Friday, July 20, 2012

Weekly Review Round-up (07/14-07/20, 2012)

A number of new releases reviewed this week and much more.


CURRENT FILMS


Bloody Fight in Iron-Rock Valley

(Seongyong's Private Place, July 14, 2012)

Deranged

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Thursday, July 19, 2012

PiFan 2012: Bloody Fight in Iron-Rock Valley (철암계곡의 혈투, Cheolhamgyegokeui Hyeotoo) 2011


Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival. Though this film was presented at last year's event (where it picked up two awards), I thought it would be a suitable way to kick off the coverage of this year's event.

Low-budget filmmakers love to dabble in genre fare and, despite inexperience and other shortcomings, they often wind up making more pertinent and exciting works than more established helmers, who may have lost their youthful filmmaking pizzazz. Horror is particularly popular for budding cineastes: it is cheap; relatively simple; and offers many opportunities for experimentation. Sci-fi, though trickier, has also been thoroughly mined by young filmmakers. Westerns on the other hand are among the hardest genre films to realize.

Film lovers are drawn to this genre and it is no surprise. Its sweeping vistas, epic stories and enduring iconoclasm remain popular among directors looking to make their mark. However, this is a difficult feat to accomplish. First of all westerns are visually demanding and feature the type of careful attention to mise-en-scene that requires time, effort and money. Other genres can cut back on this in certain ways, especially horror, but not the western. The next thing and perhaps the hardest, is striking the right balance and tone. Horror and sci-fi films, depending on their angle, may not need to be taken seriously, but a western will sink or swim on its ability to properly engage a viewer and for a neophyte in the director’s chair, this is often too much to ask for.

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Wednesday, July 18, 2012

PiFan Preview



Well, PiFan gets underway tomorrow and I've been burning with anticipation for a few weeks now. It'll be my first Korean film festival after landing here 6 weeks ago. The programme looks great and there are many people I'm excited to meet. I'll be at the event for the duration though I won't be able to see as many films as I'd like since I do have a fulltime job that gets in the way of most of the screenings during the weekdays but I've still devised a pretty packed schedule.

Since I won't be able to take in each day from morning to night I won't be publishing daily recaps as I did for this year's Fribourg and Udine Film Festivals but there will still be plenty of reviews, some news and hopefully a few interviews as well. Anything that comes up here will be crossposted on Twitch, where I will be covering the event with James Marsh (@Marshy00) and in addition I will also be participating in daily coverage of the event for Cine21, Korea's no. 1 film magazine.

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Korean Cinema News (07/12-07/18, 2012)

PiFan is upon us and once it gets underway tomorrow I dare say I won't have time for anything else. This means that there will be no Korean Cinema News next week but don't worry I'll double the week after the fest!


PIFAN


Final two previews from James Marsh and I over at Twitch:

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Tuesday, July 17, 2012

KOFA Treasures: Kim Ki-young's Woman of Fire (화녀, Hanyeo) 1971


Ongoing series on classic Korean film recently made available for free and with English subtitles on Youtube courtesy of the Korean Film Archive.

Aside from a few choice selections, remakes have become something of a bane for contemporary cinephiles.  They are borne out of commercial interests and, for the most part and almost by default, they are unoriginal.  They are also omnipresent on today’s marquees, but this wasn’t always the case.  Despite the good examples that do exist, the announcement of a remake almost never inspires much confidence, but what about when a director remakes his own work?

Surprisingly this has happened quite often, mainly when a foreign filmmaker remakes his own successful work for Hollywood.   Among the oldest examples are Hitchcock’s British and US versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 and 1956) or Yasujiro Ozu’s I Was Born But… (1932) and Good Morning (1959), both Japanese.  Among the most intriguing ones are Michael Haneke’s almost identical versions of Funny Games (Austria, 1997 and US, 2007): the US version was a fascinating meta-narrative experiment that explored our species' fascination with violence, I’m just not sure it’s what the studio had in mind, despite it being a shot-for-shot copy of the original.

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Sunday, July 15, 2012

Korean Box Office Update (07/13-07/15, 2012)

Deranged Infects the Charts


Title Release Date Market Share Weekend Total Screens
1 Deranged 7/5/12 43.60% 1,148,211 3,226,499 734
2 The Amazing Spiderman (us) 6/28/12 28.80% 679,675 4,396,250 652
3 Two Moons 7/12/12 7.60% 204,806 238,454 347
4 Dangerously Excited 7/12/12 4.90% 127,816 157,225 278
5 A Letter to Momo (jp) 7/5/12 3.80% 108,895 247,814 248
6 Limitless (us) 7/12/12 2.30% 60,765 76,399 159
7 Midnight in Paris (us) 7/5/12 2.50% 60,051 196,927 144
8 Madagascar 3 (us) 6/6/12 2.00% 54,143 1,606,573 163
9 The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (uk) 7/12/12 0.90% 22,967 31,650 149
10 Street Dance 2 (us) 7/12/12 0.80% 20,875 26,179 133

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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!


UPCOMING FILMS


(The Korea Times, July 11, 2012)

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