Have you seen" The Host" directed by Joon-ho Bong,cause if you didn't - you should! it's great!

should I go see "Tokyo!" which features a short by Bong?

no... his is awful

the gondry one is actually OK but the bong and the leo caxas ones are dire dire dire...

t'other thread

Hey you guys! South Korea's THE HOST is getting a US release starting this weekend!

BAMcinématek marks the upcoming release of his latest, Mother, with this showcase of his work to date.
http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1908

really excited to see Mother and Memories of Murder. Anyone seen Barking Dogs Never Bite?

me and tuomas IIRC

just watched Mother.
good.nice.but nothing's too special.
it's kinda similiar to Memories Of A Murder,which is so, so much better.

Just saw Mother at a film festival, and I was really impressed by it. Such a deeply felt movie with a harrowing performance by the lead actress. I'm starting to feel Bong Joon-ho is one of the finest directors of the 2000s. I haven't seen Memories of Murder yet, but I think it's pretty impressive that the same guy has made three such movies as Barking Dogs Never Bite, The Host, and Mother - all very different in concept, but definitely sharing a similar sensibility.

The local movie archive in here is showing Memories of Murder in November, I guess I have to see it too?

I guess it shows how good Mother was that it committed one of the cardinal sins of film-making - fooling the audience - and yet I wasn't irritated by that, because it was really the characters and their relationship with each other that mattered, not the murder mystery.

"The local movie archive in here is showing Memories of Murder in November, I guess I have to see it too?"

Yes, definitely.

That closing shot in Mother was pretty amazing. Liked it a lot.

Memories of Murder is def. worth your time although as I remember it it's a much more straight narrative movie compared to the others.

memories of murder is worth everyones time.

memories of murder is amazing, and yeah i agree w/ tuomas that joon-ho is one of the best directors out there. i havent seen barking dogs never bite, shld get on to that

a bunch of his stuff is streaming on netflix now, including tokyo and barking dogs never bite

I guess you can tell Barking Dogs Never Bite is his debut in that it tries to do a lot of different things: black comedy, urban ennui, social satire, even a bit of horror... But I still liked it a lot, because it had a special kind of feel and emotional timbre to it that I hadn't really felt in any other movie - until I saw The Host. Even though BDNB was much more low-key than The Host, I think they're kinda similar films in that there's lot of melancholy and tragedy in them, but underneath there's still a subtle sense of optimism. Mother felt like a different beast compared to them, more streamlined and mannered; I'd say it was a more universal and less specifically Korean movie. You could easily imagine, say, a French film-maker adapting Mother without changing its execution much, whereas it'd be much harder to imagine BDNB or The Host being made in Europe or USA.

i've seen 'the host' and 'memories of murder'. they're both ok but i don't understand the love. think people like vague anti-militarist, pro-environment sentiments, but as films, 'the host' is no 'cloverfield'.

Eh? The anti-militarism and pro-environmentalism are just the dressing, that's not what The Host is about at heart. In the same way as Mother is not a murder mystery at heart, despite nominally being one.

well -- right. so what is the fuss about 'the host'?

it was made very cheaply, somewhere between blair witch and district 9 budgets.

Host was pretty good - kinda too long for what it was trying to do. great monster though. never really tops its opening scenes, I dont think.

That closing shot in Mother was pretty amazing. Liked it a lot.

Actually I agree largely with Soto on this:

The dance sequences with which Bong bookends the picture are misfires, all too easily summoning David Lynch. The rest is expert pulp.

In my opinion the final dance sequence was kinda pointlessly long (really, just seeing the mother to start dancing would've been enough), but I don't get how it was supposed to be Lynchian? As for the opening shot: yeah, I guess you can compare it to Lynch, but I don't think he has the copyright for creepiness-beneath-banality. If anything, it reminded me of the final scene of Claire Denis' Beau travail, with the somewhat goofy dance steps carrying a huge emotional weight. Anyway, regardless of the inspiration I thought it looked great.

i've seen 'the host' and 'memories of murder'. they're both ok but i don't understand the love. think people like vague anti-militarist, pro-environment sentiments, but as films, 'the host' is no 'cloverfield'.

― paying AFFECTIONATE homage to his somewhat exaggerated teeth (history mayne), Monday, September 20, 2010 1:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

see, i might agree with you, re: the host, but memories of murder is fantastic. like a good version of fincher's zodiac. loved barking dogs never bite, too. it's the combination of top-notch action & suspense mechanics, unapologetic melodrama & sentiment, cinematic cleverness that never devolves into mere showboating, and real observational attention to character (psychology, politics, etc) that sells me. he's exactly what i think a great populist director should be: generous, honest, imaginative, playful and a wickedly sharp craftsman.

well -- right. so what is the fuss about 'the host'?

― paying AFFECTIONATE homage to his somewhat exaggerated teeth (history mayne), Tuesday, September 21, 2010 4:54 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

the black humor, really, and the upsetting of normal horror monster movie cliches

I wasn't much of a fan of The Host; I couldn't really connect with its tone.

