Month: October 2006 (Page 2 of 2)

Just because PIFF was going on does not mean the rest of Korea stops going to the movies. But it does mean I am late in updating the charts.

Not much to report this week… except that TAZZA has topped 5 million attendance (around $33 million). Not bad for just 20 days in the theaters.

(Source: Film2.0)

Sorry for not posting for so long. This year was, for me, probably the busiest Pusan International Film Festival I have ever experienced. It was my first year there without my old editor doing the heavy lifting. And on top of it all, I had a feature I was writing for the New York Times. It is great writing for the NYT, but it requires a totally different part of the brain than writing for the trades does. Put it all together, and you get quite a hectic and stressful PIFF… but mostly in a good way.

After seeing a few movies in the opening days, I had to spend most of my time at the Asian Film Market. This was the first official year of the AFM, at least in name. There has always been plenty of industry events at PIFF, under a series of names and acronyms. But this year they put everything together and expanded the market and gave it a name.

AFM is basically four days of industry events and showcases and stuff like that. Four floors of the Grand Hotel were filled with movie companies looking to sell their wares. Down on the lower levels of the hotel, there was a location market and seminars. In the evenings, plenty of parties.

Most of the parties were to build recognition for some movie or another, or else for an entire country’s industry. But for some reason, no one knows how to throw a party because the majority of events were terrible — long (very long), poorly written presentations about some project or another with no care or concern about whether the guests were enjoying themselves. Consider it a metaphor for the entire Korean film industry.

Korean highlights include:
– Showbox had a big bash where they revealed more footage from D-WAR, a ridiculously expensive dragons-in-Los Angeles film. D-WAR will cost an incredibly $60-million (or more). Most of the money comes from private investors (especially director Shim Hyung-rae’s brother), but Showbox is investing a good hunk, too.
– Taewon Entertainment is investing in the $25-million epic THREE KINGDOMS: RESURRECTION OF THE DRAGON, which will star Andy Lau and Maggie Q.
– CJ Entertainment and Nabi Pictures presented THE RESTLESS, some sort of martial-arts/fantasy thing set in some sort of Asian purgatory with some sort of big-name cast.

Terrance Chang was there, not talking about CHRISTMAS CARGO, a big-budget Korean film that will be filmed in New Zealand eventually. If his announcement is as big as is rumored, though, it will be doozy. Since my blog is not anonymous, however, I will not talk about it yet.

I even met a squad of guys from CAA, which was pretty different. Such a different mindset from the more haphazard way the Asian movie biz usually runs. But Ken Slovitz gave me a quote (CAA usually does not talk to the press), so I was quite happy.

Well, the latest Pusan International Film Festival (the 11th, if you are keeping track at home) kicked off last night, with the usual heaps of hoopla and spectacle. And, as per my personal tradition, I hung out in the back, drinking beer. PIFF’s opening movie is always screened at the Suyeong Yatching Club, on the big outdoor screen with around 2000 people in the audience. But just behind the screening area, there is a couple of small restaurants, selling udong and beer. I find that environment easier on the senses than the earnestness of the PIFF opening ceremonies. Nothing wrong with PIFF’s opening ceremonies, but it is just not to my taste. Beer is.

The opening film this year was Kim Dae-sung’s TRACES OF LOVE, a melodrama about a guy who loses his girlfriend in the Sampoong Department Store collapse of 10 years ago. Now, I only caught part of the film (thanks to the beer), but I luckily happened to be there when the building fell down. Nicely down, given the film’s budget constraints (although I was a little disappointed that no one sang “My Heart Will Go On”). But what happened right after that really turned me off of the film.

Just before the building collapsed, the lead character, played by Yu Ji-tae, was on his way to meet his girlfriend at the Sampoong. He is walking across the street when he sees the building disintegrate, right in front of his eyes. Dust is everywhere, but all Yu’s character thinks about is finding his girlfriend. “Min-ju! Min-ju!” he shouts, in a daze.

