But no buts. (하지만이란 말 하지마라.)
　A: I know, mom. But . . . (알아요. 엄마. 그렇지만 . . . )

　B: But no buts. (내겐 하지만이란 소리 없다.)

　A: You probably want to know about this cheeky know-it-all, don‘t you? Mom. I’ll tell you what he‘s made of. (이 뻔뻔하고 잘난 체하는 녀석에 대해 알고 싶으실 거예요. 그래서 어떤 녀석인지 말해드릴 게요.)

　B: O.K. (그래.)

　A: He cheats on tests, takes things of others, picks on others and everything bad you can think of around school. (시험커닝 하지요, 남의 물건 훔치지요, 다른 아이들 괴롭히지요, 학교에서 나쁜 거라곤 다해요.)

　엄마 말은 알겠지만 싸웠던 아이가 나쁜 아이였다고 영재는 강변한다.

　But no buts는 Do not give me buts(내겐 ‘그렇지만’이란 말은 안 통해)라고, 단서를 다는 반응에 대해 내리는 단호한 대꾸이다. cheeky는 건방진. know-it-all은 다 아는 체 하는 사람. what he’s made of는 사람이 무엇으로 만들어 졌다는 말은 결국 그가 어떤 사람인지. x, y, z, and everything you can think of 는 얼핏 생각나는 것들 x, y, z를 나열한 다음 생각할 수 있는 것 모두라고 첨가 하여 말하려고 할 때 쓴다.

Source:Kwnews

Relationship drama Hellcats centers around three women who live together in an old neighborhood of Seoul. Ami (Kim Min-hee, below) is a 29-year old screenwriter who has been holed up in a motel trying to finish a screenplay, but like most people involved in the film industry, her career is not progressing smoothly. Frustrated with life as it is, she receives a further shock when her boyfriend Won-seok double-crosses her. Furious and disoriented, she ends up channeling her energies into two things that look likely to get her into further trouble: alcohol and a hot-looking accountant named Seung-won.

Hellcats Meanwhile Ami is getting little sympathy from her older sister Young-mi (Lee Mi-sook of Untold Scandal fame), who rents out a room to her. A successful 41-year old interior designer working on a new theatrical production, Young-mi has an active love life, and has lately gotten entangled with the much younger Gyeong-su. However an unexpected surprise is awaiting her on her next visit to the doctor’s office.

Young-mi also has a daughter in high school named Kang-ae (An So-hee from the phenom teen pop group Wondergirls). A bright, optimistic sort of kid, Kang-ae enjoys a strong friendship with Mi-ran who grew up in Brazil, but she worries about her boyfriend of three years Ho-jae. In short, Ho-jae seems more interested in computer games than in getting naughty with her. Kang-ae and Mi-ran draw up a plan to push the relationship along, but this leads in unexpected directions.

Director Kwon Chil-in stumbled upon a hit in 2003 with Singles, a film that relied on good casting and a somewhat more honest take on modern relationships to catch viewers’ attention. Five years later, Hellcats (the Korean title is “Some Like It Hot”, just like the Billy Wilder classic) sticks to much the same formula, and though it failed to draw as much interest at the box office, the film still has its charms. The story of Ami in particular is engaging, as we follow her through wild swings in her resolve and emotional state. Actress/model Kim Min-hee (Surprise Party, Asako in Ruby Shoes) was once thought of as a pretty face with no talent, but in recent years she has surprised the public with nuanced performances in several high-profile TV dramas. Here too, the emotional tone she strikes is just right — she doesn’t come across as weak or immature, but her confusion feels genuine. The fact that her character shines the brightest in a film that also stars the legendary Lee Mi-sook is quite an accomplishment.

Unfortunately the film’s other two stories are less developed; Young-mi and Kang-ae are interesting enough characters, but we never really get inside their heads as we do with Ami. Perhaps there just wasn’t time in two hours to simultaneously develop these three separate stories, or (more likely?) it’s a screenplay problem. Still, the film projects a breezy energy that makes it stand out from the average Korean rom-com. Not prudish, if not particularly racy either, Hellcats is a tasty two-hour diversion.

Source:Koreanfilm

You better learn to say ‘no’. (단호하게 거절하는 걸 배워야겠어.)

A: Exactly. Overweight after holidays is bad, but even worse is the fact that I was made overweight. (바로 그거야. 휴일 후에 몸무게가 나가는 것도 기분 나쁘지만, 더 기분 나쁜 건 내 의지하고는 상관없이 몸무게가 불은 사실이야.)
　

B: All against your will, huh? (네 의지와는 전혀 상관없이, 응?)

