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April 15, 2009
Actor Jung Gyeo-woon Thanks Fellow Actresses
Actor Jung Gyeo-woon has expressed his deep gratitude to fellow actresses Choi Myung-gil and Park Ye-jin. They all are appearing in the KBS2 drama 揂gain, My Love. |
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April 15, 2009
YWCA calls 'Boys over Flowers' failure
The main cast of "Boys over Flowers"
Seoul YWCA called the KBS drama "Boys over Flowers" an "absolute failure" in its latest monitoring report.
According to a group of university students who participated in the assessment of the drama, the Cinderella story became immensely popular thanks to its good-looking cast and easy-to-understand storyline.
However, the group pointed out that the drama failed to deliver more than a worn-out story involving violence in school, teenagers indulging in pleasure and prejudice toward others based on their appearance and social class. It added that the leading female character named Geum Jan-di particularly failed to convince being passive and dependent, yet cocky at times.
The report concluded that the 25-part drama series was the epitome of materialism and the Cinderella complex, and has set a bad example for Korean dramas.
Credits: iamhyol@heraldm.com
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEW ... 15/200904150086.asp |
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April 15, 2009
Jung Sun-hee returns to radio show
Jung Sun-hee returned to her radio show on SBS on Monday after a seven-month absence following two tragic deaths - her husband Ahn Jae-hwan and close friend Choi Jin-sil.
As for her comeback, Jung said she is now determined to play her role in the broadcasting field in response to the continued support of her fans. She had suspended her show and other broadcast activities after her husband committed suicide in September last year.
Choi, a beloved actress and long-time friend of Jung, also committed suicide in October, after despairing about online rumors implicating her with the death of Ahn.
Credits: insight@heraldm.com
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEW ... 16/200904160052.asp |
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April 16, 2009
Prosecutors clear agency head of charges in celebrity eavesdropping suit
SEOUL, April 16 (Yonhap) -- Prosecutors on Thursday dropped charges against the chief of one of South Korea's largest entertainment agencies who was booked for allegedly replicating a cell phone of a client actress to track her phone calls and text messages.
The agency, Sidus HQ, was investigated for allegedly hiring an outside expert to access phone records and messages of actress Jeong Ji-hyun, 27, in late November 2007, shortly before her contract with the company was to expire.
Three Sidus officials, including chief executive Chung Hoon-tak, were under investigation for eavesdropping on Jeon, who signed with Sidus while still in high school more than 10 years ago.
The outside expert who helped copy and rig Jeon's handset was given a one-year jail sentence last month. "We cleared charges against Chung due to a lack evidence that he colluded with those who actually participated in replicating Jeon's phone," an official at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said.
Jeon boasts enormous star power in South Korea and has earned popularity throughout Asia as a commercial model for popular brands such as Coca Cola. The controversy surrounding her management company raised not only ethical questions about invasion of privacy but the agency's excessive control over emerging celebrities through unfair, long-term contracts.
Counter to expectations, Jeon renewed her contract with Sidus HQ last month, citing strong "trust and loyalty" formed with the agency.
Credits: odissy@yna.co.kr
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/ ... 0416002500315F.HTML |
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April 9, 2009
Yim Soon-rye Returns with New Feature
Korea抯 top woman filmmaker YIM Soon-rye, director of 2008抯 first local hit, Forever the Moment, is back in 2009 with her fourth feature, Fly, Penguin which will have its world premiere at the 10th Jeonju International Film Festival in the Korean Feature Competition section.
The feature stars award-winning actress MOON So-ri, along with PARK Won-sang, PARK In-hwan and JEONG Hye-sun |
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News Index page 102
April 16: No plans for comeback: Shim Eun-ha
April 16: Jun Ji-hyun is Chinese?
April 16: 'Insadong' Can Go That Extra Mile
April 16: Whee Sung Steals Hearts of Fans in Japan
April 16: CJ Ent. Makes Waves at HK FILMART
April 16: 揤itamin |
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April 16, 2009
No plans for comeback: Shim Eun-ha
Former actress Sim Eun-ha showed up at the Seoul Open Art Fair yesterday at COEX in Samsung-dong.
Sim looked around the fair with her husband, Ji Sang-wook. She is displaying four of her Indian ink paintings at the fair's special exhibition named "Star Arts Project."
"I hesitated at first because I thought my paintings are not good enough to be displayed in an art fair. But I got up my courage when my mother-in-law and the chairman of the fair said it was OK," Sim said in an interview with SBS TV.
