bong joon-ho Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Indie Roundup reviews the past week of news from the independent film community and provides a peek at what's coming soon.

Festivals. Canada will be hosting hundreds, if not thousands, if not mllions (only a slight exaggeration, I'm told) of visitors when the Toronto International Film Festival opens on September 10, which is next Thursday! Look for intensive coverage from the Cinematical team on the ground; those of us not lucky enough to go will be following the news eagerly from afar to gauge the critical reaction to many hotly-anticipated titles.

Deals. Courtesy of our friends at indieWIRE, we learned that Mother, the latest picture by Bong Joon-Ho (The Host), has been acquired by Magnolia Pictures, along with the Korean director's first effort, Barking Dogs Never Bite. Mother debuted at Cannes and is headed for festival dates in Toronto and New York, with a theatrical release planned for early next year; it's already been selected by Korea as their entry for this year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Barking Dogs, originally released in 2000, did not reach North America theaters.

Film Movement has picked up Geralyn Pezanoski's warm-hearted Mine, which examines what happened to the pets left behind in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In my review for another outlet, I wrote: "Even if you're not a dog lover or a pet owner, [Mine] may churn your emotions. ... once the true essence of the story becomes apparent, it's difficult to turn away from the screen." Film Movement plans a brief theatrical release before it hits DVD and VOD.

What is judicially inclined, comes in a bottle, and is very, very funny? Find out in Indie Weekend Box Office, after the jump.

Not every city ode has to be steeped in love and mainstream appeal, which is probably why Tokyo! isn't getting half the love that Paris, je t'aime got. But it should. Oh yes, it should. Above you can see the trailer for the film that will be released in New York on March 6, and in Los Angeles and nationwide on March 20.

It's not exactly like the Paris and upcoming New York versions. There are only three directors for this puppy, and they're directors known for their original visions -- Michel Gondry (Be Kind Rewind) heads "Interior Design," Leos Carax (Pola X) heads "Merde," and Bong Joon-ho (The Host) heads "Shaking Tokyo." If that's not enough to sway you, check this: Gondry's segment is about a girl who metamorphoses into something very unexpected, Carax follows a "shit" creature who terrorizes Tokyo whilst wearing a green corduroy suit, and Joon-ho's centers on an agoraphobic man who falls in love with a pizza delivery woman during an earthquake.

All set in Tokyo. What could be better?

You might remember that there was another city getting an anthology treatment, but outside of the Paris and New York love. Back in March of 2007, I posted about Tokyo, an upcoming triptych about life in the Japanese city -- coming from one interesting collection of directors: Leos Carax, Michel Gondry, and The Host helmer Bong Joon-ho. Now it looks like the title has become an exclamation -- Tokyo! -- The Hollywood Reporter posts that Liberation Entertainment has picked up the North American rights to the feature, and we've finally got some segment details.

"Merde" -- Leos Carax's piece follows "a man who engages in provocative acts on the streets of Tokyo."

"Shaking Tokyo" -- The relationship piece from Bong Joon-ho, this segment focuses on a recluse who falls in love during an earthquake. I guess getting him out of his comfort zone helps matters along.

"Interior Design" -- And finally, there's Michel Gondry's piece, which is said to be "a fable that centers on a couple drifting apart." Knowing Gondry, it'll probably be much more than the story of a deteriorating relationship.

Added note: Julie Dreyfus, aka Sofie Fatale from Kill Bill, has a role in one of the segments. No specific date for the film's release has been set, but Liberation Entertainment plans to get it out by the end of the year. I'll take that as a holiday treat. How about you?

If you missed The Host during its theatrical run, now you can catch up with one of the best movies of the year. it's been well covered at Cinematical (reviews by James Rocchi and Jeffrey M. Anderson, interview with director Bong Joon-ho by Scott Weinberg, brief comments by yours truly) and Magnolia has issued a collector's edition, packed with features, on DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. The single-disk regular edition on DVD includes only deleted scenes and an audio commentary by the director. Don't expect a straightforward monster movie; there's plenty of dysfunctional family melodrama and a cracked sense of humor popping up at unexpected moments.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'll again beat the drum for Sean Ellis' Cashback, which I mentioned yesterday in the Indie Weekend Box Office report. It's also from Magnolia, but unlike The Host, Cashback is part of Magnolia's 'limited theatrical release slightly in advance of the DVD to generate some publicity' program; I don't know how successful the program has been, but I'm glad that more people may be checking out this dryly humorous, dreamy fantasy of a young single man. The disk includes the short film that the feature was based on, as well as a "making of."

