Eric,
I can relate to that... “Our” MTV recently started showing Asian movies (mostly Korean) on weekend nights and I was pleasantly surprised by their quality. The stories may be familiar but the way they are visualized is just awesome.
Too bad that the regular channels don’t carry many Korean movies.

I just added it to my Netflix queue on your recommndation, since I’m always up for a scary flick. Interesting side note: the poster (cover?) looks a bit different on Netflix. I guess it makes sense: bloody vs. not bloody = Korean vs. American (we like the killing, but don’t want anyone to see it...?).

I watch Korean soaps and epics regularly, often preferring ones without subtitles for the former, since my imagination makes them less predictable. BTW, have you guys seen “301/302”? That story was definitely not “familiar”! :-)

hhp

hooray for foreign films! if only hollywood were so good. i watched “Shall We Dance?” again this weekend with the folks — the Japanese version. I’m almost afraid to watch the hollywood version to see what they’ve done to it. i myself am a bollywood fanatic. for a good B horror movie with great music and dance sequences you gotta watch “Gumnaam,” part of which is featured in the opening of “Ghost World.”

Best foreign film I’ve seen in a long time: City of God (Cidade de Deus). It’s incredible.

Hrant, I try to watch Korean TV at home, but then my wife throws things at me. Same goes for the Spanish-language station.

crugen,

The standard WS edition was toned down, the ’super special extended immaculately conceived ultra high-res super-duper extra-bloody’ edition has blood on it, like its Korean counterpart.

I got confused for a minute, I thought the bloody one was for the US release. It’s usually the other was around tho, isn’t it ? Don’t we usually get smacked with the dumbed down version of things, other than vice versa. The cover was one of the reasons I picked it up. Non-bloody version. Just seemed to have a little more of a ’what is happening in this picture’ feel about it.

Seems stronger message wise to not have the blood. Hmm?

Let me know how you like it ...

Oh, and BTW, that new film ’Dark Water’ w/Jennifer Connolly, is also a remake.

Interesting. I guess I assumed that because I’ve gotten screwed by U.S. rental and retail video chains renting/selling the not-very-clearly-indicated edited/censored versions of foreign films and not even offering the full versions.

Though, now that I think about it, it’s really the sexual content that gets snipped out. Which is true over all U.S. media. I should’ve guessed.

(I’m also resentful of the coverage of the Iraq war, so that’s the big reason for my little gripe.)

“What war?”

hhp

Oh, right. I forgot. I meant the rebuilding efforts against insurgent activities.

Recently there has been a lot of Korean movies showing on Swedish cinemas, including A tale of two sisters.
One I would highly recommend is Old Boy by Chan-wook Park. It’s one of the weirdest, strongest, most beautiful and disgusting films I’ve seen in years (and come to think of it, Santa Sangre was mainly just disgusting with a dash of weird, in comparison).
It’s supposed to be the second movie in a vengeance trilogy, and friends tell me the first part, Sympathy for Mr vengeance is even better, but I somehow find that hard to believe.

ƒ

Will second fredo’s recommendation for Old Boy.
Had a chance to see it when it was in limited release here in NYC.
Lovely, humorous and disturbing.

Trailer here, but doesn’t really do it justice:
http://films.tartanfilmsusa.com/oldboy/

I’m looking forward to Old Boy.

Then don’t forget the shield Chris.

hhp

Crugen,

I’m sorry, I guess i’m not explaining myself clearly, that whole schpeal at the top was just about the cover.

The ‘super special extended immaculately conceived ultra high-res super-duper extra-bloody’ part was sarcasm.

The movie isn’t censored, just the covers.

They say that there are two kinds of censorship for films in Korea; one for home consumption, the other for foreign. A theory has it that the censorship actually contributed to enforcing the people to visualize or to extend those parts that had been cut off, which explains well some of the success of Korean films that they enjoy these days. For Koreans had been trained en masse in audio-visual communications in that way for some decades.

Just kidding.