I think that's part of the pleasure of the film for me. I never quite know the parameters of the world we're meant to be connecting with.

people who think of the host as a monster movie are missing the point imo

I think part of the appeal of The Host does come from how it plays with monster movie conventions, but obviously the main theme in it is family, and more specifically, failed fathers trying to do right. It's kinda interesting that The Host is all about fathers, with mothers being completely absent (the only prominent adult woman in it is more of a big sister figure than a mother surrogate), whereas Mother is the total opposite of that.

I thought The Host was about imperialism?

I don't remember it that well though

There's a lot of stuff going on, but I think fatherhood is the biggest theme. The main character is kind of a loser dad who fails by letting the monster capture his daughter, and the family comes together to mitigate his failure (which, it's implied, they've done in the past too). Later on we find out how the grandfather character had failed with his own son. And the final scene is all about the main character trying to atone for the sins of the fathers.

The Host >>>>>>> Cloverfield

Should I see Cloverfield?

I thought it was fun but it's not essential imo

as a film, 'cloverfield' is about a dozen times more innaresting

if you can't remember the actual content of 'the host''s anti-imperialist critique, that suggests to me that it wasn't particularly incisive

iirc it vaguely paints the military as incompetent and dismissive of the needs of the people it is nominally there to protect

like a good version of fincher's zodiac.

this is just silly. it's like a mediocre, subtext-less version of 'zodiac'

how many films can you name the themes & specific details regarding said theme off the top of your head hm

if you can't remember the actual content of 'the host''s anti-imperialist critique, that suggests to me that it wasn't particularly incisive

I do remember it, I was just saying that it isn't the major thing in the movie.

iirc it vaguely paints the military as incompetent and dismissive of the needs of the people it is nominally there to protect

Which would fit with The Host's "failed fathers" theme, right? But I agree that the stuff about the military and the protesters wasn't particularly memorable, though that may be so partly due to the cultural gap... Since military dictatorship and massive, violent demonstrations are part of South Korea's recent history, those scenes probably resonated more with the local audience.

Never read much into the politics except as a 'day today'esque satire about the overblown drama of the way the media presents it. The great things about The Host, and it's one of my favorite movies of the last decade, is the black comedy, the slapstick, the monster itself, the family portrayal.

Anyway, even if you don't care about the larger themes in the movie, the scene where monster first attacks is such a bravura piece of film-making, I'd say The Host is worth seeing for that alone.

(x-post)

the scene where monster first attacks is such a bravura piece of film-making, I'd say The Host is worth seeing for that alone.

this is definitely good, and if the film really was a cheaply made as 'blair witch', as someone upthread says, then that's amazing -- it's just that i was expecting more, rly

how many films can you name the themes & specific details regarding said theme off the top of your head hm

― dayo, Tuesday, September 21, 2010 9:45 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dunno... hundreds

you sir are an elephant and I salute you

if chandler has a formula its his own

pulp meant something a lot more tawdry and anonymous

'formula chandler' or 'fc' for short I believe he called it

Calling something "pulp" is not an insult. This is one of my favorite movies of the year.

Yes, and by quoting Alfred I was implying the same.

You're all pulp to me

"He was a writer of formula mysteries"

That's like saying that Thomas Hardy or Jane Austen were pulp writers.

Hardy and Austen busted their genre conventions, Chandler didn't imo.

I don't think convention busting is really the point though. Chandler (even as a Black Mask writer he was hardly prolific) wasn't a churn 'em out dime a word writer. He published seven novels in twenty years and all his novels were published originally as hardcovers I believe.

Also Chandler (along w/ Hammett) was largely responsible for defining his genre. It's hard to do that while at the same time shattering its conventions. That said I think that the Long Goodbye (not the stupid movie) is a pretty good argument that Chandler could break convention when he wanted to.

I prefer the film versions of TLG and TBS to the novels, but that's generally how I regard adaptations of mystery novels.

I don't, but that's generally how I regard adaptations of all novels.

not sure if austen was a genre writer really

come on alfred, no need to draw lines in the sand w/r/t mystery novels

"not sure if austen was a genre writer really"

Really? So you think she just wrote like books then?

The novel in Austen's time was almost exclusively a women's genre, requiring marriages and happy endings, so her options were far more limited than Hardy's or Chandler's.

p much everything belongs to a genre, but yeah i'll go all-out and say that austen wasn't a 'genre writer' in the way tom clancy's bots are; and no that isn't because she 'broke conventions'; it's to do with a fundamentally different approach to writing

chandler and hardy were writing for a much more, um, organized, commercialized publishing industry; requirements were much more require-y

Hardy wrote a lot of hack novels, stuff like The Hand of Ethelberta which I've only read because I love Hardy and should not be rediscovered; but Tess and Jude mark a real break with Victorian literature, even as they play with the usual tropes.

IMDb says The Host's budget was 11 million dollars, I don't know where the Blair Witch comparison came from, but obviously it's not true.

philip said its budget was somewhere between blair witch's and district 9's and he's right

blair witch project $60K
the host $11MM
district 9 $30MM

the point here is, try making a film with the same scope as the host for $11MM, with a CGI monster that is actually scary and not laughable. I mean, cloverfield had 3x times the budget and was 10x less interesting.

no, it's more interesting. as a way of shooting sfx, it's rly unusual.

cloverfield and the host both feature monsters, but are going for different enough effects that debating which is more successful is no more elucidating than ET vs The Day The Earth Stood Still or some such shit

they're both monster-attacks-city movies of the late 00s

we can debate which one achieves the more interesting effects can't we?