Tom Tykwer's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer struck me as a pretty picture whose glittering charms lay entirely on the surface. But Kim Voynar had a different reading altogether, calling it "a deeply mesmerizing exploration of one man's desperate search for his own humanity ... very much more than your average serial-killer story." On balance, I think this is a film that generates discussion; therefore I recommend it. The Dreamworks DVD is skimpy on the features, with only "The Story of Perfume" on board, so a rental may be best.

Is it time to bring back the giant monster movie? Given the dismal state of the world at the moment and the general amount of fear and hopelessness in the air, the time couldn't be better. The next question, then, would be: what do giant monster movies have to do with current events? Just about everything, it turns out. The first two giant monster movies, The Mysterious Island (1929) and King Kong (1933) coincided with the Great Depression. Perhaps audiences found it cathartic to pin their invisible troubles on a visible beast. Giant monster movies took a breather for a while until the 1950s, when looming threats of atomic energy and Communism sent ordinary citizens into fits of terror. A virtual army of giant beasties stomped and swam forth from drive-ins and Saturday matinees all through the decade, from the beloved: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Them! (1954) and It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) to the wretched: Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), Earth vs. the Spider (1958) and The Giant Gila Monster (1959).

Japan added their smash-hit Godzilla franchise, spawning dozens of movies and various spinoffs. In the US, Godzilla was just another giant monster movie, and was released in 1956, edited, dubbed, re-titled "King of the Monsters" and riddled with new footage of American actor Raymond Burr. Of course, Hollywood chipped in with its big-budget American version in 1998, but times here were fairly good (at least in retrospect) and the movie failed to enter the zeitgeist. However, in 2004 the original, unedited, subtitled Godzilla opened for its 50th anniversary re-release. Critics in honest-to-goodness newspapers reviewed it and found it excellent, including an all-out rave from David Sterritt in the Christian Science Monitor, and positive reviews in the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. (Only Roger Ebert turned up his nose, while turning down his thumb.)

Grabbing a trio of directors to create a film about a famous, high-density city is nothing new. In 1989, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese got together to make New York Stories. Now another city is getting its cinematic treatment, but the spin is a little bit different. Instead of merging an incredibly verbose filmmaker with two men known for their manly features, we're getting a popular music video director-turned-quirky filmmaker, an occasional French director and the man who brought us killer tadpoles. Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-ho are all negotiating to take on Tokyo -- a triptych covering three stories that take place in the Japanese city.

There is very little news on the Commes des Cinemas feature, other than the fact that it will give three views of Tokyo. However, The Host director Bong Joon-ho has shared a little about his offering. While the plots are being kept secret, the South Korean filmmaker just finished his during a long plane ride, and it will involve the relationship between a Japanese man and woman. Each segment is set to be filmed simultaneously in Tokyo this July or August, and a source for The Hollywood Reporter has claimed that each with get liberal access to the city since it's so Tokyo-centric. I, for one, am anxious to see what each of the directors will do. They're all quite different, which should make for an interesting collection of largely unique visions.

Once of the most eagerly-anticipated (in some circles, anyway) films to premiere at Cannes this year was The Host, a monster movie from Korean director Bong Joon-ho. The film, which screened as part of the Directors Fortnight, is about "a mutant creature that inhabits Seoul's Han River and a half-witted father trying to rescue his daughter from the monster's clutches." Budgeted at only $10 million (a sum that, according to an article on the director in today's New York Times, is unimpressive even by Korean standards), the film nevertheless features work from several international effects houses, and the footage that's shown up on the internet so far is pretty freaking awesome -- how often are directors confident enough of their CGI work to send monsters out in the middle of the day, just wandering around in parks and picking off random schoolgirls?

Happily, thanks to the geniuses/foolish risk-takers at Magnolia Pictures, those of us the US are actually going to get to check out those effects on the big screen. According to a report out of Cannes a few days ago, the distributor has picked up the rights to release the film in not only the US, but also the UK and Australia. Needless to say, the people who hold the money at Magnolia were wildly impressed by Bong's film, calling it "The most impressive and imaginative monster [we've] seen in a long time." Sweet. I tend to avoid horror, but even I can't wait to see this one -- when a release date surfaces, we'll let you know.