Music, dance and stage
- Keith Howard and Rowan Pease present Korean music old and new at Asia House on 6 March. Keith will be autographing copies of his recent books.
- Many of us will be heaving a sigh of relief at the discriminatory age-cap applied to the Korean breakdance masterclass at the Roundhouse on March 18. Obviously, I would have signed up if it were open to the over-25s.
- There’s a more genteel session in the morning, where under-25s can have a go at Korean traditional instruments.
- Jump continues at the Peacock.
Film
- Kim So-yong’s In Between Days will be showing at the Birds Eye View Film Festival at the ICA on 9 and 12 March.
- The Oh Soojung Hong Sang-soo Blogathon takes place on 21 March. If anyone feels moved to contribute and wants a forum to publish their thoughts, I’m happy to provide space.
- The Duellist is now scheduled to have a nationwide release on 9 March (brought forward from 31 March, which date was itself a postponement of a date in December last year). Maybe it will actually happen this time.
- Bong Joon-ho’s The Host gets a region 2 DVD release on 5 March. All the extras you can think of apart from a director’s commentary. What’s the betting that will come out in a few month’s time?
- The rather mediocre Korean remake of The Ring gets a region 2 DVD release a week later, as does Kim Ki-duk’s Real Fiction (which you can buy for 4 quid), The Humanist, Soul Guardians… in fact there are so many Korean films being released this month according to Play.com that I just got bored listing them out. What’s incredible is that there’s now around 100 Korean DVDs listed there.
Art
- Kang Seunghee’s colourful work continues on display at Gallery Yujiro
- Kim Sora is still showing at the Baltic space in Gateshead
- Francesca Cho will be showing in the West Wing arts centre in Slough from 3 March
Societies & Academia
- Anglo Korean Society AGM takes place at the Embassy on 14 March, while
- on 22 March the British Ambassador to Korea will present some topical thoughts, again to the AKS.
- The Centre for Korean Studies at SOAS will be presenting a lecture on geomancy in Choson dynasty Korea on 2 March at 5pm (room G52)
- Tessa Morris-Suzuki will be talking at Birkbeck on “Exodus to North Korea: Pursuing the Shadows of the Cold War”, March 19.
Books
- Keith Howard is signing some of his books at Asia House (see first entry above)
- Tom Coyner’s book, Mastering Business in Korea – A Practical Guide, is due for release on Tuesday, 6 March. Available from Seoul Selection.
Tell me what I’ve missed
My Wife is a Gangster and The Quiet Family are also being released on dvd in march
Thanks
I think I missed out MWIAG because I was being pedantic – it was released on 28 Feb, but you’re right to point it out because it has Bey Logan doing a commentary, so it deserves some publicity.
Logan kicked off his Korean commentaries I think with Musa, which was a diabolically, cringeworthily bad commentary. He has been getting better – his Volcano High voiceover was quite informative. So let’s hope he continues his upwards trend.
Quiet Family – in my view rather an also-ran amongst Korean films. I much prefer the zany Japanese remake!
I thought the opposite! preferred the quiet family over happiness of the katakuris, maybe its because i’m a fan of Choi Min-sik and Song Kang-ho that i liked quiet family better and a lot of miike’s stuff seems rushed to me.
oops didn’t know mwiag was released in February.