A: Or my will was not strong enough, I‘d say. (그 게 아니면 내 의지가 강하지 못했다고 할 수도 있겠지.)

B: Yeah. I think you better learn to say ’no‘ before you complain about hospitalities of your folks at home. (그래. 고향 사람들의 친절에 대해 불평하기 전에 우선 거절하는 것부터 배우는 게 좋겠어.)
　

단호한 거절의 필요성을 깨닫게 해주려고 한다.
　
overweight는 과다를 뜻하는 over와 무게를 뜻하는 weight로 만들어진 말로 “과 체중임”과 “몸무게가 너무 나가는”으로 명사와 형용사로 모두 쓰인다.

X is bad but even worse is Y(X도 나쁘지만 Y는 더 더욱 나쁘다) 형태의 구문은 쓰임새가 많다.

be made ~는 내 의지가 아닌 남에 의해 ~ 로 만들어 지다.

all against your will에서 all은 강조.

say ’no‘ to ~ 는 ~ 에 대해 노라고 말하다, 즉 단호하게 거절하다.

hospitalities는 친절한 행동들.

Source:Kwnews

Handball is not the most glamorous of sports, which may explain why Forever the Moment ranks as the world’s first handball movie. But like any sport, it can offer up moments of drama, as when the South Korean women’s handball team competed at the 2004 Athens Olympics. The efforts of the players made them briefly famous to the multitudes of South Korean viewers who were following the match on TV. The fact that four years later, a film has been made from this story, and that it has emerged as the first smash hit of 2008, is not in itself surprising. Yet this is in some ways a surprising movie.

Forever the Moment The director, for example. Lim Soon-rye made an acclaimed debut in 1996 with Three Friends, the story of three high school graduates hesitating at the threshold of adulthood. In 2001 she followed this up with another story about men, the musical drama Waikiki Brothers. Like her debut, it earned her strong praise from local critics, but both films flopped at the box office and they never really caught on with international film festivals, either. In general, her work displays a strong interest in everyday frustrations and injustices, and a clear-eyed vision that never romanticizes her subjects — though as viewers we share in the compassion she feels. She’s not blockbuster material, in other words. Which is why it’s such a surprise that she made a low-budget sports film that expresses so much of her personal style, and that it became a blockbuster.

If there are thrilling sports movies, and emotional sports movies, then Forever the Moment definitely fits in the latter category. The long prelude to the Olympics involves (for us viewers) very little handball. Lim is more interested in the characters, and how they all relate to each other. Mi-sook (Moon So-ri) is a veteran player who won a gold in Barcelona but has since seen the team slide in quality. With a young son and a husband who can’t pay his debts, she gets a job at a discount mart and takes her son along to handball practice. Hye-kyung (Kim Jung-eun) has retired from playing but has been successful as the coach of a pro team in Japan. When the coach of Korea’s national squad suddenly quits, she is asked to fill in — but she is faced with an undisciplined team filled with older and younger players, and hardly anyone in their prime.

Much of the dramatic action of the first three-quarters of the film involves the changing relationships between the extended cast of characters. Some of the standard developments we expect in any sports movie pass by unacknowledged, and some patience is required of us — in a sense, we are obliged to relate to the team members as ordinary people rather than heroes in the making. When the games do start, however, our patience is rewarded with a truly gripping final reel. Director Lim is not one to exaggerate emotions, but there is no need here. Although not what you would think of as exceptional, the unfolding of the final match is dramatic and suspenseful enough as it is.

Great, climactic moments in the movies are often transformational: they vanquish tragedy and usher in Happily Ever After. But this film is too honest to suggest that that is what is at stake here. The Korean title translates as “The Best Moment in Our Lives,” and while a bit sappy, it does more or less capture the point of the story. The moment is important because the players have decided to invest so much into it, even if all they will ultimately take away from it is the memory. We know that everything will return to normal soon after the game ends, and we are already familiar with the rather dull backdrop to their lives back in Korea. This juxtaposition of the thrilling sports finale and the film’s stubborn realist point of view is perhaps its greatest strength. The dreams of the women are in themselves bittersweet, which is something you can’t say of the average sports movie.

Source:Koreanfilm

A:You didn’t include a receipt.

B:What do you need a receipt for?

A:Our accounting department needs it for their records.

B:I’ll put it in the mail right away.

A:영수증을 같이 보내지 않으셨습니다.

B:영수증이 무엇에 필요하죠?

A:저희 경리부에서 서류 기록에 필요하다고 합니다.

B:지금 당장 우편으로 보내 드리겠습니다.