Sim also made it clear that she has no plans to return to the entertainment business yet. "I don't have much free time because I have two children. I want to concentrate on raising them, so I have no plans of returning to the screen," she said.
Sim retired from acting in 2005 when she got married.
Credits: claire@heraldm.com) via koreaherald.co.kr, captures from daum.net |
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April 16, 2009
Jun Ji-hyun is Chinese?
Sidus, actress Jun Ji-hyun's agency, denied the reports that that Jun is a hwagyo and said it is considering on taking legal action.
An internet media reported on Thursday that Jun was verified as a "hwagyo" (ethnic Chinese in Korea) during the prosecution's recent investigation of her duplicated mobile phone scandal, quotting an an unnamed official at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office.
"We don't know if he kept his Taiwanese nationality, but Jun Ji-hyun's father is an ethnic Chinese, and Jun Ji-hyun is an ethnic Chinese herself," the media reported, quoting the source as saying.
There have been rumors about Jun's ethnicity since her debut in 1997 because she started to use another surname, Jun, instead of her real one, Wang. Wang is a typical Chinese last name, although it is also common in Korea.
The actress, however, has been denying her roots in numerous interviews since now.
"What about it if I am an ethnic Chinese? I don't understand why it needs to be hidden. Isn't it a good thing since I would also be able to speak Chinese? Sometimes I even think that it is too bad that I am not an ethnic Chinese when I hear those rumors," she had said in one interview.
Jun is an A-list actress in Korea. Overcoming the mobile phone scandal, she recently renewed the contract with her former agency, which was accused of duplicating her phone. She is currently concentrating on promoting her new film "Blood: The Last Vampire" which will be released in Japan next month.
Credits: claire@heraldm.com via koreaherald.co.kr |
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April 16, 2009
'Insadong' Can Go That Extra Mile
By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter
In 揑nsadong Scandal, |
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April 16, 2009
Whee Sung Steals Hearts of Fans in Japan
He presented a spectacular three-hour show.
Whee Sung held a solo concert entitled 揟okyo Whee Show |
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April 16, 2009
CJ Ent. Makes Waves at HK FILMART
The film sales arm of Korean major CJ Entertainment did brisk business at the Hong Kong FIILMART, closing deals on a slew of titles including pre-sales for its big-budget disaster film Haeundae going to Indonesia抯 VSG for rights over Malaysia, Singapore and home territory.
The Busan-set CGI driven film about a tsunami that hits the popular Korean beach resort of Haeundae, boasts a top cast of SOL Kyung-gu (Oasis), HA Ji-won (Duelist), PARK Joong-hoon (Radio Star), and UHM Jung-hwa (Princess Aurora). JK Youn (Miracle on 1st Street) directs with Hollywood master Hans Ulrich (Star Wars 4 & 5, The Day After Tomorrow) supervising CGI.
Haeundae also sold to Indo Overseas along with KIM Jee-woon western The Good, The Bad, The Weird for India. CJ also sold KANG Woo-suk thriller Public Enemy Returns to Palisades Tartan for the US and UK, and JUN Yun-su抯 erotic period drama Portrait of a Beauty to UniArt for Japan. CJ also signed an agreement with Australia抯 SBS TV for indie-film Members of the Funeral.
Credits: Nigel D'Sa (KOFIC) |
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April 16, 2009
BoA Begins Radio Promotion Tour
BoA, South Korea's top pop star
BoA, South Korea's top pop star, has embarked on a full-blown promotion tour of her songs through American radio broadcasts.
Following her visit to WDRE, a radio broadcaster in Long Island, Wednesday, BoA plans to visit famed radio broadcasters in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Florida, Orlando, Miami and Seattle, according to Yonhap News. While visiting broadcasters, she will have a string of interviews with famous DJs and introduce "I Did It For Love," the flagship song of her U.S. debut album entitled "BoA," and other songs.
Given that the radio is a key publicity means in the U.S. pop world, the forthcoming radio tour will serve a good occasion for BoA, 22, to get closer to fans in the world's largest album market.
Meanwhile, the music video of "I Dit It For Love," directed by Joseph Kahn, has been unveiled at BoA's official Web site (www.boaamerica.com) and other American Web sites, Yonhap said. Kahn had made promos for Britney Spears, Chris Brown and Eminem and won the Best Video of the Year and Best Direction at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards.
