Masquerade (광해, 왕이 된 남자, Gwang-hae, Wang-i Doin Nam-ja) 2012

by Simon McEnteggart

Mark Twain's seminal novel 'The Prince and the Pauper' has long endured as a classic for the manner in which it exposed the gulf between the upper and lower classes. The trials and tribulations that Prince Edward and Tom Canty undertake allowed Twain to explore the vast lifestyle differences amongst the 'haves' and 'have nots', with each protagonist utilising their prior experiences to emphasise the hardships and the unfairness evident in both. As a result the story has resonated with audiences of all socio-economic backgrounds, and in today's financial climate, it is perhaps more relevant than ever before.

With Masquerade, screenwriter Hwang Jo-yoon has adapted Twain's novel to Joseon dynasty Korea, with the case of mistaken identity transferred to King Gwang-hae and a lowly comic actor. With its well-structured and highly entertaining script, confident direction from Choo Chang-min and an enthralling set of performances headed by Lee Byeong-heon, Masquerade is without a doubt one of the best films of the year and a testament to the quality of Korea's period dramas.

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KBO: Masquerade Is King, Pieta Enjoys Golden Lion Bump (09/14-09/16, 2012)

Masquerade Is King, Pieta Enjoys Golden Lion Bump 

	Title	Release Date	Market Share	Weekend	Total	Screens
1	Masquerade	9/13/12	53.30%	1,097,619	1,278,064	809
2	Resident Evil 5 (us)	9/13/12	14.30%	245,915	304,150	368
3	Pieta	9/6/12	7.20%	148,163	353,379	325
4	The Bourne Legacy (us)	9/6/12	6.50%	135,767	913,877	345
5	Traffickers	8/29/12	4.60%	92,289	1,534,579	305
6	Wolf Children (jp)	9/13/12	3.40%	77,796	85,933	225
7	The Expendables 2 (us)	9/6/12	2.50%	53,444	416,236	253
8	Neighbors	8/22/12	2.00%	40,285	2,416,188	222
9	The Thieves	7/25/12	1.50%	32,033	12,923,537	194
10	Insidious (us)	9/13/12	1.30%	27,488	35,030	178

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CinDi 2012: Egg and Stone (Jidan he Shitou, China) 2012

Part of MKC's Coverage of the 6th Cinema Digital Seoul Film Festival.

By Rex Baylon

The Chinese film Egg and Stone tackles an issue that has been circulating around the news lately: rape. To be more precise, the rape and exploitation of young teenage girls by couples with no way to conceive. The tragic irony is that China, a nation on the up-and-up as it takes over the world’s manufacturing burden is, outside of a few densely packed metropolises, still a very poor and impoverished country. Progress is paid for by the blood of the poor and the cogs of that machine need it on a daily basis to keep the gears moving.

For Honggui, the female protagonist of Egg and Stone, any illusions that her future could hold anything other then the drudgery of housework or the boredom of a village life has long eroded with the crippling realization of her second-class status mainly as a result of the sexual organs she was born with. Although China may need more and more bodies to fill its factories and skyscrapers, a woman’s value is still gauged by her ability to conceive and rear a healthy baby boy. Sadly, anything less than that and women are pushed farther down the totem pole. The fate of many infant girls involve either abandonment, adoption by overseas families, or being sent away to childless families in the countryside to be worked like cattle.

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WKR: Pieta and The Thieves on the Intl. Circuit (09/08-09/14, 2012)

Packed WKR this week with lots on Pieta, post-Golden Lion win, and a number of writeups on The Thieves following its HK release and TIFF screening.

CURRENT FILMS

Pieta

(Joong Ang Daily, September 14, 2012)

(My Dear Korea, September 14, 2012)

(Screen Daily, September 4, 2012)

(Seongyong's Private Place, September 7, 2012)

The Thieves

(HK Knows Hong Kong, September 6, 2012)

(InSing.com, September 12, 2012)

(keukey's world, September 11, 2012)

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CinDi 2012: Masquerade (가면놀이) 2010

Part of MKC's Coverage of the 6th Cinema Digital Seoul Film Festival.

Let me get this right out of the way first, this is NOT about the brand new Lee Byung-hun period pic of the same title which came out in Korean theaters today. My timing may not great, but so be it.

