Korean Films on DVD and Blu-ray

[warren oates]

The Korean blu-ray of Barking Dogs Never Bite arrived today and I took a quick look at it.

By any chance, does the commentary have English subs?

Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, no.

[warren oates]

Anybody else planning on getting the forthcoming black & white version of Bong Joon-ho's Mother? I'll definitely be picking this up. But I'm curious to know why it's happening now. Was this always the director's intended look and he just lost a battle with producers on its initial release? Or is it some kind of more recent visual revision?

[RobertB]

Peppermint Candy by Lee Chang Dong was released on Blu-ray in Korea in January, with English subtitles. I'm extremely temted to buy it. Has anybody heard anything about this edition?

[warren oates]

Anybody else planning on getting the forthcoming black & white version of Bong Joon-ho's Mother? I'll definitely be picking this up. But I'm curious to know why it's happening now. Was this always the director's intended look and he just lost a battle with producers on its initial release? Or is it some kind of more recent visual revision?

And so David Bordwell (click and scroll down) answers my questions. The disc, which I did end up getting, looks great.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Still a somewhat perplexing experiment. Many recent B+W releases have been shot in color and retroactively drained of it, and I think it shows; the contrast is never quite as sharp or well designed as it should be and the grays are dull. And it's not even a very new experiment, even for a mainstream Korean production, as Park Chan-wook released Lady Vengeance in two versions, a color one and one which gradually fades to B+W.

At the same time, I can imagine the change giving Mother a tonal consistency and strength that I felt it lacked when I first saw it and found it less focused and atmospheric than Memories of Murder and less inspired in its sudden shifts and misplaced humor than The Host.

[warren oates]

Except that this is really the only revisionist b&w-ization that I can think of in cinema history, and a director instigated one at that. Lady Vengeance had always been intended to be shown in the slow fade to b&w version that the producers simply balked at releasing in theaters. And, of course, there are plenty of other newer b&w films shot on color film or video yet always intended to be post-processed and exhibited in b&w. But nothing else like this.

[zedz]

Anybody else planning on getting the forthcoming black & white version of Bong Joon-ho's Mother? I'll definitely be picking this up. But I'm curious to know why it's happening now. Was this always the director's intended look and he just lost a battle with producers on its initial release? Or is it some kind of more recent visual revision?

And so David Bordwell (click and scroll down) answers my questions. The disc, which I did end up getting, looks great.

Thanks for reporting back, I'll take a punt on the disc. Are any of the extras subbed?

I see that Memories of Murder and Barking Dogs Never Bite are also available on English-subbed BluRay.

[warren oates]

No subtitled extras on any of the three discs you mention but all of them have English subs for the film itself and they all look good.

[swo17]

Except that this is really the only revisionist b&w-ization that I can think of in cinema history, and a director instigated one at that.

There's also Frank Darabont's The Mist at least.

[warren oates]

But doesn't that kind of fall under original intentions? There was no hope of seeing it in theaters that way, unlike the false hope that Park Chan Wook had for Lady Vengeance. But didn't Darabont always see the film in b&w and always plan to offer it that way on video?

[Roger Ryan]

Bogdanovich's NICKELODEON received a somewhat revisionist black-and-white release some thirty years after the color version played in theaters. Supposedly, Bogdanovich wanted to shoot the film in black-and-white but Columbia Pictures refused. In my opinion, some of the costume and art direction suffers by not being seen in color.

[zedz]

Bogdanovich's NICKELODEON received a somewhat revisionist black-and-white release some thirty years after the color version played in theaters. Supposedly, Bogdanovich wanted to shoot the film in black-and-white but Columbia Pictures refused. In my opinion, some of the costume and art direction suffers by not being seen in color.

I think this is probably the closest to Bong's film. Even though Bogdanovich had wanted to shoot the film in black and white in the planning stages, Nickelodeon wasn't actually shot with B&W in mind (which is part of the problem).

[CR2]

Has anyone seen any of the "latest" films being re-released to blu right now that are available for pre-order or have been recently released? I have no idea if any of these are worth it (They appear to be lighter fare, but of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing):

- Crazy Marriage
- Oasis
- My Mother, the Mermaid
- Singles
- The Harmonium in my Memory

I have a friend who swears up and down on Cyrano Dating Agency, as well.

[warren oates]

If you're talking about Lee Chang Dong's Oasis, then 1) you bet it's worth it and 2) thanks for letting me know it's coming out. The film's not for every taste, but it's definitely for everyone who loves New Korean Cinema. Best to blind buy and go into it knowing nothing at all.

[Michael Kerpan]

Lee's Oasis is decidedly NOT "lighter fare". "Harmonium in My Memory" is heavy duty melodrama (and not terribly probable) -- but some folks seem to love it.

[Stefan Andersson]

Sorrow Even up in Heaven (1965) restored:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/k ... -up-698053" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[zedz]

If any of you are ordering a few titles from yesasia, you may well be confronted with the prospect of a free DVD as part of their regular deal. I've ended up with a few of these and they tend to be middling commercial films (plush, not-especially-scary horror movies; kooky, culturally alienating romcoms), all with English subtitles.

