Film / Video

Former Walker Artist in Residence Spencer Nakasako was honored at the The 25th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival with a program that had him onstage in conversation with filmmaker Justin Lin. We’ve been working with him here at the Walker for many years, and we’re always happy to see Spencer get some recognition for his work. Congratulations.

Also to mark the occasion, SF360 published a new interview with Spencer about his past work and his unintentional development of the first-person camcorder documentary genre.

· R.I.P. Freddie Francis - Mr. Francis was a cinematographer responsible for some of the most beautiful work in Cinema. A viewing of The Elephant Man, Cape Fear (1991), or his last film, The Straight Story would make for a fitting tribute. Reported by Reverse Shot.

· Niki Caro (Her first two films, Whale Rider and North Country were both presented at the Walker.) is now slated to direct The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky. IMDb reports.

· PingMag offers a new interview with Michel Gondry on the eve of The Science of Sleep’s opening in Japan.

• Ghibli World delivers what is likely to be one of the biggest scoops of the year, the announcement of Hayao Miyazaki’s latest feature! Entitled Gake no ue no Ponyo (roughly, “Ponyo On A Cliff“), the film came about after Miyazaki seriously reflected on his relationship with his son, film director Goro Miyazaki. The main character, 5-year old Sosuke, is modelled after Goro.

• Speaking of animation, some of you may (or may not) remember My Life as McDull, a rare animated feature from Hong Kong that did big box office in 2001. Now word comes via Twitch that writer Brian Tse is helming another animated feature, rejecting Miyazakian themes of feminism, environmentalism and family in favor of… poo. Tse’s next project will be the 3-D animated (!) Wee-Wee the Poop, a film title so utterly fantastic that I am going to stop typing right now before I spoil the moment.

• The 1st Annual Asian Film Awards, previously reported on in this column, came to a close yesterday, with Bong Joon-Ho’s inescapable The Host taking top honors. A full list of winners is posted at MonkeyPeaches.

• On a sad note, famed Japanese actor Eiji Funakoshi passed away yesterday - it was his 84th birthday. Funakoshi may be best remembered for his performance as Dr. Hidaka in the original Gamera, but his greatest role was undoubtedly that of Tamura in Fires on the Plains, released on DVD by Criterion just last week. He also starred opposite novelist Yukio Mishima in 1960’s Afraid to Die, and is absolutely brilliant as the titular sadist in the exploitation classic Blind Beast. There is an excellent obituary and career retrospective posted at SciFi Japan.

Our Daily Bread, Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s incredible poetic documentary about the largely unseen world of food production will play at the Walker Cinema this weekend.

"The film's formal elegance, moral underpinning, and intellectually stimulating point of view also make it essential. Takes us inside worlds of wonder and terror."--New York Times

· Several of us here in Film/Video are fans of good design, especially when it pops on on film posters and DVD covers. If you are, too, I highly recommend checking out this post at On Five on the design process behind the covers for the Criterion Collection release of Jules Dassin’s Night and the City.

· David Bordwell at the Hong Kong Film Festival. His first report is up on his blog, and more are promised. It’s always a fun read.

· If you are anywhere in or near San Francisco tomorrow, I highly recommend taking in the San Francisco Film Society’s Trapped in the Closet sing-a-long. The event promises to be “an exploration of R. Kelly’s artistic canon.” I wish I could be there.

• This week sees a flood of excellent DVD releases from throughout Asia, starting with the Criterion treatment for two of Kon Ichikawa’s finest anti-war features, The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain (the latter based on one of my favorite novels, written by Shohei Ooka). IVL releases a comprehensive retrospective of the late great Leslie Cheung’s work with TV studio RTHK, an invaluable resource for fans of an actor more commonly associated with blockbuster films and rock and roll superstardom (for more info, check out the profile at The Asian DVD Guide). Rounding out the must-haves is another Jackie Chan remaster from Fortune Star: his sophomore directorial effort Dragon Lord - if you think you know Chan from his American slapstick roles, you owe it to yourself to watch the master in any of the early works Fortune Star has released thus far!

• Korea’s My Wife is a Gangster films have all been breezy and innocuous actioners, and judging by Variety’s review it seems Part 3 is more of the same. Though it’s a shame to see that Shin Eun-Kyung is no longer playing the titular role, replacing her with Shu Qi (of Three Times, recently screened at The Walker) has my interest piqued!

