PiFan Preview

Bloody Fight in Iron-Rock Valley (철암계곡의 혈투, Cheolhamgyegokeui Hyeotoo)
90 Minutes (90분, 90-boon) 2012
Horror Stories (무서운 이야기, Nooseowoon Iyagi) 2012
Over My Dead Body (시체가 돌아왔다, Sichega Dolawassda) 2012
Super Virgin (숫호구, Suthogoo) 2012
The Suicide Shop 3D (Le Magasin des Suicides, France) 2012
The Crucible (시련, Silyeon) 2012
Interview with Young Gun in the Time's Oh Young-doo
Young Gun in the Time (영건 탐정 사무소, Yeong-geon Tam-jeong Sa-moo-so) 2012
Zombie 108 (城Z-108, Taiwan) 2012
The Heineken Kidnapping (De Heineken ontvoering, Holland) 2011
Osaka Violence (大阪外道, Japan) 2012

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:

PiFan Preview Part 5: Myung Films, 70s Korean Comedites and More!

Twitch Reveals its Top Picks

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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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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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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 Thieves

(The Korea Times, July 11, 2012)

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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.

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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!

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

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NYAFF 2012: Doomsday Book (인류멸망보고서, In-lyoo-myeol-mang-bo-go-seo) 2012

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.

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Korean Box Office Update (07/06-07/08, 2012)

Deranged Beats Spidey in Massive Debut

	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

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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

Dangerously Excited

(The Korean Times, July 2, 2012)

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NYAFF 2012: King of Pigs (돼지의 왕, Dwaejiui Wang) 2011

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.

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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July 2012 Korean Releases

This monthly features previews the coming month's attractions in Korean cinema. All of these monthly posts are available in an archive on the Upcoming Releases page.

July 5

Deranged

July 12

Bloody Fight in Iron-Rock Valley
Dangerously Excited
Sex, Lies and Videotape
Two Moons
Venus in Furs

July 19

Tears of the Antarctic
The 5-Million-Dollar Man
Ukelele Love Together

July 25

The Thieves

July 26

Horror Stories

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