‘Project Silence’ Review: A Collapsing Bridge Becomes a Dog’s Dinner in a Silly But Serviceable Korean Disaster Flick

Netflix this week announced six new Korean romance titles slated for the rest of 2023. They are: “See You in my 19th Life,” “King the Land,” “Behind Your Touch,” “Destined With You,” “A Time Called You,” and “Doona!” The titles were unveiled at an in-person event called “K-romance obsession” in Seoul. Guests were mostly K-drama influencers from around the Asia Pacific region and the event was decked out with reds, pinks and vast numbers of heart decorations. Guests were offered snack food that had been featured in earlier hit K-drama shows including “Crash Landing on You,” “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” “Business Proposal” and “Alchemy of Souls.”

Hong Sung-eun’s sensitive drama “Aloners” is a reflective interrogation into modern loneliness, as well as the silent brutalities of today’s urban life defined by competition, technology and nonstop productivity. The film follows a depressed young woman named Jina (Gong Seung-yeon), who works at a call center. She is currently the top employee in the office and is praised for having handled the greatest number of calls despite having lost her mother recently. Productivity is the most-valued trait in her workplace, and Jina knows this well. She treats all her clients equally, whether they happen to be deranged, abusive or pleasant. Her voice is always polite and calm regardless of how her often-entitled clients behave, but her eyes appear soulless. She looks like someone with a serious but completely asymptomatic disease.

A24 follows You Hurt My Feelings last weekend with dual-language romance Past Lives, starting a platform release on four screens in New York and LA including Q&As led by talent who have been champions of the film, including Steve Buscemi, Jodie Turner-Smith and Lulu Wang. Expanding this month.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Lisa Ling has, over the course of her career, traveled to far-off places including Costa Rica and North Korean. Her next stop: CBS News. Ling, who recently cut ties with CNN after the Warner Bros. Discovery-based cable-news outlet canceled her documentary program, “This Is Life,” will join CBS News as a contributor, says co-president Neeraj Khemlani. She is expected to debut on CBS News later this summer, and will be based in Los Angeles. “If you look at her work over the years, she is really excellent at embedding with communities,” says the executive, in an interview. “You can only do that if you are afforded time and resources that fits with the kind of storytelling that we do.”

Prime Video is expanding its global slate of Korean dramas with vampire-themed fantasy romcom HeartBeat, starring Ok Taec-yeon. 

From the Palme d’Or for “Parasite” to a stint on the following jury to a Best Actor prize all of his own with last year’s “Broker,” Song Kang-ho has become a recent fixture at Cannes. This year he made a late-break for Croisette with “Cobweb,” a slight-but-entertaining film about the movies from director Kim Jee-woon.

Black Knight, has become the platform’s most-watched non-English series of the week.This is according to data from Netflix’s official most-watched list, which tracks the platforms most popular content based on a metric it calls “hours viewed”. For the week of May 15 to 21, Black Knight logged over 35million hours viewed.It’s the show’s second week as the most-watched non-English series of the week.

SM Entertainment has announced its plans to launch new IP in 2023, including a two boybands and girl group.The plans were announced by SM Entertainment’s CEO Jang Cheol-hyuk in a new YouTube video. The first new group the K-pop agency plans to launch is the latest and final NCT sub-group, which is widely expected to be the Japan-based NCT Tokyo.“To this end, we plan to increase the proportion of Japanese members [in NCT],” Jang said.

Naman Ramachandran Korea’s Anthology Studios and India’s Panorama Studios have partnered for the remake of the Drishyam franchise in Korea. Panorama Studios is backed by producer Kumar Mangat Pathak, while Anthology Studios is founded by former Warner Bros. local Korean production head, Choi Jae-won (aka Jay Choi), “Parasite” actor Song Kang-ho and acclaimed director Kim Jee-woon. The trio previously worked together on 2016 film “The Age of Shadows.” Anthology’s “Cobweb,” directed by Kim, produced by Choi and starring Song, is premiering out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival on May 25. The two studios will join hands for the Korean remake of the Drishyam franchise. The announcement was made at the India Pavilion in Cannes on Sunday by the two studios with Pathak and Choi present.

Kumar Mangat Pathak’s Mumbai-based Panorama Studios is teaming with South Korea’s Anthology Studios, co-founded by former Warner Bros exec Jay Choi, Cobweb director Kim Jee-woon and Parasite star Song Kang-ho, on a Korean-language remake of India’s Drishyam franchise. 

