Gruesome morality tale ’Pieta’ tops Venice Kim Ki-duk received the Golden Lion award for his 18th feature-length film “Pieta” on Saturday to become the first Korean director to win the top prize at the Venice Film Festival.Venice, along with Cannes and Berlin, is considered one of the three most prestigious European film festivals. The film fests are often called the “Big Three.” No Korean directo

Pieta (Korea)Opened Sept. 6Drama. Directed by Kim Ki-duk. A man (Lee Jung-jin) lives as a brutal loan shark, making money by mercilessly threatening people to pay their debts. The solitary man, an orphan, has nothing or no one to lean on and hurts people shamelessly without realizing the pain he causes. One day, a mysterious woman (Jo Min-soo) appears claiming that she is his mother. The man rejects her at first, but gradually becomes attached to her accepting her into his life. He eventually de

There are two questions on the table during a recent interview regarding “The Words.” The first, to Bradley Cooper, is: What role did you play in helping the small independent movie with the big stars and bigger ideas get made?The second, to the writing-directing team, is: What’s the real scoop?“Why would you think I wouldn’t tell you the real answer?” asks a playful Cooper, who, at 37, is at a career point where just dropping his name could make or break a project. Then he laughs at the explana

VENICE, Italy (AFP) ― South Korean director Kim Ki-duk’s “Pieta” and U.S. director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” are tipped as the critics’ favorites to win the coveted Golden Lion award on Saturday night.The two are among the 18 movies in competition at the world’s oldest film festival in Venice where stars, auteurs and industry honchos have been rubbing shoulders at the seaside for nearly two weeks of art house cinema.The selection is “the best around,” said festival director Alberto Bar

LOS ANGELES (AFP) ― The Church of Scientology denounced as “hogwash” Wednesday a report that it auditioned candidates to be Tom Cruise’s girlfriend, while the star’s lawyer branded the claims “tired old lies.”Vanity Fair quoted sources as saying the controversial church tested actresses as potential brides in 2004, after his split from Nicole Kidman and before he met and married Katie Holmes, who recently divorced him.The report included details of a failed match with an Iranian-born  actress, w

Lives of loan shark victims explicitly captured on ‘Pieta’After “Arirang,” the self-reflective documentary about his personal failings and struggles, director Kim Ki-duk returned to the movie scene with a gruesome revenge tale ― about a cruel debt collector running into a woman who claims to be his mother. “Pieta,” which is one of 18 films vying for this year’s Golden Lion prize in Venice, is Kim’s 18th feature-length film. The movie has almost every element that would make an audience uncomfort

 South Korean director Kim Ki-duk brought his brand of excruciating emotion and troubling imagery to the Venice film festival Tuesday with his condemnation of extreme capitalism in “Pieta”.The film revolves around a brutal loan shark played by Lee Jung-jin who prowls the back alleys and small workshops of a central area of Seoul that is quickly going out of business and being replaced by skyscrapers.Kim said at a press conference that he had been inspired by Michelangelo‘s famous “Pieta” statue

The number of participants in a rare fundraising campaign for a local film project has topped the 10,000 mark, the movie’s production company said Monday.The project to make “26 Years,” a new film based on a famous Webtoon by Kang Pool featuring the 1980 Gwangju people’s uprising for democracy, has drifted for years due to financial problems.This situation prompted Cheongeorahm Film, a local movie studio that organized the project, to launch a campaign among citizens on June 25 to raise the mone

LOS ANGELES (AP) ― Michael Clarke Duncan, the hulking, prolific character actor whose dozens of films included an Oscar-nominated performance as a death row inmate in “The Green Mile’’ and such other box office hits as “Armageddon,’’ “’Planet of the Apes’’ and “Kung Fu Panda,’’ has died at age 54.Duncan died Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for a heart attack, said his fiancee, reality TV personality Rev. Omarosa Manigault, in a statement r

(AFP)LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Michael Clarke Duncan, the hulking, prolific character actor whose dozens of films included an Oscar-nominated performance as a death row inmate in ``The Green Mile'' and such other box office hits as ``Armageddon,'' `'Planet of the Apes'' and ``Kung Fu Panda,'' is dead at age 54.Clarke died Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was being tr

Korean-Canadian director Yi speaks on her work, connection to her rootsFilmmaker and journalist Yi Sun-kyung grew up in a Canadian city where her family was one of only a half-dozen Korean households in town. That small community was what shaped her view on Korea as a little girl. It was the world where she was pressured not to be a reporter, but a teacher or a nurse. For many years, she tried to stay away from it as much as possible. “There was competition and gossip,” the filmmaker told The Ko

VENICE, Italy (AFP) ― For all the glamorous seaside partying at the Venice film festival, there is a distinct air of austerity at this year’s edition for an industry that is questioning its economic future.The festival line-up has been slimmed and the star wattage toned down while even some of the movie plotlines reflect various forms of fallout from the financial crisis ― from family and relationships to faith and spiritual values.“The main recurring theme is the crisis. The economic crisis, wh