On September 24, 2010 it will arrive. Two and a half years in the making. One man. One robot. One hot comet of insanity.

.

Rajnikanth is….

.

.

Comments (0) Aug 31 2010

KOREAN MOVIE NIGHT
from September 14, 2010 – October 31, 2010
courtesy of the Korean Cultural Service
.
Every other Tuesday @ 7pm
Tribeca Cinemas
(54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street, one block from the A, C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops)
.
Price? Free.
All seating is first-come, first served. Doors
open at 6:30pm.
.

UPCOMING MOVIES

Series Three: Documentaries

.

TUESDAY, September 14 @ 7pm
TURN IT UP TO 11 (2009, 93 minutes, New York Premiere)
Winner of four major film awards, and the documentary that spawned the Korean catch phrase, “I don’t think we’re gonna make it,” TURN IT UP TO 11 is a rambunctious rock n’roll odyssey about Incheon’s unlikeliest talent incubator: Ruby Salon. A tiny, hole-in-the-wall club founded by aging punk Lee Kyou-Young, who moved back home to Incheon after accidentally getting his girlfriend pregnant, Ruby Salon is the seed that sprouts two bands: Galaxy Express, a tight, ambitious outfit who dream of stardom; and Tobacco Juice, a band whose members are so lazy they can’t even be bothered to show up for their own gigs. As one band goes up, and the other goes down, this slacker doc follows them to shows, bars, massive concerts, antagonistic rehearsals and empty clubs in the best movie ever made about the Korean music scene.

.

Turn it Up to 11

.

TUESDAY, September 28 @ 7pm
DANCE OF TIME (2009, 92 minutes, New York Premiere)
Song Il-Gon is the director of such classic Korean arthouse films as FEATHER IN THE WIND and the one-take-wonder, THE MAGICIANS, and here he turns his attention to a documentary, directing a relaxed, sun-soaked, lighthearted ode to love, dance, music, Santeria and Cuba. Starting at the turn of the century, DANCE OF TIME follows Cuba’s tiny community of Koreans from their accidental immigration to the present, along the way surviving wars, revolutions, and tumultuous romances. A little-known part of Cuba, these Koreans have blossomed into a vital part of the island’s culture and almost no one has heard of them. This slick, technically accomplished documentary, throbbing with music, takes care of that problem.

.

Dance of Time

.

TUESDAY, October 12 @ 7pm
GRANDMOTHER’S FLOWER (2008, 89 minutes)
It’s one of the most astonishing documentaries about modern day Korea ever made. Director Mun Jeong-Hyun is pressured into returning to his hometown to make a documentary about his grandmother. What starts as the most banal motion picture ever made becomes traumatic when he begins to pull on the threads of his family history, and everything unravels. Ultimately lifting the lid off his peaceful hometown of Naju, he reveals a hair raising history of conflict between intellectual left wingers and working class right wingers who have been at each others’ throats since the Japanese occupation. It begins with torture, persecution and secret executions and ends with self-mutilation, decades of discrimination, threats against the filmmaker, and a family exiled over three countries. A searing look at what history has done to the Korean people, this is the kind of documentary that keeps upping the ante, finding new realms of pain and suffering to inflict as history has its way with its victims.

.

Grandmother’s Flower

.

SPECIAL HALLOWEEN SCREENING!!!

.

TUESDAY, October 31 @ 4pm
GHOST aka BE WITH ME (2010, 100 minutes, US Premiere)
Definitely not a documentary. Every summer it’s horror movie time in Korea, but this year, BE WITH ME captured attention not by scaring the pants off its audience, but by offering a fresh take on the omnibus ghost film by some of Korea’s hottest young directors who take the traditional horror movie in a funnier, more experimental and more moving direction. These three stories about ghosts star a cast of some of the best young actors in Korea including Kim Kkot-Bi (BREATHLESS) and Kim Ye-Ri (PAJU) and they center around the loneliness of the dead. From the tale of  two best friends (and the boy who got one of them pregnant) competing for a single slot at a top college, to the story of a boy branded as a loser because he sees dead people, this is one of the freshest takes on the genre to come along in years.

