[movie 2009] Like You Know It All 잘 알지도 못하면서

New in local theaters and currently showing in the out-of-competition section of the Cannes Film Festival is Hong Sang-soo's latest feature "Like You Know It All."

Like Hong's other films, "Know" is told in a live journal-like format that is reminiscent of Eric Rohmer. While it is set in a couple of Korea's top vacation spots, the movie, as typical of its minimalist director, features characterless hotel rooms and drinking spots and showcases more of the mirror-image structures inherent to Hong's stories of frustrated ideals and sexual desires.

Modest, fragmented and meandering it may be, but the low-budget digital franchise stars some of South Korea's most high-profile actors tangled up in mundane yet comic situations and engaged in phony talks about art, philosophy and love.

Like his previous feature "Night and Day," which was shown at last year's Berlinale, "Know" stars another one of the director's archetypal womanizing anti-heroes. Actor Kim Tae-woo (Hong's 2004 "Woman Is the Future of Man") is Koo, a rising filmmaker known for his artsy works.

He is invited as a judge for the 2008 Jecheon International Music Film Festival (JIMFF). But the festival, set among the cascading mountains and scenic lakes of North Chungcheong Province, is just an excuse for everyone to have drinking parties. Here, Hong does not hesitate to bash the film industry, by depicting a know-it-all programmer (Uhm Ji-won) and superficial movie critics to the smug star director and the desperate actress trying to climb into his bed. Koo is at once the aloof observer and the passive participant in the shallowness.

Meanwhile, Koo runs into an old buddy, Bu (Kong Hyeong-jin), and is invited to his happy home. Joined by Bu's wife Yu-sin (Jeong Yu-mi), the three start another round of drinking. A series of mishaps, however, result in Koo being labeled a sexual harasser, and back at the festival, he again gets blamed for another accident involving too much booze and compromised sexual morals.

Twelve days later, Koo is invited to give a lecture at a film school on Jeju Island. Of course, the camera foregoes the beautiful palm trees and beaches of Korea's Hawaii, and instead takes viewers to more drinking parties. This time he reunites with a senior colleague, the elderly painter Yang, and is invited to his home.

Yang's new wife turns out to be none other than Koo's old flame, Koh (Go Hyun-jung). The two keep their past affair a secret from Yang, and end up in bed together ― a casual affair for Koh, while a pitiful, self-gratifying attempt for Koo to attach meaning to his frustrated past. Things become complicated, however, when the neighbor Jo (Ha Jung-woo), who swears a bizarre sense of loyalty to Yang, catches them.

"People don't make use of all the gifts in life," Hong once said. "They can be ungrateful about the good things in life while they agonize over unnecessary desires, beliefs that are unfounded, self-destructive or oppressive, and misguided ideals. I am intrigued by such things."

In "Know," Hong explores the small yet affecting results of misunderstanding and misinformation, and how history is bound to repeat itself when people fail to understand their mistakes. Running as long as "Night and Day," the director's longest film yet, "Know" develops in a tangential yet natural, and moreover, extremely funny, way. Some say that the realist always makes similar movies; Hong is consistent but is also consistently evolving, bringing new dimensions of small and subtle yet delightful rhymes.

Credits: hyowlee@koreatimes.co.kr

melusine · May 15, 2009

^Thanks for the review rubie

Y-Star [Streaming|DL]

5/13/09 - KTW on SBS Midnight TV Entertainment '한밤의 TV연예'

[MegaUpload] [MediaFire] [SendSpace]

videos+screencaps credit: Cutiepie's Drama Goodies

via Newsen + International Business Times + Nanum News

melusine · May 16, 2009

Finecut sells French speaking rights on Like You Know It All

16 May, 2009 | By Liz Shackleton, Screen Daily

South Korea’s Finecut has sold Hong Sang-soo’s Directors’ Fortnight title, Like You Know It, to CTV International for French-speaking territories.

The deal was negotiated by Finecut CEO Youngjoo Suh and CTV International cinema director Isabelle Dubar. CTV, which plans to release the film by the end of 2009, previously handled the distribution of Bahman Ghobadi’s Half Moon and Tsai Ming-liang’s I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone in France.

Finecut has also sold Shin Jung-won’s big-budget creature feature Chaw to Visicom Surya for Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Vietnam. Hans Uhlig (The Day After Tomorrow) is over-seeing the special effects on the film, about a man-eating boar terrorising a Korean village

The busy Seoul-based company has also closed a Japanese deal on music drama Go Go 70s which has gone to Fine Films. Thailand’s KR Contents Group also bought the film along with five other titles.

In addition, mainland China’s Fundamental Films bought 14 titles from Finecut including My Dear Enemy and Crush And Blush.

Finecut has also added another title to its Cannes slate – Lee Jong-yong’s A Blood Pledge – the fifth instalment in a popular Korean horror franchise that also includes The Whispering Corridor and Memento Mori. Currently in post-production, the film is scheduled for Korean release in early summer 2009.

melusine · May 16, 2009

Articles: Newsen | Asia Economic Daily,Asia Economic Daily | Star News | Yonhap News | Hankook Ilbo,Hankook Ilbo,Hankook Ilbo

Press Screening

Press Conference

credit as labelled

credit: http://www.quinzaine-realisateurs.com/film...otamyunseo.html

No hotlinking pls!

http://www.festival-cannes.com/assets/File...ections%202.pdf

melusine · May 17, 2009

Brothers Kim Tae-Hoon and Kim Tae-Woo @ Cannes [see post#13]

via Asia Economic Daily + Yonhap News + Star News

via Asia Economic Daily + Star News + DongA + Movieweek

melusine · May 17, 2009

Like You Know It All (Jal Aljido Mot Hamyeonsuh)

16 May, 2009 | By Lee Marshall, Screen International

Dir/scr/prod. Hong Sang-soo. South Korea. 2009. 140mins.

