Mark James Russell

Books, blog and other blather

Category: Korean movies (Page 1 of 31)

At last — Pop Goes Korea is back!

July 13, 2017 / / 0 Comments

PGK2

Okay, so this took a few months longer than I expected last fall. But at least, Pop Goes Korea (2nd Edition) is out and for sale.

The new version is 10,000 or so words longer than the old one, with all sorts of updates throughout. In addition to updates to each chapter, I’ve also added essays about Korean indie music, another about classic rock, a followup Q&A with Sean Yang (founder of Soribada) and a new Q&A with Dami Lee, the web cartoonist.

Best of all, the 2nd edition is also a lot cheaper, for $4.99 on the US Amazon site.

Oh, but all the photos are gone. Sorry, but I didn’t want the hassle of dealing with all those photo rights all over again. And, besides, this is the internet age, so I assumed people could just search and find all the photos they wanted for any subject.

For now, it is only available as an ebook at Amazon, but I am planning to upload it to all the major ebook sites soon enough.

Okay, it is a bit of an old book for such a high-turnover, constantly changing topic. But I think it holds up fairly well (and there really is nothing else that covers the same territory in English). And for the occasional student of pop culture, hallyu or modern Korea, I thought it would be useful to have my book easily available.

Thanks to all who read the original edition, and to those who are interested in the new one. I really appreciate your time, and I hope you find the new version interesting and useful.

 

 

All you zombies…

July 25, 2016 / / 0 Comments

TraintoBusan1

As I type this, a new Korean blockbuster has come roaring out of the gates, setting several records in its opening weekend. And it’s a zombie movie. How fun is that?

Train to Busan has gotten 5.3 million admissions since its release last Wednesday (including 500,000 or so in pre-screenings), and made about 43.8 billion won. Most impressively, it set a new one-day record, with 1.28 million admissions on Saturday, just beating out the Yi Sun-shin movie, Roaring Currents.

It strikes me as pretty fascinating how good Koreans have gotten at genre blockbusters. From Shiri back in 1999, which kicked off the current age of blockbusters, to the monster fun of The Host in 2006, and now Train to Busan—repeatedly filmmakers here have been able to shake things up with their unique takes on mainstream, Hollywood-style movies.

TraintoBusan2

Anyhow, I doubt Train to Busan will surprise Roaring Currents in the end. It doesn’t have the benefits of a resonant, nationalistic message to squeeze out those last few tickets. But it’s nice to see a smart, well-made blockbuster doing so well.

Incidentally, what’s up with this promotional still? Is it a deliberate homage to The Host?

TraintoBusan3

The_Host-010

‘C’est si bon’ with English subtitles

February 4, 2015 / / 2 Comments

Well, it looks like Ode to My Father has just about finished its run in the theaters in Korea. Or at least an end to the screenings with English subtitles.

Fortunately, something potentially a lot more interesting is taking its place — a new movie about Korean music history titled C’est si bon. The movie is the story of the C’est Si Bon club, one of the more famous music clubs from the 1960s and ’70s, and one of the more famous acts of the period, Twin Folio.

cestsibon

Twin Folio was a folk duo, comprised of the classically trained Song Chang-sik and medical student Yoon Hyun-joo. Their first recording was a Shin Joong-hyun cover on the soundtrack to the movie Green Apple (which I believe has gone missing). They did a split album with the Pearl Sisters in 1969 and then an album of their own in 1970, but by then they had already broken up. Song went on to have a good solo career, becoming a noted songwriter.

Given that Twin Folio was a duo, but the movie has changed them to a trio for “dramatic purposes”, that’s a pretty big red flag. And I was pretty excited about Go-Go 70s, too, but that was a letdown. But who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky this time.

Anyhow, if you want to see the movie with English subtitles, it is playing at the CGV theaters in Shinchon, Yeouido, Yongsan and Cine de Chef in Apgujeong.

Shinchon:

  • Feb. 7 (Sat.) – 5:55pm

Yeouido:

  • Feb. 7 – 5pm

Yongsan:

  • Feb. 8 – 7:05pm

Cine de Chef:

  • Feb. 7 – 10:10pm
  • Feb. 8 – 10:10pm
  • Feb. 9 – 3:30pm
  • Feb. 10 – 10:10pm

Here’s the trailer, with English subtitles:

Ode to My Father – English subtitles

January 20, 2015 / / 4 Comments

Just a little fyi, there are still a few CGV theaters showing the latest big hit, Ode to My Father, with English subtitles. CGV’s website is a bit tough to negotiate for non-Korean speakers, so, if you’d like to check out the fifth-biggest Korean movie of all time:

CGV Yeouido

CGV Yongsan

CGV Shinchon Artreon

Ode

(HT: Hamel)

 

Korean box office — another year, another record

December 30, 2014 / / 0 Comments

And so it was, on Dec. 30, with just one day left in the year, Korean movie theaters once again set a new attendance record. At least, that’s how it looks on KOBIS, where yesterday finished at 213.1 million admissions, just shy of last year’s 213.3 million.

