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Tiberious aka Sparkles
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: I'm one cool cat!
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 Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 5:27 am Post subject: KOREAN FILM REVIEW: Oldboy DVD = Rapture |
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Quite honestly (because I would never lie to you, sweetness) this is one of the most amazing films I have ever seen.
In my opinion, there aren't enough superlatives to describe how great it is.
I will say it now: Chan-wook Park is god.
Sparkles*_*
PS - wow.
PPS - if you have seen it, don't give anything away to those who haven't. This movie deserves to be opened slowly, like a Christmas gift wrapped in flypaper and covered in pine tar.
Last edited by Tiberious aka Sparkles on Sun May 16, 2004 4:17 am; edited 1 time in total |
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wylde
Joined: 14 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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| korean movie? |
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Tiberious aka Sparkles
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: I'm one cool cat!
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 8:23 pm Post subject: |
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A Korean movie, based (loosely, so I hear) on a Japanese manga. The director also made JSA and Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance. He's being touted as the future of Asian cinema, and if there is any justice, he will become well-known throughout the world. The guy has so much talent.
I would urge any true fan of cinema to see this film. The direction, acting, plot and score are simply amazing.
The only flaw? As with far too many Korean DVDs, the subtitles are sometimes a problem. It boggles my mind that the people who put these DVDs together don't hire a native speaker to check over the subtitles.
Anyway, a mind-blowing experience. Not only the best Korean film I have ever seen, but one of the best films, period.
Really.
Sparkles*_*
Last edited by Tiberious aka Sparkles on Sun May 16, 2004 12:57 am; edited 1 time in total |
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crazylemongirl
Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Location: almost there...
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 11:06 pm Post subject: |
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| hmmm I was interested in seeing it as I really like JSA. Anyway did you rent it or buy it mr sparkles. |
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Tiberious aka Sparkles
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: I'm one cool cat!
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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| crazylemongirl wrote: |
| hmmm I was interested in seeing it as I really like JSA. Anyway did you rent it or buy it mr sparkles. |
Wifey gave it to me for my birthday.
Coincidentally, this was just posted over at www.aintitcool.com:
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Park Chan-Wook... Most Dangerous Filmmaker In The World... What Next?
Hey folks, Harry here with tremendously cool news to report. For those of you that have been lucky enough to see Park Chan-Wook's JSA or SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE or OLD BOY... Most likely - you are amongst the converted. This Korean filmmaker is simply making some of the absolute best films in the world, and so far... The United States has completely ignored him. My take on that? Good... Perhaps if the studios leave him alone, he will never have to work with Jean Claude-Van Damme, then spiral into a hell-hole of creative stagnation.
The Hollywood Reporter sat down and talked with Park, and what a great interview. Hearing about his influences, "Sophocles, Shakespeare, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Zola, Stendhal, Austin, Philip K. Dick, Zelazny and Vonnegut," provides such a glimpse into why his films are so thoroughly involving... Hearing that it was watching Hitchcock's Vertigo while in college that made him choose the path that lead to him directing. This is the first interview I've ever read with him, and I'm delighted by what I've read. He really seems to have it together.
Right now though... the part that has me vibrating with ultimate glee is hearing what is next for him. At the moment - he's working on "THREE, MONSTER," for which he is contributing a 45 minute section, which will be joined by two other sections to be filmed by Takashi Miike and Fruit Chan!
Wook-Park will begin filming in November on the final feature in his "Vengeance Trilogy" which began with SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE, continued with the breathtaking OLD BOY... and it seems will conclude his exploration of this them with SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE!!!! According to him, it will "feature a woman in her mid-30's mercilessly dealing with vengeance" and will consist of sharply contrasting variations of the kidnapping motif of "Mr Vengeance" and the imprisonment motif of "OLD BOY." As you read this, he's writing the script in his hotel room in Cannes!
What lays for Chan after his Vengeance Masterpiece is behind him? It seems that at the end of 2005, he will begin work on a feature entitled LIVE EVIL - and all we know about that project is that it is "a movie involving vampires."
If you've never seen on of his films, you can have no concept of how exciting this news is. However, if you were in the audience of Butt-Numb-A-Thon 5 and witnessed the North American theatrical debut of Wook-Park Chan... His first two films have never even screened here, which is an insult that I can't even imagine having been inflicted upon this brilliant filmmaker... But if you were there... You know that in a 24 hour slate that saw RETURN OF THE KING and THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST unfurl upon the screen... that there was one film that stood right beside both of those, that didn't have the emotional attachment of having the filmmaker present, and still dared to be held as being the best film of the fest by a large amount of the audience. With Tsui Hark and Quentin Tarantino on the Jury at Cannes this year... I imagine that we'll see some sort of honor befalling Wook-Park's Brilliant OLD BOY. And then... Hopefully, at long last the dam will be broken and Wook-Park Chan's films will finally grace our domestic screens here in the United States! And then the Korean invasion will begin in earnest! |
I'm very interested to hear about the movie's reception at Cannes.
