Mark James Russell

Books, blog and other blather

Category: Movies (Page 1 of 5)

Comics (and scifi?) come of age in 2017

May 9, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Legion

Okay, superheroes and science-fiction media franchises have been big business for around a decade now. So many superhero movies are getting released all the time, I know we’re getting sick of it all. But having just finished watching the Legion TV series, I think it’s safe to say the genre has really taken a major step forward, at least in terms in TV and the movies — at last, superhero media are becoming templates for telling all types of stories, light, serious, mainstream, and weird, like the comic books that inspired them.

When it comes to TV and movies, so much of superhero storytelling has long seemed, well, just bad. Even as a 7-year-old, watching the original Superman movie, the concept of spinning the planet Earth backwards to reverse time seemed pretty sketchy. Hollywood’s approach to superheroes, like scifi or fantasy in general, wasn’t very smart or respectful of the genre … and certainly not very good as scifi or fantasy.

But then in 2000 came the first X-Man movie, and its relative quality was a big surprise, followed by X-Men 2 and the first Spider-Man movies. Nevertheless, in terms of sophistication, tone, etc., most comics book movies and sci-fi movies were decades behind the mainstream culture (let alone the cutting edge) in writing and drawing.

Christopher Nolan’s Batman films were a big step forward and got all sorts of praise; but, really, they were mostly just updating the superhero movie to about the point of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns miniseries (which came out in 1986!). Yes, they were progress, but still 25 years or so behind the comics (and then the Superman V. Batman movie went right back to that same well for more ideas).

Batman Superman

And even Nolan’s “serious” movies like Inception and Interstellar were pretty sketchy in terms of sci-fi — “the power of love” helping the hero cut through space-time to save the day? In 2014? Really?

Anyhow, so Marvel begins to kick butt once they took over their own production with the first Iron Man movie. People were generally pretty impressed and the film got lots of great reviews, peaking with the Avengers, but people soon grew tired with the noisy, meaninglessness of it all.

But it looks like Marvel was keeping an eye out on popular opinion, and took steps to stay ahead of the curve. And rather than doing so by emphasizing special effects and bombast, they’ve instead chosen to focus more on finding interesting voices to tell those stories. Choosing oddballs like James Gunn (who came from Troma Studios) and Scott Derrickson (who did a Hellraiser movie) was a sign of a new set of priorities.

This year, that approach to superheroes really got a lot more interesting, with the much-praised Logan movie, and now with the Legion TV series.

I really loved Legion in particular  because I so vividly remember reading those Chris Claremont-Bill Sienkiewicz issues of New Mutants that inspired the TV show. Back in the mid-1980s, coming across art like Sienkiewicz in mainstream comics was really mind-blowing. Collages, mixed media, and furious scribbles of jagged ink defined Sienkiewicz’s art, and I went crazy for it.

BS-NewMutants

Combining those classic comics with Noah Hawley (Fargo) was a masterstroke. As Bill Simmons said of the 30 For 30 documentary series he devised for ESPN: If you hire brilliant people, get out of the way and let them be brilliant.

BS-NM-David

To be honest, I was a bit ambivalent after the opening episode of Legion. I thought it was a bit precious, like it was trying too hard. I was worried that once the story got going, it was going to revert into something more traditionally superhero-y, with cheap, TV-level special effects. Was I ever wrong. Throughout the first season of Legion, the storytelling remained vibrant and creative, based on the characters rather than mindless action.

Factor in other good examples, like Arrival (a decent, if flawed, attempt to bringing Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” to the big screen) and perhaps Blade Runner 2049, and it is looking like this is a very good time to be a fan of scifi movies.

large_Arrival-Poster-2016

Of course, there will still be plenty of dumb scifi and superheroes coming our way. 95% of everything is junk, as the saying goes. But it is nice to think that the best stuff is getting better, really pushing the boundaries of TV and film — even if it took a generation for those media to catch up to the comics.

The Year in Korean Movies (Spoiler Alert: ‘Wow’)

January 2, 2013 / / 0 Comments

There have been a lot of ups and downs for the Korean film industry over the years, but 2012 was the biggest up ever, on so many levels. Just looking at the numbers (courtesy of KOBIS):

  • Total admissions: 195 million (old record was 160 million, 2011)
  • Total box office: 1.45 trillion won, or $1.36 billion (old record was 1.26 trillion, 2011)
  • Korean films: 58.8% (2nd best in decades, maybe ever)
  • Korean admissions: 114.5 million (old record was 91.7 million, 2006)
  • Korean box office:  835.5 billion won (old record was 613.7 billion, 2011)

In addition, 32 Korean films pulled in more than 1 million admissions (the old threshold for being considered successful … although, admittedly, that seems a bit low these days). Nine Korean films topped 4 million admissions, three topped 6 million, and two (The Thieves and Masquerade) topped 12 million.

