ZEITGEIST

Let’s stipulate for this conversation that everything the experts say about evolution is true. Creatures that are the most successful at reproducing pass their traits to the next generation, and so on.

But I have another hypothesis that I think is testable. What if there is another influence that also contributes?

I wonder if a creature’s aspirations can somehow have an impact on what her genes pass to the next generation. We know that thoughts are associated with feelings, and feelings are associated with body chemistry. It’s not impossible that wanting something in your lifetime can make it more likely the child achieves it.

Recently I read that certain environmental conditions can increase the odds that women will give birth to boys. So we know that external conditions can influence body chemistry which in turn can influence the genetic makeup of the kid.

So I wonder about the giraffe with its long neck, to pick an easy example. The classic explanation is that giraffes with longer necks could reach leaves higher in trees, and had a survival advantage when food was scarce. That seems reasonable enough. But I wonder if the giraffes that strained and wished they had longer necks experienced some sort of stress, and giraffe-style wishfulness, that released any chemicals that could influence the odds of producing a long-necked child. In other words, do creatures guide their own evolutionary path through their desires?

It seems hugely unlikely that such a complicated and specific system could exist in a creature. But everything about creatures with brains is ridiculously complicated and specific and unlikely. It seems to me entirely plausible that creatures with brains evolved a heretofore undiscovered ability to translate their aspirations in this life to physical traits in their children.

You could test this in female rats. One group is the control, and the other is kept frustratingly a half inch from some delicious cheese. Both rats are fed enough to guarantee equal survival, so the normal mechanism for evolution is turned off. Would the rat who aspired to have a longer snout to reach the cheese produce, on average, longer snouted offspring?

Someone probably tested that already in fruit flies or something.

[Update: Lamark didn't deal with a person's aspirations. He was all about the traits you acquire during life, whether you wanted them or not. -- Scott]

Review by Darcy Paquet

    A College Woman's Confession (1958)

Choi So-young is a university student majoring in law whose studies are supported by her grandmother. However after her grandmother dies, and with no parents or other relatives to support her, she is faced with the prospect of abandoning her career dreams and dropping out of school. With her rent overdue, So-young looks for a job, but finds that the only men willing to hire her are interested in favors that extend beyond the workplace.

Meanwhile So-young has a friend, the aspiring novelist Hee-sook, who has stumbled across a rather unusual diary written by a young woman who has since died. The diary reveals that a powerful politician named Choi Rim has a lost biological daughter, born to a woman he knew in the years before his marriage. But Assemblyman Choi has no knowledge of his daughter's identity or whereabouts.

Hee-sook, with a novelist's appreciation for dramatic plot twists, suggests something that So-young would never consider on her own: posing as the daughter of Assemblyman Choi in order to put herself through college. So-young rejects it out of hand, but as time passes and she becomes more desperate, it starts to look like a more attractive option.

A College Woman's Confession is Shin Sang-ok's big hit of the 1950s, and indeed the film that established his commercial career. Reportedly based on a French feature which in Korea was translated as Betrayal (I haven't been able to identify it), the film is notable for the star-making performance of Choi Eun-hee as So-young, and for its focus on the challenges faced by women in the post-war era. It's not hard to see why the film was so popular with female audiences of its time, given its dramatic strengths and the highly unusual portrait of a talented female lawyer who devotes herself to defending disenfranchised women, even as she herself is in danger of losing everything.

Aesthetically, Confession contains accomplished acting, an effective use of suspense (despite the slow manner in which it unfolds), and a keen feel for image and sound during an era when technical challenges dominated the filmmaking process. (Less effective is the film's musical soundtrack, with its sudden bursts of dramatic music that may seem comical to contemporary audiences) I found myself especially taken with the performance of Kim Seung-ho as Assemblyman Choi, whose measured, soft-spoken dialogue and deliberate manner overlay a passionate devotion to his newfound daughter.

There is also an interesting extended flashback that occurs in the latter part of the film, about a woman defended by So-young who has been accused of murder. The defendant is played by well-known actress Hwang Jeong-soon, who together with Choi won an acting award at the first edition of the short-lived Domestic Film Awards in 1959. (The photo that accompanies this review is of Choi receiving an acting award, since I have not been able to locate any image from the film itself.) We see in the defendant's story parallels to So-young's own experience, despite the vast divergence in their ultimate fates. The film's sudden return to the grim realities of poverty in the midst of So-young's professional advancement serves to place an asterisk next to her story and function as a reminder of what most people of that era were experiencing.      (Darcy Paquet)

A College Woman's Confession ("Eoneu yeodaesaeng-ui gobaek"). Directed by Shin Sang-ok. Screenplay by Shin Sang-ok and Jo Nam-sa. Starring Choi Eun-hee (So-young), Kim Seung-ho (Assemblyman Choi), Yu Gye-seon (Choi's wife), Choi Hyun (Choi's assistant), Kim Sook-il (Hee-sook), Hwang Jeong-soon (defendant). Cinematography by Kang Beom-gu. Produced by Seoul Film Company. 120 min, b&w. Released on July 12, 1958.

Review by Adam Hartzell

    Lump of Sugar

Esteemed producer Tcha Sung-jai, as Moon Seok writes in the 2007 Cannes Edition of Korean Film Observatory, "has aesthetically contributed to debuting the directors who now represent the Korean film industry – such as Kim Sung-su, Im Sang-soo, Bong Joon-ho, Hur Jin-ho, and Jang Joon-hwan – and accomplished the large capitalization of the Korean film industry." And although Lump of Sugar director Lee Hwan-kyung is not up to par yet with his predecessors, Tcha's participation further solidifies his importance to South Korean cinema in that with Lump of Sugar he helped secure financing for a vehicle in which a young actress as exemplary as Lim Soo-jeong can further hone her craft. And it is Lim who is very much responsible for my tempered appreciation of this little coming-of-age drama.

