Perez Hilton - Hollywood's Hottest Celebrity Gossip. Tyga says he . You get with anybody, like, for the first year, it's magic. And after that, like, you start, like, realizing a bunch of shit. It's like any relationship. Entertainment Television, LLC. A Division of NBCUniversal with news, shows, photos, and videos.![]() Korean movie reviews from 2009. Source: Korean Film Council. Seoul population: 10.2 million. ![]() I'm older, so I can deal with, like, perception. Hugh Jackman is convinced there’ll be plenty more live-action Wolverine in the future without him. Definitely someone else will play the role It turns out kids' shows are full of characters that kids seem to love (or at least be indifferent to) that make us want to sleep with a nightlight on. Full online text of The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe. Other short stories by Edgar Allan Poe also available along with many others by classic and. Those sleeves. Those sequins. That neckline. Seriously, if this music video is even a tenth as retro-tacular as the poster for David Hasselhoff’s Guardians Inferno. The Falling Man. Besides, he had a sister. He never would have left her alone. A manager at Windows looked at the pictures once and said the Falling Man was Wilder Gomez. Then a few days later he studied them closely and changed his mind. Wrong clothes. Wrong body type. It was the same with Charlie Mauro. It was the same with Junior Jimenez. Junior worked in the kitchen and would have been wearing checked pants. Charlie worked in purchasing and had no cause to wear a white jacket. Besides, Charlie was a very large man. The Falling Man appears fairly stout in Richard Drew's published photo but almost elongated in the rest of the sequence. The rest of the kitchen workers were, like Norberto Hernandez, eliminated from consideration by their outfits. The banquet servers may have been wearing white and black, but no one remembered any banquet server who looked anything like the Falling Man. Forte Food was the other food- service company that lost people on September 1. But all of its male employees worked in the kitchen, which means that they wore either checked or white pants. And nobody would have been allowed to wear an orange shirt under the white serving coat. But someone who used to work for Forte remembers a guy who used to come around and get food for the Cantor executives. Tall, with a mustache and a goatee. Wore a chef's coat, open, with a loud shirt underneath. Nobody at Cantor remembers anyone like that. Of course, the only way to find out the identity of the Falling Man is to call the families of anyone who might be the Falling Man and ask what they know about their son's or husband's or father's last day on earth. Ask if he went to work wearing an orange shirt. But should those calls be made? Should those questions be asked? Would they only heap pain upon the already anguished? Would they be regarded as an insult to the memory of the dead, the way the Hernandez family regarded the imputation that Norberto Hernandez was the Falling Man? Or would they be regarded as steps to some act of redemptive witness? I could never have made the choice not to know. Some of his coworkers, when they saw Richard Drew's photographs, thought he might be the Falling Man. He was a light- skinned black man. He was over six five. He was forty- three. He had a mustache and a goatee and close- cropped hair. He had a wife named Hillary. Jonathan Briley's father is a preacher, a man who has devoted his whole life to serving the Lord. After September 1. God to tell him where his son was. No: He demanded it. He used these words: . They'd found his son's body. It was, miraculously, intact. The preacher's youngest son, Timothy, went to identify his brother. He recognized him by his shoes: He was wearing black high- tops. Timothy removed one of them and took it home and put it in his garage, as a kind of memorial. Timothy knew all about the Falling Man. He is a cop in Mount Vernon, New York, and in the week after his brother died, someone had left a September 1. He saw the photograph of the Falling Man and, in anger, he refused to look at it again. But he couldn't throw it away. Instead, he stuffed it in the bottom of his locker, where—like the black shoe in his garage—it became permanent. Jonathan's sister Gwendolyn knew about the Falling Man, too. She saw the picture the day it was published. She knew that Jonathan had asthma, and in the smoke and the heat would have done anything just to breathe. He wore a white shirt and black pants, along with the high- top black shoes. Timothy also knew what Jonathan sometimes wore under his shirt: an orange T- shirt. Jonathan wore that orange T- shirt everywhere. He wore that shirt all the time. He wore it so often that Timothy used to make fun of him: When are you gonna get rid of that orange T- shirt, Slim? But when Timothy identified his brother's body, none of his clothes were recognizable except the black shoes. And when Jonathan went to work on the morning of September 1. She never saw the clothes he was wearing. After she learned that he was dead, she packed his clothes away and never inventoried what specific articles of clothing might be missing. Is Jonathan Briley the Falling Man? He might be. But maybe he didn't jump from the window as a betrayal of love or because he lost hope. Maybe he jumped to fulfill the terms of a miracle. Maybe he jumped to come home to his family. Maybe he didn't jump at all, because no one can jump into the arms of God. Oh, no. You have to fall. Yes, Jonathan Briley might be the Falling Man. But the only certainty we have is the certainty we had at the start: At fifteen seconds after 9: 4. September 1. 