.

Ghost

.

Comments (0) Aug 31 2010

On Tuesday, August 24, the Korean Cultural Service is teaming up with superhuge Korean broadcaster, KBS America, to screen the KBS Drama Special, A LITTLE NAUGHTY ROMANCE OF OURS (formerly known as MY LITTLE EROTIC LOVER, and then retitled as OUR SLIGHTLY RISQUE ROMANCE). The big selling point here is that the lead role is played by television megastar, Lee Seon-Gyun.

.

The show is only one hour long, and so KBS America has given permission for a second one of the KBS Drama Specials to be aired, this one starring Lee Won-Jong, the incredibly unattractive character actor from films like ATTACK THE GAS STATION, KICK THE MOON, DASEPO NAUGHTY GIRLS and NOWHERE TO HIDE amongst others. The show is one hour, and it’s a comedy horror called THE SCARY ONE, THE GHOST AND I in which Lee Won-Jong plays a bone-smashing gangster whose crew is haunted by a female ghost (Kim Min-Ji of BOYS OVER FLOWERS) who won’t stop bugging them. Finally, he breaks down and hires an exorcist in a desperate attempt to make her restless spirit piss off.

.

Surely you recognize the handsome and

clever Lee Won-Jong?

.

This double feature screening is free, and it starts at 7pm on Tuesday, August 24 at the Tribeca Cinemas. Seating is first come, first served and the doors open around 6:30pm. (More details)

.

Comments (0) Aug 18 2010

The movie that got away from this year’s New York Asian Film Festival will be playing August 28 and 29th at the IFC Center as part of the NY Children’s Film Festival. Here’s what I wrote about its director, Mamoru Hosoda for the brainiac lit magazine, World Literature Today:

.

“Then came Mamoru Hosoda’s 2006 version of this shopworn story. The original director of Hayao Miyazaki’s film, HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE (2004), Hosoda was fired from that project by Miyazaki himself and THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME (2006) was his attempt to put his career back together. Hosoda didn’t end the movie with the lead character weeping and mind-wiped. Instead, the time traveler tells her that he’ll be in the future, waiting for her to arrive. Suddenly, the future is something to be embraced, to be rushed towards. The movie became a huge hit, beating out Miyazaki’s stodgy wallow in the pre-industrial past, TALES FROM EARTHSEA (2006), at the box office.

.

.

In 2009, Hosoda secured his status as the man who drove a stake through Miyazaki’s grumpy old heart with SUMMER WARS, the most internet-friendly movie since Shunji Iwai’s ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU. An animated epic, it tells the tale of a young nerdling pretending to be the boyfriend of a schoolmate on her summer trip to her aging grandmother’s house. When an online social networking community known as Oz gets attacked by a piece of sentient malware that threatens to deliver a denial of service attack to the entire world, her massive extended family unites to restore peace to cyberspace. Hosoda goes out of his way to make the point that the internet, TV and cell phones are all part of a technological continuum that started with letters and books and whose goal is to form networks, to build communities and to erase the distance between individuals. The hero of Hosoda’s film isn’t the main character, but the network of people around him, his friends, his family, and even fellow account holders he’s never met.”

.

It’s one of the best animated films to come along in ages, and a perfect movie to watch in these hazy, lazy dog days of summer, full of hot afternoons, humming servers and young love, with production design inspired by Superflat pioneer Takashi Murakami.

.

Tickets and showtimes – it’s only screening twice so get on down there!

.

Watch the trailer!

.

Comments (1) Aug 11 2010

The New York Asian Film Festival is over, but Asian movies are still coming to NYC. You can drown your sorrows, and treat your withdrawal, with the Korean Cultural Service’s Free movie night.

.

What’s coming up?

.

