[Movie 2006] Solace 사랑할 때 이야기하는 (Han Suk Kyu & Kim Ji Soo)

[Guest ovette]

anyone has nonCB links to this movie?? i really wanna watch this lol~!

[rubie]

Hi ovette, there's still no non-CB links available... huh... I haven't had the chance to watch it myself. :blush: Browsing at YouTube awhile ago and found this VIP Premiere clip, that you might want to watch too. A lot of stars attended the premiere including KJS' co-star in 'Traces of Love', Yoo Ji Tae.

Clip shared by syah4brit

Ytn Star clip - Korean movie 'Solace' VIP preview Nov20-2006

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hcB2OENVAc

[Guest ovette]

^

^

weeep thanks!

[Guest ovette]

rubie!! and everyone else...

solace is up in idol-unlimited!!! just found out now... whheeeee!!!!

http://idols-unlimited.com/solace

[rubie]

Wow... that is so awesome, thanks for the info... ovette... yes!

Share your thoughts, ok... enjoy the movie!

[Guest ovette]

yep! i will but for now id have to download first.. and also i have exams coming up so i cant watch at once

[Konoha_RockLee]

Watched this movie 2 days ago, pretty sad movie though not entirely tragic. However, it leaves you with an "Everything's OK" feeling at the end. Han Suk Kyu plays the similar calm character in Christmas in August, running a small shop in both of the movies.

[rubie]

Tuesday, 17 July 2007

"Solace"

Written by Derek Elley

"Solace" ("Saranghal Ddae Iyagihaneun Geodtal") (South Korea)

A Cinema Service release of a CJ Entertainment presentation, in association with Cinema Service, of an Object Film production. (International sales: CJ, Seoul.) Produced by Min In-gi, Kim Nam-su. Directed, written by Byeon Seung-wook.

With: Han Suk-kyu, Kim Ji-su, Lee Han-wi, Jeong Hye-seon, Kim Seong-nyeo, Kim Gwang-shik.

A nicely observed relationship drama about two people who drift together but seem unable to make the final commitment, "Solace" reps an impressive bow by writer-director Byeon Seung-wook that's too low-key for offshore theatrical but deserves fest dates and some TV pickups. Despite the presence of local name Han Suk-kyu, the pic -- far from the perky comedy-romancers favored by young South Korean moviegoers -- took in only a mild 200,000 admissions locally late last year.

Han plays buttoned-down Shim In-gu, a pharmacist with a small shop who looks after his retarded younger brother, In-seob (Lee Han-wi), and still lives at home with his mom (Jeong Hye-seon). Into his life comes -- very slowly -- the much less buttoned-down Lee Hye-ran (Kim Ji-su), who's always popping by for a headache or hangover cure.

Hye-ran is a clothes designer whose shop is always being busted by the police for illegal copying. Her personal life is also a mess: The family is weighed down by debt, and her younger sister -- as custom demands -- can't get married until Hye-ran finds a man.

In-gu and Hye-ran inch slowly toward a relationship that ends up with them both in bed after some serious drinking. But both are wary of making the relationship more than casual, especially Hye-ran. Just when, during a camping trip, it looks like things are clicking, their separate family responsibilities hover into view.

Byeon, an assistant director on Lee Chang-dong's "Peppermint Candy," spent five years writing and setting up "Solace," and the care in the dialogue and casting showsat every stage.

So little actually happens during the movie that even the final trigger seems melodramatic. But perfs by Han (more touching here than usual) and Kim (very different from her sadsack in 2004's "This Charming Girl") are so well meshed that the almost two-hour running time hardly seems overstretched.

Helming is unfussy and the technical package fine. Though limited in its ambitions -- and neither arty nor mainstream enough to fit into a neat category -- "Solace" ranks as one of last year's most satisfying South Korean pics in terms of accomplishing what it sets out to do. Original title means "Things You Say When You're in Love ... "

Camera (color), Lee In-weon; editor, Kim Hyeon; music, Kim Shi-hwan; art director, Kim Min-oh; costume designer, Yun Mi-ra; sound (Dolby Digital), Gu Bon-seung. Reviewed on DVD, London, May 12, 2007. (In Far East Film Festival, Udine, Italy.) Running time: 113 MIN.

