The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

Fake talk show boosts numbers for HealthCare

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

New registrations for health coverage show comedy works.

ZACH Galifianakis' Between Two Ferns interview style can be pretty intimidating, but President Barack Obama says Galifianakis was the nervous one during their Funny or Die showdown that went online earlier this week.

"Zach actually was pretty nervous," Obama told Ryan Seacrest in a radio interview on March 14. "It was funny to watch because this whole Between Two Ferns' schtick – which I wasn't familiar with before my staff told me that we had been pitched to do this – his whole character is to go after the guest, and I think he was looking around and seeing all these Secret Service guys with guns and thinking, 'I wonder what happens here if I cross the line?' But we had a great time."

The appearance on the fake talk show was aimed at encouraging more young people to sign up for health coverage through HealthCare.gov by the end of the month. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, the plan worked, and the website saw a 40% boost in traffic after the video went live on March 11.

Between Two Ferns has had a number of high-profile celebrity guests over the years, but never a Commander-in-Chief. His 15-year-old daughter, Malia, however, has seen every episode.

"When I was at the dinner table with the girls and I said, 'Well today I did something with Zach, it's called Two Ferns, I think,' Malia was so excited," Obama continued.

"She had seen all the previous episodes, so I figured it was going to reach our target audience, which is a lot of young people, and it turns out we've had close to 15 million hits. And the amazing thing is afterwards people actually did link to healthcare.gov and actually signed up for health insurance, so it ended up working, but I think I have to keep my day job." – Reuters

K-drama's top superhero alien is the perfect boyfriend

Posted: 12 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

My Love From The Star has swept most of East Asia off its feet with a romantic 17th-century superhuman hero.

Landing in South Korea after a trip to her native China, rapper Meng Jia of K-pop group Miss A shared an observation on Twitter: "Almost all Chinese women want an alien boyfriend."

To be more precise, the man they and others in East Asia want is from Planet K-drama: Do Min-joon, the ageless professor from outer space played by Kim Soo-hyun in the South Korean television phenomenon My Love From The Star.

He is a guy who has superhuman powers but is more perfect than Superman because he has his priorities right. He wants to protect only one person – the woman in his life, played by Gianna Jun.

My Love From The Star, a romantic fantasy created by writer Park Ji-eun (My Husband Got A Family, 2012), has been trending in East Asia after its debut in December last year.

In China, the show has more than one billion views on video websites such as iQiyi.com and PPS, and Kim Soo-hyun is one of the top searches on Baidu, the country's equivalent of Google, say reports on news website NetEase. Books read or referenced by Kim's character in the drama – including a 17th-century Korean fantasy novel, The Cloud Dream Of The Nine, and a 2006 American children's book, The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane – are out of stock in China, add the reports.

The show is also said to have popularised fried chicken, the comfort food of Jun's character, and revitalised the country's H7N9-hit poultry trade.

In South Korea, the show took over from The Inheritors, the SBS teen romance featuring K-drama royalty Lee Min Ho and Park Shin Hye, and raced past it in the ratings. Whereas The Inheritors took 11 episodes to reach 20% of viewers nationwide, My Love From The Star took only four episodes.

A song Kim sang for the show, In Front Of Your House, flew to the top of the country's music charts two hours after it was released, says entertainment website allkpop. Which is all in a day's work for the hottest star from South Korea now. – The Straits Times, Singapore/Asia News Network

> My Love From The Star airs every Wednesday and Thursday at 8.55pm on ONE HD (Astro Ch 393).

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Isnin, 17 Mac 2014