[Movie 2004] Three..Extremes / Three, Monster 쓰리, 몬스터

Three...Extremes (2004)

From the Nightmares of Three Horror Masters Takashi Miike, Fruit Chan, Park Chan-Wook Official Website:threeextremes.com

Also Known As: Three, Monster (South Korea) Three... Extremes (Singapore: English title) MPAA: Rated R for strong disturbing violent content, some involving abortion and torture, and for sexuality and language. Runtime: South Korea:118 min / Argentina:118 min (Mar del Plata Film Festival) Directed by Fruit Chan (segment "Dumplings") Takashi Miike (segment "Box") Chan-wook Park (segment "Cut") Writing credits (in alphabetical order) Haruko Fukushima segment "Box" Lilian Lee segment "Dumplings" Chan-wook Park segment "Cut" Bun Saikou story (segment "Box") Credited cast: Byung-hun Lee .... Director (segment "Cut") Hye-jeong Kang .... Pianist (segment "Cut") Jung-ah Yum .... Actress (segment "Cut") rest of cast listed alphabetically: Mitsuru Akaboshi .... Kyoko (segment "Box") Ling Bai .... Mei (segment "Dumplings") Lee Jun Goo Kyoko Hasegawa .... Kyoko (segment "Box") Pauline Lau .... (segment "Dumplings") Mi Mi Lee .... (segment "Dumplings") Tony Leung Ka Fai .... Lee (segment "Dumplings") Won-Hee Lim .... Ching (segment "Cut") Won-hie Lim .... Terrorist (segment "Cut") Meme Mai Suzuki .... (segment "Box") Yuu Suzuki .... (segment "Box") Atsuro Watabe .... Stepfather/Editor (segment "Box") So-Fun Wong .... (segment "Dumplings") Miriam Yeung Chin Wah .... Ching (segment "Dumplings") Miki Yeung Produced by Peter Chan .... producer Fumio Inoue .... producer (segment "Box") Kazuo Kuroi .... executive producer (segment "Box") Yo-jin Lee .... executive producer (segment "Cut") (as Eu-Gene Lee) Jung-Wan Oh .... executive producer (segment "Cut") Naoki Sato .... producer (segment "Box") Shun Shimizu .... producer (segment "Box") Ahn Soo-Hyun .... producer (segment "Cut") Eric Tsang .... executive producer (segment "Dumplings") Original Music by Kwong Wing Chan (segment "Dumplings") Kôji Endô (segment "Box") Cinematography by Christopher Doyle (segment "Dumplings") Jeong-hun Jeong (segment "Cut") Kôichi Kawakami (segment "Box") Film Editing by Fruit Chan (segment "Dumplings") Jae-beom Kim (segment "Cut") Sang-Beom Kim (segment "Cut") Yasushi Shimamura (segment "Box") Production Design by Takashi Sasaki (segment "Box") Chung Man Yee (segment "Dumplings") Seong-hie Yu (segment "Cut") Art Direction by Pater Wong (segment "Dumplings") Costume Design by Sang-gyeong Jo (segment "Cut") Dora Ng (segment "Dumplings")

RYU Ji-ho is a successful film director who has earned wide and solid respect from audiences and critics alike. Wealthy, respected, talented, happily married, good-looking and also kind in nature - everything about Ryu is the definition of Mr. Perfect... that is, until he returns home one day after finishing a shoot to encounter a complete stranger in his living room.

The starnger is a male extra whom Ryu never paid attention to. Probably no one else ever did either. Madly jealous of the director's good fortune, the man is there to destroy. He has brought along a child and has taken Ryu's pianist wife as hostage. He offers Ryu two choices, to kill the child or to watch his wife's fingers being cut off - one after another. Either way, Ryu's life will never be the same again. Tormented by the dilemma, the people in the house cannot but fall prey to the madman's monstrocity - which gradually proves itself to be contagious.

Movie Poster for CUT

Official Korean website: 3monster.com

Download movie trailer

mms://media02.maxmovie.com/av/maxthreemon_t_trailer300.wmv

Three, Monster captures courtesy byunghunzzang.com, from the movie website.

February 17, 2004

Lee Byung Hun in the horror movie collaboration by Korea, Japan and HK at no fee

Source:记者 郑玄锡 hschung@sportschosun.com, translated by Shirley

Lee Byung Hun shall be in the horror movie collaboration by Korea, Japan and Hong Kong, at no costs at all.

Mega movie actor Lee Byung Hun shall be in the horror movie 'Three, Monster', a collaboration by the three Asian countries, with no fees charged for his involvement.

Scheduled to premier in August , the movie 'Three, Monster' will be Lee Byung Hun's first horror movie. This is also the sequel to the 2002 a co-project by Korea, Thailand and China(HK) - Korea portion was directed by Kim Ji Woon.

The sequel will involve Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong directors -- Park Chan Wook who directed "OldBoy", Fruit Chan and Takashi Miike who directed "Audition." The movie shall attempt to reveal the evilness and cruelty buried within human heart, to express extreme horror. Lee will be in the role of a perfect man who is devoured by an unforeseen attack of horror.

Lee Byung Hun was the one who suggested participating in the movie with no fees for his involvement, not only because of his trust in Director Park which he had known through 'Joint Security Area' (JSA), but because the feature is a horror movie with a strong script, he like to challenge the unfamiliar genre as well as taking into consideration by being in this movie, it will be an advantage to him for entering into Japan, Hong Kong and other Asian markets.

LBH recently decided on the movie 'Everyone Has a Secret' and been known to receive the highest record fee for his role. Hence, the decision to accept this role in 'Three, Monster' for free will definitely be the topic of the movie industry.

i love cut!

but imodumplings and box arent scary and only discusting! cut is very special! i love yum jung ah asa vampire..so cool!

May 11, 2004

Director Park Chan Wook on why he chosen LBH

Translation by Splash

Why Lee Byung Hun was cast as the main character, the movie director:

When I thought of the idea of this man as a perfect person, it also included his looks, so I had no choice but to exclude Song Kang Ho and Seol Kyung Ku. (laughter) Just kidding...

I did think of Senior Choi Min Shik, but he didn't seem right for the character. However, I didn't cast Lee Byung Hun because I couldn't find anyone else.

In the story , the director is caught in an extremely difficult situation. The intruder who enters the house of the helpless director is an extremely destructive person; he is the sort who would not blink or react no matter what the director does to try to free himself. Therefore, since it is hard to control his emotions, I thought it was also possible not to reveal this character to the audience. Of course, I would want a handsome actor as well as one who does excellent acting; moreover, the person playing the director needs to have the image of a star. I thought that in the movie, the character is already a star (famous) director who has everything, so even if the actor playing the role is handsome, he would not be able to bring the character to life if he is not also a star actor himself. While Im Won Hee talks a lot, the director role does not have much speaking parts, even if he talks, he does not say anything significant. He doesn't say anything more than things like "Why are you doing this to me?" and "I am sorry."

