Seven Cannes and Berlinale winners have been included in the lineup of the upcoming 2013 Cinecube Premiere Festival, the event’s organizers announced this week. The festival, hosted by Cinecube, one of the best known art house theaters in Seoul, offers moviegoers a chance to enjoy the Korean premiere of critically acclaimed works scheduled to be released in local theaters in December or early next year.A total of 15 films will be screened throughout the festival. Five Cannes winners will be scre

Slim, poised and soft-spoken, Koh Young-hee has the posture of a dancer. The North Korean defector, who fled her country in June 2012, effortlessly shows her distinctive arm movements -- the movements she learned from her mother and her mother’s teacher, the legendary Choi Seung-hee (1911-1969).Koh, 55, is the daughter of North Korean choreographer Bae Geum-ee, who was one of the original members of North Korea’s first dance troupe, founded by Choi in the 1940s in Pyongyang. One of Bae’s many st

In his 1976 novel, “The Great Santini,” Pat Conroy spilled all the beans that a good son is never supposed to spill: He wrote about his brutal father, his cowed mother, his frightened and abused siblings, and his own defiant and terrorized young self ― all thinly disguised, of course, as fiction.Like Bull Meecham in the novel, Donald Conroy really was a Marine fighter pilot, really did beat and terrorize his wife and kids, really did drink to excess, really did swagger around and call himself “T

It’s the spring of 1937 when Evalina Toussaint, the narrator of “Guests On Earth,” first catches sight of Zelda Fitzgerald, wearing black tights and ballet slippers and smoking a cigarette, on the grounds of Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.By then, Zelda had been married for 16 years to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was so infatuated with the Montgomery belle when they first met that he wrote the same line to her over and over: “I used to wonder why they kept Princesses in towers.” Nev

LongbournBy Jo Baker(Alfred A. Knopf)Looking at the ever-growing list of contemporary fiction presuming to improve on Jane Austen (with or without zombies), readers may well wonder why they can’t leave the poor author alone. Happily, Jo Baker’s “Longbourn” is no mere riff but a fully imagined rejoinder to “Pride and Prejudice” that casts a sharp working-class eye on the aristocratic antics of Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy and their friends.The Bennets’ housemaid Sarah is Baker’s heroine, and she s

Filmmaker, actress, singer and artist Ku Hye-sun is up for a new challenge.She is to write, direct and star in her next movie project titled “Daughter.” It is her first time taking up the three roles all at the same time.The film is said to be about a difficult relationship between an abusive, demanding mother and her daughter. Veteran actress Shim Hye-jin has been cast to play the mother, while Ku will be playing the tormented daughter.Ku, who broke into the Korean entertainment industry in the

When Israeli choreographer Idit Herman asked to share “something personal” for their joint piece, her nine dancers ― all members of the Korea National Contemporary Dance Company ― were very “shy” at first.“They are very, very much reserved,” Herman told The Korea Herald. “They really keep things inside. But they don’t just do that for nothing. They have a great depth and they are resilient.”Herman is premiering “Into Thin Air,” her collaborative project with the Korea National Contemporary Dance

A special concert featuring the Korean folk song “Arirang” in 10 different languages will be held in Seoul next month. Hosted by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, the folk song will be performed by the school’s student choir, HUFS Choir. The event was organized to celebrate the first anniversary of the song’s registration on the UNESCO Intangible World Cultural Heritage list.The choir is scheduled to sing “Arirang” in English, Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Ara

In 2004, Jang Mi-jeong, a Korean housewife, was arrested upon her arrival at Paris Orly Airport. She had been asked by her husband’s friend, whom she had known for more than 10 years, to take a bag of diamonds to France. Turns out, what was in the bag was some 17 kg of cocaine.An upcoming movie, titled “Way Back Home,” features the 2004 case, which led Jang to serve two years in prison in Martinique, an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea and one of the 27 overseas regions of France, for drug sm

For those who haven’t yet had a chance to see some of the most significant independent Korean films in theaters, the ongoing IndieGO Film Festival will come as a special treat.Hosted by Indie Story, a film house and distributor that specializes in independent cinema, the movie bash offers screenings of some 40 films, including ones that have not yet been released in theaters. The company celebrates its 15th anniversary this year.Included in the lineup is director Kim Dong-hyun’s “The Dinner,” a