An elliptical, meandering but often quietly hilarious tale set around the downtime of a Korean arthouse film director, Like You Know It All sees Hong Sang-soo attempting nothing particularly new in his ninth feature, but rarely has it all come together so smoothly and breezily.

Hong seems to be mellowing, moving away from the prickly impenetrability of early works like The Power of Kangwon Province towards a gentler, more observational humour – though he has not abandoned his tendency to make films about filmmakers, or his fascination with two-part structure.

Hong’s films are well considered in Korea but make little impact on the box office; his last, Night and Day, failed to break the $100,000 barrier. With its healthy humour quotient, Like You Know It All should top that figure, but the producer/director needs to look at territories such as France – where he is a cult favourite – to fully recoup his modest budget. CTV International picked up Francophone rights from Finecut on the eve of Cannes, and given the right release the film should enjoy a modest but sustained arthouse run in Gallic urban centres. Elsewhere, theatrical prospects are uncertain.

One of the commercial limitations on Hong’s films is that so much of his visual style is rather dreary point-and-shoot work in available light. In a way, however, this serves to de-gloss the characters and focus attention on their deadpan interactions. These begin in Like You Know It All when arthouse director Ku (Kim Tae-woo) turns up at a (real) film festival in the northern town of Jecheon, where he is on a jury organised by a skitty, Tourette-ish festival director (Uhm Ji-won). After some heavy drinking, an old friend and business partner invites Ku back to his house, and the next morning, the director appears to have a liaison of sorts with the young wife of his friend, who attacks Ku in a jealous rage.

Twelve days later, Ku turns up on Jeju island, where he has been invited to address a class of film students taught by an old college friend. Distorted parallels between the two parts abound; Ku is approached by an attractive younger woman – a kudos-seeking porn starlet in part one, a flirtatious young film student in part two – who eventually ends up in bed with an artistic rival of the director’s – a scuzzy fellow director in part one, a respected older painter in part two. And when the painter invites Ku back to his house to meet his young wife (Go Hyun-jung), we sort of know what to expect – though as always with Hong, that’s not exactly what we’re given.

Like You Know It All may be breaking no new ground, but it’s wryly perceptive in its deconstruction of artistic egos, sending up pretensions while at the same time making what sound like first-person declarations about creativity. It’s also – and this is no small part of of its appeal - Hong’s funniest film in years.

Production company

Jeonwonsa

International sales

Finecut

(82) 2 569 8777

Cinematography

Kim Hoon-kwang

Editor

Hahm Sung-won

Music

Jeong Yon-jin

Main cast

Kim Tae-woo

Go Hyun-jung

Uhm Ji-won

Ha Jung-woo

melusine · May 18, 2009

Like You Know It All

Jal aljido motamyunseo (South Korea)

By Justin Chang, Variety

Posted: Sun., May 17, 2009, 6:27am PT

A Jeonwonsa Film Co. production. (International sales: Finecut Co., Seoul.) Produced, directed, written by Hong Sang-soo.

With: Kim Tae-woo, Ko Hyun-jung, Uhm Ji-won.

The soju keeps on flowing -- and so does the talk -- in "Like You Know It All," another playful exercise in liquor-lubricated truthtelling from Hong Sang-soo, and arguably his most broadly amusing work yet. After his overextended Parisian detour last year with "Night and Day," the South Korean auteur is back on familiar geographical and comedic terrain with this two-part tale of a film director drawn into various awkward social and romantic configurations. Pic reps a tart treat for Hong's fans at festivals and in limited arthouse runs but is unlikely to score him a wider following.

As might be surmised from its impudent jab of a title, "Like You Know It All" neither achieves nor aims for the melancholy perfection of Hong's exquisite "Woman on the Beach" (2006); structurally, it feels like that film's slightly inebriated cousin -- looser, less elegant, possessed of a more overtly farcical sensibility. But like "Beach," it shows the writer-helmer's ongoing interest in making movies about artists, his eagerness to strip away their delusions and pretensions by subjecting them to rigorous comic scrutiny, primarily through their alternately flirtatious and tetchy exchanges with the opposite sex.

Korean male directors and the women they attempt to seduce have become Hong's targets of choice, adding a dimension of self-critique that has rarely been as consistently funny as it is here. The director in this case is Ku (Kim Tae-woo), a filmmaker of some repute but little commercial success, who arrives in the South Korean town of Jecheon during the summer to serve on the jury of the local film festival.

Hong is a well-traveled veteran of the fest circuit and he has a lot of fun at its expense here, eliciting easy laughs with shots of Ku snoring through screenings. But the effect is less to mock the festival scene than to expose Ku as a craven hypocrite, prone to flattering others excessively and making promises he has little intention of keeping.

The usual Hongian hijinks ensue as Ku hangs out with his colleagues; naturally, there will be enough booze, scorn and unplanned emotional disclosures to go around the table. The film's first half culminates in Ku's reunion with an old friend, who invites him back to his house to dine with him and his young wife. What transpires next remains entirely offscreen; suffice it to say that the night ends badly and the morning after is even worse.

The second half picks up 12 days later, as Ku heads to Jeju Island to speak to a film class, to yet more humiliating effect. After another round of drinks and philosophical bull sessions, Ku runs into an even older friend, a painter, with a beautiful wife many years his junior, Gosun (Ko Hyun-jung).

