Film and Video

Paddy Johnson has a wonderful new interview posted on The Reeler with director Guy Maddin on the occasion of the release of his latest picture, Brand Upon the Brain!. Maddin, who was the subject of a Regis Dialogue at the Walker in 2004, talks at length about editing, aerophones and “neurological facsimile,” your favorite new conceptual framework!

An excerpt to whet your appetite:

“I decided before cutting that I was going to try a different facsimile for memory. In film we’re most comfortable with most ways in which memory is presented; the most conventional is the flashback or the blur or just someone thinking and going back. Or maybe we’re equally comfortable now with things just aggressively cut across time periods, like The Godfather Part II or 21 Grams. But I wanted to be more neurological. I wanted to come to an editing style that matched my camera style, which is primitive…”

Check out the full interview here. And here’s video of his 2004 conversation with Elvis Mitchell.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, a film has been commissioned in which 33 prominent directors will contribute a short vignette intended to reveal “their current state of mind as inspired by the motion-picture theatre”. The impressive list of directors includes many of the giants of Asian cinema, including Fifth Generation directors Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, Taiwanese auteurs Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-Wai and Japan’s Takeshi Kitano! For the full list, check out the press release here.

• Ruby Yang’s The Blood of Yingzhou District won the Best Documentary Short Subject Academy Award over the weekend. Learn more about the film and read producer Thomas Lennon’s acceptance speech at the Academy’s official site.

• Mark Schilling presents a triumvirate of pieces about Mika Ninagawa’s first feature, Sakuran, including an interview with Ninagawa, an interview with star Anna Tsuchiya, and an uncommon 5-star review of what is sure to be one of the most talked-about Japanese films of the year.

• Variety has an interesting pair of reports on the Chinese government’s recent film-related actions: an environmentally conscious program designed to reduce environmental damage incurred during filming, as well as an initiative to build more movie theaters in rural areas.

• Last but certainly not least, Ryuganji reports that the great Japanese exploitation classic Female Prisoner Scorpion #701 is to be remade by Hong Kong director Joe Ma (who despite the gritty Big Bullet is a director primarily known for traditional Cantonese screwball comedies), with Mizuno Miki tasked with the difficult job of filling Meiko Kaji’s jailhouse jumpsuit! I’m uncertain that even Hong Kong’s “Category III” rating will be extreme enough to match the profound levels of excess present in Shunya Ito’s original trilogy, but I’ll be first in line to find out!

• The 57th Berlin International Film Festival has come to a close, with the coveted Golden Bear going to Chinese director Wang Quanan’s Tuya’s Marriage, while I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Okay, previously mentioned in this column, won the Alfred Bauer Prize for most innovative film! Check out Variety’s festival wrap-up here, their brief review of Tuya’s Marriage here, and the official winner’s list here.

• Jackie Chan’s 1980 directorial debut, The Young Master, gets the Fortune Star remaster it deserves and hits DVD uncut for the first time this week! In the decade since Jackie made his crossover to Hollywood with a heavily edited version of Rumble in the Bronx, the aging martial arts master has come to be known more for his signature version of slapstick than the death-defying stunts that made him a household name throughout Asia. Pick up a copy at YesAsia and witness Jackie at his most agile!

• Koreanfilm.org kingpin Darcy Paquet has posted his list of the best Korean films of 2006, topped by Hong Sang-Soo’s Woman on the Beach. As a devotee of Hong myself, I found Woman to be a minor work at best, though certainly worth screening. Differences of opinion aside, Paquet is the English-language authority on Korean cinema, and his picks are always interesting.

• In my mind, there are only a few truly great directors of animated cinema in the running for Best of All Time – and Hideaki Anno is certainly one of them. Finally, his debut OVA, Gunbuster, sees a Region 1 DVD release! A true classic that belongs in the library of any fan of animation, you can whet your appetite with Chris Beveridge’s extremely thorough review.

• Sion Sono, best known in the West for his cult hit Suicide Circle, returns this week with a new horror outing entitled Exte, a Japanese romanized contraction of, believe it or not, “hair extensions”. As you might have already deduced, this is a film about evil hair. Starring Kill Bill’s Chiaki Kuriyama, you can read Mark Schilling’s generally positive review here.