In Lump of Sugar, Lim plays Si-eun, a young girl who lives alone with her father on his farm along with his stable-hand, a friend from his obligatory military service. Si-eun's mother dies when Si-eun is very young. Visiting her mother's grave she collapses and is carried home by her mother's favorite horse, General. This brings the stable-hand to comment that General was sent to rescue Si-eun by her mother from beyond the grave. General will be shown caring for little Si-eun in more scenes, solidifying this emotional and cosmic connection. When General dies while birthing a foal to be named Thunder, Si-eun feels indebted to her new 'brother'. While all this character loyalty is being developed, we are also provided glimpses of Si-eun's interest in becoming a jockey. Her father, who still fears that Si-eun will fall off a horse to her death like her mother, attempts to stifle this pursuit by selling Thunder. Instead of encouraging Si-eun to pursue a college education through this passive-aggressive action, Si-eun instead is encouraged to ride away in pursuit of her dream.

I have yet to stumble across a survey by a scholar verifying (or contradicting) my impression regarding films centered on the trials of young women. But my recollections of such films leave me feeling that the majority of them demand a male love interest for the young lady lead. In this way, her actions are not her own but based on what is required for the male object of her affection to acknowledge her desire and validate her womanly existence. The saving grace is that some of these films have the young women realize they were mistaken in assessing what they desired. Still, the genre seems to require the male love interest.

This brings me to the other major reason I find Lump of Sugar film momentarily endearing - Si-eun's trials have nothing whatsoever to do with pursuing a boyfriend. It has everything to do with realizing her agency, specifically jockeying for her position within this male enclave while retaining her ethical tenets of fair play and mutual respect. Fellow jockey Cheol is misunderstood as a love interest by Si-eun's roommate, but Cheol is clearly a rival (therefore her equal) in the vein of any other male sports genre film. Yes, the set-ups of Si-eun and Thunder reuniting after a long absence present them looking longingly at each other as if torn straight out of a romantic comedy, so it can be argued that the genre demands of a male love interest have been displaced onto a horse. (And this is an area where many could make fun of the film, since these classic Hollywood "meet cutes" are overdone and regurgitated often.) But this love interest is that of the type of love felt between family members, including the family pet, not of the erotic kind. I may not relate to the feelings some have for their animal companions, but I don't doubt that love is felt between them, and felt intensely, especially amongst young people, who are the primary target of a film like Lump of Sugar. (The film almost broke even in its attempt to reach that audience.)

We know from genre conventions that Thunder will return and that certain sports genre tropes will intrude. Even nationalism, a common motif in sports genre films, rears its horse's rear end since much is made of the fact that Thunder's ability is doubted since he is a Korean-bred horse. The occasional cliched feel of these requisite moments, particularly the meet-cutes, keep this film from being a great film. But the fact that the genre-demanded male love interest is jettisoned and Si-eun's character exhibits several shining moments of nicely flowing, feminist agency – the most powerful being her intrusion into the privileged male space of the locker room to confront a colleague whose (lack of) sporting ethics put another colleague in danger – make this a film that expands the genre enough to placate both those who insist on genre demands and those who insist on something original. Although I can't say the film is a stellar piece of work, I resolve to let the film be what it is, a decent film within the young adult, coming-of-age genre.      (Adam Hartzell)

 

Last night I saw some pundits on the news discussing the results of a poll. When Americans were asked if they would vote for an African-American for president, more than 9 out of 10 people said yes. But when asked if they knew anyone who would not vote for an African-American, about half said they know such a person.

One inference you might make from these results, and the one drawn by the pundits on the show, is that people are secretly racists. They tell pollsters they are not bigots, but once inside the voting booth they are.

The other inference is something I call math. If there are ten friends, and only one is a racist, then it is true that 90 percent are not racists while everyone knows someone who is. It’s that one guy.

Here’s the way I think the election is going to go down. Obama will get nominated, and polls will start to show he will get 95% of the African-American vote. This will frighten all the racists who hadn’t planned to vote, and get them to the polling places, thus handing the election to John McCain, even if he is only being kept alive by machines at that point.

Here’s a little unscientific survey question of my own:

1. Do you personally know anyone who thinks Obama is a Muslim?

2. Do you personally know anyone who suspects Obama might secretly hate America and is running for President to destroy it from within?

I know registered voters in both of those categories. That's why your next president will be named McCain. That's just a prediction, not a preference.

Yesterday I went to a Giants baseball game. It was Little League Day, so there were about ten thousand young boys running wild in the stands. It was also free bat day, courtesy Bank of America.

I will pause while you digest this concept.

Do you know what happens when you hand an 8-year old boy a new bat, sit him behind the exposed heads of several adults, and ask him to sit patiently for four hours while nothing much happens on the big field in front of him? Do you think he fiddles with that bat?

Apparently Bank of America figured there was some theoretical amount of head injuries that would make the public forget that they lent a trillion of your dollars to hobos.

