Bruce Lee

He is my hero. When I was child, I saw his movie. I didn’t forget that feeling. It was so exciting! After that I still love action movie. He was master of ‘Jeet Kune Do’(It is martial art.) His action was not fake. I mean it is real martial art.

His first movie was ‘The Big Boss’. In this movie, he was not main character. But his act was impression. So he got known for people from this movie. And he acted lots of movies. ‘Fist of Fury’, ‘The Way of the Dragon’, ‘Enter the Dragon’, ‘Game of Death’. He died during acted ‘Gme of Death’. So the movie was finished with substitute actor.

Chow Yun Fat

He was born small island in Hong Kong. His parents are emigrant, so he can’t receive regular education. When he was 17, he quit the school and began actor in TVB. The movie that he got spotted first is ‘God of Killers’ which is made by Ann Hui.

‘God of Killers’ was succeeded. After that he act ‘A Better Tomorrow’ by John Woo. ‘A Better Tomorrow’ was beginning of ‘Hong Kong Noir’ in 1980’s~90’s. So he is famous actor.

He act ‘A Better Tomorrow 2’, ‘City on Fire’. So he is a idol of Asia youth. And he go to America, enter the Hollywood. After that ‘Anna and the King’, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ are made he world star. Recently he act ‘Captain Sao Feng’ who is captain of Singapore pirate in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean : At World’s End.’

The God Father : The Father of Gangster Movies

If you are interesting in the movies, you must hear about the movie, "The Godfather". Although this movie is released in 1972, pretty old, many of Americans remember this movie as a masterpiece. This movie has a well-weaved plot and scenary. We can think that this is a just one of a gangster movie, however, many of audiences refuse it.
Why many of them think that "The Godfather" is so great? At that time, we know, there is not good equipments like today`s. This movie shows the magnificent scenary and plot with this! It has a long running time like "The Lord of the Ring", it is attractive enough to enjoy it. If you want to feel the father of gangster movies, then feel it!

Leslie Cheung

He is star of Hong Kong. He act Hong Kong noir movie like ‘A better tomorrow’. ‘Farewell My Concubine’(It is movie name) made he world-famous star. And he was famous for singer. He released several record, and held lots of concert. He was an idol of people.

1 st, April 2003. He killed himself. When I heard that news, I didn’t believe it. Because that day was April fool’s day. Many people were shocked. And they and I hoped it is not true. But he was gone. When he died, people said various opinion of the cause of dead. Suicide or murder. Also people said various reason, if he killed himself. First one is melancholia. Another one is stress from breaking up with his boyfriend(He is bi-sexual.). But that opinion and reason are still opinion and reason.

He act in ‘A Better Tomorrow’, ‘Days Of Being Wild’, ‘A Chinese Ghost Story’, ‘Farewell My Concubine’ and so on. He acted man’s side such as tough, charisma in ‘A Better Tomorrow’, ‘Days of being wild’. But also he acted woman’s side in ‘Farewell My Concubine’. He is great actor.

The Matrix - Simulated reality

The picture above is the most famous scene from the movie "The Matrix". This 15 seconds length scene where hero "Neo" dodges bullets created a sensation in the world. The Matrix has 3 series (The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolution) and is still the best SF/action/thriller movie ever. It was produced by Andy and Larry Wachowski, who are brothers. With excellent special effects, this movie won Oscars and many other awards. And also, Keanu Reeves became more famous than ever he was.

The thing that is very interesting in this movie are not only the special effects and cool martial arts but also, the plot and the background of it. The movie shows us the world that is simulated by the machines. Everything is fake and there is not a thing that we can actually call real. The famous lines in the movie "What is real?" (by Morpheus), and "There is no spoon." (by a boy in Oracle's house) give us hints to understand the main aspect of this movie.

If you look on the names of the heroes, locations, and ships they ride on, you can easily find that they are all related to mythicism. For example, the main characters like Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity, the city zion where the people fighting against machine lives and the ships - Avatar, Brahma, Nebuchadnezzar, Logos, Osiris, Prometheus and more. Each of them has religious meanings. They are the names from various religions and myths from Greece, Egypt, India and more oriental civilizations. I think the directors wanted to put a lot of hidden messages in the names.

I believe this movie would become a bible of the SF/action movies. I guess almost every one of you had already seen it, but if you want to understand the profound view of the world of the Matrix series, you must see the Ani-Matrix and you must also play the video game "Enter the Matrix" and "The Path of Neo".

Jackie Chan - The true action star

Since I was a little kid, I was a fan of Jackie Chan. The way I see it is that every boys who grew up watching his films love him. He was one of the greatest heroes of the kids. Every one were amazed to the way he moves, jumps, and fights. Boys played imitating him. I think he is one of the most influential person in the world. The good news is he still is working as an actor, making films that will entertain the ones who are waiting to see him.