The problem was, as he is shouting this, there are dozens of injured people running past him in the other direction, fleeing for safety. Does Yu’s character ask anyone if they need assitance? Does he try to help anyone? Of course, no. All he does is wander around the site for hours, getting in the way of rescure workers, while doing nothing to help anyone. For some reason, that really ticked me off, and soon after I returned to my hotel room to watch the season finale of LOST.

After LOST, it was time for the big opening night party at the Paradise Hotel. It was a pretty decent event, with all the usual suspects there like every year. Most fortunately for me, I bumped into someone I have been trying unsuccessfully to get in touch with for a couple of weeks now (someone who I need to talk to for a North Korea article I am writing). Then we crashed the actors party on the second floor, which was really amusing because they had oodles of fancy food but no one was touching anything. No carbs! Must stay thin! Hah.

Then came the infamous odeng bar. Each year, the odeng bar behind the Grand Hotel is one of the major late-night spots for everyone to drink and make trouble. It was definitely one bar too many for me. I’m just happy I did not continue with my friends who went to some karaoke room. Sleep was much needed for me.

Today, I checked out the newly restored print on the Shin Sang-ok film ARCH OF CHASTITY. I tend to prefer the older films at these film festivals, and Shin’s 1962 movies about a widow and the man who tries falls in love with her was pretty amusing. Lots of sex and heaving bosoms. Not bad for an old film.

Then I saw the Japanese film MEMORIES OF MATSUKO, which was pretty good. Although if I hear that kitchy theme song one more time I might have to stab myself in the ears. It was a quirky film about a guy discovering an aunt he never knew he had. She has just died, and he must clean out her apartment. It was shot very much in the style of the Thai film CITIZEN DOG (that is colorful and surreal, with the occasional musical number), although it was much darker.

Not a lot time for me to talk about this week’s chart (deadlines, deadlines). My quick tally of the 10-day Chuseok box office was about 8 million tickets — not bad, but far from the 12 million some were predicting.

TAZZA: THE HIGH ROLLERS (the new and improved title of WAR OF FLOWERS) easily took the top spot, with nearly 4 million tickets sold since Sept. 27.

ANT BULLY (which was No. 7 the previous weekend, but was not on Film 2.0’s chart when I wrote my post) rose two spots to No. 5 last weekend, while the Kim Jeong-eun comedy JAL SALABOSE fell two spots to No. 8. I’m guessing word of mouth was responsible for much of that movement, along with the additional kids going to the cinema (thanks to parents desperate to get their tykes out of their hair after several days of holiday fun). While not exactly a hit, ANT BULLY is not doing bad for a film on just 94 screens.

The Sponge-distributed VOLVER still ekes out of spot at the bottom of the chart. Nice to see something by Almodovar there, even if it is not tearing up the box office. Hopefully, we’ll see more stuff like that in the weeks and months ahead.

THE HOST is almost toast. Now playing in just 10 theaters around Korea, it looks like Bong Joong-ho’s monster movie has reached the end of its run, with just over 12.97 million tickets sold. So close to the magical 13 million, but just short.

(source: Film 2.0)

Sorry for the less-than-classy headline, but that was my first reaction to reading that Korean movies accounted for 82% of the local box office in September. That is the most ever (well, in modern times), topping the 81% achieved in February.

Even more amazing, the No. 2 country was NOT the United States. Nope, No. 2 went to Japan with 7.3%. Hollywood landed in third with 5.4%.

Just a follow-up to my earlier post on Hong Sang-soo’s latest film, WOMAN ON THE BEACH. It looks like the film is getting quite a good reception in the West. A little surprising considering how often critics do not “get” his movies, even the good ones. But so far, Rotten Tomatoes has a 100% Fresh rating (based on just five reviews, but still not bad). And I’ll also link to the Variety review (not sure how long people can access it for free, though).

UPDATE: Looks like Hong’s good luck has run out. As of Oct. 23, his rating is down to 86%, thanks to a negative review from The Hollywood Reporter.

We are still a few days away from the Chuseok holiday, but all the big films were already released on Thursday, so the weekend box office gives us a good insight on what the big holiday films are going to be. And the winner is — WAR OF FLOWERS. Resoundingly, so.