1, 2. Richard Drew took a picture of a man falling through the sky—falling through time as well as through space. The picture went all around the world, and then disappeared, as if we willed it away. One of the most famous photographs in human history became an unmarked grave, and the man buried inside its frame—the Falling Man—became the Unknown Soldier in a war whose end we have not yet seen. Richard Drew's photograph is all we know of him, and yet all we know of him becomes a measure of what we know of ourselves. The picture is his cenotaph, and like the monuments dedicated to the memory of unknown soldiers everywhere, it asks that we look at it, and make one simple acknowledgment. That we have known who the Falling Man is all along. Korean Movie Reviews for 2. The year 2. 00. 9 opened in difficult circumstances, to say the least. With a global financial crisis exacerbating a two- year old crisis in the Korean film industry, expectations for the year were low. The situation was particularly tough for mid- sized, genre- based commercial films, which in the previous few years had lost money for more often than they had earned it. Hong Sang- soo also turned in a new film Like You Know It All, shot for a tiny fraction of his usual budget. All three films would be invited to various sections of Cannes. Daytime Drinking and Breathless, two debut films shot on tiny budgets, earned critical praise and an encouraging degree of commercial success. Most astounding, however, was the smashing success of the low budget documentary Old Partner, about an elderly farmer and his cow, which as of May 1 was the best grossing film of the year with close to 3 million tickets sold. Reviewed below: Daytime Drinking(Feb 5) - - Marine Boy(Feb 5) - - The Naked Kitchen(Feb 5) - - Handphone(Feb 1. Private Eye(Apr 2) - - Breathless(Apr 1. Thirst(Apr 3. 0) - - Like You Know It All(May 1. Castaway on the Moon(May 1. Mother(May 2. 8) - - A Blood Pledge(Jun 1. Bandhobi(Jun 2. 5) - - Chaw(Jul 1. Haeundae(Jul 2. 2) - - Possessed(Aug 1. The Pot(Aug 2. 0) - - Treeless Mountain(Aug 2. Let the Blue River Run(Oct 8) - - Paju(Oct 2. A Brand New Life(Oct 2. Lost in the Mountains(Nov 1. The Actresses(Dec 1. Woochi(Dec 2. 3). The Best Selling Films of 2. Korean Films. Nationwide. Release. Revenue. Haeundae. 11,3. 97,7. Jul 2. 28. 1. 0. 2bn. Take Off. 8,0. 92,6. Jul 2. 95. 7. 5. 7bn. Woochi. 6,1. 00,5. Dec 2. 34. 4. 0. 3bn. My Girlfriend is an Agent. Apr 2. 22. 6. 3. 8bn. Running Turtle. 3,0. Jun 1. 12. 0. 6. 2bn. Mother. 3,0. 03,7. May 2. 81. 9. 9. 7bn. Old Partner. 2,9. Jan 1. 51. 9. 0. 8bn. Good Morning President. Oct 2. 21. 8. 5. 6bn. Thirst. 2,2. 23,4. Apr 3. 01. 4. 8. 4bn. Closer to Heaven. Sep 2. 41. 5. 5. 8bn. All Films. Nationwide. Release. Revenue. Avatar (US)1. 3,3. Dec 1. 71. 24. 8. Haeundae (Korea)1. Jul 2. 28. 1. 0. 2bn. Take Off (Korea)8,0. Jul 2. 95. 7. 5. 7bn. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (US)7,4. Jun 2. 45. 0. 7. 0bn. Woochi (Korea)6,1. Dec 2. 34. 4. 0. 3bn. US)5,4. 31,4. 40*Nov 1. Terminator Salvation (US)4,5. May 2. 12. 9. 6. 9bn. My Girlfriend is an Agent (Korea)4,0. Apr 2. 22. 6. 3. 8bn. Running Turtle (Korea)3,0. Jun 1. 12. 0. 6. 2bn. Mother (Korea)3,0. May 2. 81. 9. 9. 7bn. Includes tickets sold in 2. But Hyuk- jin's troubles are far from over, as the weird locals he encounters, including a motor- mouthed woman with nasty temper (Lee Ran- hee) and a good- natured truck driver (Sin Woon- seop), begin to pose threat not only to his financial security and mental stability but perhaps to his chastity (?). The film is full of these even- its- goofs- are- hilarious moments. I wish the movie had a more dynamic, emotionally cathartic resolution that shows Hyuk- jin actively taking some initiatives against his tormentors. It's a sort of techno- ppongjjak, like ballroom muzak played for International Conference of the Organ Grinder's Monkey Association: I warn you, you won't be able to get it out of your brain once you heard it. He gets willy- nilly recruited into a dope courier job for the gangster President Kang (Jo Jae- hyun, Hanbando, Romance). The task seems to involve swimming past the Korea- Japan border with a string of bags filled with dope inside your intestines (As I had suspected it would, the movie milks this set- up for ca- ca jokes, so sensitive viewers beware). It takes a premise and a plot vaguely reminiscent of a '7. Hollywood action thriller (this time, it's Peter Benchley's The Deep, itself more than a little schlocky and illogical) and tries to update them with slick visuals imported from TV commercials, while . Director Yun Jong- seok, like many Korean debut directors, is competent if not inspired, and knows how to wrangle camera angle and editing to keep the pace up. Park Si- yeon, foxily charming in Dazimawa Lee, here has to grapple with a role that cannot decide if Yuri is just a spoiled brat with a drug problem or a manipulative femme fatale. Or maybe that was a put- on, too, since we never see her once without looking like she just stepped out of a Vogue photo spread. As for Kim Kang- woo, I still like his wild- cat hauteur with a dash of vulnerability, but he really should fire his agent or just stay away from whoever it is that advises him on choosing scripts. Fourth, Sang- in tells Mo- rae over dinner that he's expecting a