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Extras
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Video
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This is a review of the Korean LE, region 3 and released by KD Media. It’s 3 disks, with the movie spread over the first two DVDs, with the third holding the extras. Unlike the Hong Kong or Japanese DVDs, this one doesn’t have a DTS track, but it presumably has a better picture, and the packaging is pretty nice. It comes with a small book about the movie’s production. The box holds the DVDs and books, and has flaps on the front and back. KD Media released this movie again in a stunning 4-disk set about 2 years later.
Movie (1:38:40 on disk 1, 49:29 on disk 2, 2:28:19)
As important as December 7th or September 11th is to the US, June 25th
carries the same meaning and importance to Koreans. That’s the day
North Korea and South Korea became enemies. It divided the country,
the people and even the families. So when I heard that director Kang
Je-gyu decided to undertake a movie about the Korean War, my expectations
were high. Imagine my surprise, though. ‘Shiri’, his previous
movie, is probably my favorite Korean movie (and incidentally the first
Korean movie I saw), and I found myself in Korea for Mr. Kang’s follow-up
movie, whose literal translation, by the way, is ‘Taegukgi Waving’ (‘Taegukgi’
is the name of the Korean flag). It was supposed to open in late
2003, but was pushed back to January 2004, then to February 2004, and finally
opened. After a long day, I still went to the late show and saw the
movie, and even at 2 ½ hours, I was never tired. That’s even
more amazing when you consider I saw the movie without any subtitles.
Many people seemed to follow my lead. This movie was so popular here
in Korea that roughly one quarter the population saw the movie. It
won many awards, although most of them were technical. Just about
everybody who worked on the movie was nominated for one award or another.
Many, many comparisons will be made in the future between this movie and ‘Saving Private Ryan’ (which you can read about here). Indeed, they both have bookends in the present and are basically big flashbacks to a time of war, and they both rely on character development. ‘Taegukgi’, however, does something ‘Saving Private Ryan’, in my opinion, tried to do but missed the mark a little; this movie conveys its message perfectly.
I don’t think Mr. Kang likes war and I don’t think Mr. Kang likes a separated Korea. The movie basically says that war drives people apart, whether family members, neighbors or countries. The same basic message appeared in ‘Shiri’ and he carries that once again. As a carrier of this message, the actors do a very good job conveying the emotions needed. Superstar Jang Dong-gun and heartthrob Won Bin play brothers, and mention has to go to Mr. Jang’s performance. He’s great and brings great character to his… um, character. Some would say it’s melodrama, but this movie never treats its audience like idiots, so I would call it drama. Very good drama. All the characters are given nice room to breathe and their development is natural and believable.
Heightening the emotions and the drama, the action is great. The action scenes are huge. Way too big to come from a Korean movie. The movie is apparently the most expensive Korean movie to date, and you can clearly see why. The scope of this thing is big. I’m reminded of ‘Windtalkers’(read) in grandness (especially the last battle). I’ve read that people didn’t like the action because all the action is framed in tight shots. Well, that’s not completely true. Some shots are tight, but you see those in every war movie. They’re concentrating on faces and characters. The rest of the action is clear, and helped by the editing. Even if the shots are tight, you know exactly what’s happening all the time, and everything is intense. Mr. Kang once again shows his ability to shoot action.
This is a great follow-up to ‘Shiri’. Mr. Kang delivered. He made the movie bigger, with more action and more drama than ‘Shiri’. Once again, Mr. Kang’s movie breaks the most expensive movie record, broke box-office records and once again, he brings a great movie. I still prefer ‘Shiri’, but this one is mighty impressive. I very much look forward for Kang Je-gyu’s next movie. One bad thing about this movie being released is that, based on his record, it’ll take another 3 or 4 years for his next movie to come out.
To finish, I’ll tell you why politics isn’t my favorite thing. This movie made so much money that the producers wanted to say thank you to the public, and threw a sort of party so the public could come and meet the stars and crew. Well, at that time, President Noh Moo-hyeon was being impeached, so the day before the party was to be held, it was cancelled because of the impeachment. Now, if it was worth it, I wouldn’t be so mad, but this was a completely useless thing. The proof: a few weeks later in the elections to vote for a new president, Mr. Noh won the elections, only this time he had a majority government.