Series Three: TV Party
In America, Korea is famous for its movies, but in the rest of the world it’s famous for its TV. Korean drama series have scored everywhere in Asia, from China to Japan and Korean television dramas have been so popular in Malaysia that kimchi imports to that country jumped 150%. Korean TV series are even part of primetime programming in Cambodia and Iran. And so now, in this series, the KCS presents the best of Korean TV.

.

.

TUESDAY, July 13 @ 7pm
TOKYO TAXI (2010, 76 minutes, New York Premiere)
Award-winning, arthouse darling, Kim Tae-Sik (DRIVING WITH MY WIFE’S LOVER), directed this TV movie that was so acclaimed it went on to do the film festival circuit. Ryo’s (Masashi Yamada’s) band has been invited to a play a concert in Seoul, but he’s terrified of flying. In a burst of inspiration he hails a taxi in Tokyo and demands that it honor its pledge to take him to any destination, in this case, Seoul. And so begins an epic odyssey of passenger and driver across hundreds of miles and two countries in this wry, sharply-observed comedy. One of the best and most ambitious of the made-for-TV movies, it helped launch the career of Yu Hana, who plays an Asiana stewardess, Ryo’s unobtainable object of desire.

.

.

TUESDAY, July 27 @ 7pm
GIRL BY GIRL (2007, 80 minutes, New York Premiere)
Starting life as a student film made for cable TV, GIRL BY GIRL (SONYEO X SONYEO) became a popular hit thanks to its ferociously committed lead performance by Kwak Ji-Min, the star of Kim Ki-Duk’s SAMARITAN GIRL and one of the actors in the bawdy, over-the-top DASEPO NAUGHTY GIRLS. In GIRL BY GIRL Kwak plays a troublemaking high school student who is hell on wheels. When she and a model student both fall for the same guy, she figures that this means war, and so she manages to convince the model student that their dream man only likes bad girls, while trying to turn herself into the perfect high school girl he actually desires. It sounds contrived, and it is, but Kwak’s go-for-broke performance papers over the rough spots with its speed and commitment. She’s heartless one minute, ridiculous another and then oddly sympathetic the next, just like a real teenager.

.

TUESDAY, August 10 @ 7pm
PUNCH STRIKE (2006, 81 minutes, New York Premiere)
Korean directors are almost exclusively male, and PUNCH STRIKE would be notable if for no other reason that for the fact that its director, Ryou Eun-Jung, is a woman. She worked in the trenches for years before she was able to make her short film “A Smoke-Flavored Life” which won awards at film festivals around the world. She followed it up with PUNCH STRIKE, a rambunctious flick that takes on the high school power dynamic in Korea, which makes even the most dysfunctional American high school look like paradise. Hard-working character actor, Lim Won-Hie, plays “Mad Dog” a psychotic teacher who physically abuses and sexually humiliates his students. But when he slaps Mina (Park Min-Ji) in the face in front of her secret crush he’s crossed the line and so she and her two friends begin a quiet revolution as they seek their revenge. As bouncy and rambunctious as a 16 year old texting while simultaneously talking on the phone and updating their Facebook page, it’s a movie that fell between the cracks but that deserves wider exposure for its particularly cock-eyed take on high school hell.

.

.

TUESDAY, August 24 @ 7pm
OUR SLIGHTLY RISQUE RELATIONSHIP (2000, 110 minutes)
This TV movie is one of powerhouse broadcaster KBS’ new “Drama Specials,” 60 minute made-for-TV movies that showcase their hottest talent. OUR SLIGHTLY RISQUE RELATIONSHIP (formerly titled MY LITTLE EROTIC LOVER) is a typical meet-cute between a broadcaster and a reporter who can’t stand the sight of each other. Elevating this formulaic flick is the bawdy nature of the comedy (they meet cute when she spills hot soup on his penis, sparking a medical emergency) and the fact that it stars Lee Seon-Gyun. Lee was relegated to bit parts for years before he starred in the 2007 TV series, THE 1st SHOP OF THE COFFEE PRINCE, playing the owner of a run down coffee house. The show was a massive hit and he followed it up with the medical TV series, WHITE TOWER. Now he’s not only the biggest male actor on Korean television, but last year he won an acting award for his role in the critically acclaimed feature film PAJU.

