Showing posts with label the shameless. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the shameless. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

New Korean Films: Let's Make Up the Delay Part I (2015 Week 20-25)

After more than two months of silence, I'm finally back for more discussion about Korean films getting released every week. Since I've missed a lot of interesting films and that I couldn't make my mind to just resume my weekly article as if nothing happened, I've decided that it was better to still present every film released during that period and to add my usual commentary only for the most important of them. This is the first part, covering the films released between May 18th and June 21st, and you can read the second part here.

Alive
(산다)


By Fabien Schneider

Jeong-cheol tries to make ends meets despite all the odds against him. He has to keep an eye on his mentally ill sister who wishes to leave for Seoul and he tries to fulfill his niece’s wish to play piano, while he’s not even sure to have a job to feed them and repair their house. When his coworkers suspect him when an associate runs off with the pay of everybody, Jeong-cheol offers them to take a job all together at a bean plantation.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Cannes 2015 Review: THE SHAMELESS Delivers Hardboiled Melodrama with Top Drawer Performances


By Pierce Conran

"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist"
Pablo Picasso

Today's Korea, whether looking at its entertainment, fashion or culinary scenes, is a society awash with fusion. Nowhere is this more true than in its cinema, as since the late 90s Korean filmmakers have never shied away from playing with genre. Many artists and artisans would do well to take note of the above quote by Picasso (though I imagine he wasn't the first to say it) before dishing out cookie crust shrimp and potato pizzas or dumping a motley crew of genre fare into a blender and calling it a script. However, while these hybrid experiments have frequently backfired, a surprising amount have been successful, including modern classics like Bong Joon-ho's The Host (2006) and Jang Joon-hwan's Save the Green Planet (2003).