KCN: Park Chan-wook takes on Western, Pieta at Venice and Busan Heats Up! (08/30-09/05, 2012)

The bis news this week is a new Park Chan-wook project, Pieta premiering at Venice and numerous Busan Film Fest announcements

BIFF 2012

The 17th Busan International Film Festival is exactly one month away and the news is starting to come in thick and fast. MKC will be on site for the entire event:

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PiFan 2012: The Heineken Kidnapping (De Heineken ontvoering, Holland) 2011

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

Rutger Hauer’s heyday may have come before my time but as a film lover it still feels as though I grew up with him. My teenage years were spent awash in the dream of cinema and amidst the blur of it all, some films stood out. Among them was Blade Runner (1982) which, I must admit, was a film that I did not immediately warm to but the villain of the piece has stayed with me for the decade since I first I saw it. Horror may not have featured prominently in my cinema diet but I’ll never forget The Hitcher (1986), a film that could easily have been unremarkable were it not for the terrifying presence of its antagonist.

With his pellucid blue eyes, wavy blond hair and harsh features, Hauer has always been a formidable presence on screen. However, more than his physiognomy, it is of course his talent and intensity as a performer that has made him so memorable. He seems to lose himself in his best roles. I hesitate to say that he was a method actor, a term that is ill-suited to genre cinema, but he throws himself so fully into his marginalized characters that he often seems to be in a trance.

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Romance Joe (로맨스 조, Lo-maen-seu Joe) 2012

By Rex Baylon

Fractured storylines, unreliable narration and meta-narratives have all become the requisite tools of the trade for films with a postmodernist slant. The realization by filmmakers as far back as the 1960s, when the enfants terribles of France’s Nouvelle Vague tore down the barrier between good "taste" and good "cinema", have not only prompted experimentation in plot and genre, but also, on occasion, led to genuine masterpieces. Of course, there have also been a plethora of over-inflated and pretentious works that have been released to varying degrees of fanfare since then.

In writer-director Kwang-kuk Lee’s debut film Romance Joe (2011) the eponymously named Romance Joe is both an actual character in the movie, played by Kim Young-pil and Lee Da-wit, and an invention: a plot device, utilized by several characters in the film when telling their own personal/invented stories about the pain of love and the ways that fiction and fact can bleed together.

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KBO: Traffickers and Local Releases Dominate Chart (08/31-09/02, 2012)

Traffickers and Local Releases Dominate Chart

	Title	Release Date	Market Share	Weekend	Total	Screens
1	Traffickers	8/29/12	26.40%	533,243	749,694	497
2	Neighbors	8/22/12	21.20%	425,597	1,914,969	494
3	The Grand Heist	8/8/12	13.20%	289,126	4,595,784	361
4	The Thieves	7/25/12	12.70%	265,435	12,591,574	365
5	Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (us)	8/30/12	10.00%	188,955	237,799	337
6	Step Up 4 (us)	8/15/12	4.40%	94,188	849,187	194
7	R2B: Return to Base	8/1/12	2.30%	51,498	1,172,907	141
8	577 Project	8/8/12	2.30%	48,395	62,534	191
9	Total Recall (us)	8/15/12	1.60%	34,037	1,206,506	153
10	Sammy's Adventures 2 (ge)	8/23/12	1.30%	29,268	1,438,477	88

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PiFan 2012: Zombie 108 (城Z-108, Taiwan) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

Of the many genres out there available for our consumption, the zombie film holds a very special place in our cinematic diet. It is actually a subgenre, being an offshoot of horror but, just like the vampire film, it as been allowed to ascend to its own autonomous position, to be taken into consideration separately from its parent. Naturally, this comes with  particular set of problems.

Zombie films occupy a very narrow field within the medium. As potent as the concept can be, it only encompasses a specific set of tropes and narrative devices which have arguably survived long past their sell-by date. George A. Romero set off the genre in the late 1960s with Night of the Living Dead but 35 years later his own efforts have begun to look tired and recycled. In fact, the most popular zombie films of the last few years have arguably been comedies which poked fun at the genre, such as Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Zombieland (2009), as well AMC’s series The Walking Dead, which employs the novel approach of following a zombie narrative in longform.

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WKR: Neighbors, R2B and Ample KOFFIA Coverage

Lots of current films reviewed in this week's WKR and a wide selection of recent releases, largely stemming for the ample KOFFIA coverage.

CURRENT FILMS

577 Project

(The Korea Times, August 30, 2012)

Grape Candy

(Joong Ang Daily, August 24, 2012)

Neighbours

(Seongyong's Private Place, August 26, 2012)

R2B: Return to Base

(allkpop August 25, 2012)

(The LA Times, August 23, 2012)

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8th Jecheon International Music & Film Festival Wrap-up

Part of MKC's coverage of the Jecheon Intl. Music & Film Festival.

It took me a while to gather my thoughts on the eight films I saw during my brief weekend at the 8th Jecheon International Music & Film Festival but now that I've really had the time to think about it, I can say that it was well worth my time. I saw some very good films and a few bad ones but most of all the event reminded me that I'm actually a huge music enthusiast. These days as I try to keep up with everything going on in the film world, it's very easy to forget that. I often go weeks at time without ever opening iTunes. So for that, as well as the great films I did see, I am grateful for the Jecheon film festival and I will gladly be returning for its 9th edition next year.

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