• Nobuhiro Yamashita follows up the massive success of Linda Linda Linda with his latest, The Matsugane Potshot Affair. Midnight Eye has a great interview with Yamashita, and Mark Schilling delivers a review at The Japan Times.

• Rounding out the week are two articles from Twitch. First up, my jaw is still on the floor after discovering that The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai will see theatrical release in the US! Though not one of my favorite releases of 2006, its high-concept is beyond reproach: It’s a softcore porn film starring George W. Bush’s telepathic severed finger as the primary love interest. It’s sure to push a few buttons (zing!) on its April 13th release. On the extreme opposite end of the filmic spectrum we find an update on Taiwanese wunderkind Tsai Ming-Liang’s first Malaysian film, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone. The Malaysian censorship board banned the film outright, and upon appeal has been persuaded to conditionally release the film if 5 more scenes are cut and the film doesn’t open wide. It’s a tough blow for Tsai, who is Malaysian by birth but has lived and worked in Taiwan for decades.

Melody Gilbert has a way of tapping into the zeitgeist. Her film Whole (2003) came out two years before the New York Times reported on a psychological disorder in which people are obsessed with having limbs amputated. Her newest film, Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness, delves into a culture I began noticing relatively recently: the clandestine and usually illegal exploration of deteriorating or forgotten elements of urban history, from abandoned factories to underground sewer tunnels. Inspired by a 2003 news report about the arrest of six local people who were mistaken for terrorists because of their night-vision goggles, rappelling equipment, and gasmasks, she set out to document this largely hidden endeavor (what one critic calls “tresspassing as hobby”), travelling from Minneapolis to Paris and beyond. Since then UE has blossomed with countless videos, blogs, clubs, meetups, and webrings dedicated to it.

The film gets its world premiere here as part of Women With Vision (through March 17) Friday and Saturday. Director Melody Gilbert will introduce the screenings.

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• Twitch has the first still from the much-anticipated Triangle, a unique cinematic experiment in which three of the greatest directors in Hong Kong history collaborate on a single narrative, as opposed to the normal multi-director vignette format. Each director writes and directs a third of the picture, and what a directorial roster: Tsui Hark (Once Upon a Time in China, Peking Opera Blues), Ringo Lam (City on Fire, Full Contact) and Jonnie To (Election, The Mission)!

• Mentioned just 3 weeks ago in this very column, Confession of Pain has already been optioned for a US remake. Normally I’d be well on my way to drafting a scornful appraisal of this development, but Variety reports that the same team that imported Lau and Mak’s last big hit, Infernal Affairs, will be handling Pain as well! Infernal Affairs was, of course, turned into The Departed, and that turned out to be one of perhaps a dozen worthwhile remakes in film history. Monahan is on board, with the spectres of Scorsese and DiCaprio presumably hovering over his shoulder waiting to read the screenplay.

• US audiences who haven’t already scored the DVD will finally get the chance to see Bong Joon-ho’s massively acclaimed The Host this coming Friday, and Twitch has an interview with Bong to whet your appetite!

• Satoshi Kon’s latest, Paprika, will be seeing a US theatrical release this coming May, and the film’s official website (including trailer) has gone live. Midnight Eye has an old but interesting interview with Kon, and it might encourage you to check out the brilliant and Hitchcockian Perfect Blue before Paprika pops up stateside!

• Takashi Miike’s Yakuza (Ryu ga Gotoku) may not be listed on IMDb yet, but it debuted nonetheless this week in Tokyo. The premiere took place in Kabukicho, Shinjuku, a neighborhood I once wandered through completely oblivious to the fact that it is the Yakuza capital of the world… Miike is a personal favorite, having produced 70 films of an amazingly uniform quality in the span of 15(!) years.

· indieWire posted John Sinno’s (producer of the Oscar nominated documentary Iraq in Fragments) open letter to the Academy regarding Jerry Seinfeld’s presentation (reflecting what he sees as the Acedemy’s discreditation for documentary work) of the Best Documentary Award at the recent Oscar proceedings.

· Yahoo/AP published a great piece about the opening of David Lynch’s visual art exhibition in Paris. Be sure to read the entire piece to get to the bizarre turn taken during the press conference.

· Michel Gondry, Leos Carax (the subject of a 2000 Regis Dialogue and Retrospective), and Bong Joon-ho are in negotiations to work together on a triptych film called Tokyo. Sounds pretty great to me. Reuters reports.