nanoomi

When I first heard about the movie Head and saw the cast, I was really excited to see it. Ryu Deok-hwan! Park Ye-jin! Baek Yoon-shik! Oh Dal-soo! I have been a fan of Ryu’s for a while and really like his recent work–even his television forensic/mystery program, God’s Quiz on OCN. Park Ye-jin’s movie roles may be a little weak, but I fell in love with the image she created during the years she was on ‘real’ television comedy, Family. While Baek Yoon-shik’s more recent film choices may be questionable, he has credits in Tazza and The President’s Last Bang under his belt and is still considered an excellent actor. And Oh Dal-soo is a mainstay in Korean films and a great character actor.  Throw in former G.O.D. singer Danny Ahn in a supporting role and what’s not to love?  You would think that this would be a great way to spend a chilly afternoon, just sitting at home and watching the story of Head unfold.  You would be very, very wrong.  It ranks as one of the worst films I have seen in a long time.  It is hard to pinpoint just one place where the movie went wrong, but if I am going to start finger-pointing, it would have to be at director and scriptwriter Jo Woon.  This was his first feature length film after a handful of shorts made around 2005.  I don’t think he knew what he was doing.

Read the full story

Last week, KTV aired the movie The Beautiful Maid, starring Shin Seong-il and Uhm Aeng-ran. Like a high percentage of other movies from the ’60s, this film was a melodrama. It  focused on the title character Lee Poon-yi who leaves her comfortable farm and loving family in beautiful North Jeolla Province (where I happen to live) and goes to Seoul.

She makes this great sacrifice because she wants to make extra money to ensure her younger brother has enough money for his school tuition. Lacking education and refinement limits her job choices, but she is fortunate to gain employment in the home of kindly Professor Kim as a maid.

Read the full story

A man who has never been able to get over his girlfriend leaving him is suffering from strange, realistic dreams. In one of these dreams, he accidently causes an accident while driving down an otherwise empty street. Upon awakening, he rushes to the site, only to discover that the car he had forced into a pole is really there and police are on the scene.

Examing nearby cameras for clues, the police are able to get a good look at the driver of the car. It is not the man at all, but a young woman. Confused, the man overhears the woman’s address on the police radio and goes to her house as she is being picked up for taking part in a hit-and-run.

She vehemently denies any such thing, saying that she was asleep, while the man springs out of the car and tries to take blame for the accident despite all evidence to the contrary. Both are hauled off to the police station for questioning. It is learned that the woman is under psychiatric care to treat her sleepwalking, which has grown progressively worse in the last two weeks.

Read the full story

With the end of the year, we often see ‘top-10′ lists popping up on websites, television, magazines and newspapers. Well, since I am housebound at the start of a blizzard where up to two feet of snow is expected, I will write a list of my favorite ten Korean films of the year.

Sitting down to organize my thoughts and make a list of the films I liked, I immediately ran into a problem. I wound up with a list of 15 films. That is not as big a problem as not having enough films to write about, but it is going to cause me some problems as I approach the end of the list and want to include everything.

Less of a problem were the top five films. These were pretty clear in my mind.  Incidently, I am currently in the USA using someone else’s computer. I opted not to take my laptop and haven’t bought an iPad yet–but may by the end of the week–so no images are included in this article right now as I don’t see an icon for Photoshop on this computer and I don’t want to snoop around their files trying to find one…

Oh, and as I am in the USA, I have not been able to viewYellow Sea which opened this past week.  Therefore, that film was not considered for this list. So let me get started. Here are my favorite films of 2010 in reverse order:

Read the full story

Fly, Penguin was my favorite film from 2009 and it was recently released on DVD. My copy arrived yesterday along with The Man Next Door, Runaways From Home, Actresses and Boat, all from 2009 (bringing my total number of DVDs of Korean movies to 526). I had been waiting for Fly, Penguin for a long time and I had recommended it to many people.

I was a little concerned when the promotional material I received advertising the DVD release did not list subtitles of any kind on it. Usually though, when a disk has no subs, that fact is mentioned. In this case, there was just an empty space where the subtitles information should be. As it turns out, this was just a typo or an oversight.  I am happy to say that this DVD has subtitles in Korean and English so, hopefully, it will be enjoyed by a wide audience.

Read the full story

This coming week, eight new movies are opening. Of them Salt and Death Bell 2 may do well–but I was so far off last week that I am reluctant to make any predictions.  The new movies opening are listed below.

Read the full story

Last week I reviewed A Light Sleep, starting a project I hope to continue of watching all the movies in my collection in the order they are shelved. I have had this idea for a while since there are many movies I own that I haven’t had time to see, but I delayed because I was waiting for my copy of The Wig to arrive as that would be first on the shelf  (they are ordered in Hangul).  But The Wig has been on backorder for the past two months so I started last week without it. I actually do not know how long I will be able to watch films and review them in order–as of today I have 522 Korean films and short film collections–Reviewing one per week would take me ten years to finish.  Two or three per week is possible during the summer and winter breaks, but with classes, commisioned writing for magazines and exchange program work such a schedule would be impossible. So I will watch and review as I can without giving myself stress or committing myself to an impossible task.  With all that said, the next movie in my collection is Nightmare aka The Horror Game Movie from 2000.

Before I begin a review though, I have to discuss the titles of this film. When I am doing research on old  Korean films, I often come across ads from the time that contain an English title only to discover that KOFA or KOFIC is calling it something else. For example, an ad for the 1972 Lee Hyeong-pyo film calls the movie A School Mistress while KOFA calls it A Woman Teacher on its website. Normally, this bothers me. However, in rare cases I approve of the change and Nightmare is one of those cases. If you look at the poster above and at the other two versions of the poster printed in 2000, you see the name The Horror Game Movie. That title is horrible and has nothing to do with the film. It is also far removed from the meaning of the Korean title Gawi. Gawi is not exactly a nightmare either, but it is closer in meaning than ‘horror game’. Gawi is a phenomenon where a person feels pressure on his or her chest and wakes to see a ghost trying to suffocate the sleeper.

Read the full story