Happy New Year to you for 2010! After an extended holiday break the site will now start getting back up to speed, so what better way than to take a look at some of the news from the last few weeks…
SECRET REUNION Trailer
The trailer for SECRET REUNION shows that the film is looking every bit as good as you could hope it would. Starring Song Kang-ho and Gang Dong-won, the teaser trailer has no subs but they’re not really needed as its fair to say that you get a good sense of how dark and tense the thriller looks. This has a domestic release date of the 4th of February, but I would expect to see it get picked up for UK and US distribution pretty swiftly. Head over to Far East Films to take a look at that trailer.
WOOCHI hits the box-office
I’ve been pretty excited at the prospect of WOOCHI (intially called JEON WOO CHI), and it opened domestically on 23rd December at number two at the box-office, just missing the top spot (somewhat predicatably) which was held by James Cameron’s 3-D blue man CGI fest AVATAR.
UK DVD Releases
So CHAW was supposed to kick and growl it’s way into UK stores yesterday (4th January) and I haven’t had a chance to pick up a copy yet, but I hear that its release may have actually been delayed until the 1st March – at least according to Play.com and HMV online. Anyone able to confirm either way?
Park Chan-wook’s acclaimed vampire flick THIRST arrives on UK DVD and Blu-Ray on 25th January. It’s bound to be a big seller, and the good news is that Tartan Palisades have managed to put some extras on the release, something that was sorely missing from the recent Region 1 release. THIRSTs UK special features will be ‘Edited highlights from the NFT Masterclass’, ‘UK exclusive interview with Park Chan-Wook’ and the trailer. Here’s hoping that they’re good length interviews and not just a couple of nimutes long! THIRST can be pre-ordered from Amazon here
The Kim Ji-woon double bill (A BITTERSWEET LIFE and A TALE OF TWO SISTERS) that was mentioned in an earlier news post finally arrives on DVD on 11th January.
What’s instore for 2010
Just a taster for some of the films to be released in Korea in 2010 include several war films following the now familiar (within Korean films) theme of the Southern soldiers pitted against their Northern counterparts – INTO THE GUNFIRE (starring Cha Seung-won, Choi Seung-hyeon (T.O.P.), Kwon Sang-woo and Kim Seung-woo) which arrives in June and tells the story of 71 students who fought hundreds of North Korean soldiers in front of their middle school… THE RED MUFFLER 2 which is a sequel to a 1964 film directed by the late Shin Sang-ok, this sequel depicts the grandson from the original film appearing as an Air Force pilot… and finally THE BATTLE OF YELLOW SEA from director Kyung-Taek Kwak will go into production – this is to be a big-budget 3-D war story from the FRIEND and TYPHOON director.
If war isn’t your thing,then maybe POEM will be more up your street. Directed by Lee Chang-dong (OASIS), POEM stars Yoon Jung-hee as a 60 year old woman who raises her teenage granddaughter who one day signs up for a literature class and starts to write her own poetry. Keep a box of tissues handy for this one, it’s released in Korea in May.
A film that is very likely to have everyones attention is MURDERER – Na Hong-jin’s follow up to his worldwide box-office smash THE CHASER. Casting the same two lead actors is also an interesting move, although little else is known about the film other than it tells the story of man from the Korean autonomous prefecture of Yanbian, who sets sail for South Korea for a hit – i.e. to assassinate someone. He is paid only $500 in advance and told nothing about his target. Of course, things don’t quite go the way he is hoping…
With plenty of other great looking films on the way, be sure to check out these news pages weekly…
New Trailers
A couple of new trailers to take a look at – first up is the trailer for ATTACK THE GAS STATION! 2 the sequel to the excellent 1999 film. So I guess they took a while to follow this one up, but the original has grown into a bit of a cult classic, so it’s going to be interesting to see where they go with this one. It’s released in Korea on 21st January and sadly there’s no subs on the trailer (I think the man who subtitles these things has taken an extended holiday!), but from this madness it at least looks in the same vein as the original…
Next up is the trailer for DAD LIKES WOMEN, starring Lee Na-young (DREAM) a transgender comedy. Yep, you read that right. Lee Na-young plays a man who has a sex change who then discovers that she fathered a child years before. When the son comes looking he’s obviously looking for a father figure rather than… well.. check out the trailer below and it’ll become abit clearer! The film opens in Korea on 14th January…
So welcome back for 2010, if you have any news of interest, good trailers to watch, feel free to let me know at martin[at]newkoreancinema.com…