still waiting for iwojima
Argh... I found out they still haven't set a release date for Letters from Iwo Jima in Korea! WTF?!? Is there no sense of urgency here??? The movie is nominated for an Academy Award next week! I guess it will depend on whether it wins or not. Let's hope it wins Best Picture next week.
I guess the movie might not go over well here especially since it depicts Japanese soldiers in a sympathetic light. The wounds from the Japanese occupation are too deep. The anti-Japanese sentiment here is sometimes too much!
Is Nino going to the Oscars or not? Hope he does! It's not every day you star in an Oscar nominated movie!
Anyway... this is old news, but I just stumbled on this article about the new faces at the Berlin Film Festival here. It mentioned both Nino and Rain! I used to like Rain, but now I don't really care much about him. His movie flopped here anyway.
I'm just posting the interesting bits here...
FACE TIME
This year's program offers a number of promising newcomers some well-earned exposure.
By Scott Roxborough Feb 6, 2007
Among the old pros heading to Berlin this year -- Clint Eastwood, Steven Soderbergh and Robert De Niro behind the camera and an A-list of Cate Blanchett, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Tobey Maguire in front of it -- there are still a few fresh faces waiting to be discovered, at least by an international audience....
BLAH BLAH BLAH ( i cut out the boring parts)
Also featured in "I'm a Cyborg" is Jung Ji-hoon, better known to millions of Asian fans as pop star Rain. "I'm a Cyborg" represents his first feature film and first starring role as an actor after a handful of appearances on Korean television. With a rabid fan base in Asia, Rain could be on the way to a major film career -- if his onscreen performance holds up.
Another Asian pop star making his cinematic debut is Kazunari Ninomiya, one-fifth of the Japanese boy band Arashi. In Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima," he plays Saigo, one of the Japanese foot soldiers given the suicidal mission of defending the small volcanic island from the American assault.