Korean Cinema News (01/05-01/11, 2012)

Still not too much news at the beginning of the year but there a few pieces looking at the year ahead and the one just past as well as a brand new English trailer for The Front Line as it gets ready to bow in the US courtesy of Well Go Entertainment.  

KOREAN CINEMA NEWS

Big-Budget Films to Open in 2012
While 2011 saw the release of some novel, genre-defying works, not many local films aside from Sunny and War of the Arrows (a.k.a. Arrow, The Ultimate Weapon) managed to draw crowds at the box office.  This year, a lineup of big-budget films featuring the return of big stars await moviegoers.  (The Korea Times, January 5, 2012)

Best News Stories of the Year
Twitch, in its annual best news stories feature, ranked the Spike Lee directed Oldboy reboot as one of 2011's best film news stories.  The project has had a few setbacks with both Colin Firth, Clive Owen, and Mara Rooney all turning down lead roles but is still scheduled to start shooting in the next few months with star Josh Brolin in the main role.  (Twitch, January 10, 2012)

Which Way, My Way?
The dramatization of a true war-time story that spans years, continents, and changing friendships and enmities, My Way is director Kang Je-kyu’s comeback after seven years.  My Way deals with a true story that is practically legend.  In the late 1930s, a man from Joseon ends up going to China and the Soviet Union towards Germany and finally ends up on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.  (Korean Cinema Today, January 8, 2012)

Three Korean Projects Selected to HAF
Hong Kong - Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) is set to celebrate its 10th anniversary this March with a record 32 selections, including three from South Korea.  These are director Jeon Soo-il’s Another Country, Kim Baek-jun’s Monsters and Lee Hae-jun’s My Dictator.  The festival chose these from more than 200 submissions from over 45 countries and regions.  The final selection represents 20 different territories including Australia, China, India, Japan, and Malaysia.  (KoBiz, January 6, 2012)

Crossing the Streams...
Up until this point in time the only real option for streaming a large amount of content in theUK has been through LoveFilm.  Yesterday the big US company Netflix launched their service in the UK and they’ve undercut LoveFilm on the cost of their service (that’s on the standard price, LoveFilm are understandably offering promotional prices for the next few months) and, again, while the Netflix offering is limited to some degree there’s also a lot of good content on there – some of it in HD.  (New Korean Cinema, January 10, 2012)

Distribution

Martin Cleary takes a look at the frustrating state of the availability of Korean fils in the UK over on his new blog.  (New Korean Cinema, January 6, 2012)

Rotterdam Takes Three More Korean Films
The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has announced its line-up to include three more Korean films in addition to the previously announced A Fish, the Tiger Awards Competition’s first 3D film.  The film by Park Hong-min will be joined by Roh Gyeong-tae’s Black Dove, Kim Kyung-mook’s Stateless Things and Hong Sang-soo’s The Day He Arrives.  The latter three films will be in the festival’s Spectrum section.  The section will show 72 features and documentaries from 32 countries.  (KoBiz, January 10, 2012)

Foreign Koreanness Captured in the Movies
With the recent release of the first two trailers for Papa, it looks like mainstream Korean cinema will continue to wrestle with the issue of immigration and multiculturalism into the new year. As new as this theme may seem for Korean film, Papa actually follows in the footsteps of last year’s very successful Punch and 2010’s almost equally successful He's on Duty, as well as a string of independent films that addressed the same theme.  (The Korea Herald, January 5, 2012)

Michael Stipe Produces Gay Korean-American Film
Former REM frontman Michael Stipe is the executive producer behind a new short film of a gay Korean man who yearns for a family, which the director used to come out to his own parents.  The short, entitled Dol, will be shown at the Sundance Film Festival this year, Indie music news site Electric Banana reports. (pinknews.co.uk January 10, 2012)

My Sassy Girl to Be Made Into a Drama
On January 11 it was announced that the drama production company “Lemon Rain” would produce a TV drama version of My Sassy Girl with “Shincine Communication Co.”  In order to find a charming and perfect script they are holding a script contest starting from February 1 to March 30.  The original film My Sassy Girl is a classic Korean romantic comedy that jumpstarted Cha Tae Hyun andJeon Ji Hyun’s acting careers.  (soompi.com, January 10, 2012)

