【资料】2014《海雾》（金允石朴有天）4月1日法国17日本上映 各国影展还在继续

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http://www.mydaily.co.kr/new_yk/ ... 09481121&ext=na

                               
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http://www.1905.com/news/20140819/792845.shtml
《海雾》上映6天破100万人 比《追击者》快两天
时间：2014.08.19来源：1905电影网作者：橙小樱

                               
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  《海雾》海报

    1905电影网讯 韩国新片《海雾》上映六天观影人数突破了100万。据韩国电影振兴委员会综合电算网统计数据显示，该片18日动员79139名观众，累计观影人数为101万900名。作为一部19禁惊悚片，《海雾》六天100万人的票房积累速度，比《追击者》快两天，和2010年19禁票房冠军《孤胆特工》速度相同。

    《海雾》是一部刺激五感的惊悚片，也不缺刺激感性的爱情故事，这让该片相比以往的惊悚片赢得了更多的女性观众。有观众在观影后表示：“《海雾》再看两三遍也觉得是非常精彩的电影”“一次看完之后觉得结尾总在眼前晃，感觉余韵好久”。

                               
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《海雾》片场照片

    日前主演之一的文成根也曝光了亲自拍摄的一组现场照片，引发了观众的热情回应。而这也是8月13日movie Talk现场，文成根和观众立下的票房公约：“如果票房突破100万人，就公开演员们在片场的照片，让大家看看我们是怎么玩的。”而文成根也在《海雾》突破100万人之后如约放出照片，虽然要和冷冽的天气作斗争，但演员和工作人员们脸上都带着笑意，还经常凑在一起拍合影留念。金允石、李熙俊、金尚浩吃着刺螠喝红酒的样子，也展现了洒脱的魅力。刘承睦和朴有天搭着肩膀哥俩好的样子，也吸引粉丝的瞩目。据称没有拍摄日程的演员们还会一起去登山，在拍摄电影的期间都成了“一家人”。

    《海雾》讲述的是“前进号”六名船员在海雾中遭遇了偷渡者而引发了不可挽回的悲剧，已于8月13日在韩国上映。

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http://www.1905.com/news/20140822/793868.shtml
《海雾》海外版海报 韩艺礼饰朝鲜族少女单独出镜
时间：2014.08.22来源：1905电影网作者：橙小樱

                               
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《海雾》海外版海报

1905电影网讯 由奉俊昊导演制作、沈成宝导演执导的韩国电影《海雾》日前公开了海外版海报，不同于韩版海报以六位船员为主角，海外版海报只有韩艺礼饰演的朝鲜族少女红梅单独出镜。

    此次公开的海外版海报此前曾经在戛纳国际电影节电影市场上公开，之后在韩国SNS和电影网站上传播开来，受到很多观众的关注。韩艺礼饰演的红梅可以说是这部影片的“绿叶丛中一点红”，在众多男性角色中有着极强的存在感。在海外版海报上，韩艺礼身穿大红色的裙子，蜷着身子躺在甲板上，令人好奇她有怎样的遭遇。《海雾》是一部刺激五感的惊悚片，也不缺刺激感性的爱情故事，这让该片相比以往的惊悚片赢得了更多的女性观众。

    网友们纷纷表示：“看过电影之后再看这张海报有着不一样的感觉”、“海外海报上韩艺礼真是太漂亮”、“韩艺礼这张海报似乎更能传达电影的情感”、“能感受到观影之后的余温，有体会到那种心塞的感觉”。

    《海雾》讲述的是“前进号”六名船员在海雾中遭遇了偷渡者而引发了不可挽回的悲剧，于8月13日在韩国上映，截至8月21日，累计观影人数已达118万人。

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http://www.meradio.sg/musicporta ... -first/1126616.html
Yoochun's first movie to be shown in Singapore


Yoochun was last seen on the small screens, playing the lead character in K-drama Three Days, a couple of months ago.

It looks like fans of the singer-actor may very well catch him on the silver screens in local theatres soon!

Sea Fog, starring Yoochun, Kim Yoon Suk and more, tells the story of six crew members, onboard a ship carrying illegal immigrants, who became involved in an uncontrollable twist of events.

The film's 10-minute promotional video made its debut at the Cannes film market and has since garnered attention from all over the world.

The movie distribution company NEW announced yesterday (May 28) that Sea Fog has been sold to countries including Singapore, Japan, France, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

While a local release date has not been set, Clover Films and Golden Village Pictures have confirmed that they will be distributing Sea Fog in Singapore.

