Category: Entertainment Files

Here is some good news for the South Korean film industry:

Bong Joon-ho’s sensation “Parasite” earned six nominations, including best picture, for the upcoming Academy Awards on Monday, becoming the first South Korean movie to compete at the world’s biggest film event.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled its final list of nominations for the 2020 Oscars Awards, to be held on Feb. 9.

“Parasite” was up for best picture, best directing, best original screenplay, best international feature film, production design and film editing.

It is the first time that a South Korean-made film has made it to the final nominees list of the Academy Awards.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It will be interesting to see how domestic streaming companies handle the big global streaming companies entering the Korean market:

The video streaming wars are heating up, as the existing players prepare for new, highly competitive entrants. With Apple and Disney seen coming to Korea in a serious way, Netflix, Wavve and Watcha are digging in and consolidating their positions.

Since Monday, homegrown Wavve has been charging new users to its streaming service only 100 won (9 cents) for the first month. This comes just after a recent offer of 4,000 won for the first three months. Wavve is a joint video-on-demand platform of three terrestrial broadcasters, KBS, MBC and SBS. 

Netflix will partner with local production houses to increase Korean-language content, while other competitors are beefing up their offerings and providing cinema-level viewing experiences at home.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

The Korean movie Parasite continues to win accolades:

 Bong Joon-ho’s black comedy “Parasite” was named best foreign language film at the U.S. Golden Globe Awards on Monday (Korean time).

In a ceremony held at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, “Parasite” won the honor, outclassing “The Farewell” by Lulu Wang, “Pain and Glory” by Pedro Almodovar, “Les Miserables” by Ladj Ly and “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” by Celine Sciamma.

It is the first time that a Korean-made film has won a prize at the accolades given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

It was also nominated for best screenplay and best director at the Golden Globe Awards but failed to win either.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I have never watched a Harry Potter movie, but on the racism scale this seems pretty thin:

The final trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald contained a jaw-dropping character reveal that has some Harry Potter fans fuming. As it turns out, one of the prequel franchise’s “new” characters, played by Claudia Kim, is actually a familiar villain from the original series: Voldemort’s evil snake companion Nagini. Author and screenwriter J.K. Rowling tweeted that she’d been sitting on this secret “for around 20 years.” But social media skeptics say that Nagini’s shocking past as a Korean woman seems highly implausible and possibly racist.  (……)

Fans are picking up on a few problems with this change. First, there’s the issue of representation: Nagini is only the second significant Asian character introduced in the Potterverse, and we know that her fate involves being the murdering pet reptile of a wizard who believes those without “pure blood” should not live. This plays into a couple of nasty stereotypes about Asian women often scene in Hollywood films: the sinister, exotic “dragon lady” and the submissive, voiceless sex object.  [Yahoo]

You can read more at the link.

Here is someone I have not seen much of since the end of the LOST television series:

Kim Yun-jin is set to make her first appearance in a Korean TV series in nearly 20 years.

The star of the U.S. hit series “Lost” appears as a detective in the crime thriller “Ms. Ma, Goddess of Revenge,” which is slated to start airing early next month.

“I have appeared both in U.S. TV series and Korean films and dramas, but few people recognize any Korean TV series that I was in. So I hope this will be it,” she said.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

This penalty makes sense to me that if you sign a contract to lose and hold a certain weight over an amount of time and don’t keep your end of the bargain:

Singer Kim Tae-woo of the group g.o.d has to pay tens of millions of won to a weight-watching business he advertised because he got too fat.

The Seoul Central District Court on Tuesday found for the plaintiff, weight-loss company Juvis, against Kim and his agency, and ordered them to pay W65 million in compensation.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Warner Bros. tried to create a Korean blockbuster film and failed miserably:

When Warner Bros. Korea’s “V.I.P.” was criticized by the internet last year over its inappropriate depiction of its female characters, the film company thought things could not get any worse. But its latest release, “Illang: The Wolf Brigade,” proved that it had yet to hit rock bottom.

Featuring high profile actors, including Gang Dong-won, Han Hyo-joo and Jung Woo-sung, joined by the award-winning director Kim Jee-woon, “Illang” is an adaptation of the 1999 Japanese animated film “Jin-Roh,” which is known as a seminal sci-fi movie. With a star-studded cast and a massive production budget that exceeded its first locally-produced hit, “The Age of Shadows” (2016), which sold 7.5 million tickets, Warner Bros. Korea had high hopes for “Illang.”

However, “Illang” sold merely 897,000 tickets and was forced out of theaters in three weeks – a shockingly poor performance for a film that cost 19 billion won (＄17.04 million) to make. The film needed to sell six million tickets to break even.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

So why did this movie fail?  I would start with the stupid plot:

The Korean adaptation relocates the story from post-World War II Japan to South Korea in 2029, a period after the two Koreas have declared a five-year preparation for unification. Fearing rapid growth in Korea following the planned unification, the world’s superpowers impose economic sanctions against the country. The economic difficulties lead to public outrage and result in the emergence of an armed terrorist group named Sect, which opposes the formation of a joint government between South and North Korea. In response, the government launches a special police unit to quell Sect. Feeling threatened by the growing influence of the special police unit, the national intelligence agency plots to bring the unit down.

Got all that?  Is it any wonder the audience ratings for this movie were bad especially when it involves significantly changing the plot of a high respected classic Japanese anime.

I'm really concerned that Ant Man & The Wasp failed to capture the diversity of the White experience. https://t.co/cNeUpvzcPy

— Jenny Yang 👲🏼👲🏼👲🏼 (@jennyyangtv) August 15, 2018

Via a reader tip comes news of the next big K-Pop hit.  Hopefully this doesn’t become the biggest thing to come from the Trump-Kim summit:

In a new video from Lee Seung-hyun, better known as Big Bang’s Seungri, the K-Pop star invades a meeting of the world leaders and sits down alongside not-really-look-a-likes of Trump and Kim.

At one point, “Kim” performs a choreographed dance and drinks champagne arm-in-arm with “Trump” as the chorus pumps “where are you from?”  [CNN]