Most Popular
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Tensions heighten ahead of first president-opposition chief meeting
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Seoul to provide housing subsidy to married couples with newborns
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[KH Explains] No more 'Michael' at Kakao Games
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Rapper jailed after public street fight with another rapper
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Woman gets suspended term for injuring boyfriend with knife
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Samsung chief bolsters ties with Germany’s Zeiss
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NewJeans pops out ‘Bubble Gum’ video amid troubles at agency
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Nominee for chief of anti-corruption body pledges 'independence, effectiveness'
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Med schools expect 1,500+ new admission slots next year
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KT launches new mobile plans for foreign residents
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Mayor begs Woody Allen to make a movie in Rio
RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) ― Rio de Janeiro’s mayor says he’ll pay “whatever it takes” to get Woody Allen to set one of his films in this sensuous seaside city, host of the 2016 Olympics.“I’ll pay 100 percent of the production,” said Eduardo Paes in an interview published Sunday by the daily O Globo.Allen has made a string of recent movies featuring some of the world’s great cities ― London, Barcelona, Paris and Rome ― and Paes is determined to add Rio to the list.“I’ll pay whatever it takes to get hi
Aug. 19, 2013
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Soo Ae: Best characters have iron fist in a velvet glove
Actress Soo Ae says she is drawn to roles that are “oeyunaegang,” a four-character idiom that translates to an iron fist in a velvet glove.“The quality is what I consider to be ideal,” the actress said in an interview with The Korea Herald in Seoul last week. “I’ve always admired those who appear gentle but are determined and strong underneath. They are my role models. So naturally, I chose to play a lot of characters that have that quality.”The 34-year-old’s past roles are evidence of the profe
Aug. 19, 2013
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[Newsmaker] Hong Sang-soo wins Best Director at Locarno
Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s latest film “Our Sunhi” has nabbed the filmmaker the Best Director award at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland. The award marks Hong’s first win at the annual film fest, which was held Aug. 7-17.“Our Sunhi” is Hong’s 15th film, starring actress Jeong Yoo-mi and actors Lee Sun-kyun and Jung Jae-young. It tells the story of a young film studies graduate student named Sun-hi, who is about to leave for the United States to continue her stud
Aug. 18, 2013
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'Snowpiercer' surpasses 8 mln viewer mark
South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho's English language debut film, "Snowpiercer," has attracted more than 8 million viewers in 19 days since opening, the national film promotion agency said Sunday.The film, starring top Korean actor Song Kang-ho alongside Hollywood thespians Chris Evans, Ed Harris and Tilda Swinton, attracted a total of 8,004,089 viewers as of Sunday morning, the 19th day since first playing on local screens, the Korean Film Council said. The feat marks a faster speed in attract
Aug. 18, 2013
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Box Office: The Grandmaster, The Flu, The Place Beyond the Pines
The GrandmasterAction. Directed by Wong Kar-wai. Opening Aug. 22Ip Man (Tony Leung) is a martial arts specialist who enjoys a peaceful life with his wife (Song Hye-kyo) and two children in southern China. While Ip is training, he is challenged to a duel by Gong Yutian, a martial arts master known for his 64 hands technique. Ip wins, much to Gong’s surprise. He later runs into Gong’s daughter, Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi), who visits Ip to regain her father’s honor. The two form a special bond through an
Aug. 16, 2013
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The incomparable Karen Black in 1970s cinema
Though actress Karen Black never stopped working, news of her passing last week at age 74 sent me back to the 1970s. That era ― a transformative cultural moment for women in general ― had the films I remember the actress in most.It actually starts on the eve of the decade with 1969’s “Easy Rider,” the movie that put Black on Hollywood’s radar. (She had already made an imprint on stage.) It’s hard to forget her portrayal of a leggy prostitute with a long tangle of brown curls taking an LSD-fueled
Aug. 16, 2013
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BIFF gives Asian filmmaking award to Cambodian director
Celebrated Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh has been selected as the winner of Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award.The annual prize from BIFF is given to an Asian filmmaker “who has significantly contributed to the development of Asian cinema and culture.” Past winners include Iran’s Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien and Hong Kong’s Andy Lau. The 49-year-old filmmaker’s works have been largely focused on the aftermath of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime
Aug. 15, 2013
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15 years later, Oprah is back in the movies
NEW YORK (AP) ― The day before Oprah Winfrey began shooting “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” she was at the White House, talking to the president. Her access to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (this particular trip was for a 2012 campaign interview) is considerably greater than her character’s in the film. She plays Gloria Gaines, the wife of a long-serving White House butler (Forest Whitaker), whose service spans seven presidents and decades of civil rights sea changes. “They said, ‘Do you want to talk to s
Aug. 15, 2013
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Matt Damon: ‘Elysium’ resonates with the world we live in
Following on the heels of “World War Z,” “After Earth” and “Snowpiercer,” local theaters are seeing the arrival of another dystopian blockbuster, this time starring Matt Damon. Damon, who is best known in Korea for his 1997 drama film “Good Will Hunting” which he co-wrote with his friend and fellow actor Ben Affleck, visited Seoul for the first time to promote his latest movie “Elysium.”The film, directed by “District 9” filmmaker Neill Blomkamp, is set in 2154 where the powerful live in a space