Rather than forming a single, integrated narrative, the film's two halves function as panels in a diptych, with countless points of narrative and thematic connection. In both instances, Ku receives a handwritten letter and initiates an exchange with a married woman that yields disastrous consequences. It's unclear how a movie with so many strategic symmetries doesn't wind up feeling pat and over-diagrammed, but in terms of both dialogue and pacing, there's a wonderful messiness to the film's leisurely, unpredictable rhythms.

Playing a woman with a hard-earned awareness of what she wants from a relationship, Ko is well matched with Kim. Latter essays one of Hong's less toxic male specimens but manages to be frequently exasperating nonetheless (though his pensive voiceover balances the equation a bit). Both actors also appeared in "Woman on the Beach," and their very different dynamic here raises the mind-tickling suggestion, for Hong acolytes, that the two films constitute a larger diptych themselves.

Visuals are of the helmer's usual unadorned style, mostly medium shots situated to include two or three actors in the frame, abetted by occasional pans and zooms. Jeong Yong-jin's score indulges from time to time in mildly Philip Glass-like repetitions.

Camera (color), Kim Hoon-kwang; editor, Hahm Sung-won; music, Jeong Yong-jin; sound, Kim Mir. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Directors' Fortnight), May 16, 2009. Running time: 126 MIN.

melusine · May 21, 2009

Film Review: Like I Know It All

By Maggie Lee, Hollywood Reporter

May 19, 2009 01:04 ET

Bottom Line: Genial comedy on film festival flings and frivolities.

CANNES -- Film festivals and cinema workshops come across as hotbeds of drunken brawls, fulsome schmoozing and adulterous sex in "Like You Know It All" -- Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo's pertly observant and endearingly droll send-up of the film and intellectual scene. Like all his works, clever symmetries of character, plot and mise-en-scene abound but "Like" more readily indulges the audience with easy comedy and features a central character (possibly fleshed out from some personal experience) that makes one care more than one normally would in a Hong Sang-soo film.

Those who feel that Hong is getting stuck in a pretentious rut as he expands his oeuvre might rediscover some of the debonair charm of earlier works in "Like." However, it will still only make ripples in festival and art house circuits, as well as enrich cinephiles' DVD collections.

Art house director Ku Kyung-nam (Kim Tae-woo) arrives in the provincial town of Jecheon to officiate as juror of a film festival (which really exists). He has some amusing exchanges with the pretty festival programmer (Uhm Ji-won) and members of the jury. Smarmy professional networking descends into drunken, flirtatious revelry and erupts into a messy scene. With its insiders' parody of critics, filmmakers and industry wannabes, the first half hour is the most appealing to those who have done festival rounds.

Ku runs into Bu, a friend who has admired his talent and tried to help his business in the past. When he visits Bu's home and meets his cute and devoted New Age wife, Ku's mild contempt for Bu's loser life turns into envy and results in sexual indiscretions that end on a very sour note. Twelve days later, Ku is invited to Jeju Island by a college alumna to give a seminar organized by the local film commission. Similar social drinking ensues with equally rowdy effects. Hong's sharp ear for intellectual posers results in some hilarious dialogue. There also is a degree of self-parody when Ku answers questions on why he keeps making films no one understands.

The formalistic refinement of Hong's two-part structure becomes apparent when Ku has a reunion with Yang, an elderly, renowned painter who taught him in college, and finds out that Yang's new wife is his old flame Sun. The neat, self-consciously artificial parallel between the two risque episodes -- expressed through motifs like meals, letters and rowing scenes -- recalls "The Turning Gate" and "A Tale of Cinema." But he varies it with visually refreshing contrast between an enclosed rural setting (Bu's ancestral home) and wide-open ocean backdrops (a seaside restaurant in Jeju).

Ambling at a rhythm that is neither too brisk nor too slow, this human comedy invites tolerant interest in the petty struggles and minor mishaps of Ku, a vain, self-preserving wannabe whose male ego gets dented along the way -- from losing girls' attention to a rival director, to losing arm-wrestling matches, to losing his ex-girlfriend to an older, more respectable man. Zany scenes of women bursting into hysterical fits and men pummeling each other at the slightest provocation, simply adds to the bemused attitude to human foibles.

Festival de Cannes -- Directors' Fortnight

Sales: Fine Cut

Production companies: Jeonwonsa

Cast: Kim Tae-woo, Ko Hyun-jung, Uhm Ji-won

Director/screenwriter/executive producer: Hong Sangsoo

Producers: Honglee Yeon-jeong, Kim Kyoung-hee

Director of photography: Kim Hoon-kwang

Music: Jeong Yong-jin

Editor: Hahm Sung-won

No rating, 126 minutes

melusine · May 22, 2009

Starting May 24, director Hong Sang-Soo and Kim Tae-Woo will visit 25 cinemas nationwide to meet+dialogue with audiences.

[via My Daily, Osen]

Here are the ff movie theaters [via Sports Khan]: Sponge House JoongAng Cinema, Sponge House Apgjujung, Sponge House Gwanghamun, Miro Space, CGV Gangbyeon, CGV Daehangno, CGV Mokdong, CGV Guro, CGV Yongsan (w/ English subtitles), CGV Apgujung, CGV Wangsimni, CGV Gonghang, CGV Incheon, CGV Ori, CGV Dongsuwon, CGV Bucheon, CGV Ansan, CGV Ilsan, CGV Yatap, Yawoori Cinema (Chungcheong province), CGV Daejin, CGV Kyungsang (경상지역은), CGV Daegu, CGV Seomyun, CGV Centum City.

melusine · May 24, 2009

TIFF 09: LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL Review

by X, Twitch

September 11, 2009 2:03 AM

A new start. A fresh new start is all it takes.

