SIGN A PETITION TO SEE KIM KI-DUK'S TIME

Kim Ki-Duk...is there a name that elicits more drama in Korean movies? He's deeply loathed on a lot of the film festival circuit, and Korean critics (and many Western ones as well) dismiss his movies out of hand. But he's also the most successful Korean director overseas, having won more awards and raked in more money at the box office than any other Korean director except maybe Park Chan-Wook.

Kim chalks up his rough treatment at the hands of the Korean press as class contempt. He didn't rise up through the film hierarchy the accepted way, he comes from a lower class background than a lot of other film industry people, and his movies are fixated on the lives of marginal or blue collar characters. I tend to believe that this is definitely part of the problem. The Korean press seems to go after him like they've got a vendetta: some film magazines have called him "a psychopath" and other critics have claimed that his mother didn't love him enough. As far as I know, no other Korean director gets treated this way and it's pretty shameful no matter how you feel about Kim.

As a response to this (and possibly as a savvy box office movie) Kim has said he won't release any more of his movies in Korea and the first one to not be released is TIME. But over at KoreanFilm.org they've linked to an online petition asking for someone to release TIME in South Korea. Sign it or not, but you've got to hand it to Kim for keeping things interesting.