'Seoul Urban Legends' ('Seoul Villages' adapted into movies!)

In case you missed the VIP Presentation of 'SEOUL URBAN LEGENDS' ('서울 도시 전설들') in CGV Apgujeong on October 31, here's what you need to know about the first adaptation of my short stories into movies.

(Answering the question 'Some films are very close to your original stories, others build upon them. Any remarks?': 'Books are triggers. Authors and readers create their own images in their own heads. It's very stimulating to see each and every one of these very diverse and gifted creators add their own creative layers of fiction and reality'. With CHE Heesuk, YOU On, and KIM Yong-ho during the VIP presentation in CGV Apgujeong (photos Pulse9)

ABOUT 'SEOUL URBAN LEGENDS':

• 'Get out of your comfort zone, and dive into a fictional Seoul '
  
• an omnibus movie featuring 4 short films by 6 Korean filmmakers:
• 'Sweat Dream' (directed by CHE Heesuk)
• 'Black Snow' (directed by YOU On)
• 'Guisin-dong' (directed by CHOI Jong Wook, KIM Ye Jin, WON Chang Sung)
• 'de Vermis Seoulis' (directed by KIM Yong-ho)
  
• adapted from Stephane MOT's 'Seoul Villages', a collection of short stories about a fictional Seoul
• produced by Pulse9, sponsored by Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA)
• independent cinema with a touch of A.I.
  

ABOUT THE SHORT FILMS AND THEIR DIRECTORS:

• 'SWEAT DREAM'
  (DIRECTED BY CHE HEESUK):
  
  
• 'Yes, this heat is inhumane, but is there even any humanity left in a world controlled by A.I.?'
• From experimental film to music videos, CHE keeps exploring humanity and technology
  

• 'BLACK SNOW'
  (DIRECTED BY YOU ON):
  
  
• Mi-hyun finds a boy lying on the street; her city and her life itself start feeling more intense.
• An expert in short format contents, 'On Oppa' is also a TikTok phenomenon with over 21M followers.

• 'GUISIN-DONG'
  (DIRECTED BY CHOI JONG WOOK, KIM YE JIN, WON CHANG SUNG):
  
  
• If Seoul's most mysterious neighborhood claims you, don't even think about escaping it'
• Glamour or underground? CHOI, KIM,, and WON track all vibes across Seoul and beyond.

• 'DE VERMIS SEOULIS'
  (DIRECTED BY KIM YONG-HO):
  
  
• Life is a masquerade, worms roam Seoul, and acclaimed photographer KIM Yong-ho invites you to a surreal experience.
• Iconic fashion photographer turned artist, KIM Yong-ho brings a new light to the fabric of reality. 
  

• FOUR VERY DIFFERENT CREATIVE APPROACHES:
• They're all visual creators expert in their field, they're all making their first movie
• Four radically different creations (around 20 mn each):
  
• CHE Heesuk added new dimensions to the protagonist's struggles by transposing the original short story, set in early 90s Seoul, into a dystopian future.
  
• YOU On opted for a vertical format to focus on the characters. 
• CHOI, KIM, and WON built a ghost story on top of the original one, with a resolutely indie / underground touch.
• KIM Yong-ho created a highly artistic experimental film based on still pictures and quotes from the book
• Like the book combines multiple fictions about a shapeshifting city, the film combines multiple approaches of these fictions. 'This might be the very definition of a city: a work of fiction, utterly real, but always eluding its authors'.

 

(Answering the question 'Your fiction is timeless, but your background also includes startups. What did you think when you learned that A.I. virtual characters would appear in the adaptations?') 'These virtual characters belong to what's known as the 'uncanny valley', and 'Uncanny Valley could be the name of one of my fictional Seoul villages. This particular technology opens new possibilities for all kind of visual creators, actors, and performers, and it's significant to see Korea's independent cinema explore it."

We'll keep you posted about the distribution of the movie and the next steps. 

The happy few (well actually enough to fill twice the theater) who attended the VIP presentation of Seoul Urban Legends could watch the teasers and the filmmakers' interviews before a Q and A session. KIM Yong-ho's 'de Vermis Seoulis' was then screened twice so that everyone who came could watch. The whole team thanks those who could make it that day as well as everyone who supported this project that only started a few months ago.

