Pusan 08.

"There were fireworks over the Yachting Center on Thursday night as the 13th running of the Pusan Int'l Film Festival got underway in South Korea." A report from Patrick Frater and Marcus Lim for Variety, which, along with the Hollywood Reporter, has a special Pusan section up and running.

Fionnuala Halligan reviews the opening film for Screen Daily: "Rustem Abdrashev's somewhat over-saccharined story of an orphaned exile in 1940s Kazakhstan instantly joins the ranks of films like Kolya and Cinema Paradiso - in which gruff, lonely, elderly men change the lives of photogenic young boys and rake it in at the box office in the process. Gorgeously shot and composed, The Gift to Stalin won't appeal to cineastes, who may feel they've seen it all before, but despite some narrative hiccups this is still the type of accessible foreign-language film which used to charm general audiences in droves (Burnt by the Son, Il Postino, et al)."

Updated through 10/10.

Also: "Dada's Dance, directed by Zhang Yuan from his own idea, feels incomplete. The film seems to head in one direction, takes flight in another, and winds up looking for ballast in the beauty of its elusive central character." More from Derek Elley in Variety and Maggie Lee in the Hollywood Reporter.

Back to Variety for a sec: "Hong Sang-soo's Night and Day received the best picture prize at the annual Busan Film Critics Association Awards ceremony on Friday night." And Hun Sunhee lists other winners as well.

Jason Gray's posted a first round of notes and pix.

The festival runs through October 10.

Update, 10/5: Michael Sooriyakumaran and Jeffbbz are blogging from the festival.

Update, 10/6: "[M]uch of the talk around the market's first few days was divided between the general state of the Korean film industry and a film that wasn't even there - Tsui Hark's All About Women." Doug Jones reports for indieWIRE.

Update, 10/10: The New Currents Award is shared by Roh Gyeong-tae's Land of Scarecrows and Ichii Masahide's Naked of Defenses. Variety's Han Sunhee has more award-winners and festival numbers.

Posted by dwhudson at October 4, 2008 11:46 AM