BoA released her U.S. album on March 17 amid high expectations that she will be able to reenact her success story in Japan in the United States. The album contains 11 songs including "I Did It For Love" and dance tracks "Energetic," "Eat You Up," and "Look Who's Talking."
BoA's album ranked 127th on the Billboard 200 Album Charts announced on March 26. It was the first time that a Korean singer had entered the Billboard chart.
Source: koreatimes.co.kr |
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April 17, 2009
SS501 to Meet Fans in Air
The five-man band SS501 will take its Korean and Japanese fans to Jeju Island on chartered planes for a fan meeting there, DSP Media, the band抯 agency, said on Thursday.
Jin Air is to provide the two flights between Gimpo and Jeju and Busan and Jeju for the event scheduled for May 2 and 3. The group's five members will be divided into two groups to board each plane and personally serve the fans in the cabin.
In Jeju, the band will hold a fan meeting at the International Convention Center and a garden party at a hotel, and take part in a tour program with fans.
A Jin Air staffer said, 揂s soon as we started to receive bookings on our website, so many people visited it that all seats were booked in two hours. |
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April 17, 2009
Celebrities to Promote Cycling
Stars pose at the central government complex in Seoul on Thursday after being chosen to promote cycling (From left, actresses Han Go-eun and Park Eun-hye, singer Kwon Yu-ri and model Kim Yu-ri). /Newsis
Credits: englishnews@chosun.com |
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April 17, 2009
Jung Seon-kyung to Be Honored for Charity Work
Actress Jung Seon-kyung is awarded a presidential citation next Monday, on the Day of People with a Disability, for her outstanding service as PR ambassador to promote the rights of the disabled since 2002.
Credits: englishnews@chosun.com |
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April 16, 2009
Cannes taps heavy hitters
Top international filmmakers onboard for fest
By TODD MCCARTHY
The upcoming Cannes Film Festival will be swimming in top international filmmakers, as directors including Ang Lee, Jane Campion, Michael Haneke, Quentin Tarantino, Ken Loach, Pedro Almodovar, Bong Joon-ho, Marco Bellocchio, Lars von Trier and Johnnie To expect to square off for the Palme d'Or come May 13.
With one week to go before the April 23 announcement of the Official Selection, fest director Thierry Fremaux and his selection committee still have numerous films to watch, so this weekend will tell the tale as far as several titles are concerned. Unlike his predecessor Gilles Jacob, who tended to accept or reject films as he saw them over a period of months, Fremaux prefers to keep his options open to a certain extent until he's seen everything, leaving anxious filmmakers, distribs and sales companies in the dark until the final bell.
All the same, the lineup for the competition has come into focus in recent days, creating an image of a fest that will be heavy on Asian and Euro titles, light on films from Central and South America, Africa and the Middle East and iffy where Hollywood is concerned.
Tarantino's WWII saga "Inglourious Basterds," toplining Brad Pitt, was locked in a couple of weeks ago, but fest toppers only saw Lee's "Taking Woodstock," set during the fabled 1969 music event, this week and extended an immediate invitation to the Focus Features release. Liev Schreiber, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Emile Hirsch head the cast.
Word is that Francis Ford Coppola's Argentine family drama "Tetro," with Vincent Gallo, will be viewed imminently by the committee, and that Werner Herzog's "Bad Lieutenant" makeover, starring Nicolas Cage, is jockeying for a special screening or midnight slot. An almost certain midnight attraction will be Sam Raimi's horror-thriller "Drag Me to Hell," a Universal release toplining Justin Long and Alison Lohman that was very well received in incomplete form at the recent SXSW Film Festival.
Less confirmed word has it that Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," featuring Heath Ledger's final performance in a role that, after his death, came to be shared with Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, may make its debut in Cannes. Fest announced early on that Pete Docter's animated Pixar feature "Up" will open the fest, which runs through May 24.
Other English-language fare will include Campion's U.K. production "Bright Star," a drama about the romance of 19th-century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, starring Ben Wishaw and Abbie Cornish; Cannes regular von Trier's "Antichrist," a horror drama with Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple who retreat to a secluded forest cabin after the death of their son; Loach's "Looking for Eric," about a troubled adolescent soccer fan who's counseled by former star Eric Cantona; prolific helmer To's French-financed "Vengeance," starring Johnny Hallyday as a hitman-turned-chef who heads to Hong Kong to avenge his daughter's death; and possibly English director Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank," toplining Michael Fassbender in a tale of a 15-year-old whose life is turned upside down by her mother's new boyfriend. Pic looks to be in the Official Selection, although in which category remains uncertain.
