star-crossed lovers

Tonight we had our revenge on Screamy, the cute but whiney three-year-old who lives next door: we watched Chunhyang, a lengthy Korean movie with wailing/stylized singing narrative. The music is intriguing--to me it sounds a bit like Native American singing--and the lyrics are endlessly amusing. The best ones involve needlessly detailed descriptions of the story characters' garments ("He wore a hat and a blue jacket with the end tied back") and the shouting
("That bitch will pay!" and "Beat her until her organs burst!" were my personal favorites). My one big complaint is that just as the story was starting to pick up speed (The evil governor is going to beat the courtesan's daughter to death at his birthday dinner--the Korean equivalent of a piňata party. Will her husband arrive to save her in time?) our brand new LG DVD player crapped out on us. The irony of the similar story lines is not lost on me: just like the two lovers in the movie, these two pieces of Korean technology were unable to overcome their world's shortcomings in order to live happily ever after. I don't need to see the end of the movie to know how things are going to end for Chunhyang and her husband--we've already beaten the DVD player's organs until they burst.