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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...

The housing issues in post-handover Hong Kong has been a recurring theme in Hk movies recently, as we witnessed in films like “Mad World”, which uses it as a base to present a number of social comments. New writers-directors Stephen Ng Hon-Pong and Nero Ng Siu-lun use the issue in similar fashion, although in a completely different approach, which lingers somewhere between the parody and the slapstick comedy.

The Sinking City: Capsule Odyssey is screening at Art Film Fest Kosice

The script, which is based on the homonymous novel by internet author XXharuki, revolves around Hin, a very beautiful young man, who seems to have it all: education, money, a gorgeous girlfriend and the ability to persuade. His true situation, however, is quite different, since the exuberant amounts he has to spend for the apartment he rents has led him up to his neck with debts. In order to manage to raise money,...