.

Comments (3) Jul 11 2010

KOREAN MOVIE NIGHT

from May 11, 2010 – June 29, 2010

courtesy of the Korean Cultural Service

.

Every other Tuesday @ 7pm

Tribeca Cinemas

(54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street, one block from the A, C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops)

.

Price? Free.

All seating is first-come, first served.

Doors open at 6:30pm.

.

UPCOMING MOVIES

.

Series Three: Epic Action

Just in time for summer, the Korean Cultural Service presents its third series of films: big, fat, epic action movies – perfect blockbusters that’ll air condition your brain.

.

TUESDAY, MAY 11 @ 7pm

FROZEN FLOWER (2008, 131 minutes, New York Premiere)

.

.

Based on a true story, FROZEN FLOWER is sexy, bloody fun, anchored by three ferociously committed performances and powered by subversive sexual politics. Set in the Goryeo Dynasty, it opens with the King (Ju Jin-Mo, who won “Best Actor” for his performance here) peacefully in love with his bodyguard, Hong Lim (Jo In-Sung, currently serving in the Army). The two men are happy together, and the court turns a blind eye to their romance, but someone’s got to father an heir and so Hong-Lim is assigned the task of impregnating the Queen (Song Ji-Hyo). Complications ensue. So do revolutions, assassinations attempts, castrations, decapitations and intense sexiness.

.

Goryeo Dynasty man date.

.

Read a review that calls it “…a big juicy steak of a movie.” And watch the trailer.

.

TUESDAY, MAY 25 @ 7pm

THE ACCIDENTAL GANGSTER (2008, 103 minutes, New York Premiere)

.

The poster is boring,

the movie is not.

.

Its other title tells you all you need to know: GIBANG RIOT OF 1724. A head-banging action comedy it’s a frenetic blend of modern filmmaking style and period storytelling polish. A ghetto street brawler falls for a high priced courtesan (Kim Ok-Bin, THIRST) and winds up fighting for her affections with the local gang boss. Scored to a mix of hip hop and rock, edited by monkeys jacked up on crack, and featuring wall-to-wall nutso action, it’s the kind of movie that has no pretensions: it’s out to do nothing more than make your head explode.

.

Read a review that claims this movie is proof “…there is still life left in the genre, at least for directors brave enough to shake things up.” And watch the bizarre trailer.

.

TUESDAY, JUNE 15 @ 7pm

THE SWORD WITH NO NAME (2009, 124 minutes, New York Premiere)

.

.

Holy blockbusters! A big hit at the box office last year, SWORD is the epitome of posh, luscious, decadent period filmmaking. Based on the real life Empress Myeongseong, it tells her story through the eyes of a bounty hunter who becomes her bodyguard (Cho Seung-Woo, now doing his mandatory military service). She tries to stand up to Russian and Japanese intervention in 19th Century Korea and the results are a series of luxurious, CGI-enhanced action scenes alternating with carefully calibrated and eye-meltingly colorful court life pageants, making this movie feel like an unholy mix of Merchant-Ivory and THE MATRIX.

.

Read a review that calls the movie, “…heartfelt and passionate…” and watch the lush trailer.

.

TUESDAY, JUNE 29 @ 7pm

JSA: JOINT SECURITY AREA (2000, 110 minutes)

.

.

A special screening to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Korean War, Park Chan-Wook’s JSA: JOINT SECURITY AREA is one of the most moving Korean films ever made, and the hit that put Director Park (OLDBOY) on the map. Starring Song Kang-Ho (THE HOST), Lee Young-Ae (LADY VENGEANCE), Lee Byung-Hun (GI JOE; THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD) and Shin Ha-Kyun (SAVE THE GREEN PLANET, THIRST) it is the APOCALYPSE NOW of the Korean War, a shimmering, hyper-real epic that charts the spiritual fallout of international politics.

