This piece of news is a little dated but interesting as it reported that Korean director, Kim Jee-Woon has recruited 3 Korean thespians and pitted these 3 acting giants together in the same movie.

Source: Variety, By Darcy Paquet, Feb. 7, 2007, 7:50pm PT

SEOUL — Three of South Korea’s top male stars have signed on for director Kim Jee-woon’s hotly anticipated Korean-style Western “The Good, the Bad and the Weird.”
Production company Barunson announced the Sergio Leone-inspired Western will star hot thesps Lee Byung-heon (”A Bittersweet Life”) as “the good”; Jung Woo-sung (”The Restless”) as “the bad”; and Song Kang-ho (”The Host”) as “the weird.”

Casting of the three top actors turns the pic into the biggest showcase of South Korea’s star system in recent memory.

The ambitious $10 million production will be set in Manchuria during the early 1900s, building off a string of Korean genre films from the 1970s that combined the aesthetics of the Western with outlaw movements aligned against Japanese colonial forces.

However, latest pic is expected to include more humor, along the lines of helmer’s early work “The Foul King” and “The Quiet Family.”

Pic is scheduled to shoot from April to June in China, with delivery planned for early 2008. Seoul-based seller Cineclick Asia will handle presales at Berlin’s EFM.
NB: There is also a discrepancy between the slogans on the posters against the report, i.e. JWS is the good, LBH is the bad.

Translated from Spanish:
The 3 Korean actors most mentioned of the moment, Lee Byung-heon (A Bittersweet Life) as the Good, Jung Woo-sung (The Restless) as the bad y Song Kang-ho (The Host) the Ugly (I think it should be The Weird) will contend against each other in the new work of Kim Jee-woon (A Tale Of Two Sisters) with a budget of USD10 million. The film will be inspired by the Sergio Leone original and will be shot in several locations in China although it is based on Manchuria in the 1900.

Note: There is a couple of discrepancies between the Darcy Paquet´s version which I take it to be more reliable as he is a Korean entertainment reporter against the Spanish version.

Translation from Spanish: Kwfong @ Shenyuepop.com
Source for picture & Commentary in Spanish: toede´s blog
credits: www.ShenYuePop.com
DO NOT REMOVE ORIGINAL CREDITS AND ADD OTHER CREDITS

Read more about this film from the URL below:
http://www.haf.org.hk/haf/pdf/project07/project9.pdf

Shu Qi stars as Aryoung, the daughter of a Hong Kong triad boss, who is forced into hiding in Korea, in My Wife is a Gangster 3.

Jung Woo Sung and Jeon Ji Hyun, his “real life” girl friend of 8 years in a Giordano advertisement

Shu Qi is Hongkong and Taiwan´s answer to Korea´s Shin Min Ah. But what is an interesting thought deriving from this article isn’t about Shu Qi or My Wife is a Gangster 3, it is the fondness by the Asian film industry to make joint venture movies or dramas that they hope would appeal to more than one market if they have actors from different countries in it, sometimes, the more the merrier. They hope that the market for the film would be expanded by the number of foreign actors they include in the movie, but the result is not always so, unfortunately due to lost in translation!

In the 2006 Korean movie Daisy, a thriller about a cop pursuing an assassin in The Netherlands that was directed by famed Hong Kong director, Andrew Lau, one of the lead Korean actor, Jeong Woo Seong aka Jung Woo Sung who fortunately speaks Mandarin, translated the director´s requirement for Jeon Ji-Hyun and Lee Sung Jae because the translator could not convey to the other two Korean actors the nuances of the director´s instructions succinctly.

Jung Woo Sung has a long credential of well know films to his credit, among them Musa, the warrior (2001), A Moment to Remember (2004), Sad Movie (2005) and The Restless (2006). Musa and The Restless are Jung Woo Sung´s Chinese connection in his films. Musa was filmed with Ju Ji Mo (while still a narrow face horsy looking actor, now the handsome Sang Jun of the hit 200 Pounds Beauty fame) and Zhang Zi Yi in China (before Zhang became internationally famous through Crouching Tiger & Hidden Dragon). The Restless with Kim Tae Hee was also filmed in China. Kim Tae Hee won the popular overseas actress award for her role in this movie at the recent 44th Daejong Film Awards. Jung Woo Sung is thus far the most humble and polite Korean actor that I have observed, while watching the film clips for the making of The Restless and the 51st Asia Pacific Film Fest held in Taiwan. The MC of this event tried to flip Jung Woo Sung by asking him a totally unrehearsed question in Mandarin, to which he thought for a moment and gave an appropriate reply in Mandarin.

However, in the upcoming Kim Jeong Hoon´s Love Strategies being filmed in Shanghai, it will be to Kim Jeong Hoon´s favour because the production team will be Koreans, to the disadvantage of Vivian Hsu, unless she also speaks Korean or perhaps as was reported earlier, she spoke Japanese with Kim Jeong Hoon, could we expect that he might be gallant enough to help her out! This would depend upon whether their level of Japanese would be better than that of the translators´ Korean to Mandarin interpretation!

Written by Kwfong exclusively for Shenyuepop
No reproduction of this article is allowed without the written consent of Kwfong at Shenyuepop.

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