Haneke's German entry, "The White Ribbon," examines incipient fascism at a rural school in 1913; like Coppola's film, it was shot in black-and-white. Almodovar's "Broken Embraces," which has already opened in Spain, is a multistrand melodrama starring Penelope Cruz, and vet Italian master Bellocchio's "Vincere" stars Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Filippo Timi in a study of Mussolini's secret lover and the couple's son Albino.
South Korea and China will be heavily represented this year. From the former come "The Host" director Bong's "Mother," a thriller about a woman's attempt to determine who framed her antisocial son for a ghastly murder, and "Oldboy" helmer Park Chan-wook's "Thirst," a vampire tale about a small-town priest transformed into a neck-biter by a medical experiment gone wrong.
Flying the Chinese flag will be "Summer Palace" director Lou Ye's "Spring Fever," about a young threesome overcome with erotic longings, and possibly Lu Chuan's "City of Life and Death" (aka "Nanking! Nanking!"), a large-scale telling of the 1937 massacre of Nanking by the Japanese army.
Also very likely for the competition are Malaysian auteur Tsai Ming-liang's French-financed "Face," about a Taiwanese director arrived in Paris to make a film about Salome, starring Mathieu Amalric, Jeanne Moreau, Fanny Ardant, Nathalie Baye, Laetitia Casta and Jean-Pierre Leaud; and Japanese fest regular Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Air Doll," about the love affair between a videostore clerk and an inflatable sex doll.
Two other possibilities are Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman's first feature since 2002, "The Time That Remains," the story of a Palestinian family from the '40s to the present day, and Belgian director Jaco von Dormael's time-jumping fantasy "Mr. Nobody," with Diane Kruger and Jared Leto.
The final selection of French titles is regularly made at the very last minute, but the titles nearest the front of the line are Alain Resnais' "Les Herbes folles," Jacques Audiard's "A Prophet," Bruno Dumont's "Hadewijch," Xavier Giannoli's "In the Beginning," Robert Guediguian's "The Army of Crime" and Catherine Corsini's "Leaving."
Prominent in the Un Certain Regard sidebar will be two Romanian features: "Police, Adjective," directed by Corneliu Porumboiu ("12:08: East of Bucharest"), and "Tales From the Golden Age," an omnibus film produced by Palme laureate Cristian Mungiu ("4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days"), with two episodes directed by him and others helmed by proteges.
(Derek Elley, Pamela McClintock, Jay Weissberg and Ali Jaafar contributed to this report.)
Source: variety.com |
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April 17, 2009
Drama star injured in car wreck
Actor Kim Suk-hoon is reportedly having difficulty walking and moving around after he was injured in a serious car accident on the Cheonan-Nonsan Expressway last Saturday.
Kim, who is the star of the KBS-2 drama 揅heonchutaehu |
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April 14, 2009
11th Udine Far East Film Festival
 
The 11th edition of Far East Film Festival will be held from Friday, April 24th to Saturday, May 2nd, 2009.
SOUTH KOREA
The Accidental Gangster, YEO Kyun-dong, 2008, period-action-comedy-romance, International Festival Premiere
Crush And Blush, LEE Kyoung-mi, 2008, black screwball comedy, Italian Premiere
A Frozen Flower, YOO Ha,2008, erotic-drama, Italian Premiere
The Good, The Bad, The Weird, KIM Jee-woon, 2008, eastern-western, Italian Premiere
Hello Schoolgirl, RYU Jang-ha, 2008, youth drama, International Festival Premiere
Life Is Cool, Equan CHOE, 2008, rotoscope-drama, International Festival Premiere
My Dear Enemy, LEE Yoon-ki, 2008, drama, Italian Premiere
Rough Cut, JANG Hoon, 2008, gangster-movie, European Premiere
Scandal Makers, KANG Hyoung-chul, 2008, comedy, European Premiere
Source: www.fareastfilm.com
SOUTH KOREA / Feff 2009 - Guest Stars
KANG Hyoung-chul, director, Scandal Makers
KIM Jee-woon, director, The Good, The Bad, The Weird
LEE An-na, producer, Scandal Makers
SUH Youngjoo, producer, My Dear Enemy |
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Author