.

.

JSA uses the partition, the arbitrary line drawn through the middle of Korea and manned by international oversight, as a door into the psychological wreckage of the Korean War. It starts with a present-day incident on the border that leaves a group of North and South Korean soldiers alternately wounded or dead. The Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC) swoops in to investigate, led by Korean-Swiss Major Sophie Jean (Lee Young-Ae) and the stark, technocratic investigation becomes the frame for a series of extended flashbacks that depict the events leading up to the shooting.

.

.

In every sense of the word, JSA is a tragedy, but at the same time, it’s a testament to human nature. Not the cheap, sentimental Hallmark card version of human nature, but the human nature where, in the teeth of global politics, even in the face of extinction, like reaches out to like, and friendships are formed because we’re humans, not ideologues. One of the most popular Korean movies of all time, both at home and overseas, JSA is a movie that takes Korea’s national tragedy of partition and manages to find within it something as fragile and precious as hope.

.

.

Watch the trailer.

.

Comments (5) May 04 2010

Almost totally unseen in the US, Jeon Soo-Il is one of Korea’s most important independent directors and he, and a retrospective of his films, are coming to NYU this weekend. None of us have seen the films, although we’ve all heard of them, so we’ve pulled the info from the official press release. Here it is:

.

Jeon’s films have been awarded and featured internationally in film festivals, including the Cannes International Film Festival (WIND ECHOING IN MY BEING, 1997), Venice International Film Festival (WITH A GIRL OF BLACK SOIL, 2007) and Pusan International Film Festival (HIMALAYA, 2008). His energetic creativity never stops while teaching film production in Kyungsung University and currently is in production for his 8th film.  New York University will showcase Jeon’s three films; HIMALAYA WHERE THE WIND DWELLS (2008), WITH A GIRL OF BLACK SOIL (2007), THE BIRD WHO STOPS IN THE AIR (1999).

.

Screening Schedule

Director Jeon Soo-il will be present at the screenings.

Friday, April 23, 6:00pm

WITH A GIRL OF BLACK SOIL (2007, 89 min)

Cantor Film Center, 36 E. 8th Street

.

Saturday, April 24, 2:00pm

THE BIRD WHO STOPS IN THE AIR (1999, 106 min)

Michelson Theater, 721 Broadway, 6th Floor

.

Sunday, April 25, 2:00pm

HIMALAYA: THE PLACE WIND DWELLS (2008, 95 min)

Michelson Theater, 721 Broadway, 6th Floor

.

WITH A GIRL OF BLACK SOIL (2007, 89min)
In a small mining village in the Kangwon Province, a 9-year-old girl Young-lim lives a financially limited but cozy life with her miner father, and her mentally challenged brother. But their happiness is interrupted as her father loses his job after a mining incident.  Jeon’s most acclaimed film – it won awards at the Venice, Pusan, Deauville and Barcelona film festivals, among others – is a “quiet wonder” (Neil Young, Hollywood Reporter) that effectively plunges the viewer into its rugged, forlorn setting and the interior world of its young heroine.

.

THE BIRD WHO STOPS IN AIR (1999, 106 min)

Kim teaches at a provincial film school and is no favourite among the students. Different from other professors who help them find contacts and start their film careers, Kim is too focused on film itself and on making his own film, a desire which begins to merge with his longing to fly. Having kept the memories of birds from his childhood, he intends to make a film based on the images of birds that appear in his dreams. He is slowly working on his own screenplay and doesn’t notice that his professional and personal lives are falling apart. Kim’s girlfriend, Young-hie, struggles with her fears about the future and tries to interest her lover in their relationship – to no avail. Yet he agrees to accompany Young-hie on a trip to her hometown, though he is plainly becoming ever more estranged from the human world.

.

