LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Following an outcry over the all-white roster of actors nominated for this year‘s Oscars, the president of the film academy said Monday she was heartbroken by the lack of diversity and working to implement change.　“This is a difficult but important conversation, and it’s time for big changes,” Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said in a statement.　Isaacs said that while it was important to acknowledge the work of the actors nom

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee said Monday that he is boycotting the Oscars next month because for the second year in a row all the nominees in the actor categories are white.　Separately, black actress Jada Pinkett Smith said she too would not be attending the Feb. 28 star-studded ceremony. 　Lee, an African-American and previous Oscar winner, posted an open letter to the president and board of governors of the Academy Awards on Instagram. The post was accompanied by a photo of

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - “The Revenant,” a harrowing survival thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a 19th century fur trapper, topped the Oscars nominations list Thursday with 12 nods, including for best picture, actor and director.　In second place was dystopian action film “Mad Max: Fury Road,” with 10 nominations, followed by space blockbuster “The Martian,” about an astronaut stranded on the Red Planet, with seven.　The nominations, announced at a pre-dawn ceremony in Beverly Hills organized by t

"Don't Forget Me," a newly released South Korean movie, will hit American screens starting this week, its distributor said Wednesday.The love story featuring actor Jung Woo-sung and actress Kim Ha-neul will be released in Los Angeles on Friday and Dallas on Jan. 22, CJ Entertainment said in a release.The movie has drawn nearly 332,000 viewers since opening on Jan. 7 in South Korea.It tells a story of a man who loses his memory of the past 10 years after getting in a car accident and then falls i

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Mexico’s Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Britain’s Ridley Scott on Tuesday topped the list of nominees for the Directors Guild of America award -- a strong indicator of Oscar hopes.　Inarritu was nominated for revenge thriller “The Revenant” and Scott for space hit “The Martian,” about an astronaut stranded on Mars -- two films seen as top contenders for Academy Awards glory on February 28.　This marks the fourth nomination for both directors by the DGA. Inarritu won the award

Director Lee Seok-hoon's "The Himalayas" has broken the 7 million mark in less than a month, its distributor said Monday.The movie based on the true story from 2005 follows mountaineer Um Hong-gil who sets out to retrieve the body of his late junior climber on Mount Everest.The milestone was reached Sunday afternoon, CJ Entertainment said."The Himalayas" drew a record 203,000 people for a human interest film on its opening day of Dec. 16. It also gathered a record Christmas crowd of 746,420. (Yo