Park Chan Wook's Vengeance Trilogy: 11/24/09

Press release from Palisades Tartan popped up in my mail today. I had originally thought that this release was just going to be the three 1-discs with a box set sleeve over it, but I guess not.





The Ultimate Park Chan-Wook Vengeance Trilogy Box-Set
Palisades Tartan’s 8-Disc VENGEANCE TRILOGY box-set available in stores November 24th

LOS ANGELES — September 28, 2009 — For Immediate Release — You’ve been asking, we’ve been planning and this November Palisades Tartan will release the most exciting, impressive and comprehensive VENGEANCE TRILOGY box-set the world has ever seen! Featuring 8-discs and more special features then any other set on the planet (including the Korean version), celebrity essays as well as a few surprises, Palisades Tartan will release Park Chan-Wook’s VENGEANCE TRILOGY November 24th in DVD stores across the country.

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE is the first film in Park Chan-Wook’s acclaimed Vengeance trilogy. The sister of a simple and deaf factory worker, Ryu, falls ill and needs a kidney transplant, however he is not a match so he looks to the black market which he can’t afford. After being fired from his job, his rebel girlfriend suggests that he kidnap the child of his former boss, Park. When the girl accidentally dies, her father seeks vengeance for her death.

OLDBOY is Park Chan-Wook’s classic genre-defining revenge tale of a man who’s wrongly been imprisoned for 15 years and is then suddenly released. Given money and a cell phone, he’s challenged to discover who incarcerated him in the first place, but he only has five days to uncover the truth. Even with a mysterious young girl to help him, his tortures have just begun. Cannes-winner championed by Tarantino, OLDBOY regularly appeared in top ten best movie polls across the country and is listed as one of the all-time best films as rated by IMDB users.

LADY VENGEANCE, the final film in the trilogy was created by Chan-Wook for his daughter. After being wrongfully convicted of kidnapping and murdering a young child, a beautiful young woman (Lee Young-ae) is imprisoned for 13 years. While in prison she gains the respect and loyalty of her fellow cellmates, all the while plotting her vendetta on the man responsible (OLDBOY’s Choi Min-Sik). Upon her release she sets in motion an elaborate plan of retribution, but what she discovers is a truth so horrifying, even revenge doesn’t seem punishment enough.

Director Park Chan-Wook’s most recent film THIRST won the Jury Prize at Cannes (2009) and was released in the US earlier this year by Focus Features. All three films in his celebrated Vengeance trilogy collection have garnered an impressive 28 Film Festival wins at prestigious venues including Cannes, Venice, Chicago, Fantasia, Stockholm, Hong Kong and the Sitges International Film Festival to name a few.

Each film is recorded in their original language (Korean) and offer English and Spanish subtitles. Each title is presented in anamorphic widescreen, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and DTS Surround Sound 5.1. Special features include an essay on each film by celebrated filmmakers, actors and writers, including Eli Roth. Additional features include but are not limited to: audio commentary by Park Chan-Wook and actor Ryoo Seung-wan, behind the scenes, “The Process of Mr. Vengeance”, “My Boksu Story”, storyboards, photo gallery, filmographies, film notes and crew interviews (SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE); three audio commentaries, five behind-the-scenes featurettes, “Le Grand Prix at Cannes” and deleted scenes with commentary (OLDBOY); regular and “Fade-To-White” versions, character interviews (Lee Geum Ja, Prof. Baek), “Prisoners”, “Families”, “Lady Vengeance at the 62nd Venice Film Festival”, trailer, film notes, making-of and deleted scenes (LADY VENGEANCE).

Tartan Films was originally founded in 1984 in the UK and is credited with bringing Asian Extreme film to the West as well as some of the most compelling art house films of the last quarter century. In May 2008, Palisades Pictures acquired Tartan Films US library assets and two months later, acquired a majority of Tartan Films UK’s 400+ film library assets. The new company Palisades Tartan has operations both nationally and internationally. Palisades Tartan will continue to expand an already distinctive and provocative slate of films by focusing on quality film acquisitions, thus significantly increasing the size of their overall library in both territories. Palisades Pictures and its parent company Palisades Media Corp is a prestigious financier of print & advertising for the independent film market. Together with its affiliate, Palisades Media Asset Fund, Palisades has securitized and financed more than 550 films.

www.palisadestartan.com

VENGEANCE TRILOGY Box Set - (SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE/ OLDBOY / LADY VENGEANCE)
Palisades Tartan Video
Genre: Thriller/Foreign
Rating: Not Rated (Special Features Not Rated/Subject to Change)
Language: Korean (English Subtitles)
Format: DVD Only / 8-disc (Box-set)
Running Time: Approximately 361 minutes (not including special features)

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE – 129 min (not including special features)
OLDBOY – 120 min (not including special features)
LADY VENGEANCE – 112 min (not including special features)

Suggested Retail Price: $49.99
Pre-Order Date: October 27th 2009
Street Date: November 24th 2009
Catalog #: TVD8307
UPC Code: # 842498000076

$50 for eight discs? That's a steal.

