Angelina Jolie and ‘Kung Fu Panda 2’ Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson on Hollywood’s Female Director Deficit
Hollywood Reporter
I don’t think about the gender thing very much. But when I speak at schools, I’ve had female students say to me afterwards, “I never envisioned myself being a director, since I’ve never seen women do it.” But after seeing me, they can picture themselves directing, so maybe we’ll see more female directors. And half of these kids in art and animation schools are girls.
South Korea by Train: High Speed, Slot Machines and Monastic Calm
Telegraph (U.K.)
Dorasan, close to the border, was supposed to be a key stop on the route to reunification for North and South. But the idea of restoring a regular cross-frontier passenger service foundered. Dorasan station, though shiny with hope, remains no more than a 20 minute stop-off for sightseers on bus tours of the border. It sits on the edge of one of the world’s weirdest slivers of real estate – the Korean Demilitarised Zone, or DMZ, where the Z rhymes with C.
It is a scrubby slice of the 20th century preserved not in archive or museum but in camouflage, landmines and barbed wire. Around it has grown a sort of Cold War theme park, an edgy peep-show of a world almost at war, where instead of turnstiles there are guard posts and the guys on the gate are front-line soldiers. Their costumes and props – combat fatigues and automatic rifles – are real.
Nearly 7 out of 10 Koreans See Society as Corrupt
Yonhap News
More than half of the country’s ordinary citizens considered politicians the main culprits behind the corruption in the nation, followed by government agencies (30.3 percent), the judiciary sector (25.4 percent) and state-owned companies (22.5 percent), according to the poll.
While more than half of the ordinary citizens assessed the government’s anti-corruption efforts as insufficient, the share of the respondents who expect things to get worse reached 27.3 percent, up from 17 percent last year, it found.
Seminar’s Hettienne Park on Hitting the Theatrical Jackpot in Plays by Tony Kushner & Theresa Rebeck
Broadway.com
Growing up outside Boston, Park juggled music, dance and academics. Her parents had “the typical kind of Asian [outlook],” the Korean-American actress says. “They had me play every musical instrument; I started ballet when I was three but couldn’t pursue it because I was so busy with music, clubs and academics.” After studying flute and piano at the New England Conservatory, Park bowed to her parents’ wishes and entered college at the University of Rochester, double-majoring in economics and religion. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking,” she says of her demanding load, which included Latin as her foreign language. By graduation, the over-achieving Park realized she was more interested in performing than business.
Exploring Koreatown’s Galleria Market with Chef Debbie Lee
KCET.org
Not every cook is familiar with Korean ingredients — but we’re lucky to have them in abundance in L.A. Lee herself likes to shop at the Galleria Market in Koreatown, which fills the ground floor of a three-story mall at the southeast corner of Western and Olympic. Explains Lee, “The Galleria Market is like the Pavilions of Koreatown. Everything you can imagine is under the sun, with the freshest ingredients. I prefer to shop at a market for variety, and the Galleria has just that.”
Fund Manager Kim Offered Six- to 18-Year Sentence for Alleged Ponzi Scheme
Bloomberg
Manhattan prosecutors said Kim told his clients they were investing in safe and stable securities while he generated losses trading highly speculative futures contracts and diverted customer money to himself. He created fake monthly performance statements to conceal the scheme from at least 45 victims, the government said.
Kim and his employees told prospective clients the fund generated returns of more than 240 percent, and they hid losses by making new investments look like profits, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in a civil suit.
Shopping trips in New York, skiing in Vermont and excursions to Atlantic City, New Jersey, were funded by improper withdrawals from the fund, the CFTC said. Kim “is the sole and managing member” of the New York-based company, the agency said in its complaint, filed in February.
Virginia Tech Settles Wrongful Death Lawsuit
Fairfax Times (Virginia)
Daniel Sun Kim, 21, was a 2004 South Lakes High School graduate who was a junior at Virginia Tech when the massacre occurred there on April 16, 2007. Kim killed himself on Dec. 8, 2007.
The lawsuit, filed by William and Elizabeth Kim of Reston, sought $43 million from the university’s “Care Team.”
The suit claimed an online gaming friend, Shuan Pribush, who was then a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., contacted Virginia Tech via email and warned counselors there of Daniel’s suicidal tendencies about a month before he killed himself.
Looking Back at 2011’s Asian Americans in Film
Hyphen Magazine
…the great number of breakout works from 2011 is a reminder that there is a very vibrant Asian American film community with many members working actively to produce timely and entertaining works. While we’ve yet to reach a time when, at any given month of the year, you can walk into a multiplex and find films with either Asian American leads or directors, progress is being made slowly but surely.
Additionally, in 2011 film festivals that heavily feature Asian American works continue to prosper. Hawaii (HIFF), Los Angeles (LAAPFF), San Francisco (SFIAAF), San Diego (SDAFF), and New York City (AAIFF) all enjoyed a very stellar year. Asian American films would be no where without the help of these festivals.
