First Image From Bong Joon-Ho's Snowpiercer

[Brendon Connelly]

The Host and Mother director Bong Joon Ho has yet to make anythingless than a tremendous film and I?m hopeful that his next, which willalso be his English language debut, will prove to meet his remarkablestandards. Snowpiercer is to be a big scale science fiction film butalso promises tense character drama and the chewing over of somesocial and political ideas.

Here's the official blurb:

Snowpiercer is set in a future where, after a failed experiment tostop global warming, an Ice Age kills off all life on the planet exceptfor the inhabitants of the Snowpiercer, a train that travelsaround the globe and is powered by a sacred perpetual-motion engine. Aclass system evolves on the train but a revolution brews.

And, courtesy of the Bittersweet 2046 Tumblr, our first still from the film.



Looks like the windows are still green screen and need filling in...maybe? Still, a tantalising first look at one of my most keenlyanticipate movies.

[HED]

I haven't yet watched any of Bong's films - they're on a all too long list of things I need to watch - but it seems that Park Chan-wook is a producer on it and that's enough for me to trust it'll be good.

[Adam]

Bong Joon-ho is the sort of director whom other directors should be required to salute should they chance to encounter him.

That said, I'm going to keep fighting to keep my expectations down to the manageable "cautiously optimistic" level. It's his first film in a different language, working with a cast and crew that almost certainly don't speak his own, and I'm very familiar with how, even assuming the presence of good translators, a difference in language and culture can screw with communication in the workplace.

The Hollywood machine might have an adverse effect on the final product as well, since American producers tend to value customer satisfaction over mature storytelling. "Mr. Bong-san, can we talk about the ending?" "'산'?" "Sorry, did I not pronounce it correctly? Anyway, our focus testing says the audiences would like something happier..."