“The Best Man Holiday” is a most welcome sequel to the 1999 sleeper hit, “The Best Man,” about a tight-knit circle of black friends who gathered then for a wedding, now to spend Christmas together.Yes, it’s occasionally maudlin and melodramatic, and it’s entirely too long. But it’s also heartfelt and often downright hilarious, and shows off just how canny Malcolm D. Lee’s casting was all those years ago.Everybody’s paired up, now. Pretty much everybody, anyway. And everybody seems successful, wi

Several years ago, a cookbook editor friend called asking my advice on whether she should publish Jacques Pepin’s autobiography. Pepin is one of my heroes in food, I told her, but I’d pass on the book ― all chef biographies tend to follow the same story arc, there’s not a lot new to be said.Wisely she ignored me, and though “The Apprentice” turned out just as I predicted plot-wise, it was one of the bestselling cookbooks of the year. I learned two lessons from that incident: I’m a lot better off

In her poignant 2010 essay “What I Will Miss,” which appears on the last page of a new omnibus, “The Most of Nora Ephron” (Alfred A. Knopf.), the author listed 31 items ― bacon, Paris and “the concept of waffles,” among them. There’s one thing she left out, I would venture to guess: writing.Though it was kept secret from all but her immediate circle, Ephron knew she was terminally ill with leukemia for six years before her death in 2012. If anything, this increased her productivity. According to

Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War IIBy Wil S. Hylton (Riverhead)The official story was that the war in the Pacific claimed Jimmie Doyle on Sept. 1, 1944, when Japanese antiaircraft fire brought down his B-24 Liberator during a bombing mission over the tiny Palau archipelago. Neither the plane nor a single member of the 11-man crew was ever found. But there was always a second, darker story, and it haunted Jimmie’s son, Tommy, for most of his life.Tommy’s uncles bel

BEIJING ― Just a year after the National Ballet of China had the Korean premiere of its staple repertoire “Raise the Red Lantern,” its Korean counterpart ― the Korea National Ballet ― premiered its rendition of French choreographer Roland Petit’s (1924-2011) “Carmen” and “The Woman of Arles” in China on Tuesday. The performance took place as part of China’s on-going, inaugural International Ballet Season, hosted by the National Ballet of China in Beijing. The ballet bash features dances by 12 co

Theater“Danton’s Death”: Seoul Arts Center is presenting “Danton’s Death,” the first play written by German dramatist Georg Buchner (1813-1837), set during the French Revolution. The play presents with the last few days of the French revolutionary leader, Danton. Korean artist Lee Ja-ram, who is known for her pansori works, is making her theater acting debut as a street performer in this play. The show is directed by Romanian theater director and teacher Gabor Tompa. “Danton’s Death” runs from N

There’s a fleet and funny comic-book movie buried inside “Thor: The Dark World.” You catch glimpses of it here and there, like a shot in which the Asgardian muscle-bound hero (Chris Hemsworth) enters a London flat and hangs his hammer on a coat rack as if it were an umbrella, or a clever sequence in which Thor’s villainous brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who wreaked all kinds of evil in “The Avengers,” relishes the fact his older sibling is now asking for his help (how convenient). That scene get

Poet Jin Eun-young, author Kim Soom, playwright Koh Yeon-ok and translator Choi Yang-hee were chosen as the winners of the 21st Daesan Literary Awards. Kim Soom, 39, won the prize for her sixth novel “Women and their Evolving Enemies,” which deals with a woman and her conflicting relationship with her mother-in-law. Jin, 43, received the prize for her poem titled “A Stealing Song,” while playwright Koh Yeon-ok, 42, won the honor for her play “Father in a Scabbard,” a tale about a son who plots r

About two years after the release of his successful 2011 feature debut “The King of Pigs,” animation film director Yeon Sang-ho is back with another grim and powerful portrait of human nature. Titled “The Fake,” the animated film manages to be an engrossingly dark tale of truth and deception. It takes place in a rural Korean town on the verge of becoming submerged. Most of its residents ― undereducated and isolated ― have little to their name. Some are terminally ill, while others are desperate

Korean veteran actor Choi Min-sik (“Oldboy,” “Nameless Gangster”) is to star in the latest project by French filmmaker Luc Besson (“The Lady,” “The Fifth Element”), along with American actors Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman. He left for France to shoot the movie on Nov. 1.The movie, titled “Lucy,” is about a drug mule (Johansson) who is endowed with superhuman abilities. Choi’s participation in the film was revealed during the French director’s upcoming lineup announcement at the Venice Fi