Lee Byung Hun has very mesmerizing eyes that enable him to communicate all sorts of emotions, simply by looking. Therefore, I decided that Lee Byung Hun had to be the one.

Review published on 08-19-2004

Best Two Out of 'Three'

By Joon Soh

Staff Reporter

"Three, Monster," a compilation of short films by East Asian directors, is probably the most aesthetic of horror films to open in theaters this year. The three directors who participated in this project _ Park Chan-wook of South Korea, Takashi Miike of Japan and Fruit Chan of Hong Kong - figure out ways to not as much terrify the audience as attempt to disturb them on a psychological level.

The films of "Three, Monster" all work from the same premise _ that the source for the horrific lies not outside but within the individual. The results have somewhat of a biblical feel, with the directors casting their interpretations on greed, envy, desire and other deadly sins that can transform people into monsters.

The most original and polished of the three is the first. "Cut," directed by Park, is a continuation of the revenge theme that the filmmaker has been exploring in his recent films "Chiltunun Naui Him (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance)" and "Old Boy." The short film, however, takes a slyer approach than his features, and gives center stage to the black humor Park only hinted at previously.

"Cut" is a literal theater of cruelty, in which a failed actor credited only as the Terrorist (Yim Won-hee) holds a director (Lee Byung-hun) captive at a film set, a recreation of the Director’s own home. There, the Terrorist has elaborately tied up the Director’s wife, the Pianist (Kang Hye-jung), in front of a piano, and a random child on a sofa. He then gives the Director a choice - either strangle the innocent child or watch as he chops off one of the Pianist’s fingers every five minutes.

It may seem odd that Park would find humor in such a situation, but the director does so with gleeful abandon. The situation is taken into absurd territory, revolving mostly around the game between the Terrorist and the Director, and aside from the unnecessary twist at the end, the film succeeds in keeping the audience in uncomfortable laughter throughout.

Less elaborate but perhaps more frightening than "Cut" is Fruit Chan's "Dumplings." The story, about a woman (Yeung Chin Wah) who tries to recover her youth by eating dumplings made of aborted fetuses, seems like something that could unfortunately occur in our youth-obsessed society. The short film, which includes excellent performances by Ling Bai, as the ruthless dumpling vendor, and Leung Ka Fai as the husband who chases after young women, falls short of meaningful social criticism, but its close resemblance to our world makes it more disturbing than any ghost story.

Miike's "Box," unfortunately, gets lost between the two superior shorts. The director fills his surreal narrative about a young woman writer with such evocative images as a circus act starring twin teenage dancers, bleak walks through the snow and repeated dreams of being buried alive. It's certainly beautiful to look at in a melancholy sort of way, but the film's simplistic story of jealousy lacks the psychological dimension that makes "Three's" other two films so engaging.

Kang Hye-jung plays a pianist held captive in Park Chan-wook's 'Cut,'

one of the three films that make up 'Three, Monster.'

Three, Monster

Stars: Lee Byung-hun, Yim Wonhee, Kyoko Hasegawa and Ling Bei

Directors: Park Chan-wook, Fruit Chan and Takashi Miike

Length: 1 hour 58 minutes

Rating: 18 and over

Languages: Korean, Japanese and Chinese

Source: http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/culture/20...18584711690.htm

Review published on 08-23-2004

Film unmasks monsters inside man

Horror movies usually deal with anti-heros, whose monstrosity is so evident that the audiences readily distance themselves from the negative images fleshed out on the silver screen. But "Three, Monster," released on Friday, goes the opposite way.

The film has attracted media limelight because of its peculiar production style. Three top-rated directors from Korea, Japan and Hong Kong joined in the omnibus movie project. Although their cinematic styles are highly disparate, a common thread - human monstrosity - runs through the three 40-minute-long pieces.

Another element that unites the three stories is the bitter aftertaste. Some audience members have rushed out of the theater in the middle of previews, apparently unable to endure some tortuous and graphic scenes.

And some who have been brave enough to stay until the ending credits have expressed anger and frustration.

"What in the world are these movies?" a moviegoer said in utter embarrassment. Such a sense of disgust, however, is what the three moviemakers aim to provoke.

"Cut," the opening piece by award-winning Korean director Park Chan-wook, is bizarre and unnerving. The story starts with a grotesque yet eerily funny filmmaking scene in which a female vampire feasts on a human being.

It turns out that the scene is part of a movie being filmed by Ryu Ji-ho, an extremely successful film director who has earned wide and solid support from both the audience and critics. He is a sort of Mr. Perfect: wealthy, respected, talented, happily-married, good-looking, kindhearted.

Really? Ryu's perfection is seriously challenged when he returns home and encounters a complete stranger - an extra who participated in some of Ryu's movies. Ryu had never paid attention to this obscure man - until now.

The intruder, who has nothing to lose, reveals deep-seated hatred toward the director, who has everything to lose. The intruder has brought along a small child and taken Ryu's pianist wife hostage. Ryu is given a mind-boggling choice: kill the innocent child or to watch his wife's fingers cut off one by one at five-minute intervals.

The psychological showdown between the have and the have-not seems excruciatingly fast-paced as the five-minute deadline for a cruel finger-cutting drives up the tension. (Yes, blood is shed, and it's not a sight to enjoy.)

But it's hard to say that the cruelty here is similar to mainstream slasher movies filled with violent images. First, it takes only three characters to get the plot running. And only two characters - the director and the intruder - talk.

The director's house where the riveting game is played out is decorated in baroque-style, and classical music scores echo through the expansive space.

Ryu's pianist wife also makes a fetish appearance thanks to the constant tears of fear that smear her make-up, reminding the audience that this is not real, but rather a psychological drama.

When the madman cracks a series of jokes in the slow-paced dialect used in midwestern Korea, director Park seems to be pursuing a comic rendition of human monstrosity.

What's really funny is director Ryu's confession. Asked about the shortcomings of his life, he ponders seriously (while his wife's fingers are chopped away, thank you), and finally says, "I'm sorry I've been so kindhearted."

If this derisive scene makes you laugh, you'll discover how scary it is only a few seconds later. Director Park, who cleverly blends the filmmaking term "cut," in the film's title with cuts of an entirely different sort in the movie, is a shrewd cinematographer who knows how to hit the sweet spot of the audience.

"Box," directed by Takashi Miike of Japan, tackles mythical and dreamy theme of horror that haunts Kyoko (Kyoko Hasegawa), a successful and renowned beauty.

The main character is trapped in a web of claustrophobic scenes, which chug along at a painfully slow pace, with Kyoko confined to a solitary and secrecy-laden life.

On the surface, Kyoko has ambivalent feelings toward her editor who has a crush on her. But she hesitates to open her heart to him because of a traumatic childhood experience.

Deploying techniques that can be defined as a minimalist fantasy, the film shows what really happened. At the tender age of 10, Kyoko accidentally caused her twin sister Shoko - a rival for the affection of their surrogate father Hikita - to be burned to death.