‘ 우편으로 보내다’는 표현을 put something in the mail이라고 합니다. You didn’t include a receipt.라고 하면 영수증을 포함시키지 않았다. 즉 영수증을 빼먹고 안 보냈다는 뜻이 되죠. What do you need ∼ for?는 ‘∼이 무슨 용도로 필요합니까?’를 물어보는 표현입니다. 뒤에 for 사용하는 것 잊으시면 안 되죠. Accounting department는 회계부, 경리부를 말하고, right away는 ‘즉시, 곧’을 말합니다.

Source:Segye

A chi-chi private high school, which actively encourages cutthroat competition among the student body by, for instance, publicly displaying their exam score rankings, selects twenty elite members and organizes a boot camp of sorts, to prepare for an international student exchange event. To their chagrin, the students, including rebellious heroine Ina (the singer Nam Gyu-ri), her timid best buddette Myong-hyo (Son Yeo-eun) and her wannabe-boyfriend Hyun (the sit-com idol Kim Beom), and the teachers, uptight English teacher So-young (Yoon Jeong-hee, TV’s Happy Woman) and popular Korean instructor Chang-wook (Lee Beom-soo, City of Violence) find themselves stuck inside the school. Somebody is kidnapping students one by one, in the order of their midterm score ranks, and killing them. The gruesome ways in which they die are broadcast via the school AV system: the only way to prevent the hideous murders is to find correct solutions to the culprit’s “exam questions” in time.

Death Bell Death Bell is the only Korean horror film opening in the 2008 summer season. As an avid fan of horror genre, I would have loved to report to you that it handily overcomes bad word of mouth and production troubles and single-handedly restores the faith in K-horror. Not a chance. It instead partakes of what is surely the ugliest trend of North American cinema in recent years: Death Bell is, to put it succinctly, torture porn for the Whispering Corridors set. As such, it might actually develop some (unwelcome) reputation among the “Extreme Asian Cinema” constituency outside Korea: it pulls no punches in graphically displaying young high school boys and girls (mostly girls) burned and asphyxiated by candle-wax, drowning in a transparent fish bowl, and, in one girl’s case, tumble-cleansed in a washing machine with dozens of razor blades embedded in her skin. Cheerful stuff, eh?

Death Bell is the brainchild of one Yoon Hong-seung, who prefers to be known as CHANG a la Charlie’s Angel’s McG, and had previously directed music videos for such luminaries as BoA, GOD and SG Wannabe (Am I spelling the names of these epitomes of musical sophistication and creativity correctly?). CHANG’s direction is not particularly awful, but the screenplay he authored with Kim Eun-kyung (Meet Mr. Daddy) is a fetid mess. The “exam questions” the culprit comes up with will strike most viewers as either hopelessly arcane or ridiculously complex: the blase cartoon graphics inserted to illustrate the “questions” are no help. Quite a few viewers have already pointed out just how unconvincing the flick’s central premise is: that twenty-some students could be so completely isolated from the outside world?even though their cell phones have been taken away in the beginning? so that the murderer could do them in one by one. On the other hand, the inevitable “surprise twist” does not, thankfully, opt for yet another variation on Tale of Two Sisters (The movie, though, opens with Ina graphically menstruating on screen, in a shameless reference to the former), so the filmmakers get some puny credit for that.

Aside from cute-puppy antics of the lead youngsters, the film’s weight is carried on the shoulders of the excellent character actor Lee Beom-soo. His goggle-eyed, broad performance is nonetheless solidly anchored in the earth and he almost sells us the climactic crazy-dumb “revelation” about his character. Note the emphasis on “almost.”

Death Bell annoyingly combines prettified, slick visual filmmaking (but with no real depth) and gag-inducing torture porn excesses: it’s simultaneously tepid and lackluster on the one hand and gross and offensive on the other. Recommended only for the fans of Lee Beom-soo and very undiscerning fans of the horror film genre.

Source:Koreanfilm

A:What’s the market cap of that company?

B:I don’t know exactly.

A:Can you guess roughly?

B:I’m sorry I can’t.

A:그 회사 주식의 시가총액은 얼마인가요?

B:정확하게 모르겠습니다.

A:대략이라도 모르시나요?

B:미안합니다. 잘 모르겠어요.

Market cap은 market capitalization의 줄임말로 ‘시가총액’이라는 뜻입니다. 시가총액이란 발행 주식의 총가격을 말합니다. 다른 말로는 market value라고도 합니다. 시가총액은 회사 규모를 나타내는데, 많이 쓰이는 중요한 지표 중의 하나입니다.

