Film & Entertainment BlogWatch
Most of the blogs on this page are film-related, but Mark Russell’s Korea Pop Wars is a bit broader. If you know of any other film blogs with a specifically Korean angle, let me know.
Posted 9 weeks ago: With the persistent problems with the Korean press in the past (film_blog/portraits/the_strange_ca~ Then again, he has a consistent record of getting recognition from foreign critics and audiences: he received the Best Director awards at the Berlin International Film Festival, for Samaria (2004) and at the Venice Film Festival 3-Iron (2004). So honors are nothing new for him, but a major ... [
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Posted 9 weeks ago: Happy happy joy joy Korean TV and film stars celebrated... themselves, I suppose, for The 44th PaekSang Arts Awards (http://isplus.joins.com/100sang/) last week (Thursday, April 24) in Seoul (aired on SBS), and the greater good of all things screen-related, big and small. Not much to say about the "content", since I must admit I haven't seen a whole lot of the ... [
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Posted 9 weeks ago: One of my colleagues - a true connaisseur of all things anime - brought this to my attention yesterday: Studio Flying, the animation team that worked on Aachi & Ssipak, is coming back with a spectacular-looking project, Mad Monkey. The format if the film is basically a series of 3 OAVs (70 minutes total) that will be directly released on ... [
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Posted 12 weeks ago: I have not had the occasion to comment on the hallyu (Korean Wave) panel that I had the chance to moderate, on August 23rd. Nor did I have much time to blog much, of late... swamped as I was in my recent duties. At any rate, since I am evoking the “Is the Korean Wave dead” roundtable, I should mention ... [
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Posted 13 weeks ago: I have not had the occasion to comment on the hallyu (Korean Wave) panel that I had the chance to moderate, on August 23rd. Nor did I have much time to blog much, of late... swamped as I was in my recent duties. At any rate, since I am evoking the “Is the Korean Wave dead” roundtable, I should mention ... [
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Posted 13 weeks ago: The New York Korean Film Festival 2007, presented by Helio and organized by The Korea Society: Paradise Murdered will be screened on - Tuesday, August 28th 2007, 9:00 PM. At the IFC Center The tiny but lively community that lives on the remote island nicknamed “Paradise Island” (Gukrak-do) is, as the epithet suggests, a peaceful, almost utopian micro-society. Or would ... [
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Posted 13 weeks ago: On Thursday, August 23, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm, I will be moderating a panel discussion with: Kim Yong-Hwa (director of the blockbuster comedy, 200 Pound Beauty) Michael Huh (vice president, ImaginAsian TV) Robert Cagle (assistant professor of cinema studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) Recent years have seen a wave of Korean pop culture (hallyu) sweep across Asia as ... [
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Posted 13 weeks ago: The New York Korean Film Festival is having its second Short Film program on August 30th at Cinema Village. The theme of this year’s edition is: Universality. The purpose is “to honor the works, which communicate and connect with various culture and audience by sharing something that is core in life.” “In Your Eyes”, one of the animation finalist After ... [
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Posted 13 weeks ago: The New York Korean Film Festival 2007, presented by Helio and organized by The Korea Society: Unstoppable Marriage will be screened as an International Premiere on - Friday, August 24th 2007, 4:40 PM. At Cinema Village - Wednesday, August 29th 2007, 9:00 PM. At Cinema Village Unstoppable Marriage is director Kim Sung-Wook’s first movie and a good piece of romantic ... [
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Posted 13 weeks ago: Tazza: the High Rollers (http://www.koreasociety.org/conten~ will be screened on - Saturday, August 25th 2007, 9:00 PM. At Cinema Village - Sunday, September 2nd 2007, 6:00 PM. At BAM Rose Cinemas By some odd coincidence, as I was looking for the Japanese title of Tazza for some work I had to do in the prospect of the upcoming festival, I came ... [
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Posted 4 days ago: ———-Coming This Week to Korean Theaters——- Broken English (us)- d. Zoe Cassuvetes starring: Parker Posey, Melvil Poupaud The Counterfeiters (au/gr)- d. Stefan Ruzowilzky starring: Karl Markoulias, August Djehl www.diefaelscher.at Crows Zero (jp)- d. Takashi Miike starring: Shun Oguri, Takayuki Yamada www.crows-zero.co.kr Fast Food Nation (us)- d. Richard Linklater starring: Greg Kinnear, Wilmer Valderrama www.fastfoodnation.co.kr Hancock (us)- d.Peter Berg starring: Will ... [
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Posted 7 days ago: I have always maintained that some of the best work coming out of Korea is in the form of short films. Unfortunately, most of these are not seen outside of film festivals which means the vast majority of short films are not seen by many people in or out of their country of origin. The digital tv service Hana-tv took ... [
