KOFFIA 2012: Disney, Nostalgia, and Politics in Sunny (써니, Sseo-ni) 2011

Part of MKC's coverage of the 3rd Korean Film Festival in Australia (previously published).

Delve into any well-balanced childhood and you’re sure to find a candy store: our ephemeral youth’s source of confectionary delights and perpetual euphoria. During my childhood I had a particularly aggressive sweet tooth and the easiest way to motivate my obedience or to inspire my eternal adoration was to drag me into a store full of sweets. I grew older and these gave way to popcorn as I found myself gazing up at the silver screen, the candy store of my adulthood. Between these two worlds lies a transition and at the forefront of it, an enduring symbol that came both before and will likely remain long after. I speak of Disney, the dream factory that is also the world’s most powerful media conglomerate. It is a kaleidoscopic candy store that titillates our senses beyond our sweet-craving taste buds. It is also calculating, cloying and devious but I seek not to denigrate its brilliant success, merely to point out what makes it so infectious: formula.

Just like the chemicals that bind together to delight our youthful, undeveloped palates in the candy store, the Walt Disney Company applies a rigid, time-tested formula to all of its products. The formula has many permutations and its application is effectuated, for film and animation, through themes, morals and standards, but also by way of a carefully constructed mise-en-scene. When done right, as it often is by Disney and even more frequently by its subsidiary Pixar, the result is clear: a good film that is guaranteed a solid ROI.

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JIMFF 2012 - Gainsbourg By Gainsbourg: An Intimate Self-Portrait (Je suis venu vous dire..., France) 2012

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

When I noticed this documentary among the many titles on offer at this year’s JIMFF, I quickly saved a spot for it in my schedule. It was my first time hearing of it but as I count myself one of Serge Gainsbourg’s many fans it was out of the question that I should miss it. However, following the thrill of seeing it in the schedule and my rising excitement as I recalled this great artist’s legacy, my initial enthusiasm soon turned to trepidation. Gainsbourg, of course, is no mere pop star (not that I mean to denigrate anyone associated with that label). He is one of the most complicated mainstream artists of the 20^th century. Following his death, the president of his native France declared him a national treasure, placing him in the same pantheon as Apollinaire and Baudelaire, two of the finest poets to ever put pen to paper.

My fear was that he is a towering figure, a versatile musician with an enigmatic persona: how does one adumbrate his life and work in a mere 100 minutes? There was no doubt in my mind that the music would be up to par (as it would be his) and that I could expect a number of interesting anecdotes coupled with footage and audio of the great man himself outside of his recorded oeuvre. What did nag at me was that I could scarcely imagine how the film could live up to the man.

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PiFan 2012: Interview with Young Gun in the Time's Oh Young-doo

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

Oh Young-doo has been working in the Korean film industry for 15 years and for the last couple of those he has transitioned to making his own low-budget features. He and some of his friends worked together to make the zombie omnibus feature The Neighbor Zombie in 2010 and following that Oh made his feature directorial debut with the ultra low-budget Invasion of Alien Bikini (2011) which had a very successful festival run.

Now he's back with a new feature called Young Gun in the Time, which will hit Korean screens later this month. I had the chance to catch up with him following its Korean premiere at this year's Pucheon International Fantastic Film Festival.

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JIMFF 2012: The Moon (พุ่มพวง, Pumpuang, Thailand) 2011

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

Generally speaking I’m not a huge fan of music biopics. As the Jecheon film festival has proven (or not in some instances), musicians tend to make better documentary subjects. With the latter format you can improvise and approach their life and work from a variety of angles. By staging a full blown narrative feature, you’re assuming that the musician has a life that is worth the film treatment. Very often this is not the case. While musicians lead very interesting lives, these rarely amount to a good feature-length narrative.

The Moon is about Pumpuang Duangjang, the queen of Thai country (luktung) music. Born in poverty, Pumpuang worked hard to get herself taken in as an apprentice by an established musician in Bangkok and quickly made a name for herself with her powerful voice among a male-dominated scene. The film chronicles her steady rise and later her battle with illness, all the while exploring her marriage as she grows more famous and distant.

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KOFFIA 2012: The Front Line (고지전, Gojijeon) 2011

Part of MKC's coverage of the 3rd Korean Film Festival in Australia (previously published).

Before getting into a discussion about Jang Hoon’s much-ballyhooed new feature The Front Line, I feel that I should mention that over the years I have had a troubled relationship with war films.  I have seen all kinds, from different eras, different countries, detailing different fights, and espousing all sorts of different points of view.  On a cold Sunday afternoon, there isn’t a whole lot that can beat a repeat viewing of seminal classics like David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1956), John Sturges’ The Great Escape (1963), or Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953).  Those are actually all POW (Prisoner of War) films but there is a great wealth of others that I can always return to, including: Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition trilogy (1959-1961), Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959), Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) or HBO’s 10-part mini-series Band of Brothers (2001).

When the elements fall into place, a good war film is one of the most engaging types of entertainment across any medium but that correct balance is a difficult thing to achieve.  War films differ from other genres as they are naturally rooted in spectacle, feature little to no romance or indeed female protagonists, and must frequently sacrifice characters on the battlefield.  What’s more, rather than following a personal trajectory, the main thrust of the narrative is often consumed by a story far greater than the leads that we are to bond with on screen.

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KBO: Neighbors Tops Korea-Heavy Chart (08/24-08/26, 2012)

Neighbors Tops Korea-Heavy Chart

	Title	Release Date	Market Share	Weekend	Total	Screens
1	Neighbors	8/22/12	31.10%	780,556	1,094,081	600
2	The Grand Heist	8/8/12	20.10%	537,099	4,106,828	515
3	The Thieves	7/25/12	19.80%	513,409	12,094,680	544
4	R2B: Return to Base	8/15/12	6.80%	182,718	1,059,543	331
5	Total Recall (us)	8/15/12	6.60%	172,453	1,111,574	321
6	Step Up 4 (us)	8/15/12	6.50%	164,872	672,959	269
7	Sammy's Adventures 2 (be)	8/1/12	2.60%	71,952	1,401,327	244
8	Animals United (ge)	8/8/12	1.10%	33,674	275,373	115
9	The Dark Knight Rises (us)	7/19/12	1.30%	29,475	6,359,420	81
10	Red Lights (us)	8/23/12	1.10%	29,341	38,204	197

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KOFFIA 2012: The Client (의뢰인, Eui-roi-in) 2011

Part of MKC's coverage of the 3rd Korean Film Festival in Australia (previously published).

There are few things more satisfying than a well-performed and thoughtfully structured courtroom drama. I for one have pleasantly idled away many a Sunday afternoon whisked away into the heady wood-paneled halls of justice. The beauty of legal dramas or thrillers is that by way of their conceit they are already confined, for the most part, to one location and as viewers we accept this fact. More than most genres, with courtroom films we largely know what we’re getting ourselves into.

So what makes these films so popular when they are so constrained by their design? Their narratives typically do not require the presence of too many characters and often eschew subplots which may otherwise seem contrived. This makes them quite lean and generally pretty easy to follow and be drawn in by. For the most part the stories will be determined by the answer to one question: will the case be won or lost? But the most engaging thing about courtroom dramas is the bitter contest of right vs. wrong. We are compelled to deliberate over the evidence and arguments presented by both sides (though we are often led by the filmmaker’s guiding hand) which in effect means that our viewing experience sees us living vicariously through the jury represented on screen. Some of the genre’s best examples are fully aware of this fact and use it to their advantage, such as the slippery and claustrophobic moralizing of Twelve Angry Men (1956).

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