'Seoul Urban Legends' in Tokyo for TIFFCOM 2023 (with YOU On, CHOI Jong Wook, CHE Heesuk)

ABOUT THE BOOK:

If you haven't read 'Seoul Villages' yet, download the free ebook:

• 'Seoul Villages' (EN)
• '서울 마을들' (KR)
• '서울 마을들' (EN/KR)
• 'Séoul Villages' (FR)

blogules 2023
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
NEW: join blogules on Facebook!!! and Twitter (@stephanemot, @blogules)
Enjoyed my neuroses? Check my prose: Seoul Villages, dragedies.com.

 

*  among many others:

• 소설 '서울 도시 전설' 옴니버스 영화로…"깊고 놀라운 표현"(종합) [N현장] - 뉴스1 - https://www.news1.kr/amp/articles/?5216311
•  [[영화] 31일 사진작가 김용호의 실험영화 <데 베르미스 서울리스> 시사회 -https://m.monthly.chosun.com/client/mdaily/daily_view.asp?idx=18655&Newsnumb=20231018655 
•  영화·AI의 접목…예술 분야 신인 감독이 AI와 만났을 때[SS현장] - https://m.sportsseoul.com/news/read/1364905
  

The Housemaid (Im Sang-soo)

Ahead of the 63rd Festival de Cannes, "The Housemaid" (하녀) premiered yesterday in Seoul : IM Sang-soo's latest movie will air on Korean screens starting May the 13th, and on the Croisette the next day.

This is a remake of a great Korean classic by KIM Ki-young (1960) : a psychological drama, already audacious 50 years ago, where a man cheats on his wife with their maid. Korean media were pretty much excited by a glamorous erotic thriller featuring a clash of actresses : the betrayed spouse (Seo Woo) et her rival (Jeon Do-yeon as the title role). I was expecting different kinds of surprises from this audacious filmmaker.

And yesterday, I wasn't disapointed : IM once more delivered a well crafted movie, a stimulating actors direction, and a powerful social satire. He didn't hesitate to somehow rewrite the original story, inverting the roles and moral standards.

In this version, the femme fatale is not the maid but the mother in law (Park Ji-yeong) who forms with the husband and wife (Lee Jung-jae et Seo Woo) a perfect trio of vain characters as artificial as their luxurious yet Hitchcockian mansion.

The actual pair of actresses lies around the pivotal role of the housekeeper. In "The President's Last Bang", IM Sang-soo carved an amazing Baek Yoon-sik. With "The Housemaid", he's not only pushing Jeon Do-yeon on the way to a second Palme d'Or, but also bringing the best in Yoon Yeo-jeong.

And once more, enjoying the winding road between a classic tragedy and a dark comedy.

blogules 2010 (see also this post in French)

Watchmen and the nature of Alan Moore's power

As the screens get filled with spectacular images of Zack Snyder's action movie sharing the same title as Alan Moore's delicate masterpiece, I welcomed Salon's interview of 'The wizard of "Watchmen"' (Andrew Firestone - Salon - 20090305).

At last ! The only person who could say something relevant and intelligent about his own work (which once again, has nothing to do with a recently released popcorn byproduct*).

In very deed, Watchmen is not about comics and superheroes. ""Watchmen" is an intelligent meditation on the nature of power".

Intelligence and power ? Alan Moore knows something about those, alright. As well as he knows something about human nature, its beautiful as well as its lighter and - preferably, I reckon - darker sides.

To stay with Watchmen characters, I think the darkest side of Alan Moore resides not in Rorschach, but in Dr Manhattan : the systems he designs are as perfect, but the key difference is that they are meant for planet Earth, perfectly human and humanly flawed, a tribute to intelligence**. Not the boring, dull, sterile Ozymandias kind of intelligence - the sparkling, stimulating kind.

If Stan Lee revolutionized super heroes and the comics industry, Alan Moore revolutionized comics as a medium*** for human intelligence and creativity. And in that extent, there is something fictionally autobiographical in Watchmen, "an intelligent meditation on the nature of Moore's power".

I was not surprised to learn that Moore produces several pages of script for each final page. The edifice requires an incredible concentration from its author, and there is just no way one could add, move or retrieve any single piece without ruining the work and provoquing its collapse****. The movie, any movie, was doomed to fail from the start.

Moore knows how to lift existing characters to new dimensions, and he changed the Swamp Thing or Batman forever, reinvented actual or virtual figures from the past, but he can do much more than that, lift the burden of all existing rules, build his own universes, bend space and time, explore fiction beyond Pynchon or Borges. How's that for superpowers ?

