Month: March 2009 (Page 2 of 2)

The anti-superhero epic WATCHMEN took the top spot this week in Korea — but not by a lot. The classic comic book made just 1.8 billion won ($1.2 million) over the weekend, for a quite tepid opening. Especially considering the film opened on nearly 400 screens (although, to be fair, it was nearly three hours long).

Meanwhile, the cow movie, OLD PARTNER (Wonang Sori) continues to do well, taking in another 1.5 billion won ($1 million) over the weekend to bring its eight-week total to just over $10 million.

(Kind of funny and interesting, btw, how seriously OLD PARTNER’s producers and the police are treating piracy of this film. I mean, I am happy that the powers-that-be are trying to protect anyone’s intellectual property… but with the endemic piracy in South Korea, why is this film so special? And why don’t everyone else’s films deserve the same protection?)

BENJAMIN BUTTON was third, and has now broken the 10-billion-won mark ($6.6 million). Korean film THE SCAM (Jakjeon) was in fourth, with 774 million won to bring its total to 8.8 billion won.

The only other Korean film in the top-10 was HANDPHONE, which was sixth with 314 million won, bringing its total box office to just over 4 billion won.

Not a lot of arthouse love in Korea, as the much acclaimed THE WRESTLER opened in eighth, and the Colin Firth crime caper IN BRUGES opened in 10th.

(All numbers courtesy of KOBIS, and the chart is from KOFIC).

Not that anyone asked, but I liked WATCHMEN, albeit with a lot of reservations. It certainly was not a perfect film, or even great. And it has the worst use of a Leonard Cohen song in a movie soundtrack that I can recall. But I did like the movie’s ambition, and that it followed the comic’s peculiar rhythms instead of the usual three-act Hollywood blockbuster cliche.

I guess this really is the year of the cow — OLD PARTNER (Wonang Sori) was the No. 1 film in the land for a second week. The low budget documentary made another 2.4 billion won ($1.55 million) to bring its total box office now to 13.3 billion won ($8.4 million). In fact, OLD PARTNER has now topped 2 million admissions. Pretty amazing for a film that did not sell even 6,000 tickets in its opening weekend.

In second, once again, was BENJAMIN BUTTON, followed by Korea’s THE SCAM (Jakjeon). The top new film was Clive Owen’s THE INTERNATIONAL, down in fourth. Other new openers were THE UNBORN in sixth and Korea’s GUSEJU 2 in ninth.

December’s big hit, SCANDAL MAKERS (Gwasok Seukaendeul) finally dropped out of the top 10, falling to 12th. But don’t feel too bad for the silly Cha Tae-hyun comedy: now that it is topped 8.2 million admissions, SCANDAL has become the sixth-biggest film ever in Korea. And, even better, it has apparently had its remake rights picked up by Hollywood.