After the debacle that is 7광구, which I discussed here, I figured I might write up a few suggestions for Korean film companies considering undertaking an SF project. After all, I’m someone who has studied Korean SF films carefully, picked out their pitfalls and how and why they failed — either domestically, or internationally — and I have a few thoughts based on my own frustration with the way Korean SF film has gone, and is going. I think there are a few very simple things that production companies in Korea need to realize, if they want to start putting …
Tag: FILMS & TV
Two Good Korean Films
I don’t watch a lot of Korean films these days, in part so few good ones are put out, but also because none of the good ones actually play in my neighborhood. No, it’s all junk in my neighborhood, and I’m busy enough that sometimes it’s hard to justify the trek out to Seoul to see something worth seeing. But the other day, Miss Jiwaku dragged me to a couple of great films that were showing in Guro. The first was the omnibus film If You Were Me 5 (시선이 너머). I never managed to see the third and fourth …
The American, Tron, and the “new” Harry Potter
Well, I’ve seen a few movies in the last few weeks, went into all of them blind (because no, I still haven’t read the Harry Potter books) and there are two things I can say about those films. The first is that you can tell a lot about a movie by how badly Koreans took it. The American, a European film featuring George Clooney, has been getting some pretty negative reactions online in Korea. People are reporting things like a quarter of the audience getting up and walking out at some point in the film. Lots of people are complaining …
초능력자
Tonight I saw 초능력자 (Choneungryeokja, which you could translate as “Psychic” or “Person with Supernatural Powers”1) with Miss Jiwaku, and I have to say that it actually pretty much was what one of my students described: …pretty good for the first hour or so, and then ramps up an exponential curve of silliness until it hits infinite silliness at the end. That said, the film seems to have been received rather well by the Korean public, and some people are praising it. My experience is that films that are very highly praised in Korea are sometimes good, but often don’t …
Campus Damocles, and Regenesis
The internet has been off on campus for two days–not in professors’ offices, and mostly not in department offices, but in a lot of classrooms, and of course the wifi is off. One person told me her Wibro (roaming wifi-like service) even seemed to be blocked–or nonfunctional, in any case–on campus. The official explanation is that pigeons disabled the power and internet on campus two days ago, but the idea that they haven’t managed to fix it since then, is growing more and more, well… you read my blog, and you know that except for an outage on Wednesday, there’s …
Coming Soon: Gwacheon International SF Film Festival!
So I should have posted about this before, but there’s an SF Film Festival on soon. It’s starting in a few days (28 October) and runs until 7 November, down at the National Science Museum in Gwacheon, South Korea. There’s a twitter account that’s announcing events and so on, but unless you read Korean, it won’t mean much to you. Much better to head over to the website. It’s a chance to see all kinds of SF films on the big screen, from 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the sequel) to an all-night Back to the Future trilogy marathon this …
방가?방가!
So the other day, I got a chance (apparently rare!) to see the film Bang[g]a-Bang[g]a. I’d seen the poster around, but had I not been told about the wacky screening schedule, I’d have missed it completely. If you haven’t seen it and plan to, I strongly encourage you. I don’t think the film is perfect, but it’s rare to see a film that deals with multiculturalism at all in Korea, let alone one that hits some really right notes. The film has a very limited release, but it should be on screens on Sept. 30th. Yes, one day. I don’t …
It’s True, Though…
Really, it is. Nobody likes M. Night Shyamalan… … well, except whoever keeps giving him money to make crap. Oh, wait, that’s us, isn’t it? Argh! Can we all just not go to his next movie? You think that might kill the career of the walking dead?
El Sistema, Musical Utopianism, and Social Change in Venezuela
Have you ever wondered how to fix an unfixable mess? That’s the question that faced José Antonio Abreu, of Venezuela, except for one thing: he didn’t regard the mess that Caracas was in as unfixable. In 1975, he decided that there had to be a way to get kids off the street, away from the innumerable dangers vying for their attention, energy, and lives. He realized that there had to be a way to wake up families, to form communities, to give the handicapped and the poor a chance to be respected and shine. How? Music. I kid you not. …
The Lost Airbender
So, I only started watching the animation a month or two ago, and only here and there. Nonetheless, I quite like it, and I think it’s for the same reason I’ve been enjoying The Muppet Show, as I mentioned recently. And this reason becomes even more apparent on watching the M. Night Shyamalan adaptation travesty, which I did the other night. I mean, even the creators of the series backed away carefully when asked what they thought of it. You know, that means it’s really bad. Well, it was. The funny thing is that I happen to agree with a …