Stricken by grief, Hikita vanished shortly afterwards. Adding to the tangle, the editor looks exactly like Hikita. Meanwhile, Kyoko has been struggling to fend off the recurring dreams and memories of her twin sister.

The film does not stray from well-known motifs: jealousy, murder, guilt, and the judgment. Fantasy and reality intertwine, detach, and then overlap one another, making it hard to regard the suffocating images as real.

The question is whether the movie lives up to the grander theme of human monstrosity. For the most part, it doesn't. But the last scene changes all that in a way that may punch complacent viewers in the stomach.

"Dumplings," directed by Fruit Chan of Hong Kong, mixes one long-running human desire - to retain youthful beauty - with another insatiable desire - eating.

Instead of a wicked deal with a devil, Qing (Miriam Yeung), an ex-starlet who is now the wife of a rich man, chooses to embark on a culinary journey to eat specialty dumplings, which are reputed to have some rejuvenating effect.

A mysterious chef, Mei, a former gynecologist, caters to such wealthy yet desperate women willing to pay for a fortune to recover their beauty. Her secret recipe for the dumplings: human fetuses, obtained from abortions.

Grotesqueness ratchets up to a truly bewildering level when Qing slowly chews the dumplings, mincing and twisting her lips. The strange cracking sound will surely send shivers down the spines of the audience.

The movie keeps asking whether you can resist an offer to break the sacrosanct limit of human morality in return for youthful beauty. Cinematic questions aside, you'll look at a serving of dumplings in a far different way thereafter.

Without a doubt, "Three, Monster" will disgust and disturb some audiences. But the message is rather straightforward: Monsters are not without, but within us - if we are brave enough to look through the dark abyss of our pretension-infested hearts.

(insight@heraldm.com)

By Yang Sung-jin

2004.08.24

Source: The Korean Herald

Three...Extremes / 3 Monster 쓰리, 몬스터 2004

From the Nightmares of Three Horror Masters

Takashi Miike, Fruit Chan, Park Chan-Wook

CUT

Director: Park Chan Wook

Writer: Park Chan Wook

Starring: Lee Byung Hun, Kang Hye Jeong, Im Won Hee

Release Date: August 20, 2004

Duration: 48 minutes

Genre: Horror

He is rich, talented, and kind-hearted. He lacks nothing in life and is a successful film director. One day, a man breaks into his house. He is trapped in a movie set that looks exactly like his house. The intruder says he had done it just because the director is kind-hearted. He had brought a child with him and tied up his pianist wife with piano strings. He threatens to cut his wife's fingers if the director doesn't kill the child. His wife's fingers, or the child's life - which should it be? The director finds himself entangled in a horrific dilemma.

Synopsis: A man (Im Won-hee) kidnaps Yoo Ji-ho (Lee Byung-hun), a rich and handsome film director, and takes him, his wife (Kang Hye-jeong) and a random innocent child to a film studio that exactly resembles Yoo's luxurious house. The intruder demands that Yoo kill the child, and for every five minutes the director hesitates, he cuts off one of the fingers of Yoo's wife, a classical pianist. The intruder's motivation is simple. He thinks Yoo has never done anything bad so he wants to see him doing something really evil.

Review: Now this is one gruesome story, which revolves around a movie director (Lee) and a former extra of his that's gone completely insane and terrorizes the director and his wife at their home. Park's short story touches on adultery, relationships, regret, fame and childhood memories - as well as featuring amputation, torture, child abuse, and a crazy set - as Lee and his kidnapper spar until the shocking end. This is the most graphic of the three stories, and the most brutal. But the twists and turns that happen towards the end, tend to confuse the whole story. Nevertheless, this is a great little horror movie.

THREE, MONSTER

Year of Production: 2004

Directors: Fruit Chan, Takashi Mike, and Park Chan Wook

Genre: Horror

Produced by: Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong

Production Company: Bom (Spring) Movie Company, Applause Pictures, and Kadogawa-Daiei

Cast: Lee Byung Hun, Kang Hye Jeong, Im Won Hee

Lee Byung Hun Stars as Park Chan Wook ... "Three, Monster"

Credits: Original Korean Article by Lee Kyun Seong (email: gslee@inews), translated by Splash

Director Park Chan Wook, the recipient of the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival, leaves a permanent mark of himself on screen through Top Star Lee Byung Hun. Through his autobiographical work "Three, Monster," Director Park Chan Wook delivers a realistic portrayal of himself through Lee Byung Hun in the role of movie director.

Lee Byung Hun's leading role as movie director reminds one of Director Park Chan Wook who has earned a well-deserved place as the director representing Korea to the rest of the world through the success of "Old Boy" and his Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix award.

Besides the societal setting, the details of Lee Byung Hun's personal life in the movie are extremely similar to Director Park's, especially in the depiction of him as the movie director who always puts his family first and thus maintains a happy marriage, just like Director Park in real life. Moreover, qualities such as consideration towards his staff, kindness, warmth, and popularity, make him undeniably the good guy in the movie.

In the movie, there is a scene when the movie director played by Lee Byung Hun adjusts the filming schedule according to the needs of his staff, rather than his own, and questions whether it is better to have 60 people losing sleep or just one person losing sleep, which was what Director Park Chan wook was believed to have actually said during the filming of "Old Boy".

When asked about his role to portray Park Chan Wook realistically as a cool and popular director in the movie, Lee Byung Hun revealed that he did not feel the need to do research on it. Not only did he simply base his character on Director Park Chan Wook, he also executed such an outstanding performance that one could not help getting confused who the director in the movie really was i.e. Director Park Chan Wook or Lee Byung Hun. On the set of the movie where the crew of "Old Boy" got together again to work on "Three, Monster," everyone was overwhelmed by the similarity between the movie director in the movie and Director Park Chan Wook; like everyone else, Director Park Chan Wook was so overwhelmed by Lee Byung Hun's realistical portrayal of Park Chan Wook (himself)that he remarked that Lee Byung Hun could now become a director.

"Three, Monster," a movie where internationally-renowned director Park Chan Wook and Korea's top actor Lee Byung Hun meet and deliver a horror style unique to themselves, is a omnibus movie that sees the collaboration of 3 countries in Asia. The movie, which relates what happens when a popular movie director is abducted by supernatural forces one day and has his life turned upside down, is scheduled to be released to audiences in August 2004.

Related links kmdb.or.kr l imdb.com l wikipedia l CINE21 l amazon.com l dvdbeaver.com l yesasia.com

SYNOPSIS

RYU Ji-ho is a successful film director who has earned wide and solid respect from audiences and critics alike. Wealthy, respected, talented, happily married, good-looking and also kind in nature - everything about Ryu is the definition of Mr. Perfect... that is, until he returns home one day after finishing a shoot to encounter a complete stranger in his living room.

The stranger is a male extra whom Ryu never paid attention to. Probably no one else ever did either. Madly jealous of the director's good fortune, the man is there to destroy. He has brought along a child and has taken Ryu's pianist wife as hostage. He offers Ryu two choices, to kill the child or to watch his wife's fingers being cut off - one after another. Either way, Ryu's life will never be the same again. Tormented by the dilemma, the people in the house cannot but fall prey to the madman's monstrocity - which gradually proves itself to be contagious.