Oldboy Production Delayed Until May; Clive Owen Passes on Villain Role
The inability to cast, plus Brolin’s press commitments to MIB 3, has forced production of Oldboy to be pushed back to May of this year.  Colin Firth was the biggest name to be attached to play as the villain, but he passed on the role, which was then offered to Clive Owen.  But according to a report from Jeff Snieder over at Variety, “don’t expect Clive Owen to play the villain.”  (Fused Film, January 7, 2012)

INTERVIEW

Director Park Hong-min
Director Park Hong-min’s A Fish is about a professor who searches for his runaway wife.  It compares this life to the afterlife, and humans on land to souls in the sea.  A Fish was revealed to the world at the 16th Busan International Film Festival and has also been invited to compete at the 41st International Film Festival Rotterdam’s annual Tiger Awards Competition.  Director Park is now making final adjustments to the film’s sound effects and computer graphics before he heads off to Rotterdam.  (Korean Cinema Today, January 5, 2012)

TRAILERS

Nameless Gangster


Pacemaker


The Front Line (eng sub)

POSTERS

Nameless Gangster

The Angel's Breath

The Front Line

Unbowed

BOX OFFICE

MI4 Takes Fourth Victory Lap, Closes in on Record

(Modern Korean Cinema, January 9, 2012)

Korean Cinema News is a weekly feature which provides wide-ranging news coverage on Korean cinema, including but not limited to: features; festival news; interviews; industry news; trailers; posters; and box office. It appears every Wednesday morning (GMT+1) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update and the Weekly Review Round-up. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site. 

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Fighting Spirit (투혼, Too-hon) 2011

Baseball film? Think again.

Kim Sang-jin is one of the biggest names of modern Korean cinema.  He got his start with early films such as Money in the Account (1995), Gangster Lessons (1996), and Two Cops 3 (1998) but always as a contracted director behind a big producer like Kang Woo-suk.  It wasn’t until 1999 that he got his real start with the anarchic hit Attack the Gas Station, which was stamped with Kim’s signature style that has since led to hit after hit.  He’s not the first name that comes to mind when considering the box office clout of Korean directors, but you would be hard pressed to name a director who has been a more consistent and impressive force on the Korean box office charts.  Attack the Gas Station became the second highest grossing Korean film of 1999, subsequently:  2001’s Kick the Moon came in at no. 3; Jail Breakers wound up at no. 4 in 2002; 2004’s Ghost House also had a no. 4 finish; and Kidnapping Granny K landed just outside the top 10 in 2007.

The interesting thing about all of these hits is that though they are all quite similar in tone and structure, they were all written by different people.  Kim has actually never written any of the films he’s directed, which is a testament to the force of his directing style and how recognizable it is on its own.  Kim’s best and most enduring works have been deranged blends of gang and youth violence (Attack the Gas Station, Kick the Moon), prison and romance (Jailbreakers), or horror and melodrama (Ghost House).  The common denominators between his films have been warring factions, anarchy, comedy, and immense climaxes between multiple large groups, a funny thing to be known for perhaps but very effective and memorable nonetheless.

Do-hun (Kim Joo-hyeok) caught in the act

In 2010, Kim made a follow-up to his original smash hit Attack the Gas Station.  The sequel had little of the impact of its predecessor and 11 years later it was no longer relevant to audiences, failing to leave an impression on the box office.  Late last year a new Kim film found its way into theaters with little to no fanfare.  I first heard about Fighting Spirit the week before it opened but I wasn’t aware of who made it at first.  Had I not known that it was a Kim Sang-jin film as I sat down to watch it, I probably never would have guessed it.   

Do-hun (Kim Joo-hyeok) is the star pitcher for the Lotte Giants, he is nearing the end of a brilliant career but he’s become arrogant and complacent in the wake of his success.  He’s been kicked out of his house after cheating on his wife (Kim Seon-ah) and is soon demoted to the minors.  He must now prove his worth to his teammates and to his estranged wife and children.  This brief synopsis seems to indicate a typical up-down-up sports trajectory of a fallen hero who will rise again but actually that isn’t really the case.  It’s nearly incidental that he’s a baseball player as the sporting angle is a front for what the film really is, a family melodrama.  Do-hoon’s wife Yoo-ran develops terminal cancer and this is the real crux of the film.  In fact, Fighting Spirit is essentially a cross between GLove and The Last Blossom, two mediocre 2011 films that appeared earlier in the year.