Just to give you some perspective, before 1999’s Shiri, no Korean movie had ever pulled in more than 4 million admissions. Shiri blew away the records then, with 6.2 million admissions, but today that is not enough to crack the top-20.

Those aren’t the officials numbers, btw. Just my quick look at KOBIS. But clearly 2012 was pretty freakin’ incredible for Korean movies, especially for someone who first traveled to Korea in 1996 when the movie industry was in shambles financially (when they made 23% of a 203 billion box office).

Changing of the Guard

September 3, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Kind of exciting to see that there are now new top dogs in town, for both Korean movies and music.

In movies, Thieves has shot past The Host to become the top-grossing movie Korean of all time. According to KOBIS, Thieves now has made 90.9 billion won ($80.4 million) from 12.6 million admissions. That puts Thieves well ahead of The Host‘s 79.3 billion won ($70.1 million), although still behind its 13 million admissions.

In music, Psy’s “Gangnam Style” is now the biggest Youtube success for any Korean song, topping 94 million views. As it had just 73 million a few days ago, I guess it will probably keep rising for a while. (UPDATE: I woke up this morning to see it at 99 million views. Most likely will top 100 million before the end of the day. Kind of amazing how, once something goes viral, it just keeps going).

The previous leader was Girls Generation’s “Gee,” which has about 84 million views.

Of course, what does 94 million Youtube views really mean? It’s impressive, but the significance is not so clear-cut (nothing really is these days, I guess). Psy has been No. 1 on Apple’s music video chart for quite a few days, as well as Billboard’s Social Media chart. But the song is just No. 31 on Apple’s iTunes singles chart, No. 72 on Billboard’s digital singles chart and it isn’t on Billboard’s Hot 100 at all.

(Although his album is No. 2 on Billboard’s World album chart and No. 24 on the Heatseekers album chart).

But, even if Psy isn’t the second-coming of Michael Jackson (or even LMFAO), the “Gangnam Style” phenomenon is still a pretty spiffy achievement. Good for him. Between this song, Girls Generation on Letterman, Wondergirls on Nickelodeon, etc., K-pop has gotten the West’s attention. And, more importantly, K-pop artists have mostly done so on their own terms, not following the advice of Western A&R guys or other consultants.

Anyhow, regardless of what happens next with Psy and Kpop, I vow never to let this happen to me:

Batman vs. Drunkman

July 19, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The pre-release hype for the latest mega-huge Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, is reaching a peak, and so far the reviews look quite good. But I was amused to see Rises‘ rating on Metacritic at the moment, a very strong 81, still lags behind Hong Sangsoo’s mega-low-budget, rambling boozefest that is The Day He Arrives, with 84.

Was the budget for Hong’s movie enough to make one Batsuit? One day’s catering on the set of Rises?

Arg… Hard to read. Just to make things clearer, here is a close-up (note: this is Metacritic’s 90-day chart of highest-ranked movies):

South Korean Dreams, North Korean Rocky, and Spanish Nightmares

July 12, 2012 / / 0 Comments

– I’ve talked a few years ago about the end of the Dream Cinema, the last old-style, single-screen cinema left in Seoul. Well, after stumbling along on life support, Dream Cinema (aka Seodaemun Art Hall) finally screened its last movie yesterday, Bicycle Thief. Theater head Kim Eun-ju was apparently so upset, she shaved her head at the screening.

Dream Cinema opened in 1964 and for many years was one of the nicer theaters in Seoul. But that was quite a while ago, and it was terribly run down when I first went there in 1998-ish. Sad to see the theater go, but, still, considering it was supposed to close in 2007 or so, it had a pretty good run. Besides, who isn’t excited about a new high-rise hotel filling the Seoul skyline?

– Not only is North Korean leader Kim Jong-un apparently dating a famous singer and incorporating Disney characters into its stage performances, but now Kim is reportedly using the theme from Rocky, Sinatra’s “My Way”, and “It’s a Small World.”  All that is, of course, in addition to the North Korean accordion version of “Take Me On”:

– Meanwhile, over here in Spain, the torpid Rajoy government seems intent on running down the struggling economy any way it can. Remind me again why Spain has to undergo this sort of pain when its debt-to-GDP ratio is lower than in Germany, France, the United States, or Japan? What a crock.