Remake Watch 2009: OLD NEWS and, yep, The Fly.

I know I open almost every post like this, but since I've started writing for Boxoffice.com I've become greatly distracted. Rest assured, content is coming. In the meantime, I have wheel-spinning link-lists to fall back on, like Remake Watch 2009. Here's a bunch of old news you've already heard about projects that are, except for one, not new to the Remake Watch 2009 count.

First up is 20th Century Fox's wonderfully moronic decision to reboot the Fantastic Four franchise, which they started in 2005. Yes, it's been FOUR WHOLE YEARS since the franchise started, and TWO WHOLE YEARS since the last entry, 2007's Rise of the Silver Surfer. Oh, the times, they are a-changin'. Via Variety.

Last time I reported on the live-action Akira remake, it was dying. I guess it's not so dead after all. Via Collider.

In actual good news, Joel and Ethan Coen have reunited with Big Lebowski star Jeff Bridges for their True Grit remake. They should actually make it a double remake and a sequel to Lebowski by retitling it The Dude Goes West. Via Variety.

The Highlander remake is runnin' on NOS! There can only be one Drift King when Fast & Furious director and would-be Oldboy remaker Justin Lin takes control of the project. ComingSoon.

Also, I read on my Twitter feed that David Cronenberg is rebooting The Fly. No confirmation yet, but I'll be sure to run back and edit this post if anything develops.

EDIT: The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz Blog is corroborating the Cronenberg remake story. I haven't yet figured out how to add this to the tally. Is this another remake of the original, or is Cronenberg remaking his 1986 version? I have no idea. It's kind of baffling, actually. THR mentions that Cronenberg can do new things with the visual effects, but the makeup work on the original, by Chris Walas (who directed The Fly II) and Stephan Dupuis, won an Oscar. I guess I'd like to think that Cronenberg has some crazy new idea for this one, and it won't actually be much like his Jeff Goldblum version other than the basic concept.

More importantly, where are they going to find someone as awesome and stunning as 1980's Geena Davis?





Remake Watch 2009:
28 film remakes announced
5 film remakes released
2 tv remakes released
2 reboots announced
2 reboots released
1 remakes announced/released direct-to-DVD
3 TV remakes announced

A "reboot" is defined by Remake Watch as a new attempt at a film series with new actors playing old characters (thus, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Race to Witch Mountain are excluded). Sequels to remakes (The Pink Panther 2, Halloween II) are ignored.

Ow. Ow. Ow.

That's the sound of me punching myself in the skull, because Universal is making a live-action Barbie movie.

Ow.

Ow.

Ow.

[via The Hollywood Reporter]

An Interview with Comedian Patton Oswalt

This interview took place via email on September 22nd, 2009, to promote Big Fan. I also added in a couple of questions that were asked at a Q+A at the Landmark Egyptian in Seattle, WA on September 18th.

Tyler Foster: As both a celebrity and a self-proclaimed nerd, it seems like you have the unique standpoint of seeing both Paul and Quantrell's side of the conflict. While Quantrell Bishop is clearly in the wrong for physically assaulting Paul, don't you think there's something weird about these guys following him around?

Patton Oswalt: Of course there’s something weird. That’s another reason I liked the script — everyone feels justified in their viewpoints and actions.

Tyler Foster: Do you get fans hassling you? Do you have some sort of personal line that they'd have to cross before you'd stop talking to them or wouldn't want to talk to them?

Patton Oswalt: Most of the time, when my fans meet me, they’re polite and smart. The few that are rude, I just sort of tune out, right in front of them, and they tend to walk away. I think the rude ones get a lot of that from everyone they meet, so I don’t come off as arrogant or mean.

Tyler Foster: Do you follow sports?

Patton Oswalt: No. I...view sports the way an autistic child looks at love. I watch it, and I understand that other people are happy, and I like that they're happy, but I just don't get it. To me, it's like watching a bunch of superheroes with no powers.

Tyler Foster: Did you attempt to do any research for the movie, perhaps in vain?

Patton Oswalt: Nope!

Tyler Foster: At the Q&A in Seattle, someone brought up that you had said previously that you do movies so that you can do the stand-up. This is a similar question, but that makes me wonder, how much personal investment do you have in or how much joy do you get out of acting?

Patton Oswalt: I get a lot of joy out of acting and writing. Anything I do creatively I try to put my heart and soul into. But why not have an overall goal in life?