Congratulations to Choi Dong-hoon, whose popular appeal has finally matched his critical appeal. His last film, THE BIG SWINDLE, never caught on with the public, but this time, I guess Choi done good. Something I had not considered until a friend pointed it out today was the comparison between Matt Damon’s ROUNDERS and WAR OF FLOWERS. WoF is based on the Korean card game hwa-tu, which I never learned how to play, but is apparently full of bluffing and mind-games, much like poker. Rather than display my ignorance too brilliantly, I will refrain from more dubious analogies until I learn the game.

In other movie news, MARRYING THE MAFIA 3 and MAUNDY THURSDAY remained surprisingly strong, at No. 2 and No. 4 respectively. Lee Jun-ik’s RADIO STAR had a fairly middling debut, and THE FOX FAMILY was downright poor. And the Chinese film THE BANQUET tumbled all the way down to No. 8.

(source: Film 2.0)

Some random thoughts…
– The number of screens listed this week was way up, 2,235 all told. Last week we had 1,924. In fact, there are around 1,700 screens in Korea. What gives? I assume that, due to the huge competition for screens, that a lot of films doubled-up, showing two movies on one screen, just at different times.
– Attendance appears to be up nicely, considering the holidays have not officially started yet. This week, 580,000 tickets were sold in Seoul, up from 502,500 last weekend. Not bad, but hardly overwhelming — 640,000 tickets were sold the week HANBANDO was released around July 14, and a massive 780,000 tickets sold for THE HOST’s debut at the end of July. Attendance will have to pick up massively to reach the 10-12 million ticket estimates that some thought would be sold over the 10-day holiday period this year.
– Once again, Korea’s lack of diversity is showing, with not enough films in the theaters to make a top-10. Only eight significant releases (although I’m sure Sponge House, Dongsoong and the Seoul Art Cinema had alternative titles that did not make the chart).

There was a surprisingly good profile of the independent movie distributor Sponge House in today’s Korea Times (you can read it here). For people looking for alternatives to the same-old-same-old Hollywood and Korean mainstream, Sponge House is one of the few alternatives around.

But the money quote for me came about halfway through, when Sponge House president Cho Sung-kyu talked about the Korean Screen Quota. As most followers of Korean cinema know, Korea has long had a quota which requires every movie screen in the nation to show local films a minimum number of days per year. Until recently, that number was about 146 days a year, although by showing Korean films at certain peak times, you could get that number down to 106 days a year. But starting July, the quota has been halved to 73 days a year, although with the peak exemptions eliminated.

Although many support the Korean Screen Quota and measures like it in the name of “diversity,” in fact, the quota can actually impede diversity, as Cho notes in the story.

There is a strong debate in Korea about the diversity of Korean cinema and government regulations towards cinema. Cho says, “I disagree with government regulations. They can have good effects too, but they treat all cinemas the same, while there is a big difference between a Sponge House and other smaller film houses, and the big multiplexes. A measure like the screen quota should be flexible towards different kinds of cinemas,” he added. “If the screen quota hadn’t been reduced, we wouldn’t have opened the Sponge Houses. For Sponge Houses it would have been too difficult to show Korean films 146 days a year,” referring to the boom in popular mainstream films in Korea, and the much smaller number of selections from Korean independent cinema.

Cho is skeptical about the suggested “minimum quota,” a regulation that demands Korean independent/art films be shown for a minimum number of days. “Korean independent cinema and its audiences are small. The minimum quota won’t work. People won’t go to see the films.” However, he believes that the Korean independent cinema can grow from its current five percent to 10 percent of the market in the future.

As difficult as it can be for small distributors and films to compete with the mainstream, I really like reading about someone trying to do just that, with minimum government help/interference. Despite its best intentions, government is not the artist’s friend (and quite often the government has intentions that are far from the best). Finding economic solutions to artistic problems is by far the strongest and most sustainable way to preserve that art. Kudos to Cho for trying.