 

Doomsday Book – Part I

July 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

At long last, I have finally started watching the Korean science-fiction triptych Doomsday Book.I wanted to watch it during my trip to Korea in May, but the film was already gone from the cinemas, even though it opened on April 20. Nice going, distributors (I think it was Lotte).

Doomsday Book is actually three short films, co-directed by Yim Pil-sung and Kim Jee-woon. Kim, of course, is one of Korea’s most highly regarded directors, knowns for constantly trying out different genres — Foul King (comedy about pro-wrestling), Tale of Two Sisters (gothic horror), Bittersweet Life (gangster noir), The Good, the Bad, the Weird (spaghetti western), and I Saw the Devil (hyper-violent and total shite).

Yim Pil-sung, on the other hand, is famous for being total box office poison. Antarctic Journal was a moody, ambient horror film about Korean explorers at the South Pole. It did not quite work, but at least it suggested possibilities and creativity. It also was one of the biggest money losers in Korea history (especially at the time it was released). Hansel & Gretel was a dark reinterpretation of the famous fairy tale. It completely did not work and suggested that the director might be really terrible (I reviewed it at my old website). After those two bombs, Yim was pretty much a filmmaking pariah, with no Korean production company or distributor willing to go anywhere near him.

But the funny thing is, in the Korean movie scene, he is pretty tight with a lot of the top Korean directors. That’s why he shows up in Bong Joon-ho’s The Host as a supporting character. And it also means that when Yim does get to make a movie, he is able to get top actors and support from Korea’s movie scene.

As I said, Doomsday Book is a triptych, with a segment about tainted food creating a zombie panic, a Buddhist robot, and a meteor crashing toward the Earth. Gord Sellar talked a lot about the film already, and, as with most things pertaining to Korean science fiction, he’s a good place to start.

Doomsday Book has been in the works for quite some time. I remember people talking about it years ago, and the Wikipedia page claims that production started in May 2006. But after Yim and Kim filmed their segments, financing fell through, and they were only able to raise the money to finish it last year.

Oh, SPOILER WARNING, of course.

So far, I have just seen the zombie segment, titled “A Cool New World,” about how a bad apple (literally) and some disgusting recycled organic matter leads to a kind of Mad Cow outbreak that created zombies. There is also a bit of a love story, although it is pretty weak and not terribly important. Mostly people eat tainted meat, then turn into zombies. There’s a lot of blood and gunk, but nothing too crazy violent and gory … In fact, I would say the most disturbing stuff are the real-life clips you see, like of pigs being pushed into pits for being killed during a hoof-and-mouth outbreak.

The amazing thing is that this was filmed in 2006, two years before the US beef freakout that shut down downtown Seoul for several weeks in 2008. Even more amazing, as Gord points out, is the film in no way blames outsiders for the plague, keeping the causes and agency totally directed at Korea. Kind of the opposite of The Host or Kim Seong-su’s coming film Flu (or, for non-s/f, Welcome to Dongmakgol).

Most of the film is, unsurprisingly, satire and social criticism, some of it quite funny and some of it silly. I’m sure I missed a lot of it, as it does come pretty fast and thick at times. There is a good long chunk that comes from a TV news-discussion program called 90-Minute Discussion, obviously a play off of KBS’s 100-Minute Discussion (100분토론). The program has a conservative woman named “Park Ho-Yeong” (actually played by Park Ho-yeong) from the “Hanauidang Best Hospital” who I bet is supposed to be Park Geun-hye of the Hannaradang conservative party (well, the party has changed names now, but that was its old name). Director Bong Joon-ho plays a progressive, wearing a casual hanbok, with a chart showing how the zombie virus outbreak coincides with conservative voting patterns. As the zombie plague gets worse, the show devolves into the host and speakers singing and playing music like from a 1980s university.

Hopefully I will get around to watching the next two segments later this week and post a few thoughts about them.

Anyhow, here’s the first trailer to Doomsday Book (with English subtitles):

More Korean Box Office 2011

January 31, 2012 / / 0 Comments

It looks like the official box office results for 2011 are out, and they look pretty close to what I estimated at the beginning of January. Key numbers:

– 158 million admissions
– ￦1.23 trillion ($1.10 billion) in revenue
– South Korean films were 52% of tickets sold, 49.8% of revenue
– 166 local titles released, versus 320 foreign titles
– CJ E&M Corp (née CJ Entertainment) was the top distributor (no surprise), with 37.5% of the box office, six of the top 10 movies, and 44 titles released overall.
– Top movie was Transformers 3, with 7.9 million admissions, good for  ￦74.8 billion ($66.7 million) — proving, once again, that Koreans love robots
– Top Korean movie was War of the Arrows (최종병기 활), with 7.5 million admissions, but just ￦55.8 billion ($49.8 million).