Park Cheol-min in a rare moment of calm

Kim Joo-hyeok is an actor I quite like who impressed me with his effortless performance in The Servant (2010) and has been doing steady work for years but audiences so far have not responded to his being recast as a leading man as both of his 2011 starring roles, the other being In Love and the War, have been major flops.  It’s hard to blame him since the scripts were so lacking but I wonder if he shouldn’t be more discerning with the projects he chooses to take on.  Kim Seon-ah (She's on Duty, 2005; S-Diary, 2004), as Do-hun’s long-suffering wife, is a little cold in her role, thereby nudging the audience to side with the boyish and charming Do-hun, despite his infidelities.  The representation of her character is proof that as gifted as Kim Sang-jin is, he’s never been particularly adept at handling female characters, they always lack depth in his films.  Park Cheol-min, who plays the Lotte Giants minor team coach, is one of those working actors who appears again and again in Korean cinema.  Last year alone he had eight roles, including Clash of the Families, Sector 7, Spellbound, and Suicide Forecast, which would seem to indicate that he’s well liked.  He’s a very over-the-top performer who tends to grin a lot and gesticulate with mock bravado.  His style never really changes:  it’s more a case of putting him in the right situations.  For instance his performance works in Clash of the Families while it is miserably out of place in Sector 7, thankfully he just about fits into this film.

I understand why Fighting Spirit didn’t make any money:  it doesn’t really know what it wants to be and it is very lacking in passion.  It’s by the numbers in its characterizations, plot elements, and resolutions but irregular in its tone and narrative.  What this amounts to in the end is a great director who, like Do-hun, was at the top of his game but seems to have lost his way.  Kim Sang-jin needs to get back on the saddle before he becomes a footnote in Korean cinema.

★★☆☆☆

Do-hun's estranged family

Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Korean Box Office Update (01/06-01/08, 2012)

MI4 Takes Fourth Victory Lap, Closes in on Record

	Title	Release Date	Weekend	Total
1	Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (us)	12/15/11	477,851	6,243,796
2	Wonderful Radio	1/5/12	281,296	334,855
3	Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (us)	12/21/11	223,500	1,862,606
4	Perfect Game	12/21/11	133,580	1,155,313
5	Friends: Naki on Monster Island (jp)	12/29/11	118,342	407,958
6	My Way	12/21/11	112,905	2,002,323
7	The Darkest Hour (us)	1/5/12	82,684	98,450
8	Lion King 3D (us)	7/9/94	46,257	270,993
9	Spellbound	12/1/11	46,231	2,945,469
10	Pokemon: White - Victini and Zekrom (jp)	12/22/11	30,116	345,153
-	My Barefoot Friend	12/15/11	378	2,970
-	Bleak Night	3/3/11	139	22,350
-	Green Days	6/23/11	120	51,195
-	King of Pigs	11/3/11	118	18,782
-	Jam Docu KANGJUNG	12/22/11	68	502

Local business had another tough frame with only one midlevel opening and diminishing returns from holdovers as Hollywood continued to trump domestic offerings.  1.62 million tickets were sold this past weekend, a marginal increase of last year's comparable weekend whereas the Korean film market share was down to 35% from 75%.

Mission Impossible IV continued its remarkable run, banking another 477,851 admissions, though that was down a little over 50%.  With 6,243,796 tickets sold to date it's still another 1.5 million away from Transformers 3's 2011 crown which may be mission impossible but we'll see if Ethan Hunt and crew can pull it off.

Wonderful Radio, in the midst of terrible reviews had a so-so opening with 281,296.  Assuming a less than encouraging word of mouth, the picture may see a quick exit from theaters, especially as it loses screens and business in two weeks to lunar day releases.

The second Sherlock Holmes lost about half its business in its third outing, garnering 223,500 sales.  It looks set to cross the two million mark, which will likely be its last major milestone as it continues to diminish through the month.

Perfect Game has crossed the one million mark but has done so with little fanfare as the well-received baseball pic has added 133,580 to its total this weekend.  A mediocre performance for a big holiday release.

