Asian Cinema

Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Ric Aw’s recent short film ‘Villain’, like his previous short films never fails to stylize the Singapore landscape, offering a quiet ‘art-house’ version of Singapore that does not look too different from the uncluttered style prevalent in many of Michaelangelo Antonioni’s films. It is at once, both distancing yet disarming. ‘Villian’ tells the story of an errant father who loathes the daily grind of a working class life and wants an easier, though unscrupulous, way out of it. And it starts with a bang – literally on his leg, a pre-meditated plan to be injured and be compensated for it. He has a daughter who also gives in to the same ‘stealing’ instincts as him and loots items from a supermarket like a seasoned thief.With the help of a mostly stationary and composed shooting style and objective camera framing of the characters, coupled with long moments of nothing but ambient sound, we are presented with an almost clinical study of the two characters in this film, and through them, a study of poverty and marginalization. What results is an understated yet thoughtful film where we, the audience complete the thoughts. The characters don’t say too much (like in Ric’s previous films) but the message is well-delivered through crisp and succinct storytelling and editing. Interesting to note that all other characters other than the two leads are unflinchingly one-dimensional.Despite the arms-length treatment of marginalization, the films succeeds in presenting dilemmas and conflicts in both of them. The girl struggles with her current daily stealing routines as she yearns to go back to a normal schooling life. Her father professes to be irresponsible but yet his desire to provide for his daughter is discernible. Which makes the ending both perplexing and heartbreaking at the same time – his abandonment of his daughter en-route to escaping. Guess that’s when the surrealism kicks in – the idea that one can actually escape to somewhere in Singapore. Mmmm…..One more comments: this film needs a better and more fluent Mandarin narrator.This film was nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Fiction at the 4th Singapore Short Film Awards.Review by Jeremy Sing

‘Tum’ Warawut Poyim aka Tum the Star 9′s music video for his first single ‘‘Ja Ruk Jon Gwa Ja Roo (I will love before you know it)’ featuring Mark Prin and Bella Ranee Campen premiered today and I can’t follow the concept of the video. I thought she was a ghost. Bella  is an old lover who traveled through worlds (time) to find her love Mark in the present. The MV featured some lovely dovey scenes of Mark Prin getting close with Bella for us to enjoy. It’s a pretty video, featuring some pretty people, at a pretty place–I can settle with that.

Director: Kim Ji-hoon. Review: Mark Appleton. Usually I’m against remakes. I can’t stand the thought of an original movie being butchered to try and cater for today’s audience or, worse still, Hollywood remaking a perfectly good foreign film with the justification ‘people don’t want to watch movies with subtitles’.Having said that I’m not against the idea of all remakes (‘The Lawnmower Man ‘would be good with the advances in technology and CGI we’ve had for example) and the idea of the tables being turned and the East remaking a Hollywood film I have to say, was intriguing . This brings me on to The Tower, which sees director Kim Ji-hoon put his spin on the 1974 US disaster movie classic The Towering Inferno. The Towering Inferno starred Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, it was nominated for eight Oscars (winning three) and was the first joint production between two major Hollywood studios (20th Century Fox and Warner Bros.). Pretty big boots to fill. Ji-hoon assembles a lesser known cast for his version but goes large on the effects with some 1,700 shots out of a total of 3,000 having some element of CG. Post-production apparently lasted two years…

Pictures of James Jirayu’s supposed ex-girlfriend or current girlfriend Kwang emerged today and Thai fans don’t seem to care. They are more happy he has an ex-girlfriend and is not gay. One person wrote: ‘it begins, the chiseling down of a rising star, if this news doesn’t create a buzz, the next news is that he is gay. He didn’t even do anything, why mess with him?’ Others wrote James Jirayu is a good looking kid, they are not surprised he has an ex-girlfriend or girlfriend. She is cute too they wrote. It would be strange if he didn’t have a past. Apparently this is from 2012, she is an actress who worked with him on a filming project ‘Where is love’. If not, people have said they have broken up a long time ago. This is old news and it doesn’t even matter. This news is acting like a confirmation that James Jirayu is not gay. Thai fangirls are happy about this. ‘This is normal, if he has or doesn’t have, I still love Dr.Puttipat (Jame’s character in the lakorn),’ wrote a devoted Thai netizen for James Jirayu. This is good. Thai fans are not crazy. They at least want him to have a private life or a past. Applauds. Apparently this young woman fits his type a girl who is older and is petite. Hey, I qualify– not really. I am definitely way older and extremely petite (5ft). Both attempting to be cute. It just seems like James can do no wrong.  The nerdy lookSource: Kapook and sanook

