Furiosa: Mad Max Saga
Jeong Seohui (Cinema Journalist): A single person sped through the wasteland for three days because of 15 years. Why? The prequel to Mad Mad: Fury Road (2015) entitled Furiosa: Mad Max Saga, released 9 years later, runs through the character Furiosa from Charlize Theron’s to Anya Taylor-Joy’s performances. Why? Furiosa ruminates the question “why,” then smelts it in the furnace of fury, which becomes her driver. This epic is a thorough review of the heroine’s “yesterday.” Civilization has disintegrated, and Furiosa who was born in the treasure trove of a land, “The Green Place” gets kidnapped by a biker gang and taken to their leader Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Young Furiosa witnesses the murder of her mother who tried to save her. All that was left was her mother’s last words telling her to go back home and a single fruit seed. This seed is a legacy of life and revenge. The battle between the three strongholds - the Citadel ruled by Immortan Joe, Gas Town that Dr. Dementus steadily took over bit by bit, and the Bullet Farm that Immortan struggles to preserve and Dementus continuously tries to take over - took a total of 145 vehicles, including four-wheel drive trucks and motorcycles. Director George Miller enhanced the engine sounds to heighten the viewers’ experience which is juxtaposed by several moments of dead silence to heighten the tension. Furiosa’s loneliness echoes. Furiosa seems to be harming herself as she quietly dwells on her past, and her feat of quickly and silently moving up the ranks from Citadel warrior to Imperator was the only way for her to avoid rape. She feigned loyalty while keeping an eye out for the right moment to strike. After capturing Dementus she asks him: “Remember Me?” But it isn’t a question. It is her declaration of not her honor but her existence. Remember “me.” So that “I” don’t forget “myself.” “Me,” a person from the land of plenty. “Me” who will never be broken by “you.” The Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, who liberated the wives, who were shackled to their duties of producing Immortan's healthy offspring, parallels the Furiosa in Furiosa: Mad Max Saga. Furiosa’s untainted and persistent attempts to buttress “today” with hope that no sandstorm from the waste land can taint, repeatedly sketch a genuine and honest map. How can a woman who trudges on in the desert storm find redemption that lies beyond loss? However, this isn’t a question.

EBS The Face of Money (Streaming available on Wavve, Tving, Watcha, and the EBS Homepage)
Yun Huiseong: Don't just memorize everything. You need to understand it to make it entirely yours. The documentary series on macroeconomics entitled The Face of Money speaks to us like a star instructor who suddenly woke up one morning with an overwhelming sense of duty. The current trend of asset management content spews out number after number, like what percent of your income you should save, what accounts you should open, what you should invest in, and how much money you should have saved to have a comfortable life after retirement. But The Face of Money is collected and kind - laid back even. And no wonder. This show was produced after the viewers requested that the documentary series Capitalism be renewed. The channel behind the series is none other than the educational broadcasting station EBS. Convincing and selling isn’t the best strategy for educational content. Instead, The Face of Money compiles the stories on money as told by many people including experts and patiently teaches us how to gain insights. The narrator Yeom Hye-ran takes cases from different countries and time periods, and converts them into digestible morsels of information, further helping us gain a better understanding.

So that leaves us with the question: why should we take a closer look at money, now? Episode 1 “Do you trust money?” opens with a bank robbery case in Lebanon. The robbers weren’t money hungry; they were ordinary citizens who had no other way of paying their medical bills. They were unable to access their own funds from the bank because of a withdrawal limit that was put in place. This example was used to explain cash liquidity. Confidence that humanity agreed upon with the advent of the banking system isn’t as strong as we once believed, and capitalism can disintegrate in a second once this trust is broken. Confidence and agreement are key premises, and the two words are repeated in the episode. Without agreed-upon rules, the current system, in which numbers represent value and dominate our lives, will not be sustained. Episode 5 “Crypto, did you get on the bandwagon?” talks about what happens when there is a crack in this agreement, and finally takes us back to why we need to think hard about money. The top-down structure of confidence on which capitalism was built, the banking system which exists by brokering this confidence, and currency that is dominated by these institutions are now starting to be questioned. The symptoms are there: people have started to come up with unconventional ways; “gray” ways. If we can no longer deny that money, which was invented to resolve instability of trade, is pushing people to take risks, then what an educational show can do is to provide us with good information so that we can make the right choices. We have entered an age where the fantasy of saving money and spending less leading to a stable life has been dispelled. If you are willing to learn basic survival skills, then spend some time watching this series - it is well worth your time, and it surely will age well. Do remember to search for EBS Docuprime to stream The Face of Money on the OTT services. 

Parannoul - "Gold River"
Na Wonyoung (Music Critic): American engineer, producer, and funk/punk musician Steve Albini suddenly passed away last May 7. Albini passionately disagreed many things. He was against the music industry, Steely Dan and especially digitally recording and editing music using the computer. Albini, dedicated to capturing the raw energy of the venue, was responsible for the loud sounds of American indie rock in the 80s and 90s. His work featured drums that sounded like someone bashing the entire kit and electric guitars with sharp, belligerent, and neurotic tones. But what is lesser known is that Albini still remains highly influential today, in an era where a laptop is as prominent an instrument as a studio was during the analog age.

Within the new environment of digital technology and its limitations, finding the right balance between signals and static directly links to the essence of indie rock. But Parannoul, who is preparing for his fourth studio album after After the Magic, shows us his clever idea that he had been devising over the early 2020s with his single Gold River. All elements except perhaps his voice was recorded using virtual instruments, which are deliberately heavily distorted to create a rough, grainy sound. The densely packed and exaggerated static is positively stuffed into the track. This sound quality, which goes quite well with the album cover which depicts a golden sunset in highly saturated yellows and oranges, seems to have reached the right balance. Though the murmuring vocals are somewhat overwhelmed by the electric guitar that weaves through the energetic shattering drums, the condensed noise, the rippling riffs, and the shimmering keyboards beneath the surface, it is unwavering, driven by the melody. Just like the signal that came through despite the heavy static, the lyrics try to resist oblivion by “remember(ing) the memory of memories.” As the lyrics flow with the melody and reach closer to the climax, the sunset that colored the internetsphere blue a couple years ago is now slowly turning gold. As the song reaches its end, leaving the trilling insects behind on the riverbank, all sounds explode in a magnificent orchestra of noise, glowing in a bright light. It makes us look forward to the morning light that will find its way to us past the magical night and digital dawn, “ruminat(ing) the sense of sunrise that is left in your eyes.”