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Ringing Korea’S Grand Bell

“Concrete Utopia,” South Korea’s Oscar contender, was Wednesday named best film at the country’s annual Grand Bell Awards. It also won prizes for best actor, best supporting actress, art direction, sound mixing and visual effects. A disaster movie set in a devastated Seoul, it makes an unusual Academy Awards selection, but has gained high praise from reviewers. Variety this week said the film felt like “’Earthquake’ crossed with ‘Lord of the Flies’.”

The Grand Bell’s best director award nevertheless went to Ryoo Seung-wan for “Smugglers,” while Ahn Tae-jin took the best new director award for “The Night Owl.”

In the other half of the event, Disney+’s “Moving” was named best series, earning Han Hyo-joo the best series actress award to boot.

The Grand Bell Awards, aka Daejong Film Awards, are organized by The Motion Pictures Association of Korea.

Cineasia Honors

The...

Exclusive: MakerVille, the recently launched entertainment subsidiary of Hong Kong media group Pccw, is set to make a splash at Filmart, unveiling an ambitious slate of movies and premium series, following its debut feature Mad Fate, which had its world premiere at Berlin film festival.

Lofai Lo, MakerVille’s CEO and former General Manager of Pccw’s free-to-air channel ViuTV, sat down with Deadline to talk through the slate and outline the company’s production strategy. In addition to movies with international appeal, which Hong Kong has long been known for, he aims to put local creators on the map with a slate of high-end Cantonese and Mandarin-language TV series that can travel beyond Hong Kong.

“We produce around 2,000 hours of programming a year for ViuTV, and while most is targeted at the local market, it’s allowed us to create an incubator structure where we can experiment with new ideas,...

The full list of nominations for the the 38th Hong Kong Film Awards has been revealed. On the 14 April 2019 we will know the winners but for now let’s have a look at the nominees.

Two films seem to lead the competition. Big budget “Project Gutenberg” by Felix Chong has the highest number of nominations (17) and both its protagonists, Chow Yun-Fat and Aaron Kwok, compete for the Best Actor Award. To follow, a much smaller (but not less loved) film, “Men On The Dragon” by Sunny Chan has 10 nominations.

Here is the full list:

Men On The Dragon

Best Film

Three Husbands

Operation Red Sea

Still Human

Men On The Dragon

Project Gutenberg

Best Director

Fruit Chan (Three Husbands)

Dante Lam (Operation Red Sea)

Sunny Chan (Men On The Dragon)

Oliver Chan Siu-Kuen (Still Human)

Felix Chong (Project Gutenberg)

Aaron Kwok and Chow Yun-Fat

Best Actor

Francis Ng (Men On...

The t-shirt deal of the day over at Ript Apparel is the Pokemon-inspired shirt called called "Brock Obama."

The tee, by artist Jeff Cheung, went on sale at Ript today, Tuesday, February 15, 2011, at midnight Cst, and will continue for 24 hours from then, and once it’s over, it will not be sold on the site anymore.

Here's what the artist said about the design, which is a take on the Barack Obama "Hope" poster: "This design is about Brock’s unending pursuit for Joy… Nurse Joy that is." [...]...