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https://www.facebook.com/taoyuanff

https://tw.movies.yahoo.com/movieheadline/d/a/140822/3/16y2.html
大師伍迪艾倫愛情新片《魔幻月光》桃園電影節閉幕首映

2014年桃園電影節將在9月26日開幕，影展今天公佈第一波超強片單，大導伍迪艾倫最新浪漫愛情片《魔幻月光》將為今年影展閉幕，導演伍迪艾倫親自首肯在桃園電影節首映，讓觀眾可搶先見證艾瑪史東與柯林佛斯精彩的愛情魔力對決。此外，片單更是眾星雲集，同時囊括坎城、柏林、威尼斯及日舞四大影展精彩作品，包括奧蘭多布魯全裸演出南非警探的《祖魯追緝令》；如車手版《絕命鈴聲》由湯姆哈迪精湛演技新片《失控》；勇奪威尼斯影展最佳女主角義大利名角伊蓮娜柯塔領銜主演的《狹路相逢》；《全面啟動》女主角艾倫佩姬主演寂寞城市親密之作《肌膚之親》；韓國朴有天大銀幕處女作《海霧》，全球首席電影組合都將在今年桃園電影節齊聚獻映。

韓國朴有天大銀幕處女作《海霧》，討論人口販子的內心情慾糾葛，在一片白霧的海面上，正義與否已不在考慮的範圍內，每個人都為了私慾不擇手段。由《殺人回憶》編劇沈成寶首次擔綱導演，《末日列車》奉俊昊監製，《海霧》的黃金組合廣獲多倫多影展等各大影展邀約，是韓國年度重量級代表作之一，本片即將在今年九月於多倫多影展首映，桃園電影節將是亞洲地區影展的首映。

第二屆桃園電影節將在9月26日至10月5日舉行，影展為期十天，共六十多部影片，來自全球三十多國，精選自世界各大影展佳作，幾乎都是在台灣首次放映，更有許多是亞洲或是國際首映之作。今年的城市主題以「從桃園出發，前進世界」的願景，透過電影節推廣放映更加深文化發展。首波公布的片單便眾星雲集，想必已讓影迷們心動不已，還有更多大師作品，將會在近期陸續公布，敬請影迷們拭目以待！

更新日期： 2014-08-22

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http://www.1905.com/news/20140903/797246.shtml

第19届釜山电影节曝片单

“韩国电影的今天”全景单元将展映21部韩国电影，参展多伦多国际电影节的沈成宝导演长片处女作《海雾》

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http://blogs.indiewire.com/thepl ... ng-joon-ho-20140905
TIFF Review: Korean Thriller 'Haemoo' Co-Written By 'Snowpiercer' Director Bong Joon-Ho

REVIEWS BY NIKOLA GROZDANOVIC
九月 5, 2014 4:58 下午
0 COMMENTS

South Korean cinema has a special way of smacking you upside the head as soon as you settle in and feel like you’ve gotten a grip on its characters and the story’s direction. Take a look at any of the most popular films out there, particularly from internationally renowned masters Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook, and you’ll see what we’re talking about. This year, a single South Korean film, directed by relatively unknown Shim Sung-bo, found its way into TIFF’s prestigious Gala program (usually reserved for the glitziest star-filled movies of the season). In fact, it’s Shim’s debut feature as a director, with only a couple of writing credits under his belt. So how did “Haemoo” end up sailing its way into the significant international waters of Toronto, exactly? Having Bong producing and co-writing your project certainly helps, but making South Korean cinema still feel fresh and vital with its genre-swerving storytelling practically seals the deal.

Set in 1998, during the aftermath from the IMF financial crisis of 1997, “Haemoo” follows a ragtag trawler crew, scraping to survive as fishermen in economically desolate times. Captain Kang (Kim Yoon-seok) is the kind of man who considers his rusty, old and half-broken ship ‘Junjin’ a family member, stubbornly ignoring everyone’s suggestions to do away with it. Meanwhile, when he comes back home and catches his cheating wife in the middle of the act, he merely express his annoyance with a tiresome sigh. With a five-man crew under his leadership, including a wise old engineer who comically hides from debt collectors, and 26-year-old Dong-sik (Park Yu-chun) who prides himself in being a sailor, the walls are closing in on Kang because there’s no catch big enough to fish his way out of the financial woes that are drowning him and his brothers-at-sea. With his back up against it, Kang sees no way out other than to accept an illegal smuggling job from a local shyster known for transporting contraband from China. The cargo? Chino-Korean immigrants.

The unraveling of the plot begins when one of the immigrants, Hong-mae (Han Ye-ri), accidentally falls into the water mid-transfer. After a second’s hesitation, Dong-sik jumps into the water and saves her, silently vowing, it seems, to be her protector from there on out. Meanwhile, at the sight of two women among the frightened and confused group, Kang mumbles to himself how having women on board his ship is bad luck. Yet, even with these ominous signs and foreshadowing, including a near-fatal incident in the opening sequence of the film, nothing truly prepares the audience for what Bong and Shim have in store once the sea fog (the literal translation of ‘Haemoo’) sets in. Adventure, action, romance, horror and comedy of the darkest kind reign simultaneously once the shocking incident occurs. To reveal this incident would spoil the gumption shown by the filmmakers, but suffice it to say that "Haemoo" becomes an all-together different kind of beast. For better, and for worse.