Jakie is often compared with other Chinese action stars like Bruce Lee (known as Lee So-ryong in Korea) and Jet Li (known as Lee Yeon-gul). Bruce lee and Jet Li's action style is more concentrated on showing martial arts. However Jakie has done his training from the Chinese opera academy, therefore his actions are more like acrobats. His strong point comes from his stunts which are, for the most part, humorous.
One of the characteristics of his movie is that he shows funny NGs(No Good - scenes that are not in accordance to the script) film parts at the end of the movie. There are a lot of stunt scenes in his movie so he also gets injured a lot of times. He got numerous times of surgeries. It is his passion that makes people like him. Not only taking the funny roles, he always tries to show the audience his mental acting which I found it very nice. The fact that he is also a singer who has many music albums released shows that he is an all round player, a Jack of all trades ans master of all

Why People Watch Thriller Movies

To find out the reason why people watch thriller movies, we have to find why people get frightened. Each person has a feeling of uneasiness and tense inside, and when it comes out to your body and your mind, person begains to feel scare.

Then let's talk about why people watch thriller movies although it's frighten. Actually human being has a mentality of enjoying fear. It's little bit similar to the reason why people want to ride fearful vehicles like Viking and Roller coaster, etc. Also Seeing their misery at the thriller movies, we can feel relief thinking of this; "I am not in a terrible situation like a protagonist of that horror movie." And we can contrast this situation with a mental state of people who crowd at the scene of the car accident.




Human also has a basic mental sate of commit the crime. While you are watching triller movies, first you will think the victim at the movies is so poor, but as time goes by, you will jump into offender's shoes, and feel joy, which can be offender's feels. It's instict of destroy or murder which every human has inside of their unconscious mind.







P.S. And this is bonus story. If our market of society falls down, people spend time to watch thriller movies much more.

Do-Sa-Bu-Il-Che (頭師父一體)

In this blog project, my aim is to analyze one of the conspicuous Korean action movie trends: Jo-Pok (Korean gangs) movies. Therefore, I started the dissection from introducing the pros and cons of this trend, and then I continued the analysis by showing the major reason why this trend is so popular in Korean society. Also, in my recent blog posting, I pointed out that the ‘Hanwha incident’ has great things in common with this trend. Now, I will end up this discussion with a brief introduction to my best favorite Jo-Pok movie: Do-Sa-Bu-Il-Che.

The first question when we see the title of this movie would probably be like this: “What does this mean?” This title is a combination of Chinese characters, so that it is not so easy to understand even for Korean people. ‘Do’ means a gangster boss. ‘Sa’ means a teacher. ‘Bu’ means a father, and lastly the ‘Il-Che’ means the same body. Therefore, the title means a gangster boss, a teacher and a father should equally be respected. (What a non-sense, should we respect the gangster boss like we do for our father or teacher?)

Introducing the plot briefly, Kye-Sik (a main character) who is a gangster boss enrolled at a high school, because he felt the education is necessary to successfully survive in the competitive gangster society. There, he meets the corrupt teachers and rotten Korean education system; so he decides to fight against the corrupt school executives. However, Kye-Sik comes to know that the fight will not be easy when he finds the executives are tightly connected to the local gangs who are much stronger than Kye-Sik’s gangs. As you may see, this movie shows the typical story of most Jo-Pok movies show.

Jo-Pok Movie Syndrom

April in 2007 was a tumultuous month for Korean people. The chairman of Hanwha Group, the sixth largest conglomerate in Korean economy, orchestrated his body guards to assault six gangs out of revenge for their violent activity to his younger son. While this may seem like a personal affair, the majority of media reported this incident using negative nuance, for example saying like ‘The Rich Attacks the Poor.’ This somewhat exaggerated reports raised tempestuous rage from people against the merciless rich CEO.

However, we are wrong, and we are even manipulated by the media. The target against whom we should show rage is not the chairman, but the six gangs. Most of all, the six gangs first started the violence. Also, if your lovely son is pulverized by gangs, what would you do? Of course, the public character like company CEO should have shown at least slight self-control before taking the action. However, even despite his public characteristic, he is still beloved someone’s father.

Wait a minute! This incident seems to have something in common with what I previously wrote - “Why Are We Mad at Jo-Pok Movies?” In other words, prevalent positive image about Jo-Pok (gangs) might have caused people to think that the six gangs are just the powerless and ordinary people like us. Even further, this incident gave me an impression that people seem to be hypnotized thinking like the six gangs are the heroes fighting against ‘the vicious rich Hanwha Group’s CEO.’ However, people are missing the main point that the six gangs are just bad people who first committed violence without reasons.