Source: VarietyAsiaOnline, image from hancinema.net

http://www.varietyasiaonline.com/content/view/1691/53/

[rubie]

April 21, 2007

Solace

Review by luna6

Solace / Telling Things When Falling Love / Salanghal ddae iyagihaneun geotdeul

Plot Synopsis : In-ku owns a small retail pharmacy, while taking care of his mentally disabled brother. In the past, he was set for marriage, until his fiance’s parents refused to allow the marriage because of his brother.

Hye-ran runs a small retail booth in Dongdaemyun Shopping Center. Often, she resorts to selling counterfeit merchandise to make ends meet. When her father passed away, he left her saddled with his large debts.

As fate has it, In-Ku and Hye-Ran meet in a chance encounter and find solace in each other’s company. As they grow closer to each other, so does their problems.

Movie Review : “Solace” is a strange movie to classify. Not exactly a big budget Korean film nor a low budget indie film. Difficult situations exists in both of the main character’s lives, but the problems lack the more common Korean melodramatic flair to cause an outpouring of empathy for either characters. Their lives are tough, but not quite bleak enough or dark enough to elicit heartfelt sympathy. If anything, all signs point to a “realistic” film that carries with it a mix bag of realistic good and bad.

The positives of having such a film like this, is seeing things that have not been shown much in Korean movies. Hye-Ran works in a clothing booth that often peddles counterfeit goods. Her booth is situated somewhere in the DongDaeMun shopping center, which is a well known shopping center in Seoul. If you have ever been there before, which I have, you may wonder what their lives are like when they are not selling clothes in their booths. For In-Kuh, his biggest problem in life would be the responsibilities of having a mentally handicapped brother. This portion didn’t get overly dramatic which I appreciated, yet kept its realistic feel by showing In-Kuh’s frustrations at appropriate time. Also, his job as a pharmacist was kind of cool as well, something you don’t often see in Korean movies, yet there’s one of these pharmacies on every block in Korea.

The negatives of having such a realistic film is that the film sometimes forgets the importance of having a compelling story behind all these scenes that are done realistically. The filmmaker’s desire to focus on such moments, often led to questionable scenes, like the scene where In-Ku takes a whizz in the sink (was that necessary?) or the movie harping on the mentally disabled brother’s fetish to masturbate with girlie magazines. Furthermore the characters of In-Ku (played by Suk-kyu Han of Swiri/Christmas In August fame) and Hye-Ran (played by Ji-su Kim) were portrayed in a manner were empathy was often hard to conjure for their characters. On a side note, I do firmly believe that Suk-kyu Han’s family tree and Patrick Swayze’s family tree crossed paths somewhere in the distant past. The resemblance is uncanny at times.

Although, the problems that afflicted the characters in Solace were something most people could relate too, the story itself was bland enough that whatever connections were made in the film were lost somewhere in the second half of the film. Granted, Solace was interesting at times, but more often than not the movie was just “bland” and combined with the performances, which were instantly forgettable, you have a movie that’s probably going to be remembered for nothing at all.

Here’s my own spin on a popular philosophical question…”If you thought about a tree falling in an empty forest and the next day you can’t remember having such thoughts, did the tree actually fall in your mind?” That’s a dilemma you will likely encounter after watching Solace.

Source: lunapark6.com

[Guest honor]

ugh, i didnt like the ending. how could you let materialistic mini cooper like that get in the way of love. damn.

lol, i didnt know you cant cuss.

[rubie]

Wishing everyone

happiness in 2009

[rubie]

November 12, 2010

Founder of largest English K-pop site 'Soompi'

Korean-American web developer creates first global online community devoted to K-pop, Asian entertainment

By Cathy Rose A. Garcia cathy@koreatimes.co.kr

Main page of the ultimate K-pop site “Soompi”

If you’re looking for news about a SuperJunior concert, reviews for a 2NE1 album, recaps of Korean drama "Sungkyunkwan Scandal" or simply anything about Korean entertainment, chances are you’ll find it on Soompi.com.

