Lets face it, Korean cinema has been far from impressive of late. Especially when we put things in contrast to earlier this very same decade that saw an emerging new generation that inventively crafted genre films capable of drawing huge international markets. Whether it was Park Chan Wook, Bong Joon Ho, or Kim Ki Duk, it was obvious that there was a shifting paradigm away from the more classical mentalities of old blood like Im Kwon-taek or even the monotonous flood of mainstream romance comedies or period films on the other side of the spectrum.
Overall, films that were both commercially viable and critically successful on a global scale were becoming increasingly more likely. This was in direct contrast and often times in conflict with a parallel trend that was heavily aimed at drawing in domestic tween markets, with embarrassingly sappy melodramatic fare that was often times both formulaic and utterly mindless. Unsurprisingly, this latter trend won out and the emergence of this domestic innovation seemed to disappear altogether. Park Chan Wook and his contemporaries were still pumping out yearly works for the festival circuit, but it didn’t appear that anyone new was entering the limelight.
Its quite a sad affair and one that has honestly decreased my personal attentions to Korean film making on the whole. Thus I watch less films as years pass and pay increasingly less attention to industry developments. This isn’t to say I’ve completely given up on them but merely that my attentions are focused elsewhere on the globe. I still catch the new Kim Ki Duk or Park film when the opportunity presents itself. And on some rare occasions, still catch that oddball film that may have peaked my interest via a blog post or blind rental. Castaway on the Moon is such a film and one that I viewed wholly by accident.
This is why Bruce Lee is awesome. Forget Fists of Fury or Big Boss, this rather random and ridiculous cameo from the film Marlowe is what I will always remember of the man. The second sequence included in the clip is even more nonsensical and true epic fail.
In the tradition of both cinéma vérité and Italian neorealist style, it seems that the central image of the bicycle within a bleak urbanized environment has become somewhat of a motif. Dating back to De Sica’s classic Bicycle Thieves and popping up more recently in Sixth Generation director Wang Xiaoshuai’s Beijing Bicycle, it has once again seemingly appeared in Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou’s social realist work, Take Out.
To not rely heavily upon comparative analysis, I’ll be brief. The continuing motif is obvious but probably irrelevant for the most part. Take Out has little to nothing to do with De Sica’s earlier work aside from genre and narrative similarities. If anything, it bears more in common with its Sixth Generation contemporaries across the globe such as Li Yang’s Blind Shaft or possibly Lou Ye’s Suzhou River.
In this manner there is a deep interest in its almost transnational cinematic relationship that seemingly parallels the subject matter of the film. Ming Ding, an illegal Chinese immigrant like most of the characters on screen, is struggling to not only earn a living, but save enough money to send back home to his awaiting family. His supposed frustration over this difficulty leads to borrowing money from a loan shark that he simply can’t pay back.
I had no idea this was still in production and had simply died off long ago. Guess not, here’s the trailer to the upcoming sequel to the rather enjoyable yet embarrassingly corny Boondock Saints. Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus are rejoined by Billy Connolly and newcomer Clifton Collins, Jr. Julie Benz also stars in what I imagine is the replacement role left by Willem Dafoe who I’m saddened to hear is not reappearing. David Della Rocco though, is reappearing as supposedly a guiding spirit for the brothers. Either way, red band trailer embedded above and its looking mighty derivative of the first entry.
The premise seems interesting enough. Stranger steps into diner holding everyone hostage while slowly killing them off one by one for reasons unknown. Better still is the rather surprising cast. Michael Madsen as the stranger Doe, with Harold Perrineau, Amber Benson, and Danny Trejo as the diner’s inhabitants.
On The Last Lullaby, Jeffrey Goodman in a manifesto-like statement expressed his desires to stray away from modern cinematic norms and trends. He called for a seemingly nostalgic return to when film actually mirrored its society in a relevant fashion. Its an honest sentiment and one that I find both intriguing and troubling. On the one hand, looking back through the eyes of history one can easily associate periods of time with cultural artifacts such as film in this context. But the trouble I see is whether or not this is indeed simply “nostalgia” at work or possibly the presence of a larger historical scope to look back on.
Its hard to say whether or not cinema for better or worse, does or does not mirror our own contemporary society today. Surely film has indeed become somehow more rapid, sporadic, and pointlessly styled with little forethought. But it is hard to state whether this is not somehow indicative of our modern perceptions in a more holistic context. Life and temporal perception have indeed become more rushed, mechanized, and rather chaotic thus possibly for better or worse, film has still retained a certain accuracy in social reflection.
Regardless, Goodman does indeed make a great effort to stray away from huge Box office hitters like 300 or Crank which literally bombarded the viewer with an almost orgy-astic attack of excess. The Last Lullaby is anything but, and is indeed a refreshing diversion away from the over stimulation of these recent films. Goodman’s debut is if anything, a refreshing break from the quite literally tiresome fare at the box office of recent years characterized largely by senseless visual style.
Au Revoir, Les Enfants is a semi-autobiographical, fictionalized account of Malle’s own childhood experiences during Nazi occupation. The title translated into English, “Goodbye Children” refers both to the tragic departing at narrative’s end, as well as the general loss of innocence that accompanies an adolescent’s transition into adulthood. Overall its quite a beautiful yet heartbreaking piece of cinema. Dealing largely with the war yet almost ignoring its presence onscreen, it instead utilizes the microcosm of a small boys Catholic school to showcase the grander effects of the miserable conflict outside.
The film focuses largely on Julien Quentin, Malle’s own surrogate whom is often set in moral ambiguity among his peers. Opposite him is the seemingly mysterious newcomer Bonnet, later revealed to be a Jew in hiding. While one could easily spend a good deal of time discussing the emotional and humanistic impact of Malle’s personal work, I find that this would be quite redundant. For one, its a given and has been contextualized by many sources to death. Instead I will focus on a particular visual motif that caught my interest and was cleverly utilized cinematically, to add depth to this already impressive film.
Lets face it, Korean cinema has been far from impressive of late. Especially when we put things in contrast to earlier this very same decade that saw an emerging new generation that inventively crafted genre films capable of drawing huge international markets. Whether it was Park Chan Wook, Bong Joon Ho, or Kim Ki Duk, it was obvious that there was a shifting paradigm away from the more classical mentalities of old blood like Im Kwon-taek or even the monotonous flood of mainstream romance comedies or period films on the other side of the spectrum.
