Born in northern China and raised in Beijing, Sally Liu came of age in the 1990s and dreamed of becoming a filmmaker. With the world’s most populous nation swelling with thousands of new cinemas, big-budget productions proliferating and box-office grosses multiplying, the movies in China aren’t just glamorous, they’re a serious growth industry. When it came time to apply to film school, though, ...

Hallyu girl group Girls’ Generation will release their latest single “The Boys” in the U.S. and other countries, through Interscope Records, an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. The record label is home to many big-name stars, including Lady Gaga, Eminem and the Black Eyed Peas. SM Entertainment, the group’s agency, announced on Wednesday that the new single will be relea...

BUSAN (AFP) ― Actress Michelle Yeoh, who plays Aung San Suu Kyi in a new biopic of the Myanmar activist, said Wednesday that the release of jailed dissident and comedian Zarganar was “joyful news.” Zarganar, one of Myanmar’s most celebrated satirists who had been incarcerated since 2008 for his political activities, was among dozens of political prisoners given their freedom in military-dominate...

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ A man was charged with hacking into celebrity email accounts in a computer invasion scheme that led to the posting of private and revealing information, including nude photos of actress Scarlett Johansson, on the Internet, federal authorities said Wednesday. Christopher Chaney, 35, of Jacksonville, Florida, was arrested without incident as part of a yearlong investigation of c...

BUSAN (AFP) ― When filmmaker Davy Chou began to research the history of Cambodian cinema he found the films themselves had almost vanished amidst the devastation of war but that memories were keeping them alive. “The Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh in 1975 and the film industry just simply vanished,” says Chou. “But the wonderful thing to me was that everywhere I went, people would remember...

BUSAN (AFP) ― The growing power of China’s cinema industry is on show at Asia’s top film festival, but some filmmakers worry that a thirst for blockbusters is hurting quality and creativity. “It’s a big population and a big market and a lot of opportunity to increase that market,” independent Chinese filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai said on the sidelines of the 16th Busan International Film Festival (BI...

BUSAN (AFP) ― A 3-D horror movie set in a public toilet block is part of a revolution underway in the Asian film industry as low-budget 3-D productions take on the big studios at their own game. At the 16th Busan International Film Festival, audiences have been lining up to see the likes of multi-million dollar 3-D productions “The Three Musketeers” and the re-imaged version of the local monster...

BUSAN, South Korea (AP) ― French actress Isabelle Huppert says curiosity has drawn her to Asia and helped her discover the region’s innovative talents. Huppert made inroads into Asia as an actress this year when she starred in Filipino director Brillante Mendoza’s “Captured.’’ In the thriller, she plays a hostage taken by a group of terrorists. Huppert has appeared in more than 90 productions s...

Sleeping Beauty (Australia) Opening Oct. 20 Thriller. Directed by Julia Leigh. Lucy (Emily Browining), an attractive university student, takes many part-time jobs to pay her expensive tuition and rent. While working as a server for a sex-themed party hosted by high-earning figures in town, Lucy is asked by a stranger if she is willing to take a high-paying job. The job requires Lucy to be drugg...

“Real Steel” used real robots. Oh, there are computer-generated robots as well, of course, in this film, opening Friday, about bot boxers in the near future. But for most scenes outside the bouts themselves, the movie crew built 26 (and a half) of what the press materials call “animatronic robots” ― a friendly phrase invoking a Country Bear Jamboree folksiness but that’s as redundant as “motoriz...

The 16th Busan International Film Festival opens with Korean tearjerker “Always” BUSAN -- Two young souls with traumatic pasts fall in love. While the man is a former prisoner, the woman is losing her eyesight. As conventional as it may sound, this year’s BIFF opener on Thursday turned out to be a beautiful cliche paired with its warm and color-conscious mise-en-scene. Directed by Song Il-gon, ...