Like voices brimming inside our souls, adamant to explode out in the open and be revealed for everyone to listen, such instincts can be very alluring, some of the most impulsive whims known to man. Sometimes you let them take over, wake up in the early morning in a Jerry Maguire-like frenzy and witness all that energy spurt out, to then somehow regret it later. Or maybe you make it a sort of real life McGuffin, only there to maintain status quo, like for Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung in Wong Kar-Wai's 春光乍洩 (Happy Together), not making a single step forward but always living off that wish, that distant chimera in the desert called a new life; a fresh new start. Especially when it comes to artists, such temptations can be very strong, devastatingly so. Think of Jang Seung-Eop in Im Kwon-Taek's 취화선 (Chihwaseon), bemoaning in front of his mentor how the mendacious fame he is enjoying is not made out of the blood, sweat and lonesome tears of an artist, but only the laborious fabrications of a copycat. Think of some of the greatest lights of the glorious Myeongdong of the 1950s, like painter Lee Jung-Seop and poet Park In-Hwan, abandoning themselves into the bittersweet embrace of the bottle and that alluring abyss called madness, tired of enduring a world which never accepted what they did as art. A fresh new start is all they needed. Alas, it never came.

Directors are no different, particularly when we're dealing with auteurs. Drenching every single new work with that unique style and approach to filmmaking can make for a rather endearing, in many ways comfortable experience for its purveyors, even when the playing field doesn't necessarily subscribe to the usual canons of auteur theory. Without the need to mention masters like Bong Joon-Ho or Park Chan-Wook, if you know what to expect from a Lee Myung-Se, Jang Jin or Ryu Seung-Wan film, it's likely that you will leave the theater with at least some form of satisfaction, because most of their films ooze that personal cinematic dialectic you've come to understand and appreciate with time. By all means, Hong Sang-Soo perfectly exemplifies that kind of experience, for his career has brought us eight films which felt more like eight chapters of a long novel on the life of this tremendously fascinating director, more than singular entities. You'd expect this book to continue without end. Then again, there could always be surprises along the way, like his latest chapter, 잘 알지도 못하면서 (Like You Know it All).

I was more than a little disappointed in regards to the rather underwhelming International title for Hong's ninth work. It's certainly not a bad rendition of the original, and longtime K-film fans will by now be used to linguistic contortions often bastardizing every inch of charm an original title might have possessed, so this is only a gentle compromise in comparison. Still, 잘 알지도 못하면서 is one of those endlessly fascinating riddles which the Korean language is full of: literally, it just means "you don't even know, but still..." Notice the last part. It's like an open ending, whereas the English translation is much more assertive. It could be, "you don't even know (me), but still pretend to do so," or "you don't even know (your own feelings), but still go on and confess before another woman that she's your soulmate, the woman you've been waiting for all your life." There are countless instances all over the film, suggesting how multi-faceted an expression it can be. So, yes, it might in a way feel like the most explicit, in your face film title of Hong's career, but then again it's filled to the brim with questions on that big enigma called life. And the moment you realize that, the quicker you'll sense how this "new start' is not really that much of a change for Hong. It's just put together in a different way.

It's easy to see why so many critics are heralding the advent of a new Hong Sang-Soo. Get down to simple nuts and bolts, and you'll see how this is the least expensive film Hong has ever shot, costing all of 180 million won - which made sure this also became his first ever film to break even, although it's by no means an impressive tally. Also, put together a list of names like Go Hyun-Jung, Ha Jung-Woo, Kim Tae-Woo, Yoo Joon-Sang, Moon So-Ri (voice acting only), Gong Hyung-Jin, Jung Yoo-Mi and Eom Ji-Won, and even the humongous cast of blockbusters like 해운대 (Haeundae) will start to tremble in all its ungodly silliness. Of course the key was their working for free, sacrificing their fees for the sole opportunity of collaborating with one of Korea's most eclectic and acclaimed directors. Ha himself pretty much "begged" for the role, calling Go on the phone as she was shooting -- the two first met each other in 2006, working on the TV police procedural 히트 (HIT) -- and wondering whether there could be any spot left for him, however small it was.

Working with Hong can certainly prove to be a charming challenge, set aside his domestic and International acclaim. He writes scripts on the day of the shooting or the night before, out of a barebones treatment, and you're given a few pages' worth of dialogue, having to improvise on the fly, trusting your instincts and ability to give your best right away, for what will mostly be very long scenes shot in one take. You need an incredible sense of adaptation, enabling you to react to the circumstances with much more resonance and spontaneity than what is usually asked from an actor. So those working with him inevitably improve. Notice on 선덕여왕 (Queen Seondeok) what working with Hong did to Go Hyun-Jung's acting, and you'll soon understand the point. Some compare it to military training, but it's probably something closer to standing on the stage and trying to improvise next to a Wynton Marsalis or other gods of jazz.

