Month: April 2011

Director: Shin Sang-ok

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Shin Sang-ok had many lives.

He began his cinematic career working on Choi In-gyu’s Viva Freedom!, the first film made in Korea after attaining independence from Japan. From there Shin went on to have a sparkling career in the “Golden Age” of Korean movies. His 1961 effort, Mother and a Guest, is a beautiful literary adaptation which is both lyrical and (mildly) daring in its use of sexual themes.

Told from the impossibly cute perspective of Ok-hui (Jeon Young-seon), the young daughter of the widowed mother (played by Shin Sang-ok’s then wife Choi Eun-hee), the film demonstrates why Shin was known as the Orson Welles of Korean cinema.

Alas, there was far more to happed in Shin’s long and distinguished career that would give him more notoriety that his great films of the 1960s. After falling out with the Korean government, he was forced to head to Hong Kong to make films for the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest studios.

In 1978 Shin joined his then ex-wife in North Korea where he directed 7 films over the coming years, perhaps the most prolific and artistically important period for North Korean films.

The pair then went to the US and the final stage of Shin’s remarkable career began when he produced a series of films that many of us will remember from our childhood: 3 Ninjas.

As the title of Shin’s autobiography suggests (I, Was a Film) Shin had one of the most remarkable lives you could ever imagine, and in the coming weeks I’ll look at some of the amazing films he produced. But for now, I suggest tracking down Mother and A Guest. You won’t regret it.

Review: From 5pm to 5am

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Once again, I am pleasantly surprised by this offering from North Korea. Obviously, you have to judge this film – which I imagine most would find hard to sit though, even at 78 minutes in length – with a different criteria than you would a film from a more developed country.

The key to the enjoyment I got out of the film was its pure simplicity: a squadron of North Korean soldiers during the Korean war must scramble across dangerous terrain to cut off an American attack (with only the eponymous 12 hours in which to do it). With a commander whose health is failing him, a group of young but fiercely patriotic soldiers and a character who is perhaps the closest to comic relief I have seen in a North Korean film to date, the DPRK army manage to hold off the Yanks (who foolishly informed the press of their planned attack before going through with it).

You actually have a pretty dramatic and action-filled movie on your hands, but what the film is most notable for is the first appearance I have come across of James Joseph Dresnok.

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Review: Our Lifeline (2002)

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What struck me most about Our Lifeline, an actually pretty good espionage thriller with a couple of cute twists in its tale, was how old the film looked. I sat through Part 1, which clocked in at around 1 hour 20 minutes and wondered when this film was made. Obviously judging by the aesthetics it had to be around the 80s, but when I couldn’t be certain.

Jo Yun Chol looking thoughtful

After searching IMDb.com and wikipedia to no avail, I googled it and was genuinely shocked to find it was made in 2002. Of course, it was set in 1950 but the framing sequences at the beginning and end took place in “modern times” and it still looked like a film from times past.