South Korean movie industry places hopes in a 'kimchi western'

South Korean movie executives are watching to see if an unusual summer blockbuster - a "kimchi western" - can help change the fortunes of a struggling domestic industry known for holding its own against Hollywood imports. The "The Good, the Bad, the Weird," which cost $17 million to produce, is about three Koreans - a bounty hunter, a bandit, and a train robber - who battle for a valuable map in Manchuria, an area of northeast China, during the Japanese occupation of the 1930s. Reviving the genre of "Manchurian westerns," which were popular in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, the movie stars three of the country's most well known actors while the title pays homage the Italian director Sergio Leone's classic 1966 western "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." The tag "kimchi western" mimics the 1960s genre of Italian films... [read full story]