Remember the Stephen Colbert feud with RAIN? Well Stephen Colbert is back at it again and once again Stephen is hilarious. Don’t you miss Colbert raising his fist and yelling the name of “RAIIINNNNNN!” whom he refers to as his “Kpop arch nemesis.” Stephen pounced on RAIN’s recent winning of MTV’s Badass award at the MTV Movie Awards. It’s a brilliant piece of comedy that Stephen Colbert displays as he rails on RAIN and his movie Ninja Assassin.
Crazy but a Korean guy beat out a bunch of Hollywood bigwigs to win MTV’s Badass Award! RAIN actually showed up and accepted the award with a brief speech. That’s awesome!
Check out our interview with him back in November.
Singer and Actor RAIN became the first Korean to be nominated for an MTV Movie Award. He was nominated in the category of “Biggest Badass Star” for his role as Raizo in Ninja Assassin. He’s got serious competition against Hollywood’s biggest stars like Brad Pitt, Hugh Jackman, Matt Damon, Tom Cruise and many more.
But you get a chance to vote for RAIN on (Wednesday) May 12th, to make him the first Korean to win a MTV Movie Award. So set your alarms and visit the MTV Movie Awards web site and cast your vote. We can make it happen! The results will be revealed live on June 6th in Los Angeles.
Check out our interview with RAIN from the past fall.
K-pop singer Rain and Olympic figure skating champion Kim Yu-na are among 200 candidates for this year’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
Rain has been on the candidates’ list every year since 2006. Although he has ended up placing first or second in the online poll each year, he has appeared on the final 100 list only once, in 2006.
“Rain has long been a phenomenon in his native South Korea, but his popularity in the U.S. is growing after a successful international concert tour in support of his latest album, ‘Rainism,’ included several U.S. stops,” Time said. “He has crossover appeal too — he showed his acting chops with recent roles in ‘Speed Racer’ and ‘Ninja Assassin.’”
On Kim, the magazine reported, “Kim earned South Korea’s first ever Olympic figure skating medal, a gold one at that, during the Vancouver Games. Her graceful command of the ice — her Olympic programs earned the highest scores from judges since a new scoring system was instituted in 2006 — is single-handedly making skating the sport to watch in her golf-obsessed nation.”
RAIN was in New York over the weekend to promote the Concept Korea Fashion Collective during New York’s Fashion Week. The event was held at the New York Public Library to promote the fashion sense coming out of Korea. Enjoy RAIN!
Who was the first Korean male to star in a leading role in a Hollywood film? That would be RAIN, the Korean pop star known was the Justin Timberlake of Asia. We knew he was going to be big back in 2006 when he was voted #1 to the TIME 100 poll, beating out everyone else in the world that was thrown on the ballot. Fast forward three years later and we found RAIN kicking his way into Ninja Assassin, produced by the guys who brought the Matrix Trilogy. What RAIN represents is the future of entertainment because the economics dictate such. With the advent of digital undermining the traditional Hollywood business model, Hollywood has to seek out new ways to expand their reach and better monetize their products. Asia is the new frontier, but RAIN wasn’t necessarily the first guy to build that bridge to several billion people across the Pacific for Hollywood. There was of course Jackie Chan, Jet Li and others who found themselves as the first set of Asians in co-leading roles of big budget films. It’s obvious that Hollywood is trying to identify someone who has a huge following and leveraging their fame to expand their overall reach. What RAIN has done is open the possibilities for other Koreans to venture into Hollywood and perhaps someday, well be cheering on our version of Slumdog Millionaire. Someday we’ll look back and say that guys like John Cho and RAIN were the ones who put Koreans on the Hollywood radar, and that’s why RAIN is #3 on our top ten list of most influential Korean(-Americans) for 2009.
If you happen to be celebrating Christmas in Las Vegas, then you may want to drop by Caesar’s Palace on the Las Vegas strip to see Korean pop sensation RAIN. He’ll be performing two nights on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day. It’s his first concert in the United States in three years. He’s bringing his RAINISM tour so watch out!
This is probably the most unique pick and most controversial of our top ten most influential Korean-Americans for 2009 because it’s a website. allkpop.com is the only website chosen because of its significant influence of exporting the Korean wave. Based on our calculations, Johnny Noh and his gang has made allkpop.com the most web trafficked Kpop website outside of South Korea; this in a matter of two short years. They’ve become so big that Korean entertainers and the agencies that represent them have taken notice and they’re now coming to allkpop.com for help to deliver their promotions and messages to the U.S.
The Korean wave had its biggest year yet with significant milestones like Korean actors Daniel Henney, Lee Byung Hun, and RAIN making their entry into Hollywood. You had Korean singing acts trying to make their way into the American music consciousness with Se7en, BoA and the Wonder Girls taking big steps into the U.S. market. And the website that was at the forefront of breaking and covering these events was allkpop.com. And just to give you a little bit more perspective, this website that covers Korean pop culture and entertainers made the distinction of becoming the #1 retweeted account on Twitter this past fall and it’s currently a finalist for Mashable’s Open Web Awards for “Best Breaking News” website in 2009. That is pretty impressive because they’re one of the finalist against well known websites CNN, Twitter, and the BBC. How the heck did they end up among those big names? That says it all and that’s why they’re #8 for 2009.
This is for the ladies as we close the chapter on RAIN since Ninja Assassin has opened and played to the world. Here are pictures from an Allure magazine photo shoot which shows off the perfect abs. Does anybody know the exact abs workout he did? We’re looking high and wide for it and if we find it, we’ll certainly share it with all of you.
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