3Extreme American trailer

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/threeextremes/?aosid=p204&siteid=1503186&program_id=2554&cid=OAS-EMEA-AFF&tduid=942c4db42b7977eba7f0413870e04309

Three... Extremes trailer

<object ><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-lnf01j7kw?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object>

Park Chan-wook has received much international acclaim for his two unnerving and gut-wrenching vengeance films, “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and “Old Boy” and his contribution here follows along those same lines though not to nearly the same powerful effect. Bloody yet playful at times, one is never quite sure how serious this is supposed to be or whether Park is partly poking fun at himself and parodying his earlier efforts. Shot in bold clean colors encompassed within a classic giallo horror tableau, this is really the only part of the trilogy that might comfortably earn the “Extreme” aspect of the title.

Successful film director, Ryu (Lee Byung-Hun), returns to his movie setting home after shooting a vampire scene at the studio and is captured and knocked out by an intruder. When he gains consciousness he finds himself attached to an elastic material that allows him to roam for a specified distance. He also finds his wife (Gang Hye-Jung) trussed like a marionette with her fingers glued to piano keys by a film extra (Lim Won-Hee) who has lost his mind and is insanely jealous of Ryu’s fame. More than this though he hates Ryu because Ryu is so ethical and treats everyone with respect. The captor gives Ryu a choice – to show that he can be evil or he will chop off one of his wife’s fingers every five minutes. Surprising confessions spill out of Ryu but this does not satisfy his captor and he gives him one more opportunity to save his wife – commit murder. It gets intense at times, but one still senses that Park was chortling behind the camera at much of this. Source: brns.com

October 30, 2004

Three Extremes. "Cut". by Chan Wook Park. R3 HK DVD. Review.

Posted by logboy twitchfilm.net

Chan Wook Park shows his understanding of psychological horror in a way that's very reminiscent of the 1970's work of notable Italian directors such as Dario Argento in this short, twisted tale.

It's all here: the very long swooping camera shots, the bright vibrant primary colors, the terror of real-life melted with the terror of the extreme and illogical. Though it's not a pastiche, it's a very individual piece with many Park trademarks and twists of his own.

Park takes fictitious film Director Ryu Jin-ho, a man with a seemingly perfect life, and puts him in the control, and at the mercy of, an individual with complex and twisted psychological processes, then watches as it begins to play havok with the minds of those involved: the kidnapper himself, Ryu and his wife. Park shows a hefty understanding of the conventions and purposes of psychological horror in this short tale. The familiar surroundings of one person become the location for unfamiliar happenings. Mental stress predominantly, physical stress, a twisting pathway and dramatic conclusions.

I enjoyed the use of limited locations, which had it not been for the use of a camera, could almost be done as a stage play. The visual style is harsh, vibrant and colour-heavy. It has the nightmarish quality of an apparently real situation: a living nightmare. Park blasts the eyes of the viewer, but demands more of you than to sit back and take in the visuals.

The script is heavy, twisting and deceptive. Again, like "Box" from Takashi Miike, there's a large element of deception apparently occurring, you aren't quite sure if you're managing to follow the story. The end throws it all up in the air again, but this time it's an entirely different approach to "Box" and indeed to other Park work as well.

I appreciated this film for its wide ranging understanding of film, reality and its ability to meld the two into a cohesive and disturbing whole. It's not as obviously complicated or difficult to pin down as "Box" but it's no less a film for it. You can sit down and take it in at a purely visual level, or you can try to read between the lines of the complicated script. The more you delve, the more potentially uncomfortable the whole experience becomes, but additionally it's the more rewarding route on offer.

It's shocking to see the kidnapper break into the minds of his captives, pick apart their lives and hopes to find and exploit the imperfections hidden away in their minds; his motivation is the hatred of the apparently over-successful or over-privileged. Park uses it to show, communicate and discuss his understanding of the difference between film and reality, and how one can become part of the other in so many positive and negative ways.

The film isn't as substantial as the more slowly paced and drawn out work in "Oldboy" or "Sympathy for Mr.Vengeance". However, in the convention of the horror film and in this short time frame he has packed in as much as you could wish to find. Don't expect something too familiarly Park, as it is something different, yet alot of the familiar touches are in there. It's technically faultless, impressive: the use of computers to meld long and complicated shots, and the camera work and use of a tight space is very effectively exploited. It's with this film the subtitles begin to falter. Admittedly they're perfectly adequate but they're littered with slight faults. It's worth noting that there's two different Korean dialects being used simultaneously here. The picture is perfectly good, as is the sound. The only problems appear in the "making of" featurette when artifacting and poor quality imagery is on display.

Overall, having watched all 3 sections of the Three Extremes project in one form or another, I am both reassured by the skills of those involved (Miike expecially, showing a return to form after the abysmal "One Missed Call") and impressed at their adaptability and understanding of what is the most extreme about reality and fiction (when a part of reality itself), and present it in a fascinating and unreal manner.

I think there's lots here for fans of any of the three directors, and for anyone interested in seeing good film making which utilises limitations and restrictions. One of the best things I've watched this year. Highly recommended.

Credits to daramji* at Drama Links for Download thread

http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1241&st=0

쓰리 몬스터 (three monster/three... extremes)

cast: lee byung hun, kang hye jung, lim won hee, yum jung ah / hasegawa kyoko, watanabe atsuro / miriam yeung, tony leung ka fai, bai ling

http://www.koreanfilm.or.kr/films/feature_...sp?films_num=58

http://www.asiandb.com/browse/movie_detail...682&mode=review

http://www.3monster.com/

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Whoa, I wanna see this now. Thanks

Gang Hye-jung

Complete filmography:

"Domabaem" (2006)

Invisible Waves (2006) [Thailand]

Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005)

Sympathy For Lady Vengeance (cameo) (2005)

Rules of Dating (2005)

Antarctic Journal (cameo) (2005)

Three... Extremes (2004)

Old Boy (2003)

Nabi (2001)

Gang Hye-jung (b. January 4, 1982) began working as a model in her first year of high school, and throughout the late 1990s she appeared in small roles in TV dramas and sitcoms such as Jump and Non-Stop III. Her first film role was in Moon Seung-wook's arthouse/sci-fi film Nabi, for which she won a Best Actress award at the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival. Following this she appeared in a short film by Song Il-gon titled Flash as well as an internet film Naebang-nebang.

Gang's first major hit film was opposite Choi Min-shik in the modern-day classic Old Boy by Park Chan-wook. Her portrayal of the character Mido won her considerable attention both domestically and abroad, and she also picked up acting honors from the Grand Bell Awards and Pusan Film Critics Association. The following year she also appeared in Cut, Park Chan-wook's 30-minute contribution to the omnibus horror film Three... Extremes.