(Thanks, as always, to Film Biz Asia for their great work).

Holiday Movie Roundup

January 15, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I went on a pretty good movie spree over the last few weeks, so I thought I would add my brief opinions on some of them. Spoilers here, so beware (more spoilers of tone than plot, though):

Tin Tin – B-

Mostly harmless. Spielberg not trying usually brings out his best.

Mission Impossible 4 – F

Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. Stupid, mindless, annoying, and decidedly second-rate action. Maybe objectively it was not the worst film of the season, but because I expect so much more from director Brad Bird, I give it an outright fail.

Sherlock Holmes 2 – D-

Basically Transformers, minus the robots — that is, senseless noise for two long, long hours. Not sure why I am not giving it an outright F … perhaps Robert Downey’s acting? Perhaps the occasional flash of creativity in a couple of action sequences? Maybe I have no taste? Anyhow, really, really bad.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – B

I really wanted to like this — John LeCarré’s spy novels are a great antidote to the mindless action of James Bond or 24. I quite liked the book, although not overly so (so I think I could watch the movie objectively). But in the end, I did not like it much. It ended up feeling way too disjointed and dull. George Smiley actually does talk and communicate, unlike in this movie, where he just stares into nothingness. Still, deserves a decent grade for not being a non-stop noise fest and having some thoughtfulness.

The Descendants – B+

After so many noisy action films, it was good to see a story with something approaching human characters and human emotions. But it was also pretty formulaic in its own way, especially the saccharine ending.

Drive – B

For the first hour of this movie, I thought it was a sure A. Then I thought it was probably an A-. But after the end, just a B. If a movie is called “Drive,” and the characters repeatedly talk about what a special driver the main character is, you kind of expect his driving skills will be a big part of the story, maybe even the finale. But a better title for this film would have been “Stab.” Anyhow, great soundtrack.

The Day He Arrives – B+

Yeah, it is not really a holiday film, but I just saw it so I’ll include it anyway. Hong Sang-soo really shines in black and white. As he said for Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Hong’s first black and white movie, and still my favorite of his), black and white helps audiences concentrate on the story and not get side-tracked by less important details.* Regardless, it is certainly Hong’s best-looking film, with some gorgeous shots of Bukchon in the snow.

the-day-he-arrives-01-web

Being a Hong Sangsoo film, I guess a plot recap isn’t really necessary — people drink too much, hook up, have awkward conversations, patterns repeat, etc. If there is anything that makes The Day stand out, perhaps it is the surreality of the film, as characters swirl about without any sense of time really passing or events occurring. Is it one day we’re seeing, like Groundhog Day?

The snow adds to that surreality, as Hong’s filming style does not really allow for a lot of continuity — snow appears and disappears, seemingly at random. But that’s okay, because as in many HSS films, characters also appear and disappear at random. Actress Kim Bo-kyeong plays two different characters, also adding to the swirling sense of dislocation you get watching the movie.

Ultimately, though, Hong Sangsoo continues to disappear ever deeper into his own navel, and his films all suffer. The Day He Arrives may be one of his best variations — light, fun, and interesting — but it is still a variation on the same theme. After 12 movies, I would not mind if he tried some different themes.

*(Not that I didn’t get hopeless distracted by his locations anyway. I was so happy to see Hong return to that great Insa-dong fish restaurant, where so much of Virgin Stripped Bare takes place).

Korean Box Office 2011 — Still Setting Records

January 5, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I thought I would add a quick note about the Korean box office for 2011. Numbers are still preliminary, but they certainly look very good. According to KOFIC:

– It was the biggest year every for overall box office in Korea, with 1.24 trillion won ($1.07 billion) in revenues and 160 million admissions.

– With 51.9% of the box office going to Korean movies, it was the best year for domestic cinema since 2006 — or 82.9 million admissions. And according to Kofic, 612 billion won would make it the best year ever for revenues (although I suspect the numbers for 2006 might have been incomplete).

– With 622 billion won for non-Korean movies, it was the second-best year for international cinema in Korea.

So big congratulations to everyone who helped make the year so good. And I hope 2012 will continue to be so strong.

« Older posts

© 2024 Mark James Russell

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