I always enjoyed that aspect of Hong's films, because it made them feel much more real, and I'm not talking about cinéma vérité sensibilities. It was always fabricated spontaneity, all right, but this improv acting approach always made sure all those gloriously awkward moments would truly deliver in the best possible way. Take his infamous sex scenes, always interrupted by hilarity and awkwardness one instant before they risked becoming voyeuristic; or his notorious drinking scenes, during which actors often drink to enhance the feeling, and deliver the kind of disarmingly frank and awkward pathos that you never find in other Korean films. That kind of unbidden, often ridiculous energy and breeze is what made his films special, going beyond what was always a rather trite setup (man leaves for the countryside on vacation or for business, meets people, gets drunk and possibly has sex, makes an richard simmons of himself, leaves. Rewind. Play). You'll certainly find those elements in this film as well (minus the explicit sex, which is no longer part of Hong's cinematic interests, it seems), but the approach is a bit different.

Saying he's become a little more mainstream would be misleading, but there are traces of an enhanced desire to communicate at all cost, not only to those who "got" his previous films, but also those who couldn't, or didn't want to understand them. Set aside the title, this might be Hong's most explicit and forthright film to date, from the collection of voiceovers highlighting the mood more often than you'd like to down to simple camerawork, which directs your attention and puts the spotlight over certain spaces and reactions over others. Confront that with the quasi Hou Hsiao-Hsien like visual aura of his past works, and the change is all the more noticeable. But his dialogue has also changed, immersing itself in the kind of exposition and long-winded commentary that would often drench the work of lesser indie directors. I can't say I'm terribly fond of these cosmetic changes, mostly because they tend to cheapen that spontaneity which always set Hong's films apart.

Sometimes the approach does reap rewards though, particularly in the awkward asymmetry shown by a female student, reacting to two different facets of the same concept in hilariously opposite ways: first it's Kim Tae-Woo, the notorious auteur who makes strange works nobody seems to understand, but everyone strangely ends up liking, talking about this unique artistic vision of his, about his thriving to undertake that journey of personal discovery reached through the improvisational process his works can give him. The result? He's half-jokingly derided with a "Director, you talk like a philosopher." When it's the elder painter (veteran Moon Chang-Gil, returning to Chungmuro after two decades spent mostly on TV) with all his charismatic savoir faire saying pretty much the same thing, adorned by embellished words and the panache of an experienced seducer, the result is being called "a genius" by the same lady, after which suspicious moaning sounds come from the room next door, right as the old master left "for a cigarette" and the student headed for the bathroom. All she asked them was "why do you do this?" Imagine if it was a more complex question.

Now, the biggest difference at play here is not so much this ironical and clever dialectic, that is something most Hong films have displayed over the years. It's rather that sense of detachment you feel throughout the film. For instance, if you begin by asserting that Kim Tae-Woo has become a sort of "persona" for Hong, a muse through which he delves into his cinematic psyche, explaining through that diabolically charming machine going at 24 frames per second what he probably wouldn't be able to divulge with mere words, then you'll notice that his films are becoming increasingly introspective. This director ""alter ego" started appearing from 여자는 남자의 미래다 (Woman is the Future of Man) - obviously played by Kim Tae-Woo - and has become a recurring character in most of his later films. Take the rest of his work focusing on this figure, and you'll notice something very close to a first-person approach, a full immersion into the character's psyche, but things begin to change in Like You Know it All. There might be voiceovers giving color to Gyeong-Nam's thoughts and seemingly rowing through the narrative current, but you're always given space to reflect upon his actions from an emotionally distant point.

Take, for instance, the party at the film festival. They're all more or less in the industry in some way or form (programmers, directors, actors and the like), but Gyeong-Nam is almost forced to sort of "mark his territory," establish his credentials in front of everyone else. He does so particularly when an old college mate of his (famous novelist Kim Yeon-Soo in a curious cameo) joins the fray, as a very successful commercial director. The guy, as Gyeong-Nam suggests us, used to run around him almost like a groupie during the glory days, but now that he's a big shot, he doesn't even bother with deferentials, he goes straight for "Director Gu." How disrespectful. Can he challenge him on the success of his films? Not amongst that kind of company, not with the box office results his career has been blessed with. So he goes for the cheap shot: "were you always this short?"

Were this a pre-"transformation" Hong film, he would have mostly focused on Gyeong-Nam alone, but you see the same patterns used for many other characters here - just to remain at the party, the former adult-video starlet who "took it all off in a fancy arthouse flick and now calls herself actress," trying to reform her career by going straight for the big shot director, in more ways than one. Everyone here is trying to save face and make his or her mark, which is why everything that is said in this collection of scenes feels like an ad-hoc fabrication. The human animal's constant struggle with hypocrisy and compromise has always been a staple of Hong films, but this time he enlarges the scope even further, taking a few steps back and observing this jungle from afar. This is a sort of double-edged sword: the theme emerges in much stronger fashion, but the detachment makes the characters less interesting, particularly because they feel like vessels working for the sake of that same thematic consciousness. They're clearly not cardboard cutouts, but the journey of repetition and that strange rendition of coincidence (or destiny, if you prefer) which always marked Hong's work has become a tad too precious at times.

Precious like his naming choices, for instance. Kim Tae-Woo seems to have come to Jecheon and Jeju just as an observer, so he is christened as Gu Gyeong-Nam ("Observing Man"). Gong Hyung-Jin's character, after a rather crazy accident at his home with Gyeong-Nam, ends up injuring him, so he could only be called Bu Sang-Yong ("For Injury's Sake"), not to mention the spiritual hoopla of his lover played by Jung Yoo-Mi, who is Yu-Shin ("There's a God!"). I'd expect this kind of cutesy nomenclature from third rate weekend drama writers like Moon Young-Nam or Im Sung-Han, but coming from Hong Sang-Soo... it's not cute. Nor funny, at all. I also don't find much "diegetic" beauty in his new obsession with zoom lenses which started with 극장전 (Tale of Cinema), showing us a nice frog swimming in a pool or a worm passing by as human irony goes on, for no other reason than the fact they were "beautiful," as he often said on various interviews. I might understand the will to show that, whatever smoke and mirrors might color the shenanigans of us mortals, nature goes on. But if it has to come via something lacking any organic or narrative flair like this, it just feels like the proverbial CG bastardizing a Dogme film.

