Word: ju
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...talks with Seoul, accusing it of kidnapping the 468 North Korean defectors who arrived in the South last week via Vietnam. Another round of multilateral talks on the North's nuclear program is due to start in September, but the chances of success seem slimmer than ever, says Nam Ju Hong, an expert on international relations at South Korea's Kyonggi University. "North Korea is moving away from solving the nuclear crisis," he says. "This is going to take a long time." Time that the North might use to develop more dependable nuclear weaponry...
Just now, grown-up horror is frightfully chic. The Village, which Shyamalan describes as "a Grimm fairy tale--Little Red Riding Hood, but an adult, dark version of it," creeps into theaters this week, followed by Open Water. Ju-on has opened in New York City and Los Angeles and spreads to a dozen cities next month. Soon we'll see an assault of Hollywood remakes of Japanese horror films. The Ring 2, a sequel to the 2002 Naomi Watts thriller that grossed $230 million worldwide, is being directed by Hideo Nakata, who helmed the original Japanese film version...
...Psychological or atmospheric horror is what's attracting audiences these days," says Roy Lee, the Korean American who sold The Ring and Ju-on to Hollywood. It attracts producers too, since atmospherics cost less than computer legerdemain. But you don't have to be Japanese to scare people smartly. You need only a potent idea and $200,000. That was the budget for Open Water, based on the true story of an American couple who were left behind on Australia's Great Barrier Reef by a scuba boat...
...sharpest post-Ring cycle is Ju-on, two features on video and two on film written and directed by Takashi Shimizu. They detail the mischief that awaits anyone entering a house haunted by the ghosts of a man, his murdered wife and his son Toshio. The Ju-on series is a superbly orchestrated symphony of fear. A girl crawls under bedsheets to escape the wraiths and feels a tug on her leg; she lifts the covers to see a grimacing ghoul, climbing closer...
Hollywood studios often remake foreign films but rarely with the original directors. Yet Nakata is directing The Ring 2 and Shimizu is remaking Ju-on (as The Grudge). They may well be the first Japanese directors to make major studio films in America. Another Nakata film--Dark Water, his best--is being remade by Walter Salles, with Jennifer Connelly as a mother who gets traumatized and very wet in a haunted apartment building...