Sparkles*_* |
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wylde
Joined: 14 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 11:24 pm Post subject: |
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i didn't even look at your avatar  |
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Tiberious aka Sparkles
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: I'm one cool cat!
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| Posted: Sat May 15, 2004 11:33 pm Post subject: |
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| wylde wrote: |
i didn't even look at your avatar |
To be fair, I think I changed it after your question.
Sparkles*_*
PS - the DVD comes with the original soundtrack to the film -- as well a heap of other extras, unfortunately not subtitled -- on a bonus disc. |
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komtengi
Joined: 30 Sep 2003
Location: Slummin it up in Haebangchon
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 12:31 am Post subject: |
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| Tiberious aka Sparkles wrote: |
It boggles my mind that the people who put these DVDs together don't hire a native speaker check over the subtitles.
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the scary thing is that one of the busiest subtitlers in Korea is an American
the director has also directed a great music video.... cant remember the name of it at the moment though |
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Tiberious aka Sparkles
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: I'm one cool cat!
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 1:06 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
Park Chan-Wook... Most Dangerous Filmmaker In The World... What Next?
Hey folks, Harry here with tremendously cool news to report. For those of you that have been lucky enough to see Park Chan-Wook's JSA or SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE or OLD BOY... Most likely - you are amongst the converted. This Korean filmmaker is simply making some of the absolute best films in the world, and so far... The United States has completely ignored him. My take on that? Good... Perhaps if the studios leave him alone, he will never have to work with Jean Claude-Van Damme, then spiral into a hell-hole of creative stagnation.
The Hollywood Reporter sat down and talked with Park, and what a great interview. Hearing about his influences, "Sophocles, Shakespeare, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Zola, Stendhal, Austin, Philip K. *beep*, Zelazny and Vonnegut," provides such a glimpse into why his films are so thoroughly involving... Hearing that it was watching Hitchcock's Vertigo while in college that made him choose the path that lead to him directing. This is the first interview I've ever read with him, and I'm delighted by what I've read. He really seems to have it together.
Right now though... the part that has me vibrating with ultimate glee is hearing what is next for him. At the moment - he's working on "THREE, MONSTER," for which he is contributing a 45 minute section, which will be joined by two other sections to be filmed by Takashi Miike and Fruit Chan!
Wook-Park will begin filming in November on the final feature in his "Vengeance Trilogy" which began with SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE, continued with the breathtaking OLD BOY... and it seems will conclude his exploration of this them with SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE!!!! According to him, it will "feature a woman in her mid-30's mercilessly dealing with vengeance" and will consist of sharply contrasting variations of the kidnapping motif of "Mr Vengeance" and the imprisonment motif of "OLD BOY." As you read this, he's writing the script in his hotel room in Cannes!
What lays for Chan after his Vengeance Masterpiece is behind him? It seems that at the end of 2005, he will begin work on a feature entitled LIVE EVIL - and all we know about that project is that it is "a movie involving vampires."
If you've never seen on of his films, you can have no concept of how exciting this news is. However, if you were in the audience of Butt-Numb-A-Thon 5 and witnessed the North American theatrical debut of Wook-Park Chan... His first two films have never even screened here, which is an insult that I can't even imagine having been inflicted upon this brilliant filmmaker... But if you were there... You know that in a 24 hour slate that saw RETURN OF THE KING and THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST unfurl upon the screen... that there was one film that stood right beside both of those, that didn't have the emotional attachment of having the filmmaker present, and still dared to be held as being the best film of the fest by a large amount of the audience. With Tsui Hark and Quentin Tarantino on the Jury at Cannes this year... I imagine that we'll see some sort of honor befalling Wook-Park's Brilliant OLD BOY. And then... Hopefully, at long last the dam will be broken and Wook-Park Chan's films will finally grace our domestic screens here in the United States! And then the Korean invasion will begin in earnest! |
You know, as much as he champions great films, Harry Knowles is one helluva dumbass. Get the guy's name right, Harry.
Park Chan-wook. Or Chan-wook Park. But not Wook-Park Chan.
Sparkles*_* |
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Tiberious aka Sparkles
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: I'm one cool cat!
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 1:21 am Post subject: |
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Here's a rather negative review from www.hollywoodreporter.com. Funny that the reviewer's only reason for disliking the film is because he considers it too violent. And somebody should tell him that there are Koreans who eat live octopi.