My memory of the afternoon goes something like this: “TREVOR, PUT DOWN THAT BAT! YOU ALREADY HIT THAT LADY ONCE! I SAID, PUT IT DOWN! I MEAN IT! I WILL NOT TELL YOU FOUR HUNDRED MORE TIMES!” This was followed by the sound of wood making solid contact with skull, cursing, repeat.

My wife took a solid blow to the shoulder. Later, one of the tykes kicked some guy’s beer out of the back seat holder, so we sat in a puddle of beer, while the sun cooked us. I was one pinch of salt from being a recipe.

I tried to use the restroom at the stadium. This is no place for the shy. Unlike most public men’s rooms, where there might be a small privacy shield between urinals, this place was designed to handle high volume, shoulder-to-shoulder peeing. I saw an opening where I could poke my penis between a bearded guy and a guy with a fanny pack, just over the left ear of a Little Leaguer, but before I could make my move, someone filled the slot. I decided I could wait another three or four hours.

Conditions were difficult, but at least the game was exciting well into the first half of the first inning when the Reds scored six runs and put it out of reach. Technically, there was still hope, since many of the Giants have batting averages that round to one hundred, and some are able to catch a fly ball nearly half the time. But yesterday was not their day. There were many boos from the stands. I felt bad for the players until I realized they couldn’t hear the boos over the screams of the bat victims.

I wish someone would invent a device that allowed you to watch sporting events from your home. I think that would be popular.

Review by Darcy Paquet

    The Happy Life

The combination of director Lee Joon-ik and screenwriter Choi Seok-hwan has been golden, not only with their record-breaking smash hit King and the Clown but also with mid-sized hits like like Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield (2003) and Radio Star (2006). Their films are sometimes clever, but never flashy or trend-chasing. More than anything else, it is storytelling skill that drives their works. They create believable, real-life characters and make us care about them.

The Happy Life is their latest release, a smaller-budget project made before taking on the Vietnam War-era Sunny (scheduled for release in summer 2008). The film's story first picks up at a funeral, where three middle aged friends sit down together and start to reminisce about the past. Twenty years earlier, the deceased had been the lead singer in a university rock band called "Active Volcano", and the other three men had played lead guitar, bass and drums. Currently, the three are plodding through life without much enthusiasm or sense of meaning. Then Ki-young, the guitarist, bursts out with a crazy idea: "Let's re-form the band!"

As a basis for a film, this setup seems neither particularly unique or commercially appealing, but Lee and Choi are able to turn this into an unusually fun movie, thanks in part to vivid characterization. Ki-young (played by Jung Ji-young from King and the Clown) has accepted early retirement and has grown used to life as an unemployed father. His wife Seon-mi (the supremely talented Kim Ho-jeong, Nabi) works as a teacher and so the family is able to scrape by. But she and their daughter Ju-hee (Ko Ah-sung, the little girl from The Host) pay him hardly any attention as they go about their daily lives.

Seong-wook (the bassist, played by Kim Yun-seok who has been catapulted to fame by The Chaser) has recently been laid off. With a smart son, and a wife eager to give him the best schooling and private lessons possible (which in Korea will cost a small fortune), he has taken to working several menial jobs at a delivery service and designated driver program. Meanwhile Hyuk-soo (the drummer, played by character actor Kim Sang-ho) runs a car dealership in Seoul in order to support his wife and two kids who live in Canada -- a not uncommon situation in contemporary Korea.

In truth, it's insane for any of these three to be actively entertaining the idea of starting a band. Urgent real-life problems beckon, and their families are unlikely to be very understanding. But crazy ideas sometimes gather momentum and lead us in unexpected directions.

The Happy Life manages to be both entertaining and uplifting without papering over any of the economic issues that ground the film in reality. Although the broad plot of the film remains fairly predictable, the meat of the story lies in the many smaller dramas and twists that take place along the way. Hyuk-soo the drummer in particular becomes a fascinating character as the story progresses, and sure enough he won a best supporting actor award at Korea's Blue Dragon awards ceremony for his engaging performance. But all of the extended cast is great, giving an even greater boost to this modest story that surpasses expectations.      (Darcy Paquet)

Review by Adam Hartzell

    Desert Dream

As we creep towards the opening credits, Desert Dream fades to dusty yellow before it fades to black. If you are ever in East Asia in the spring/summer and notice the people wearing surgical masks, don't be worried about a returning SARS outbreak. Be worried about yellow dust. Yellow dust storms originate primarily from the deserts of Mongolia, northern China, and Kazakhstan thanks to an erosion of barren land similar to that of the Dust Bowl that occurred in the U.S. in the 1930's. These storms end up carrying pollutants in their wake to cities halfway around the world, exposing neighboring countries to lung-damaging particles, hence the surgical masks. In China, as Patrick Alleyn notes in his article "The Chinese Dust Bowl" in the October 2007 issue of the Canadian monthly The Walrus, besides government 'ecological refugee' relocation programs, efforts are being taken to renew the land to a fertile state to hold off further erosion, such as planting a Great Green Wall of China to protect the land from wind, or fining shepherds who allow their flocks to graze indiscriminately. But Zhang Lu's film is void of such collective political action in Mongolia. In Desert Dream (Mongolian title - Hyazgar), one man is the Johnny Appleseed of stories that make up the Mongolian section of The Steppes. That man is Hungai (Osor Bat-Ulzii).

