My Beautiful Girl, Mari (2001) - 마리 이야기 (Ma-ri I-ya-gi)

2007/05/08 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Korean film distribution company Mirovision has built an intimate state of the art theater that will run Korean independent and artistically oriented foreign films. The 10 year old film company says it is dedicated to bringing the best of alternative cinema to Seoul audiences, and its 120 seat venue named Miro Space will launch with two English-subtitled critically praised Korean features.

Opening May 3rd was KIM Tae-sik's "Driving With My Wife's Lover", which has toured various high profile festivals including Sundance and the Berlinale. In this black-comedy, small-town shop owner Tae-han learns that his wife is having an affair with Joong-sik, a Seoul taxi-driver. Intending to violently confront him, Tae-han goes to Seoul and hails Joog-sik's cab, asking for a long-distance trip back to his small town.

From May 10th, LEE Seong-gang's "Texture of Skin" will run for one week, also with English subtitles. It is the live-action feature debut of director LEE, known for his ani...

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2007/01/23 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

1987's Tteodori Ggachi

Will the 10-year myth work again? It's time for the Korean animation industry to find out.
The "myth" started 40 years ago when the first Korean animated feature "Hong Gil Dong - Animation" by director Shin Dong-heon opened in theaters and shocked audiences with its grand scale.

A newspaper in 1967 said that the length of the paper sheets used to make the film would be 3,459,000 centimeters long if laid end to end, or about 150 times the height of Mount Namsan. Four hundred people worked on the project for over a year. They did not have celluloid film so they recycled film stock obtained from a U.S. military base, using sodium hydroxide. The animated feature was the second-most-popular film that year.
Since then, Korean animated films have made extraordinary progress, surprising animation fans with a notable and groundbreaking film in every decade. The '70s had "Robot Taekwon V", an animation about a taekwondo robot fighting evil. The '80s had "Tteodori G...

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2006/12/25 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter

Can melodrama queen Son Ye-jin portray a 10-year-old girl? The answer is "yes", and you can see for yourself in her upcoming feature film.

She returns to the big screen after last spring's television mini-series "Alone in Love", only this time as a voice actor for an animation movie, "Yobi, The Five Tailed Fox".

"I was so worried, as my character is a teenage girl. But I dubbed while thinking about things for children", Son said Friday during a new conference at Seoul Plaza Hotel in Seoul.

Son is best known for her pure and innocent image in melodramas on both the big and small screen like movies "The Classic" (2003) and television drama "Summer Scent".

She said voice acting was a challenging job as it was so different from what she had done in the past.

"This is the first animation in which I worked as a voice actor. And I didn't know how to do it properly. When you shoot a film or TV drama, you can freely express what you feel from a ...

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2006/07/02 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter

A strange, radical local animation film "Aachi And Ssipak" finally opened in theaters last Thursday, portraying a hilarious world fueled by human feces. It took eight years to produce.

"Of course, there are some flaws and some parts that we think we could've made better in the animation", said animation producer Kim Seon-koo. "But most of all, we are so happy to have completed the work and (to be releasing) it at last".

No one thought it would take eight years, especially given the high expectations of the film when its unconventional story idea was first introduced to the public. When a three-minute flash animated clip was introduced as an Internet sneak preview in 2001, millions of people were fascinated and expected to soon see the feature length animation.

With a strange and radical theme, the film promised action-packed scenes and jokes never seen before by audiences. Who could possibly think of an animation about a futuristic world wher...

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2006/06/25 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

The x-rated animated movie "Aachi And Ssipak" finally has its domestic release on June 28. With a title combining a Korean world for "bum" and a term of abuse, it took some eight years for the movie to hit the screen after it was first conceived, director Jo Beom-jin says. The production team braved financial and other hardships in sticking to one principle: Forget about sending a message or educating the public. Fun is the only thing that matters in this movie. The posters duly warn, "This movie is unsuitable for teenagers, pregnant women and those with heart trouble", but even mature and physically fit viewers for whom etiquette and courtesy are important values need to think twice before out seeing the movie.

The fact that it took eight years to release "Aachi And Ssipak" reflects how the animated movie industry has been suffering. When a three-minute flash animated clip offered audiences a sneak preview in 2001, it attracted three million Netizens, with the movie originally sche...

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