MinJungKim.com Braindump v 6.0 Gah. I’m still doing this?

2 More flicks and then I think I’m movied out. For Now.

You Are My Sunshine:

A lovely and sweet Korean flick HIV romcom between a cowfarmer and a coffee bar prostitute. Um. Yeah. I know it sounds weird but it’s not the strangest film I’ve seen today. Of note, our cowfarmer owns 1 cow. Of note, our prostitute with the heart of gold has some serious issues.
Honestly, a remarkably sweet film that confronts the notion that we all have faults, baggage, and damage to a degree. But love — real love — recognizes, accepts, and moves beyond it all. The title song is played at appropriate moments throughout the film in piano, guitar, accordian, and flute. It’s sweet and makes you forgive the film directors for allowing a Korean knockoff of Cyndi Lauper’s SheBop be basterdized in the karaoke scene.

Highlight scenes include seeing the birthing of a calf, our hero breaking a speaker system to grab the hand of his beloved, how cutesy the two are on their honeymoon in the bathtub blowing bubbes at each other, and when Seok-Jun gives Eunha a piggy back ride as cherry blossoms fall around them.

3.5/5 Pigtails. Good but not stunning. Not for everyone but definitely very sweet.

I bawled a little durning this film but it wasn’t the water works I had the night before.

The official film description below

Simple, sweet-natured farmhand Seok-Jung (Hwang Jeong-Min) longs for a wife. He is certain that he has found her the instant he catches sight of lovely Eun-Ha (Jeon Do-Yeon). She is far more experienced and sophisticated than he is, a difference made starkly clear by her job at a sleazy café where she delivers intimacy and coffee to the guests at the aptly named Beast Motel. No one is more surprised than she is when his unquestioning devotion wins her over, and she falls for her impassioned suitor. Seok-Jung thinks he has found the perfect love, but Eun-Ha is a woman with a past that has resulted in an HIV infection, and her former life casts a shadow that threatens not just their marriage but also his place within his family and community. What begins as a daffy romantic comedy of opposites attracting gradually darkens and deepens as writer/director Park Jin-Pyo examines the steadfastness of unconditional love and the outside forces that seek to destroy it. It is a graceful transition into melodrama, made all the more poignant by Seok-Jung’s naiveté and Eun-Ha’s vulnerability. The intense chemistry between the two actors ensures that while the latter half of the film is nominally about AIDS and the high cost it extracts not just from its victims but from everyone close to them, it is far more a testament to the bond between lovers. A box office success in Korea, the film received seven nominations for Korea’s Blue Dragon Awards, winning for best director, best actor and best couple.

—Pam Grady

Presented in association with the Institute of East Asian Studies. North American Premiere

Neoneun nae unmyeong

New Directors
South Korea, 2005, 121 minutes

SHOWTIMES

Sun, Apr 23 / 8:30 / Kabuki / YOU23K
Wed, Apr 26 / 2:30 / Kabuki / YOU26K

CREDITS

dir Park Jin-Pyo

prod Eugene Lee, Oh Jeong-Wan

scr Park Jin-Pyo

cam Seong Seung-Taek

editor Mun In-Dae

mus Bang Jun-Seok

cast Jeon Do-Yeon, Hwang Jeong-Min, Na Mun-Hee, Ryu Seung-Su, Go Su-Hee

source CJ Entertainment, 26th Fl. Star Tower, 737 Yeoksam-dong, Kangnam-gu, 135-984 Seoul, South Korea FAX: 82-2-2112-6599 EMAIL: heejeon@cj.net

Next up

Executive Koala

Um. Mix Office Space with Memento with Scream with A little Who Killed Bobby and the Fugitive and Shawshank Redemption and an Inigo Montoya vibe of “you killed my father, prepare to die”.

And then add a Koala head.

Uh. Yeah. Did I mention that there was a musical number? And a totally awesome fetish for things Korean including Kimchi and hot Korean boys?
I swear to God, those Japanese must have some awesome awesome drugs to come up with this stuff.

I don’t honestly know how many pigtails to give this film. My head is still broken.

I think I give it a 3.5/5 pigtails.

Official description below.

Though accurate to its subject, the film’s title doesn’t quite express the full-bore craziness of Minoru Kawasaki’s followup to The Calamari Wrestler (2004). Moving from the interspecies grapplings of the wrestling ring to the even more brutal milieu of office politics, it is the story of Tamura, a hard-working employee of the Rubbles Pickles Company who is working on a merger with a South Korean kimchi producer. He is introduced in the film’s opening song as a “kind-hearted fence-sitter, unhurt by layoffs or demotion.” The fact that this dutiful drudge has a giant koala head and that his boss appears to be a large rabbit is little remarked upon. Though the office secretaries bemoan his hirsuteness, they still see him as a nifty catch. Tamura’s desirability is called into question, however, when detectives start suspecting that he might be responsible for the disappearance of his ex-wife and the death of his current girlfriend. Thinking he might suffer from a split personality, our titular hero strives to recover the buried memories of his spouse’s disappearance through analysis, though his shrink might actually mean him more harm than good. Another rogue element is Tamura’s colleague from the kimchi company, who is never seen without his flying squirrel, Momo. Borrowing a pinch of plot from The Manchurian Candidate, a modicum of musical absurdity from The Happiness of the Katakuris and some animal anthropomorphism from Sesame Street, Kawasaki adds his own peculiar sense of humor and martial arts action to come up with something entirely new and entirely unforgettable.

—Rod Armstrong
Koala Kacho

Spotlight: The Late Show
Japan, 2005, 85 minutes

SHOWTIMES

Fri, Apr 28 / 10:30 / Kabuki / EXEC28K
Tue, May 02 / 4:15 / Kabuki / EXEC02K

CREDITS

dir Minoru Kawasaki

prod Shuntaro Kanai

scr Minoru Kawasaki, Masakazu Migita

cam Yasutaka Nagano

cast Hironobu Nomura, Arthur Koroda, Hideki Saijo, Eiichi Kikuchi, Lee Ho, Ellirose

source The Klockworx Co, Ltd, MF Bldg, 4-F, 1-6-10 Ebisu Minami, Shibuya-ku, 150-0022 Tokyo, Japan FAX: 81-3-5720-7792. EMAIL: senden@klockworx.com

web http://www.koala-kacho.com/

If I can get motivated, I will watch Sa-Kwa tomorrow.
Jayzus. 4 Films from the film festival + my netflix documentary of Born in Brothels.

Jayzus.