Actor Lee Chun-hee and child actress Kim Sae-ron have been appointed as promotional ambassadors for the 13th Seoul International Youth Film Festival, which begins July 7.The festival has been a venue for youngsters to share their culture through films and media education since 1999. This year, a total of 143 films from 37 countries, featuring stories of youth, children and growing up will be scree

Film June 1, 2011

Mama (Korea)Opening June 1Drama. Directed by Choi Ik-hwan. Featuring the stories of three different mothers and their children, director Choi Ik-hwan’s “Mama” tells what mothers mean to the traditional and contemporary Korean mentality. Hyung-seok, a 5-year-old boy who suffers from a fatal heart disease, lives with his mom Dong-sook (Uhm Jung-hwa) alone. Being a single mother, Dong-sook works as a

Film May 27, 2011

Barring the end of the world (it didn’t happen Saturday, did it?), or the even less likely scenario in which no one bothers to go out next weekend to see three guys wake up completely blotto, there will be a “Hangover: Part III.”“Obviously, it will depend on the success of the second one,” says Bradley Cooper, whose participation in the inaugural “Hangover” had more than a little to do with his ro

Books May 27, 2011

Life of NYC’s most tribal borough The Devil She KnowsBy Bill Loehfelm(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)Maureen Coughlin, a 29-year-old cocktail waitress at a seedy Staten Island bar, has dropped out of college and is lying to her mother about it. She tells herself she’s saving money so she can go back to school, but she knows that is also a lie.She pictures herself flirting for tips from drunks until she

Books May 27, 2011

In the picture, I am probably 10 years old. I’m wearing blue jeans and a bright red sweater, and I’m perched on the stump of a redwood tree, surrounded by a forest of the same. On my lap, I hold an open book. My head is bowed, long blond hair studiously tucked behind my ears. I wish I could remember the book I was reading, but I can’t.What I do remember is that I knew my mother was taking the pict

Books May 27, 2011

For some, a book club means Chardonnay, gossip and some bookish conversation. For Oprah Winfrey, it’s meant making bestsellers and, as she said last week, “the biggest controversy in our 25 years.”As her broadcast television show comes to a close, Winfrey welcomed the reason for that controversy ― the not-truthful memoirist James Frey ― onto two full shows of her final 10, putting her once-vital B

Books May 27, 2011

Chinese-born Nobel Prize winner says modern literature must break away from 20th-century ideologies Gao Xingjian, the Chinese-born recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature, said all forms of literature must be free from outside control, including ideologies, politics, and the free market.He was speaking at a press conference Tuesday at Kyobo Bookstore in downtown Seoul, on the first day of

Books May 24, 2011

Cinematic self-portrait ‘Arirang’ gains international recognitionKim Ki-duk, one of the best known Korean auteurs overseas, received a coveted sidebar prize at Cannes on Saturday for his wrenching cinematic self-portrait “Arirang.”Kim shared his Un Certain Regard best picture prize with German director Andreas Dresen, who received it for the film “Stopped on Track.”“Arirang” is an emotionally raw

Film May 22, 2011

Cinematic self-portrait ‘Arirang’ gains international recognitionKim Ki-duk, one of the best known Korean auteurs overseas, received a coveted sidebar prize at Cannes on Saturday for his wrenching cinematic self-portrait “Arirang.”Kim shared his Un Certain Regard best picture prize with German director Andreas Dresen, who received it for the film “Stopped on Track.”“Arirang” is an emotionally raw

Film May 22, 2011

Cardinal Nicholas Cheong Jin-suk may resign as archbishop of Seoul by the end of the year, a local news report said Friday.The Vatican is looking to accept Cheong’s resignation before the end of the year, or at least by early next year, the report said citing an unnamed high-ranking official of the Korean Catholic Church.Cheong, who was appointed as the archbishop of Seoul in 1998, tendered his re

Social Affairs May 20, 2011

Goodbye, Boy (Korea)Opening June 2Drama. Directed by Roh Hong-jin. Middle school boy Jin-woo gets a part-time job delivering newspapers in the early morning, to help his mother who supports the family by herself. His father has always been unemployed, suffering from alcohol addiction. And his sister, who attends high school, has no aspirations for her future. Jin-woo runs into another boy named Ch

Film May 20, 2011

After decades of dark excess, Keith Richards seems wildly out of place at family-friendly Disneyland. But on a recent Saturday, there he was, a rock ‘n’ roll exile on Main Street USA, attending the massive movie premiere of “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” the fourth installment in the blockbuster franchise in which he briefly appears as Capt. William Teague, father to Johnny Depp’s

Film May 20, 2011