By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter
Ten rising South Korean filmmakers present seriocomic stories about money matters in the omnibus project "
Short! Short! Short! 2009": Show Me the Money.
As much as the opening film for the 10th Jeonju International Film Festival is about money, the tight budget for the project ($5,000 per director) is most palpable. The screaming individuality and experimentalism of each episode compensate, but commercial prospects seem slight and the flick will most likely find a small niche in arthouse cinemas.
The omnibus reel opens with
Choi Ik-hwan's one-cut flick "Our Last Words, Live". The "
Life is Cool" director offers a mock home video featuring two despairing young men, who, defrauded, bankrupt and about to get arrested for false charges, try to assert their innocence by recording their last words on tape before committing suicide. But life ― and death ― are often beyond one's control.
In "A Tip for Cigarettes" by Nam Da-jeon, a news reporter stages a story about teenage smoking. What seemed simple enough ― paying an underage smoker to act like she is askin...
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The true horror is the win-at-all-cost mentality
Kyu Hyun Kim (qhyunkim)
The third film in the series of HD-lensed horror films produced by
Yoo Il-han is "
Roommates - 4 Horror Tales" (2006), connected to the previously reviewed "Hidden Floor" ("
Forbidden Floor - 4 Horror Tales") via the central character of Bo-ram (
Eun-seong): she is the girl with burn scars briefly glimpsed by the "
Forbidden Floor - 4 Horror Tales"'s possessed toddler in the train station.
"
Roommates - 4 Horror Tales" directly delves into probably the most important subject for the K-horror, the evils of education system, specifically a setup in which one shot of college entrance examination basically formalizes and entrenches one's status (economic, social, martial, you name it) for the rest of his or her life (or so everyone in Korea believes).
The now-famous and high-quality "Whispering Corridors" series started out in late '90s as a then-extremely frank critique of the oppressive high school experience, before running toward their own quirky, artistic directions.
This debut feature by director
Kim Eun-kyeong ups the ante by basing her movie on an actual incident, a fire in a "boot camp"-style exam-prep center that resulted in the deaths of many high school girls. Bo-ram, the narrator, rooms with the bespectacled, timid Da-young (
Heo Jin-yong), beautiful and smart Eun-joo (
Kim Ri-na) and rebellious Yu-jin (...
MoreTwo of last year's big budget fantasy thrillers have been invited to compete at the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film (BIFFF), set to run April 5th – 17th, 2007 in Belgium.
Bong Joon-ho's record-smashing monster film
"The Host" and
Jo Dong-oh's purgatorial fantasy "
The Restless" will vie for the top international prize in the program.
Other Korean films selected to participate in the non-competition categor...
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