What Hong has gained from "growing up" as a filmmaker is a stronger thematic consciousness, that is hard to deny. You'll watch this film and be reminded of that very title every single minute, from how easy it is to misunderstand people or criticize them and go through the same exact sins, to our empty and misguided desires to change things without first looking inside our souls. It's an eye opener in many ways, filled with clever situations that always point the finger at how hilariously conflicted and hypocritical the human psyche can be. But what he has lost in the process is a lot of that spontaneous breeze and irreverence which charmingly drenched his past works. Like You Know It All tries to open the door for more people to come in, but then manages to forget what people passed through that door for.

Did I like this film? It's a strange question. I think of Hong Sang-Soo as the Korean equivalent of Eric Rohmer, and that is in not necessarily a stylistic comparison. Their films just blend for me, even those (like this one) which give you more things to negatively reflect upon than you've been used to. I like the fact that Hong Sang-Soo's films continue to exist, and I still enjoy the eclectic vibes watching a Hong film can give you. I'm just not sure whether this pleasant limbo made of frigid respect and admiration, this book made of several chapters all somehow telling the same story has really any destination, or any closing word which will leave a lasting mark. They just seem to exist, and continue to drench our journeys to the movies with more of what they've been known for. I can't say it's terribly exciting anymore after the initial infatuation, but a film world devoid of their touch would feel somehow incomplete.

So here I am, waiting for a new chapter, a new start which will likely bring us back to point one once again. Then again, who knows, it might as well be a completely new journey. Like I know it all....

RATING: 6

잘 알지도 못하면서 (Like You Know it All)

Director: 홍상수 (Hong Sang-Soo)

Screenplay: 홍상수 (Hong Sang-Soo)

D.P.: 김훈광 (Kim Hoon-Gwang)

Music: 정용진 (Jung Yong-Jin)

Produced by: Jeonwonsa Film

Int'l Sales: Finecut

126 Minutes, HD 1.85:1 Color

Release: 05/14/2009 (18 and Over)

CAST: 김태우 (Kim Tae-Woo), 고현정 (Go Hyun-Jung), 엄지원 (Eom Ji-Won), 유준상 (Yoo Joon-Sang), 공형진 (Gong Hyung-Jin), 정유미 (Jung Yoo-Mi), 문창길 (Moon Chang-Gil), 하정우 (Ha Jung-Woo), 서영화 (Seo Young-Hwa), 문소리 (Moon So-Ri - VOICE CAMEO)

rubie · May 27, 2009

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Korea Weekend Box Office - May 22-24

Oops, I nearly forgot about the box office this week. Sorry about that.

As I predicted, TERMINATOR SALVATION did ridiculously well in Korea last weekend, must as TERMINATOR 3 did a few years ago, making 9.3 billion won ($7.4 million) over Fri-Mon, and a total of 11.1 billion won ($8.8 million) if you include Thursday when it opened. That over 1.4 million admissions (1.7 million including Thursday), easily making it the biggest opening of the year so far in Korea.

Expect a huge drop-off for TERMINATOR next weekend (it was a pretty mediocre film, and there is some big competition looming), but an impressive opening nonetheless.

The top Korean film of the weekend was MY GIRLFRIEND IS AN AGENT (7 Geup Gongmuwon) in third, earning another 1.8 billion won to bring its five-week total to 23.2 billion won ($18.4 million).

In fourth was CASTAWAY ON THE MOON (Gimssi Pyoryugi), earning 1 billion won to bring its total to 3.7 billion won.

Other Korean films in the top 10 were THIRST (Bakjwi) in seventh, INSADONG SCANDAL in eighth and Hong Sang-soo's LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL (Jal Aljido Mot Hamyeonsa) in ninth.

I saw LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL last weekend and quite liked it. Not as much fun as WOMAN ON THE BEACH, but similar in tone. Maybe a little "deeper." Maybe a little too long. But fun and full of some amusing perspectives on film festivals and artists. It is playing with English subtitles at the CGV Yongsan in Seoul and is totally worth checking out.

Weekly Box Office 2009.05.22 ~ 2009.05.24 3-day Gross/Total Gross (won)

1. Terminator Salvation: The Future (U.S.) 7,864,940,000 / 9,562,582,500

2. Angels & Demons (U.S.) 1,892,626,500 / 8,610,973,000

3. My Girlfriend Is an Agent (South Korea) 1,508,393,500 / 22,927,407,500

4. Castaway on the Moon (South Korea) 844,296,500 / 3,569,451,000

5. Star Trek (U.S.) 546,926,000 / 6,676,543,500

6. Coraline (U.S.) 493,385,000 / 514,408,000

7. Thirst (South Korea) 290,422,000 / 14,277,380,500

8. INSADONG Scandal (South Korea) 111,721,000 / 7,437,725,500

9. Like You Know It All (South Korea) 39,914,000 / 163,830,000

10. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (U.S.) 25,924,500 / 8,348,698,500

Source:

KOFIC

(Stats courtesy of KOFIC, as always)

I have no idea how well Bong Joon-ho's new film MOTHER (Madeo) will do (although as I write this, it handily has the biggest advance sales on the Internet), but it opens Thursday this week. And it too is playing with English subtitles at Yongsan. Funny, the film had great reviews at Cannes pretty much across the board, but apparently the jury members for the section it was in all hated it.

