THE HOST opened at No. 9 in France last week. In its first weekend, THE HOST made $680,805 in 223 theaters. Not bad, I guess. I still remember checking out www.boxofficemojo.com each week, years ago when MUSA was released in France, like it was somehow important that a Korean film was playing in the theaters overseas.

Oh, pretty good reviews for THE HOST over at Rotten Tomatoes.

A nice overview of some jazz concerts in Seoul this Christmas over at the Marmot’s Hole. Christmas season is always the biggest time of year for live shows in Korea, with anyone and everyone having their big holiday shows.

Why has Firefox stopped showing me pics and editing options on blogger? I assume I have something turned off in my preference, but cannot see anything that could be causing the problem. Kind of annoying.

What happened to my NBA television? TVU, a kind of Internet pirate TV station out of China, used to let me watch ESPN (1 & 2) and the NBA channel, among about 100 other channels. But this week, ESPN and the NBA channel disappeared. All the lousy channels I do not care about are still there, only my NBA is gone. I assume Disney and/or the NBA took some sort of legal action against the company… but since when did the legal system in China Work? And why did it had to work to my detriment?

(For the record, I would gladly pay to watch the NBA, either over the Internet or via cable TV, but I have no such options in Korea. None of the Korean sports channels carry the NBA (okay, one game a week on MBC ESPN, but that hardly counts). Star Sports out of Hong Kong has nothing. No Interview VOD options. Nothing. Such a bizarre and sad situation.)

Sad, albeit in a totally different way, my Raptors are currently No. 7 in the Eastern Conference. Despite having a 7-10 record. If the playoffs were held today, Toronto would be in and Miami would not be. Bizarre.

Yes, I know those last points have nothing to do with Korean entertainment.