I knew Masquerade was a documentary and based on the one still that was attached to it in the CinDi program. I assumed it had something to do with pantomine or some sort of performance. To say that I was way off the mark would be something of a cataclysmic understatement. Nestled among a crowd of mostly young women, I grew somewhat uncomfortable when the narrative revealed itself to me for the first time. You see, Masquerade is a hard-hitting film about child abuse in Korea and how it is often ignored by society at large.

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CinDi 2012: Lilou's Adventure (Lilou No Boken, Japan) 2012

Part of MKC's Coverage of the 6th Cinema Digital Seoul Film Festival.

The world of cinema is one we often use to reflect upon ourselves, one where our deepest desires and our darkest impulses are laid bare. Filmmakers habitually use the medium to explore the different facets of our personality but also to ask questions. Good cinema is almost always inquisitive and the further we delve inwards the less concrete our footing becomes. The land of dreams and of the subconscious has been a domain of choice for artists since time immemorial. Through paintings, poetry, books, performance art and more, our unknowable mental projections have maddened and gladdened artistic minds.

Cinema, perhaps more than any other medium, is an ideal canvas for exploring the nebulous impressions we constitute around our internal and uncontrollable visions. From an aesthetic standpoint it is both visual and auditory and yet much is still arrived at through interpretation. However, dreams, which are non-linear by design, are oftentimes difficult to narrativize and their depiction on screen, when not handled carefully, can sound the death bell of a production. Sometimes, these representations of our inner thoughts are best appreciated as sensory experiences, gleaning meaning from them is often a fool’s errand. Yet in rare circumstances, a filmmaker has been able to apply dream logic to a workable plot structure. The most clear example of this, though a divisive one, is David Lynch’s Mullholland Drive (2001). It’s a classic Hollywood narrative that has been broken down and reassembled through dream logic, though it took at least four tries for me to come to that conclusion.

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KCN: Kim Ki-duk Wins Historic Golden Lion and Busan Unveils Lineup (09/06-09/12, 2012)

Big week for news as Kim Ki-duk scoops up the Golden Lion and BIFF unveils its programme! Much more besides including the promotional material for The Perfect Number, the Bang Eun-jin thriller based on the Keigo Higashino novel 'The Devotion of Suspect X.'

Venice

Kim Ki-duk's Pieta Takes the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival
It has been extensively reported at this point but it's wonderful to hear that Kim Ki-duk's Pieta took the Golden Lion at this year's Venice Film Festival. This marks the first time a Korean film has scooped up top honors at one of the major three European fests (Berlin, Cannes, Venice)! It is also a major comeback for Kim Ki-duk and proof of his popularity overseas. Also encouraging is the film's strong performance in Korea, which was bolstered by the international accolade, jumping four spots in the rankings in a single day. (Modern Korean Cinema, September 12, 2012)

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CinDi 2012: The Boxes of Death, The Live (죽엄의 상자, 더 라이브) 2012

Part of MKC's Coverage of the 6th Cinema Digital Seoul Film Festival.

A number of bizarre and interesting works were presented at this year’s CinDi but none fit the tag ‘meta’ better than this curious Korean cinema-centric documentary. The Boxes of Death, The Live is about a live musical staging of the debut work of a titan of classic Korean cinema which was actually a showcase at last year’s CinDi. I didn’t see it in the exact same theater but it was certainly strange witnessing the proceedings unfold at the same event.

The Boxes of Death (1955) was the first film of Kim Ki-young, a masterful Korean cineaste who is slowly, and rightly, being recognized as one of the greats of world cinema. Most famous for his incendiary work The Housemaid (1960), Kim’s oeuvre stretched over a few decades and always pushed the medium to its limits. Films like Woman of Fire (1971), The Insect Woman (1972) and Iodo (1977), explored our darkest desires and shed an often unflattering light on Korea, in stark contrast with the image that the then-authoritarian government wished to promulgate. The Boxes of Death is perhaps more interesting as an historical artifact but the truth is that it is difficult to make a proper judgment on the film as the only existing print is lacking its soundtrack.

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17th Edition of Busan Film Fest Announces Powerful Lineup

Part of MKC's Coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

The 17th Busan International Film Festival, which will unfold over October 4-13, has announced its full selection and boy is it packed to the gills. Many new films from stars of world cinema will be screened and a number of high-profile Asian films will bow at the event. Throw in a bevy of retrospectives and special screenings and what you end up with is a 300+ film program of pure cinematic delight.