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Posted 10 days ago: The rankings of the films listed above is slightly different than the official list as I did not wish to include any film that has not actually been released yet. However, the early screenings of Crossing, opening on Thursday this week, attracted enough attention so that it was in the 10th spot nationally and the 8th spot in Jeonju. ———-Coming ... [
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Posted 18 days ago: ———-Coming This Week to Korean Theaters———- 21 (us) - d. Robert Luketic, starring: Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey www.blackjack21.co.kr Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (fr/iran)- d.Hana Makhmalbaf, starring Nikbakht Noruz, Abdolali Hoseinali www.school2008.co.kr Doomsday (uk)- d. Neil Marshall, starring Rhona Mitren, Bob Hoskins www.doomsday2008.co.kr Get Smart (us)- d. Peter Segal, starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway www.getsmart2008.co.kr Indie Anibox (kr)- d. Kim ... [
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Posted 19 days ago: Well, my internet problems that I thought were fixed reappeared and the technician came back to say that it was because I needed a new modem–hopefully, everything is really solved this time. I had also been busy with giving final exams–now they are finished as well and I should have enough time to do everything I want–especially working on this ... [
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Posted 4 weeks ago: ———-Coming This Week to Korean Theaters———- Appleseed 2 (jp)- d. Shinji Aramaki starring: Ai Kobayashi, Koichi Yamadera www.exmachina.jp Beyond All Magic (kr)- d. Jo Nam-ho starring: Kim Soo-mi, Shim Hye-jin www.blackheart2008.co.kr Flash Point (hk)- d. Yip Wai-shun starring: Donnie Yen, Louis Koo www.upgrade-action2008.co.kr Happening (us)- d. M. Night Shyamalan starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel www.foxkorea.co.kr/happening Hulk 2 (us)- d. Louis ... [
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Posted 4 weeks ago: It is my sincere belief that the good people at Hana-Tv nor the person have never seen this movie. Otherwise they would not have classified it as a drama and placed it as such on their menu. Then again, judging by the poster and the title, you would probably never guess that this film is a horror movie. I was ... [
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Posted 4 weeks ago: Well, my internet problems have been solved and everything is back to normal now. I will probably still be slow posting this coming week because I am giving final exams in my classes. But things should be back on track after that. For now, here are the next ten films produced in Korea in 1971. You can click and then ... [
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Posted 5 weeks ago: ———-Coming this Week to Korean Theaters———- The Eye (us)- d. David Moreau, Xavier Palud starring: Jessica Alba, Alessandro Nirola www.theeyethefilm.com (remake of an excellent Hong Kong horror film..do yourself a favor and rent the original) Final Victory (kr)- d.Tae Joon-shik http://cafe.naver.com/finalvictory Girl Scouts (kr)- d.Kim Sang-man starring: Kim Seon-ah, Na Moon-hee www.girlscouts2008.co.kr The King (us/uk)- d. James Marsh starring: Gael ... [
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Posted 5 weeks ago: I have been having problems with my home internet connection which is why I haven’t been able to post much this week. Hopefully, I will get everything fixed this weekend… The good people over at Gesomoon–a popular website here in Korea–have asked permission to translate some of my articles into Korean. I have agreed and have been surprised at the ... [
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Posted 4 days ago: Not much to say this week about the box office. PUBLIC ENEMY RETURNS is still doing well, up to 2.7 million admissions. KUNG FU PANDA is about to pass 4 million admissions and should become the biggest foreign film of the year shortly. Oh and I should note how poorly Kwak Jae-young's MY MIGHTY PRINCESS did. Worse than DAISY. Ouch.This ... [
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Posted 8 days ago: The organizers of the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) made their official announcement of this year's fest earlier in the week. And as usual, it looks like a pretty loaded festival, with oodles of special sections for just about every taste. PiFan will open on July 18 and run until July 25. Opening film is WALTZ WITH BASHIR by ... [
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Posted 10 days ago: Just found out that the newest Pixar film, WALL-E, has had its opening pushed back to July 31. Buena Vista bastards. The film had been scheduled to open nearly at the same time as North America (July 3 in Korea), but now they expect us to wait a month? Terrible. Looks like the DVD pirates around Seoul just found a ... [
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Posted 10 days ago: Great news -- the Korean Film Archive is finally putting out a 4-DVD box set of Kim Ki-young's movies. It's about time!Kim, of course, is one of Korea's most famous directors from the 1960s, most notably for his 1960 thriller THE HOUSEMAID (which also featured a young Ahn Sung-ki). The box set will feature GOREOJANG, PROMISES, CHUNGNYEO and, best of ... [