Meanwhile My Way dropped all the way to number 6 as it added 112,905 admissions and has now inched over the 2 million mark, so much for 10 million!

Spellbound at number 9 sold another 46,231 tickets as it winds down its run and is now very close to the 3 millin mark.

Jesus Hospital is the Korean film opening next week and I can't imagine it will be in any position to boost domestic ticket sales.  We'll have to wait until the following Lunar Day weekend when a number of high profile releases find their way into theaters.  MI4 may spend a fifth week on top, unless The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo opens big.


The Korean Box Office Update is a weekly feature which provides detailed analysis of film box office sales over the Friday to Sunday period in Korea. It appears every Monday morning (GMT+1) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site. 

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Bleak Night (파수꾼, Pa-soo-ggoon) 2011

It’s amazing to witness what can be done with little resources and in 2011, a year filled with high-falutin, hollow, and very disappointing blockbusters, there were many films that did just that. One in particular managed to do the most with the least. The Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) has been training some of the peninsula’s best talent since the 1980s, including Bong Joon-ho, Im Sang-soo, and Kim Tae-gyun, and these days, as it produces four feature-length projects per year, it looks set to develop an even larger pool of talent. Not long ago I discussed the importance of Korean film schools in a piece on the Korean National University of Arts (K’Arts) short Metamorpheses. The technical competence of Korean films is due in no small part to the high quality film academies in the country and this becomes only more evident now that the student-produced shorts and features from these institutions gain wider exposure.

Bleak Night is one of KAFA’s student features and going into the film it’s hard to say that knowing this didn’t completely change the way I looked at it. I’m generally not a fan of student films and not just because of low production values and a lack of experience.  Oftentimes they are pretentious, lazy, and/or cocky and rather than being diamonds in the rough, they are frequently vanity projects from people who either don’t have what it takes or have no intention of trying to make a career out of filmmaking. Let me be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, this is the purpose that film societies at college universities serve and the world is all the better for it, however I would rather not subject myself to these less than enticing offerings. I also speak from experience, as I too was one of these cocky student filmmakers in my Dublin salad days.

There have been more technically proficient student films out of Korea, the aforementioned Metamorpheses is an excellent example of poly-generic adroitness but Bleak Night has what few films possess, no matter how experienced or talented the makers are. It is an extremely mature work: the characters are few, the plot is simple, and the setting is familiar but they belie a complex and devastating character study with reminded me of the eye-opening and cathartic realism I experienced when I saw The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005).

Lazarescu was the first Romanian film I saw and still stands as my favorite European film made after the turn of the millennium. The films that came out of Romania at that time achieved something that I had never experienced before. A friend and I, after being blindsided by Lazarescu following a random screening selection at the 2006 Dublin International Film Festival, hailed it as ‘the death of postmodernism!’ We were over-excited film students who tended to roll our eyes at the mere mention of ‘postmodernism’ or other woefully over-loaded academia terms like the ‘Lacanian mirror stage’.  Lazarescu, and the films that followed it like 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006) and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), came as a breath of fresh air as they seemed honest, straightforward, and devoid of intellectualism yet they were still exceptionally complex.

The biggest liberty that Bleak Night takes in its film style is its fragmented chronology which jumps to and fro without warning. Titles and exposition can seem contrived but unsignalled time jumps can be far more dangerous if the audience can’t figure out what’s going on. Thankfully the young filmmakers give us just enough information to keep our footing and more importantly respect us enough to allow us to figure some things out for ourselves. In fact a great deal of the film’s success derives from this risky trait.  We are never told what has happened and we are required to trust ourselves to understand what is going on during moments we don’t see and to decipher unuttered thoughts in the protagonists’ minds.

I don’t want to say too much about the film as I think it is better to let it reveal itself to you but essentially there are three friends, some bullying, and a suicide which serves as the starting point of the narrative but not of the story.  Lee Je-hoon, as the bully Gi-tae, has won numerous newcomer awards this year for his lead role in Bleak Night and his supporting turn in war pic The Front Line (2011). Sure enough his performance is nothing short of a revelation. In his role he is completely grounded and never falls into the easy trap of overacting. He says so much with his few words and even more with his silences, he reveals the truth about his character little by little, always taking you by surprise but never forsaking credibility. He reminds me of a younger and more subtle Ryoo Seung-beom (The Unjust, 2010; Suicide Forecast, 2011), an actor whom I like very much, and I can only see great things in his future.

