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Why Hollywood doesn’t get South Korean cinema
Tuesday December 03rd 2013South Korea’s cinema boom continues to echo through Hollywood, with the country’s acting talent heading Stateside and Korean stories regularly remade. Yet these Americanised versions often end up drained of the weirdness that made them so bracing. It’s like trying to make coleslaw out of kimchi. Here are five things that Korean cinema does better.
Inventive murder weapons
There’s no right to bear arms in the South Korean constitution, but it doesn’t say anything about hammers. In Hollywood you can simply spray the bad guy with bullets; in Korea, you’ve got to think out of the box. The toolbox, most often. Oldboy and The Chaser said it with hammers; The Isle deployed fish hooks (many viewers are still recovering); other novel weaponry has included pliers, golf clubs, dumbbells, or simply bare hands. All of which make for visceral close-combat fight scenes and higher dry cleaning bills.
Deranged storylines
South Korea shares a border with a communist dictatorship that’s hungry, armed to the teeth and constantly threatening to start a nuclear war. The US has Canada. Living in a permanent state of military paranoia must do things to the South Korean psyche that we cannot comprehend. Perhaps this is why they so regularly come up with terrifying horrors and ingenious gotcha plot twists. What’s beyond our wildest imaginations isn’t beyond theirs.
Genre-bending
It’s not just geographical borders that are shakier. Korean movies blithely flout Hollywood’s carefully policed genre rules. As a result, they end up with labels like “kimchi western” (The Good, The Bad, The Weird), “eco-kidnap serial-killer alien-invasion thriller” (Save The Green Planet!) or “man who has a gun inserted into his penis and becomes aroused at the sight of ballerinas and has a brother who’s half-tiger drama” (Never Belongs To Me).
Varied menus
We can all agree that harming animals in the name of cinema is not a good thing. But when it comes to “commitment to the role”, Choi Min-sik’s consumption of a live octopus in the original Oldboy takes some beating. Animal cruelty is a no-no in western cinema, but you wouldn’t want to be a horse, fish, frog, dog or cephalopod with movie ambitions in Korea, judging by the real horrors they’re routinely subjected to. To be fair, Choi – a Buddhist – said prayers apologising to the octopus before each take.
Epic ambitions
If it’s the extremes of Korean cinema that get lapped up in the west, is that their problem or ours? Away from the violence and the weirdness, Korea supports a healthy contingent of award-winning auteurs, like Hong Sang-soo, Im Sang-soo or Lee Chang-dong. But there are also signs that American audiences have shorter attention spans. Bong Joon-ho is making a valiant attempt to bridge the cultural divide with his new sci-fi saga Snowpiercer, starring Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho and Tilda Swinton. But he’s fighting with his US distributor, Harvey Weinstein, who wants to cut it by 20 minutes for American audiences. If there’s one thing Koreans should have learned about negotiating with Hollywood by now, it’s always bring a hammer.
Source: Guardian
Front Page, Industry News
Why Hollywood doesn’t get South Korean cinema
Tuesday December 03rd 2013South Korea’s cinema boom continues to echo through Hollywood, with the country’s acting talent heading Stateside and Korean stories regularly remade. Yet these Americanised versions often end up drained of the weirdness that made them so bracing. It’s like trying to make coleslaw out of kimchi. Here are five things that Korean cinema does better.
Inventive murder weapons
There’s no right to bear arms in the South Korean constitution, but it doesn’t say anything about hammers. In Hollywood you can simply spray the bad guy with bullets; in Korea, you’ve got to think out of the box. The toolbox, most often. Oldboy and The Chaser said it with hammers; The Isle deployed fish hooks (many viewers are still recovering); other novel weaponry has included pliers, golf clubs, dumbbells, or simply bare hands. All of which make for visceral close-combat fight scenes and higher dry cleaning bills.
Deranged storylines
South Korea shares a border with a communist dictatorship that’s hungry, armed to the teeth and constantly threatening to start a nuclear war. The US has Canada. Living in a permanent state of military paranoia must do things to the South Korean psyche that we cannot comprehend. Perhaps this is why they so regularly come up with terrifying horrors and ingenious gotcha plot twists. What’s beyond our wildest imaginations isn’t beyond theirs.
