We announced a while back that HANA was coming out on DVD from Funimation on June 24. They had a nice cover for the disc, and it's a great, albeit overlooked, film. Apparently there was some issue with the image they used on the cover and they've sent out new artwork which still looks nice and it's still set for June 24:

In a shocking move, Kino is releasing EAGLE SHOOTING HEROES on DVD this July 15. Say what?!? This is the mind-bending 1993 parody of Wong Kar-wai's ASHES OF TIME that was fully endorsed by Wong, is directed by his producing partner, Jeff Lau, and stars almost the complete cast of ASHES. Gaze upon the face of this mo lei tau madness and feel the insanity fry your brains. I'm glad they're doing this but I really hope they didn't pay a lot of money for this one. Better question: how'd they even find elements?

But soon DVDs will go the way of the Betamax as Blu-Ray takes off like a rocket. Mega Star has announced a small but eclectic initial Blu-Ray line-up that includes Stephen Chow's CHINESE ODYSSEY flicks, the INFERNAL AFFAIRS trilogy, PERHAPS LOVE and some early Wong Kar-wai, but their Andy Lau concert disc, ANDY LAU: WONDERFUL WORLD 2007, broke the first-day sales record for all Blu-Ray discs.

Andy was so excited by this news that he fired a small child out of his crotch.

Then he acted all cool: "Actually this technology is very new, if you want to watch the disc you would need to purchase a Blu-ray player, thus I'm rather reserved when releasing the disc, I never expected it would have such good sales record." Immediately afterwards he said he didn't wear any special HD make-up while shooting because his skin is so good. I want to make a wallet from Andy when he dies!

And Kino, not one to be outdone by Andy Lau, is responding to his child-sized crotch rocket trick by releasing Wong Kar-wai's FALLEN ANGELS on Blu-Ray. 

Out soon is Teruo "HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN" Ishii's cult flick, BOHACHI BUSHIDO: CODE OF THE FORGOTTEN EIGHT which is about "...a privileged samurai gang in charge of recruiting women for prostitution in old Edo's pleasure quarter," and it stars that most manly of men, Tetsuro Tanba! And in other old news, Synapse Films finally released their deluxe edition DVDs of KARAOKE TERROR (thrill killers + karaoke + rocket launchers) and PARTY 7 (by director Katsuhito Ishii of TASTE OF TEA and FUNKY FOREST).

(Pictures and more commentary from Andy's Blu-Ray celebration)

(HANA)

(BOHACHI BUSHIDO)

(PARTY 7)

(KARAOKE TERROR)

(EAGLE SHOOTING HEROES)

Went to a press screening of THE CHILDREN OF HUANG SHI last night, which is the new flick set in WW II China starring a couple of forgettable white people, Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh, and the first thing that struck me was, "Oh yeah, there's Shanghai Film Park again." Whenever you see old Shanghai in a Chinese or Hong Kong movie, chances are you're looking at the Shanghai Film Park. Although not as big or quite as the famous Hengdian studios five hours south where pretty much every period martial arts movie is filmed (and which has a documentary about itself) Shanghai Film Park is still a pretty impressive slab of real estate, with acres of old city streets recreated, sound stages and prop and costume rental houses.

It's a great place to film, I'm sure, but the problem with looking at these pictures is that you'll never look at Chinese movies set there the same again. Instead of enjoying the film you'll keep seeing the same shots from the same angles. They're angles that the architecture forces on filmmakers. They make sense, but when so many movies are shot there they all begin to look a little bit the same.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE: 3, THE PAINTED VEIL, 2046 and dozens of other flicks have shot here, and it was Chris Doyle working on Chen Kaige's TEMPTRESS MOON who lamented that it was actually built with real buildings that had real walls rather than with gutters for cables and with walls and spaces cheated towards shooting movies. To keep afloat, they also do tours. It's one of those weird architectural anomalies that's going to baffle the aliens when they arrive.

Masters of Cinema is a prestige DVD line in the UK, similar to the Criterion Collection in the US. They've put out special edition DVDs of world cinema classics like FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES, METROPOLIS, VENGEANCE IS MINE and...MAD DETECTIVE? Yep, Johnnie To's MAD DETECTIVE will be one of the line's first Blu-Ray discs. This will be the first modern movie Masters of Cinema has released in almost 20 years (previously their most recent film is 1989's nutso GANDAHAR).

Rumor has it that after MAD DETECTIVE, Masters of Cinema is planning to devote its energy to releasing some modern classics of Hong Kong cinema. All I can say is: a fully restored, complete version of PEKING OPERA BLUES...please!