When Hungai's daughter's illness demands his wife take her to the capital of Mongolia, Ulan Batar, he is left with just his saplings and the few familiar faces that pass through his little nook of The Steppes. But soon some new faces appear at his door, two North Korean refugees, pre-teen Chong-no (Shin Dong-ho) and his mother (Suh Jung). Slowly these two get to know each other and trust each other as they assist Hungai in his tree-planting, cow-milking, dung-gathering, and goat-birthing. Although the dialogue explicates some themes, the majority of the plot is supported by silent actions since only two of the three in this triad can verbally communicate with one another. (But such linguistic limitations do not stop Chong-no's mother from clearly informing Hungai to keep his grimy hands off her body.) Such persistent silence enhances the effect of the stories told in the folk songs sung in Desert Dream.

Each Zhang film I've seen depicts lost characters seeking something and someone to hold on to, only to be disappointed by eventual betrayal. Desert Dream follows a similar path as it spins us around as we seek an elusive holding place, which presents the viewer with a tiny fraction of the disorientation experienced by many of the refugees of the world. The film is slow-paced, taking time out to appreciate the vast expanse of space making this film perfect for the cinema, and leaving me disappointed that my only option for viewing it was my computer screen.

As my friend Brian Darr has noted over at his blog Hell on Frisco Bay, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is lately staying loyal to particular directors and I'm happy they found fidelity with director Zhang Lu, or otherwise who knows when I might have had a chance to check out Desert Dream after its screening in official competition at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival, even if that chance is only on my computer via the privileges of a reviewer's copy. Zhang's decision to focus on the displaced, be it North Koreans in China (Grain In Ear) or in Mongolia, is a welcomed and refreshing presence on the world cinema stage. Much is made about the money lost in South Korean cinema in 2007, but not enough is made about the other losses, those films deserving of greater exposure that stay in the film festival ghetto. But in this case, the marginalization of Zhang's films in theaters parallels the lives of his characters. Perhaps the fact that Zhang is a third-generation Korean-Chinese explains why he empathizes so much with the status of his characters. Thankfully, as Tom Giammarco informs me, he has two more films set for release in South Korea. It appears Zhang will continue on with his work like that of the characters of Desert Dream. In spite of the obstacles, each continues to walk onward in the face of all the dust in the wind that seeks to impede their progress. Occasionally each finds oases of beauty along the way.       (Adam Hartzell)

Review by Darcy Paquet

    Going by the Book

Do-man is a low-ranking traffic cop with an unusual personality. Soft-spoken and seemingly a bit shy, he is nonetheless unbending when it comes to rules and the law. His quiet stubbornness makes him the butt of other officers' jokes. Occasionally it also gets him into trouble, as when he pulls over his new boss, the newly instated police chief Lee Seung-woo, and issues him a ticket.

The police chief, played here by the dependable character actor Son Byeong-ho, is surprised and a bit annoyed at the unexpected fine. But he has other things to worry about at the moment. The town of Sampo is in a panic over a string of bank robberies, and as a means of reassuring them, he decides to carry out a highly realistic drill to demonstrate the police force's professionalism and resolve. Officers will be stationed throughout the city, and without warning, someone pretending to be a bank robber will stage a holdup, taking hostages if necessary. The chief announces the plan, and then later in secret, he tells Do-man that he is to act as the bank robber.

The chief may have been chuckling to himself at the irony of having a man so committed to obeying the law play the part of a criminal. But for Do-man, this is no laughing matter. Devoting himself to the task at hand with his usual fastidious attention to detail, he prepares to commit the perfect crime.

Filmmaker/playwright Jang Jin has carved out a niche all his own in the film industry these past several years, and although he participates on Going By the Book as a screenwriter and producer -- not a director -- his contribution is unmistakable. His comedy is both character-based and situational at the same time, or in this case, it is the clash between Do-man's endearingly subdued character and the outrageous situation that he finds himself in that gives the film its biggest laughs.

Director Ra Hee-chan, like Welcome to Dongmakgol director Park Kwang-hyun before him, worked as an assistant director under Jang before making his debut with one of his mentor's scripts. Ra displays less of a personal style than Park, and Korean critics have questioned his sense of comic pacing (sadly, the film's biggest weakness), but he still managed to turn the film into a solid commercial hit of 2.2 million admissions. Indeed, the film considerably outperformed Jang's own feature My Son, released earlier in the year (which is admittedly one of his lesser works).

Any review of this film would be incomplete without mentioning the performance of longtime Jang collaborator Jung Jae-young in the role of Do-man. Although he was best known earlier in his career for playing slightly unhinged, violent characters as in No Blood No Tears or Silmido, he has since proven himself in films like the wonderful Someone Special (2004) to have a much wider emotional range. Do-man is a man who does not express his emotions very clearly (if at all). Jung is able, with mumbled sentences and a deer-in-the-headlights stare, to make him appealing and memorable, and in that sense he is a major contributor to this film's success.      (Darcy Paquet)

Can’t believe we have made it to 17 LunchBox’s already.  Nicole Atkins and The Sea came in and played and amazing set for us.  We followed them later that night to their Doug Fir show to check out their packed set.  Nicole loved Justin’s shirt so he gave it off his back to her (earning [...]

2008.04.09:  A summer without horror?   This week's issue of Cine21 asks a scary question: could it be that not a single Korean horror film is released this summer? Usually producers of horror films aim specifically for the summer season, given that a tradition of sorts has emerged over the last decade. As the weather heats up, viewers seem to look forward to something to scare their socks off. But this year they may have to do with imported horror, because production companies have apparently decided that the genre needs a rest.