Soompi.com is the oldest and currently the largest English-language online community devoted to Korean and Asian entertainment, with a million unique visitors every month.

Soompi has come a long way from its early days as a personal online shrine devoted to K-pop started by Korean-American Susan Kang in 1998.

"I had recently graduated from college with nothing much to do. As a recent fan of both K-pop and the Internet (AOL was all the rage), I noticed that there weren't any English-language sites devoted to Korean pop music or TV dramas, so I purchased a book called `Make Your Own Website with Microsoft Word '97’, and the rest, as they say, is history," Kang said, now a 35-year-old mother living in Irvine, Calif., in an email interview with The Korea Times.

Kang’s original site, Soompitown, was fairly simple. She would just upload photos of her favorite K-pop acts like H.O.T., S.E.S., Shinhwa and FinKL and English translations of Korean magazine articles, as well as post CD audio samples and her own album reviews. Basically, Kang ran the website out of "love" for K-pop.

(If you’re wondering about the meaning of Soompi, it simply refers to a nickname that a roommate’s family gave Kang in college.)

In the early 2000s, hallyu or the Korean wave began spreading around Asia and international fans discovered Soompi, the first website that actually provided English-language information about their favorite Korean stars.

Soon Soompi became more and more popular, requiring more servers and more technical expertise. A team of volunteers helped moderate the forums and post content on the website, but Kang, who also worked full-time as a web developer, was running the website on her own as a hobby and it was starting to feel burdensome.

For one, it was getting expensive to pay for the server fees out of her own pocket, although it was partially funded by member donations and small ad buys.

Then came the fateful day, Oct. 5, 2005, when the entire Soompi website crashed. Its entire database of 80,000 members and millions of forum posts was gone. "I seriously thought of just making that the end of Soompi, as I'd been running the site as a hobby for seven years at that point, and was paying for the servers completely out of my own pocket," she said.

"The turning point was when we re-opened an empty forum with 0 members and 0 posts, and within 5 days, we already had 40,000 members. That's when I knew that Soompi was bigger and more important than just one person's hobby."

Soon, it became apparent that a more serious, business-oriented approach to Soompi was needed.

In 2006, Joyce Lan Kim, a lawyer then working for technology firms in Silicon Valley, joined Soompi to handle the business side, albeit on a part-time basis.

"I joined the company, working on advertising and thinking of ways the company can break even. Susan never started this with business in mind. It was always just about fun. It was about bringing K-pop to the people. But how we make this sustainable is our job," Kim told The Korea Times at a coffee shop in downtown Seoul, last week.

Last year, Kang and Kim both decided to leave their full-time jobs and focus on Soompi.

The 33 year old Kim, who studied at Cornell and Harvard universities and received a law degree from Columbia University, had no second thoughts giving up a law career. She sees Soompi as a good business opportunity with K-pop’s potential to expand around the world.

Soompi is may not yet be profitable, but there is no doubt it is an Internet success with 500,000 registered members, and attracts over one million unique visitors every month ("That's like a small city," Kim quipped.) Revenues are currently generated from ads, premium membership and affiliate programs, but not enough for the company to break even.

There may be other K-pop websites that attract more hits, but Soompi has the most activity among community members, such as posting content and comments on the site. "Our success comes from covering such a wide variety of topics - not only the latest K-pop news, but Korean dramas and variety shows, original fan fiction, our own member-run shops, beauty & fashion, among so much more," Kang said.

Aside from sections on entertainment news, fan clubs and beauty & fashion, Soompi also has its own weekly music chart and annual contests, such as Soompi Idol, Soompi Dance Idol, Soompi Ulzzang, fan fiction writing and graphics contests.

All contests were originally started by Soompi members themselves. This year, Soompi Ulzzang Contest, a modeling competition for Soompi members, has become an official event and sponsored by Korean entertainment company Sidus HQ.