It was in 2005, however, that Gang established herself as a star outside of her appearance in Old Boy. The sharp-edged relationship drama Rules of Dating, in which she starred opposite Park Hae-il, proved to be an unexpected hit, and then two months later she took a small but central role in box office megahit Welcome to Dongmakgol. Around this time her offscreen relationship with actor Cho Seung-woo (Marathon) also kept her the subject of attention.

In 2006 she is scheduled to appear in Domabaem ("Lizard") a romance with Cho Seung-woo, as well as the Thai film Invisible Waves by rising directorial star Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Last Life in the Universe).

Source: koreanfilm.org

http://www.koreanfilm.org/actors2.html#ganghj

Lee Byung-heon

Complete filmography:

A Bittersweet Life (2005)

Everybody Has Secrets (2004)

Addicted (2002)

My Beautiful Girl, Mari (2002, voice)

Bungee Jumping of Their Own (2001)

Joint Security Area (2000)

Harmonium in My Memory (1999)

Elegy of the Earth (1997)

Kill the Love (1996)

Armageddon (1996) (voice)

Runaway (1995)

Who Drives Me Mad? (1995)

Lee Byung-heon (b. July 12, 1970) majored in French at Hanyang University before making his television debut on KBS in 1991. A fixture in TV dramas throughout the decade, Lee has continued to work in television even after becoming a major film star. His movie debut came in 1995 as the lead in Who Drives Me Mad?, and he worked off and on in the film industry up until his breakthrough film in 2000, Joint Security Area.

For a long time thought of as just another pretty face, Lee eventually earned great praise for his acting, both for his turn in JSA and especially in Bungee Jumping of Their Own. He also starred in the popular television drama Beautiful Days, which screened in spring 2002 on SBS and would later be exported across Asia.

In 2002, Lee starred with actress Lee Mi-yeon in Addicted, a melodrama about two brothers who fall into a coma on the same day. The following spring he also took the lead role in the highly popular TV drama All In, about a successful gambler.

In 2004, Lee appeared opposite actresses Choi Ji-woo, Choo Sang-mi and Kim Hyo-jin in Everybody Has Secrets, a remake of the Irish comedy About Adam. Also that year, several of Lee's TV dramas began to screen in Japan, and his popularity there started to soar. He eventually became even more popular in Japan than he is in Korea.

Then in 2005, Lee appeared in Kim Jee-woon's highly anticipated action-noir A Bittersweet Life. Although the film ended up performing below expectations in both Korea and Japan, it was selected to screen in the Official Selection (out of competition) at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, giving Lee the opportunity to "walk the red carpet" for his biggest moment of fame.

Deep gratitude to koreanfilm.org for the information.

Credit to lee ji woo at *Everything Lee Byung Hun*

Three... Extremes

Director: Fruit Chan, Park Chan-wook, Takashi Miike

Cast: Miriam Yeung, Lee Byung-hun, Kyoko Hasegawa

In Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese w/ subtitlesRated: R

125 minutes

Reviewed by Scott Tobias

October 26th, 2005

Anthology films are mixed bags by nature, partly because multiple novella-length features rarely complement one another when stitched together, but mainly because directors tend not to bring their A-games to a side project. If nothing else, the horror anthology Three... Extremes, a trio of macabre shorts from first-rate Asian filmmakers, provokes a strong effort from everyone involved, though they're not all wholly successful. There isn't much to connect the three in terms of style, which ranges from Park Chan-wook's thick baroque sensibility to Takashi Miike's uncharacteristically elegant formalism, but each concern the capacity people have for vindictiveness and cruelty when their feet are in the fire. Whether due to vanity, jealousy, or sheer desperation, the leads in all three stories commit atrocities that would seem beyond their capabilities.

In Chan's queasily effective "Dumplings," Miriam Yeung plays a stressed-out trophy wife in need of some polish, lest her wealthy husband leave her for a newer model. For this, she turns to the giddily sadistic Bai Ling, a former gynecologist who has parlayed her old career into a new one making "special" dumplings for older women seeking a miracle rejuvenation cure. Taken literally, the premise of aborted fetuses being ground up and cased in fried dough is distasteful in the extreme, especially when Chan plays up the sound of teeth grinding through the gristle. It's more acceptable (though blunt) as social commentary—the rich gaining luster by making a meal of the underclass, basically—but that doesn't make it any easier to digest.

Made between Oldboy and Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, the second and last entries in his revenge trilogy, the disappointing "Cut" is concerned with Park's usual pet theme, but it feels like he's going through the motions, albeit with his usual surplus of technical brio. Lee Byung-hun stars as Park's alter ego, a popular film director who returns home to an invader who ties him up and forces him to choose between atrocities: the murder of an abducted child, or watching his pianist wife get her fingers chopped off one by one. Gradually, Lee's response to this torment makes him seem as villainous as his captor, but Park's idea of revenge spreading like a poisonous contagion gets lost in the baroque unpleasantness.

The last and strongest of the three is Miike's "The Box," which is more abstract and less immediately accessible than the other two, but looks and feels unlike anything Miike has done. Unfolding like a waking dream, with memories of a past trauma flooding into the present, "The Box" follows Kyoko Hasegawa, a successful but lonely author whose latest book attracts an editor that reminds her of her childhood. As a little girl, Hasegawa and her twin sister were contortionists at their father's traveling magic show, but one night, her jealousy over her sister's close relationship to him leads to tragic consequences. Few directors are as "extreme" as Miike, but ironically, his entry in Three... Extremes is the least explicit; its suggestive tale of envy and guilt resembles Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" more than Miike's usual six-per-year gorefests. Could this mark the start of a new phase in his career, or will it be back to business as usual?

source: avclub

October 26, 2005

'Three Extremes' is an extremely disturbing time

By: Adam Summerville studlife.com

"Look out there-the audience is totally checking us out!" "Whoa."

Three... Extremes

4/5 Stars

Starring: Byung-hun Lee, Maggie Cheung, Kyoko Hasegawa

Directed by: Fruit Chan, Takashi Miike, Chan-wook Park

Showing at: The Tivoli

Release Date: Oct. 28

First and foremost, "Three Extremes" is one of the most disturbing pieces ever committed to film. It deals with such topics as coat-hanger abortions, rape, incest, murder, torture, pedophilia and cannibalism of fetuses. All of this being said, it is one of the most stunning films and creative exercises ever created.

Combining the talents of three of Asia's most prolific directors, "Three... Extremes" is a series of three horror vignettes. These aren't horror films in the standard slasher or creature flick, and they aren't even that similar to the modern, creepy, mystic child pic popularized by "The Sixth Sense." Rather, these are stories of true horror, stories that actually inflict a real sense of dread and disgust. This is accomplished through horribly disturbing situations with even worse imagery, avoiding any of the cheap tactics so common in the horror genre.

The first piece, "Dumplings," is the most disgusting of the three and will turn people away from Chinese food for a while-maybe even forever. Mrs. Lei (Maggie Cheung) is an aging actress who goes to a local woman for some dumplings that are supposed to reverse the aging process. It is obvious from the beginning that there is something insidious about the titular dumplings, but the procession of events is more horrifying than one initially expects. The sound design is wonderful, as it perfectly achieves its intended goal of making one want to vomit.