A new Hong Kong action film called Cold War, which is the debut of industry veterans Sunny Luk and Leung Long Man, will serve as the opening film while Mostafa Farwar Farooki's Television, which promises to announce the arrival of Bangladeshi cinema, will close out the week.

As always, among the most exciting things on offer at Busan are the Korean premieres. For many years BIFF has been the premiere showcase for new Korean films. This year's crop is particularly exciting. There will be gala presentations for the new Jeon Soo-il (Pink, 2011) film El Condor Pasa, National Security, Chun Ji-young's follow-up to Unbowed (2011) and a new effort from Park Chul-soo (301,302; 1995) called B.E.D.

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PiFan 2012: Osaka Violence (大阪外道, Japan) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 16th Puchon International Film Festival.

The main prize-winner at this year’s Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival, Takahiro Ishihara’s Osaka Violence, is a gritty film which employs both a realistic aesthetic and deadpan excessiveness to bring home its point. As its title suggests, the film concerns the prevalence of violence in Osaka, it is depicted as the most commonplace of acts, a cyclical ritual that is absorbed from a young age through the ebb and flow of everyday life.

The film begins with a group of young boys loitering on some farmland. The owner comes up to shoo away the trespassers but is subjected to a tirade of disrespect and abuse. They walk off, leaving the old man stunned. Things have changed in Japan and certain elements of society, such as respect, are evolving but not always in a good way. This demonstration of apathy is a logical starting point for the film. The boys’ trip through their Osaka neighborhood introduces us to an increasingly apathetic subset of its inhabitants. First they cross a gangster who is friendly to them and gives them money. Their new found fortune is swiftly taken away by a group of older boys who threaten them but this new gang is in turn beaten to a pulp by an older, burlier gangster who demands a toll for crossing under ‘his’ bridge. Suddenly, their lack of respect towards the old farmer from the opening scene is not so shocking.

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KBO: Hollywood Titles End Late Summer Local Streak (09/07-09/09, 2012)

Hollywood Titles End Late Summer Local Streak

	Title	Release Date	Market Share	Weekend	Total	Screens
1	The Bourne Legacy (us)	9/6/12	29.30%	522,713	619,128	588
2	Traffickers	8/29/12	17.60%	302,258	1,315,355	385
3	The Expendables 2 (us)	9/6/12	13.30%	240,675	278,494	394
4	Neighbors	8/22/12	12.00%	206,259	2,298,476	346
5	The Grand Heist	8/8/12	7.70%	144,076	4,833,965	312
6	The Thieves	7/25/12	7.20%	129,060	12,836,869	323
7	Pieta	8/6/12	3.30%	58,061	68,090	171
8	Step Up 4 (us)	8/15/12	2.50%	45,369	931,745	149
9	Abrahama Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (us)	8/30/12	1.90%	31,749	333,276	230
10	Sammy's Adventures 2 (ge)	8/1/12	0.80%	14,750	1,454,392	107

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Preview: The Music of Jo Hyeja (조혜자의 음악) 2012

The New England weird fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft is a man whose reputation precedes his actual work. Known by many primarily for his xenophobic fear of "the mixing of races" and also his influence on Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, it is very rare to see anyone reading his work now. Yet, the man that critics oftentimes looked upon as a second-rate Poe was a huge influence on the development of horror and supernatural fiction in American literature. His Cthulu mythos alone has inspired writers as diverse as Stephen King and Neil Gaiman, musicians like Metallica, and also sword and fantasy games, e.g. The World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons. While in the realm of cinema his vast output has led to countless adaptations of his stories, many of which are of the low budget variety.

For Korean cinema-philes that are going to be in the Los Angeles area around September 28-29th, the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival will be screening The Music of Jo Hyeja, Korea's first foray into the dark atmospheric world of H.P. Lovecraft. The film, directed by Park Ji-hyun and written by Canadian expat Gord Sellar, is an adaptation of Lovecraft's The Music of Erich Zann, a short story about a poor university student who befriends one of the tenants in his building who night after night plays an eerie tune on his violin. The story being a pure product of Lovecraft's unique imagination the melody that the troubled violinist plays is a tune which keeps the demons and odd creatures from entering the world through the windows of the apartment.

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