Haemoo
Never in a million years would someone be able to watch this film for the first time and guess that it’s a debut feature. So assured is the direction, so purposeful is the camera that frenetically follows the characters on the boat, so optimally bleak are the wide shots of the isolated ship, aimlessly stuck between the darkness of the ocean and the darkness of the thundering skies above. The cinematographer Hong Kyeong-pyo truly deserves accolades for imbuing the picture with a ghostlike atmosphere that makes any Tim Burton picture look like a Skittles commercial. Add to this the character of the ship itself, thanks to the screenplay’s intelligent scattering of episodes across various locations on the vessel, and you’ve got yourself a picture of truly epic dimensions. Bong Joon-ho’s influence is felt from rhapsodic start to somber finish, and it’s clear that the two men have built a good working foundation from their first collaboration, Bong’s brilliant “Memories of Murder,” which Shim co-wrote. Mind you, once the titular fog envelops the ship and all the hearts and minds on board along with it, the tone of the film obscures any genuine attributes these characters may have possessed in the first half of the film.

About two-thirds in, a realization creeps in that this is a carefully crafted story with characters that can only exist in fiction. The effect is one of dispelled movie magic, not unlike Bong’s recent “Snowpiercer”. People begin to lose their minds, and human desires flare up, in comically nightmarish fashion that’s much too quick to properly absorb and admire. This unwelcome feeling still doesn’t stop one from enjoying the devilish fun when one of the crew members calms everyone down by saying “we are all in the same boat. Literally!” The performances from the three leads, Kim in particular relishing his role with subtle viciousness similar to Humphrey Bogart in “Treasure of Sierra Madre”, also anchor the film so that it doesn’t get too lost in the tonal twists and turns. And once the fog clears, despite the questionable pace along the way, Shim has much to be proud of.

South Korea’s peculiar brand of cinema is doubtlessly thrilling when done right. Similarly though, it can tip the genre scales a little too forcefully at times, making for a nauseous ride. "Haemoo" is bit of mixed bag in that sense, and a certain time-jumping decision at the end will leave many international audiences scratching their heads, while it may very well resonate with a more understanding South Korean crowd. In any case, "Haemoo" is a picture worth seeing for its thrills, scrupulous tension-building and mischievous genre twists that will have you gasping one second, and laughing the next.

corona0911

http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk ... f-2014-haemoo-27815

TIFF 2014: Haemoo
TIFF 2014: Haemoo film still
BY
DAVID EHRLICH
07/09/14 02:32

Bong Joon-ho sets sail with a human trafficking thriller on the high seas.

A devious film about desperate people, Shim Sung-Bo’s Haemoo absolutely drips with the conviction that has made contemporary Korean pop cinema such a source of international excitement. A waterlogged morality play in the guise of a breathless thriller, Shim’s film, like the best of those directed by his co-writer Bong Joon-ho (here returning the favor for Shim’s contributions to the script for Memories of Murder), is a perfect storm of disparate tones and genres.

Assimilating influences as diverse as Sunshine, Southern Comfort, and The Caine Mutiny into its sea bound story of human trafficking, Haemoo is ultimately so gripping because of how Shim is able to bend the film’s myriad modes into a bold and singularly lucid portrait of the unraveling male id.

Shim drops anchor in the fall of 1998, Haemoo opening on the docks of a brittle fishing village; the Gloucester, Massachusetts of blue-collar Korea. The film never deviates from the presentness of its characters to explain why its set in the past, but the period choice is a pointedly curious one for a film that isn’t beholden to a true-life story, and a cleverly roundabout way of foregrounding the shadow of the Asian Financial Crisis. Kang (Kim Yoon-seok) is the gruff and barnacled captain of a local fishing boat, and the pinch is already starting to chip away at his livelihood and his manhood, alike. His boat is old and in desperate need of repair. His wife is having sex with another man, and can’t even be bothered to apologize when Kang catches her in the act. Kang is dangling at the end of his line, and there’s blood in the water. This is exactly what it looks like just before decent men are tempted to do bad things. For Kang, the opportunity comes in the form of human cargo, a few dozen Korean-Chinese immigrants that he and his crew are paid to receive in open waters and then illegally return to Korean soil. It’s an offer he can’t refuse.

So it’s off to a quick and dirty bit of Seven Samurai-style team-building as Kang assembles his crew, a ragtag group of men who share a believable familiarity if not an especially intimate bond. The deckhands run the gamut from the naive young Dong-sik (K-pop star Park Yu-chun) to a variety of more grizzled types whose ranks include a father figure, a horndog, and a kindly engineer. The script provides just enough rope for the immaculately cast actors to deviate from their archetypes and create the kind of messy dynamics that are riveting to watch disintegrate.

