Month: November 2006 (Page 1 of 2)

Matt over at the Gusts of Popular Feeling blog has a great post about the Korean boxer Kim Duk Koo (Kim Deuk-gu) and the Kwak Kyung-taek biopic about him, CHAMPION. But then, everything that Matt writes about over at Gusts is worth a look… it is one of the most substantial and interesting sites anywhere on the Internet about Korean culture.

Good to see some pictures of director Kwak, too. Although Kwak’s films are not really to my taste, he is a heck of a nice guy, and I’m convinced that he has a really good film inside him, just waiting to get out. Sometimes it takes a while for any artist to hit his stride, figure out what he’s all about and how to express that best.

Oh, and nice to see Matt mention Mark Kozelek and his Sun Kil Moon band. I’m a big fan, especially of his Modest Mouse covers. Can’t believe I missed him when he toured Korea a few years ago. Hopefully we will get him back before too long.

Martin Scorsese’s THE DEPARTED took top spot this past weekend in Korea… at least in Seoul. In yet another sign of the city/country split going on in Korea, SUNFLOWER actually did better nationally (thanks in part to its additional 124 screens), while THE DEPARTED was easily the more popular film in Seoul.

A similar split was going on at Nos. 3 and 4, with STEP UP winning in Seoul and the Aardman animation FLUSHED AWAY winning nationally.

Screen averages were especially amusing this week. For example,THE PRESTIGE played on just 44 screens, but easily beat SEXY TEACHER, which was on 230. Hah! I bet the theater managers with the 230 prints of SEXY TEACHER are pretty unhappy at the moment.

(Source: Film2.0)

So, of course I saw THE DEPARTED this weekend. And… once again, Scorsese is pretty mediocre. I was actually bored for most of the film, although it did pick up in the last 30 minutes or so. Yet again, here was a Scorsese movie that felt like a photocopy of a Scorsese movie (looks pretty much the same, but with some bad resolution). I really think MS needs to sit down with some digital cameras and some fresh, unknown actors, are re-teach himself all the things that made him great once upon a time.

And, in a random digression, I just re-watched Yim Pil-sung’s ANTARCTIC JOURNAL, and found myself feeling very similarly about it as I did about DEPARTED — both are bad movies made by very talented filmmakers. In Yim’s case, ANTARCTIC was his first feature-length movie, and it is so silly and poorly plotted, it is hard to believe (not to mention having one of the most blatant disregards for basic physics I have ever come across in the movies). No doubt about it, AJ was a bad film. However, it was also clear that director Yim has some serious talent. A good producer and another year of pre-production could totally have turned that movie around.

Luckily, Yim is getting another chance to show what he can do, with the horror film HANSEL & GRETEL, being produced by Barunson. Much like AJ, H&G is about historical parallels and notebooks… but let’s hope someone kicks his butt until the plotting makes sense.

Yim is also doing a short zombie film as part of the triptych DOOMSDAY BOOK, due out next year, too.

With the Christmas and Seollal (lunar new year) holidays approaching, expect a surge in major releases. Both big Korean movies and Hollywood blockbusters. The first “big” movie of the season will probably be Park Chan-wook’s I’M A CYBORG BUT THAT’S OKAY (I’ll try to review it after the press screening next week).

In the meantime, Darcy Paquet at Koreanfilm.org has a very good write-up about the current state of Korean cinema. I’m not sure how much of his thoughts on the rise of independent cinema is real or just wishful thinking… But even wishful thinking can become real if enough people wish the same thing.

The rising interest in Japanese movies is quite interesting. Japanese culture was pretty much banned in Korea from the Korean War until 1998. Then the local market slowly opened. First, three award-winning Japanese films were allowed in. Then award-winning films in general were allowed. Then in January 2004, almost all Japanese pohttp://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifp culture was allowed.