Commentary by writer/director Kang Je-gyu and actors Jang Dong-gun and
Won Bin
Well, as you’d probably expect, this doesn’t have any use for non-Korean-understanding
folk. Too bad because I’m sure it could be very entertaining.
disk 2:
After Commentary
This has Jang Dong-gun and Kang Je-gyu talking, probably, about making
the commentary and the movie. It’s only 2 minutes long.
disk 3:
Just so you know, all the writing is in Korean here, so the titles
are my own doing. If you follow my order, you shouldn’t have any
problems finding what you’re looking for, apart from the cities in my number
4, which don’t really have any order.
1) The Korean War
6.25 and Us
This runs about 24 minutes and 40 seconds long. As you would
expect, this talks about the war. It has a bunch of veterans talking
about their experiences. Some teacher comes in also. Near the
end, Jang Dong-gun and Kang Je-gyu give their two cents. That’s not
the best part, though. The most interesting parts are the picture
ans video footage from the war itself. You get to see troops marching,
tanks firing and the cities of 1950. That footage is not as ample
as I’d like, but I really don’t care. It’s great stuff, and you’ve
still got a fair bit of the running time taken up by these things.
If you care, I heard ‘North Korea’ many times, as well as the names of
cities.
The Main Battles
Okay, so this gets pretty complicated. You have different choices.
In each choice, you’ll see information about that particular battle.
It’s all in Korean, though, which doesn’t do most people any good.
You can, however, see a clip of the movie that depicts each battle, if
indeed the movie shows you that particular campaign. Taking look
at the dates provided (year/month/day), you can see how the war went.
In chronological order, they are: ‘Eumseong District Battle’ (1:49), ‘Yeonggang
Battle’, ‘328 Highlands Battle’ (1:30), ‘756 Highlands Battle’ , ‘Attack
on Pyeongyang’ (1:40), ‘Woonsan Battle’ (1:39), ‘Battle on the Outskirts
of Cheongcheonjang’ and ‘Paju Seokhyeonri Battle’.
Showing the Korean War’s Progression in ‘Taegukgi Waving’
You can get to this through the ‘Main Battles’ menu screen. This
is just to show you how territories waxed and waned in the war. There
are 9 main points, from June 1950 to July 1951. In each point, you
can access a minute-long animated gallery of still from that particular
place. Each place’s gallery is roughly a minute long, with the longest
going to around 2 minutes seconds, the shortest 39. In all, the galleries
add up to about 10 minutes.
2) The Process of Origin and Creation
Origin and Creation
The director a few producers, a consultant and a couple of writers
talk about how the movie got made, I imagine. This is pretty much
all interview, but you see some old war photographs, a few storyboards
and a little behind the scenes footage. It’s informative, but without
understanding what’s being said, it’s rather useless. It’s 12 minutes
long.
War Project
This is a bit longer, at 16 ½ minutes, and is pretty much the
same. The director, producer, production chief, assistant director
and even a Kang Jegyu Films representative and a Showbox inventment representative
talk about making a war movie, maybe. I think they talk about the
huge undertaking the movie was. With all the extras and props and
computer effects, it wasn’t a simple movie. You see a little bit
of behind the scenes footage as well as some press conference footage.
The thing finishes with the promo trailer two paragraphs down, although
it’s a condensed version. Over this, you see a small picture-in-picture,
with the director talking. Again, nice, but without Korean in the
language centre of your brain, you’ll probably not find this enlightening.
Storyboards
You can choose 3 angles: movies and storyboards, storyboards or movie.
If you choose the first, the top half of your screen is storyboards, the
bottom half is the movie. The boards pretty much the same as the
movie, apart from the more action-y scenes. I mean, the same.
The framing and the angles are pretty much the same. The boards are
animated, whichever angle you choose. You’ve got 6 scenes to choose
from: Jin-tae’s Home (2:20), Daegu Station (1:15), Neungsun Battle (0:57),
Daedae Medical Barraks (1:57), Counterespionage Corps (2:12) and Doomillyeong
Highlands (1:53).
Promotional Images
This is one of those things you might see at Cannes, and it looks very
much like an intermational trailer. It uses the music from ‘2009:
Lost Memories’. The thing starts out with plenty of action, then
drama, then action again. The last minute and a half or so is behind
the scenes footage. It shows the movie being shot, which is really
interesting. It’s about 4 minutes and 40 seconds long.