mentor to help him plan the menu for his dream restaurant: a brilliant young French- Korean chef who will arrive that evening. Mo- rae and Sang- in have been friends since childhood. I have a wife. That type of film must meet several conditions. First and foremost, we should be able to feel for its protagonist. Conversely, the piece's villain should brook no sympathy. The violence the good guy employs against the villain must be clean- cut, not messy like one we see in real life. And so on. Handphone ignores these conditions. In fact, it gleefully violates them. Seung- min the entertainment agent, the film's alleged hero, is not someone we would voluntarily feel any sympathy toward. He is shallow, low- rent and lacking in conscience. Yi- gyu, who accidentally picks up Seung- min's cell phone and decides to blackmail him, is, on the other hand, someone easier for us to root for. Yi- gyu is slowly crumbling under the pressure of working life, unlike Seung- min, whose shallow character seems to actually enhance his ability to navigate through the treacherous waters of his profession. The film is aware of this contrast, and puts Yi- gyu through a wringer to prove its point. Naturally, the violence eventually sparked between these two disturbed characters does not help the viewers whatsoever in reducing the latter's stress. Handphone is masochistic, cynical and ultimately misanthropic. Few characters in this film are mentally stable or morally upright. Most of them are seriously flawed in one way or another: a few are annoying on a metaphysical scale. Of course, since Handphone's hateful depiction of humanity is based on the relational dynamics of the Korean society as well as the stereotypes of its members, we might accept that the scope of its misanthropy is limited to those whom we see around us. Whatever the director originally intended with all this is rather beside the point. Its structure is rather loose. The cell phone in question can only do so much as a multi- purpose Mc. Guffin. The filmmakers eventually resort to improbable coincidences and a bit of cheating. As in his previous film Paradise Murders, director Kim Han- min does not quite know when to end the movie. A double- entendre epilogue is frankly redundant, although we could concede that this looseness does contribute to extending the agony of the climax. They are quite well cast for the respective roles of a sleazy agent and an . If I were compelled to compare the two, I must say Park seems to benefit slightly from a more three- dimensional character he is playing. The payoff can be really ugly. A detective story set in the early 2. Japanese colonial rule! With Hwang Jeong- min, Ryu Deok- hwan, Uhm Ji- won, Oh Dal- soo in the cast! And the screenplay picked up some kind of award! Well, the last bit was not so intriguing. It's not uncommon for an acclaimed screenplay to turn out to be disappointing. Still, the first two pieces of information were enough to get my expectations up. Hong Jin- ho, the character played by Hwang Jeong- min in this film, is a pro at things like tracking down missing people and exposing illicit love affairs. He doesn't call himself a private eye, but that's basically what he is. He usually tries to avoid tight situations but is one day pushed into a rather sticky murder case, when Jang Gwang- soo, a med student who collects abandoned bodies for dissection, asks Hong to find the murderer of his latest cadaver. I mean, wouldn't it be obvious to a med school student that if you find a body with a knife wound in it, it was probably a victim of murder? The film begins to lose its footing this early on. The story wouldn't make sense even from the viewpoint of early 2. Seoulites. Any moderate reader among them would have been familiar with the ABCs of detective novels. This would have included a cadaver- hungry medical student, by the way. It could be that Jang was simply thinking that his actions were fine if the body belonged to some insignificant fellow, but less so if it turned out to be the son of a high- ranking official that spells out mortal danger for him- - but then the audience wouldn't be able to like him as much. The folks who made this film were indeed aiming for a Holmes and Watson partnership, colonial Seoul- style. The names match somewhat, with a little stretch: Holmes - Hong Jin- ho, John Watson - Jang Gwang- soo, see? But there's a fatal flaw here. As you Baker Street Regulars already know, Holmes and Watson are highly distinctive characters. Just a few pages into the story and you know what kind of people they are. In Private Eye, it's much harder to figure out the two main characters. Especially Hong Jin- ho. What is he, anyway? No, he's too dumb for that. Or an eclectic super- hero like his namesake Holmes? He doesn't have half the skills. Maybe a tough guy like Sam Spade? Hong can't hold up in a fistfight, nor does he have the guts to handle the life underground. Then why in the world is this man the hero? In other words, the screenplay was not very well thought out. The film doesn't have much mystery in it. There's no foreshadowing that lasts more than ten minutes, and most clues are explained away in the very next sequence. On top of that, there's just one suspect. Or were there two? In any case, there's no room for a detective to do anything, much less show himself off. Even that snazzy toy that looks like something Q might make for 0. It's the inventor Soon- duk, played by Uhm Ji- won.
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