"Cut" is the second vignette and is somewhat familiar territory for director Chan-wook Park. It is the tale of a successful, handsome, good-natured director (Byung-hun Lee) who is kidnapped by a disgruntled extra from one of his movies. The extra is upset because the director is a man who is successful in all aspects of life while remaining a good person, while the extra is unsuccessful in everything he does and is a horrible person. He feels his position in life is hopeless, and the best thing he can accomplish is to bring the director down a few notches into the realm of being a bad person. The extra's method of doing this is by holding both the director and the director's wife hostage and cutting off one of the wife's fingers every five minutes until the director kills an innocent girl who the extra kidnapped. This is only the premise of "Cut," and anyone who has seen Park's "Old Boy" knows that there will be a procession of twists, each more disturbing, until an ending of pure catharsis. "Cut" is probably the most watchable of the three films but is also the most standard of the three.

The stories are rounded out by "Box", a film that is very much the odd love child of David Lynch and "The Ring." Box follows Kyoko (Kyoko Hasegawa), a writer in her early twenties. Kyoko is romantically pursued by her agent but remains distant because of a series of traumatic events in her past. As a child, Kyoko was in a circus troupe of sorts but gave up that life after an exceedingly disturbing tragedy. Everything in "Box" is suspect, as the story slips in and out of dreams seamlessly, and the audience is never sure if the events that happen are the work of ghosts, a devious psychopath, a dream or any combination of these. "Box" is sparsely soundtracked and has minimal dialogue, meaning that there are stretches of about two to three minutes that are entirely silent. Combined with the plot, this makes for a cinematic event that truly leaves one feeling cold and alone.

The three short films are masterpieces in their own right; combined, they amount to a cinematic event of unparalleled emotional power. While they are all wonderfully scripted and acted, they are powerful because of their ability to draw out such raw emotions from the audience. The film is certainly not for the faint of heart or stomach, which is why it cannot be seen as an unqualified success-but for those who think they can handle it, "Three Extremes" is a must-see film.

October 26, 2005

Three...Extremes Recommended for Hardcore Fans Only

By C.J. Kershner pacepress.org

Media Credit: Lions Gate Films

Three directors, Fruit Chan, Park Chan-wook, and Takashi Miike, collaborated to create a series of films under one title.

Before I begin my review of Three... Extremes, a new film anthology from Lion's Gate Films, I'd like to take a quick straw poll. Among the readers, raise your hand if you have seen Dawn of the Dead (and I mean George Romero's original from 1978, not the recent tripe with Ving Rhames) or Kill Bill?

OK, those of you that haven't, please move on to the Features or News section and thank you for your time.

The only reason I tell people to skip this review is that the films in question will probably only appeal to a very narrow group of people-generally speaking, fans of the ultra-gory new Asian horror cinema that's emerged from the East in recent years. These fans aren't squeamish at the sight of heads or hands being lopped off, with fountains of blood ensuing, and went to see Passion of the Christ because it promised to be the best zombie movie of the decade.

They're cult films with a niche audience; fans of Ichi The Killer and Old Boy can be heard bemoaning the limited releases these films garner. Three... Extremes is both gladly and sadly following in this tradition.

Through some unholy alliance, three of Asia's premier directors, Hong Kong's Fruit Chan, Korea's Park Chan-wook and Japan's Takashi Miike, came together to produce a series of short films that will disturb viewers in ways that The Ring can only hope at. Chan's contribution to the anthology is "Dumplings," written by Lilian Lee and starring Bai Ling as a sexy ex-abortion doctor named Aunt Mei.

You can crack all the dead baby jokes you want when you're out with friends, but you're never quite prepared for as graphic a depiction as you'll see here. The production notes merely say, "A retired actress longing to retain her beauty seeks the rejuvenating effects of a doctor's 'special' dumplings, only to discover they contain one horrifying ingredient..."

The film makes no bones (pun fully intended) about what the ingredient is, as a huge butcher's cleaver deftly reduces a number of aborted fetuses into a fine, almost shrimp-looking paste within the first five minutes. They're wrapped, steamed and set out on a decorative plate. And then a rich woman named Ching (Miriam Yeung) eats them.

Performances by both women are excellent, and the film is competently shot by Christopher Doyle, who also shot the film Hero.

"Cut" by Chan-wook (who both wrote and directed) places Lee Byung-Hun as director Ryu Ji-Ho, a real Mr. Perfect. A critically acclaimed director, wealthy celebrity, Ryu has a big house, luxurious car and a beautiful, concert pianist wife.

He comes home one night to find her glued to the keyboard of their concert grand, a madman brandishing an ax, and a child chained to his sofa. The madman, an extra from one of his films, jealous at Ryu's success, offers him a simple deal: Kill the child in cold blood or watch as his wife's fingers are removed one by one.

What makes "Cut" stand out in the anthology is not how unsettling the material is (though it is pretty weird) or how well it's filmed, but the music and sound effects.

Every time the wife loses a finger, even if the audience isn't shown it, the sound of a loud bang on the keyboard and her piercing scream is enough to make even the most stoic filmgoer jump. There's also a musical dance number that's akin to what Napoleon Dynamite might've been if directed by Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs).

Finally, from Miike and writers Bun Saikou and Haruko Fukushima, comes "Box."

I'm a huge fan of Miike's previous work, most of which makes Kill Bill look like a ride on Splash Mountain. So I was extremely surprised when "Box" turned out to be filmed with a quiet beauty.

The story revolves around Kyoko, a shy, former child contortionist-turned-grown-up-novelist who's haunted by the memory of her twin sister, Shoko, who burned to death in a fire that Kyoko was responsible for. Kyoko also has an unresolved crush on her surrogate father, Hikita, who ran off after Shoko's death.

Kyoko returns home one day to find white roses and a card at her doorstep, leading her to the place where her sister's death occurred. This short film is simply marvelous in terms of how lovingly it was made. Miike works with minimal background noise and dialogue and a tight color palette to create something both haunting and awe-inspiring.

More words could be spent describing and praising these films if space allowed, but needless to say, I'm very happy with what I saw. It's been a long time since I went to the movies and came out really freaked out. If I have any gripes about the experience, it's that, given the length of the films, the synopsis from the note packet I received at the door (something that regular viewers won't get) gave deeper insight into the stories and characters than sometimes the moving images did.

Regardless, if you're still reading, if you're interested, go see Three... Extremes. Because of the nature of its content, it's probably not going to see a huge, national release, but if you're a fan, find some place that's showing it and prepare to have the i can't read scared out of you.

Grade: B

Credit to lee ji woo at *Everything Lee Byung Hun*

Things That Go Thud in the Dark

Two new horror films avoid clichés but don’t make much sense

~ By ANDY KLEIN ~

An angry extra (Lim Won-Hee) wreaks revenge on a film director in the “Cut” segment of Three ...Extremes

n the run-up to Christmas and awards season, studios start rolling out all their titles with Oscar potential … or at least with what they think of as Oscar potential. And since Labor Day, we’ve –

BOO!