Source:Segye

As we creep towards the opening credits, Desert Dream fades to dusty yellow before it fades to black. If you are ever in East Asia in the spring/summer and notice the people wearing surgical masks, don’t be worried about a returning SARS outbreak. Be worried about yellow dust. Yellow dust storms originate primarily from the deserts of Mongolia, northern China, and Kazakhstan thanks to an erosion of barren land similar to that of the Dust Bowl that occurred in the U.S. in the 1930’s. These storms end up carrying pollutants in their wake to cities halfway around the world, exposing neighboring countries to lung-damaging particles, hence the surgical masks. In China, as Patrick Alleyn notes in his article “The Chinese Dust Bowl” in the October 2007 issue of the Canadian monthly The Walrus, besides government ‘ecological refugee’ relocation programs, efforts are being taken to renew the land to a fertile state to hold off further erosion, such as planting a Great Green Wall of China to protect the land from wind, or fining shepherds who allow their flocks to graze indiscriminately. But Zhang Lu’s film is void of such collective political action in Mongolia. In Desert Dream (Mongolian title - Hyazgar), one man is the Johnny Appleseed of stories that make up the Mongolian section of The Steppes. That man is Hungai (Osor Bat-Ulzii).

Desert Dream When Hungai’s daughter’s illness demands his wife take her to the capital of Mongolia, Ulan Batar, he is left with just his saplings and the few familiar faces that pass through his little nook of The Steppes. But soon some new faces appear at his door, two North Korean refugees, pre-teen Chong-no (Shin Dong-ho) and his mother (Suh Jung). Slowly these two get to know each other and trust each other as they assist Hungai in his tree-planting, cow-milking, dung-gathering, and goat-birthing. Although the dialogue explicates some themes, the majority of the plot is supported by silent actions since only two of the three in this triad can verbally communicate with one another. (But such linguistic limitations do not stop Chong-no’s mother from clearly informing Hungai to keep his grimy hands off her body.) Such persistent silence enhances the effect of the stories told in the folk songs sung in Desert Dream.

Each Zhang film I’ve seen depicts lost characters seeking something and someone to hold on to, only to be disappointed by eventual betrayal. Desert Dream follows a similar path as it spins us around as we seek an elusive holding place, which presents the viewer with a tiny fraction of the disorientation experienced by many of the refugees of the world. The film is slow-paced, taking time out to appreciate the vast expanse of space making this film perfect for the cinema, and leaving me disappointed that my only option for viewing it was my computer screen.

As my friend Brian Darr has noted over at his blog Hell on Frisco Bay, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is lately staying loyal to particular directors and I’m happy they found fidelity with director Zhang Lu, or otherwise who knows when I might have had a chance to check out Desert Dream after its screening in official competition at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival, even if that chance is only on my computer via the privileges of a reviewer’s copy. Zhang’s decision to focus on the displaced, be it North Koreans in China (Grain In Ear) or in Mongolia, is a welcomed and refreshing presence on the world cinema stage. Much is made about the money lost in South Korean cinema in 2007, but not enough is made about the other losses, those films deserving of greater exposure that stay in the film festival ghetto. But in this case, the marginalization of Zhang’s films in theaters parallels the lives of his characters. Perhaps the fact that Zhang is a third-generation Korean-Chinese explains why he empathizes so much with the status of his characters. Thankfully, as Tom Giammarco informs me, he has two more films set for release in South Korea. It appears Zhang will continue on with his work like that of the characters of Desert Dream. In spite of the obstacles, each continues to walk onward in the face of all the dust in the wind that seeks to impede their progress. Occasionally each finds oases of beauty along the way.

Source:Koreanfilm

귀사에 가보는 것이 어떨까요?

B:You mean tomorrow afternoon? That’s okay for me.

A:Where can I meet you?

B:How about the hotel lobby. I told you my company is just a stone’s throw away, remember?

A:Yes, I do. I’ll wait for you there tomorrow afternoon around 3:30. Is that okay for you?

B:Of course. Would you like me to bring any samples or catalogs?

A:How about meeting in the lobby and then going to the company to see the products?

B:내일 오후 말씀입니까? 좋습니다.

A:어디서 뵐까요?

B:호텔 로비 어때요? 제가 말씀 드렸죠? 저희 회사가 지금 계시는 호텔에서 넘어지면 코 닿을 곳에 있습니다.

A:맞아요. 괜찮으시면, 제가 오후 3시30분쯤 로비에서 기다리겠습니다.

B:알겠습니다. 그때 샘플이나 안내책자를 보여드릴까요?

A:호텔로비에서 뵙고 제품을 회사에 가서 직접 보면 어떨까요?