HIMALAYA: THE PLACE WIND DWELLS (2008, 95min)

The film begins with the protagonist Choi (Choi Min-Sik, OLDBOY), who has just finished his divorce procedures. When he visits his brother’s factory, he receives a request to deliver one of the Nepali workers’ ashes to his homeland and family. After suffering from nasal haemorrhage and headache due to mountain sickness, he arrives in Sham’s hometown in the Himalayas to find Sham’s ill mother and his three sisters living in a ragged house.  Unable to deliver the news, Choi stays in the Himalayas, which forces him to choose between the village life and modernity.

.

Comments (0) Apr 15 2010

On April 9 @ Anthology Film Archives (corner of Second Avenue and Second Street) there will be three performance-based films from avante-garde filmmaker Taka Iimura. It starts at 7:30pm. Take a look at some of Taka’s other experimental works and then decide if this one’s for you.

.

(Full info on the performance)

Comments (0) Apr 01 2010

On Tuesday, April 6 @ 7pm the Korean Cultural Service will hold a free screening of the Korean horror flick, PHONE. It’ll be at the Tribeca Cinemas (54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal, one block from the A,C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops).

.

Tickets are free. We’re seating first-come, first-served and doors open at 6:30pm. With 130 seats to give away, there’s plenty of room.

.

.

But why should you see PHONE? This is part of the Korean Cultural Service’s “Remakes” series, and the movie has been slated for a Hollywood remake with original director, Ahn Byung-Ki at the helm. PHONE was the highest-grossing Korean horror movie of 2002, and it’s a consumerist nightmare that unfolds in sterile, over-designed homes that turn into gothic graveyards, as if a layout in
Architecture Today suddenly got hijacked by Mario Bava, and he turned all those contemporary furnishings into mossy headstones.

.

And the Academy Award for Over-Acting by

a Child goes to…

.

It’s all about a career journalist getting stalker calls after busting a kiddie porn ring. She switches to a new cell phone number and instead of menacing calls from gangland pimps, she starts getting spooky calls from beyond the grave. Things get worse when she visits her best friend, Ho-Jun, and lets Ho-Jun’s daughter answer her cell phone. Before you can say “Linda Blair” this perfect little tyke is possessed by an evil spirit. This gang of other well-dressed yuppies quickly discover that their stylish clothes and chic haircuts are no match for the spirit of a moldering schoolgirl having the ultimate bad hair day. Not just another clone of Japan’s THE RING, this character-driven movie is a very Korean nightmare where all those pretty things you buy are just a cheap bandaid on a festering wound.

.

“Killing you makes me giggle!”

.

But the real reason to see this movie is the cute little possessed girl, Young-Ju, played by the most insane freak in Korea, Eun Seo-Woo, who deserves a special Academy Award for her performance. Whether she’s French kissing daddy, hissing like a cat, or trying to break her own neck, this tyke is out of control in a way even Maury Povich can’t handle. It’s like watching Joan Crawford give the performance of her life if she was four-years-old and Korean.

.

In true gothic fashion, the family unit of PHONE turns out to be just another nest of neurotic possessiveness, hidden homicide, and lustmord. As the minutes tick off until “The End” rolls across the screen, all the stylish ephemera of modern Korean filmmaking does a time lapse dissolve into an Edgar Allan Poe haze with unlimited minutes and no roaming charges.

.

Comments (0) Apr 01 2010

KIMJONGILIA, the documentary about North Korea’s prison camps, opens on March 19 at Cinema Village. Here’s what the filmmakers have to say about their flick:

.

“KIMJONGILIA, The Flower of Kim Jong Il, is the first film to fully expose the disaster through a tapestry of defectors’stories,North Korean propaganda, and original performance. This feature documentary shows why the defectors fled, describes their hair-raising escapes, and recounts the dangers they face in China, hunted by Chinese as well as North Korean police. These refugees are from every walk of life, from child concentration camp inmates to an elite concert pianist.”

.

The film’s director will be in attendance at certain opening weekend shows. Here’s the official website with trailers and all kinds of jazz, and here’s a review (that says the film “must be seen to be believed.”) and here’s a link to tickets and showtimes. Also, read some reviews.

.

.

Comments (0) Mar 18 2010