The debut of the new show on the Podcast On Fire Network, follow Stoo and company through the love, hate, ups and downs of Korean Cinema during the next 6 episodes! This first entry focuses on Kwak-Jae-young’s 2001 romantic comedy My Sassy Girl. Also, Stoo, Ken and special guests Martin Cleary from New Korean Cinema (newkoreancinema.com) and Rufus L de Rham from our friends at VCinema (vcinemashow.com) and cineAWESOME! (cineawesome.com) cover their first discovery of Korean cinema! It’s all done under 2 hours!
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1 comment on “What’s Korean Cinema? 1: My Sassy Girl”
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Hey guys,
Still doing a bit of podcast catch-up from February, but I really enjoyed this first foray into Korean cinema. I know very little about Korean film, but MY SASSY GIRL was one of my early exposures to the ‘new wave’ as it hit Hong Kong. I am pretty much in Stoo’s camp in that I really loved the film and it’s humor. It worked for me because of the role-reversal, but I can see how watching in a decade later how it can lose some of its flare. Interestingly, the Hong Kong theatrical cut is still my preferred cut. It’s shorter, a bit tighter, with a different soundtrack in places, and it gets rid of some of the coincidental near misses of the two characters. The film was very popular here and there were quite a few low budget Hong Kong knock-offs. As a result of the local success the semi-prequel WINDSTRUCK that Martin mentioned was actually co-produced by some Hong Kong folks as well and it was heavily promoted here.
I was a huge fan of Jun Ji-Hyun coming off of her role in IL MARE, but Cha Tae-hyun really makes this film for me. And sadly Ji-Hyun has had some real dregs of late (DAISY and BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE). I am hoping her next film can be a return to better form. The US remake of MSG was really was a hollow shell as mentioned on the podcast, and the IL MARE remake (THE LAKEHOUSE) was not much better.
Looking forward to future episodes.