Friendship lies at the heart of Bleak Night or at least what defines the bond between friends. At different points in the narrative, the three friends fight and betray each other, they move through different circles, one going so far as to transfer out of school, yet at times they are also extremely loyal and share their free time together, throwing an old baseball around at an abandoned train station, itself a foreboding metaphor for their youthful, transient relationships. There are other boys in the school who are part of the group during school hours in the classroom and the trio also have families, though Gi-tae has no mother and seems to fend for himself, but Bleak Night never dwells on the characters’ lives outside of the group, a rare and welcome change from the melodramatic tendencies of Korean cinema.

29-year old writer and director Yoon Sung-hyun excels with his debut feature, demonstrating a subtle but commanding grasp of his characters. His (justified) confidence as a filmmaker allows him to strip out any flourishes leaving a bare bones mise-en-scene which eschews music and ostentatious cinematography in favor of intimate character framing, well-timed silences, and an austere, dark, but also gorgeous color palette which creeps under your skin. A superb film from emerging talents which is not to be missed.

★★★★☆

Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Weekly Review Round-up (12/31, 2011 - 01/06, 2012)

For the first WEEKLY REVIEW ROUND-UP of 2012, a few reviews for new releases in Korea and a lot of pieces on older Korean films which is always nice to see.

CURRENT KOREAN RELEASES

Pacemaker

(The Korea Times, January 4, 2012)

Spellbound

(8Asians, January 4, 2012)

(The One One Four, January 2, 2012)

Wonderful Radio

(The Korea Times, December 29, 2011)

RECENT RELEASES

A Better Tomorrow

(joblo.com, January 4, 2012)

GLove

(Modern Korean Cinema, January 5, 2012)

Mama

(Modern Korean Cinema, January 3, 2012)

Man of Vendetta

(Rainy Day Movies, January 3, 2012)

No Doubt

(Init_Scenes, January 4, 2012)

Poongsan

(Asian Movie Web, January 2, 2012)

Rolling Home With a Bull

(Init_Scenes, January 3, 2012)

Sector 7

(New Korean Cinema, January 4, 2012)

Sunny

(Hangul Celluloid, December 30, 2011)

(The One One Four, January 5, 2012)

The Yellow Sea

(Asian Movie Pulse, January 3, 2012)

You're My Pet

(Hanguk Yeonghwa, January 4, 2012)

PAST FILMS

A Good Night's Sleep For the Bad, 2009

(Init_Scenes, December 31, 2011)

Baby and Me, 2008

(UnitedKpop, December 31, 2011)

Death Bell, 2008

(Twitch, January 4, 2012)

I'm a Cyborg But That's Okay, 2007

(Hanguk Yeonghwa, January 2, 2012)

Pyongyang Nalpharam, 2006

(North Korean Films, January 3, 2012)

Secret Sunshine, 2007

(koreanfilm.org, January 1, 2012)

Silmido, 2003

(gwangjublog.com, January 3, 2012)

Taegugki, 2004

(Nerdlocker, January 5, 2012)

Tale of Cinema, 2005

(Rainy Day Movies, January 4, 2012)

The Host, 2006

(Film in Asian, January 4, 2012)

Untold Scandal, 2003

(Hanguk Yeonghwa, January 5, 2012)

The Weekly Review Round-up is a weekly feature which brings together all available reviews of Korean films in the English language (and sometimes French) that have recently appeared on the internet. It is by no means a comprehensive feature and additions are welcome (email pierceconran [at] gmail [dot] com). It appears every Friday morning (GMT+1) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at Korean Cinema News, and the Korean Box Office Update. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site. 

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

G-Love (글러브, Geu-leo-beu) 2011

The team

Kang Woo-suk is a big name in Korean cinema.  He is the director behind the Two Cops (1993-98) and Public Enemy (2002-08) trilogies and helmed the blockbusters Silmido (2003) and Hanbando (2005), as well last year’s big mystery film Moss.  He’s been around for a long time and has had a big hand in shaping the industry as it stands today.  In the 1990s he formed Cinema Service, which is now one of the country’s top film producers.  Like a more prolific Kang Je-gyu, Kang specializes in blockbusters and doesn’t seem to know how not to make an event picture.  Earlier this year however, his new film GLove was released.  A baseball pic with a big star (Jeong Jae-yeong) and a rather modest concept by Kang’s standards.

