UPCOMING FILMS
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(The Korea Times, July 11, 2012)
Friday, July 13, 2012
Weekly Review Round-up (07/09-07/13, 2012)
Lots more NYAFF coverage this week and an early review for incoming blockbuster The Thieves. Next week PiFan gets underway so get ready for plenty of new genre release reviews!
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Thursday, July 12, 2012
Pink (핑크, Pingkeu) 2011
The passage of time affects us all in certain ways, our experiences and our memories all take on different forms after we’ve lived them and they leave behind a trace. This imprint can be faint and slip through our conscious memory just as it can leave an indelible mark, a scar that bears the weight of its genesis. Most things change with the passage of time but some do not and Jeon Soo-il’s new feature Pink is a dirge to the intransigence of the roots of our defining characteristics.
Jeon, who hails from Korea’s vibrant port city Busan, is a fiercely artistic filmmaker who has quietly been making films for the past 15 years. While respected within the filmmaking community, Jeon has never attracted anywhere near the same level of international reputation as his arthouse contemporaries, such as Hong Sang-soo (The Day He Arrives, 2011), Kim Ki-duk (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring, 2003) and Lee Chang-dong (Poetry, 2010). His films are slow, deliberate and difficult and though they are successful on the festival circuit (he has won awards at Fribourg, Busan and Venice), a larger audience may never gravitate towards his oeuvre.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Korean Cinema News (07/05-07/11, 2012)
Plenty of news this week so dig in! PiFan is just around the corner by the way, get started next Thursday!
Check out the following previews for this year's PiFan, written by myself and James Marsh over on Twitch:
PiFan 2012 Preview Part 3: Vision Express
PiFan 2012 Preview Part 4: Strange Homage, Forbidden Zone & More
PIFAN
Check out the following previews for this year's PiFan, written by myself and James Marsh over on Twitch:
PiFan 2012 Preview Part 3: Vision Express
PiFan 2012 Preview Part 4: Strange Homage, Forbidden Zone & More
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
NYAFF 2012: Doomsday Book (인류멸망보고서, In-lyoo-myeol-mang-bo-go-seo) 2012
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Part of MKC's coverage of the 11th New York Asian Film Festival.
(by Peter Gutiérrez)
No doubt about it: it’s definitely a cliché to remark on how anthology films can be uneven – in fact, it’s probably also a cliché at this point to point out how commonplace such an observation is. Yet although this assessment applies to Doomsday Book, which gets its North American premiere Wednesday evening at NYAFF, the film is also refreshing in that I could see different viewers holding disparate ideas as to which are the stronger and weaker entries in this ambitious, three-part science-fiction extravaganza.
The opening story, “A Brave New World,” takes what seems like a well-worn zombie formula and, in the hands of Antarctic Journal’s Yim Pil-Sung, fashions one of those optimal mixtures of the audaciously dark and the goofily humorous that can make Korean genre cinema so wonderful. That’s not to say that Yim’s goals are purely pulply, its ironical tone and light intellectualism are evident from the title. Taking its cue less from Shakespeare, or Huxley, and more from the Bible, this segment looks terrific and boasts some solid storytelling, so you’ll be forgiven for not noticing its more highbrow aspirations. Like Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, which played for both more laughs and more horror, “A Brave New World” is so adept at grabbing and holding your attention that you may be a bit disappointed when it seems satisfied in leading you into romance (!) territory and leaving you there.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Korean Box Office Update (07/06-07/08, 2012)
Deranged Beats Spidey in Massive Debut
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| Title | Release Date | Market Share | Weekend | Total | Screens | |
| 1 | Deranged | 7/5/12 | 39.20% | 1,128,335 | 1,323,523 | 755 |
| 2 | The Amazing Spiderman (us) | 6/28/12 | 42.90% | 1,059,076 | 3,362,773 | 896 |
| 3 | A Letter to Momo (jp) | 7/5/12 | 3.30% | 102,728 | 114,887 | 252 |
| 4 | Madascar 3 (us) | 6/6/12 | 2.80% | 83,087 | 1,545,255 | 247 |
| 5 | The Raven (us) | 7/5/12 | 2.40% | 65,946 | 87,472 | 264 |
| 6 | Midnight in Paris (us) | 7/5/12 | 2.30% | 61,735 | 80,391 | 187 |
| 7 | All About My Wife | 5/17/12 | 2.00% | 56,070 | 4,516,210 | 184 |
| 8 | The Emperor's Concubine | 6/6/12 | 1.60% | 44,226 | 2,569,270 | 252 |
| 9 | Haywire (us) | 7/5/12 | 0.90% | 26,675 | 34,093 | 199 |
| 10 | Cabin in the Woods (us) | 6/28/12 | 0.80% | 20,773 | 211,874 | 184 |
Weekly Review Round-up (06/30-07/08, 2012)
Sorry for the delay, it's been a busy week. Not too many writeups this week but a few from NYAFF and TKFF which are both underway.
CURRENT FILMS
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(The Korean Times, July 2, 2012)
Friday, July 6, 2012
NYAFF 2012: King of Pigs (돼지의 왕, Dwaejiui Wang) 2011
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Part of MKC's coverage of the 11th New York Asian Film Festival.
(by Peter Gutiérrez)
I’m not sure what the current cultural status of bullying in is South Korea these days – are public policy steps being taken to curtail it, as is the case here in the U.S.? – but certainly anyone who has followed Korean cinema knows that it has provided the thematic backbone to films which cut across several genres. I’m a bit partial to A Bloody Aria (Won Shin-yeon, 2006), and Yeun Sang-ho’s The King of Pigs shares something of its beyond-bleak tone and emotionally raw approach. Just don’t look for any of the former’s dark humor: Yuen has crafted that rare film that effectively plunges head-first into the abyss and never really allows the audience to come up for air, let alone laughs.
(by Peter Gutiérrez)
I’m not sure what the current cultural status of bullying in is South Korea these days – are public policy steps being taken to curtail it, as is the case here in the U.S.? – but certainly anyone who has followed Korean cinema knows that it has provided the thematic backbone to films which cut across several genres. I’m a bit partial to A Bloody Aria (Won Shin-yeon, 2006), and Yeun Sang-ho’s The King of Pigs shares something of its beyond-bleak tone and emotionally raw approach. Just don’t look for any of the former’s dark humor: Yuen has crafted that rare film that effectively plunges head-first into the abyss and never really allows the audience to come up for air, let alone laughs.
So don’t expect a slow and “tasteful” build to the film’s often unforgettable moments of psychological and physical violence. Right away we see our point-of-view character Kyung-Min experience a form of workplace bullying… and then immediately turn around and take out his feelings of shame and powerlessness on his wife in a dynamic that strongly recalls that of James Joyce’s classic Dubliners short story “Counterparts.” But can all of his present-tense troubles really account for the way that Kyung-Min seems to be so haunted? This question is soon answered as he meets up with middle school classmate Jong-Suk for the first time in years, and it becomes clear to us that something happened back in their early adolescence that shaped both men… something that neither seems eager to discuss directly.
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