A 가 세미나 참석차 타이완에 도착한 후 Mr. Tan과 처음으로 전화 접촉을 한 후 계속 이어지는 전화대화입니다. 여기서 “My company is just a stone’s throw away”란 돌(stone)을 던져(throw) 떨어질 수 있는 거리, 즉 아주 가까운 곳에 있다는 뜻으로 한국말에 비슷한 표현으로 “넘어지면 코 닿는 곳”이란 표현이 있습니다.

Source:Segye

Midway through M, the novelist Min-woo types a repeated phrase on his computer, not unlike Jack Torrance in The Shining: “more specific, less poetic. more specific, less poetic…” I’m not sure what Min-woo thinks of this advice (he does subsequently press the delete button), but if the completed film is any indication, director Lee Myung-Se seems not to hold it in very high regard. M is a film filled with gorgeous imagery, flights of fancy, and bursts of color. However it makes very little effort to tie these images down into the world of people and things.

I wonder: are the “specific” and the “poetic” mutually exclusive? Many poets seem to go out of their way to immerse themselves in the specific and the concrete, and to my ears at least, it makes their work more poetic. Min-woo mentions James Joyce at one point in the film: perhaps the labyrinthine, complex architecture of a novel like Ulysses (or Finnegan’s Wake) is what Lee Myung-Se is after. Still, M feels to me like a sad contradiction: the imagery beckons with sensual force, but the film throws up so many riddles and mind games that you’re too preoccupied to feel its beauty.

M There’s none of Fritz Lang in M — this is not an homage to the 1931 classic. Lee claims instead that the film’s genesis came when Alfred Hitchcock visited him in a dream, presenting him with a book marked “M” on the cover. But I don’t think even Hitchcock ever indulged himself so fabulously as Lee does here. M feels like the dream sequences that you sometimes see in other movies, except that it lasts for the entire film.

It’s customary in a film review to introduce the plot, though even after watching M I’m still a bit in the dark. Let me offer up some observations instead: there is a novelist named Min-woo, who is feeling pressure to write his next book, though the words seem slow in coming. There is a young woman named Mimi, who may or may not exist, who pursues, and then is pursued by, Min-woo (is she his muse?). There is also a woman named Eun-hye who is engaged to Min-woo. They live together in a gorgeous apartment.

Gong Hyo-jin (Family Ties, Conduct Zero) plays the role of Min-woo’s fiancee Eun-hye. Gong is a truly exciting actress — her strength lies in the knife’s edge to her voice, her “don’t give me any bullshit” attitude, and the way that her characters always sound so grounded in reality. Yet in M her fiance, and indeed the film itself, seems to resent her for these qualities. If so, it’s a particularly cruel bit of casting — to choose an actress for her strengths, and then to make them seem like faults. Lee Yeon-hee’s Mimi, by contrast, is the “poetic” to Gong’s “specific”. I’m a big fan of Lee as well — her strength is her natural charm and screen presence, rather than her acting per se. Some actors just need to put themselves in front of the camera in order to make an impression. While watching this film, unable to make sense of what I was seeing, I spent most of the time simply waiting for Mimi to show up again in her purple dress.

But perhaps I’m being unfair to Gang Dong-won, who plays Min-woo. At the start of his career, I had a hard time understanding why many Koreans considered him so attractive (especially in his debut film, Too Beautiful To Lie). But he’s looking pretty fabulous here, in his small, dark glasses and black jacket. It can’t have been an easy role to play, either, with his character often flitting back and forth between dreamy romanticism and absurdist outbursts. Whatever you think of his performance here, Gang is establishing himself as a key actor of his generation.

With this film, I find myself on the unfamiliar side of a common debate. I’m generally not the kind of person who fixates on plot or tight narrative, in fact I often find it refreshing when filmmakers — such as Lee Eung-su in Desire or Lee Myung-Se himself in First Love or Nowhere to Hide — toss the plot aside for a while to focus on the image, all by itself. Still, despite the best efforts of its actors, much of M feels like an inside joke. In the films I mention above, the images pull emotions from the viewer, but here it’s like I’m watching someone else’s feelings on the screen.

M has not gone over particularly well in Korea. Walking out of the theater, I overheard a middle school student in front of me saying, “I tried to get some sleep, but the music kept waking me up.” Viewers posting on the internet have called Lee a “swindler” for disguising a very personal, idiosyncratic film in such commercial trappings. That’s perhaps unfair — I think that Lee did genuinely hope to connect with his audience this time. But sadly, due to runaway ambition, miscalculation, or perhaps some other reason, M took a wrong turn and never made it home.

Source:Koreanfilm