Things go awry almost immediately. A young migrant named Hong-mae (Han Ye-ri) falls overboard when trying to make the jump onto Kang’s ship, and almost drowns before Dong-sik can rescue her from the sea. The two kids soon begin a primitive romance in the ship’s dank engine room, but it isn’t long before the situation goes completely FUBAR. Mistakes are made, lives are lost, and bodies are dismembered.

The madness may never be quite as overboard as it is in the films that Bong has directed, but Haemoo nevertheless bears his stamp. Without diminishing the deftness of Shim’s direction (in particular how effectively he familiarizes viewers with the layout of Kang’s ship so that he can better exploit the geography during the film’s hectic third act), Haemoo is only elevated to something more than a high-wire exercise because of how convincingly the script pushes its characters down their slippery slopes. From Oldboy to Bittersweet Life and Bong’s own Mother, the pop films of the Korean New Wave that have achieved international success have done so by mastering this delicate transition, dropping their depravity in a familiar place and making sure that audiences can always swallow the story hook, line, and sinker. As Kang’s crew finds themselves in a truly unfortunate human trafficking jam (the details of which are shocking, and must remain unspoiled), the crisis builds in ways both organic and horrifying, the events wild but fundamentally believable. A post-apocalyptic pall eventually builds over the film as things get more dire, compromise giving way to compromise until there’s nothing left of these men but their bodies.

Time will tell if Shim is a director on par with his co-writer (and / or if he’s lured away by Hollywood to helm the inevitable remake), but Haemoo is an exceptionally promising start. It’s a thrillingly shot survival movie that dovetails with a sneakily sophisticated lament, the film is at its best when things are at their worst. Kang doesn’t need a bigger boat, he just needs a better one. Once the ship starts to break down, there’s no piecing it back together.

corona0911

http://collider.com/haemoo-review/
HAEMOO Review | TIFF 2014
by Phil Brown    Posted 18 hours ago

There are few countries in the world cranking out films with the consistency of quality of South Korea. Over the last fifteen years, filmmakers like Chan-wook Park (Old Boy), Jee-woon Kim (I Saw The Devil), Joon-Ho Bong (Snowpiercer), and others have turned the country into one of the finest cinema factories in the global market. After Haemoo, a new name can be added to the list in Sung-Bo Shim. Well, even though he’s new to directing, he’s not really new to this world having previously worked as Bong’s screenwriting partner (Bong also serves as producer here). Yet, for any director to deliver a project as moving, thrilling, unpredictable, morally complex, and just plain entertaining as Haemoo with one swing of the bat is still a remarkable achievement. Haemoo is a wonderful piece of work and yet another reason why South Korea has fast become one of the great movie centers on the planet. Hit the jump to find out why.
Despite coming from a background in genre film as a screenwriter, Haemoo clings to no tropes or established thrills. Instead it tells a contemporary tale, with all of the action, emotion, and drama of some of the most heightened Korean genre films. Reduced to its most basic element, Haemoo is a movie about a boat. More specifically, it’s about a fishing boat with an impoverished crew who agree to smuggle some illegal Chinese immigrants into South Korea out of desperation. It’s clearly a sketchy situation from the start, combining two separate collections of desperate lost souls into a claustrophobic setting and then waiting for things to go horrendously wrong. Inevitably that wrong happens, yet in such a shocking, dramatic, and movie-shifting manner that it would be unfair to get into specific details. Suffice to say the film quickly shifts out of mild swashbuckling and smuggling into something far more horrifying.

The plot comes ripped from a true story and while Sung-Bo Shim and his writing partner Joon-ho Bong are respectful to the material and careful to at least explain everyone’s motivations, it’s not a placid docudrama unafraid to embrace it’s genre elements. The film is a big wild ride, filled with the radical tonal shifts that Bong is known for. Haemoo can feel like a comedy in one scene, a romance in the next, and then turn into action movie moments later without ever coming across as tonally inconsistent. Shim is always steadily in control, with his eye aimed on eventual tragedy. The way the co-writer/director shifts his film on a dime halfway through is an undeniably impressive bit of storytelling. The shock effect is undeniable, and the sudden transformation into a deeply dark thriller from that point on (and does it between characters whom we’ve come to embrace) elevates the movie instantly. Shim may never have stepped behind the camera before, but he already has a gift for subverting expectations and manipulating conventions without ever sacrificing the reality of the piece.
He’s also a more than capable visual stylized, creating some beautiful imagery out of a single cramped location and easily weaving between well over a dozen characters through perpetually moving cameras without a moment of confusion. His film walks a delicate line between visceral cinematic thrills and complex emotional trauma, yet never seems to struggle at balancing the two. It’s a remarkably effective debut and if my description of precisely why seems vague, that’s purely because it deserves to be experienced through unfamiliar eyes. That’s when you’re putty in Shim’s hands and by the time he’s done, you’ll stumble out of the theater an emotional wreck. But at least you’ll know you’ve seen something special, vital, and of the moment. Hopefully Shim will be just as productive a filmmaker as his preceding countrymen, because he already added a welcome and fresh flavor to the South Korean cinematic stew.
Grade A-