Genre-bending
It’s not just geographical borders that are shakier. Korean movies blithely flout Hollywood’s carefully policed genre rules. As a result, they end up with labels like “kimchi western” (The Good, The Bad, The Weird), “eco-kidnap serial-killer alien-invasion thriller” (Save The Green Planet!) or “man who has a gun inserted into his penis and becomes aroused at the sight of ballerinas and has a brother who’s half-tiger drama” (Never Belongs To Me).
Varied menus
We can all agree that harming animals in the name of cinema is not a good thing. But when it comes to “commitment to the role”, Choi Min-sik’s consumption of a live octopus in the original Oldboy takes some beating. Animal cruelty is a no-no in western cinema, but you wouldn’t want to be a horse, fish, frog, dog or cephalopod with movie ambitions in Korea, judging by the real horrors they’re routinely subjected to. To be fair, Choi – a Buddhist – said prayers apologising to the octopus before each take.
Epic ambitions
If it’s the extremes of Korean cinema that get lapped up in the west, is that their problem or ours? Away from the violence and the weirdness, Korea supports a healthy contingent of award-winning auteurs, like Hong Sang-soo, Im Sang-soo or Lee Chang-dong. But there are also signs that American audiences have shorter attention spans. Bong Joon-ho is making a valiant attempt to bridge the cultural divide with his new sci-fi saga Snowpiercer, starring Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho and Tilda Swinton. But he’s fighting with his US distributor, Harvey Weinstein, who wants to cut it by 20 minutes for American audiences. If there’s one thing Koreans should have learned about negotiating with Hollywood by now, it’s always bring a hammer.
Source: Guardian
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Front Page, Industry News
Why Hollywood doesn’t get South Korean cinema
Tuesday December 03rd 2013South Korea’s cinema boom continues to echo through Hollywood, with the country’s acting talent heading Stateside and Korean stories regularly remade. Yet these Americanised versions often end up drained of the weirdness that made them so bracing. It’s like trying to make coleslaw out of kimchi. Here are five things that Korean cinema does better.
Inventive murder weapons
There’s no right to bear arms in the South Korean constitution, but it doesn’t say anything about hammers. In Hollywood you can simply spray the bad guy with bullets; in Korea, you’ve got to think out of the box. The toolbox, most often. Oldboy and The Chaser said it with hammers; The Isle deployed fish hooks (many viewers are still recovering); other novel weaponry has included pliers, golf clubs, dumbbells, or simply bare hands. All of which make for visceral close-combat fight scenes and higher dry cleaning bills.
Deranged storylines
South Korea shares a border with a communist dictatorship that’s hungry, armed to the teeth and constantly threatening to start a nuclear war. The US has Canada. Living in a permanent state of military paranoia must do things to the South Korean psyche that we cannot comprehend. Perhaps this is why they so regularly come up with terrifying horrors and ingenious gotcha plot twists. What’s beyond our wildest imaginations isn’t beyond theirs.
Genre-bending
It’s not just geographical borders that are shakier. Korean movies blithely flout Hollywood’s carefully policed genre rules. As a result, they end up with labels like “kimchi western” (The Good, The Bad, The Weird), “eco-kidnap serial-killer alien-invasion thriller” (Save The Green Planet!) or “man who has a gun inserted into his penis and becomes aroused at the sight of ballerinas and has a brother who’s half-tiger drama” (Never Belongs To Me).
Varied menus
We can all agree that harming animals in the name of cinema is not a good thing. But when it comes to “commitment to the role”, Choi Min-sik’s consumption of a live octopus in the original Oldboy takes some beating. Animal cruelty is a no-no in western cinema, but you wouldn’t want to be a horse, fish, frog, dog or cephalopod with movie ambitions in Korea, judging by the real horrors they’re routinely subjected to. To be fair, Choi – a Buddhist – said prayers apologising to the octopus before each take.
Epic ambitions
If it’s the extremes of Korean cinema that get lapped up in the west, is that their problem or ours? Away from the violence and the weirdness, Korea supports a healthy contingent of award-winning auteurs, like Hong Sang-soo, Im Sang-soo or Lee Chang-dong. But there are also signs that American audiences have shorter attention spans. Bong Joon-ho is making a valiant attempt to bridge the cultural divide with his new sci-fi saga Snowpiercer, starring Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho and Tilda Swinton. But he’s fighting with his US distributor, Harvey Weinstein, who wants to cut it by 20 minutes for American audiences. If there’s one thing Koreans should have learned about negotiating with Hollywood by now, it’s always bring a hammer.
Source: Guardian
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