Ha, ha. Got ya there, didn’t I? Oldest trick in the book: lull you with something really banal and dull, then suddenly, like, “Boo!” Works every time … .

Oh, it … didn’t? Well, onscreen it works every time. I guess it doesn’t translate to the printed page exactly perfectly like. Oh, well. Happy i can't reading Halloween, party pooper.

It is both the boon and the curse of horror/suspense films that such obvious tricks work on a basically visceral level. The effects of most devices wear off with repetition, but a jump cut and a loud noise will always make you jump, even if there’s a big legend on the screen saying, “Brace yourself: jump cut and loud noise in 10 seconds” with the seconds counting down. It’s a purely involuntary, physiological response.

Judiciously used, in a context of genuine psychological horror, it can be of great aesthetic value; but, repeated endlessly as the sole scare factor in a film, it moves out of the realm of art and into the realm of biology. It’s the difference between Psycho and Jeepers Creepers, between Halloween and Halloween H2O. The filmmaker may as well be poking the viewer in the eye with a pointed stick.

These devices are simply too easy and reliable and have been increasingly abused by uninspired directors, particularly with the improvement in sound technology and the faster-paced cutting of the last 30 years or so.

So I’d like to give props to movies that studiously avoid them … like, for instance, Three … Extremes (opening Friday) and Stay (which opened last week, without benefit of screenings). Both of these work hard to establish mood and to disorient us in subtler ways. Hurray! Unfortunately, neither makes any real sense.

Three … Extremes is an Asian horror anthology with one story each from Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan. The HK segment, Fruit Chan’s “Dumplings,” leads off. Miriam Yeung plays Li, a retired actress, whose husband (Tony

Leung Ka-Fai) has an eye toward younger, firmer flesh. To save her marriage, she visits Mei (Bai Ling), a shady cook who is known to make dumplings with the power of rejuvenation.

Now, I don’t want to say what goes into these dumplings, but it’s something that likely won’t go down well with

either the squeamish or pro-choice advocates. (I’m both, so … ewwwww.) The great Christopher Doyle shot this segment, and everything is queasily evocative. And the story makes a good deal of sense until … . I mean, major

elements remain unresolved, and what the hell is going on with the final shot? Dumplings is about 35 minutes, and Chan prepared a 90-minute feature version as well, so maybe that explains things a little better.

The longest of the stories, “Cut,” is from Park Chan-Wook, whose Oldboy remains one of the best films of 2005. “Cut” is very similar in concept to Saw. (Luke Y. Thompson’s review of Saw II, incidentally, can be found in CityBeat’s Latest Reviews section.) A film director (Lee Byung-Hun) awakens to find himself and his pianist wife trapped on his own movie set by a loony extra (Lim Won-Hee), who threatens to chop off the wife’s fingers one by one if the director doesn’t commit a horrible act.

As in Oldboy, Park frequently violates reality here, but that still doesn’t explain the baffling identity transfer in the final scene – so arbitrary that it retroactively diminished my feelings about what preceded it.

Finally, there’s “Box” from Takashi Miike (Audition, Gozu). The insanely prolific Miike’s films often have a slapdash look to them, but “Box,” like Audition, is much technically smoother. A reclusive novelist (Kyoko Hasegawa) remains traumatized by a horrific childhood incident, in which her jealous actions led to her sister’s gruesome death. She sometimes sees her sister’s ghost, but this may not be a delusion, since her editor – who coincidentally looks exactly like her beloved, incestuous father (both are played by Atsuro Watabe) – sees it briefly, as well.

Miike jumps around in time and repeatedly blends reality, memories, and dreams, which is dandy, except – I’m repeating myself, I know – it would be nice, at the end, to have a little more of a hint as to what’s actually happening.

Ninety percent of Three … Extremes is fun, but that fun is compromised by the 10 percent that isn’t – i.e., the conclusions. One possibility is that the writers, going for the extremes promised in the title, contrived situations so outrageous that there was no graceful way out of them.

Speaking of “extreme,” speaking of “outrageous,” speaking of “contrived,” there’s Marc Forster’s Stay. Ewan McGregor plays Sam Foster, a psychiatrist who inherits patient Henry Lethem (Ryan Gosling) from an indisposed colleague (Janeane Garofalo, made up to look like living hell). (Henry’s last name is presumably an homage to novelist Jonathan Lethem, who explores similar turf.) Henry has announced that he intends to commit suicide in three days, on his birthday. Suicidal patients strike a particularly strong chord with Sam, since he apparently met his girlfriend (Naomi Watts) after her own suicide attempt. (Later in the film, it’s contrarily suggested that they were already together when she slashed her wrists, but, by that time, nothing makes much sense anyway.)

Everybody starts seeing dead people, and in the background there are often identical pairs (or threesomes) of people with metal briefcases walking in lockstep, and Sam starts to experience the same moments twice, and … .

Basically, Forster revels in having an overall framing story that allows him to go crazy stylistically and narratively. It would be a spoiler to say what that frame is, except that by a third of the way through it’s pretty clear, roughly, that we’re dealing with a dream or a dying flashback or a scrambled virtual reality or something.

I’m a sucker for doppelgangers and identity transferral and time manipulation. I’m also a sucker for show-offy cinematic devices, all of which Forster uses and a few of which he seems to be inventing. (It’s rare in Stay that we move from one scene to the next with a standard cut or dissolve.) But the ending explanation – which is in the mode of Jacob’s Ladder and Mulholland Dr. (already invoked simply through the presence of Naomi Watts) and very, very similar to the recent, generally unseen November – is not only old hat, but also fails the test for such things.

That is, the ending revelations of Mulholland Dr., the gold standard for justified use of this kind of narrative, make us examine everything that went before in a new light. They enrich the experience and make the weirdness more intriguing. But in Stay there is nothing interesting about the payoff; it seems like little more than a convenient excuse for a director to have fun, throwing a bunch of wild stuff up on the screen.

Three … Extremes. Directed by Fruit Chan, Park Chan-Wook, and Takashi Miike. Written by Lillian Lee, Park Chan-Wook, and Haruko Fukushima. With Miriam Yeung, Bai Ling, Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Lee Byung-Hun, and Kyoko Hasegawa. Opens Fri. at the Nuart.

Stay. Directed by Marc Forster. Written by David Benioff. With Ewan McGregor, Ryan Gosling, Naomi Watts, and Bob Hoskins. Citywide.

10-27-05

source: LA City Beat

Credit to lee ji woo at *Everything Lee Byung Hun*

Queasy Pieces

Three ... Extremes showcases a trio of brutal Asian directors.

By Bill Gallo

Published: Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Who / What:

Three ... Extremes

Details:

Opens Friday. Not rated.

