Frustratingly, the post-apocalyptic Bong Joon-ho-directed movie ‘Snowpiercer’ still doesn’t have a release date for the English-speaking parts of the world.  The movie set records at the box-office in South Korea and won Best Film, Best Director and Best Cinematographer from the South Korean Film Critics Circle and a winner of Best Production Design from the 56th Asia-Pacific Film Festival.  The film has also been released in France, where it was also successful.  But The Weinstein Company holds the distribution rights to the US, Canada and the UK and are demanding the film be cut down to make it shorter and… well, dumber to make it more palatable for Michael Bay-loving fly-over state audiences.  Harvey Weinstein also wants explanatory voice-overs added to the opening and closing, once again, I suppose so ignorant Umurkins won’t be completely lost.

Anyhoo… the film is set in an Earth that has been covered in ice after a failed attempt to reverse global warming.  The only survivors of humanity live on a bullet train divided up into castes, with the wealthy in charge, living at the front of the train and protecting their precious perpetual engine and the poor existing at the back of the train.  Eventually, the downtrodden decide to revolt and seize the engine.

The film will make another debut next week at the Berlin Film Festival.  And while English-speaking audiences still have a wait before we see the film (if we do at all, considering that Bong Joon-ho doesn’t seem to be rushing to make Weinstein’s demanded edits) we do get four new clips showcasing important plot points from the movie.

First, Mason (Tilda Swinton) addresses the poor underclass, demanding they know their place:

Next we get the protagonists, led by Curtis (Chris Evans) making their bold move. Man, don’t mess with Octavia Spencer!:

Then we learn of a subplot involving a drug called Chrono and the introduction (?) of Namgoong Minsu (Kang-ho Song, the headlining star in South Korea):

Finally, the heroes enter the upper-class bunks and discover a window. (It seems that they haven’t seen sunlight or the outside world in a long time.) John Hurt’s Gilliam remarks that the world is still frozen:

It’ll be nice to finally see all these clips strung together in order, although at this point I predict I’ll have a similar reaction as I did to ‘Forrest Gump’ which I didn’t see in theaters and by the time I watched it on VHS (yes, VHS) it was as if I had already seen the entire thing, just not put together.

The movie looks stylish and intriguing.  I really hope the embattled parties can come to an agreement and finally get this movie out in the US, Canada and the UK!

Source: Indiewire