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May 16, 2004
Old Boy
By Duane Byrge
Stick a lethal dose of sadism into a Franz Kafka story line and you've got this In Competition entrant. Assaultive in both an aesthetic and philosophical sense, "Old Boy" is a grueling and gripping story of psychological torture. Graphically violent and narratively twisted, its most appreciative audience will likely be callow males and movie buffs who appreciate the old "ultraviolence." Representative of the South Korean "new wave," it might be categorized as the "new brutalism."
It's a bizarre and captivating premise: Dae-su, a young Korean man, is incarcerated in a hotel room-like prison. He has no idea who his captors are or what his crime has been. Worse, he has no idea how long he will be imprisoned. The years drag on: He is fed, drugged and dehumanized, reduced to a primitive state. Increasingly manic, his anger and rage grow. With each passing year, he cuts a line into his hand. After 15 lines, he is released but reduced to an automaton being.
Filmmaker Park Chan-wook has harnessed a mesmerizing premise and visualized it with a rousing smear of sensory abrasions: "Old Boy" is technically masterful, evocative of the protagonist's crazed/hypnotized mindset. The saturated colors permeated by cold grays and ragged blacks, together with the neo-Expressionistic cityscape, conjure about the most awful forebodings and feelings. We're riveted throughout, almost pulled into the protagonist's mania -- - who has perpetrated these horrors on him and why.
Although the premise is stirring, "Old Boy" degenerates into an assaultive smear of sadistic stylistics: Gruesome scenes of torture, combined with sordidly sensational flourishes (eating a live octopus), poison the film with their overt nastiness. Ultimately, we feel like the hero, hypnotized but desensitized and utterly turned off by its histrionic horrors. As the tormented protagonist, Choi Min-sik perambulates with a Charles Bronson glaze of vengeance -- cogently apt for his torment.
The film's music, an astringent symphonic score, smartly counterpoints the savagery and horror of the story line.
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eamo
Joined: 08 Mar 2003
Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 5:13 am Post subject: |
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I saw it in a DVD bang last night.
Strange, exciting, peculiar, comical, original. It's as good a Korean movie as I've seen.
Actually, it has the feel of a 'breakthrough' film. You know, the first of a new breed. |
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Juggertha
Joined: 27 May 2003
Location: Anyang, Korea
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 7:05 am Post subject: |
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| Saw it today and its one of the best Korean movies i've seen yet. I really enjoyed it. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 7:20 am Post subject: |
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All right then, consider me sold. I'll probably see it within the week.
About subtitles: some of them are either quite bad or downright wrong. I hate when that happens as I then feel compelled to explain the meaning to whoever I'm with if I suspect they didn't understand.
Bad subtitle:
Terminator 1(I think). Somebody walks into the police office. Officer at the desk spills beer on his hand, can't shake the guy's hand. "Ah, sorry, beer on my hand..."
Korean subtitle: "���̾��?"
Good subtitle:
Scary Movie 2. "Get the chest!" says a girl. Guy grabs the girl's chest. "Not this chest, that chest!" she says pointing to a treasure chest.
Korean subtitle: "���븻�� �� ��!" |
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Tiberious aka Sparkles
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: I'm one cool cat!
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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Here's what Roger Ebert wrote about Oldboy (not a review, but tidbits from his running diary while in Cannes):
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| And then to the Debussy, merely 2,000 seats, to see the new Korean film ''Old Boy.'' The Croisette by now is jammed, boys perched in trees, some fans with their own stepladders, for a better look at the stars ascending the red carpet for the official showing of the Kusturica movie. Inside the Debussy, ''Old Boy'' is a bizarre film by Chan-wook Park, about a drunken man who awakens to find himself held captive for 15 years by faceless jailers who will not reveal their reasons. There is a scene where a man's teeth are pulled out by the stumps, one at a time, that makes Laurence Olivier's dentist in ''Marathon Man'' look like Painless Parker. But you have to concede: The movie is edgy. |
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| There's a lot of buzz, too, about "Old Boy," by the Korean director Chan-wook Park, about a man who is held in a private prison while his wife is murdered. Will he ever discover who imprisoned him? |
Sparkles*_* |
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J.B. Clamence
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon May 17, 2004 6:44 am Post subject: |
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I just watched this tonight. Man, that was one of the most messed up movies I've seen in a long time. I have to say that I thought it was really good though. Movies these days are often so predictable, but this one broadsided me like a freight train; I just didn't see it coming!
A little drawn out (like most Korean movies; could have been edited and streamlined a lot better), but overall, a good movie. |
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