Member feedback is invaluable to keeping Soompi relevant. Whenever new features are launched, Soompi looks at the comments from members and makes the appropriate tweaks. Members can also vote for which Soompi fan clubs should be created next, as well as recommend new forums and sub-forums.

Soompi is working to make the site more user-friendly. "It's not a hobby anymore. We have to do it for real. Functionality is very important for us. We are definitely working on making it easier to use, and on getting great content," Kim said.

In terms of technical innovations, the Soompi Street Teams Twitter application is being launched. This will make it easier for fans to get their favorite K-pop idols on Twitter’s top trending topics.

"We wanted to make it easier for everybody to join together and tweet in support of their celebs. Twitter is not just for K-pop, because it's for everyone... Each time a K-pop celebrity ends up as a Twitter topic, people go, `who is this guy?’ Like when (SuperJunior member) Kim Hee-chul was trending on Twitter, everyone was talking about him... We can expose more people to the world of K-pop," Kim said.

An Asian website

Soompi is no longer just devoted to Korean pop music, but Asian pop and entertainment in general. It is also very much a global community, with most members from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia.

The majority or 81 percent of Soompi members are Asian, while 8 percent are white, 5 percent are multi-ethnic and the rest are African-American, Hispanic and other ethnicities. The most surprising fact was 60 to 80 percent of the non-Asian groups said they "know some Korean."

"It’s mostly non-Koreans, as opposed to 7 or 8 years ago when majority were Korean-Americans. Now Korean Americans are a minority on the site. We have ever growing number of people who are not even Asian. We have Caucasians, African-Americans, Middle East, Latin American, South East Asians," Kim said.

Soompi stands out because of its tight-knit community and its members. "Soompi is very community-focused, not just information or gossip-focused. It feels like home to many, and there are many members who have literally grown up on the site ― from Junior High to High School to College to getting married and having children," Kang said.

Noticeably, the Soompi forums are relatively free from the anti-fans and trolls who frequent K-pop websites to post vitriolic comments that rile up fans.

"I think our biggest defining feature is our members. Our members are the ones who do the subtitles, episode recaps and organize fan meetings," Kim said. "We have good members."

Future of Kpop & Soompi

Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say that Soompi has helped give a boost to K-pop and Korean entertainment’s popularity among English speakers.

But while K-pop is undeniably big in Asia, there is yet to be a real K-pop breakthrough in the U.S., despite attempts by Rain, Wonder Girls and Se7en. "Honestly, I'm not sure if the U.S. is ready to accept Asians as idols, as Asians are still widely portrayed as awkward geeks or kung fu masters on TV and film, but I do believe it's just a matter of 'when', not 'if'. I hope it's sooner than later," Kang said.

Looking back, Kang admitted being constantly amazed and inspired by the level of commitment and amount of time people will willingly volunteer to support their favorite idols. "Passion will drive people to do crazy and wonderful things," she said.

In the future, Soompi hopes to leverage its brand value as the oldest K-pop online resource, and to continue fanning the flames of K-pop and Asian pop fever around the world.

"In 10 years, I'll be 45 years old. I hope by then, the Soompi community will still be going strong, with the love for Korean and Asian pop being passed to a much wider audience. We'll still be providing the best place for people to express their fandom and meet others who share their passion," Kang said.

[rubie]

January 2, 2011

Soompi.com shows Hallyu where to go

By Yang Sung-jin (insight@heraldm.com) koreaherald.com

Soompi.com is the world’s biggest English-language online community dedicated to Korean pop culture. It boasts some 1.4 million visitors daily. More importantly, 90 percent of its members are non-Koreans.

The website is widely regarded as a promising social network venture that has secured a solid user base on the strength of Korean cultural content. Softbank of Japan has already invested in Soompi.com and other investors are lining up amid the outlook that the website will emerge as a key gateway to Asian pop culture for English-speaking audiences.

Soompi.com CEO Joyce Kim, who lives in San Francisco, said in an interview that Hallyu is still in the early stages of growth internationally and the website would help foster its development online as “the central online activity hub for all fans of Hallyu and Asian pop.”