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http://linkis.com/dorkshelf.com/2014/0/xo4L2
TIFF 2014: Haemoo Review
By Phil Brown September 6, 2014 | 9:15 am


Haemoo
Gala

With Snowpiercer finally out and as beloved as all assumed it would be, the time has come to appreciate Joon-ho Bong’s next movie….kind of. He produced and co-wrote Haemoo, while directing duties fell into the hands of his longtime writing partner Sung-Bo Shim. Bong’s fingerprints remain on the film in its radical tonal shifts, but beyond that Shim delivers a different beast of a film. For one thing, Bong’s heavy genre movie influence is all but removed. Haemoo is based on a true story about a ragtag of impoverished South Korean fisherman (with various degrees of prickishness in the group) who agree to smuggle a collection of illegal Chinese immigrant into their country for a little extra cash. Describing more would be unfair given the way that Shim and Bong structure their movie.

About halfway through the running time something happens that completely changes the tone, feel, and purpose of the film. For the first chunk, goofy humor pops up in pockets and there’s even an element of mild swashbuckling. By the end, the film is a terse and intense thriller with touches of Treasure of the Sierra Mandre. The script handles the radical shifts and complex morality of the tale masterfully, the acting is heartbreakingly real, and for first timer, Shim proves to be one hell of a director. He’s able to stage big set pieces, small claustrophobic suspense sequences, and intimate human tragedy with equal skill. Somehow he even mixes it all together in a film that feels tonally consistent despite its unpredictable nature. Tonal roller coasters have always been the Joon-ho Bong way of filmmaking and now it seems as though his former partner can continue the tradition from a different angle. The South Korean film world was already bursting with ridiculously talented auteurs before Haemoo, but it looks like we’re going to have to add another big boy to the list. (Phil Brown)

Screens

Tuesday, September 9, 6:30pm, Roy Thomson Hall

Wednesday, September 10, 12:00pm, Ryerson Theatre

Sunday, September14, 12:00pm, Ryerson Theatre

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http://letterboxd.com/briantt/film/sea-fog/

REVIEW BY
Brian Tallerico
Sea Fog 2014 ★★★★½

Watched Sep 05, 2014
Brian Tallerico’s review:
At one point in my notes, I actually wrote "Holy Shit." There's a breathtaking sequence in the rain that you should try to see on the biggest screen possible. I like the first half more than the second but like the whole thing more as I think about it. It's incredibly well-crafted and so, so grim. Best I've seen here on the ground over the first two days.

corona0911

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com ... ronto-review-730697
'Haemoo': Toronto Review
1:05 PM PDT 9/6/2014 by Clarence Tsui

Haemoo Still - H 2014
Courtesy of Toronto International Film Festival

The Bottom Line
A possible riveting nightmare fogged up by concessions to blockbuster conventions.

Venue
Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations); also San Sebastian International Film Festival (Competition)

Director
Shim Sung-bo

Cast
Kim Yoon-seok, Park Yoo-chun, Han Ye-ri, Moon Sung-keun

Bong Joon-ho produced and co-wrote first-time director Shim Sung-bo's thriller about a fishing-boat crew's descent into red mist after a botched human-trafficking operation

Quite a few recent Korean movies are obsessed with representing China as an external threat to security and order at home. There's a Korean-Chinese mob wreaking havoc in Seoul in the high-octane thriller The Yellow Sea, for example, and The Thieves' über-villain is a Chinese underworld kingpin. With Haemoo, screenwriter-turned-director Shim Sung-bo subverts this long-running equation by revealing the possibilities of Koreans being in the wrong when people from the two cultures collide, as he adapts Kim Min-jung's play about the real-life incidence of a Korean fishing boat crew casting the bodies of 25 Chinese illegal immigrants aboard after a botched smuggling operation.

It's not as if Shim hasn't dealt with this theme of crime and guilt before: His screenplay for the 2003 hit Memories of Murder, co-written by the film's director Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Snowpiercer), is a powerful suspense thriller which doubles up as a j'accuse about the moral void giving free rein to the neo-liberal, authoritarian excess of the U.S.-backed South Korean military dictatorship in the 1980s.

With Bong returning Shim the favor by serving as co-writer and producer, Haemoo (or "Sea Fog" in Korean) certainly boasts a similar sensitivity of turning a genre flick into a more substantial social allegory. Once in the directorial chair, however, Shim has shown himself to be more attuned to straightforward sensitivity than Bong. Subtlety and reflection are not Shim's strongest suit, with Haemoo subscribing to many of the conventions of both disaster epics and revenge drama, and the over-dependence of a central seaborne romance (complete with a below-deck sex scene) actually veering the film towards Titanic territory.

