shadows in the palace Tagged Articles at Cinematical

As I posted last month, several South Korean horror pictures have been pleasing both audiences and critics recently, providing a bright spot in an otherwise disappointing year. The most recent of the four I mentioned is Shadows in the Palace, a murder mystery period piece that Jonathan Holland of Variety described as "an Agatha Christie country-house mystery transposed to the royal court of Korea's Joseon dynasty, given a distinctive femme twist and then drenched with gore."

The film opened in South Korea on October 18 and more positive reviews have followed. Brian Naas of Asian Cinema - While on the Road called it "a terrific fast paced conspiratorial page turner that refuses to take a breath. ... What makes it especially fascinating is the feminist milieu in which the plot unfolds." Maggie Lee of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "For a film about court intrigue, it raises the bar in creating a paranoid and ruthlessly competitive feminine space, revealing a medieval world of sadistic torture behind ornate interiors, rustling 'Hanbok' gowns and elegant court decorum." Lee Hyo-won of The Korea Times concluded: "The movie shines brightly among the renaissance of period pieces on the big and small screens, with forgotten historical figures gaining a human dimension and giving way to a whirlwind of suspense."

The latest box office figures show that Shadows in the Palace is still going strong, finishing in third place for the week. The Korean-language trailer is quite suggestive without being explicit in its depiction of blood and gore, though the reviews mention that there are some hair-raising, needle-torturing scenes. No word yet on any US distribution, though it seems like somebody should pick this up sooner rather than later.

The strike isn't the only thing that has been cooking up lately. Check out all the international indie deals that Variety threw up recently:

• Oldboy helmer Park Chan-Wook has not only been cooking up some machine love with I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK. He's also got Bakjwi (Evil Live) on the way -- a modern-day bloodsucking vampire story, and Variety reports that CJ Entertainment has pre-sold French and Russian rights to the pic, which hopefully means North America will get some bloody rights soon. Other current CJ deals include Secret Sunshine, Shadows in the Palace, and Love Now.
• On the more Bolly side of things, Variety has posted that India indie distributor Indo-Overseas Films has picked up some movie rights. First up is the romcom Chocolate, directed by Mayavi helmer Shafi, and written by Sachi and Sethu. Ah, the ease of one-word, short names! The other film that Indo-Overseas has nabbed is Power Kids, but that currently seems to be lurking beyond the reach of the Internet.
• There's also a few action flicks coming out of Hong Kong. Variety reports that Rialto has gotten Aussie and Kiwi rights to both award-winner Dante Lam's upcoming flick Sniper, and Assassins -- Soi Cheang's latest action film. I don't know Cantonese, but maybe one of you, out there, can tell me if that's the same as The Grudge detective Ryo Ishibashi's Shamo? The flicks are also reaching Israel, the ex-Yugoslavian region, and Turkey, so maybe, again, we'll hear North American rights soon.

As I previously wrote, the 12th edition of the Pusan International Film Festival opened last week in South Korea. One of the festival's newer initiatives, the Asian Film Market, started its second edition on Sunday. Variety's Patrick Frater reports that buyers and sellers "have been greeted with calls for a long-term approach to building a regional movie marketplace." The market has about the same number of participants as the inaugural edition last year, but the past twelve months have seen Korean exports drop by 50%, according to Variety.

In a separate article for Variety, Darcy Paquet writes of a possible bright spot for the industry: "Korean tradition has it that a good fright is the best way to fend off the summer heat," which explains why so many horror movies appear on South Korean screens between June and August. He says that, locally, there's a sense that the genre has undergone a "creative renewal." While horror movies also suffered from the national downturn in audiences, their producers have hopes that they will continue to appeal to foreign audiences, especially those in Europe and Latin America, and are making many of them available for the first time to buyers at the Asian Film Market.

Paquet notes three films that stood out this year, and one that's due out shortly. Black House (pictured) is the top grossing horror flick; it's a Korean-Japanese co-production, based on a Japanese novel, featuring "high production values and a well-known star in Hwang Jeong-min." Epitaph is set at a Seoul hospital during World War II and is a critical fave. Wide Awake is a medical thriller. The upcoming Shadows in the Palace, due for release on October 18, is already earning good buzz, according to Paquet. The murder mystery period piece premiered at the San Sebastian fest recently, where Jonathan Holland of Variety described it as "an Agatha Christie country-house mystery transposed to the royal court of Korea's Joseon dynasty, given a distinctive femme twist and then drenched with gore."