You’d expect a movie called “The Breaking Ice” to be cold and Anthony Chen’s gentle drama about three isolated young people finding moments of connection definitely stays away from passionate and heated statements. But it’d be a mistake to think that Chen’s restraint comes at the expense of feeling, because “The Breaking Ice” is one of the most beautifully evocative films to screen during the first few days of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.A luminous “Jules and Jim” riff with a stunning visual design and a real purpose to its apparent aimlessness, “The Breaking Ice” screened on Sunday in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, bringing the Singaporean director back to the festival where he won the Camera d’Or for “Ilo Ilo” in 2013, and also appeared as part of the COVID-era anthology film “The Year of the Everlasting Storm” in 2021.“The Breaking Ice” begins with a fascinating shot of workers cutting ice blocks from a frozen lake.

two sequels). “XO, Kitty” is busier than the simply plotted “To All the Boys,” for better and for worse, but, fans of the films — or viewers hankering for a cute (and very tame) romcom – should find plenty to enjoy and it’s helmed by Jenny Han, who wrote the books on which “To All the Boys” is based.Kitty, now 17, and with her older sisters off in college (they appear in the show in the form of text messages), is ready for her own adventure.A hopeless romantic, she convinces her father (an under-used John Corbett) to send her to the Korean International School of Seoul– which has the overly on-the-nose acronym “KISS.”It also conveniently happens to be her late mother’s alma mater.

In a bold reaction to market trends, Korean entertainment powerhouse HYBE Corporation — best known as the home of K-Pop superstars BTS — is more bullish than ever, expanding out of its core record label, talent management and concert production business into several other areas, and now bills itself as a global entertainment lifestyle platform.

Cannes Film Festival, is about the years and the mileage. Then it’s about the years some more because the semi-supernatural twist this time around involves time travel.The film is full of action, stunts and escapes from Nazis, because that’s what “Indiana Jones” movies are. It relies heavily on the charm and charisma of Harrison Ford because of course it does.

Aramide Tinubu Katherine Song Covey (Anna Cathcart), aka Kitty, is a Gen Z dream. Since she was introduced six years ago in the “To All The Boys I Loved Before” trilogy, the precocious younger sister to Laura Jean (Lana Condor) and Margot (Janel Parrish) has walked to her own beat. Steadfast, determined and slightly nosey, Kitty’s incessant meddling helped connect LJ to her long-term love Peter (Noah Centineo). With the new spinoff TV series, “XO, Kitty,” the youngest Covey sister is stepping into the spotlight and going after the life she feels she deserves, even if that means getting her heart broken in the process.  From the minds of “To All The Boys” novelist Jenny Han and “Glow” scribe Sascha Rothchild, the series opens in the final hazy days of a Portland summer. Kitty has grown frustrated with the distance in her long-term relationship with Dae (Choi Min-yeong), whom she met several years prior during a family vacation to Seoul, South Korea. With her sisters out of the house, she’s left to twiddle her thumbs with her father, Dan (John Corbett), and step-mom, Trina (Sarayu Blue). However, Kitty refuses to resign herself to a “typical” high school experience. Instead, she convinces her parents to allow her to attend the prestigious Korean Independent School of Seoul (KISS). It’s the same school that Dae attends and where Kitty’s late mother, Eve, spent one magical year of her life. 

PBS’s National Memorial Day Concert will return on May 28 with a lineup that includes a tribute to Vietnam War POWs and Gold Star families, as well as a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice and a remembrance of World War II.

James Gunn is showing off his geeky side.

Japan’s most prolific and successful contemporary filmmaker, Hirokazu Kore-Eda, is back in a favorite place, Cannes, for the unveiling of his latest effort, a return to his Japanese storytelling roots and a good one at that. For his seventh film in the main Cannes competition and his ninth overall (counting two that appeared in Un Certain Regard), Monster represents the first movie since his 1995 debut feature Mabofosi that the director has not had a screenplay credit on — this film being written by Sakamoto Yuji — but clearly with its humanist family-centered themes is right in this master craftsman’s wheelhouse.

member and the Eighth Grade director have been rumored to be seeing each other for a few months, but there's been no confirmation from either camp. Meanwhile, their mutual friend continues to draw out all the celebs, including Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman, who had a great time at her concert.On Monday, May 15, Urban posted a quick clip of himself and his wife singing along to “Style” in the VIP tent at one of Tay's concerts over the weekend in Philadelphia to TikTok, writing, “we love ya.” Would have been a perfect opportunity for a “we come to this place for magic…” caption but I digress.

EXCLUSIVE: International finance, production and sales company EST Studios has taken worldwide sales rights, excluding South Korea, to Korean horror thriller Chabak – Night Of Murder And Romance, directed by William Inhyuk Hyoung.