If Magnolia Pictures were interested in Bong Joon-Ho’s Mother, they sure took their sweet time deciding on whether the picture would be a good fit for their label or not. Sure it might need a little bit work in terms of marketing, but as I had mentioned here, the film was probably the only title left over from Cannes that was the consensus “why hasn’t this been picked up yet” pick. Actually, the timing couldn’t be any better, it will be shown at the fall festivals, was just nominated as the Korean selection for this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Magnolia plans to release the film only in 2010.
But Magnolia didn’t stop there. They went back into the Joon-Ho catalogue and grabbed the rights to his year 2000 debut film, Barking Dogs Never Bite.
Scripted by Bong and Park Eun-kyo, this sees a social loser framed as the perpetrator of an horrific murder and his hard-headed mother has to figure out who really did it to keep her son from prison. Word is the actress who plays “mom” delivers one hell of a perf. This was the one title that I didn’t see at Cannes that made me feel as if I missed out on something worth my while. I blame my peers for that feeling of inadequacy but all is good because I’ll end up catching at TIFF (I’ve got it pegged as my last film screening of that festival). Here’s the trailer.