It's a gripping ride through the storm, nevertheless; with powerful imagery, a simple and accessible story and a stellar performance from Kim Yoon-seok (the star of The Yellow Sea and The Thieves, no less) as a captain slowly spiraling towards madness, Haemoo has become a commercial and critical triumph since its release in South Korea in August. Its bow as a gala presentation at Toronto and then a competition title at San Sebastian would certainly secure this big-budget vessel with an ever more respectable coating, and Bong's participation would probably lead to a niche release and/or ancillary action outside Asia.

The term 'IMF noir' has been used to describe films — among them Bong's The Host and also Lee Chang-dong's Peppermint Candy — which explore how ordinary South Koreans realize their fate as being dictated by the ebbs and flows of political and economic forces from beyond their home country's boundaries. Haemoo certainly qualifies as a fellow traveling show: set in 1998, three years before the real-life incident actually took place, the film's journey into darkness begins when trawler captain Kang Chul-joo (Kim) finds himself broke (and broken) beyond repair, his fortunes hit hard by the fallout of the Asian financial crisis.

Desperately trying to secure cash to save his creaking boat, Kang agrees to take on a 'croaker-fishing' commission, a phrase used to denote the trafficking of Korean-Chinese immigrants over to South Korea. It's a trip of no return for Kang and his crew as their harmless veneers begin to crack once the job goes awry. As deadly mayhem sets in — just at the very moment when a heavy fog renders zero-visibility around the boat — chaos reigns with all hands on board going crazy, including the bald, bumbling boatswain Ho-young (Kim Sang-ho), the swaggering handyman Kyung-goo (Yoo Seung-mok), the chief engineer Wan-ho (Moon Sung-keun) and his sex-crazed deputy Chang-wook (Lee Hee-joon).

The only faint light of humanity is personified here in Dong-sik (Park Yoo-chun), whose love for one of the immigrants emboldens him to rebel against this Kang-led rising tide of red mist. It's a crowd-pleasing trope no less — Park is a pop idol and soap opera star whose fame stretches well into China and Japan — but this romantic subplot derails the film's possible trajectory into fantastical eerie horror. When the girl, Hong-mae (Han Ye-ri), tells Dong-sik about her wish to head to an address in downtown Seoul once she arrives in Korea, you can really figure out how the story will pan out and who's going to survive all this.

Nevertheless, Haemoo offers a spectacle to behold: The camerawork from Hong Kyung-pyo (Snowpiercer) and Lee Ha-joon's production design are effective in highlighting the differences between the lands of vast, cold port and the unforgiving environments of the sea and cramped insides of the fishing boat. Kim Sang-bum and Kim Jae-bum's editing also helps the film set sail — their opening-sequence montage, showing the boat crew going about their daily business with bright bonhomie, is a clever signpost warning of how this camaraderie would inevitably give way to the emergence of their darker inner psyches.

Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations); also San Sebastian International Film Festival (Competition)

Production Company: Haemoo Co., Ltd
Cast: Kim Yoon-seok, Park Yu-chun, Han Ye-ri, Park Yoo-chun
Director: Shim Sung-bo
Screenwriters: Shim Sung-bo, Bong Joon-ho, based on a play by Kim Min-jung
Producers: Bong Joon-ho, Cho Neung-yeon, Lewis Taewan Kim with Yu In-soo
Executive producers: Kim Woo-taek
Director of photography: Hong Kyung-pyo
Production designer: Lee Ha-joon
Costume designer: Choi Se-yeon
Editors: Kim Sang-bum, Kim Jae-bum
Music: Jung Jae-il
Sales: Finecut
In Korean
No rating; 111 minutes

corona0911

http://www.koreanfilm.org/kfilm14.html#haemoo

    Haemoo

Yeosu Port, Western Sea, circa 1997. Cheol-ju (Kim Yun-seok, The Thieves), captain of an aging fishing vessel Advance, realizes that the harsh, post-IMF crisis economic condition will soon result in the loss of his ship and unemployment for his skeleton crew-- the bull-like boatswain Ho-young (Kim Sang-ho, Running Man), the sneering, thuggish, poodle-haired fishing-line "roller" Kyung-gu (Yoo Seung-mok, A Werewolf Boy), the perpetually horny, slightly cretinous deck-hand Chang-wook (Lee Hee-joon, Helpless), the soft-spoken and fragile chief engineer Wan-ho (Moon Sung-geun, A Girl at My Door) hiding from debt collectors and the young rookie Dong-sik (Park Yoo-chun, a.k.a. Micky Yoochun of JYJ).

