Korean movie news

2008/04/23 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Actor Park Yong-ha was chosen to host the 44th PaekSang Arts Awards. He will host one of Korea's most prestigious arts awards Thursday evening together with SBS announcer Park Eun-kyung at the National Theater of Korea in Seoul.

Having led the Korean Wave in Japan with his role in "Winter Sonata", Park's participation in the award ceremony is expected to draw attention from his Asian fans. He said that it was an honor and pleasure for him to host the PaekSang Arts Award. He added that he is quite nervous to be hosting the show with all the big TV and film stars in the audience, but will do his best to make the ceremony memorable.

Park is currently starring in the hot SBS drama "On Air" playing the romantic, yet charismatic TV producer Lee Kyung-min. Coincidentally, Park has been nominated for the most popular TV star category together with his "On Air" co-stars Song Yoon-ah and Kim Ha-neul. The PaekSang Arts Awards will be aired live Thursday evening at six on SBS. ...

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2008/04/23 | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Official selection (Out of Competition) :

"The Chaser" by Na Hong-jin with Kim Yoon-seok and Ha Jeong-woo
"The Good, the Bad, the Weird" by Kim Ji-woon with Lee Byeong-heon, Song Kang-ho and Jeong Woo-seong

Un Certin Regard :

"Tokyo", omnibus film by Leos Carax, Michel Gondry and Bong Joon-ho

...

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2008/04/23 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

The Korean fantasy film "Laundry Warrior" will be released at more cinemas in the United States than Shim Hyung-rae's "D-War", which opened in more than 2,000 theatres there.
The 46 billion won ($46 million) movie, directed by Lee Seung-moo and produced by Barrie Osborne of "Lord of the Rings" fame, features Jang Dong-gun, Geoffrey Rush and Kate Bosworth.
According to Star M, Jang's entertainment company, the film will be released at the end of this year in the United States.
The company is currently looking for a distributor.
Continental Entertainment Capital, a subsidiary of Citigroup, directly invested on the film.

By Lee Eun-joo...

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2008/04/23 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Working in a newsroom with television news always on, a time like last week was no picnic, with repeated scenes showing how the first Korean in space brushes her teeth and eats her kimchi.
After listening to the steady stream of anchors on SBS-TV — which partly paid for the astronomically expensive trip — proudly explaining every detail, I turned from admirer to skeptic.
"What's the big fuss about a package tour into space", I said, to the disapproval of my friends.
They were heartily excited about this astro-adventure.
Anyhow, it's great to hear that Yi So-yeon is safely back on terra firma.
Now she can brush her teeth like me and evacuate her bowels with two feet planted on ground.
So I am finally free of all that astronaut ado, that lasted 10 days and cost 26 billion won ($26 million). Congratulations to both of us.
I decided to celebrate my freedom over the weekend with some old-fashioned channel surfing, without fear of stumbling upon another "This is how I eat my kimchi" d...

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2008/04/23 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

SEOUL, April 23 (Yonhap) -- Seoul city, in collaboration with the organizing committee for a Seoul film festival, is to present free outdoor movies for five months starting this week, city officials said Wednesday.

Short award-winning films from the Seoul International Youth Film Festival of about 30-minutes length will be shown on the screen located by the Cheonggyecheon, a stream running through the heart of Seoul.
The screen will be set up under the so-called Bridge of Films, situated between the Uljiro third and the Jongro third streets. The seats will be available for an audience of 100 people. On the fourth Saturday every month, film makers will be also invited to the screening....

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2008/04/23 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Actor Jang Hyeok has surprised his fans by making a cameo appearance in the brand new Japanese drama series entitled "My Sassy Girl", a remake of a Korean film by the same title.

Jang appeared in the first episode of the drama series, which was aired on Japan's TBS on April 20, with Tsuyoshi Kusanagi and Lena Tanaka.

Jang took on the role of Korean Hallyu star "Jang Hyeok" who appears in the dreams of Kusanagi and Tanaka. Taking revenge on Kusanagi for attacking his younger brother, he aims a gun at his enemy inside a warehouse located at a construction site.

Jang's management agency SidusHQ said the actor was able to get the role after he appeared as a guest on the "Tsuyoshi Kusanagi 2" talk show on Fuji TV on February 8. The director of the show reportedly added new scenes for Jang that were not included in the original script.

After shooting the episode, Kusanagi, a member of the popular boy band SMAP, said he had fun working with Jang, whom he described as a down-to-ear...

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2008/04/22 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Kim Yoon-jin, an actress from the ABC series "Lost", recently told Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd on the CTV daytime talk show "The View" that being a star in Korea is different from Hollywood, because you are not stalked by paparazzi here.
Kim Hyeon-joo, another hallyu actress, confessed her bitter experience during a media tour to Hong Kong, when local paparazzi for a magazine sneaked into her hotel room and took pictures of discarded junk in her trash can.
Significantly, though, the paparazzi situation has alerted entertainment management companies in Korea. Local tabloids increasingly take paparazzi pictures of celebrities' private lives or print photos off the stars' personal blogs without their consent.
"It causes an extra burden on female celebrities, because the Korean public can be very cruel and conservative", says Lee Jeong-hun, an agent at Yedang Entertainment representing the Korean actress Han Ji-hye.
"A single photo is enough to dampen a career", Lee says.
Star...

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2008/04/22 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

New Yorkers will be able to taste a series of artistic Korean movies made by director Kim Ki-duk from Wednesday (Apr. 23).

The Department of Film at New York's Museum of Modern Art, or MoMa, will hold a screening of the works of award-winning moviemaker Kim Ki-duk, 48, who has directed artistic yet controversial films since 1996.

During the exhibition at MoMa's Theater 1, co-organized by the Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Korean Film Council, and supported by the Korean Film Archive in Seoul, movie lovers will be able to take in a total of 14 movies directed by Kim, which will include several features never before seen in the United States, according to MoMa.

Kim is a self-taught maverick filmmaker whose works have impressed international cinema industry with a focus on symbolism and his strong sense of motifs and intensity.

He was a former factory worker, soldier, seminarian and a street artist in France between 1992 and 1995 where he discovered cinema thro...

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2008/04/22 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Korean pop singer and Asia-wide music star "Rain" or Jung Ji Hoon, 26, is spreading his wings to the world -- not in tour but on screen.

Thanks to his songs and charismatic dancing, followed by a modeling and acting career, he was dubbed one of the world's most beautiful people by People Magazine in 2007 and is to debut as a movie actor in a Hollywood blockbuster "Speed Racer" directed by the Wachowski brothers, director of the world-famous "Matrix" trilogy of films.

Ahead of the international release of Speed Racer on May 9, "Rain" spoke of his new acting career in Hollywood and his future plans in an interview with Yonhap News on Monday (Apr. 21).

Speed Racer is the story of a racing car driver named Speed Racer (played by Emile Hirsch) who is a natural behind the wheel and loyal to his family racing business. After turning down a lucrative offer from Royalton Industries, he finds a dirty secret that Royalton has been manipulating the race to boost profits. The only way for ...

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2008/04/22 | Source | Permalink |  Digg |  del.icio.us | Stumble It! | Share this news

Seoul, April 22 (Yonhap) -- An international cartoon and animation festival will open here next month, showcasing the latest trends in the animated film industry and fast-changing media environment, the event's organizer said Tuesday.

The 12th Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival (SICAF) is to start May 21 for a five-day run at the Convention and Exhibition Center (COEX) in southern Seoul, the SICAF organizing committee said. ...

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