Korea Blog: When Does One Find Time to Sleep?

도덕산 (Dodeoksan)

Part of an ongoing series about my trip to and discovery of Seoul...

Just off another very busy week in Seoul and the fatigue is starting to settle in but then again I've probably been pushing myself a little too hard!  After my initial few weeks of discovery here it is time for me to find the right balance between work #1, work #2 and play.

After a long week I made my way into Hongdae on Friday night to meet my friend Matt we were both hungry and looked around for a place to eat. After a while Matt recognized somewhere he had been to before so we went in, were greeted and sat down. Only then, we were told that this particular establishment specialized in the parts of a cow that as a westerner you wouldn't think to eat. Oh well, said I, when in Rome!

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Korean Box Office Update (06/22-06/24, 2012)

Miss Go Goes Straight to the Top

	Title	Release Date	Market Share	Weekend	Total	Screens
1	Miss GO	6/21/12	17.70%	268,277	331,169	439
2	The Emperor's Concubine	6/6/12	14.90%	224,090	2,187,575	427
3	Madascar 3 (us)	6/6/12	14.70%	219,150	1,275,303	449
4	King of XXX-Kissing	6/21/12	13.60%	213,630	270,293	424
5	All About My Wife	5/17/12	12.00%	179,158	4,144,011	325
6	Lockout (us)	6/14/12	5.70%	87,409	411,636	284
7	Runway Cop	5/30/12	5.30%	81,741	1,258,758	226
8	Men in Black 3 (us)	5/24/12	4.00%	60,379	3,346,609	221
9	Prometheus (us)	6/6/12	4.50%	58,567	929,723	211
10	Faces In the Crowd (us)	6/21/12	2.80%	40,950	52,982	173

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Weekly Review Round-up (06/16-06/22, 2012)

Broad section of reviews this week as more and more Korean films see DVD, Blu-ray and theatrical releases in English-language territories, hooray!

CURRENT FILMS

All About My Wife

(8 Asians, June 20, 2012)

(Film Journal, June 21, 2012)

In Another Country

(Modern Korean Cinema, June 21, 2012)

(Twitch, June 21, 2012)

The King of XXX-Kissing

(The Korea Times, June 19, 2012)

Two Weddings and a Funeral

(The Korea Times, June 15, 2012)

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Korean Cinema News (06/14-06/20, 2012)

A few items on PiFan this week and a number of new trailers, which now feature writeups (originally posted on Twitch).

KOREAN CINEMA NEWS

PiFan to Hold Myung Films Retrospective

The lineup for next month's 16th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival will not be revealed for another week but we now have our first indication of some of the films that will screened at the event. PiFan will be holding a retrospective of the respected Korean production company Myung Films. The sidebar will be titled "Asian Major Studio Special Program: The Sun and the Moon of Korean Films, Myung Films" and will feature a cross section of some of the company's major works.

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Dancing Queen (댄싱퀸, Daensingkwin) 2012

Just when it seemed like star power was starting to fade in Korea, a new vehicle for two of the nation’s most popular performers danced its way into the spotlight, enchanting four million local viewers in the process.  Late last year and earlier this year a host of others (I among them), were calling out Korean stars for their failure to attract audiences to domestic cineplexes.  Song Kang-ho, normally the country’s most reliable star, misfired with Hindsight (2011), the first film in over a decade from Lee Hyeon-sun (Il Mare, 2000) and a short while after Countdown drew even less receipts despite starring what should have been a potent combo with Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine, 2007; The Housemaid, 2010) and Jeong Jae-yeong (Castaway on the Moon, 2009).  Since the star system has been powerful for so long, arguably too long a time, this shift in what drives a spectator to a theater has been seen as audience’s rejection of the less than-stellar features that the studios marched into the multiplexes, especially hollow blockbusters and these empty star vehicles (though personally I thought the above two films were a little better than what most people made them out to be).

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Settling Into the Fast-Paced Seoul Lifestyle

View from 삼성산  (Samseungsan)

Part of an ongoing series about my trip to and discovery of Seoul...

It's nearly been two weeks since I've arrived and I'm amazed at how much I've done despite my hectic schedule, I guess it just comes down to the city's notorious work hard/play hard culture. I only have a little over 20hrs of teaching hours from Monday to Friday but throw in my writing duties for MKC, Twitch and VCinema, as well as exercise and learning Korea and my day goes from 7am to 11pm, with meals kept very short. After 11 I can finally take some time for myself, which usually means watching a Korean film (or part of one), but that almost falls into the work category as well. Sleep comes over me at around 1am and after 6hrs rest it starts all over again.

Now I am certainly not complaining, I'm busy but I am also focussed and glad that I know exactly what I'm doing. For the first time in a while I feel like the master of my own destiny and the fact that most of my workload is voluntary is a testament to that fact. That said, while I did some work over the weekend, I also took the opportunity to discover Seoul some more, catch my first new Korean film in theaters and, best of all, to meet friends old and new!

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Korean Box Office Update (06/15-06/17, 2012)

Concubine Seduces the Box Office For Second Straight Week

	Title	Release Date	Market Share	Weekend	Total	Screens
1	The Emperor's Concubine	6/6/12	21.60%	379,354	1,720,595	536
2	Madascar 3 (us)	6/6/12	18.00%	311,454	1,000,913	557
3	All About My Wife	5/17/12	13.60%	238,402	3,820,013	370
4	Lockout (us)	6/14/12	11.10%	201,263	237,522	373
5	Runway Cop	5/30/12	7.90%	145,036	1,098,518	282
6	Men in Black 3 (us)	5/24/12	7.50%	135,452	3,231,814	332
7	Prometheus (us)	6/6/12	8.80%	129,265	801,391	322
8	Sadako 3D (jp)	6/14/12	4.90%	71,346	87,953	261
9	Don't Click	5/30/12	3.00%	57,234	837,617	254
10	The Thing (us)	6/14/12	1.50%	27,886	33,462	173

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