GLove does feature a number of typical Kang features:  a male-centric narrative populated by his regulars, such as Jeong and Kang Shin-il; an ambiguous protagonist who has fallen from grace; a lack of subtlety; and a very long running time (144 minutes).  If it sounds like I’m criticizing him I will admit that I find Kang to be a very limited director though what he does, with his big, bombastic style, he does quite well and Public Enemy (one of the first Korean films I ever saw) still stands as one of my favorites.  That said, in this new territory, Kang seems a little out of his depth.  He recognizes the codes of the sports film and uses them to his advantage, the mise-en-scene is typically strong though not par with his other films, especially the sumptuously filmed Moss (2010).  What Kang does struggle with is the saccharine melodrama, he doesn’t do a bad job but he is not subtle in his approach, not that many Korean filmmakers are, but it’s clear that it’s not his area of expertise.

The star and his agent: Sang-nam (Jeong Jae-yeong) and Charles (Jo Jin-woong)

To begin with the concept is terribly cloying.  Baseball superstar Kim Sang-nam (Jeong Jae-yeong) falls from grace and is suspended, in order to rebuild his image his agent Charles (Jo Jin-woong) suggests that he start teaching baseball at a school for the hearing-impaired.  Stubborn, moody, and resistant at first he soon starts to take a shine to the kids and begins to shapes these diamonds in the rough with the help of teachers Gyo-gam (Kang Shin-il) and Joo-won (Yoo Seon).

From the outset there is little doubt as to what you will be subjected to:  the bullying of deaf children; group crying; the melting of cold hearts; redemption; etc.  On these counts the film does not disappoint.  Korean cinema is rife with mute or deaf characters harboring or enduring traumas without the ability to express them.  I briefly wrote about these protagonists in my review for last year’s Poongsan and it occurs to me now that they are also an ideal cinematic representations of ‘han’, which I discussed vis-à-vis mothers in my piece on Mama (2011) earlier this week.  Of course normally we only have to deal with one of these characters in Korean films but with GLove we get a whole school of them, which of course comes with a whole lot of baggage.  It’s nearly as though the depiction of the hearing-impaired built to a crescendo in 2011, ending of course with the worldwide media frenzy surrounding Silenced, which resulted in new laws being passed in Korea.

The teachers:  Gyo-gam (Kang Shin-il) and Joo-won (Yoo Seon)

Sadly GLove is not as interesting as it could be, which is no surprise.  It’s most like A Barefoot Dream, Korea’s 2010 selection for the Oscars, which was a strong feature but also bogged down by saccharine melodrama.  The strongest aspect of the film is Jeong Jae-yeong’s performance whom I think is one of the best actors in Korea.  Primarily identified as a bad guy or a comedian, Jeong has shown great range in the last few years and turned in some of the best performances in Korean cinema.  His deadpan comedy was the anchor of Someone Special (2004) and Going By the Book (2007), while his vulnerability was aching in Castaway on the Moon (2009), and he rightly won a Grand Bell award for his menacing performance in last year’s Moss.  His turn in GLove is not on the level of the previous films but he plays the arrogant, stubborn, and stoic baseball star to a tee and as always he’s very funny.  Special mention should go to Jo Jin-woon who plays his hard-working agent.  Jo, who has been in Gangster High (2006), A Frozen Flower (2008), and The Front Line (2011), had never impressed me before but now I can see why he appears in so many films.  He balances the good-natured and frustrated elements of the character very well, and his chemistry with Jeong is excellent.

Besides a few strong performances, GLove was a disappointment but it was a strong, confident production.  It’s just too long, not particularly engaging, and very predictable.  I like to see directors trying something new but maybe Kang should stick to what he’s good at, I’m not sure how versatile he is.  I do enjoy baseball films though and still have two Korean ones to watch from 2011, FightingSpirit and Perfect Game, I hope at least one can bring it home.