(Although, strangely, Japanese animation was still quite regulated. Strange, I say, because Japanese animation has long been the most ubiquitous form of Japanese culture in Korea. Some of it was dubbed into Korean (and sometimes even presented as Korean), and others were available on the black market and in Japanese culture cafes. EVANGELION has been hugely popular for years. Everybody knows GATCHAMAN (BATTLE OF THE PLANETS in America, and EAGLE 5 in Korea). And Japanese comic books were widely available in translation since I first came to Korea. Yet another one of Korea’s non-ban bans.)

(Parantheses 2: I tried linking to the Wikipedia article on Evangelion, the first choice in that Google search I linked to, but it seemed to crash my Firefox brower every time. I have no idea why. Feel free to let me know if you have any theories/solutions.)

Anyhow, so Japanese movies and TV shows were allowed into Korea en masse, beginning January 2004. At first, a lot of people were worried that they would overwhelm local programming, revealing how much Korean media has cribbed from Japan. But then, surprise surprise, nothing happened. Japanese movies and TV and music barely made a ripple here. Except for Hiyao Miyazaki films and the 1998 release of LOVE LETTER, Japanese movies did poorly. Japanese TV dramas got fairly mediocre ratings. Life moved on.

Turns out, however, that there was a decent market for Japanese culture here. It just needed some time to incubate. This year has seen many Japanse movies do respectable numbers, led by THE SINKING OF JAPAN. I doubt Japanese product will overwhelm Korea, but it good to see the market growing more diverse.

It is especially good to know that most people in both countries have little interest in the annoying nationalism and stupid anti-Korea/anti-Japan garbage spewed by some in both countries. Among the people who really matter — the filmmakers and writers and designers) (not to mention the average folk who care about movies and music and such) — there is a healthy interest in the art and pop culture of their neighbors. And on a business level, the two nation’s entertainment industries are growing more and more interconnected.

As for Darcy’s feeling that there is a lack of energy in Korean movies these days… I am actually a little optimistic, for the first time in quite a while. The big guns of the industry (Bong Joon-ho, Kim Jee-woon, etc.) seem to be working on some good stuff right now. And there are a bunch of new directors making films with potential. CJ Entertainment and Nabi Pictures have teamed up to create a bunch of low-budget genre movies (I’m a big believer that low-budget schlock can be one of the most fertile fields for a film industry). In TV, the cable channels are increasingly churning out new shows to compete with the lame dreck on mainstream TV, much as HBO started to do in the 1990s. Sure, there is a lot of crud out there… but as Sturgeon’s Law says, 95% of everything is crud.

(Or Sturgeon’s Revelation, if you want to be pedantic).

(Note: While writing this entry, my Firefox browser crashed. But upon reopening it, I discovered that my entire post had been saved. I was so surprised and happy. All hail Firefox 2.0!)

Another dreary week at the box office here in South Korea. The top film, HOW THE LACK OF LOVE AFFECTS TWO MEN, won the No. 1 spot with just 281,500 in attendance (about $1.87 million), one of the lowest figures for a No. 1 film in quite a while. But it was nice to see iHQ have one of its films open at the top of the box office. iHQ has been through a long streak of disappointments, so hopefully this will be the start of something good.

Interesting to see DEVIL WEARS PRADA and PRESTIGE holding on to the Nos. 2 and 3 spots for another week, especially while last week’s No. 1, LOVE ME NOT, plummeted to No. 6.

TAZZA is pretty much finished, with 6.77 million tickets ($44.90 million), making it the seventh-biggest film in Korean history. Not a bad run at all.

Just three more days until THE DEPARTED opens in Korea. Much nerdy joy on my part.

(Source: Film2.0)

Those kings of the backhanded compliments, North Korea, have come out with some good press of Bong Joon-ho’s monster movie, THE HOST. Apparently they were quite pleased by the film’s critical stance toward the American military presence in South Korea.

Now, I would never claim to be Bong Joon-ho’s best friend, but from my conversations with the man, plus what I have heard from those who know and work with him, the idea that he is a raging anti-American is pretty off the mark.

Why knows — maybe the North Koreans are just buttering up director Bong so he will remake BULGASARI.

Bong’s THE HOST will make its debut in France on Nov. 22. Maybe even on a good number of screens. Not sure about the United States; I have heard December and February.