Tyler Foster: Along those lines, most of your movie and TV roles are either by someone I might guess you'd consider a friend in the comedy community, like Observe and Report with Seth Rogen and Jody Hill, or someone with obvious prestige, like Pixar, or Steven Soderbergh (and Big Fan is both, since Siegel edited The Onion and wrote The Wrestler), so if it weren't for these people, would you just not really seek out any acting work?

Patton Oswalt: No, I’ve done plenty of acting work with and for people I didn’t know personally, and ended up getting along with famously. That’s how most acting works. But I definitely get movie roles because people come looking for me. It's not like I call up Pixar and go "today's your lucky day!"

Tyler Foster: Did you know Kevin Corrigan, Michael Rapaport or Siegel before signing onto this?

Patton Oswalt: I knew of Siegel, but I didn’t meet him until he gave me the script. I met the other guys on the film.

Tyler Foster: If Martin Scorsese calls up and says "I'd love for you to be in my movie in a small part, and we shoot it on Sunday" and you have a show on Sunday, do you reschedule the show or do you have to pass?

Patton Oswalt: I’d totally re-schedule the show. I’ve done that before — they always understand. I’d help them find someone to replace me, as well.

Tyler Foster: On your CDs, you always talk about doing all of these scripts you wrote, and I was just wondering if any of them were inching closer to being produced?

Patton Oswalt: Writing a movie and getting a movie made are two totally different things. I just found out that a screenplay that I wrote was rewritten by two different guys, and now two other guys are rewriting that version to make it more like the version I did originally. But I still do punch-up, I did some material for Funny People, and I'm still...'the guy' at DreamWorks, they'll call me up and I'll say, "wait, so this is the story of a donut that wants to be a bagel...?"

Tyler Foster: Can you tell us about any of the movies you did drafts on?

Patton Oswalt: No.

Tyler Foster: Since doing punch-up is, presumably, uncredited work, do you ever feel like you're just giving away material? Do you ever wish you had credit for some of these things when they come out the other end?

Patton Oswalt: I’m not giving it away if they pay me the profane sums they pay me, am I?

Tyler Foster: The IMDb trivia page for Big Fan has an awesome piece of trivia: "Director Robert D. Siegel has said that between takes in the strip club, while other members of cast and crew were enjoying the company of dancers, actor Patton Oswalt was watching episodes of "John Adams" (2008) on his iPod in a private room." Do you have any comment on this?

Patton Oswalt: I was actually re-watching Season 4 of "The Wire".

Follow @bigfan_movie on Twitter, befriend Patton Oswalt on facebook and MySpace, and go see Big Fan, in theaters now.

Special thanks to Gary Rubin of First Independent Pictures for making this happen.

Thirst Contest

Updates to the blog have been intermittent since I started writing news for Boxoffice, and this isn't a particularly newsly news item, but it is pretty awesome. Palisades/Tartan is having a contest to win two tickets to fly to London and meet Oldboy/Thirst director Park Chan-wook! Two runners-up will also get a copy of The Vengeance Trilogy box set being released on November 24th, 2009.

You can enter the contest here and you are required to take me if you win. Yep.

Remake Watch 2009: Swamp Thing, The Blob

This stuff is all a few days old, but this isn't really a news site, and my new post at Boxoffice.com is eating up a considerable amount of my free time. Matt Lingo and Nathan Kerce should have Top 20s coming though, if you're actually checking this site for updates.

Collider reports that Joel Silver is developing a Swamp Thing remake. I feel like all of my knowledge of Swamp Thing is pretty peripheral. My friend had an elaborate action figure playset of Swamp Thing when we were younger, and I know the original DVD of Wes Craven's version was recalled because someone had used a version with a bunch of extra nudity in it, even though the film is rated PG. Other than that, my awareness is pretty low.

On the eve of Halloween II's release, Variety posted the news that Rob Zombie will be directing a remake of The Blob. I don't have much to say about that either. Frank Darabont and Chuck Russell's 1988 remake gets a lot of praise, but I have to say I only thought it was okay. The gore effects were amazing, though.

I'm updating the tally of released films in advance, because I'm not making a devoted post to the release of Sorority Row. Also, there's been a lot of chatter on The Crazies remake, but it was announced in 2008.

Remake Watch 2009:
28 film remakes announced
5 film remakes released
2 tv remakes released
1 reboot announced
2 reboots released
1 remakes announced/released direct-to-DVD
3 TV remakes announced

A "reboot" is defined by Remake Watch as a new attempt at a film series with new actors playing old characters (thus, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Race to Witch Mountain are excluded). Sequels to remakes (The Pink Panther 2, Halloween II) are ignored.