NYAFF 2012: War of the Arrows (최종병기 활, Choi-jong-byeong-gi Hwal) 2011

Part of MKC's coverage of the 11th New York Asian Film Festival.

It’s about time I threw my hat into the ring and chimed in on War of the Arrows, the top-grossing Korean film of 2011, which has met with positive reactions from all over the globe.  Early in 2011, if you were familiar with the big films that were scheduled to come out throughout the year, you could be forgiven for expecting Sector 7 and The Front Line to dominate the charts during the summer months.  In the end the former was a cataclysmic failure, likely because it was a terrible film, and the latter fell below expectations, it was a decent film but perhaps a little thin to play well given its subject matter.  One film you may not have noticed, I know I didn’t, was War of the Arrows, a straightforward period action film with mid-level stars and no pretense about it.

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Weekly Review Round-up (06/23-06/29, 2012)

Lots of reviews of recent and past films this week including many for Korean doc Planet of Snail which is currently playing in the UK and many films that will be screening at the 11th New York Asian Film Fesitval which is kicking off today and will be covered here on MKC.

RECENT FILMS

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NYAFF 2012: Nameless Gangster (범죄와의 전쟁, Bumchoiwaui Junjaeng) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 11th New York Asian Film Festival.

Korean cinema is filled to the brim with genre offerings and one of its most successful areas is with the gangster film.  These are called ‘jopok’ films, which is a Korean word for gangster and we did a whole series on the genre here on MKC not so long ago called ‘Jopok Week’.  Clearly I’m a big fan of gangster films and like many others I grew up on the likes of the Godfathers (Part II is my favorite if anyone cares to know) and Goodfellas (1990) but it didn’t take me too long to get turned onto more far-flung examples of the genre, ranging from Brazil’s City of God (2002), Italy’s The Conformist (1970), France’s Jean-Pierre Melville (Bob le Flambeur, 1956; Le Samourai, 1967) and Japan’s Kinji Fukasaku (Battles Without Honor and Humanity, 1973-76).

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NYAFF 2012: Vulgaria (低俗喜劇 - Hong Kong, 2012)

Part of MKC's coverage of the 11th New York Asian Film Festival.

It’s generally a good rule of thumb to get things started with a bang, be it a film, a dinner, a concert, etc.  In the case of a film festival, I’m always amazed at some of the drab films that get chosen to open events that are supposedly consecrated to the celebration of the medium.  I recall the Dublin International Film Festivals of years past (I used to go to every year when I was based there), one that comes to mind was 2007 when the event opened with Jindabyne (2006), a handsome and languid arthouse circuit film from down under starring Ireland’s own Gabriel Byrne.  However, despite being a good film, it was hardly the kind of work that was going to get me pumped up about cinema for a full 10-day event.

You should start as you mean to continue and as far as a festival is concerned, good does not always mean right.  Looking at this year’s New York Asian Film Festival  (NYAFF) lineup, a little grin curled up my lips as I saw Pang Ho-cheung’s Vulgaria front and center.  I was lucky to catch it earlier this year at the Udine Far East Film Festival (FEFF) and while it didn’t open that event (that honour went to Sunny, another strong kick-off choice), by all accounts it brought down the house.  I say that because I had to catch in the video library but boy did I wish I could have seen it with a crowd.

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11th New York Asian Film Festival on MKC

Vulgaria (低俗喜劇 - Hong Kong, 2012)

Nameless Gangster (범죄와의 전쟁, Bumchoiwaui Junjaeng) 2012
War of the Arrows (최종병기 활, Choi-jong-byeong-gi Hwal) 2011
Couples (커플즈, Keo-peul-jeu) 2011
Honey PuPu (消失打看 - Taiwan, 2011)
Retrospective: A Legend in the Flesh - The Life and Career of Choi Min-sik
King of Pigs (돼지의 왕, Dwaejiui Wang) 2011
Doomsday Book (인류멸망보고서, In-lyoo-myeol-mang-bo-go-seo) 2012

Sadly I can't make it to this year's New York Asian Film Festival since, as you know, I'm halfway around the world but that doesn't mean that MKC won't be covering it! Peter Gutierrez, our US Correspondent will be chiming in with a few pieces on Korean films while I have a few features and reviews up my sleeve as well!

It's a great year for Korean film at the festival with no less than 12 films and a program of shorts being screened. The most exciting element of the package will be the presence of screen legend Choi Min-sik who will supporting his most recent work Nameless Gangster but will also be the subject of a retrospective, with Failan (2001), Oldboy (2003) and Crying Fist (2005) also playing during the week.

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Korean Cinema News (06/21-06/27, 2012)

Lots of great news pieces this week, chief among them the fantastic lineup for next month's PiFan!

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

PiFan Unveils Lineup!

