Chan-Wook Park... Most Dangerous Filmmaker In The World... What Next'

Hey folks, Harry here with tremendously cool news to report. For those of you that have been lucky enough to see Chan-Wook's JSA or SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE or OLD BOY... Most likely - you are amongst the converted. This Korean filmmaker is simply making some of the absolute best films in the world, and so far... The United States has completely ignored him. My take on that? Good... Perhaps if the studios leave him alone, he will never have to work with Jean Claude-Van Damme, then spiral into a hell-hole of creative stagnation.

The Hollywood Reporter sat down and talked with Park, and what a great interview. Hearing about his influences, "Sophocles, Shakespeare, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Balzac, Zola, Stendhal, Austin, Philip K. Dick, Zelazny and Vonnegut," provides such a glimpse into why his films are so thoroughly involving... Hearing that it was watching Hitchcock's Vertigo while in college that made him choose the path that lead to him directing. This is the first interview I've ever read with him, and I'm delighted by what I've read. He really seems to have it together.

Right now though... the part that has me vibrating with ultimate glee is hearing what is next for him. At the moment - he's working on "THREE, MONSTER," for which he is contributing a 45 minute section, which will be joined by two other sections to be filmed by Takashi Miike and Fruit Chan!

Wook-Park will begin filming in November on the final feature in his "Vengeance Trilogy" which began with SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE, continued with the breathtaking OLD BOY... and it seems will conclude his exploration of this theme with SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE!!!! According to him, it will "feature a woman in her mid-30's mercilessly dealing with vengeance" and will consist of sharply contrasting variations of the kidnapping motif of "Mr Vengeance" and the imprisonment motif of "OLD BOY." As you read this, he's writing the script in his hotel room in Cannes!

What lays for Chan after his Vengeance Masterpiece is behind him? It seems that at the end of 2005, he will begin work on a feature entitled LIVE EVIL - and all we know about that project is that it is "a movie involving vampires."

If you've never seen one of his films, you can have no concept of how exciting this news is. However, if you were in the audience of Butt-Numb-A-Thon 5 and witnessed the North American theatrical debut of Wook-Park Chan... His first two films have never even screened here, which is an insult that I can't even imagine having been inflicted upon this brilliant filmmaker... But if you were there... You know that in a 24 hour slate that saw RETURN OF THE KING and THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST unfurl upon the screen... that there was one film that stood right beside both of those, that didn't have the emotional attachment of having the filmmaker present, and still dared to be held as being the best film of the fest by a large amount of the audience. With Tsui Hark and Quentin Tarantino on the Jury at Cannes this year... I imagine that we'll see some sort of honor befalling Wook-Park's Brilliant OLD BOY. And then... Hopefully, at long last the dam will be broken and Chan Wook-Park's films will finally grace our domestic screens here in the United States! And then the Korean invasion will begin in earnest!