No less than six were released between May and August last year (in order: The Evil Twin, which was actually produced in 2005, Black House, Cadaver (aka The Cut), Muoi, Epitaph, and Someone Behind You). However none of them really met box-office expectations. Black House, the highest grossing of the group, sold 1.4 million tickets, but given the high profile cast and its big marketing push CJ Entertainment was hoping for a bit more. The Evil Twin, Muoi and Someone Behind You qualify as major flops. At the same time, Asian horror doesn't sell as well on the international market as it used to.

Given the much-discussed crisis in the film industry, and the scarcity of investment these days, it seems that (probably without intending to) all the major distributors have ended up bypassing the tradition this year. There is actually one lower-profile project that went into production in February that the Cine21 article didn't mention. With a Korean title of Oetori ("Loner"?), it is directed by Park Jae-sik and stars Jeong Yu-seok, Chae Min-seo and Goh Eun-a (pictures of the cast here). But we'll have to wait and see if it actually secures a release in the summer.

Meanwhile, The Guard Post (which mixes genres, but is probably closest to horror) was released last week, and though it opened at #1, ticket sales were still pretty low. Other companies are supposedly developing horror films for the future, but they won't be ready for the summer season.

Review by Darcy Paquet

    Hellcats

Relationship drama Hellcats centers around three women who live together in an old neighborhood of Seoul. Ami (Kim Min-hee, below) is a 29-year old screenwriter who has been holed up in a motel trying to finish a screenplay, but like most people involved in the film industry, her career is not progressing smoothly. Frustrated with life as it is, she receives a further shock when her boyfriend Won-seok double-crosses her. Furious and disoriented, she ends up channeling her energies into two things that look likely to get her into further trouble: alcohol and a hot-looking accountant named Seung-won.

Meanwhile Ami is getting little sympathy from her older sister Young-mi (Lee Mi-sook of Untold Scandal fame), who rents out a room to her. A successful 41-year old interior designer working on a new theatrical production, Young-mi has an active love life, and has lately gotten entangled with the much younger Gyeong-su. However an unexpected surprise is awaiting her on her next visit to the doctor's office.

Young-mi also has a daughter in high school named Kang-ae (An So-hee from the phenom teen pop group Wondergirls). A bright, optimistic sort of kid, Kang-ae enjoys a strong friendship with Mi-ran who grew up in Brazil, but she worries about her boyfriend of three years Ho-jae. In short, Ho-jae seems more interested in computer games than in getting naughty with her. Kang-ae and Mi-ran draw up a plan to push the relationship along, but this leads in unexpected directions.

Director Kwon Chil-in stumbled upon a hit in 2003 with Singles, a film that relied on good casting and a somewhat more honest take on modern relationships to catch viewers' attention. Five years later, Hellcats (the Korean title is "Some Like It Hot", just like the Billy Wilder classic) sticks to much the same formula, and though it failed to draw as much interest at the box office, the film still has its charms. The story of Ami in particular is engaging, as we follow her through wild swings in her resolve and emotional state. Actress/model Kim Min-hee (Surprise Party, Asako in Ruby Shoes) was once thought of as a pretty face with no talent, but in recent years she has surprised the public with nuanced performances in several high-profile TV dramas. Here too, the emotional tone she strikes is just right -- she doesn't come across as weak or immature, but her confusion feels genuine. The fact that her character shines the brightest in a film that also stars the legendary Lee Mi-sook is quite an accomplishment.

Unfortunately the film's other two stories are less developed; Young-mi and Kang-ae are interesting enough characters, but we never really get inside their heads as we do with Ami. Perhaps there just wasn't time in two hours to simultaneously develop these three separate stories, or (more likely?) it's a screenplay problem. Still, the film projects a breezy energy that makes it stand out from the average Korean rom-com. Not prudish, if not particularly racy either, Hellcats is a tasty two-hour diversion.      (Darcy Paquet)

SEOUL SEARCHING: CULTURE AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY KOREAN CINEMA (2007) Edited by Frances Gateward. SUNY Press: paperback (ISBN: 978-0-7914-7226-2), 314 pp / hardcover (ISBN: 978-0-7914-7225-5), 336 pp.

From the back cover: "Seoul Searching is a collection of fourteen provocative essays about contemporary South Korean cinema, the most productive and dynamic cinema in Asia. Examining the three dominant genres that have led Korean film to international acclaim - melodramas, big-budget action blockbusters, and youth films - the contributors look at Korean cinema as industry, art form, and cultural product, and engage cinema's role in the formation of Korean indentities.

Committed to approaching Korean cinema within its cultural contexts, the contributors analyze feature-length films and documentaries as well as industry structures and governmental policies in relation to transnational reception, marketing, modes of production, aesthetics, and other forms of popular culture. An interdisciplinary text, Seoul Searching provides an original contribution to film studies and expands the developing area of Korean studies"