Haemoo Against his better judgment, the captain decides to take on the job of smuggling a human cargo of ethnically Korean illegal laborers from China. The "shipment" turns out to include a pretty young girl Hong-mae (Han Ye-ri, The Commitment) to whom Dong-sik feels an immediate attraction. In order to escape the attentions of a corrupt coast guard officer (Yoon Je-moon, Dangerously Excited), Cheol-ju places his grumbling, unhappy "passengers" inside the storage tanks for the catch. However, a terrible, unforeseen accident takes place, forcing Cheol-ju and other crew members to reassess their plan. As the Advance sits enveloped in a curtain of sea fog, Dong-sik desperately attempts to reason with the increasingly agitated captain.

Haemoo (meaning "sea fog" in Korean) is written and directed by Shim Seong-bo, Bong Joon-ho's screenwriting partner for Memories of Murder (2003), adapted, like the latter thriller, from a stage play originally produced by the Yeonwoo Theater Troupe, also responsible for providing the source material for King and the Clown (2006). As you could readily guess by its stage-bound origins, the engine that drives this compact, taut thriller is primarily the ensemble acting by its superb cast, but this is not to say this particular adaptation is not cinematic. While the film eschews the kind of expansive, panoramic visuals we are used to seeing in a Hollywood blockbuster-- it largely avoids spectacle-oriented CGI effects, the kind that The Admiral: Roaring Currents, for one, indulges in, except for a rather symbolic depiction of a sinking ship in the apocalyptic climax-- one immediately notices the extraordinary beauty of Alex Hong's (Snowpiercer) cinematography, followed by Jeong Jae-il's (Flower Island) non-intrusive music and Lee Ha-joon (The Face Reader) and his team's intimate yet dense production design that keeps the ship's inner space dark, drippy-wet and oppressive (punctuated by jolting, sometimes tension-defusing, bursts of steam) yet believably looking lived-in.

The movie's tone harbors somewhere between the morally sensitive paranoia (with a deep appreciation of the ironic absurdity of human conditions) of an Alan J. Pakula thriller such as Klute (1971) or Parallax View (1973) and Roman Polanski's just-this-side-of-full-blown-psychosis simmering of Knife in the Water (1962), although it is not difficult to glean producer and co-screenwriter Bong Joon-ho's pet thematic concerns, with the poignantly-monikered Advance serving as a microcosm of the postwar Korean society propelled by the developmentalist ideology and Kim Yun-seok as its not-quite innately evil but fatally misguided "leader," ready to sacrifice "disloyal" and "foreign" elements to "save the ship." Many will recognize a satirical portrait of the arch-patriarchal political leadership of late 20th century Korea in his characterization (Yim Pil-sung's Antarctic Journal also pushes the character of the expedition leader played by Song Kang-ho toward this direction, with more mixed results).

Kim actually abandons his patented slow-burn villainy for this film: his Cheol-ju is instead full of poorly articulated resentment and rage, exploding in bursts of hatefully whiny-sounding accusations, paranoid pronouncements ("We are all gonna die here!") and self-justifications ("Who am I trying to protect with all this crap? You!"). Han Ye-ri, not a conventional plastic-surgery-altered beauty, is the perfect embodiment of a doe-like creature gracefully wielding marble-white long limbs, yet with a hardened, survival-minded core: it is to director Shim's credit that her desperate friendship/romance with Park Yoo-chun feels completely natural, despite the dire circumstances facing the characters. She was almost the best thing in T.O. P.-starring The Commitment and she likewise almost outshines the more aggressive theatrics of her male co-stars here.

Haemoo is not really designed to appeal to the same audience who flocked to Roaring Currents this summer, soon (as of mid-August 2014) to be crowned the biggest moneymaker in Korean film history (not coincidentally, the current champ is Bong's The Host): there are no great seafaring spectacles, and the scale of the story remains resolutely intimate, set within a single fishing vessel for most of the movie. Yet it is a terrific thriller and psychological drama, with the kind of richness of character and the appreciation of complexity of human motives that one looks in vain in screen-dominating blockbusters of today. Haemoo is yet one more evidence for my theory that the genre that Korean cinema truly excels at this juncture, globally speaking, is the mid-level-production psychological thriller in the '70s American cinema mold, rather than horror, comedy or even tear-jerking melodrama.      (Kyu Hyun  Kim)

corona0911

http://www.cine-vue.com/2014/09/toronto-2014-haemoo-review.html

Labels: Ben Nicholson, Film Festivals, Toronto 2014

Toronto 2014: 'Haemoo' review
★★★☆☆
Not content with dominating the rails with his recently lauded ferroquine sci-fi allegory Snowpiercer (2013), Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho has also sets his sights on the high-seas with nautical adventure Haemoo (2014). Co-written by Bong and director Shim Sung-bo, it showcases precisely why certain Korean directors are currently the toast of Hollywood, playfully lacing a sombre trawler-set stage play adaptation with social context, interesting characters and that off-kilter humour so redolent in the country's genre fare. Whilst not uniformly successful in its execution, it provides ample excitement and never fails to keep the audience off balance with unexpected plot lurches amidst perilous sea fog.


