What’s wrong with Lindsay Price?  She’s had some bad luck because Eastwick is the 4th show that featured Lindsay Price and was canceled.  Ouch!  We want Lindsay to succeed because she’s Korean of course, but man she’s had some tough luck.  She was previously on the supposed can’t miss “Lipstick Jungle,” but the writer’s strike ended up undermining its potential.  Now that’s bad luck.  To make things worse, her boyfriend from “How I Met Your Mother” just dumped her.  Don’t worry Lindsay – your luck will turn around.  For more on Lindsay’s bad luck, go to NY Magazine.

What’s wrong with Oldboy?
Korean movie “Oldboy” is a cult classic and a former winner of the Grand Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival, so it should be an easy success story when Hollywood gets its chance to remake it. Right?! Apparently not. Stephen Spielberg was trying to make and direct this film with Will Smith in the lead role. It doesn’t get heavier than those two Hollywood heavyweights, but negotiations have broken down with the current rights holder (Mandate) and it’s back to a holding pattern. For the full story, go to the LA Times.

So where’s the best resort in South Korea?

The Hilton Namhae Golf and Spa Resort was named Korea’s leading golf resort and Korea’s leading resort in the 2009 World Travel Awards. The winners are chosen based on votes by travel agencies and tourism experts from around the world.  This is the third year running that the Hilton Namhae Golf and Spa Resort has won the awards in both categories.

The movie “Thirst” opens on Friday in the U.S. from famed South Korean director Park Chan-Wook, a former winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes.  “Thirst” is a vampire movie and you should expect a bloody good time.  “Thirst” is loosely based on Émile Zola’s 1867 novel Thérèse Raquin: Beloved and devoted priest from a small town volunteers for a medical experiment which fails and turns him into a vampire. Physical and psychological changes lead to his affair with a wife of his childhood friend who is repressed and tired of her mundane life. The one-time priest falls deeper in despair and depravity. As things turn for worse, he struggles to maintain what’s left of his humanity.

Park Chan-Wook’s work is always dark and he could be considered South Korea’s Stephen King with his ability to take the audience to the edge, raise their nerves and make you blink twice.  Take a look at his previous work and how he shows the depraved side of humans:  dentistry by hammer (Oldboy), underwater surgery on a character’s Achilles tendon (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), and disturbing images of terrorized children and revenge-obsessed parents (Lady Vengeance).   It appears “Thirst” derived from his frustrations growing up from his religious upbringing and the temptations of the world.

“I didn’t set out to make a vampire film,” Park says somewhat sheepishly, sitting in an uptown hotel suite with a translator in tow. “As a boy, I disliked horror films; they were too scary. Thirst isn’t really a monster movie; it’s a story about a hero falling into the most serious of dilemmas, where he’s doubting God and his own beliefs. Because he had no choice in becoming what he becomes, you have to wonder, Should what he’s doing be considered a sin?”

It’s a question that Park takes seriously. Raised Roman Catholic in Jecheon, South Korea, the director found himself torn between his religious upbringing and his desire to make provocative art and experience worldly pleasures. The breaking point arrived in high school. “The local priest came to see my father and said, ‘This boy, you need to put him in a seminary. He’ll make a great priest.’_” Park says. “But I had no desire to live a life of celibacy. I got scared and stopped going to church.” Seeing it from a philosophical point of view, you might say the movie is partially autobiographical, with Song’s fallen holy man trying to reconcile the spiritual aspects of his former life with the temptations of an extremely exaggerated secular world. Park just smiles at the idea.  “That’s why I like the symbolic nature of vampires,” he says. “They can be bent to suit almost all purposes.”

Critics appear to like Park Chan-Wook’s latest work, and so does the folks at Rotten Tomatoes with an 85% on the Tomatometer.