Contents:
1. Korean Cinema after Liberation: Production, Industry, and Regulatory Trends (Seung Hyun Park)
2. Christmas in August and Korean Melodrama (Darcy Paquet)
3. Storming the Big Screen: The Shiri Syndrome (Chi-Yun Shin and Julian Stringer)
4. Timeless, Bottomless, Bad Movies: Or, Consuming Youth in the New Korean Cinema (David Desser)
5. Scream and Scream Again: Korean Modernity as a House of Horrors in the Films of Kim Ki-young (Chris Berry)
6. Forgetting to Remember, Remembering to Forget: The Politics of Memory and Modernity in the Fractured Films of Lee Chang-dong and Hong Sang-soo (Hye Seung Chung and David Scott Diffrient)
7. Reflexivity and Identity Crisis in Park Chul-soo's Farewell, My Darling (Hyangsoon Yi)
8. Nowhere to Hide: The Tumultuous Materialism of Lee Myung-se (Anne Rutherford)
9. Closing the Circle: Why Has Bodhidharma Left for the East? (Linda C. Ehrlich)
10. Waiting to Exhale: The Colonial Experience and the Trouble with My Own Breathing (Frances Gateward)
11. Crossing the Border to the "Other" Side: Dynamics of Interaction between North and South Koreans in Spy Li Cheol-jin and Joint Security Area (Suk-Young Kim)
12. Race, Gender, and Postcolonial Identity in Kim Ki-duk's Address Unknown (Myung Ja Kim)
13. Transgressing Boundaries: From Sexual Abuse to Eating Disorders in 301/302 (Diane Carson)
14. Taking the Plunge: Representing Queer Desire in Contemporary South Korean Cinema (Robert L. Cagle)

SOURCES:     Amazon (paperback), Amazon (hardcover), Amazon.co.uk (paperback).

Review by Kyu Hyun Kim

    The Wonder Years

The Wonder Years (another misguided English title—this movie's about as remindful of the popular-in-Korea, Fred-Savage-starring '80s TV series as Twyla Tharp is of Michael Flaherty in Lord of the Dance) is a debut feature from director Kim Hee-jung, an alumna of the Lodz Film School and winner of the Wide Angle Prize at PIFF for the short Once, Someday (2001). Thirteen-year-old Soo-ah (the original Korean title), played by Lee Se-young (the childhood Geum-young from Daejanggeum), is a shy, borderline-autistic girl living in a small Cholla Province town. Deeply unhappy, she believes that a popular singer Yoon Seor-yeong (Kim Yoon-ah, a real-life vocal artist) is her real mother, to the bafflement of her working Mom, Young-joo (Choo Sang-mi, A Smile, Turning Gate). When her junior high school life turns out to be more of the same, i.e. peer abuse and indifference, Soo-ah resolves to travel to Seoul and confront her real mother.

One thing Korean cinema has done rather well in the last fifteen years is its continued support for, and introduction of, female directors with strong personal visions, beginning with Lim Soon-rye (whose Forever the Moment is shaping out to be 2008's first big Korean hit), Jeong Jae-eun (The Aggressives) and Byun Young-joo (Flying Boys). Kim Hee-jung is the latest in this roster of talented Korean female directors. Her Wonder Years is a gentle, composed character study that will probably bore viewers expecting either a well-heeled, cliche-bound melodrama wherein copious amounts of tears are shed, or an adolescent phantasmagoria with surrealistic flights of fancy. The movie truly excels when director-writer Kim observes the seemingly mundane details of Soo-ah's life with a compassionate gaze, letting the girl's slouched, awkward walk or her disappointed expression at a broken VCR player -- rather than spurious narration or distracting mise en scene -- speak for the character's feelings.

It would surprise no one that Lee and Choo are two principal reasons for anyone to check out The Wonder Years. Lee Se-young's portrayal of Soo-ah is remarkable in its subtlety and restraint. It is to her (and director Kim's) credit that the latter's terse (but often amusing) responses to the efforts by the adults to "make conversation" with her never once strike us as "precocious." Choo Sang-mi, one of the most skilled and naturally talented actresses working in Korea today, is brilliant as usual, conveying, for instance, Young-joo's lifetime of remorse and pain, but also the spiritual courage mustered by her to overcome them, in the brief moment of hesitation regarding where to hang a mirror. Truth to be told, both actresses are so ridiculously beautiful that we at times have trouble seeing Soo-ah and Young-joo with the contemptuous eyes of other characters in the movie. Indeed, Lee's face positively glows whenever the camera focuses on it: she is like a Winona Ryder going on 18 trying to play Ugly Betty. When one of the characters grumbles, "Boy, not only is she ugly but…," my only possible reaction is "You need an eye exam, kid."

The Wonder Years is not without serious weaknesses. The story arc is rather predictable and ends in a disappointingly conventional resolution regarding the identity of Soo-ah's real mom. More seriously, director Kim's interpretations of Soo-ah's imaginary universe are surprisingly lackadaisical. In particular, the musical interludes, featuring Kim Yoon-ah belting out torch songs amid confetti and amber floodlights, look rather cheap and poorly choreographed. (I wish director Kim had employed some other tactic, like, say, Persepolis-like minimalist animation) While not an exciting and powerful debut feature comparable to, say, This Charming Girl or Take Care of My Cat, The Wonder Years is a solid character study with its own sense of integrity, as well as an excellent vehicle for the young actress Lee Se-young to showcase her considerable talent.      (Kyu Hyun  Kim)

Review by Adam Hartzell

    Happiness

Looks like in the case of my experience with the films of Hur Jin-ho, the fourth time's a charm. Rather than rehash what has kept me from fully embracing Hur Jin-ho's films, I'll just refer you to my review of his third film, the Yonsama vehicle April Snow, where I summarize my ethical battles with his narratives. I am happy to say Happiness has appeared to have tossed that tarnishing trope aside and I can now relinquish the ethical axe that too many narratives force me to grind. Whether or not this excision was conscious on Hur's part, I thank him anyway, because now I can join hands with the joy and despair that is a walk in Hur's characters' shoes rather than part ways along irreconcilable political paths.

