Filmmaker Lee Chang-dong has been appointed as the dean of this year’s Asian Film Academy, organizers of Busan International Film Festival said.An intensive film education program organized by BIFF, the Asian Film Academy offers its students a chance to participate in short film productions and attend workshops as well as mentoring sessions. Lee is the second Korean filmmaker to serve as AFA’s dean, after director Im Kwon-taek. Former AFA deans include Hou Hsiao Hsien, Jia Zhangke, Mohsen Makhma

March 19, 2013

Lindsay Lohan isn't headed back to jail _ but she won't be free to party for a while either.The troubled 26-year-old actress accepted a plea deal on Monday in a misdemeanor car crash case that includes 90 days in a locked-down rehabilitation facility that she won't be able to leave.Lohan who has struggled for years with legal problems and been briefly jailed five times, pleaded no contest to reckless driving and lying to police who were investigating the accident involving the actress in June al

March 19, 2013

One cannot be sure why film director Roh Deok calls this young couple “very ordinary,” but it is the “ordinary” post-break-up behavior that is on her mind ― or at least in her feature debut: The two get into a physical fight while drinking with their coworkers, obsessively check each other’s Facebook accounts, secretly follow their ex on their dates, and swear at each other in public.The film, “Very Ordinary Couple,” seems to be arguing that this is what most of us, the “ordinary,” go through af

March 18, 2013

G.I. Joe: RetaliationOpening March 28Action. Adventure. Science Fiction. Directed by Jon M Chu. Zartan (Arnold Vosloo), the Cobra commander who is impersonating the president of the United States, has world leaders under his control. His ruthless terrorist organization is determined to rule the world, and the U.S. is in turmoil -- advanced warheads are aimed at innocent people around the world, and the G.I. Joe team is accused of crimes against the country. On Zartan’s orders, some of the G.I. J

March 15, 2013

Abigail Breslin burst onto the scene in 2006, playing Olive, the youngest member of a dysfunctional clan in the quirky film “Little Miss Sunshine.” Despite sweatbands and nerdy glasses, Olive was obsessed with beauty pageants and led her family on a cross-country road trip to a pageant where she’d perform the choicest dance numbers.Breslin, who earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for that role, turns 17 next month and stars in another road trip movie of sorts ― though

March 15, 2013

Local film weekly Movieweek is going out of business this month, leaving Cine21 as the last Korean movie weekly standing.The magazine announced the news through their official Twitter account on March 12. “Our upcoming 571st edition, which will be out on March 22, will be our last issue,” the weekly said via Twitter.The film magazine was founded in 2001, and has been considered one of the two most influential movie weeklies for the last 12 years, along with Cine21. From the late 1990s to the ear

March 15, 2013

Director Park Chan-wook has been there, and so has director Kim Jee-woon. Hollywood may not be an undiscovered place for Korean directors as of this year: They’ve made their debut films there, released them, and experienced the red-carpet glamour. Hollywood, however, still remains foreign to most local actors. One of the few exceptions is top actor Lee Byung-hun, whose performance in his 2009 Hollywood debut “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” left a mark. The actor is now ahead of the opening of the

March 12, 2013

MIAMI (AP) ― When actor Jonathan Pryce first received a copy of River Phoenix’s last film “Dark Blood,” it sat unwatched on his desk for months. He worried about how he would feel reliving Phoenix’s death, growing nostalgic about memorable dinners the two shared after long days of filming in Utah and recalling the shocking 5 a.m. phone call telling him the young actor had died.“It’s very hard to comprehend for a while. It was a terribly sad time,” said Pryce, who starred in the film alongside Ph

March 10, 2013

Actor-turned-director Yoo Ji-tae’s first feature film has won the Jury Prize at this year’s Deauville Asian Film Festival, the film’s local promoters said Sunday.Titled “Mai Ratima,” the film features a love affair between a destitute Korean man (played by Bae Soo-bin) and a young Thai woman who moved to Korea as a mail-order bride (played by Park Ji-soo). Both of the characters face discrimination against their social status and ethnicity.  The movie was premiered at last year’s Busan Internati

March 10, 2013

Django UnchainedOpening March 21Drama. Western. Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Set in the South in 1858, Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave with a brutal history with his former owners, finds himself with bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christopher Waltz). Together they search for the Brittle brothers who are wanted dead or alive. Once they find the brothers, the team sets on a mission to rescue Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), Django’s wife from during the slave trade long ago. On their journey they bu

March 8, 2013

In the movies’ version of March Madness, Sam Raimi turns out to be a much better Tim Burton than Bryan Singer. Unlike “Giant Slayer” Singer, Sam’s got a sense of humor. Taking on a prequel to the fairytale that frightened generations, Sam does scary. And does it well.“Oz the Great and Powerful” is a winning back-engineering of the Oz fantasy, a “How the Wizard got to be wonderful” romp that is a stunning update “The Wizard of Oz’s” effects, and the most gorgeous use of 3-D since “Alice in Wonder

March 8, 2013

Top Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio said he was “proud” to play a character who “represents everything wrong” about the American antebellum era. The 38-year-old arrived in Seoul on Wednesday to promote his latest film, Academy Award-winning “Django Unchained.” In the western film directed by the legendary Quentin Tarantino, set in the antebellum era of the Deep South of the U.S., DiCaprio stars as Calvin Candie, a cruel plantation owner who is chased after by a freed slave Django (Jamie Foxx),

March 7, 2013