Just an aside but: as I was musing over the list of the 5th Korean film awards that I wrote about earlier (today is the eve of the “Blue Dragon Awards”) and half-watching, half-dozing through the 2006 Spike TV Video Game Awards, it just occurred to me that there seems to be awards for everything these days, including video games. So the question is, or should be: why don't Koreans adapt their own video games for the screen? After all, the video game industry is the other “big deal” of Korean entertainment (what other country has professional players? The Land of the Video Geek). I have been going through a bunch of movies without which the world would probably be a better place, like Doom, or Silent Hill. Perhaps an adaptation of Lineage, or Ragnarok would be worth considering, some day. It could happen and it could be really good, in many respects. Videogaming as a subject matter has already produced a couple of excellent, if highly underrated, films, in the past: Who Are You? (2002) and Paradise Villa (1999).

End of the aside.

To go back to the November Korean Awards prize list, it is interesting to see who shared the “scraps” left by the monster movie, The Host. Interesting because all of the films that were rewarded on that night are, indeed, more than worth a watch, and worth more than one watch. They form a much more complex landscape of the film industry than the recent debates over the monopolies that blockbusters (like... The Host) hold over theaters and multiplexes in South Korea would seem to suggest. This year, as in the past few years, it appears that Korean filmmakers work well within the conventions of a genre, particularly melodramas, which is nothing new, and noirs, which is more striking than usual. The recent, slightly unexpected success of Tazza: The High Rollers and Sunflower confirms this general trend. Also, and there may be a connection with the noir bend of this year, comedies and melodramas have a darker tinge to them, and cover more social ground and topics, some of which were considered taboo and untreatable on-screen. Whether or not this is a sign of the times I am not sure, but maybe with hindsight, we will be able to tell if this represents actual changes in contemporary Korean society.

At any rate, Walt Whitman liked lists. So did Sei Shonagon. So do I (sometimes). And so do Koreans. So here it is: the 2006 Korean Film Awards list, yet another manifestion of the human, all too human drive to evaluate and rank each other in virtual or actual tribunals. We should expect the same titles to pop up in the Blue Dragon Awards tomorrow.

- Best leading actor: Jo In-Seong, A Dirty Carnival (the actor has gone a long way since The Classic)

- Best leading actress: Jang Jin-Yeong, The Unbearable Lightness of Dating AKA Between Love and Hate

- Best supporting actor : Lee Beom-Soo, City of Violence

- Best supporting actress: Choo Ja-Hyeon, Bloody Tie

- Best new director: Lee Hae-Yeong/Lee Hae-Joon, Like A Virgin

- Best new actor: Lee Joon-ki, King and the Clown

- Best new actress: Choo Ja-Hyeon, Bloody Tie

- Best screenplay : Son Jae-Gon, My Scary Girl

- Best editing : Park Gok-Ji, A Dirty Carnival

- Best art direction: Jo Geun-Hyeon, Forbidden Quest

- Best soundtrack : Lee Byeong-Woo, For Horowitz