Cyborg Preorders Open

YesAsia are now taking pre-orders for the 2-DVD limited edition release of Chan Wook Park's I'm a Cyborg, But That's Okay. Only the film is subtitled in English, but this still remains an incredibly exciting prospect. I must count my beans...

I'm A DVD, But That's Okay

DVD Prime are hosting some images of the I'm a Cyborg, but that's Okay DVD menus. The release is set for May 15th - though oddly absent from YesAsia's pages as I write - and the disc is certainly English friendly as far as the film goes, if not necessarily for the special features.

I want this. I want this now.

Nikki Finke Slurs Oldboy

Nikki Finke has written a piece that not only notes a possibly spurious link between the Virginia Tech shootings and Chan Wook park's Oldboy but also lays into the film pretty squarely and with little or no real basis for argument. here she goes:

...the pic received amazingly good and even great reviews from critics in the U.S. and around the world who (for reasons that escape me) loved its unsettling and terrifying tale of revenge told with relentless energy. Wrote Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times: "It says something when you come out of a film as weird and fantastical as Oldboy and feel that you've experienced something truly authentic. I just don't know what. I can't think of anything to compare it to." Well, now we know to compare it to real life, don't we? I just don't understand how critics with even a shred of humanity keep supporting films that celebrate violence in all its awfulness. Makes me nauseous.

Now we know to compare it to real life? First of all, Nikki, surely we can compare almost all films to real life. Even Eraserhead - just to take one example - is cleary a film associated with real life. Indeed, Eraserhead is more closely linked to David Lynch's experiences with baby Jennifer than Oldboy is to the Virginia Tech shootings - and, yes, this is mainly because it is a film made to relate to this moment in life, and Oldboy was not made to relate to any massacre that hadn't happened yet but - this is the key part - the massacre was not made to relate to the already existing film either.

Was Cho Seung-Hui motivated in simply trying to live out Oldboy? Where's the evidence for that? Did he see images in Oldboy that he could use to indulge himself, to feed into his own power plays and fantasies? Well, maybe he did, it seems probable to me. But that's something a whole lot of people do every day, isn't it, with all kinds of sources, not just Oldboy? Indeed, The Bible wouldn't be one-half as well selling if people couldn't use it to fuel their fantasies and induglences. Remove the drama - and even non-dramatised documentary narratives - that can't be used in this way and... bookstores would be virtually empty, TV would have to go off of the air and cinema would disappear in a puff of smoke.

Motives can't be called upon exclusively to explain Cho Seung-Hui's actions. I'm motivated to pay my rent, put food on the table and keep the cinema tickets and DVDs rolling in - but I don't go out mugging old people to boost my coffers. Motive isn't enough when a moral line has to be crossed. The first person to even find a shred of real evidence that Oldboy, or any other film, can actually lead to a moral breakdown in a viewer wins everything I own, including my Chan Wook Park DVDs. Countless times it has been suggested that such evidence was uncovered... and then the investigation is revealed as flawed, biased, faulty or just plain irrelevant.

As I commented in the piece about Dark Matter a few days back, the world needs films that deal with difficult and painful human experience. Dark Matter may well be one such film, Oldboy certainly is. And it's a moral film, and a wise one, and, sure, it features people doing a lot of horrendous things but it doesn't conclude that these things should be done. Do I really have to bring up Macbeth, say, and the horrible things enacted in that most revered, canonised masterpieces of drama?

Evil Is Alive

Kang Ho Song has become the first named cast memmber of Chan Wook Park's upcoming vampire film, currently best known as Live Evil - (or Evil Live or Bat, depending on who you believe). You may recognise the actor from The Host, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance or JSA and if you're anything like me, you're quite the fan.

A member of the KFCC forums suggests that Song will be taking the role of a vampiric priest. All we really know about the film is that man, many characters will be subject to vampiric infection in the film... but more details as and when they arise.

Cyborg Just Okay

As was expected, Chan Wook Park's I'm a Cyborg, But That's Okay did indeed go straight to the top of the Korean box office this last weekend - but with relatively humble ticket sales. Around 351,000 seats were filled, bringing in something like 2.1 million dollars, and compared to showings from the director's previous films this represents quite a slow burn beginning.

Sadly, it's doubtful that the film will end up enjoying the same kind of monstrous box office enjoyed by JSA and Oldboy, nor in fact, the same kind of international profile. Romantic comedies set around asylums can be rather hard sells - whereas bloody revenge, military investigations, curious mysteries and shocking violence can pretty much be depended upon to appeal in certain quarters.

I'm still hoping that the Chan Wook Park name is enough to convince Tartan to give the film the big push it needs here in the UK and across the US, but more than any of his recent revenge trilogy, I dare say they'll be aiming more for a risk-free DVD success than letting it all ride at the theatrical box office for too long with Cyborg.