From The Straits Times    |

Clever casting helps Korean films rise to the topIt’s been a big week for the Korean cinema industry, with yet another local hit on the domestic front and one of its productions continuing to charm audiences and critics alike across mainland China. At cinemas across South Korea, director Lee Yong Joo’s romance Architecture 101 has managed to touch hearts and over the past week has added more than 570,000 admissions, for a total audience now of 1.6 million viewers from just over two weeks, according to Han Cinema.

The film — which traces a rekindled relationship between two former lovers — stars Korean box office drawcards Uhm Tae Woong, Lee Jae Hoon and Han Ga In and introduces pop singer Suzy to the big screen for the first time.

It’s proved a canny marketing move as the film has kept the Hollywood blockbuster Wrath of the Titans out of first place in South Korea, with that film collecting just over 482,000 admissions for the week.

Clever marketing has also been partly behind the success of director Kim Tae Yong’s Late Autumn, which set a record for opening weekend box office returns for a Korean film in mainland China last week — collecting 25 million yuan (three million euros) in three days.

With China taking time off this week for the annual Ching Ming Festival, no updated figures have been made available from the box office there but Late Autumn has still featured heavily in the local press.

Much of that focus has been on the starring role taken by Chinese actress Tang Wei — cleverly paired with Korean heartthrob Hyun Bin, who has a legion of fans in China, and with the film mainly in English, as it is set in the United States.

Tang was ostracized by the Chinese media after her role in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (2007), which featured multiple nude scenes, but her reputation now appears to have been restored thanks to her role in Late Autumn — as evidenced by the reaction to the film by the state-run China Daily newspaper.

“With years of ups and downs, appraisal and criticism, [Tang] has become an expert in portraying the women who may look fragile, but are lions at heart,” the paper’s reviewer wrote.

The other major news from the Asian box office has been the continued dominance in Japan by the animated feature Doraemon: Nobita and the Island of Miracles – Animal Adventure, which added a further US$3.6 million (2.7 million euros) to its coffers, according to Tokyo Hive, meaning the film has now collected just over US$35 million(26.6 million euros) from five weeks in cinemas.

The Doraemon character — a time-travelling blue robot cat — first appeared in Japanese manga comics way back in 1968 and has been appearing in feature films since 1980.

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