(Thanks to logboy for the news)

(MAD DETECTIVE at Amazon UK) 

Korea's big, hunky slice of singing, dancing, supercelebrity man meat, RAIN (aka Jung Ji-Hoon) is having a run of bad luck ever since he left the world of pop stars to try to become a movie star. His first film, I'M A CYBORG BUT THAT'S OK, directed by Park Chan-Wook (OLDBOY) wasn't the world's biggest hit, but it was one of the best Korean movies of 2006 and he acquitted himself well in it. Unfortunately, he followed that up with SPEED RACER that just opened this past weekend to become one of Summer 2008's first major disasters. Directed by the Wachowski Brothers, the $100 million film barely made $20 million on its opening weekend and looks to do weak box office globally. And let's not forget that he spent 2007 ditching his management company, JYP, to start his own company, J Tune, that spent the year getting sued and alienating fans during its 2007 World Tour thanks to last minute cancellations, lawsuits over copyright infringement and bad marketing.

To add insult to injury, no one seems to know who RAIN is, all of a sudden. He was one of People magazine's "Most Beautiful People in the World" in 2007, but when they did an interview with RAIN recently they used a photo of Karl Yune to illustrate it.

To add injury to injury, RAIN is also slated to star in the next Wachowski Brothers movie, this time directed by V FOR VENDETTA's James McTeigue. It's called NINJA ASSASSIN, making it sound like something Cannon would have produced for the direct-to-video market in 1983, but RAIN's proud of himself in it and even released pics of himself training for the movie. There are rumors that this is actually a live action version of the famed anime series, NINJA SCROLL, but whatever. RAIN still looks like a manorexic.

Finally, to add insult and injury to injuries and insults, RAIN will be recording a new version of Carl Douglas' horrible and horribly over-exposed "Kung Fu Fighting" for the soundtrack of the upcoming animated film KUNG FU PANDA.

(Thanks to PopSeoul! for that People magazine clipping)

I've been congratulating Viz on trying a new theatrical strategy for their release of the live action DEATH NOTE movies as special events on May 20 and 21 only, but I had to pause recently when I found out that, despite Fangoria announcing they were subbed, the films will be screened dubbed. The confirmed voice cast (via Viz) are:

Light Yagami - Brad Swaile
L/Ryuzaki - Alessandro Juliani
Soichiro Yagami - Chris Britton
Death God Ryuk - Brain Drummond

I'm not a big anime fan, so for me dubbing is the kiss of death. However, anime fans seem to have less aversion to dubbing and from reading the forums they don't seem too miffed or upset about this, so who knows? Maybe it'll work for them.  In the meantime, you can check out the English dub of the film in the Viz trailer (via Fango) here.

Warners specialty division, Picturehouse, has been responsible for some of the highest profile foreign film releases in the US in recent years including LA VIE EN ROSE, PAN'S LABYRINTH and THE ORPHANAGE, so it seemed like a good idea that they were handling the belated US release of Tadanobu Asano's Genghis Khan flick, MONGOL. Well, that's not such a good thing anymore because Picturehouse was just shuttered by Warners and MONGOL is going to be the last foreign film they release.

But how much will they release it? It's slated for a June 6 opening and while they've been doing some marketing for it I would imagine that this is now a low, low, low priority for all 43 employees at Picturehouse as opposed to, say, job hunting. Expect it to come and go like an tiny mouse in the night. I'll bet the release will be radically scaled back and I'd give it about a week in theaters.

(In other news, Warner Independent Pictures was also shuttered. They were the distributors of THE PROMISE and THE PAINTED VEIL)

Movies, schmoovies. If you want to get all jacked up on craziness, undiluted and straight from the source, then you need art. Art! It's just some weirdo locked up in a room with his pencils and all they want to do is jab that pencil in your eyes. The premiere eye-jabber of all time is Kazuo Umezu, whose manga have been adapted into movies many times (AKANBO SHOJO, LEFT HAND OF GOD RIGHT HAND OF THE DEVIL, DRIFTING CLASSROOM) but never have the movies been able to capture the sheer, shuddering insanity of his manga, such as Drifting Classroom, which makes Lord of the Flies read like Dick and Jane.

The folks over at Same Hat! Same Hat! have been pimping the works of the psychologically unsanitary Shintaro Kago for a while now, resulting in one of Kago's lip-rippers appearing on the cover of Vice magazine where it will hopefully make the fashionably hip children soil their American Apparel.

Same Hat! has scanlations of several of Kago's short, brain battering manga that look something like this:

There's Abstraction and Blow-up to get you started. Also, if you really want to feel your eyes rolling down your cheeks then try Wanted: Cheap Manga's scanlation of the primitivist Human Clock by Tokunan Seiichiro which was written in the 60's and is exactly the kind of thing you'd expect an office building janitor to write immediately before they dug up his shack and found fifteen castrated schoolboys.

North Korea has tried to do crazy manhwa before, but this is about as close as they get:

You can go here for a complete scan and translation. The DPRK may have dropped the ball in the "freedom of expression for lunatics" sweepstakes but just over the border, China knows crazy. Even its signs are crazy.

But no one is crazier that Hong Kong manhua artists. These guys have been putting together comics with covers like this for years:

Kung Fu Fridays even links to a 1973 Esquire article that contains a translation of Hong Kong manhua, which is so insanely violent that it cannot be reproduced here. But decades later, in 2008, Hong Kong illustrators and artists are still reaching for the crazy stick when it comes to illustrating crimes and natural disasters for the local papers, including this drawing done for Apple Daily to illustrate a story about a bus fire in Shanghai.

