Customer Reviews

New Korean Cinema: Breaking the Waves (Short Cuts)

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This is a well-written, intelligent survey of the most crucial years in the development of recent Korean cinema. Paquet obviously knows his stuff and seems to have lived through some of it (he lives in Korea). What's most useful is the historical and social perspective and context in which Paquet frames his account. For those of us who don't know much about Korea, it helps deepen our understanding of the films themselves and the environment in which Korean cinema took hold of the world's imagination at the end of the 20th century. It's a necessary corrective to all that misinformation you find from fanboys, opportunistic blogs, and amateurs who don't know their Park Chan-wook from Don Siegel. An absolute necessity for anyone's collection - even if you only have a passing interest in cinema, this book will tell you a lot about Korea itself.

Now if only Paquet would turn his attention to the deeper riches of Korean cinema of the 1950s and 1960s!