3) Taegukgi’s Mental Attitude/Frame of Mind/Resolution (not sure about
the translation)
If you don’t know who these guys are, their names and credit appears
(albeit in Korean) every time you see their faces. This thing is
basically all interviews with some behind the scenes footage. Whoever
appears
on screen talks about various things. I’m sure they talk about their
roles and how they got into them. One person talks about the action
school they went to. The director, producer and pretty much all the
actors talk in here. About 17 minutes 42 seconds.
4) Their Mark/Footprint
This is essentially a behind the scenes doc. You can choose some
13 cities, and see what was there. Every now and then you’ll get
a soundbite from various cast or crewmembers. Everybody in the cast
and crew gets their chance to say something, also. Other than that,
it’s just behind the scenes footage. It’s great to watch. The
scale was huge, and you can certainly see that here. You see a lot
of Mr. Kang giving out directions, various actors following them and many
explosions going off. Now, I know that if you can’t read Korean,
my telling you the names of the cities won’t do you any good. For
completeness’ sake, I’ll run off the cities and their running times, but
you apart from the individual cities, you can also choose a Play All feature
(on the left, choose the middle option), which follows the movie order,
not the chronological order of the shoot. In total, the videos are
around 44 ½ minutes. The last thing you’ll find here is something
called ‘Highlight’, which, I think, is all the different intro bits edited
together. It’s a minute 12 seconds long. Roughly from top to bottom,
the cities are: Yanggu (2:06), Bucheon (2:33), Jeongseon (2:10), Pyeongchang
(3:21), Asan (2:48), Yeongdeok (3:26), Jeonju (5:12), Gimje (1:56), Gyeongju
(3:29), Hapcheon (7:19), Gokseong (2:30), Busan (3:16) and Sooncheon (2:53).
5) Unseen People
This concentrates on the people behind the camera. The director
of photography (whose shirt will probably offend some English-speaking
people), the director, the producer, the production designer, the special
effects supervisor, the visual effects supervisor, the composer talk about
working on the movie. They probably talk abour reading the script
and wondering how they would do what the director wanted. Roughly
18 minutes, 18 seconds long. Interesting behind the scenes footage
(or pre-vis, or pyrotechnics testing, whatever the case may be), but most
people outside Korea will find this mostly useless.
6) Theatrical Trailer
I first saw this on the Internet. I wanted to see the movie before
I saw the trailer, but if I hadn’t known about the movie, this pretty well
would’ve cemented my resolution to go see it. It’s an awesome trailer,
full of action and emotion. Two minutes and 49 seconds long.
The score from ‘2009: Lost Memories’ is used here as well.
7) TV Spot
Like a mini version of the trailer. Only 32 seconds, though,
but still very nice to see.
8) Poster Gallery
This is neat. You have 20 posters per page. The left half
is the poster, the right have are the thumbnails. These must be concept
posters because I don’t remember seeing these anywhere. I saw a few
but not many of the 39 they show here. Interesting ideas. Some
of the posters are the same except the tinting is different.
Audio
The sound is in Korean Dolby 2.0 and 5.1. The 5.1 track is just
amazing. Even though there’s no DTS track, the Dolby sounds perfect.
Positions are accurate, with very nice range. The surrounds are ample
and well mixed. The voices are dead centre and are always clear.
The score uses all the speakers, including the subwoofer, and is very nice
and emotional. Ambient sounds and other effects use up all the speakers
as well. When the bullets start flying, they really start flying.
Their direction is very accurate and the numbers are plentiful. You
feel you’re in the middle of the battle, with mud flying in your face.
It’s quite an experience. The subwoofer gets quite a workout, because
there are many explosions, or tank rumblings or other such bassy sound.
This is an incredible experience, and I can just imagine what a DTS track
can sound like.
Video
2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. With war movies, there’s always
the danger of having pixelation, for you always have shrapnel and dirt
and other such debris flying around. That coupled with the usual kinetic
camera work and relatively quick cuts can wreak havoc on the authoring.
Lucky, the movie being split over two disks, the video handles everything
perfectly. All the mud and bullets are clear and defined. There
are no compression artifacts of any kind, or any other authoring flaws
for that matter. Hell, there aren’t even any print flaws. So,
no specks, scratches or grain. The picture is clear and clean, with
accurate colours and great contrast. There’s nothing wrong with the
picture. In fact, it’s a great picture. It’s pretty much perfect,
as far as I can see.
7/12/2004