Trailer here:
LINK
Have fun reading!
]]>CLICK HERE for the review!
Thank you for your time and readership, I assure you it is much appreciated!
]]>Read here!
Thanks for all the views/reads, though don’t be afraid to comment every now and again, it’d be much appreciated.
Thanks again!
]]>Check out my “assessment” of Christopher Nolan’s Inception
Thank you!
]]>The films are also quite different. Ahn Seon-kyeon is a musician and scriptwriter and A Blind River is a more artful film. Kim Jeong teaches at a University and Viewfinder is more academic. She has also directed several short films and a documentary trilogy on women’s history. Not to slight Kim’s artistic credentials, though. Viewfinder is a low budget film but it looks very good and is full of creative photography, capturing both the heavily industrialized and the naturally scenic character of South Korea. It has a fantastic soundtrack that wiggles between a Chet Baker and Lhasa de Sela mood.
From the web site for the International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul where Viewfinder premiered:
Viewfinder showcases moments in the lives of several people who meet by accident at the Namgang Rest Stop off a highway in southern South Korea. Kyung is in search of her younger runaway sister. Chang is a computer whiz who had recently lost his job, Kim Vac is a reporter-photographer who frequents the place, and Ona is an orphan media artist who works there, dreaming of New Asia Highway. These four form a loose network of loss and negotiate that loss in the digital age.
That’s all fine and good. The film does spend a good amount of time observing people using computers. What’s remarkable about it, besides the quantity, or rather, what’s remarkable about it in spite of the quantity, is that it all seems natural. Yes, we live in a digital age but this film isn’t about negotiating anything that’s peculiar to it. The tools are different than they were a decade or two ago but it’s a disservice to the film to make it sound like it might be nerdy, or SMS messaging trendy. It’s more weird and poetic and the focus is on people and their emotions.
If only it weren’t for this program note, which follows the synopsis, I wouldn’t be concerned:
[...] Following her previous documentary “Koryu”, director Kim Jeong tries to catch the motions of people staying and leaving, or the space of constant motion. The camera often follows the people from behind rather than watching them from the front and looks around the scenes, passing outside from the driver’s seat, which gives the audience the feeling of being inside the film. Viewfinder is an independent film with a low production budget. It tells about the communication, loneliness, and the emptiness of people living in the digital environment. The traces of people’s views and the results of their motions are delivered through digital texts. The internal emotions are expressed not on the human faces but on the virtual space generated by a computer window. The camera seems to be attracted to the new scenes created by digital technology and concurrently dreams of the space it cannot reach. Viewfinder is a cinematic exploration about the primal scene in the digital age considerately brought by director Kim Jeong.
I like the bit about catching people in the space of constant motion but the rest of it sends my bullshit detector through the roof. I don’t care if it’s a direct quote from the director’s commentary track. “The camera ... dreams of the space it cannot reach”. Help! I need a class in contemporary film deconstruction.
Viewfinder is a film about people, not the plague of the digital age. It’s about people living their lives, dreaming their dreams, and doing their jobs ... and one of the characters is trying to figure out why everything got a little fucked-up. She gives the film its emotional center. Films have been doing this for a long time. All four characters are portrayed well and are engaging. Choi Hee-Jin, as the photographer is a blast. She’s sweet and kind and thoughtful but often makes you wonder if she understands other people’s personal space. Photographers are like that. Lee Ho-Young is also good as the guy who finds people without ever leaving his computer and he sort of explains the movie through his philosophical poetry. Newcomer and unknown Moon Ha-in, as the popular Internet blogger who works the night shift at the rest stop where most of the action takes place, is the most intriguing, and probably the most together. She also looks a lot like Lee Yeon-Hee. At first I felt like Yang Eun-Yong, who plays Kyung and is more or less the lead, gave a rather flat performance but her character is supposed to be a little flat. There is a moment near the end which fleshes things out.
This is a film about characters, not tools. It’s slow-paced and low-key with a few quirky bits thrown in for spice. There’s some surreal dialog, some animation, a breaking of the fourth wall, and a supernatural scene where the subject of a photo doesn’t appear in the picture. It’s slightly bizarre but also very down home and it’s got a great soundtrack. It’s not going to play well at the mall but if you like art films with real emotion, get it at YesAsia.
]]>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs1_OyRwwpQ
http://archstonedistribution.com/movies/view/Orcs
http://www.facebook.com/OrcsMovie?v=wall
ORCS! : Faced with extinction, two park rangers are forced to defend the national park against hordes of rampaging orcs. Ancient and long forgotten, these orcs are unleashed from the depths of the mountains, and they won’t stop until we’re all dead.
]]>