Joyce Kim

As for Hallyu, Kim noted that the near absence of a legitimate distribution of Korean pop content is a serious problem that is often neglected by Koreans.

The following are excerpts from the e-mail interview with Kim.

Korea Herald: How did Soompi.com start, and how did you get involved in the site?

Joyce Kim: Soompi was started by my co-founder Susan Kang in 1998 as her own personal website dedicated to her interest in Korean dramas and music. During the initial first few years, Susan would scan Korean entertainment magazine articles, translate them into English and post them on the site. Slowly, a community began to grow around the site and Susan soon had people volunteering to help with the site. As the first Hallyu wave began to grow, the site also began to grow. Soon, there were hundreds of thousands of visitors each month.

I met Susan because she is the older sister of my best friend from law school. We initially started to work together on Soompi in 2006 when the site growth was really taking off which meant server expenses were also taking off. I was helping Susan set up the advertising system on the site and eventually we decided to officially create a company and work on Soompi together. At first, we both kept our full-time jobs (Susan as a coder and me as a lawyer) and worked on Soompi during our nights and weekends. But by the end of 2008, the site was so active that it was obvious that the site needed more support. We made the decision to leave our jobs in 2009 and work on Soompi full-time.

KH: If you define Soompi.com, what is it?

Kim: Soompi is an online fan community for Hallyu. Soompi’s greatest strength lies in our members. Ninety-nine percent of the content on Soompi is user-generated content so our members are the ones who find the information to share and discuss. They spend a great deal of time online answering each other’s questions. No amount of money or marketing can create the organic community that sites like Soompi have.

KH: Who are Soompi members?

Kim: Soompi members are mostly young Americans of many different backgrounds (Asian, Caucasian, black and Latino) followed by people in their teens and 20s in South East Asia (Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, etc). They are typically very fashionable and up on the latest trends since they follow entertainment so closely. When they come to Soompi, they are often looking for the latest news about Hallyu and to meet other passionate fans. Hallyu fans love to work together to do events and share their love for their idols.

KH: What aspect of Hallyu appeals to Soompi members?

Kim: Soompi members love the celebrities ― their personalities, their visuals, their songs ― all of it. In fact, many of our members (90 percent of whom are not Korean) have started to learn Korean to better understand the music and dramas. Hallyu has definitely started to grow beyond its typical Asian boundaries. I think we will see Hallyu spread to the U.S., Latin America and Europe in 2011. However, for Hallyu to be truly successful abroad, Korean entertainment companies need to better understand international fans better ― this is important for creating new fans and reaching out to new markets.

KH: What can Korean websites and firms interested in Hallyu learn from Soompi?

Kim: I would say two differences between Soompi and Korean sites are 1) we really take into consideration the community’s desires when we build new products ― meaning oftentimes we look at community feedback first when thinking about new features and 2) we push out features before they are 100 percent perfect ― sometimes it means it has bugs, but it also means we can get our full community reaction quickly and fix or change things as needed.

For entertainment firms working in the Hallyu industry, it is important to make the music and drama content easily available for international fans. People in Korea do not realize how hard it is for international fans to buy the music and dramas legally ― there are not good options available. If entertainment firms made their content for easily available for international purchase, then more international fans would buy the content. But at the moment, we cannot even easily register on Korean websites.

KH: To create new and successful services based on social network service, what should and shouldn’t Korean venture startups do?

Kim: I see many Korean startups that are testing or half-heartedly targeting the global market. The decision whether to go global should be made early as it significantly impacts the kind of team that needs to be built and the product. If you are building an SNS service targeting the international market, then you should create your team abroad.

KH: What was the purpose of your latest visit to Seoul, and what did you feel when you were in Seoul?

Kim: I visit Seoul at least once a year to meet with Korean entertainment companies and Korean Internet startups. On the entertainment front, there is strong interest in online and social media strategy from the entertainment companies. This is one of the big growth opportunities for Hallyu. But I think Korean entertainment companies will need to hire people with international Internet experience to really open that opportunity.