His best moments ? When he starts from scratch. And even then, he must always move on before it gets boring to him... which happens much earlier than it does to us. This author simply cannot stick to one thing, even from a dark swamp.

Yeah, the man's back to "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" - not my favorite. But he's a human being, remember ? And his "Lost Girls" will probably expose new weaknesses.

I probably won't read those two, but I'd love to have a peek at his scripts.

Which, I know for sure, will be a delight for scholars decades from now.

PS: I also committed three blogules in French about Alan Moore : two lamenting about the disastrous choices of filmmakers ("Watchmen - Le Film" - 20081210 / "V for Vendetta - c'est Alan Moore qu'on assassine" - 20060323), one pointing out how "V" became IRL when, following the 2005 terror attacks, London authorities lauded their surveillance systems as their "Ears" and "Eyes" ("V for Vendetta. V : c'est arrive en 2005" - 20050724).

* Haven't watched it yet (who watches the Watchmen anyway?), but I will. Eventually.

** What's in a Worldsmith ? This Blue Man Group Of One would build with "materials" (please don't nuke me Doc, I know I'm being utterly reductive and classically / quantumly wrong) where the Bard Wordsmith mindnipulates "immaterials".

*** I'm not saying "a" as "one" : in Watchmen, Moore mixes all kinds of media (comic strips, novels, radio, cinema, press, TV, sketches and paintings...).

**** see (in French also) "Watchmen - Frappes chirurgicales et hommages collatéraux".

David Attenborough, one life on Earth

I would never tire of watching TV series from Sir David Frederick Attenborough. Each time I end up thinking why wait for this strange animal to disappear from the surface of Earth before paying hommage to such an utterly exotic and brilliant naturalist from the BBC ?

Because the David Attenborough is an endangered specie ; a dodo exhibiting improbable feathers, carrying a surprisingly melodious breathless tune, and with a unique way of shaking all over while delivering incredibly valuable messages in an otherwise vanished language. Maybe the missing link between Darwin and Monty Python... actually, a discreet hello was sent by none other than the unforgettable agent of the Ministry of Silly Walks during John Cleese's cult documentary in Madagascar.

But Sir David would never dare compare the tarsier with a microwaved cat. His sense of humor is full of love for life in all sorts and shapes, life starring in breathtaking and voluminous tales matching the greatest of XIXth Century novels. This naturalist probably produced the most ambitious works to date on the ephemeral story of life on our ephemeral piece of cosmos, and "The Living Planet" may perfectly sum up both his achievements and those of life on Earth. Actually, "life" / "living" and "planet" appear in all titles, like trademarks. Non for profit trademarks : just marks of respect traded every day for any kind of emotion on any kind of place and under any kind of weather.

The younger brother of director Richard Attenborough (whose rather classical "Ghandi" shall be better remembered than a rather classical role of scientist in Spielberg's Jurassic Park), this Londoner works essentially for the Beeb, in audiovisual formats, and never balking at the most surprising images. Yet, I do believe his main talent lies in his writing : everything seems so simple and natural, like water running down the mountain... but imagine what it takes to start a sentence in Antarctica and complete it six months EARLIER in Kalimantan ! Even under the charm of his tale, one cannot but admire the clarity, the relevance, and the synthetic mind of this splendid achievement of evolution.

Naturally (indeed), years tend to go by, hills to draw more sighs, and winds to agitate a whiter shade of hair, but even at 81, Sir David remains this curious kid dreaming his naïve environmental dreams, and radiating eternal love for life.

Some sad day, England will cry for the loss of this beautiful life on Earth. That day, let us not keep his brain in formalin on some dusty shelf of a museum, but disseminate his ashes and works around to keep our planet and minds fertile.

"Jesus vs Mahdi" Prophecy - Red blogule to Bush-Cheney's war on Iran

Lobby Dick has decided : the US must bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. W is almost ready, just making sure he doesn't need any agreement from the Congress, that ugly and totally unnecessary offspring of democracy.
Make no mistake : just like the invasion of Iraq, this attack has nothing to do with the official agenda. Preventing WMD proliferation, getting rid of a dictatorship, and even securing juicy contracts for big corporations... all these are mere alibis, the Bush Administration's usual sales pitch*.
The aim of the game is to accelerate the final showdown between Iran and Israel before the World's most important regime change : Lord Dubya's rule is bound to end by 2008, and this mad crusader has yet to fulfill his most important task ; the so called Bible Prophecy.
If you missed the previous episodes, here's the story : Bush believes Jesus Christ's Second Coming will be provoqued by the ultimate war between Israel and Iran. Crazy enough ? There's more : the Shiite sect to which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad belongs believes the Mahdi is coming this spring... which means Dubya's favorite philosopher will face another heavyweight messianic figure somewhere between the begining of the MLB season and the NBA finals. This definitely beats Rocky Balboa's return, Jason vs Freddy and even Alien vs Predator !
Both sides consider it The Clash between Good and Evil... without noticing they're talking about the same God. So make that "Good vs Good", or better : "dimwit vs dimwit".