Young-su (Hwang Jeong-min) works in a nightclub. Exactly what he does is never clear, but he is obviously dissatisfied with his work and relationships. We witness him lie to a woman who appears to be his girlfriend with a story about going abroad. He gives the same story to his mother. (Bringing up another major change in a Hur film, this is his first main male character with a present mother. In this case, the son's the absent one.) Yet Young-su doesn't head abroad, but to a health community of some kind nestled somewhere in a South Korean village where those with terminal illnesses go in hopes to diet, stretch and laugh their illnesses away. Taking his nightclub work home with him, Young-su's drinking has resulted in his acquiring cirrhosis of the liver. (One of the nice subtle beats of humor is struck by Hur having one of Young-su's fellow stricken campers refer to Young-su not by his given name, but by his given illness, "Good Morning, Cirrhosis!")

It is at this recuperation center that Young-su meets and loves and . . . (well, you'll see) the lung-disease-stricken Eun-hee (Lim Soo-jung) in the go-away, come-here, rinse and repeat way that we have come to expect of Hur's characters. Although not at the expert levels of Christmas in August and One Fine Spring Day, the romance is still patiently developed and you will find yourself resonating with the film's title and dissonating just as strongly as Hur's ironic, yet not, title reveals itself. Hur's films are refreshing in how he executes the relationships between his two characters. As film critic Kim Ji-mi puts it in Korean Film Observatory magazine (No. 23), Hur "shows the outstanding talent of being able to grasp the sensitive moments of the beginning and ending of a love between a man and a woman" (p. 22). Think of what you hate about the overly melodramatic and reflect on what it would be like to see a director get ever so closed to the too cute but to turn away just at its palatable peak and that's Hur. Think of the histrionics you don't like about Korean TV serials and imagine a director who holds the sorrow tenderly enough to make the cries cleansing rather than cringing and you have the baby bear porridge of Hur's emotional competency.

Particularly lovely here are Young-su's tears and the comforting words (at least in translation) of Eun-hee. She lets him know that she didn't show her hurt before because nobody cared about her. She promises to show her hurt now and she expects him to care. In this wonderful mix of dialogue and soft action, Eun-hee says this not as she breaks down but just as Young-su does. She gives him what he's asking for by asking for what he wants to give her. (Eun-hee's is a strong voice in Hur's oeuvre, speaking confidently and maintaining self-respect despite the brief lapses of self-pity.) And his tears do the same for her. Both Young-su and Eun-hee are guarded individuals who eventually let their mutual armor down in order to receive each other completely. This means they will get hurt, but we can only hurt when we lose something that matters to us. I'd rather hurt than never care about something so much that pain never comes into the picture. It is in this way that Hur's ironic titles always circle back again to erase the irony we placed upon them. Happiness is what a Hur film can be when realized in all its ethical splendor.       (Adam Hartzell)

Review by Darcy Paquet

    The Guard Post

South Korea's meandering border with the North is one of the world's most surreal places, a heavily armed space still trapped in the Cold War. Park Chan-wook's JSA depicted the tension and close proximity of Southern and Northern soldiers at Panmunjeom, a former truce village that is now divided cleanly in half. But elsewhere along the DMZ, the most prominent structures are guard posts (GP for short): large, heavily armored self-contained forts that are strung along the border like pearls on a necklace. North Korea also maintains its own guard posts, which form pairs with those on the South.

The atmosphere in the DMZ (the term "de-militarized zone" is a bit of a joke) is tense. The military sends its strongest soldiers to this area, and imposes the harshest degree of discipline on them. Shots are occasionally exchanged across the border. Suicides or mysterious deaths have been known to occur among the men stationed there, and there was a recent case of a solider in a guard post who became mentally unhinged and slaughtered many of his fellow recruits.

What better place to set a supernatural gore fest? GP506 is a guard post that has fallen strangely silent (each GP is required to send a signal to headquarters every half hour; if the signal is not received, troops are sent in). A neighboring contingent of soldiers enters the post and finds blood on the walls and grossly dismembered bodies strewn in every direction. A military inspector arrives to investigate, and at first the deaths seem to be the result of some inner conflict within the group. The one surviving soldier is severely traumatized and seems unwilling to talk. Eventually, however, more disturbing clues emerge.

Kong Su-chang received both critical praise and commercial success with his debut R-Point (2004), about a company of Korean soldiers serving in Vietnam who are sent to a remote location to investigate a vanished squadron. The Guard Post would appear at first glance to be a virtual redux, with only the setting changed, but it's surprising how different the two films feel. R-Point was a slow-moving, chilling mystery with a slightly arty feel to it. The Guard Post is a roller coaster that wears its genre credentials more prominently on its sleeve, and despite its setting, offers a less developed political subtext. Unfortunately R-Point's greatest strengths -- its pitch-perfect ensemble acting and narrative coherence -- are reproduced far less successfully in the latter film.

The making of The Guard Post turned out to be more of an adventure than the filmmakers hoped. Midway through production, a spreading sense of crisis in the Korean film industry, together with unrelated trouble at the film's production company, caused the film's main investors to back out and shooting to ground to a halt. It appeared for some time that the film would never be finished, but eventually distributor Showbox stepped in and re-started the project.

Viewers beware: The Guard Post is gory! Brains, rotting flesh, self-mutilation -- this movie goes the extra mile (the poor woman sitting next to me at the press screening seemed to only barely make it through the film). Whereas R-Point had sort of a crossover appeal for people who don't like horror films, The Guard Post seems intended more explicitly for fans of the genre.