VIZ Media’s Haikasoru Imprint Releases Exciting Novel by Famed Horror/Sci-fi Author Hideyuki Kikuchi Source: VIZ Media, MediaLab press releases Official Site: haikasoru.com Special Thanks to Jane Lui and Erik Jansen The new Vampire Hunter D novel Noble V: Greylancer is now available in stores. Image courtesy of VIZ Media. Cover art © 2013 Vincent Chong VIZ Media’s Haikasoru literary imprint delivers a bloodthirsty new chapter of the legendary Vampire Hunter D saga with the North American release of Noble V: Greylancer, now available in stores. The new fantasy novel by Hideyuki Kikuchi, carries an MSRP of $14.99 U.S. / $16.99 CAN. The release also includes a bonus novelette titled, An Irreplaceable Existence. An eBook edition is also available for the Amazon Kindle, Apple’s iBooks Store, and the Barnes & Noble’s Nook Books Store. Haikasoru publishes some of the most compelling contemporary Japanese science fiction and fantasy stories for English-speaking audiences, and is the first imprint based in the U.S. dedicated to Japanese science fiction and fantasy in translation. Internationally acclaimed writer, Hideyuki Kikuchi, author and creator of the famed novel series, Vampire Hunter D, delves into the past with his latest addition, Noble V: Greylancer. It is the year 7000 by Noble reckoning, and the vampire rulers of the world have grown complacent. When the Outer Space Beings (OSBs) invade, the Noble warrior Greylancer must pit his skills and magic against the technology of the OSBs, quash an anti-Noble rebellion, and, when he is critically injured, turn to mere humans for help. The Three Thousand Year War of Vampire Hunter D begins here! Continued...

