M Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Pusan Fest Kicks Off With Chinese War Drama 'The Assembly'
Filed under: Drama », Foreign Language », Independent », Mystery & Suspense », Other Festivals », Cinematical Indie », War »
The 12th edition of the Pusan International Film Festival kicked off with the world premiere of Feng Xiaogang's Chinese war epic The Assembly, which, by virtue of its national origin, is itself newsworthy. As I mentioned last month, Pusan has rapidly grown into an essential stop on the festival circuit for the Asian film community. Before this year, however, the festival's opening night presentation has traditionally been a Korean film. Patrick Frater of Variety Asia Online says that the selection of The Assembly "is a symbolic gesture, as South Korea ... reaches out to other Asian countries at a time when Korean films are in crisis."Frater explains that South Korean films have not been selling well to foreign distributors. Japan, for example, has notably cut down on imports in view of domestic successes. After years of high-pitched international excitement about Korean films, 2007 has been very quiet indeed. In a separate article at Variety Asian Online, though, film critic Derek Elley points to several anticipated South Korean productions that will be screening at Pusan. He makes special mention of "dark psychodrama" M (directed by Lee Myung-se, who previously made the high-octane breakthrough Nowhere to Hide and the ambitious if messy Duelist) and world premieres of Spare, a "gangster caper" by debut director Lee Seong-han and Hello, Stranger, a drama by Kim Dong-hyun.
Other Korean films that caught my eye include two world premieres. Written starts with a man who wakes up in a bath tub, discovers that one of his kidneys is missing and then learns that he is a character in an unfinished film. Set in the early 1990s, Drawing Paper (pictured) is a coming of age story about a girl in a high school band who's more concerned about her uncertain future than the teenage love triangles that swirl around her. The Pusan festival runs through October 12.
Cinematical Presents: Bondcast -- Episode Two
Filed under: Action », James Bond », Comic/Superhero/Geek », Remakes and Sequels », Bondcast », Daniel Craig »
[Update! We had some problems with our RSS feed and iTunes subscription links below. All has been fixed. Happy listening!]
Bondcast is back! This episode Athena Stamos of CommanderBond.net and I talk about the aftermath of the Casino Royale DVD release and head to a screening party. We also cover our favorite Bond girls, although we both learned that it is very hard to choose just one. Athena takes us through the list of actors that were considered for the role before the mantle went to Daniel Craig.
Since they didn't include one with the recent release, we'll soon be bringing you our own feature-length Casino Royale commentary that you can play along at home with your copy of the film (or without it, if you have an extremely active imagination.) Upcoming interviews on the show include actress Lana Wood who played Plenty O'Toole in Diamonds Are Forever, and John Cox, who runs YoungBondDossier.com, a great source for James Bond news and information in the literary world.
Here are a few tidbits that, even with our vast Bond knowledge, we didn't have at our fingertips during the podcast. When we refer to the post, you can glance here for the points we're talking about.
- England got the Region 2 DVD release of Casino Royale earlier this week (3/19), while the States got the Region 1 discs last week (3/13). Sort of ironic that we get Britain's superspy in our homes before they do.
- CommanderBond reports that after battling with The Secret, Casino Royale has indeed ended up as #1 on the DVD sales charts.
- Pussy Galore's bevy of flying beauties is the eponymous 'Pussy Galore's Flying Circus.' An interesting fact is that while the group is comprised solely of women, it was actually men wearing blonde wigs. Yow.
- Robbie Coltrane portrayed Valentin Zukovsky in both GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough. Plus, he also plays Hagrid in the Harry Potter films. The guy is versatile.
- The Tudors actually premieres on Showtime on April 1st.
SUBSCRIBE to the Bondcast in iTunes
LISTEN to the show now
ADD the Bondcast feed to your RSS aggregator
'Entourage' Movie in the Works?
Spielberg Backs Out of 'Harvey'
Discuss: Should Gay Actors Stay in the Closet?
Sundance '10 Announces Non-Competing Film Premieres
'Up in the Air' Named Best Film of the Year by NBR
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