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Posted 11 days ago: At long last, a Korean film is back on top of the box office, Kang Woo-suk's PUBLIC ENEMY RETURNS. Like you would expect from a Kang film, it opened strong, with 1.4 million admissions over the weekend (around $7 million). The big question is how well it will hold up over the next couple of weeks. Kang's SILMIDO kept on ... [
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Posted 12 days ago: Just heard about an odd announcement on Facebook -- looks like the magazine Rokon is having a farewell party on June 27 at Sortino's in Itaewon. Does that mean Rokon is no more? Seoul has several free English-language magazines -- ROKON, GROOVE, and ELOQUENCE (not to mention one not-so-free magazine, SEOUL). While Rokon was definitely the prettiest of the freebies, ... [
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Posted 15 days ago: Okay, this is strange. American rock group WEEZER has apparently covered a Boa song. The ballad MERI KURI (aka, MERRI CHRI) is supposed to appear on the Japanese version of Weezer's newest record, THE RED ALBUM. When I went to Amazon.co.jp, I could not find the song listed on any of the versions of THE RED ALBUM, however I found ... [
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Posted 15 days ago: Sorry for putting this week's top-10 up so late. Crazy busy week here. KUNG FU PANDA is really on a tear, beating out a couple of big new entries in its second weekend. Nearly 1 million tickets in its second weekend? With $16 million so far, if PANDA keeps it up, it could become the most successful animated film ever ... [
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Posted 21 days ago: The Chosun Ilbo has pictures of a fire that engulfed a historical drama set at a KBS-TV lot in Suwon on Thursday (June 12). (HT: Korea Beat). [
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Posted 4 weeks ago: Holy crap! Korean movies in May had their worst month on record -- just 7.8 percent of the boxoffice. KOFIC says that is the lowest level they have since 2000 (when they started tracking). Ouch. Just one Korean film in the top 10 this week, GIRL SCOUT, so the bad news is going to continue for at least a little ... [
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Posted 4 hours ago: MBC’s When Night Comes, SBS’s Iljimae The following article from OSEN takes a look at the difference between the types of dramas on the air these days. I find a lot of mainstream entertainment press to be oversimplified (I’m sure I’m just not looking in the right places), but it’s something to chew on, for those of us who are ... [
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Posted 11 hours ago: Happy Fourth of July!! May you all have too much to eat and drink, plenty of sun in which to bask (heed faux Vonnegut! Wear sunscreen), and lots of fireworks to watch. Me, I’m gonna have a nice, relaxing day that hopefully requires as little thinking as possible. Something tells me that shouldn’t be too hard. Just added! A poll, ... [
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Posted 24 hours ago: Hmm. I didn’t really love the first half of Episode 7, although that wasn’t because it was bad. I think we’re just in that phase where plot setups start to bear results, and some of those can lead to uncomfortable moments. The developments are necessary, of course, and we get some nice acting amidst a more somber tone. And this ... [
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Posted 32 hours ago: The crew of MBC’s upcoming Wednesday-Thursday drama Lawyers of the Republic of Korea gathered on the afternoon of June 2 in Seoul’s Kangnam neighborhood for the show’s press conference. The drama centers around the world of divorce law (and the warring divorce attorneys on either side), in which Lee Soo Kyung (Soulmate, Golden Age of the Daughter in Law) plays ... [
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Posted 2 days ago: As briefly mentioned earlier, Kang Ji Hwan stars in a new movie with So Ji Sub. Wow. Two heartthrob stars who are actually strong actors, working together! Their film is titled A Movie Is A Movie and just wrapped filming yesterday, having begun shooting in May. Their final filming session actually began on June 30, but lasted 26 hours, culminating ... [
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Posted 2 days ago: I was actually writing up So Ji Sub’s new movie (with Kang Ji Hwan!) and was looking to see what his next project was, and got wrapped up in trying to untangle THAT mess. (So Kang Ji Hwan will have to wait for the next post.) I’d been hearing about the high-profile drama Cain & Abel forever, but all the ... [
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Posted 3 days ago: Episode 6 was the first episode where I thought that rather than being entirely so-bad-it’s-good, there were parts that were pretty decent on their own merits. Not the entire episode, of course — Chil Woo wouldn’t be fun if it were played completely straight — but just enough to make this episode resonate (with me) more than merely for its ... [