At two hours in length, the film is not short, and unfortunately the middle section is somewhat flaccid and confusing (some viewers may be annoyed by the constant jumping back and forth between past and present). I also found it frustrating that for all the care taken to build a highly authentic guard post set, the film never takes the time to properly "introduce" it to the viewer. JSA, by contrast, was much better at finding ways to orient and inform the viewer about Panmunjeom. However as its mysteries are sorted out, The Guard Post does finally find its rhythm in the last 30 minutes, and from then on out it's an engaging enough genre splatterfest.      (Darcy Paquet)

hulu.com is the brain child of NBC Universal and News Corp. This is the website that consumers have been waiting for since the advent of the Internet; taking on-demand television and movies to a new level. The site offers full-length movies, current and discontinued television series (even the goodies like Charlie’s Angels and Arrested Development), and high-definition movie trailers. hulu does not charge for any of its offerings, it’s all free. Network programming ranges from NBC and Fox shows to Oxygen and National Geographic. I dare to say, there is something for every member of the family on hulu.

You might be saying to yourself “what’s the catch?” Well, the only catch is that the networks have finally found a way to reinvent their old friend, the 30-second spot, for the Internet. The 30-second spot comes in the form of a full show sponsorship with multiple short ads throughout. Clicking on the ad sends you to the sponsor’s website, giving instant gratification for the curious consumer. 

Given the big-name backing of NBC, it’s no surprise that big-name advertisers are already on board. Tylenol, Sprint, MTV, and DirecTV are among the early-adopters. Intel is sponsoring the HD Gallery, where the system requirements exclusively call out three different Intel processors. The site offers many benefits to the advertisers, as ads/sponsorships can be highly targeted to specific shows/movies on hulu.com. It also provides advertisers with excellent success metric tracking. The advertisers know precisely how many eyes saw their ads, unlike Nelson ratings where an approximate number is provided with a high margin of error. In addition, the advertisers can track the click-through rate to their website via the 30-second spots. 

So…is it time yet for consumers and advertisers to abandon television altogether? Probably not. However, hulu.com is potentially a great way for companies to connect with the tech-savvy crowd in a new medium.

2008.04.02:  Jeonju, and a note to readers   First let me start this blog post with some personal news, since it is likely to affect the site. My work life is going to be changing this spring: first of all, I have decided to stop writing for Variety. I enjoyed the time I spent as the magazine's Korea correspondent, but I've been feeling overwhelmed recently, and just need to simplify my life a bit. I also need to spend less time on the computer, because the arm pain (RSI) I have is sometimes quite severe. So I'm hoping to concentrate most of my film writing on this website, and maybe get back to doing some teaching to replace the lost income. (Or, with luck, I may finally get a proper sponsor for the site).

I'm also in the process of writing a book. It won't be officially announced until the manuscript is in, but it's an entry into the Short Cuts series published by Wallflower Press in the U.K. It will examine the revival and boom of Korean cinema from the 1980s until the present, while also giving a basic overview of the political and social changes that transformed Korea in that time period. My deadline for the initial draft is the end of June, so perhaps sometime next year we can see it in print.

Those are my two goals this spring: finish the book, and put the mojo back into this website. Wish me luck.

In the meantime, I thought I would comment a bit on this year's Jeonju International Film Festival, scheduled for May 1-9. The full program was revealed yesterday at press conferences in Jeonju and Seoul. The opening film is from Japan, Manda Kunitoshi's The Kiss ("Seppun"), and the closing film will be the fourth installment of If You Were Me, the omnibus films sponsored by the Korean Human Rights Commission. Whereas If You Were Me 1, 2, and 3 were mostly focused on the issue of discrimination, this time around the focus will be on the challenges facing young people in today's Korea. The five directors chosen are Kim Tae-yong (Family Ties), Pang Eun-jin (Princess Aurora), Lee Hyeon-seung (Il Mare), Yoon Seung-ho (Milky Way Liberation Front), and Jeon Gye-su (Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater). It strikes me as a more difficult subject to portray well than issues related to discrimination, but we'll see...

I'm also excited about a new documentary by Kim Dong-won, whose Repatriation (2004) was maybe the best Korean documentary ever. The new film, a 60-minute documentary titled 63 Years On, tracks down former comfort women (i.e., women forced into sexual slavery during WWII by the Japanese military) living in Korea, China, the Philippines and the Netherlands. This topic has been covered before in Korean documentaries, most famously by Byun Young-joo's The Murmuring (1995), Habitual Sadness (1997) and My Own Breathing (1999), but Kim's take on this subject is sure to be interesting.

There will also be around 10 brand new Korean independent features, mostly by debut directors. These days, so many low-budget HD works are being made that it's a real challenge to keep up with them. I'm not complaining, mind you -- though some are inevitably very bad, others are well made, so that talent spotting at festivals like Jeonju is becoming a more engaging sport. As for films from other countries, there will be retrospectives on Bela Tarr, Alexander Kluge, cinema of the former Soviet central Asian republics, and Vietnamese cinema.

If any of you readers are living in Korea and have never been to this festival, I strongly urge you to take some time and go. There's something about the small city, the festival's focus on the films, and the great food that makes it feel completely different from Pusan or Puchon. My head is clearer when I am in Jeonju, and I feel more like a cinephile. This year I'll be able to stay longer than usual at the festival, thanks to its dates being pushed a little later (in the past it always conflicted with the Udine Far East Film Festival). So I hope to discuss more about the films and issues at this year's JIFF in a festival report.