★★★☆☆

Enthusiastic coaching

Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Korean Cinema News (12/29, 2010 - 01/04, 2011)

As 2012 gets underway there are many top 10 lists floating around, I was planning to include them all here but there are so many that I will only include a few and I will do a separate post on them a little later this month.  Plenty of other news this weeks, with some features, interview, and trailers to boot.

KOREAN CINEMA NEWS

The Year in Film: 2011 Brought Large Successes from Low-Budget Movies
It was another tough year for the film industry.  According to the Korean Film Council, 136 Korean films and 278 foreign films were released as of late November, but just a few of them became box office hits and a handful of them were remembered by the audience.  The most expensive film flopped, and the least-anticipated film became a sleeper hit of the year.  (Joong Ang Daily, December 30, 2011)

Jo In-seong Comes Back With Cold
Having finished his military duty, Jo In-seong is currently in the final stages of negotiating terms and conditions for a new project.  Cold is the first movie in nine years by director Kim Seong-su, who directed There is No Sun (1999), Beat (1997), Musa (2001) and 2003's Please Teach Me English.  Kim Seong-su had been making One-Armed Warrior, a Hong Kong co-production . Cold is going to be produced by Jo In-Seong and Sidus HQ.  It is about a man and a woman who look for the host of the virus that is fatally spreading.  (hancinema.net, December 29, 2011)

Spotlight on Indie Films

The Korean film industry was more diverse than ever before.  Amid an array of high-budget blockbuster films, a couple of Korean independent films achieved the10,000-audience mark, a figure compared to 1 million viewers for commercial films.  The rise of independent films started with Re-encounter in February.  (Joon Ang Daily, December 29, 2011)

Best of 2011: Korean Films
It has been a year of great debuts, be it in terms of format or first-time narrative feature helmers, coming from both the more established generation of filmmakers that emerged in the mid-1990s and those that represent the newest crop of interesting filmmakers to watch.  There were also surprising domestic box-office hits for small films this year.  Not small in terms of output or inferiority, but rather in blockbuster terms: low-key works that unlocked just as many – if not more – emotional keys and engaged the spectator in subtle and surprising ways.  (Asia Pacific Arts, December 28, 2011)

Low-Budget 3D Films?

In a larger feature on 3D movie sand Hollywood, there was a quote from Choo Sang-sok, the director of Persimmon 3D:  “Budget doesn’t matter, it is story that matters in cinema and its the same when you are using 3D.”  After the high profile failure of Sector 7, perhaps Korean filmmakers could make a name for themselves by revolutionizing smaller-scale use of the de rigueur technology?  (The Malaysian Insider, December 27, 2011)

I Saw the Devil Deemed Best Foreign Film by Austin Film Critics

In its annual evaluation of the year's best and worst in film, the Austin Film Critics Association has seen fit to award Kim Jee-woon's I Saw the Devil with the Best Foreign Film Prize.  In addition, the revenge pic also landed at No. 8 on their top 10 list for the year.  (Film School Rejects, December 28, 2011)

My Way to Open in Japan
Kang Je-gyu’s World War II drama My Way is due to open in theaters in Japan on January 14, 2012.  Leading Korean distributor CJ E&M says the film will be released on 300 screens.  Starring Jang Dong-gun and Odagiri Joe with a strong supporting cast which includes Chinese star Fan Bingbing and Korea’s Kim In-kwon, the film is Korea’s most expensive – made for US$25 million.  Although My Way has been doing less business than expected in Korea, the film has so far taken in more than 1.17 million admissions for co-distributors CJ E&M and SK Planet. (KoBiz, December 30, 2011)

Arirang Invited to Kuestendorf Film Festival
Kim Ki-du's comeback film Arirang will be playing at yet another film festival, this time invited to screen at the Kuestendorf Film Festival in Serbia.  (AFP, December 28, 2011)

Korea’s Lotte Cinema Opens Fourth Vietnam Multiplex

Major South Korean exhibition chain and affiliate of major Korean distribution company Lotte Entertainment, Lotte Cinema is opening its fourth theater in Vietnam on Dec. 31.  The new five-screen multiplex will be in Hanoi, with 848 seats and 3D projection.  Lotte Cinema has been in the Vietnamese exhibition sector since 2008 when it acquired the Diamond Cinema Joint Venture Company (DMC).  (KoBiz, December 30, 2011)

Who's the Busiest Actor of 2012?
Who is going to be the busiest actress or actor in 2012?  Looking at the movies that are being released or are planning to go into production this year, we can see several names that appear often.  (hancinema.net, January 2, 2012)

Questions About Korean Cinema...

