Kitano's -korean carbon copies

[Stephen Cremin]

There has been attempts to release 1960s Korean films on DVD 
domestically, but the attempts were largely unsuccessful.  Despite the 
high quality of the DVDs produced in Korea (several subtitle tracks, 
various extras, dual-layer format, etc), sales are not strong.  Films 
must make their money back at the theatrical box office, since they 
don't have much of a life on rental or sell-through, etc.  My 
impression from Japanese friends is that they'll generally wait for the 
DVD rental, rather than put ?1,800 over the counter, unless the film is 
a cultural phenomenon.  Going to the theatre in Korea costs about 
one-third of that, at W7000/US$6.  At those prices, why wait for the 
DVD.

Stephen


On Aug 31, 2004, at 8:57 AM, J.sharp wrote:

> I?m not sure how many prints of Korean films from the 60s are 
> available, and I gather they are not in particularly good condition, 
> but the home video/DVD market is so small in Korea at the moment 
> (compared with the hunger for the newest hot releases) that very 
> little has made it out of the archives. As such its very difficult to 
> get any sense of Korean cinema history, but from what I have seen of 
> the stuff from the 60s, which basically stretches to this film and the 
> bizarre catwoman-vampire movie A Devilish Homicide (Salinma, dir Lee 
> Yong-min, 1965), there?s some really interesting stuff tucked away. 
> Who knows how long it will take before we get to see any of it.
>
> --
> Midnight Eye: The Latest and Best in Japanese Cinema
> www.midnighteye.com
>
> ===
>
> Coming in October from Stone Bridge Press:
> The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film
> by Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp
> Foreword by Hideo Nakata
>
>
>
>
> --------- Original Message --------
> From: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> To: "KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu" 
> <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
> Subject: Re: Kitano's honor
> Date: 30/08/04 14:35
>
> On Aug 31, 2004, at 1:33 AM, Jason Gray wrote: > But once upon a time, 
> Korea was bankrupt of ideas and > turned to Japan's seishun eiga boom 
> in the 1960s for > material As nice to Koreans as they are to 
> Iranians, eh? I have also heard of Korean filmmakers stopping in Tokyo 
> on a layover from somewhere else. They check out what's hitting in 
> Japan, and then go reproduce it back home. The example I heard was an 
> Ozu film! (I'd love to see if they copied Ozu down to the shot!) What 
> exactly was going on here? Setting aside Takeshi's setsu about lack of 
> creativity, we can certainly say it has something to do with the ban 
> on Japanese films in Korea. Was it simply a stunningly elaborate 
> version of the remake/rip-off---Batman reproduced in the Philippines 
> or the Ring in the US? The former example shows how prestige is 
> borrowed, while the latter is a matter of creativity. I suppose the 
> first step would be finding out how much people knew about Japanese 
> cinema despite the ban. And to what degree were these films coded as 
> foreign, generically or even as adaptations? What does this say about 
> Japan-Korean relations in pop culture? This hints at a fascinating 
> relationship between Japanese and Korean cinema beyond the colonial 
> era and into the days of the embargo. Anyone looking for a 
> dissertation topic? Markus
>
>
>  ________________________________________________
>  Message sent using Hunter Point Online WebMail
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 3819 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/private/kinejapan/attachments/20040902/fed7a657/attachment.bin