Kaiju Shakedown - January 2008

Johnnie To update

Johnnie To's pickpocket movie, SPARROW (apparently there's no "The" in the title), is at the Berlin Film Festival and so Mr. To finds himself once again all over the Chinese media. Sina.com did a four-page interview with Hong Kong's King of Directors and a sharp-eyed reader graciously translatd and summarized the contents:

- it's well-known that To rarely works with a complete script, and his actors often don't seem to have a clue on set about what [...]

HAF projects in review

HAF, the Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum, has released their list of projects for 2008 and it's an impressive line-up full of big deal directors and producers like Hideo Nakata, Park Chan-Wook, Sabu, Ning Hao, Bong Joon-Ho, Nonzee Nimibutr and Fruit Chan (producing). The 25 projects are all at different stages of financing and they're all looking for funds so they can move into production. They'll be shopped around at this year's Hong Kong Filmart. Here's my take on [...]

Fang Li interview

The Chinese indie flick LOST IN BEIJING opens in the US today and it�s already the most important Chinese movie of the year, not so much for its content but for its fate. Released in November 2007, �Lost in Beijing� became one of the highest-grossing indies of the year in China, but on January 3rd SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film and Television) posted notice on its website that it was pulling the movie�s exhibition license for distributing deleted scenes on the Internet, entering [...]

Wu Jing: Director?

Paco Wong, Wu Jing's manager and the producer of SHA PO LANG and FATAL CONTACT, gave an interview in December, 2007 saying that he was going to be producing a new movie in 2008. Then he sort of blew everyone's minds by saying that Wu Jing would not only act in the film, but would direct it as well.

(Thanks to the sharp-eyed reader who sent this in)

Fatal movie trailer

Dennis Law, the corporate bigwig at Johnnie To's Milkyway Image, the producer of ELECTION and ELECTION 2 and the the director of the Wu Jing vehicle, FATAL CONTACT continues what will certainly come to be known as his "fatal" series with FATAL MOVE. I don't have enormously high hopes for this flick since I didn't really enjoy FATAL COMBAT in the slightest, but the huge ensemble cast of this dark gangster drama actually feels kind of exciting. There's Simon Yam and [...]

Nightmare Detective on US DVD

Not sure if we mentioned this already, but Shinya Tsukamoto's incredible NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE gets a direct-to-DVD release February 19 in the US. It's the first title from the Weinstein Company's Dimension Extreme label that I'm aware of and here's the box art:

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In contrast, here's a really classy, well-made, English-subbe [...]

Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble

These days, reveling in North Korean kitsch is about as old hat as you can get, but there's something so completely unhinged about the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble that I must speak. Named after a village where Kim Il-Sung personally machine-gunned thousands of Japanese occupiers in a revolutionary frenzy, the PEE (as I like to call them) are a massive band that plays only electronic instruments in a shocking physical frenzy of revolutionary proportions. Comrade Musicians are decked ou [...]

The unheard director

I haven't read much about 37-year-old director, Gan Xiao'er, from Xin Village in Henan province, especially not on film sites. Gan has had to shoot his films without official permits, his subject matter has been controversial, he runs the risk of official punishment for making his films and he's had to distribute his latest flick himself, all of which are the trials and tribulations that are normally catnip to the arthouse crowd who require their Chinese directors to come with t [...]

Pirate radio wins in Hong Kong

A big "Yargh!" for pirate radio stations was issued in Hong Kong yesterday when the High Court rejected the Hong Kong government's bid to extend their injunction against Hong Kong's pro-democracy pirate radio station, Citizens Radio. "Mr Justice Hartmann said he could not see how airing programmes would affect public safety by interrupting emergency channels," the South China Morning Post reported.

You are not Andy Lau

No. You are not. Because Andy Lau is the most awesome superstar in the universe and you are, well, you are you.

Andy Lau likes to go bowling. He bowls at public lanes. Hundreds of people watch him. At the end of his game he signs autographs and says, "This does not affect my bowling, if these teenagers does not like me anymore, it's time I call it a day!" Hundreds of teenagers staring at me would affect my game. And that's why I am not Andy Lau.

< [...]

Genius Party goes to America

Festivals in North America have been begging to screen Studio 4C's hallucinatory omnibus flick, GENIUS PARTY, ever since they first got wind that the movie was going into production, but every time anyone's asked they've been met with a firm "No." Well, over on the Maboroshii Productions blog the answer for this hard-to-get behavior is finally revealed: GENIUS PARTY will be screening in Washington DC as part of the Japan! Culture and Hyper Culture festival. Studio 4C [...]

Zhang Yuan arrest video

Zhang Yuan, director of LITTLE RED FLOWERS, was busted last week on suspicions of using crystal meth. First the cops raided a sound studio and arrested MISSING GUN cinematographer Xie Zhengyu and Wu Gang (aka Wu Lala) who did the sound design for BEIJING BASTARDS and NOT ONE LESS. Then, acting on information they had previously received, they raided Zhang Yuan's home and arrested him.

Reactions were instant. Wu Lala's company distanced themselves from Wu, saying that sou [...]

The Banquet = Curse of the Black Scorpion

Last year the New York Asian Film Festival was proud to screen THE BANQUET, Feng Xiaogang's period martial arts epic version of HAMLET starring Daniel Wu and Zhang Ziyi and with the CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON production team behind the camera: Tan Dun on music, Tim Yip on art direction and Yuen Wo-ping on action. The movie received a lukewarm critical reaction when it made its bow at the Venice Film Festival which was too bad. Besides the abnormally long closing shot, it was a solid [...]

China attacks Warcraft

Last week, China's CCTV 7 Military Channel showed a documentary about war exercises that took place around the world last year. One of the maps they used showed Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

Later, a Chinese internet user posted this map from the popular online game World of Warcraft. The area shown is known as the Arathi Highlands. Notice any similarities?
[...]

Simon Yam assassination movie

On March 19, 2004 President Chen of Taiwan and Vice President Annette Lu were shot in an attempted assassination while campaigning for re-election. Their wounds weren't life threatening and it's thought that the attempt gained them enough sympathy votes to win the election the next day. It's spawned a tangled sprawl of conspiracy theories, largely due to the quick and easy investigation that followed. Now, a sharp-eyed reader informs us that Lawrence Ah Mon is making a film ver [...]

A film rating system for China?

In its coverage of the LOST IN BEIJING debacle that's unfolding in China, Danwei translated some very funny talk about the possibility of China gaining a ratings system after some pundits posited that a Chinese ratings system would allow movies like LOST IN BEIJING to be screened without corrupting the morals of Chinese youth.

A Chinese ratings system is such a hot topic that when national film conferences take place folks from the legal affairs department go around the r [...]

ADV takes it on the chin...again

In November, 2002 ADV started publishing a US edition of the Japanese anime magazine, Newtype, called Newtype, USA. In February, 2008 Newtype USA will cease publication . Representatives of ADV who contacted retailers this week to inform them of the cancellation told them that a new and improved magazine would replace Newtype USA but no details were made available about what this magazine would be or when it would start publishing.

Coupled with the news that ADV just closed down [...]

Angela Mao rules

A few people sent me this news from Tokyo Filmex, which took place in late November of 2007, and it's so nice that I had to put it up. Filmex did a single-film tribute to Hong Kong's legendary actress, Angela Mao, as part of their line-up, screening an unsubtitled print of HAPKIDO and bringing Mao over for the event. Mao is one of those actresses whose eyes shoot off the screen like lasers and hunt you down all over the room and she's one of the most convincing action actresses [...]