Saturday, March 05, 2005
Good news everyone! Quality cinema is alive and well and living in Korea.
An unlikely sequence of events on thursday saw me wandering into HMV (Unlikely event no. 1) to get Gill her last Birthday present. After ploughing through millions of sales items (slurry) I came to the world cinema bit, which is traditionally under-represented, way fucking overpriced and several years out of date. Huge Man Vagina (or whatever it stands for) had gotten their acts together since I was in there last though, and their selection was pretty good (still overpriced, but hey) and I remembered that 'A Tale of Two sisters' had come out on DVD and got that for the dragon. I then saw 'Oldboy', which I missed in the cinema, and bought on the strength of the trailer alone (unlikely event no 2).
****WARNING!***** Those who distain hype and overzealous gushing, may wish to not read the next paragraph, esp. those of you who have yet to see either of the above movies.
Oldboy is as stylish, memorable and robust a piece of cinema as I can remember ever having seen. It is violent, certainly, but not that bloody. Some of the scenes of torture are very graphic, and detailed, but there seems to have been a conscious decision to keep the blood to a minimum. This works remarkably well, and all the violence has a very unique 'look' to it. I loved the film while I was watching it, but when we watched the extras we realised that everything in it was thought out thoroughly and they had about 5 good reasons to do everything, even lighting. Masterful stuff.
I had already seen 'Tale of two sisters' in the cinema, so I know I kicks ass, but as anyone who has seen it will attest, watching it the second time around promices to be a whole new experience.
So my question is this: When did Korea become the new cinematic superpower? I swear I'd never even seen a Korean film 5 years ago, now they are strutting around blowing the tits of every other moviemaking hotspot around- including Hong Kong and arguably Japan. Why wasn't I notified?
Have to get back to work now. Heed my word.
Aido 'evergreen' potato
An unlikely sequence of events on thursday saw me wandering into HMV (Unlikely event no. 1) to get Gill her last Birthday present. After ploughing through millions of sales items (slurry) I came to the world cinema bit, which is traditionally under-represented, way fucking overpriced and several years out of date. Huge Man Vagina (or whatever it stands for) had gotten their acts together since I was in there last though, and their selection was pretty good (still overpriced, but hey) and I remembered that 'A Tale of Two sisters' had come out on DVD and got that for the dragon. I then saw 'Oldboy', which I missed in the cinema, and bought on the strength of the trailer alone (unlikely event no 2).
****WARNING!***** Those who distain hype and overzealous gushing, may wish to not read the next paragraph, esp. those of you who have yet to see either of the above movies.
Oldboy is as stylish, memorable and robust a piece of cinema as I can remember ever having seen. It is violent, certainly, but not that bloody. Some of the scenes of torture are very graphic, and detailed, but there seems to have been a conscious decision to keep the blood to a minimum. This works remarkably well, and all the violence has a very unique 'look' to it. I loved the film while I was watching it, but when we watched the extras we realised that everything in it was thought out thoroughly and they had about 5 good reasons to do everything, even lighting. Masterful stuff.
I had already seen 'Tale of two sisters' in the cinema, so I know I kicks ass, but as anyone who has seen it will attest, watching it the second time around promices to be a whole new experience.
So my question is this: When did Korea become the new cinematic superpower? I swear I'd never even seen a Korean film 5 years ago, now they are strutting around blowing the tits of every other moviemaking hotspot around- including Hong Kong and arguably Japan. Why wasn't I notified?
Have to get back to work now. Heed my word.
Aido 'evergreen' potato
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