Of course, when it comes to actual revenue, 2014 set a new record a few weeks ago — 1.65 trillion won ($1.5 billion), versus 1.55 trillion won last year.

Roaring Currents

As for Korean movies, as a percentage it was a bit of a down year, and thanks to a late surge does it look like they’ll finish the year right at 50 percent of ticket sales. That’s down from last year’s amazing 59.7 percent, but still pretty frickin’ good.  They made about 811 billion won, which is the third-best ever.

The Hollywood studios, on the other hand, must be ecstatic, setting huge records across the board. 106 million admissions is 23 percent higher than their previous record, and 839 billion won is also a huge record.

Anything else worth mentioning? ADMIRAL: ROARING CURRENTS was crazy popular, of course, making 135 billion won. But 12 Korean movies made more than 20 billion won, and 22 made more than 10 billion won, so from where I sit, the industry looks pretty healthy.

I do find it pretty cool that in all my years in Korea, the movie biz has set new attendance records almost every single year (save three or four, I think).

‘Snowpiercer’ Hits US Screens

June 28, 2014 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a long wait, but Snowpiercer has finally come to movie theaters in the United States. Unlike me, most reviewers in the US seem to quite like the film.  Rottentomatoes has the film at 92% fresh so far, while Metacritic gives it an 84. Not bad at all.

I’m still not a fan of Bong Joon Ho’s latest. But I guess I can see how many critics might appreciate the change of pace, coming after so many, so similar Hollywood blockbusters.

UPDATE: Ah, there are the numbers. Snowpiercer made $162,000 from just EIGHT screens. That’s a per-screen average of $20,000, which is considered very good. Expect to see the film’s rollout expand new week, but probably not that much.

Monday morning evening links

February 3, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Sorry, I was all about to write a little column of links and whatnot when real life suddenly raised its ugly head and kept me busy all day. But better late than never, so…

 

Friday morning links

January 17, 2014 / / 0 Comments

There’s a very fun story in the Korea JoongAng Daily about the movie The Attorney coming on Monday. I’m really looking forward to linking to it. But in the meantime, here are a few things I’ve found interesting recently:

Meanwhile, the weather outside is frightful. No, we’re not experiencing brutal cold or a winter snowstorm. But we are in the middle of a huge chemical fart from China. Thanks China for messing up the air!

From the KMA:

 

Strangely, if appropriately, the Korean website for those color maps of the pollution is called “Kaq“, for Korea Air Quality. But it sounds like “cack“, because that’s pretty much the air quality today.

Label Market Is Open

December 30, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Just a little reminder to anyone who cares about music that Sangsang Madang’s annual Label Market is now open. Running until Feb. 4, the Label Market is your best chance each year to discover and buy Korean indie music, with a slew of music-related concerts and events going on.

 

Sangsang Madang is the arts-related group sponsored by KT&G (huzzah for tobacco and ginseng), most famous for its big, Skeksis-looking building:

See what I mean? No? It’s just me? Fine, moving on then…

Anyhow, the gallery on the second floor is completely lined with CDs from all the major indie labels in Korea and it is open every day until 7pm. Plus there’s still a whole bunch of concerts coming, such as:

Jan. 5 at 6pm – Kim Mok-in, Kang A-sol, Big Pony, Big Baby Driver

Jan. 12 at 6pm – E-Visor, Isang-ui Nalgae (Wings of the Isang), Juck Juck Grunzie, Hwang Boryung=Smacksoft

Jan. 17 at 7:30pm – Grey, First Aid, Saram12Saram

Jan. 18 at 6pm – Ahn Hong-geun, Garlics, Kang Baek-su, Party Street, Hangukin

And there’s plenty more, going until the end of January.

Wednesday morning links

November 13, 2013 / / 0 Comments

I don’t want to say much about the Ailee photo “scandal” (because embarrassing photos are not really a scandal). But I will add two things:

  1. The website that broke the “news” was neither ethnical nor journalistic. But, then, they started as a K-pop troll site, so people shouldn’t have expected anything different. Best to ignore them and move on.
  2. I’m quite impressed how Korea seems to be lined up squarely behind Ailee and against the people who leaked and published the photos. Ten years ago, maybe that wouldn’t have been the result. Way too many foreigners (dumb foreigners) really misread how Koreans would react (yet again).

As for some real news:

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