Some time ago I received a Korean thriller called The Client and I've only just got around to watching it. It's good! Definitely opt for this if it's in the selection of freebies under offer.

It's kind of Memories of Murder-lite. It's a slick whodunnit that takes in murky official malfeasance, procedural shenanigans and professional rivalry. Pretty standard stuff, but entertainingly delivered. What really stands out is the lawyerly stunt that the defendant's attorney pulls at the climax of the trial. It's a move I haven't seen done before among the zillions of other lawyerly stunts pulled in a zillion other courtroom dramas, and it's so nifty that I wouldn't be surprised if the whole film were constructed simply to get us to that point.

Detailed spoilers follow, so only read this if you have no intention of ever seeing this film.

SpoilerShow

The crime is a 'perfect murder' in which a man's wife has been gruesomely killed, but there is no body. The fact of death is only supported by the absence of the woman and the amount of her blood in her apartment, making it 'very unlikely' that she could have survived whatever happened to her. There is no physical evidence linking the husband to the crime, but he's - supposedly - the only suspect. Early on, it becomes clear that there's some suspicious police shenanigans behind the scenes, and a number of other complications (missing CCTV footage, an unreliable alibi witness) pile up, but at the end the case boils down to a pile of circumstantial evidence, no corpse, but no particularly strong defence arguments. Then along comes the stunt. In his summing up, the defence attorney relies heavily on the fact that all the evidence is only circumstantial and that there's even the possibility that the wife, gravely injured after a suicide attempt, simply got up and walked away. In fact! He is going to count to three and she will walk right through the courtroom doors, alive and well. He starts counting, and all heads turn to the doors, which fail to open when he gets to three. Never mind. As the attorney points out, if you looked at the door - and every juror naturally did - you've got reasonable doubt that the wife is dead, so you can't legally convict. The rhetorical coup is enough to hang the jury, and the judge passes a verdict of 'not guilty'. As they're leaving the courtroom, the prosecutor points out to the defence attorney that the only person in the courtroom that didn't look at the door was the defendant. Aha!

If you did read through the spoilered text (or have seen the film), please let me know if that particular gimmick has been used before, or alternatively, let me know when some enterprising Hollywood screenwriter borrows it.

[rockysds]

Love Me Once Again (1968) just got a blu-ray release. Has anyone here seen the film / know if it is well-regarded? Seems like it was a sizable domestic hit, since it got plenty of sequels.

[manicsounds]

Looks like the sequels will be released on DVD only on the same day, and without subtitles for some reason.

[chucktatum]

Has anybody seen a blu-ray that is subject to disc rot before? My copy of Memories of Murder froze during a crucial scene and refused to play the subsequent scene. I took a look at the disc, and that milky, swimmy thing that happens to them is happening. I've never seen it happen on a blu-ray before, though.

Luckily, it looks like CJ still has a Memories of Murder blu-ray for sale. Hopefully it's the same transfer of the film as in my version (I had CJ's original release of the film on blu.

This happened to me too! It happened right about halfway through. Kind of heartbroken since I only got to watch the Blu-ray one other time before this happened.

[Raymond Marble]

For those of you who are more tuned in to international releases than me, if you spot an edition of A Girl at My Door released, preferably on blu-ray, could you post that here? I read about the film in the new Cinema Scope and it looks right up my alley. That said, I'm having an unusual amount of difficulty figuring out what the deal with it is--it appears to have opened theatrically in South Korea in May, but yesasia.com and eBay don't seem to be showing any DVD or blu-ray releases of it so far. It doesn't appear to have a US distributor yet, though CS was predicting Strand Releasing will pick it up, which seems likely, given what I know about the plot and Strand's track record. Meanwhile, it's showing at the Chicago International Film Festival on my birthday, and I live in St. Louis (about a five-hour drive away), so I'm tempted to just take a quick trip up there to catch up with it.

[manicsounds]

Looks like it's available via digital: streaming, cable, etc in Korean, but hasn't been released on physical media yet.

[Michael Kerpan]

Link to CinemaScope article discussing the new Korean films shown at TIFF: http://cinema-scope.com/features/tiff-2 ... oul-patch/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I would note that Girl at My Door stars the one and only BAE Doona.

(The Hong film also sounds quite intriguing).

[rockysds]

Two new interesting releases:
The March of Fools (1975)
and The Housemaid (1960), which hopefully will include English subtitles on the extras since:

This edition includes Kim Ki Young's 1955 film The Box of Death, his 1954 short film I Am a Truck, an introduction by Martin Scorsese, commentary by Park Chan Wook and critic Lee Dong Jin, and the "Directors on Kim Ki Young" featurette.

[htdm]

Several sites have posted information on the features--oddly only Box of Death is listed as not being subbed.

EDIT: back cover