It would be laughable if human lives and nuclear powers weren't involved.

If God does exist, I guess the time has actually come to pay us a visit and wipe all this crap out of the surface of the Earth.



* Don't get me wrong : Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a bad guy and potentially as dangerous as Saddam, and the Iranian theocracy is as dangerous for World peace as the US theocracy. I'm only warning you like I did four years ago : if you follow Bush on his crusade, you are doomed. And this time, we all could be doomed.

Pink blogule to Hollywood - followers at best

Ang Lee truly was the best director around. To me, it means even more than the best picture award : he won on the human side, and anyway "Brokeback Mountain" has already become an all time great.
"Crash" won't reach that level. That movie reminds me of "Boyz n the Hood" : a "sign 'o the times" flick with a clear message and an interesting twist, but a little bit too much arranged and caricatural... just like Haggis' scenario for "Million Dollar Baby". You can enjoy it on the spot (good parts, great actors) but unlike Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing", the effect doesn't last. I guess Hollywood voters* were touched by the painting of the L.A. clamors reaching almost the top of their Beverly Hill fences.
That was a nice year for indies, but Hollywood didn't go all the way for their 2006 Academy Awards. George Clooney nailed it quite well by saying Hollywood "reflect society, not truly lead it".
Hollywood was two years too late because the majors accepted a deal with the Devil : our Administration passes the laws you want, don't attack us before the elections. Last year, it was as if the majors offered more playtime to their independant arms. But come moneytime or the All Star Game, only the big names did get their chances.


* (as Jon Stewart put it) "the first time many of [which] have ever voted for a winner".

Red blogule to Bae Yong June Airlines

Yonsama Grandeur ? Winter Sonata ? Korea Pride ? How about Secondhand Tico ? Instead of milking the Bae Yong-Jun cow, the KNTO (Kora National Tourism Organization) should move towards better vehicles and more perennial attractions. Wake up Korea ! How dare you want to be reknown for this scarf-wrapped excuse of an actor (Choi Min-Sik doesn't need scarves, but he is an actor) ? Can't you see this mirage is bound to crash, this "April Snow" is bound to melt ? Why not sponsor Dan Brown's next blockbuster so that the plot sits in Seoul while you're at it ? Don't waste time on fads and invest on the country's unique know how, what makes its culture so much tastier and spicier, even in the movie pictures industry.

Red blogule to the Rotten Globe Awards - Invasion of the buddy snatchers

Hard to tell which flick will win the Terror movie category among this year's Rotten Globe Awards nominees :

• "The invasion of the buddy snatchers" : a remake of Romero's masterpiece directed by Karl "The Architect" Rove, "The invasion" turns Joe Sixpack into a zombie voting machine unable to utter any word but "freedom" or "terror", contaminating friends & neighbors across the county ("you're against Him ? You're not one of us").
• "Lara Whitchcraft" : in this sick parody of America's Funniest Home Videos, GI Jane becomes a shameless torturer. X rated. Explicit material and language. A tremendous success for director Gonzales - even the boldest piracy won't deter much awaited sequels.
• "Shock & Awe" : and you thought Godzilla was the only towering menace to civilization ? The trillion dollar deficit is back, baby : angry and hungry.
• "Donald's wonderful adventure" : thanks to a powerful lobbying, Disney's creatures won't fall into the public domain anytime soon. But Rummy is very much likely to fall back into the private sector after january the 30th (ballot in Iraq ? pentagone out of track). Money, power, greed, handshakes with dictators... expect the most gruesome moments of animated movie.
• "The exorcist - reloaded" : brother Jeb is plagued with floods and hurricanes, father Herb's running out of stamina but Saint George has the power to defeat the dragon once again with a double barrel tommy gun. Mel Gibson's brilliant (err... make that "enthusiastic" instead) impersonation of "never doubting dubya" brings tears to the audience and blood all across the Middle East.