Far too much to go through here but upcoming Korean omnibus Horror Stories will be opening the proceedings and the week will close with Takashi Miike's latest, For Love's Sake. Lots of interesting films in competition and plenty of Korean films will be screened over the 11 days. James and Marsh and I will be breaking down the program over the coming days over at Twitch and we will both be onsite, providing the most comprehensive coverage you're likely to find! (Modern Korean Cinema, June 27, 2012)

16th PiFan - Full Schedule

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Café Noir (카페 느와르, Kape Neuwareu) 2009

The burden of expectation can sometimes be a heavy weight to bear and after a little too much of it, many films simply crumble.  In 2009, an indie Korean film clocking in at three and a half hours began to make the rounds of the festival circuit and attracted some very positive attention.  After a full year screening at various events it was finally accorded a domestic release in late December 2010 but, like the vast majority of independent features, it failed to find an audience in Korea.  A number of people (myself included) patiently awaited its DVD release but it never came… until now.  After premiering at the Busan Film Festival in October 2009, Café Noir was finally released on DVD in June 2012.

While I can’t say exactly why the wait for the disc was so long, I can, to some extent, understand it.  Here is a film with an enormous running time, some heavy source texts (Goethe and Dostoyevsky), painfully long takes and a fairly significant dollop of pretension; it is also the debut film of a long-standing film critic.  Just one of these elements is dangerous enough to ward off all but the most adventurous film viewers but taken together it’s true that this film could only ever appeal to a very select crowd.

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Korea Blog: When Does One Find Time to Sleep?

도덕산 (Dodeoksan)

Part of an ongoing series about my trip to and discovery of Seoul...

Just off another very busy week in Seoul and the fatigue is starting to settle in but then again I've probably been pushing myself a little too hard!  After my initial few weeks of discovery here it is time for me to find the right balance between work #1, work #2 and play.

After a long week I made my way into Hongdae on Friday night to meet my friend Matt we were both hungry and looked around for a place to eat. After a while Matt recognized somewhere he had been to before so we went in, were greeted and sat down. Only then, we were told that this particular establishment specialized in the parts of a cow that as a westerner you wouldn't think to eat. Oh well, said I, when in Rome!

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Korean Box Office Update (06/22-06/24, 2012)

Miss Go Goes Straight to the Top

	Title	Release Date	Market Share	Weekend	Total	Screens
1	Miss GO	6/21/12	17.70%	268,277	331,169	439
2	The Emperor's Concubine	6/6/12	14.90%	224,090	2,187,575	427
3	Madascar 3 (us)	6/6/12	14.70%	219,150	1,275,303	449
4	King of XXX-Kissing	6/21/12	13.60%	213,630	270,293	424
5	All About My Wife	5/17/12	12.00%	179,158	4,144,011	325
6	Lockout (us)	6/14/12	5.70%	87,409	411,636	284
7	Runway Cop	5/30/12	5.30%	81,741	1,258,758	226
8	Men in Black 3 (us)	5/24/12	4.00%	60,379	3,346,609	221
9	Prometheus (us)	6/6/12	4.50%	58,567	929,723	211
10	Faces In the Crowd (us)	6/21/12	2.80%	40,950	52,982	173

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Weekly Review Round-up (06/16-06/22, 2012)

Broad section of reviews this week as more and more Korean films see DVD, Blu-ray and theatrical releases in English-language territories, hooray!

CURRENT FILMS

All About My Wife

(8 Asians, June 20, 2012)

(Film Journal, June 21, 2012)

In Another Country

(Modern Korean Cinema, June 21, 2012)

(Twitch, June 21, 2012)

The King of XXX-Kissing

(The Korea Times, June 19, 2012)

Two Weddings and a Funeral

(The Korea Times, June 15, 2012)

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Korean Cinema News (06/14-06/20, 2012)

A few items on PiFan this week and a number of new trailers, which now feature writeups (originally posted on Twitch).

KOREAN CINEMA NEWS

PiFan to Hold Myung Films Retrospective

The lineup for next month's 16th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival will not be revealed for another week but we now have our first indication of some of the films that will screened at the event. PiFan will be holding a retrospective of the respected Korean production company Myung Films. The sidebar will be titled "Asian Major Studio Special Program: The Sun and the Moon of Korean Films, Myung Films" and will feature a cross section of some of the company's major works.

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Dancing Queen (댄싱퀸, Daensingkwin) 2012

Just when it seemed like star power was starting to fade in Korea, a new vehicle for two of the nation’s most popular performers danced its way into the spotlight, enchanting four million local viewers in the process.  Late last year and earlier this year a host of others (I among them), were calling out Korean stars for their failure to attract audiences to domestic cineplexes.  Song Kang-ho, normally the country’s most reliable star, misfired with Hindsight (2011), the first film in over a decade from Lee Hyeon-sun (Il Mare, 2000) and a short while after Countdown drew even less receipts despite starring what should have been a potent combo with Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine, 2007; The Housemaid, 2010) and Jeong Jae-yeong (Castaway on the Moon, 2009).  Since the star system has been powerful for so long, arguably too long a time, this shift in what drives a spectator to a theater has been seen as audience’s rejection of the less than-stellar features that the studios marched into the multiplexes, especially hollow blockbusters and these empty star vehicles (though personally I thought the above two films were a little better than what most people made them out to be).

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