Masquerade (2012)

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Posted on August 14, 2013 by Justin

Superstar Lee Byung-hun (JSA, A Bittersweet Life, I Saw the Devil) gets to play the leading role twice over in Masquerade, a lavish South Korean costume drama set during the turbulent rule of King Gwang-hae of the Joseon Dynasty. (Wikipedia pegs this as 1608-1623, for those as ignorant of Korean history as I am.)

One role is that of young King Gwang-hae himself, maintaining his grip on his feuding court through political intrigue and … (read more)

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The Tower (2012)

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Posted on August 13, 2013 by John Snadden

The Tower is South Korea’s first attempt at a full-on disaster movie, and overall it’s pretty good but does bear a strong resemblance to the Hollywood pic The Towering Inferno, widely seen as the peak title in this 1970s movie subgenre.

It’s also the latest film from director Kim Ji-hoon, whose most recent pic was the underwater-monster feature Sector 7, which did big business at the box-office.

Christmas Eve in Seoul sees the public debut of the Tower … (read more)

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The Berlin File (2013)

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Posted on August 13, 2013 by Eugene

Who knew?  North Korea, despite being the diplomatic Bogeyman of the western world still maintains an embassy in Berlin.  Admittedly, now that I’ve looked it up on Wikipedia, it does seem less impressive to have a Korean spy thriller set specifically in Berlin (which I was led to believe was somewhat unique).  Nonetheless the city still retains a residual cloak and dagger ambiance from years of the Cold War and films about the subterfuge that once went on in … (read more)

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Reel Anime 2013 dates announced

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Justin

The news came in on the wire today that our anime-loving friends at Madman have announced the final dates for this year’s Reel Anime 2013 festival, where they intend to showcase brand-spanking-new anime in theatres across the country.

Screening this year are:

Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo — the third feature film in the re-imagining of the much-loved Neon Genesis Evangelion series.

009 RE: Cyborg — an adaptation of influential manga Cyborg 009 helmed by Kenji Kamiyama (who also … (read more)

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KOFFIA 2013 Full Program

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Justin

As we foretold a few weeks ago, the Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) is coming in just a few short weeks to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. They’ve now released their full program, crammed full of Korean film from across the genre spectrum!

Here’s the trailer for this year’s event:

The key dates are:

Brisbane: Aug 14-18, at Event Cinemas Myer Centre.
Sydney: Aug 21-29, at Event Cinemas George Street.
Melbourne: Sep 5-11, at ACMI in Federation … (read more)

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This week in cinemas: ‘Tales from the Dark I & II’ (HK)

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Justin

In Australian cinemas this week is a double-bill from Hong Kong, horror anthology film Tales from the Dark and its sequel. Adapted from the horror novels by Lilian Lee (who wrote the novels that became Rouge, Farewell My Concubine, Green Snake and others), the two films comprise six stories from different directors, with a great deal of familiar talent both behind and in front of the camera.

The six directors involved are: Simon Yam, Lee Chi-ngai, Fruit Chan, … (read more)

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Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)

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Posted on August 1, 2013 by Justin

It’s all coming up kaiju this year!

Inspired by Guillermo del Toro’s epic monsterpiece Pacific Rim and the upcoming 2014 Hollywood Godzilla reboot, I decided to set aside a few evenings and run through the Godzilla “Millennium Era” films and see what it’s all about really. Prior to these, I had only ever seen the classic 1954 film that started it all, and Madman have just released (and kindly sent us a review copy of) a box set, covering the … (read more)

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‘36th Chamber’ (and its sequel) on iTunes

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Justin

In the early 2000s, Celestial Pictures in HK bought the rights to the Shaw Brothers library of films (more than 760 titles from the ’50s through to the ’90s) and started trickling them out on DVD beginning in 2002, which was about when I was introduced to Asian cinema by HC’s Alison. I caught a couple of them, beginning with King Hu’s wonderful Come Drink With Me — still one of my favourite films — and got hooked, buying a … (read more)

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