New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Park Chan-wook.
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Kim Hae-sook, Shin Ha-kyun, Kim Ok-vin, Park In-hwan
Description: Holy man Sang-hyun learns of a secret vaccine trial to eradicate a virus that has plagued his flock, and he puts himself forward for the trial. A subsequent blood transfusion transforms the priest into a creature of the night. Wrestling with his carnal desire for what flows through the veins of the townsfolk, Sang-hyun encounters Tae-ju, the wife of a childhood friend desperate to escape her marriage. She introduces the man of God to a world of unspeakable sin.
Country: S KOREA. 2009. 133mins
Catholic guilt: priest Song Kang-ho is an unhappy vampire
A vampire sucking the blood from a tube inserted into a coma patient is just one of the outré spectacles in Park Chan-Wook’s latest epic.
A riff on Emile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin, it won a prize — probably for sheer chutzpah — at Cannes this year.
Park is the South Korean director whose Old Boy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance showed him to be one of the wonders of the East.
Here, his central character, a Roman Catholic priest named Sang-Hyeon, struggles mightily with the forces of evil that have taken hold of him.
The priest (Song Kang-ho) has heroically submitted himself to a vaccine that could stop a deadly African virus in its tracks and finds himself covered in sores.
Almost dead, he is given a blood transfusion that keeps him alive but turns him into a vampire.
But he’s a bloodsucker with a difference, guilty and unhappily prey to overwhelming carnal desire. And there’s Tae-joo (Kim Ok-vin), a beautiful married woman, waiting to seduce him.
The bored and unsatisfied wife of a young man he once taught, she soon becomes a vampire too. Only she is not the least guilty about being on intimate terms with the seven deadly sins, and plans for them to kill her husband.
Meanwhile, the priest tries to cope with his affliction as best he can, which is none too well.
Park’s storyline takes so many twists and turns and evinces so many changes of mood that it can’t be said to be a complete success. It is, in fact, overlong and grossly uneven.
But Song Kang-ho, one of Korea’s superstars, is so good as the riven priest forced into extremes and the film itself is directed, shot and produced with such flair that no one could deny it entirely.
Certainly the Cannes jury didn’t, giving it a share of the Jury Prize with Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank.
Park is clearly an exceptional director capable of being weirdly funny, quirkily fantastical, brutal and sexy, sometimes at one and the same time. There’s no one quite like him. Not even David Cronenberg or George Romero.
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To A Korean,
Of course there's more to Korean cinema, and Asian cinema in general.
The distributors are likely going by what the flavour of the month is. And with things like Twilight and True Blood being so popular at the moment, I guess they are riding on the surge of interest in the vampire genre. With subtitled films, this makes even more sense. A strategy to pull in revenue from people who wouldn't normally watch films with subtitles.
- Jock, London
But I think it sounds rather good. I think I might even try and see it.
- Mary, London, UK
As a Korean living in Europe, it sickens me sometimes to see only those extreme Korean films are shown here. People must think that we are such a weird and violent bunch and must have distorted ideas about Korea. It seems that when comes to Korea, only two subjects dominate. Namely, North Korea or ultra twisted and sickening violent movies from Korea(aka. South Korea). There seems to be no middle ground. Well, I guess we got to blame ourselves for keep on making sick movies.
- A Korean, Europe
Morning:
12°c