Vithaya Pansringarm, Kristin Scott Thomas, Nicolas Winding Refn and Ratha Po-ngam at the daytime photocall for Only God Forgives in Cannes. The blood-spattered Bangkok-set crime drama Only God Forgives premiered to boos and mixed reviews in competition at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday. The violence in the film has been turn-off for the squeamish critics, even though some of them liked the movie. Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Only God Forgives features his Drive star Ryan Gosling in the lead role. However, Gosling didn't turn up at the premiere, and sent his regrets to festival director Terry Fremaux. He is in Detroit shooting his directorial debut How to Catch a Monster. The Guardian rounds up some of the reactions, including a five-star review from The Guardian's own Peter Bradshaw in which he says "The first scenes made me think that Wong Kar-wai had made a new film called In the Mood for Fear or In the Mood for Hate." Other round-ups are at and Metro. Reviews include Variety, Screen Daily, AV Club and the Vulture. Liv Corfixen and her husband Nicholas Winding Refn hits the red carpet at Cannes with Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm and Ratha Po-ngam. Some of the critical loathing is directed at Kristin Scott Thomas, who plays Gosling's venom-spewing mother. She forcefully calls on her gangster son to take revenge for the death of his brother. But others are praising her bold turn, which the actress herself has said left her unsettled by the time filming was over. But it's Vithaya Pansringarm (profiled recently by The Nation) who plays the main antagonist, a sword-wielding former cop nicknamed the Angel of Vengeance who metes out his own form of justice. It's a breakout role for "Pooh" Vithaya, 50, who's only been acting for four years. He previously starred as the sleuthing monk in Tom Waller's Mindfulness and Murder and had bit parts in various foreign productions in Thailand, including The Hangover Part II. In real life, Vithaya is a kind, soft-spoken soul who runs a ballet school in Bangkok with his American wife. However, in the movie he pins a man to an armchair with knives and stabs him through the eye. Not unsurprisingly, he's earned the "badass" title and admiration from various quarters, including Twitch and First Showing. Hopefully, his appearance in Only God Forgives will be a shot in the arm for his and Waller's next project, The Last Executioner. Singer-actress Ratha "Yaya Ying" Po-ngam, among the stars in the recent Jan Dara remake, also appears in Only God Forgives, playing Gosling's girlfriend Mai. She, Vithaya and Scott Thomas joined the director on the Cannes red carpet and at a daytime photocall. Vithaya, as promised, waved the Thai cultural flag, turning up on the red carpet in a Siamese cut jacket and traditional black silk "jong kraben" trousers. Also in Cannes is Madame Ho actress "Chompoo" Araya A. Hargate. However, she isn't there as part of any movie, she's representing l'Oreal Thailand. Wearing a frilly green gown, she hit Tuesday's red carpet premiere for Behind the Candelabra, the Liberace biopic starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon and directed for HBO by Steven Soderbergh. And on Wednesday, she turned up in a slinky black number for All Is Lost. Chompoo is at Cannes representing l'Oreal. She attended premieres for Behind the Candelabra, left, and All Is Lost. ATTENTION: This is a post from Wise Kwai's Thai Film Journal. The url for the source blog is http://thaifilmjournal.blogspot.com. If you're seeing this post anywhere besides your personal feed reader or a couple of social-networking sites, then it might be being misused against the spirit in which it is made freely available.

A new “Lie” teaser has been released for Nobuo Mizuta’s upcoming comedy Shazai no Ohsama (lit. king of apologies). The film reunites the so-called “golden trio” that worked together on 2007’s Maiko Haaaan!!! - director Mizuta, screenwriter Kankuro Kudo, and star Sadao Abe. Inspired by the seemingly absurd number of public apologies that have been delivered by Japanese public figures in recent years, the film revolves around an apology instructor named Mamoru Kuroshima (Abe) who teaches a...

Today it was revealed that actor Kengo Kora will appear in Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s My Man, an upcoming film adaptation of Kazuki Sakuraba’s Naoki Prize-winning novel Watashi no Otoko. Kora first met Kumakiri at the age of 18 when they both attended the the Rotterdam International Film Festival, but the two have never worked together before now. He was reportedly a fan of Kumakiri’s work from the start, and particularly liked his recent films Sketches of Kaitan City and Blazing Famiglia. The new...

Director: Michael Taverna. Review: Adam Wing. Arriving approximately fifteen years too late, Apartment 1303 is a terrifying shocker based on the highly acclaimed (that’s what it says here) J-horror film of the same name. I say terrifying but what I really mean is terrifyingly bad. I say shocker but what I really mean is shocking. Starring Mischa Barton (The OC, The Sixth Sense), Rebecca De Mornay (The Hand that Rocks the Cradle) and Julianne Michelle (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), Apartment 1303 is released through Koch Media this June, available to buy on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD. I was starting to think the curse of the J-horror remake had passed, but this 2012 offering is further proof that you can’t keep a dead girl down. Hollywood will continue to raid the vaults of Asian cinema over the next few years, with remakes of Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance looking most likely to offend, but I was really hoping it had learnt its lesson from the likes of One Missed Call, Shutter and The Eye. Clearly there is still a thirst for tired remakes in Hollywood. Having grown up under the grip of her fame-hungry mother, Janet Slate takes the opportunity to go it alone, moving into a high-rise apartment in downtown Detroit. Played by Julianne Michelle, Janet is one of the dumbest movie heroines you are ever likely to see. She makes the girl from Scary Movie look like Laurie Strode. Janet is the kind of girl who chooses to investigate the sudden appearance of a shadowy figure in her apartment, rather than get the hell out of Dodge.