Veteran Japanese actor Ken Watanabe will open this year’s Busan International Film Festival, the event’s organizers said Tuesday.Watanabe has been chosen to cohost the festival’s opening ceremony on Oct. 2 along with South Korean actress Moon So-ri, they said.He will be the third foreign national to open the festival following Chinese actress Tang Wei and Hong Kong actor Aaron Kwok.  Ken Watanabe (center). (Yonhap)He is one of Japan’s most-loved actors and has also carved a place for himself in

South Korean actress Song Hye-kyo on Tuesday apologized for committing tax evasion, stating in a news release that she “deeply regrets mishandling her tax affairs due to ignorance.”Song said that she had not been aware that her accountant had underreported her income taxes until the tax authority told her in 2012 that it could not acknowledge them due to a lack of documents on tax-deductible expenses.Through her accountant, the actress reported 5.5 billion won ($5.4 million), or 92.3 percent, of

Disaster movies are by design not long on character development. Instead they bank on our love of being virtually, vicariously in fear for lives.Still, they need to establish personalities deep enough to care about, or at least halfheartedly root for. Despite spending the first interminable 20 minutes attempting just that in the earnestly unrealistic manner of an after-school special, “Into the Storm” quickly spirals downward into a vortex of vapidity.The action transpires in a single momentous

NEW YORK (AP) ― Moviegoers continued to shell out for “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” while Sylvester Stallone’s action ensemble “The Expendables 3” was easily out-gunned in its weekend debut. Paramount Pictures’ rebooted reptiles took in $28.4 million in the film’s second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. That far surpassed the limp $16.2 million earned by Stallone’s gang of aged but buff warriors. The paltry, fourth-place total for “The Expendables 3” is well below previous debuts

Drama ‘Sea Fog’ centers on true story behind the Taechangho incident

A homegrown action film about a 16th-century Korean naval hero’s astonishing victory against Japan gathered more than 13.62 million in attendance at home, a local box-office tracker said Saturday.The Korean Film Council said “Roaring Currents” became the most-watched movie at theaters in the country as of Friday, breaking the previous record held by Hollywood blockbuster “Avatar” that gathered 13.62 million.The record came a day after “Roaring Currents” became the most-watched South Korean-made

A homegrown action film about a 16th-century Korean naval hero's astonishing victory against Japan gathered more than 13.62 million in attendance at home, a local box-office tracker said Saturday.The Korean Film Council said "Roaring Currents" became the most-watched movie at theaters in the country as of Friday, breaking the previous record held by Hollywood blockbuster "Avatar" that gathered 13.62 million.The record came a day after "Roaring Currents" became the most-watched South Korean-made

The number of viewers who have seen “Roaring Currents” exceeded 10 million on Sunday, just 12 days after its premiere, marking the fastest time for a film screened in Korea to hit the box office milestone.The period action flick centers on the historic Battle of Myeongnyang in 1592 at the dawn of the Japanese invasion of Korea (1592-1598), in which Adm. Yi Sun-sin uses brilliant strategy to defeat 133 Japanese warships with only 12 vessels under his command.

Historical flick ‘Pirates’ takes audience on entertaining journey

LOS ANGELES (AP) ― “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” sliced off $65 million at the weekend box office. Paramount Pictures’ comic-book adaptation featuring Megan Fox alongside computer-generated renditions of the pizza-eating, sewer-dwelling superheroes lunged into first place in its debut weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. The action film’s totally tubular result prompted the studio to announce plans Sunday for a sequel set for June 3, 2016. Megan Colligan, Paramount’s head of domestic

Popular historical action film ushers more visitors to historical sites related to Adm. Yi Sun-sin

When chef Floyd Cardoz arrived in France last year, he knew he’d spend most of his time cooking. What he didn’t expect was a quest for the perfect Hollywood shot that would force him to roast a wild bird artfully stuffed with truffles ― 12 times.“I asked someone, ‘Do you really need this amount of food?’” Cardoz said. “There were takes and retakes, and a lot of the food just gets thrown out. For me, that was a learning experience.”Cardoz spent five days working elbow-to-elbow with eight other ch

The Fault in our Stars (U.S.)Opening August 13Drama, Romance. Directed by Josh BooneBased on John Green’s best-selling novel of the same name, “The Fault in our Stars” centers on a 16-year-old thyroid cancer patient Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley) who attends a cancer support group because her parents insist that she make some friends. It is at the group that she serendipitously meets Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), an 18-year-old teen whose basketball career was cut short when he lost