Oh, the Korean title is Madeo. Does that sound like "Mother" to you? Or more like "Murder"? Probably just a coincidence, but the thought amused me.

Posted by Mark Russell at 2:50 PM via koreapopwars.com

melusine · June 5, 2009

^thanks rubie

Arirang Showbiz Extra - Cinema Spotlight (English subbed) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g8rF2YchOw] [MegaUpload] [MediaFire] [SendSpace]

video+screencaps credit: Cutiepie's Drama Goodies

Director Hong Sang-soo, who's known for mimicking realities of Korean society in films has something new for filmgoers - movie about a philandering film director, Koo Kyeong-nam's attempt at love! This innovative and experimental movie is called, 'Like You Know it All'. [ArirangTV]

melusine · June 7, 2009

Movieweek feature part 1+part 2+part 3+part 4

June 16, 2009

Pretty big casts.

I'm looking forward to the movie basically because of the story itself.

melusine · June 19, 2009

http://blog.cine21.com/lightson1109/78818

melusine · June 19, 2009

Box Office <credit: KOBIS>

[2009/06/05~07]

13. Like You Know It All 잘 알지도 못하면서 (South Korea)

Opening Date : 2009/05/14

Adm / Total Adm : 1,680 / 32,522

Gross / Total Gross (won) : 11,680,000 / 224,320,500

Screen : 18

[2009/06/12~14]

19. Like You Know It All 잘 알지도 못하면서 (South Korea)

Opening Date : 2009/05/14

Adm / Total Adm : 1,071 / 35,007

Gross / Total Gross (won) : 7,974,000 / 241,488,500

Screen : 12

[2009/06/19~21]

24. Like You Know It All 잘 알지도 못하면서 (South Korea)

Opening Date : 2009/05/14

Adm / Total Adm : 865 / 36,470

Gross / Total Gross (won) : 6,435,000 / 251,854,500

Screen : 11

Flyers credit: http://kr.blog.yahoo.com/asiafont6112/22122 + http://kr.blog.yahoo.com/asiafont6112/22400

melusine · June 24, 2009

The Toronto International Film Festival Brings Home The Best Of The Festival Circuit

06/23/2009, Toronto - The Toronto International Film Festival announces 24 international selections to screen this September. Programmers have brought back some of the finest titles from Cannes, Berlin and beyond, to screen as part of the 34th edition of the Festival running September 10-19, 2009.

Contemporary World Cinema

Like You Know It All Hong Sang-soo, Republic of Korea

North American Premiere

Delightfully comic exploration of the emotional and social geography of an art-house film director, directed by Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo.

http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/films/likeyouknowitall

melusine · September 2, 2009

http://www.koreanfilm.org/kfilm09.html#likeyouknowitall

Like You Know It All

"The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has 'meaning' and that each of us is unique. One can see that evolving a built-in obscuring mechanism for those depressing and inevitable insights might be of practical use." - Talking Heads frontman David Byrne in Bicycle Diaries (p 74).

In spite of the variations spun on recurring themes in the oeuvre of director Hong Sang-soo, when you repeat so many themes, bits of dialogue, actions, gestures, and characters (his films are dominated by traveling role-players in the film community and writers and visual artists), you can't help but leave viewers with a sense of meaninglessness to the films and the dialogues and the characters. Even though we do repeat ourselves often in real life, watching the repetition of sections of dialogue in Hong's films strips them of their meaning, echoing their in-authenticity. However true it might be when our main character Director Ku Kyung-nam repeats his motivation for being on the film jury panel of the Jecheon Film Festival to an ambitious, over-eager actress and her enabling stage-mom that "Many good films get buried unfairly", the sincerity is brought into question when the actress responds "Like your films?" He takes offense to this because his words didn't have the effect he'd hoped, or better yet, his own words were used against him, resulting in an awkward moment that is one of the many Hongian beats spread out throughout Like You Know It All to the delight of Hong fans sprinkled everywhere.

Not just characters are repeated, but the very actors who play them. And Like You Know It All, Hong's ninth film, repeats actors like no other. Three Hong alumni pepper this film. Kim Tae-woo of Woman Is the Future of Man and Woman on the Beach is our film director Ku Kyung-nam; Uhm Ji-won returns from Tale of Cinema to be out first female, Gong Hyun-hee playing the festival director of the Jecheon Film Festival; and Ko Hyun-jung finds herself on a beach again after Woman on the Beach as the second female, Ko Sun, the May wife of a December husband who happens to be a revered senior artist of Jeju Island.

This film can be separated into two blocks like many of Hong's other films. We begin at the bus stop where Ku (the subtitles reference last names, so I'll follow that pattern) is picked up at a bus stop to be a part of a jury at the Jecheon Film Festival. We begin again at the second section where Ku is picked up at the airport by an old friend who now works for the Jeju Film Commission and teaches film at the local university, which is why Ku is there, to give a lecture and pick up a stipend for the effort. Both times he is picked up, the welcoming person was delayed because they had to pick up bread. The repetitions begin early, and don't stop.