Martin Cleary over at New Korean Cinema is fielding questions on Korean film!  (New Korean Cinema, December 30, 2011)

Korea’s My Way Going to Berlin Film Fest
In a move that may come as a bit of a surprise given it's lukewarm reception from audiences and critics in its native Korea, Jang Je-gyu's mega WWII blockbuster My Way, starring Jang Dong-gun, Joe Odagiri, and Fan Binbin, will be featured as one of Berlin International Film Festival’s Panorama sidebars this year, the film’s distributor said Wednesday.  (The Korea Herald, January 4, 2012)

Director Kim Jee-woon comes back with The Fall of Humanity

A lot of news items have flown around the internet claiming that Kim Jee-woon is returning to Korea to film The Fall of Humanity, citing an piece by hancinema.net.  However the article is very unclear and from what I understand the film, wich is an omnibus comprising on short by Kim and two by Yim Pil-seong began filming in 2006 and was halted for financial reasons.  Not much else is known but since the release is slated for February/March, I can't imagine that Kim is heading back to shoot his segment.  (hancinema.net, January 2, 2012)

Korean Film Fiesta Dazzles Lagosians
The second Korea Film Festival in Nigeria was held recently in Lagos, with a refreshing experience for the Nigerian movie lovers who thronged the venue.  Korean films have benefited tremendously from the emergence of youthful, talented film directors, as well as the liberalization of the market, leading Hallyuwood to occupy a large percentage of the Korean domestic market and ever-increasing export.  (The Daily Sun, December 29, 2011)

Hong Sang-soo Tops Cine21’s Picks of the Year

South Korea’s leading film and entertainment magazine Cine21 has picked Hong Sang-soo’s The Day He Arrives as the Best Film of 2011. In their annual survey, the magazine with its 33 journalists and critics also picked Hong as the Best Director of the Year.  The magazine lauded The Day He Arrives as “a singular experience of time and space and memory”.  (KoBiz, January 3, 2012)

Darcy Paquet's Top 10 Korean Films of 2011

Over at koreanfilm.org, Darcy Paquet has offered up his top 10 for the year which by his admissions is very weighted towards low-budget fare this year.  This seems to be the consensus as independent films were strong this year but commercial fare was weaker than in other years.  (koreanfilm.org, January 3, 2012)

INTERVIEWS

Director Explores Childhood Betrayal
For anyone who has seen Park Chul-soon’s feature debut Lovable, a moving portrait of a young girl with Savant syndrome, it wouldn’t be surprising to discover the director full of playfulness.  The 28-year-old’s debut, which won the best screenplay prize at Persons with Disabilities Film Festival this year, is filled with childhood desires and imaginative adventures.  (The Korea Herald, December 26, 2011)

Michelle Son, Managing Director of M-Line Distribution

Heading up international sales company M-Line Distribution as Managing Director, Michelle Son has in a few short years positioned the company to handle a bulk of deals including foreign remake deals for major local titles.  She spoke with KoBiz over the phone about looking beyond feature films for exciting audiovisual content and the importance of facilitating international co-productions.  (KoBiz, December 29, 2011)

TRAILERS

Nameless Gangster

Papa

POSTERS

Love Fiction

Never Ending Story

BOX OFFICE

Korean Films Outdone By Hollywood as 2012 Gets Underway
(Modern Korean Cinema, January 2, 2011)

Korea's Highest Grossing Foreign Films of 2011

We have seen Korean cinema succeed both locally and internationally this year, but which foreign films made it big in Korea in 2011?  Besides the few international films from Asia and Europe it has been Hollywood that has dominated Korea's consumption of foreign films.  War of the Arrows stood out as Korea's highest grossing domestic film of the year but even that was trumped by over 400,000 admissions to the third Transformers film.  (hancinema.net, December 31, 2011)

Korean Cinema News is a weekly feature which provides wide-ranging news coverage on Korean cinema, including but not limited to: features; festival news; interviews; industry news; trailers; posters; and box office. It appears every Wednesday morning (GMT+1) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update and the Weekly Review Round-up. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site. 

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