Korean Cinema House’s Moobie Blog-a-Log

So what will the New Year bring us? South Korean cinema overcame some difficulties when in July last year a new screen quota reduction policy was enforced. This literally halved the amount of days that films are allowed to be shown at the local box office. Yet despite this records were broken and audiences ensured that their homeland would take little over 60% in domestic profits. The Host stormed the box office and in less than two months became the highest grossing Korean film of all time, just out-gunning earlier 2006 hit The King and the Clown. These flicks were amongst the elite, which also included the successful Forbidden Quest, proving that South Korea could still be at the top of its game if it tried. But for these well received movies the industry also managed to milk some tired franchises (but box-office pleasers) with the third instalments of Marrying the Mafia and My Wife is a Gangster, along with My Boss, My Teacher - a follow up to 2001’s My Boss, My hero (alright the latter isn’t really a franchise, but it was already flawed enough). Plenty of generic actioners and dopey romancers also filled in some months.

A few interesting titles seeped through, but I hope to talk about those another time, one of which is Park Chan-wook’s - who leaves behind his revenge thrillers in favour of romantic comedy - I am a Cyborg, But That’s OK, which performed shockingly bad at the end of the year, but should see a swift DVD release soon.

In light of the screen quota issue, with roughly eighty new films being prepared for 2007, which makes it a much lesser output than last year, one hopes that we’ll get plenty of quality, well thought out productions. Aside from two or three gems in the past few years I’ve yet to be as bowled over as I was at the end of the nineties/early noughties, where the industry appeared to be truly original and there were too many films to highly recommend. These days you can get by with just three or four must see features and happily do away with the rest. So I have high hopes for the new year, with Park Jin Pyo’s Voice of a Murderer (based upon a real life 1991 kidnapping) topping my list, where I hope to see something as powerful as 2003’s Memories of Murder. I’m also looking forward to plenty of DVD releases and hope to update you on those in the future.

So here’s to what will hopefully be a happy and succesful new year for South Korean cinema.