Did the decade end? Well, crap.
***
Gary Sullivan has a magnificent list of his favorite movies of the decade over at Elsewhere. It’s a reminder that I’m way behind on watching all the best Korean movies, which he notes duly owned the oughts. In the 90s it was Taiwan & Iran, all those slow, long-take movies: Hou, Tsai, Kiarostami. South Korea had a protected film industry for half(?) the decade, with government-imposed quota system. Every theater had to have half their screens show homegrown movies. So a film industry sprouted, the most vital popular film industry since Hong Kong’s heyday. (I’m probably fudging the numbers, Darcy at Koreanfilm.org surely has the real skinny)
I know free marketeers crow, but if you’re not Southern California and want movies about you and your world, you’ve got to legislate it.
When I teach film, I always show something I’m passionate about, like Tarr or Ozu and everybody dozes. Then in with a genre-splicing Korean blockbuster and it’s like the Rapture. Someone needs to bottle what they do and sell it globally.
Comments on this entry are closed.