Yet another bid to get me to upgrade to the iPhone 4, despite the fact that the last time I spent several hundred dollars on the original iPhone—money that could have gone to shoes—it backfired. That slow-ass, buggy-as-hell internet phone sucks ass, and does not make me want to fork over another $200 to the same company for a different version of the same suckass product, no matter how much I can get for the old one on eBay. Momma needs a new pair of shoes. Nonetheless, it is pretty amazing that they convinced Park Chan-wook to direct a half-hour short filmed entirely using the iPhone 4. "Paranmanjang," which is "Ups and Downs" in English, sounds like typical Chan-wook material: "The short is a fantastical tale that begins with a middle-aged man fishing one afternoon and then, hours later at night, catches the body of a woman. The panicked man tries to undo the intertwined fishing line, but he gets more and more entangled. He faints, then wakes up to find himself in the white clothes that the woman was wearing. The movie’s point of view then shifts to the woman and it becomes a tale of life and death from a traditional Korean point of view," says the Wall Street Journal, who notes that the cinematography is "quite good, except for a little shakiness in the beginning. And the fact that the screen is coarse works to the film’s advantage, especially on the night scenes given its life-and-death theme." As for the film itself, you'd be lucky to catch its limited release in theaters, but expect it to hit the old iTunes store tout de suite. I am quite fond of the film's poster:

paranmanjang-poster.jpg