Walter Bruce Willis

There are a number of acters and actresses. However, how many acters who are known in all around the world? We could count them easily, may be. Walter Bruce Willis is one of them. All of us know him, and see him. Although he acted in dramas and so on, he is well known as a character of leadership, so we can see him from many kind of action movies as well.

He had acted in Hostage, Tears of the Sun, Armageddon and so on. We can see his talent from his movies. Sometimes he is shown as a kind father, otherwise he is shown as a suffering soldier. All of his acts are showing his realistic performance. Now, his movies, Die hard 4.0, Perfect Strangers are coming. Don`t you anticipate his another talented acting?

Pirates of the Caribbean : The Curse of the Black Pearl

I've never tried to write regarding action movies in this blog. Today I'm going to explain one great action movie. It's the first movie of Pirates of the Caribbean. Recently we can see the third one, and I already saw it this weekend. In my view, first one was much better than the third one, so I want to metion the very first movie.

Will Turner is a son of a famous pirate, and he has a pirate's necklace. Actually Elizabeth keeps it because she wants to save Will. One day, Black Pearl arrives in the town, and the pirate captain Barbossa kidnaps Elizabeth. Will, who loves her, asks Jack Sparrow, who used to be the captain of Black Pearl, to find the ship and rescue her. So they have a big trip, and gradually find out the curse of the Black Pearl.

It's a pretty exciting movie! Also I love the main actor, Johnny Depp! He is the perfect pirate and the perfect Jack Sparrow. If you didn't see this movie, just ask me! I have the DVD.

Unusual reversal : Save The Green Planet!

Many Koreans doesn't enjoy korean thriller. Why they do that? I think the main reason of that is there is no exciting reversal in korean thriller movie. For success of thriller movie, it need to reversal which the audience never expected. The masterpiece of Hollywood thriller, usual suspect and memento are the movie which shows that characteristic. But, I didn't find yet the great reversal thriller of finding murder. In the other subject, however, there is more unusual reversal SF thriller in korea. 'Save the green planet' is that.

'Save the green planet' is unusual from the plot. The plot is the following : The here, Byung-gu believes earth will be in danger by aliens. So, he kidnaps Kang present who he believes alien. As Byung-gu's severe torture, Kan present starts to lie to Byung-gu for surviving. Who is a real lier? Their fight is continue.
The reversal of this movie is Kan present is a real alien and Byung-gu is not a mental patient. It is very extraordinary and may looks like nonsense. But, If you know this movie is not only SF thriller, but also black comedy, you could catch the message this movie give us. The message director want to give may be the warning to selfish human.

'Save the green planet' is not spectacular and thrilled for any Hollywood SF thriller. However, this movie gives the fresh interesting to audience for its unusual reversal. Even though this movie didn't succeed at attracting audience, If you want to see a more and less maniac and unusual movie, I recommend this movie. Through this movie, you can see the typical Korean thriller(low-budget, but unusual) produced by famous director and actors.

Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War

I think that this is one of the best popular movie in the Korea. This movie is also called "Taegukgi hwinalrimyeo", and "Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War " is the international name of the movie. It is taking the Brotherhood between two brother, who had to be departed by the Korean War.
Why this movie can make a great hit in Korea and even in USA and so on? This movie is showing the true brotherhood during the war. Because of the misunderstand during the war, the brothers had to be an enemy each other. However, when they met in a battle field, they promise to meet again, but they couldn`t do that. This movie could be a tragedy, but it is still enough to moving us.

Catch up Hollywood thriller : The Host

In Korea, there are few action thriller using graphic effect. Action thriller using graphic effect pointed like Godzilla and King kong of Hollywood. However, because most Korean movies are low-budget than Hollywood movie, Korean action thrillers need a lot of capital are poor and immature at CG effect for Hollywood movie. But, recently one very creative action thriller movie comes in Korea. The movie name is 'The Host'. This movie succeed to attract audiences by giving more reality than Hollywood movie.

The plot is the following : The hero, Kang-do runs a small store near Han river. Oneday, unidentified host appears in Han river and take his daughter, Hyun-seo. But, nobody want to help him and his family who have no money and no power. So, they look for everywhere in Han river to rescue Hyun-seo only by themselves. Finally they find the host and kill it, but Hyun-seo already died.
If you see the just plot, it may be childish and looks like imitation of Godzilla or Jurassic Park. However, If you think the birth background of host, you will be attracted this movie. At first scene in the movie, one scientist illegally flow formalin into Han river and the movie give an that it makes a fish the host.
Through that inkling, this movie not only just give exciting spectacles like many Hollywood movie, but also makes audience think human's selfishness.

So, If you want both exciting spectacle and lingering, try to see 'The Host'. I'm sure this movie is the masterpiece of Korean action thriller movie which producted by famous director and great actors.