I like to call it, "Don't take the bus."

Jackie Chan flew to India for the launch of the soundtrack for Kamal Hassan's jaw-droppingly huge DASAVATHARAM and had this to say about it:

"The movie, DASAVATHARAM, is truly a sight to behold. The story, directing, acting, camera work, special effects, everything about it is amazing. It really opened my eyes to modern Indian cinema. Of course I had seen Indian films before; I admire many of the actors, and really like the music and dancing. But this movie is really something else. Every element was amazing to me; and all the elements together just made a perfect and incredible movie! I won’t spoil anyone’s surprise by revealing the story now, since I think everyone should watch this movie. But I will say two things: watch for the environmental message, and all you directors in Hong Kong and China, watch this movie and start working harder than ever, because very soon now, Indian cinema will overtake us in the eyes of the international audience!"

I'm not sure how much of the movie he saw since it was just a launch for the soundtrack, but okay. At least he's enthusiastic. Of course, he also got into trouble with the press but not as much trouble as actress Mallika Sherawat, who had an official complaint filed against her by S R Kaniraj, secretary of the Hindu Makkal Katchi (HMK) for causing "mental agony" to the people of Tamil Nadu by wearing this outfit:

My own personal mental agony was sparked by this, however:

Kamal Hassan's daughters get to sit on thrones?

Thrones?!?

I hate my parents. 

First, the poster for the astonishing looking TOKYO GORE POLICE, featuring Eihi Shiina , the actress who burned her way into unprotected brains with her insane performance in Takashi Miike's AUDITION.

Then, there's a long, very detailed report and review on the advance screening of THE LAST PRINCESS, Toho's remake of Akira Kurosawa's classic THE HIDDEN FORTRESS that took place recently at UCLA, of all places. The review/report is appropriately thoughtful and full of big words.

(See THE LAST PRINCESS trailer here)

(See four minutes of jaw-dropping TOKYO GORE POLICE footage here)

What's the matter with Korea? Programming this year's New York Asian Film Fest is presenting all of us with the simple, bald, glaring fact that there weren't very many good movies from Korea last year. Beyond the handful of good flicks, the bad ones share similar problems: terrible scripts that don't know what they're about, bloated running times, no sense of a single unifying presence behind the camera (be it a director, a script or a producer) to give the movie a point-of-view, and an inability to "close the deal" with the audience, ie, deliver an ending that wraps up and holds together everything that's come before.

A punishing interview from Eiga Hiho magazine with Sai Yoichi, the Japanese director of BLOOD AND BONES and SOO (which he shot in South Korea with a Korean crew) has been translated by the kindly ones at Ryuganji and it boils down the trouble with Korean cinema to this: the young generation of filmmakers working today are unprofessional. SOO is not the greatest movie, and it flopped in Korea, but the whole interview is an eye-opener, and the following quotes give you a taste:

"Sai Yoichi: Alright, quiz time: do you know what the young generation of South Korean filmmakers places the most importance on?

Eiga Hiho: Hmmm, I wonder.

SY: Appearance. Looks, in every sense of the word. The offices of these film companies are amazingly unnecessary and lavish. A bit like Roppongi Hills. With two gorgeous surgically-enhanced receptionists sitting side by side [laughs]. The same applies to the rest of their staff, and the first stylist I thought of using for “Soo” was one too. She showed me the work she’d done in New York, and it was all patched together from the kind of costumes you’d see in some trendy cop show, so the content of her work was underwhelmingly shallow. As if she had absolutely no grasp of the basics....In the middle of the shoot, the art design team ran out on me. There were about 15 of them, but every single one ran away one night [laughs].

EH: I hear that your shoots are famous for their severity, so were you in a situation where you had to push the crew hard?

SY: No, of course not. The things that were necessary for the sets were already written in the script. Despite that, they tried to put single sheets on a double bed, so I had no choice but to tell them they’d messed up. As a result of them running away the shoot was shut down for a month, which did cause problems, but as the director I couldn’t let that go."

You can read the entire interview here.

How did it come to this? I don't know, but if you want to see a veritable list of things not to do in a movie, check out this trailer for the Korean film, A TALE OF LEGENDARY LIBIDO, out now. Here's what I never want to see in a Korean movie again:

- a bitchy, tough woman yelling at her husband

- arousal indicated by a bloody nose

- you think it's a hot chick but then...it's an old lady!

- gay predators who can't keep their hands (or feet) off the straight boys

- someone getting hit in the nuts

- women using an inanimate object to tell other women about the size of their lover's junk

- women who don't want it, but then they're forced to take it, and then they like it!

- spit takes

- Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" being used in any movie that powerful streams of urine moving boulders

Avoid these simple things, and maybe next time...a good movie?

(A TALE OF LEGENDARY LIBIDO trailer)

(Read a review of SOO)