ILX doesn't think comparing things is useful, for some reason.

Cloverfield may have more thrills and chills, but Host seems a lot more suggestive and emotionally effective. to just settle for "it's no cloverfield!" is no brighter than "it's no independence day!"

Did anyone say the Host is a Cloverfield?

What's a cloverfield?

wait don't tell me

And, if we are gonna look at stuff both movies are trying to do - keep the shape and nature of their monsters ambiguous - The Host impresses me more for getting us both far away and superclose to it, while still making it pretty hard to describe fully in memory.

It was...sort of like an octopus

But it could run, I think

as a way of shooting sfx, it's rly unusual.

― no one was protesting when this happened to (history mayne), Tuesday, September 21, 2010 9:18 AM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

we can debate which one achieves the more interesting effects can't we?

― no one was protesting when this happened to (history mayne), Tuesday, September 21, 2010 10:07 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

you may be using "sfx" and "effects" to talk about different things here (special effects and cinematic/narrative effects?), but the integration of blair-witch style 1st person shakeycam and elaborate CGI is the only thing about cloverfield that seems interesting to me. other than that, its characters, themes, plot and world-building are all quite dull. the host at least attempts to do something ambitious in combining comedy, family drama, social commentary and monster horror. it's not a favorite film of mine by any means, but the comparison just makes cloverfield seem that much more vapid and forgettable.

both films suffer a bit for their underwhelming monsters, imo.

when running, host monster looks like a sleek hippo

one thing in favor of cloverfield -- watching it on a pirated cam rip doesn't really degrade the experience.

I think if we've got "octopus that can run," "sleek hippo" and "leech with two feet" (what my description would be before I GISed it), I think that's a sign the Host's makers successfully made a creature that doesn't lend itself to immediate total comprehension.

evil giant guppy

For Gods sake, bring me a light, for we have caught THE HOST in the lane

I'd be more interested in seeing "The Host" if it was about a murderous Communion wafer

I think that's a sign the Host's makers successfully made a creature that doesn't lend itself to immediate total comprehension.

yeah, cloverfield manages the same trick fairly well, but i'm not sure it's a winning monster movie approach when you don't have a truly great creature to withhold. or rather: there is no winning monster movie approach absent a memorable creature. we think of godzilla and alien so fondly in large part because their monsters are unforgettable. alien manages to deliver this classic, fearsome, surrealist monster while employing an obscurantist strategy that's quite similar to the host and cloverfield. it succeeds in that case because giger's underlying creature design is so great.

i dunno if its a "winning monster movie approach" if your goal is to have an iconic figure like Godzilla, but if you're going for a sort of surreal awe - which I the Host is - then making a figure detailed enough that you can have it race across the screen killing people and the audience could only catch a few of its aspects, that's pretty damn cool. Cloverfield utilized a similar concept (JJ Abrams is a big Host nut apparently, rumored to be bringing Joon-Ho Bong stateside too!) but hid the dude behind skyscrapers mostly.

in a similar light: john carpenter's 80s version of the thing. the creature there defies comprehension by nature, but the film still delivers as a monster movie, because whenever we see an incarnation of the thing, it's both spectacular and truly horrifying. so it apparently doesn't matter whether or not we're given a singular and coherent "monster icon" by which to remember the film, so long as what we DO see of the creature manages somehow to tap into our fears and brand itself on our brains.

to be honest if alien had ended at ridley scott, I don't think I'd have a good idea of what the alien looks like, except for the facehugger and the cute lil' fetal alien.

should see the host again. often find that i understand and appreciate films more on the second pass -- or at least better synchronize myself with how they're asking to be approached. first pass is often distorted by my expectations going in.

Christ I need to see this again. So good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaxwv1rndPI

and yeah, it definitely qualifies as "overhyped" esp since what's neat about it isn't just CHILLS AND SPILLS, if you come in expecting cloverfield you will find it's no cloverfield

I really disagree with the less-is-more approach if your movie is about the monster. There are certainly trade-offs with how frightening you can make something with a full reveal, but maybe the fullest expression of a monster movie isn't to be frightening.

The alien queen fight scene in aliens feels like modern dance, for example, or at least what I imagine modern dance aspiring to.

modern dance aspires to a space reptile fighting a giant robot?

yeah some kind of expressionism that isn't bound by human bodies.

what kind of fucked up ballet do you have season passes to

merce cronenberg dance company

lol

Harvey Scissorhands plans to cut 20 mins from Bong's acclaimed new film Snowpiercer.

“According to film critic and programmer Tony Rayns ‘TWC people have told Bong that their aim is to make sure the film “will be understood by audiences in Iowa … and Oklahoma.”

http://twitchfilm.com/2013/08/weinstein-thinks-you-are-too-dumb-for-snowpiercer.html