About

A blog of sorts to showcase my collection on Korean cinema.

Apart from the pages linked in the top bar, I’ll make post with pictures and scans of items in the collection.

• New arrivals are posted in a timely manner after I received them (not necessarily immediately as it takes some time to post, but hopefully within 14 days). These are tagged NewAddition. It should nicely show how the collection is (slowly) growing. [since 11-07-01] [not currently active]

• Additionally I want to show the items I already have. These posts are tagged retrospect and published as follows:
  • Monday through Friday: one film on DVD [since 11-07-01]
    -> the main shelves (standard sized, single film editions that I don’t plan on replacing, in chronological order by Korean theatrical release date starting in 1995)

  • I also take requests if somebody is interested in certain items/films.
  • post are currently pre-scheduled up to 11-10-05

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12-03-03:
I have decided to no longer include documentaries in my collection.
I will still be buying and watching many, but will only keep a few on DVD.
This decision has knocked off about 20 titles from my list of films, but more importantly a whopping 100 titles from my want list and probably another significant number, once I sort out which short film releases only contain documentaries.
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I have thought about excluding animated feature films as well (not letting go of animated short films, though), since I don’t really enjoy watching these and often have difficulties establishing whether older cartoons for children (which I have no personal interest in) were TV productions (only) or got a theatrical release – but I have decided to keep (collecting) them for now. I’ll see how I feel about excluding docs in a couple of months and get back to this issue.
Btw: the only types of films I have excluded from my collection from the very beginning, even though I would eventually like to include them are those produced in the PROK and Martial Arts co-productions (mostly with HK and the RoC), the reason for the former being that I find it difficult to distinguish official releases from bootlegs and for the latter that I often can’t determine the level of Korean involvement in these titles – many were produced in name only to fill quotas.

12-01-30:
Well, another “wasted” week-end – I’ve managed to keep some of my lists updated, but that’s about it. Considering that I’m expecting the next 3-4 weeks to be very difficult/stressful/important I doubt that I’ll have any time at all to work on the blog.

12-01-15:
I changed the way I present my shortened want-list: instead of making a yearly list of a few dozen titles (which I didn’t do in 2011 anyway) I’ll select 2 films and one item each month to be added. And I’ll try focusing on these.
Looking back – getting 90% of my 2009 most-wanted within 3 years isn’t bad, but then again that was a realistic list, I’m only at 28% of the more challenging 2010-list. Still, finding titles like ‘Downfall’, ‘Ardor’ LE, ‘Bungee Jumping of Their Own’ LE, ‘Gangster Lessons’, ‘School Excursion’, ‘Christmas in August’ LE, ‘Driving with my Wife’s Lover’, ‘A Promise’, ‘Skeletons In the Closet’, ‘Pil-gu’, ‘Solace’ (among many others) is something I’m quite happy about. Hopefully this year I’ll manage to pick up some more rarities.

12-01-14:
Over the last week or so, I managed to get my want-list up to date. So far I’ve only done the Korean DVDs – and I’m sure I missed quite a few of those as well – but I think I’m nearly there and it now is a workable list again.
The good news: one thing less to do before I start working on blog posts again.
The bad(?) news: I still have ~400 editions to go…
In the coming weeks I’ll cross check the releases of the last two years with other e-tailers, to make sure I did not miss too much.

12-01-06:
First thing I managed this year was to update my lists of which titles I already got – which I apparently hadn’t done for the last half year or so. So that’s a start. It should be an interesting year …

12-01-01:
Surprise, surprise – the blog-project has stalled again, but this time it’s not so much due to my laziness, but more due to a seriously increased workload and subsequent lack of time.
I’ll try to take ~15 min. every day for this collection – let’s see how far that’ll get me.
In December I rewrote most “rules” for this collection – mainly changing how much I’m willing to pay for what. I should now have a higher chance to get the films I’m actually interested in watching as well as to focus, and possibly even come close to completion, of certain sub-collections. More on how/what I collect later.

11-07-02:
I decided to go ahead with the next attempt of a restart with regular posts, despite the fact that I have nowhere near enough pictures and scans prepared as I wanted to. To increase the chances that I’ll stick with the plan this time, I’ll start out with only one feature and will try to add more when I have at least ten weeks of posts pre-scheduled. At the moment I simply don’t put enough time into this project to start showcasing the entire spectrum of the collection.