Aug. 14, 2013
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Matt Damon: ‘Elysium’ resonates with the world we live in
Following on the heels of “World War Z,” “After Earth” and “Snowpiercer,” local theaters are seeing the arrival of another dystopian blockbuster, this time starring Matt Damon. Damon, who is best known in Korea for his 1997 drama film “Good Will Hunting” which he co-wrote with his friend and fellow actor Ben Affleck, visited Seoul for the first time to promote his latest movie “Elysium.”The film, directed by “District 9” filmmaker Neill Blomkamp, is set in 2154 where the powerful live in a space
Aug. 14, 2013
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When martial arts become cinematic poetry
Filmmaker Wong Kar-wai’s “Grandmaster,” contrary to what the title suggests, is not exactly a biopic of the legendary Chinese martial artist Ip Man (1893-1972), the grandmaster of Wing Chun who famously taught Bruce Lee.Rather, it is Wong’s poignant, visually stunning tribute to what is now gone ― China before the Japanese invasion and the glory years of Chinese martial arts in the 1930s. Though it features the life of Ip, the film focuses on martial arts itself rather than the individual. What
Aug. 13, 2013
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Disney prepares a toy offensive with ‘Infinity’
GLENDALE, California (AP) ― With cartoony posters plastering the walls and toy figures standing at attention on nearly every flat surface, a once ordinary conference room on Disney’s Glendale campus has been transformed into the colorful war room for “Disney Infinity,” the ambitious project from the company’s interactive division that combines real-life toy figures with virtual worlds.“This is like being in my bedroom,” says “Infinity” executive producer John Vignocchi while bouncing around the
Aug. 12, 2013
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Cho Jae-hyun wins acting prize at Montreal Film Festival
Actor Cho Jae-hyun won the best actor prize at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, Canada, for his performance as a hunchback in director Jeon Kyu-hwan’s film “The Weight.”In the 2012 film, Cho plays a mortician who accepts the corpses of those who died without any family or friends to pay for the funeral. Cho is said to have agreed to star in the low-budget movie for free.Director Jeon won the Queer Lion prize at last year’s Venice International Film Festival for the m
Aug. 12, 2013
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Summer days with movies of all genres
From classics to cult, movies of different genres are being screened at an annual summer film festival in Seoul. The 2013 Cine-Vacances Seoul, in its 8th year, is showing 28 movies categorized into four sections at Seoul Art Cinema in Insa-dong, Seoul. The cinema is a non-profit cinematheque ― a film archive with small venues that screens mostly classic and art-house films. It screens some 500 films from various countries and receives over 60,000 visitors every year. The films taken out of the
Aug. 11, 2013
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Box Office: The Flu, The Place Beyond the Pines, The Terror Live
The FluDrama. Action. Directed by Kim Sung-soo.Opening Aug. 14A deadly strain of the avian influenza virus H5N1 suddenly spreads, causing widespread destruction in Bundang, a city of high-rise apartments outside of Seoul. The disease infects its victims through the respiratory system and it takes only 36 hours for the infected to die. People are helpless against the airborne disease and the number of infected increases quickly, spreading chaos. As a precaution against the worst-case scenario, th
Aug. 9, 2013
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Tom Hanks films to open, close London Film fest
LONDON (AP) ― The London Film Festival is getting a double dose of Tom Hanks.Organizers announced Thursday that the festival will close Oct. 20 with “Saving Mr. Banks,” which stars Hanks as movie mogul Walt Disney.Hanks also plays the lead role in the festival’s opener, piracy thriller “Captain Phillips.”Based on real events, “Saving Mr. Banks” tells the story of the fraught page-to-screen journey of children’s classic “Mary Poppins.” Hanks plays the American filmmaker, with Emma Thompson as the
Aug. 9, 2013
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Long-lost Orson Welles film turns up in Italy
NEW YORK (AFP) ― A long-lost silent film directed by Orson Welles in 1938 has been recovered from a warehouse in northeastern Italy, where it will be screened in public for the first time in October.“Too Much Johnson” was originally intended to be shown as a prologue to a slapstick comedy at the Mercury repertory theatre in New York, but it was never finished.Until staff at the Cinemazero art house cinema in Pordenone, Italy found the work print in a warehouse earlier this year, it was thought t
Aug. 8, 2013
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‘The Terror Live’ to get North American release
After marking 2 million viewers within just six days of release, “The Terror Live” will be released in seven cities in North America starting on Aug. 9, the movie’s investment distribution company Lotte Entertainment announced Thursday. The North American premiere will take place at CGV theater in Los Angeles on Friday, followed by New York, Atlanta, Seattle, Las Vegas, Vancouver and Toronto. More screens may be added depending on the film’s performance. Meanwhile, nearly 3 million people have s
Aug. 8, 2013
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Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep to reunite for ‘The Good House’
NEW YORK (AP) ― More than a dozen years after their last film together, Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep will reunite on screen for an adaption of Ann Leary’s darkly comic small town New England tale, “The Good House.”De Niro and Streep memorably starred together in 1978’s “The Deer Hunter,” as well as 1984’s “Falling in Love” and 1996’s “Marvin’s Room.”FilmNation Entertainment announced Tuesday that it acquired the rights for “The Good House” from Jane Rosenthal, De Niro’s producing partner. She
Aug. 7, 2013
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Media Rating Board OKs screening of Kim Ki-duk’s controversial ‘Moebius’
The Korea Media Rating Board has lifted its ban on the screening of filmmaker Kim Ki-duk’s “Moebius” in Korea, after the director re-submitted the film twice and cut two minutes and 30 seconds from the original version. “Moebius” received an R rating, which prohibits teenagers under 18 from seeing the movie.The film initially received a “restricted screening” rating from the state-run rating agency in June, for its controversial subject matter ― especially for scenes that depict incestuous encou
Aug. 7, 2013