Korean Industry Moves Forward Slowly as 2021 Remains Rocky

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefKorean American drama film “Minari” can’t stop winning awards. Similarly, it continues to reign on top of the Korean box office.The Lee Isaac Chung-directed film earned $1.09 million between Friday and Monday to top the box office in South Korea, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service of the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).The figure is little changed from the previous weekend.

Korean media group Next Entertainment World has partnered with L.A.’s Library Pictures International, signing a three-year co-financing slate for the production of Korean-language films.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefKorean Oscar-winner “Parasite” gleefully poked fun at South Korea’s bourgeoisie. Hur Jin-ho’s “The Dinner” is set to give the middle classes another skewering.The project is an adaptation of Dutch novel ‘Het Diner’ (“The Dinner”) written by Herman Koch.

On Feb. 22, Korean cafe Spoon by H on Beverly Boulevard announced via Instagram that it would close the next weekend.

Gallery: The career of Betty White in pictures (Espresso)Youn shared the historic first with "Minari" co-star Steven Yeun, the first Asian-American to be nominated for a best actor Oscar. Born in Seoul, Yuen and his family moved to Canada and then the United States when he was a child.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentFollowing his win of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the recently concluded Berlin Film Festival for “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” 42-year-old Hamaguchi Ryusuke suddenly finds himself catapulted to the directorial front ranks in his native Japan.It’s not that he’s exactly obscure there: Hamaguchi’s 2018 romantic drama “Asako I & II” was selected for the Cannes competition while his 2015 breakthrough, the five-hour-plus drama “Happy Hour,” won a group best

Rebecca Davis editorZhang Yimou has been hard at work alongside his daughter Zhang Mo shooting his upcoming blockbuster “Sniper,” which is now set for an October release, its production firm said.The project was explicitly conceived as a nationalistic commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Korean War, known in China as the “War to Resist U.S.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefA notable launch for “Minari” lifted the South Korea box office to its second highest weekend of 2021. The Korean-language American-made drama performed 80% higher than the weekend’s other significant new release Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon.”Opening in first place, “Minari” clocked up $1.68 million over the weekend, according to data from the Korean Film Council’s KOBIS box office tracking service.

Saban Films has picked up the horror-thriller Hide and Seek forNorth America, the U.K. and Ireland.

EXCLUSIVE: Indie stalwart Cassian Elwes is making a move into management via his Elevated banner, kicking off with signing Best Sellers director Lina Roessler, whose debut feature starring Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza screened in the Berlin Film Festival’s Special Gala section this week. It’s the first time the film producer and former co-head of William Morris Independent has moved into the management space.

Late Wednesday night there was a sliver of good news for the German film industry —and for anyone trying to sell films into Germany at this week's virtual European Film Market: Germany plans to re-open cinemas. Sort of.

Joe Otterson TV ReporterApple has ordered a live-action series adaptation of the Korean webtoon “Dr. Brain.” The series will be the first completely Korean-language project at the streamer.Kim Jee-Woon will write and direct, with “Parasite” star Lee Sun-Kyun set to star.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefTriumph and pain were bedfellows last year for the Korean film industry. But Berlin’s European Film Market and the imminent Hong Kong FilMart see Korean companies putting on a brave face.Korean cinemas were in defensive mode early on in the coronavirus pandemic, as a population familiar with epidemics chose to stay away from crowded places.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe end came quietly with the humdrum announcement of a deal between two state-owned TV groups, China Central Television (CCTV) and South Korean public broadcaster KBS.

EXCLUSIVE: The Remake Co, FilmSharks’ specialty label handling remake rights, has closed a deal with Korea’s Covenant Pictures for rights to the Argentinian feature Crazy Heart.

Toward the end of Tina, the revealing documentary tribute by Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin for HBO, Tina Turner is seen in an extended concert clip performing the Beatles' "Help" as a decelerated ballad — intimate, melancholy and full of feeling.

Opening with a very real-looking hardcore sex tape, and climaxing with a deranged orgy featuring super-sized dildos, Romanian writer-director Radu Jude's latest taboo-busting polemical comedy is refreshingly untroubled by tasteful restraint. Shot during COVID lockdown last summer, with cast and crew all wearing anti-viral masks, the snappily titled Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a scattershot attack on sexual hysteria and political hypocrisy in an era of online slut-shaming.

Most cop movies — and most movies in general — spend the first reel setting up a story that usually kicks off after an “inciting incident,” to quote various screenwriting manuals, which takes place within the first ten or 15 minutes. For the rest of the film, we then watch how that incident unravels and affects the lives of all those involved.

Hungary’s most recent contribution to the implacable flow of war films pouring out of Eastern Europe is a far cry from the Russian tank operas and spectacular disaster films like Battle of Leningrad. Denes Nagy’s sensitive first featureNatural Light (Termeszetes feny), bowing in Berlin competition, is the opposite of these: a slow starter high on atmosphere but low on action, whose horrific main event takes place discreetly off-screen.