The 'Junjin' is a fishing trawler that harbours in a small coastal town and is serviced by a limited local crew. When they return home from their latest trip empty handed after a machinery malfunction, Captain Kang (Kim Yoon-seok) has a difficult decision to make with economic hardship weighing heavily mind, and his livelihood on the brink. In desperation, he agrees to a lucrative but risky job for a local businessman transporting illegal immigrants from China into the country. He and his crew collect their cargo without a hitch, but events take a turn for the substantially worse when a terrible accident throws into the balance the lives of everyone on board. Bong is known for character-driven genre films and this screenplay is no exception with the motley crew the focus of the opening act and each given time to craft individuals.

The captain may be primarily surly, but there's a more to his brooding than a mere single dimension. Elsewhere, Park Yoo-chun performs well as the newest addition to the boat, Dong-sik, and his flowering romance with one of the stowaways (Han Ye-ri) provides the films delicately handled heartbeat. There's also humour - suitably wacky in parts- to be found amongst these assorted sailors and their bickering and misbehaviour. Where Haemoo lets itself down is its descent into familiar action territory during the closing stages. Tension is painstakingly built over the first two thirds of the film and it does a sterling job of hiding its hand until the perfect moment. The frayed nerves finally snap, however, and the atmosphere briskly dissipates in favour of frustratingly unoriginal blood-letting that abandons the fine groundwork laid before it. Shim directs well, but he lacks the verve for this to sail through on its visuals and although the denouement returns to the unconventional (discounting the unnecessary coda), the climax reduces the impact of what was otherwise an enthralling voyage.

Ben Nicholson

corona0911

http://www.cinemateaser.com/2014 ... 014-haemoo-critique
[Trans] Toronto 2014 : #HAEMOO / Review
An intense, lyrical and raging first movie by the scriptwriter of MEMORIES OF MURDER.

Extreme, without compromise of principles, enraged : such is often the South-Korean cinema which loves nothing as much as frontally filming violence or moral dereliction - on top of which is added an absurd and/or some much surprising slapstick humor. With HAEMOO, Shim Sung-bo perpetuates this tradition of a cinema which, although mainstream and accessible, refuses to gentrify itself or align the concessions. In 1998, while the whole Asia is suffering from the after-effects of the endemic local financial crisis, a group of South Korean fishermen lead by the Captain Kang (the monstruously fantastic Kim Yun-seok seen in THE CHASER, THE MURDERER or LES BRAQUEURS [T/N French title for THE THIEVES]) struggles to make ends meet. The government suggests the sailors to buy their ships, especially the most ancient ones, however for Kang, acting as such "would be just like disowning [his] family". So this proud and scoffed man as much by the economy as by his cheating wife, is going to accept a risky deal: boarding stowaway immigrants from China (but ethnically Korean) on his boat and shipping them over to South Korea. For his first directing, Shim therefore decides to film on the water - such a pain - but it doesn't matter because his talent seems to be far more impressive than some simple logistical worries. The pre-opening sequence of HAEMOO alone let us catch a glimpse of the talent from the neo movie director to create a universe and to immediately immerse the member of the audience: a ship knocked about a lot by waves, fishermen gathered in precarious conditions yet enjoying each other's company warming their hands on bare light bulbs or saving each other's lives. This friendship, this fraternity, Shim will spend two hours to jeopardize it, torture it and be confronted with horror. Because just like his elder brother SNOWPIERCER, HAEMOO (co-written and produced by Bong Joon-ho) poses as a gigantic metaphor of the moral state of the world in time of crisis; of a capitalist system eaten away by quest for profit and exploitation of the others. Tenaciously dark in its perspective on how the survival instinct pushes to get one's hands dirty, HAEMOO gradually falls into hysteria from despair, madness, chaos, screaming and violence while all around Kang's ship an unusually thick fog surrounds the theater of this tragedy, as if illustrating the loss of all moral bearings from the characters. Shim's dynamic mise en scène doesn't seek demonstrative virtuosity: what the movie director films and the acting from the actors suffice to create a nightmarish lyricism - at the risk of drifting sometimes towards an overflow of operational momentum or a symbolism too emphatic. Seized to the collar, terrified by the strength of words uncompromisingly hit, exhilarated by the touch of hope an impossible romance between a sailor and an immigrant inspires, one can only admire this trial run that is HAEMOO. And to think it's based on a true story...

By Shim Sung-bo. Starring Kim Yun-seok, Park Yu-chun, Han Ye-ri. South Korea. 2h. COMING SOON (T/N about the official release date in French theaters)