Showing posts with label yoo ah-in. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yoo ah-in. Show all posts

Monday, June 4, 2018

Cannes 2018 Review: BURNING, a Slow Burn for the Ages


By Pierce Conran

Eight years after his phenomenal drama Poetry, Lee Chang-dong makes a long-awaited return to the Cannes competition with his sixth film Burning, an adaptation of Haruki Murakami's short story 'Barn Burning'. Dense with symbolism, this tour de force burrows towards the ineffable as it gradually builds palpable tension through a mystery that begins to consume its lead character. Yoo Ah-in and Steven Yeun both deliver career-best work while newcomer Jeon Jong-seo is a marvel as the girl who finds herself caught between them.

Friday, September 8, 2017

News: Newcomer Jeon Jong-seo Cast in LEE Chang-dong's Murakami Adaptation BURNING

By Pierce Conran

Auditions appear to have wrapped up for Lee Chang-dong's sixth film Burning as it was announced today that newcomer Jeon Jong-seo will take on the lead female role in the adaptation of Haruki Murakami's short story Barn Burning, originally published in The New Yorker.

Monday, August 21, 2017

News: Will Steven Yeun Star in Lee Chang-dong's BURNING?


By Pierce Conran

Last week we finally got the news we'd all been waiting for when it was confirmed that Lee Chang-dong would finally be getting back behind the camera to shoot his next feature Burning, an adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story. Now, with only a few weeks to go until its mid-September start date, news has broken that Walking Dead and Okja star Steven Yeun has been offered a lead role in the project.

Friday, August 18, 2017

News: Lee Chang-dong Gears Up to Film BURNING, Based on Murakami Short Story


By Pierce Conran

We haven't had a new Lee Chang-dong film since 2010's magnificent Poetry but we got our hopes up last year when his new project Burning was announced, only to have them savagely dashed when a copyright issue stalled the production. That snag has now been resolved and production is set to begin on his new film in the middle of September.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Busan 2015 Review: VETERAN, Who's Gonna Protect Gotham When Bruce Wayne Grew Up to Be an Evil Super-Rich Punk?


Part of MKC's coverage of the 20th Busan International Film Festival.

By Kyu Hyun Kim, Associate Professor at UC Davis and koreanfilm.org contributor.

Seo Do-chul (Hwang Jeong-min), a veteran of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, busts a ring of foreign car smugglers with his teammates, the muscle-bound Detective Wang (Oh Dae-hwan), ass-kicking Miss Bong (Jang Yoon-joo) and the cute rookie Detective Yoon (Kim Si-hoo), under the leadership of the perennially frustrated but bizarrely eloquent Chief Oh (Oh Dal-soo).  Do-chul, a pit bull of a cop, in the process of investigating the smugglers, befriends a trucker, Mr. Bae (Jeong Woong-in). Later, he is invited to a private party as a "consultant" to a hit TV series and witnesses the sponsor corporation's young heir Jo Tae-oh (teen heartthrob Yoo Ah-in) behaving cruelly to one of the partygoers. When Mr. Bae is found to be unconscious and critically wounded from an alleged suicide attempt, after directly confronting Tae-oh's corporation about his unfair firing, the cop smells a rat and starts an investigation, despite pressure from the higher-ups to look the other way. 

Monday, February 3, 2014

Review: THE SATELLITE GIRL AND MILK COW Shows Promise for Korean Animation


By Pierce Conran

There is no shortage of skilled animators in Korea but following the floundering of the local animation industry in the 1970s, most of that talent went into domestic TV production or were sucked into the outsourced contracts of far more lucrative foreign shows such as The Simpsons. Over the last few years, a handful of new feature animations have cropped up in Korean cinema and are serving as embers for what will hopefully become a full-fledged industry in the coming years. 2014 has a few Korean animations in store and the first of those to hit theaters will be The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow, the feature-length debut of Jang Hyung-yun, who previously made a number of acclaimed shorts including A Coffee Vending Machine and Its Sword (2007).

Friday, May 25, 2012

Punch (완득이, Wandeuki) 2011


On the surface Lee Han’s new feature may not seem like much as it treads well-worn territory such of the coming-of-age drama and the sports film.  Even as it unspools it doesn’t seem to break any new ground as we are introduced to a very familiar plot and a fairly typical coterie of characters.  What sets it apart is the skill in its staging.  Though a standard narrative, it is so well executed that it beckons you into its story with a gesture that, like from an old friend, is both welcoming and comforting.  Once you’re nestled into Punch’s world, which hardly takes a moment, subtle and sometimes surprising elements flutter into the film and the outwardly simplistic characters slowly become more fleshed out.  Though it takes some time to realize that you are watching a film that is much more complex than its easygoing exterior lets on.  Lee, who has previously made a name for himself with a series of well-crafted romance films such as Lover’s Concerto (2002), Almost Love (2006) and Love, First (2007), deftly and almost imperceptibly handles the narrative’s many cogs.