Film Director:

Fruit Chan, Park Chan-wook, and Takashi Miike

Film Genre:

Horror

Starring:

Ling Bai, Miriam Leung, Lee Byung-hun, Won-hee Lim, and Kyoko Hasegawa

Written By:

Lillian Lee, Park Chan-wook, and Haruko Fukushima

Devotees of Asian cinema -- especially those with a thirst for blood -- will probably delight in the unofficial sequel to 2002's horror sampler Three. Like its predecessor, Three ... Extremes is a trilogy of short films that root around in the dark regions of the psyche and conclude that human behavior is pretty appalling. Stylistically diverse but united by their intention to chill, these shorts provide another broad hint about the reach and range of the new Asian filmmakers. This is like a good three-course meal served by ghosts at midnight, in spooky candlelight.

For the purposes of this project, Hong Kong director Fruit Chan (Hollywood Hong Kong) consented to create an abridgement of his ninety-minute feature Dumplings, an unsettling variation on the old fountain-of-youth theme that may have you squirming in your seat from the outset. I haven't seen the full-length version, but in this case there may be something to be said for judicious editing: in about 35 minutes, the filmmaker calmly and dispassionately reveals the awful bargain an aging TV actress (Miriam Yeung) strikes with vanity. Concerned that her looks are fading and her indifferent husband has gone astray, she visits a mysterious woman, Aunt Mei (Ling Bai), whose magical dumplings are said to reverse the aging process. As it happens, Dorian Gray himself couldn't make a more fateful choice. For that matter, neither could the expectant mother in Rosemary's Baby. There's no point in disclosing the crucial ingredient in Aunt Mei's crunchy potstickers, but if you yearn for a bit of social context with your horror, Fruit happily provides: He not only addresses the question of female self-esteem in today's China, he grapples, horrifyingly, with the gender bigotry that underlies it. Little wonder that the screenwriter here is a woman, Lillian Lee.

The middle segment of Three ... Extremes, South Korean director Park Chan-wook's Cut, is by far the most extroverted of the three, and despite its bloody plot, the most humorous. When a famous movie director (Lee Byung-hun) and his pianist wife (Gang Hye-jung) are taken hostage on a studio set by a resentful former movie extra (Won-hee Lim), Chan-wook lets fly with all manner of Grand Guignol effects while the camera leaps around the room like a whirling dervish. Committed to his task, the enthusiastic terrorist performs a lively buck-and-wing for his captives (remember the droogs' happy mockery of "Singin' in the Rain" in A Clockwork Orange?), then presents his former "employer" with the kind of horrifying moral choices that can destroy a mind. Last year's gory thriller Saw has nothing on the casual sadism in Cut, but another new arthouse film just might: while Chan-wook gives us the queasies by tossing some severed fingers into a kitchen blender, the makers of Hard Candy one-up him with the notion of dumping its hostage's testicles down a Dispose-All. In any event, the Korean filmmaker (Oldboy) takes such glee in dismemberment and psychic discombobulation that you may start to wonder what new ends the slasher-flick has gotten to.

The surreal third episode of Three ... Extremes owes less to Polanski or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre than to Buñuel and Dalí. Directed by Japan's Takashi Miike (Audition), Box enters the vivid mindscape of a beautiful novelist (Kyoko Hasegawa) who is haunted by the fiery death, in childhood, of her twin sister. Horror movies have long exploited the profound bonding of twins -- and the potential for intense sibling rivalry -- but Miike takes those dueling ideas to truly extreme lengths. Between its vision of intertwined ballerinas winding their way through a dance of death to its persistent image of boxes -- confining boxes shackled by padlocks, boxes buried in snowy fields, strangely tinkling music boxes, striped boxes that invoke both Un Chien Andalou and the myth of Pandora, with its notion of evils loosed in the world -- Box gets inside our heads with a kind of insidious grace. It unfolds with the relentless irrationality of a nightmare, but in the end it makes perfect sense, as if the night itself had pulled a nasty trick on us.

Connoisseurs of horror are bound to play favorites here (this amateur votes for Box), but there's one more thing that connects these three films -- the brilliant cinematography of Christopher Doyle (2046). Amazingly, he perfectly suits three directors with three completely different ideas about lighting, shot selection, and camera movement. If Oscar voters are in a mood to hand out an award for versatility this year, Doyle has to be their man.

source: East Bay Express

October 27, 2005

Movie review: 'Three' is stylish horror, chilled and a la carte

Three of Asia's most acclaimed directors offer three tales of terror

Source: Colin Covert, Star Tribune

Movie review: Cheesy satire 'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang' is fun, funny

"Three ... Extremes" is a delicious banquet of horror served dim-sum style: first a fable about the quest for eternal youth, then a revenge shocker and finally a dreamlike vision of psychosexual mania. Three of Asia's best-regarded young filmmakers contribute to this terror trilogy, each giving his segment a distinctive flavor of bleak black comedy and elegant dread.

Hong Kong's Fruit Chan opens with "Dumplings," which follows Mrs. Lee (Miriam Yeung), a former television actress alarmed by her approaching middle age. Prepared to try any remedy, she seeks out Aunt Mai (Bai Ling), a sensual young ghetto dweller who is rumored to have the key to rejuvenation. Rather than an elixir, Aunt Mai's cure comes in the form of delicately flavored steamed dumplings whose secret ingredient is ... well, you'll be traumatized by that information soon enough.

Chan, best known for rough-edged independent films about Hong Kong's poor, employs acid social criticism within the context of his horror story, which is full of insights about the basest aspects of human nature. Yeung's restrained performance and good manners mask an insatiable consumer who will devour anything that gives her comfort, while Ling's character enables her client with amoral nonchalance. Chan's heart-palpitating parable isn't a violent horror movie, but an emotional, moral one. Christopher Doyle's cinematography adds tasteful visual design to a fable about maintaining appearances at all costs.

A filmmaker and his pianist wife are imprisoned and tortured by a maniacal intruder in "Cut," directed by Park Chan-wook, South Korea's playfully psychotic answer to Quentin Tarantino. The kind and talented Ryu (Lee Byung-Hun) has lived an exemplary life, but the kidnapper forces him to choose between two cruel options: He must either kill an innocent child or watch his wife's fingers be cut off one by one. Unlikely as it sounds, the film generates wonderfully tense humor from Ryu's riveting dilemma while cleverly rethinking the usual film cliches about rich bad guys and poor good guys.

Japanese cult director Takashi Miike completes the triptych with "Box," a coolly contemplative chiller. Kyoko (Kyoko Hasegawa), a successful but introverted novelist, has recurring nightmares about being buried alive. As a child she and her twin sister, Shoko, performed together as contortionists in a magician's act. Their surrogate father favored the more graceful Shoko, and Kyoko's jealous reaction produced tragic results that haunt her into adulthood. When she receives a summons to reunite with her sister and their master, her dream life and real life merge with shocking results. "Three ... Extremes" is Asian fusion at its tastiest.

Three ... Extremes

*** out of four stars

Rating: R for strong disturbing violent content, some involving abortion and torture, and for sexuality and language.