting if I’m taking the time to tell about my meals. We wandered around the beach for a bit, taking in the stands and stuff assembled for the film festival. I was hoping for a lot more stuff to do at the tents, but it might have just been I was in a grouchy mood. I really wanted to see some movies (good ones) and didn’t really give two shits about all this other stuff. We then spent a considerable amount of time sitting around and people-watching, which was entertaining as always. It was at this point that we found the restaurant. We hadn’t really intended to eat there, but once we saw it, we knew we had to eat there. No rice, no kimchi…sign me up! Afterwards, we headed to an ATM to pull out cash and nearly threw up. This particular ATM “room” was attached to my bank (the lack of withdrawal fee wasn’t worth it) and was home to a sleeping homeless person and an overflowing garbage can. Let those two stimuli incubate and mature within a tiny little glass box just big enough to hold 3 ATM machines and you get an awful, awful smell. It was not so great.

Later on, we met up with some other folks for a bit of drinking and then 10 drinks more. Some of us were drinking to forget about the disappointing movie and sold out tickets, some (Amy) were drinking to relieve themselves of the pain of having spent the whole day with just Chris and myself. After a time, we spied two young Korean guys trying to sell random shit for their part time job. Something about these shy, nervous little buggers going around giving speeches about whatever junk they were selling in the most formal Korean speech imaginable with excessive bowing, all while wearing bright purple and yellow afro wigs, struck me as ironic. We called them over, then took pictures with them, borrowed their wigs for pictures, offered them some drinks (one actually refused cuz he was still in high school), then finally bought the good luck charms they were selling. Afterwards we moved to a new bar and were introduced to some new people. Given its me, you can probably assume what happened. There was awkward conversation, then even more awkward silence, followed by them leaving. Once back at the hotel, the males in the group were scolded for not trying to make a better impression. Chris and Danny (another friend) had legit excuses. Chris was suffering from a nasty combo of lack of sleep, alcohol, antibiotics for a sore throat that turned out to be bronchitis, and the said bronchitis. He was asleep for most of the time, thus being terribly untalkative. Danny was also less than chatty, as he didn’t sleep the night before thanks to an all nighter celebration that he was unable to avoid. He also slept for most of the time. As for me, I could say that I was tired or that I was sleepy from the booze, but the answer is simple: I don’t like interacting with people. For me to actually want to converse with new, unknown and potentially lame people, they really have to impress me and give me a reason to talk to them. They did not. Therefore, I did not talk to them. Simple enough.

The next morning Chris and I overslept (again) and missed the morning films we wanted to see (though the tickets may have been sold out again), so we quickly hopped on the KTX train and got the hell out of town. Man, I love Busan and it’s a blast every time I go, but damn did this last trip leave a bad taste in my mouth. Here’s hoping the Jarasum Jazz Festival is everything I hope it to be. Please, please, please don’t rain this weekend.


P.S. I forgot to mention it earlier, but I was thrilled when I found out that one of my favorite female crushes would be attending the festival and would have a movie premiering. The movie booklet with this information neglected to mention the really important information, such as her cell phone number and hotel room in Busan, but I'm not gonna hold it against them. Her movie was supposed to have some lesbian elements in it between her and another actress, but that may have just been rumors to build interest in the film (got me interested). Sadly, I didn't see her on stage and her movie played after we left. Tear.

http://images.google.co.kr/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hl=ko&source=hp&q=uhm+jung+hwa&btnG=%EC%9D%B4%EB%AF%B8%EC%A7%80+%EA%B2%80%EC%83%89&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=#gbv=2&hl=ko&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&newwindow=1&q=uhm+jung+hwa&sa=N&start=0&ndsp=21

Here's the google image search for her. Ms. Uhm Jung Hwa is actually 41, if you can believe it. She's also still unmarried, which makes it even better for me, as the Korean menz would have written her off as an old maid/damaged goods, meaning less competition for me. Now, normally 41 is a bit old for my taste, but if you still look like that at 41 or 51 or 61 or even 71 for that matter, I'd be interested. They call her the Korea's Madonna, but if Madonna had ever looked that good, I would have cared alot more about her lousy music and movies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F2_ja7aZU8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZjqT4FIxrY

Pics: Album "Busan Film Festival"
***Also, as usual, you can find more pics (and certainly better pics) by searching through the pics of me and the albums they are attached to****