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Posted 3 days ago: Song Seung Heon grapples with a foe, leaps off a building and performs his own stunt wire work while shooting MBC’s upcoming epic drama (spanning multiple decades, from the sixties to the present), East of Eden, which premieres August 25. He films on location in Hong Kong. [
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Posted 3 days ago: Um… can Shin Dong Wook please rehire his hair stylist back from his Soulmate days? He hasn’t had a good haircut in years. Here he dons a mask and shows off a magic trick while recording for his new gig, as the new host of Mnet’s Chasing Your X-Boyfriend. July 1, Seoul, at the X-boyfriend studios. [
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Posted 4 days ago: Ooh, Episode 5 is good. And with Strongest Chil Woo, “good” really means “bad,” but you probably already guessed that. This series isn’t just funny. It’s hysterical. I’m pretty hard to surprise, but I have to admit there’s always a moment or two in each episode that literally makes my jaw drop open in disbelief. It’s almost enough of a ... [
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Posted 4 months ago: Review by Darcy Paquet Forever the Moment Handball is not the most glamorous of sports, which may explain why Forever the Moment ranks as the world's first handball movie. But like any sport, it can offer up moments of drama, as when the South Korean women's handball team competed at the 2004 Athens Olympics. The efforts of the players made ... [
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Posted 4 months ago: Review by Kyu Hyun Kim Wide Awake Wide Awake takes one of the real-life medical mysteries -- patients who remain fully conscious (and responsive to pain) but paralyzed during operations, called "intraoperative awareness" -- and weaves a revenge-motivated mystery plot around it. (According to experts this happens shockingly more often than we think -- approximately 20,000 to 40,000 surgery patients ... [
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Posted 5 months ago: An Interview with Bong Joon-ho by Giuseppe Sedia Born in 1969 in Daegu, Bong studied sociology at Yonsei University in Seoul. In 1994-1995 he attended the Korean Academy of Fine Arts, where he produced his first short films. His first feature-length movie, Barking Dogs Never Bite ("Flanders-ui gae") won the Fipresci Prize at the Hong Kong Film Festival in 2001. ... [
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Posted 5 months ago: Review by Adam Hartzell The Salaryman (1962) Early on in Lee Bong-rae's The Salaryman, our patriarch (Kim Seung-ho) is placed in an ethical dilemma enable the boss in his plan to embezzle money from the company, or get fired. Within these limited choices imposed by those in power over his well-being, he chooses the latter. Having given his last ... [
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Posted 5 months ago: Someone Behind You Ka-in (Yun Jin-seo, Old Boy) is a high school student, adept at fencing, with loving parents, a pretty younger sister and a hunky med-student boyfriend (Yi Ki-woo, Tale of Cinema). Everything seems to be perfect, until one day her aunt suffers a terrible accident on her wedding day. She is then graphically stabbed to death by another ... [
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Posted 6 months ago: 2008.01.03: Top news stories of 2007 Since these days I haven't been able to keep up with the old news pages or newsletter, I thought I would take this chance to look back at the top news stories of 2007 (from my perspective, at least). It's been an eventful year, as always! #1. Crisis, Crisis, Crisis. The never-ending news story ... [
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Posted 6 months ago: Review by Adam Hartzell Resurrection of the Butterfly I don't require a film to be completely inspiring and profound. I prefer it to be, but when a film provides a lackluster or non-existent impact, I encourage myself to see what significance might remain for the film in the course of a review rather than focus exclusively on the critical slam. ... [
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Posted 6 months ago: Review by Darcy Paquet Shadows in the Palace The Joseon Dynasty palace is divided into parts, like the chambers of a heart. One part belongs to the women -- or more accurately, the women of the palace belong to this space (Gungnyeo, meaning "palace woman," is the Korean title of the film). Sworn into secrecy, submission, and celibacy, the women ... [
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Posted 6 months ago: Review by Kyu Hyun Kim Paradise Murdered 1986. A group of men are fishing while listening to a live broadcast of the Asian Games. One of their poles snags on a big clamper, and the owner pulls on it delightedly. Splat! The decomposed head of a guy lands in the kettle where ramen noodles are boiling. The men scream their ... [
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Posted 7 months ago: 2007.12.01: Thoughts as the year nears its end There's a very interesting, wide-ranging debate going on over at the Korean Film Discussion Board about where Korean cinema stands now after ten years of growth and commercial development. Have commercial pressures overwhelmed the industry? Creatively, does Korean cinema provide any meaningful alternative to Hollywood at this point? What can we expect ... [
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Korean Artists Association
