The Chosun Ilbo will catch the attention of  patiently-waiting iPhone enthusiasts this morning. It reports that the Korean launch of the will be iPhone next week. There is no official statement from KT, the official supplier of the Apple product in Korea, but industry insiders are saying that November 28th is the date. They are also saying that KT will start online reservations for the iPhone tomorrow. 150,000 units will be sold at first, ranging between w250,000 and w300,000. The article also mentions that both the 3GS  and 3G iPhone models will be available here. (more…)

The 13th Pusan Film Festival concluded last Friday after seven full days of screenings. Both William Empey and myself attended and between us we saw around two dozen of this year’s offerings. Instead of giving two separate overviews of this year’s PIFF, we felt it may be more useful to have a conversation discussing each of our experiences. So instead of the usual monologue, here is a dialogue on both the festival itself as an event and the various films we each encountered. (more…)

For early birds, there are two great ones: Hong Sang-soo’s latest, LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL (see my review here), is playing at 10:00 at Haeundae Megabox, and Martin Scorsese’s 1976 TAXI DRIVER is playing at 11:00, Lotte Cinema. (more…)

Brilliante Mendoza’s “Kinatay“, winner of the Best Director Award at Cannes this year, is relentless in its iniquitous tone. From the very beginning we are given a view of modern Manila as a squalid corrupt city filled with urban chaos and its people hacking out a living from on the decaying streets. A police academy classroom looks like an inner city high school filled taught by a teacher who is more concerned with getting the students to listen than with real police work. From there the film takes us on a long journey into the dark heart of The Philippians with a young recruit held hostage by his higher-ups and made to participate in one of the most gruesome and chilling scene of violence I have ever seen on film. (more…)

Where Are You?

Tomorrow at PIFF, I am going to see three films: At 13:30 at the Centrum City CGV, the latest from Japanese director Kobayashi Masahiro, WHERE ARE YOU?,  a drama about a teenager who loses his mother, turns to crime, and then tries to reconcile with his estranged father. (more…)

Seoul’s own electro band Swingset Committee are set to join Dairyland Youth in a tour across Korea and Japan this November. Swingset Committee is the newest member of the Minneapolis indie label Catlick Records. The Youth in Asia Tour will hit all three of Korea’s major cities: Nov. 6 Club FF in Seoul, Nov. 7 in Daegu at Club That and Nov. 8 in Busan at Vinyl Underground. The tour then heads to Japan to tour across the country from Nov. 9-15

This year’s Pusan International Film Festival, still scheduled to go on Oct. 8-16 despite other festivals being cancled due to H1N1 fear,  will have a record 355 films from 70 countries, 98 of which will be world premieres. The One One Four has compliled a list of the top 10 most anticipated film of this years line-up. Also if you haven’t seen TAXI DRIVER or BONNIE AND CLYDE or the other films of the New Hollywood retrospective in theatres, this is a great opportunity. Part of the fun of a festival is checking out things you would never see otherwise, so I encourage viewers to participate in some “cold” screenings as well.
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Michigan native turned LAite Samiyam will be tearing up Vinyl Underground in Busan this Friday, Sept. 4th along side locals Simo and Mood Schula Doors open at 10:00pm Tickets are w15000

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