I Dream of Park Chan-wook

by Jason Adams

If like me you've been hanging on every miniscule drop of news regarding South Korean masterpiece-maker Park Chan-wook's next film over the past six long, long years since The Handmaiden came out -- the film's titled Decision To Leave and it stars Lust, Caution powerhouse Tang Wei and it's been in some state of being filmed for the past two full years -- then consider today's random Park-related gift a gallon of delicious water in the desert. It doesn't have to do with that movie, but it is it's own worthwhile thing -- Apple commissioned Park to shoot a short 21-minute film on an iPhone as part of a series they're doing (selling phones, natch), and he came up with "Life is But a Dream," a martial-arts fantasy horror musical (yes, all of that) that stars the terrific Kim Ok-vin, previously so killer in his 2009 vampire flick Thirst. We love a reunion! Especially with talents this fine. The entire short's online now, watch:

This is actually the second time Park's made a short film for Apple on a phone -- in 2011 he directed a thirty-minute short titled "Night Fishing" which you can also watch right here. That won the Golden Bear for Best Short. Next up for Park -- after Decision To Leave, I mean -- is an HBO limited series titled The Sympathizer, an adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book which will apparently star Robert Downey Jr. in multiple roles, which all sounds very Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove to me. The lead, described as "a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy," has not been cast yet. I'd ask for casting suggestions but I have to imagine that the acting pool for "half-French half-Vietnemese" is smaller than most and they'll probably end up going with an unknown?

Horror Costuming: Stoker

by Cláudio Alves

We carry part of our parents with us at all times. Whether through the body their genetics defined, or the mind molded and perchance scarred by their influence, their absence, their love, we are made in their image. Some might rejoice in that intrinsic truth, others resent it. Park Chan-wook's only English-language feature, Stoker, understands this with caustic assuredness. From its opening salvos, the script and images call attention to matters of blood and descendence, materializing the familial bonds through costume design…

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Horror Actressing: Kim Ok-bin in "Thirst" (2009)

by Jason Adams

What's funny looking back on Kim Ok-bin's work in Park Chan-wook's 2009 vampire film Thirst for the first time in a decade is just how brief her character Tae-ju's time as a bloodsucker actually is in the movie. Over the past ten years my memory had turned Thirst into the "Tae-ju Supernatural Vampire Olympics" -- she had opened her maw and swallowed the whole movie whole. And yet in actuality Tae-ju doesn't get turned into a vampire until the last half hour of an over-two-hour film -- her character is there, very much there, but Song Kang-ho's conflicted priest Sang-hyun is the main course. Until he isn't.

Kim is just so damn good that I think any of us would be excused for having handed her the stage. Even before she's turned, as the saying goes, she's already nibbled down the film's edges until it's become Her Shaped...

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Horror Actressing: Mia Wasikowska in "Stoker"

Out this Friday the cast of Antonio Campos' new Netflix film The Devil All the Time is so ridiculously stacked with young actors of note -- Tom Holland! Robert Pattinson! Riley Keough! -- that it was inevitable one of them would be left under-served by the material, and I'm sad to report the worst off in this respect is by my estimation the best actor in the whole cast, one Mia Wasikowska. She gets less than five minutes of screen-time, none of which save her final moments give her much of anything to do, all while we know good and well dagnabit that Miss Mia can do anything!

So for today's edition of our "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series let's look back at Mia doing something. Something plenty worthy of her talents. In Park Chan-wook's deliriously under-appreciated 2013 coming-of-age thriller Stoker, specifically.

Mia plays India, who's celebrating her 18th birthday as the film opens...

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The New Classics - The Handmaiden

by Michael Cusumano

Hello, everyone. I'm celebrating my 80th day of quarantine by letting my mind wander to one of the most uproariously debauched scenes in recent years.

Scene: The Reading
We hear about Lady Hideko’s readings a few times before we actually see one in action. Earlier, when she says she is worn out after a performance, we take it as a sign of her weakness. She is so sheltered and delicate a simple reading wipes her out her. When we actually witness one of these performances halfway through Chan-wook Park’s The Handmaiden, we change our tune in a big hurry. The readings are nothing if not impressive displays of stamina...

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