And these Like You Know It All repetitions seep into the Hong films that preceded it. In the Korean Film Council Korean Directors Series volume devoted to Hong, American film theorist and writer David Bordwell notes "Hong has remarked that he is less interested in a dramatic structure than a pattern, and his narrow repertoire of situations allows us to perceive echoes and variations among the actions. This geometric model of storytelling has pushed him beyond his contemporaries' looser, more anecdotal and additive narrative strategies" (p 24). In Like You Know It All, Hong continues the arm-wrestling, extending back to the film before, Night and Day. Ku sees a frog in the swimming pool like the insect in the planter of The Day a Pig Fell In the Well or the random dog in The Power of Kangwon Province. Ku will find himself wounded literally in accordance with Hong's metaphorically wounded males, just like in Hong's other films. Hong even covers up the cause of the wound on Ku's cheek with a reference to an actual scene that happened in Turning Gate, claiming a few thugs beat him up because "One of them said I was looking at their girl's legs." In Turning Gate our male tries to cover up that he was looking at a woman's legs by saying he was looking at a poster above the woman. Here Ku covers up the bizarre reaction of a former friend with what was covered up in a film before.

It is this repetition that keeps Hong's films from being unique, yet making Hong's oeuvre unique at the same time. They are one long treatise on the inability to be authentic, to be sincere. It is a treatise on the inherent meaninglessness of our words and actions, and by extension, the meaninglessness of cinematic signifiers, such as his refusal to announce his character's dreams. As Korean film critic Huh Mooning (the editor of the previously mentioned KOFIC book on Hong) argues, "In Hong Sang-soo's films, meaninglessness is more strongly experienced than meaning. His film is a 'form of meaninglessness'" (p 10). Even more so, ' . . . his films have questioned the nature of movies and redefined it" (p x). The supreme irony of Hong Sang-soo's films is that he takes an artistic medium that the very patrons of which find so meaningful and shows that audience the inherent meaninglessness in the medium. And the further irony is this is what makes his work so meaningful to the small group of us who follow and anxiously anticipate his films.

As Bordwell also points out, Hong's films are memory-tests. His films require re-watching because you want to go back to previous scenes to check if you recall correctly. His scenes are like the cards you flip in a game of memory. And by repeating dialogue and actions and themes throughout his films, you are enticed to not only re-watch a single film, but to re-watch past Hong films. His films are perfect for DVD technology since his films are their own DVD extras in that they propel you to click back to previous scenes, and previous scenes in previous films.

Interestingly, Hong Sang-soo's memory-testing oeuvre arose at the very moment when our memories have been augmented by the technologies available to those of us who can afford them. As Viktor Mayer-Schönberger details in his excellent book Delete: The Virtue of Fogetting in the Digital Age, we have entered a rare time in history where remembering has become the default rather than forgetting. Previous to our present now, the cost of remembering (be that cost monetary or time-intensive) had well exceeded the cost of forgetting. But with the internet storing exponentially the words, acts, and images of our past, along with the reliable searching and aggregating mechanisms enabling efficient retrieval of these data points, our technologies remember while our human minds are still programmed to forget.

Hong films don't let you forget even while his characters are forgetting. At the same time his characters are claiming they have excellent memories, (such as in this film with Ku and his mentor artist Yang battling over whose memory is more excellent during one of Hong's obligatory group drinking sessions), Hong's films prove those memories faulty in that the slight variations of similar scenes brings into question the reliability of our memories. Plus, his refusal to prompt dream sequences makes them real while at the same time dreaming the real. And with the modern technology of DVD players, and even more so the inevitable, future searching algorithms that will allow scenes to be searched like Google now allows for the text of books, we can immediately pinpoint the past scenes Hong's films motivate us to recall in their slight variation. Yet Hong demonstrates that even with the expansive external memory banks that film in internet form might provide, each fragmented scene allows for multiple interpretations of meaning, multiple interpretations of meaningless meaning, therein providing their meaning. Hong's films are an endless tape loop, a Möbius strip that collects Escher ants as we travel along its form.

When a college student who was demure to Director Ku outside the classroom before watching his film in class, a film she claims to have seen before, responds bluntly that she doesn't understand why he makes the films he does, arguing, perhaps correctly, that people don't understand his films, Director Ku response is close to an outrage.

"If you don't get it, then you don't. I just make them and the rest is up to you. My films are not dramas that you're used to. No clear messages, ambiguous at best. No beautiful images, either. I can only do one thing. I jump into the process without preconceived ideas. I gather the pieces I discover and make them into one. You might not like the result. No one might."

I swear I've heard Hong make similar comments at post-film Q&A's or conversations I've personally had with him, a clear moment where Hong has brought himself into his film. After questioning Director Ku's proclaimed modesty, stating that his films are irresponsible, she makes the best summary of Hong and why his films fall so flatly on so many, yet resonate so deeply with the small number of us who've grown to love his films, "You're not a film director, but a philosopher." (Adam Hartzell)

From Koreanfilm.org's Darcy Paquet:

http://www.koreanfilm.org/new.html

2010.01.01: Best Korean films of 2009

[...] Film magazine Cine21 polled 35 critics and collated the (interestingly diverse) results to determine the following ranking for the year's best films: (1) Mother, (2) Like You Know It All, (3) Paju, (4) Thirst, (5) Breathless. I was included among the 35 critics, and my top five was published in the magazine, but now I'm going to contradict myself and rearrange spots 3-5. Here is my personal top 10:

1. Paju
2. Thirst
3. Like You Know It All
4. Mother
5. A Brand New Life
6. The Actresses
7. Possessed
8. I Am Happy
9. The Pit and the Pendulum
10. Daytime Drinking

[...] As time goes on, I am becoming more and more personally attached to the films of Hong Sang-soo, and the second half of Like You Know It All in particular was captivating. [...]

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[movie 2009] Like You Know It All 잘 알지도 못하면서

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