THE BUSINESS ARMY

 THE BUSINESS ARMY 

As the Roosevelt administration planned to move off the gold standard, some industrialists became hysterical…

Climate change in South Korea

 

On adapting short stories: the example of Young Goodman Brown

 A lot of canonical short fiction is either not adapted to film, or turned into audio books (novels are preferred for film adaptations).

However, there are exceptions. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown was adapted as a movie. The trailer here: https://youtu.be/VuY0qRI-7mM?si=hnc_ZHl0g3vLmbsj

(There’s apparently another professional film version of it, too.) 

I can’t judge the entire film but it’s obvious even from the trailer that the both dialogue and tone of the story are changed.

This young filmmaker version of the story *does* make an attempt to stay true to the short story’s tone but abbreviates it radically and has uneven dialogue that’s sometimes true to the text and sometimes has an updated, goofily contemporary, quality that’s impossible to take seriously: https://youtu.be/N3vQu25X2RI?si=yuFW8E5upO1pK0pZ

So film adaptations are hard to pull off without losing much of the original beauty of the story, which lies in its language.

Yet the audio books lack the visual interestingness that a short story like this would inspire a lot of filmmakers. 

And so we come full circle: how can one adapt a short story to film and new media, while still retaining the beauty of the original?

https://youtu.be/Nq6AY2AaEe4?si=wFqLGdjEdh5xhKsW

Your World

Very happy that my hybrid documentary/ moviepoem about market culture vs urban commercialism, entitled “Your World”, was just selected by Goa Short Film Festival via FilmFreeway.com. 

If curious, YouTube link: youtu.be/kaI1ZtdRVPA?si… 

#Korea #marketplace #rural

Greening Korea: When Festivals Lose Their Focus

Contemporary South Korean culture is great at organizing festivals. But sometimes the essential point of the festival is forgotten.