11-06-26:
There’s still nothing going as planned on here. It’s been nearly 18 months since I started on this domain, and there’s no visible content. (just made the last remaining posts ‘private’) …
I really wanted to start the next attempt for a continuous blog on July first, however I don’t have any posts prepared, so even if I decide to push ahead with it, it’ll only be in a much more limited way than originally planned.
Otherwise:
Bad news: I’ve hardly put any time into Korean Cinema as of late (neither watching films, nor looking to grow the collection), been rather preoccupied with my latest attempt to sell everything non-Korean and my obvious inability to stop collection, since I have started other “(temporary) Film Collection Projects” (mostly video-based) to “cope with the loss”.
I’m also still having some problems defining what exactly it is I collect. The films itself are rather easy, but what about the other stuff and the doubles? Do I really want to go for all pre-86 releases / Videos / dead formats / promotional material?
I seem to have lost out on a chance for a few first-print releases I still need to replace my current editions, that happens regularly (though it has become rather rare that I see a slipcase I didn’t know of before), but I was offered them twice and it fell through each time.
Good news: I received an edition (as part of a bigger collection I bought) I never thought I’d own, simply because I am/was not willing to pay anywhere ear the collector’s value of that set.
I have sorted and moved the trade stuff and was rather impressed by some of the beautiful editions on there, then I started to marvel at all the SEs/LEs I managed to amass – rather happy with what I got.
In the last few days I’ve slowly started to update my want-list. Still a long way to go, but it’s rather depressing to know that the Korean DVD list alone will once again top 300 titles – and probably even 350.

11-04-25:
Well, it didn’t even last a week. But I’m not giving up on this blog yet and there have actually been some exciting developments as of late:
First off, through some improved/resurrected contacts I’ve been able to get a number of new titles as well as several replacement editions. I’m positive that this will continue for a little while.
I have also (finally) decided to include Video-tapes in my collection, which is going to roughly double the number of titles, something I’ve been very excited about as of late.
Some additional changes to the exact definitions of what I am collecting have been made as well, most important probably the decisions not to upgrade to Blu-Rays and to eventually include all releases of “pre-86″ titles. I shall “soon” publish the exact infos in an explanatory introduction to my collection.
I was hoping to use the Easter-weekend to prepare some posts and relaunch the blog on May 1st. However that didn’t work out.
I still haven’t given up on the blog and plan to restart posting regular updates, just want to have a little more prepared posts/time buffer this time around.
I have however managed to update my list of films a few weeks ago.

11-02-21:
New picture format: one (or more) photos of the items, followed by detailed scans. I’m using different watermarks, this way I can try to have a “nice” picture without the intrusive watermarks, but still give everybody a chance to read backcovers/booklets etc. without providing source material for bootleggers.

11-02-20:
Received what I consider the highlight of my collection yesterday. Re-organized my DVD-shelves today. No more DVD-stacks and hopefully enough space for the arrivals of the coming months.
Will try to post 2 editions daily starting tomorrow. Haven’t prepared anything, so let’s see how long I can keep this up without missing a day.

11-01-22:
Decided to remove (nearly) all previous entries. Planning to repost the content with new picture settings soon.

10-12-26:
Since there have been no updates of any kind (content or layout) for 8(!) months the logical thing to do, would be to close this site.
But I have not (yet) given up on my collection – in fact I managed to snatch up some nice sets in the last few weeks – and decided to give this blog another shot.
The long overdue upgrade to WP3.0 ruined what little there was of my theme as well as all the settings for images & galleries. Not much to miss, though, I never got close to the planned design & functionality and there were (already) several browser compatibility issues. I switched to a WP standard theme (K2), in hopes that while there are several things I don’t like about the layout (for this blog) at least everyone should be able to access the site. To avoid this blog drifting into inactivity soon again, I will not even start bothering about the look until I have content for at least three months in advance.

10-01-14:
A new home to present my collection on Korean Cinema.
The site (layout & content) is still being worked on.
Please be patient.