• What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than crashing on the sofa with your significant other to watch Confession of Pain, the latest from the directorial super-team of Alan Mak and Andrew Lau! If the latest Mak/Lau collaboration isn’t reason enough for you to hunt down a copy, the film features Hong Kong legends Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro, together again for the first time since their breakthrough roles in Wong Kar-Wai’s classic Chungking Express. Not sure if a gritty murder mystery will be appropriate fare for a romantic V-Day? I assure you it will*! (*probably a lie) YesAsia has a copy with your name on it.

• Takeshi Kitano has already completed work on his 13th feature, tentatively titled Kantoku – Banzai! (roughly, “Director’s Battlecry“), reports Jason Gray. Kitano is one of my favorite directors, and to hear that he is returning to his comedic roots for a Fellini-esque farce is cause for celebration!

• Midnight Eye’s Eija Niskanen has written an excellent new feature, a welcome introduction to the works of the vastly underrated Mikio Naruse. With the recent UK release of three of his postwar features through Eureka Films, and next Tuesday’s Criterion treatment of When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, I can only hope for a collective re-evaluation of this seminal figure of early Japanese cinema.

• Kim Ji-woon, director of recent cult favorites A Bittersweet Life and A Tale of Two Sisters, is prepping a period western (!) for release in 2008, reports Variety. Entitled The Good, the Bad and the Weird, the real payoff is Kim’s casting coup, with arguably the three hottest actors in South Korea taking on the titular roles: Lee Byung-hun is Good, Jung Woo-sung is Bad, and the masterful Song Kang-ho is Weird! The wartime setting is an interesting concept, but the treat will be seeing these three magnetic actors chew up the scenery.

• The Japanese Hitman Picture is a genre fallen by the wayside in recent years, the very premise conjuring up memories of the endless hard-boiled actioners that littered the ’90s film landscape. Cold-blooded J-killers may be down, but they’re not out just yet, as this week sees the release of Freesia in Japanese theaters. Surprisingly, lean man of Japanese letters Mark Schilling has penned a glowing review, turning more than a few eyes in the direction of a once-unanticipated feature!

• Last but not least, an update of sorts to the previously reported news that Alain Delon will be joining Johnnie To for an as-yet-unnamed film. This Variety article reports that To will be directing a remake of Melville’s classic Le Cercle Rouge, a film that features one of Delon’s most famous roles. Perhaps a coincidence, but what could be more enticing than to imagine To, hitting his cinematic stride, directing Delon as a more wizened incarnation of the suave thief Corey? A sweet dream, indeed…

• A double-whammy from Ryuichi Hiroki this week. First up, his phenomenal Vibrator, a film I had previously listed as one of 5 hidden gems that everyone should see, finally sees US DVD release today. His latest, a documentary about Japanese kinbaku masters, is currently premiering at Rotterdam – hit the link for a humorless Variety writeup!

• The final nominees for the 26th Annual Hong Kong Film Awards were announced this past weekend, with some great surprises in store. Chief among them in my book would be the multiple nominations for my favorite Asian picture of the past year, Isabella. Edmond Pang’s finest turn to date roped in five nominations, including a Best Actress nod for the ethereal Isabella Leong, a well-deserved Best Cinematography nod for Chris Doyle’s heir-apparent, Charlie Lam, a shoe-in Best Original Score nod for Peter Kam (the film took a similar prize at Berlin), as well as Art Direction and Costume & Make-Up Design nods. Check the full list at the awards’ official site.

• Read the first English review of Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance director Park Chan-wook’s latest, I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Okay, courtesy of Kyu Hyun Kim at Koreanfilm.org.

• Ryuihei Kitamura returns to his independent roots for his latest, LoveDeath. Twitch reports that the film’s distribution rights hit the European Film Market this week. Here is some information on the film from last year’s Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival (YIFFF) – “This is a story about an extremely crazy and cool couple. The violent erotic comedy dances on the screen one after another.” Well, I’m sold.

• Expat director John Williams is making quite a splash this week with the release of his second feature, Starfish Hotel. Metropolis has an interesting article about the barriers Williams had to face to work within the insular Japanese film industry as well as a brief history of foreign filmmakers working in Japan. Over at The Japan Times, Mark Schilling interviews Williams and reviews the film.

• Finally, I encourage every supporter of foreign cinema to check out the beta of Jaman, an internet film delivery service that allows you to download independent and world films in high resolution. The rental service is free during the beta, and you can start by digging through more than 50 remastered films from the Shaw Brothers Studio, recently represented at the Walker during the Heroic Grace retrospective.

• Grande dude of the French cinema, Alain Delon, will star in Hong Kong auteur Johnnie To’s next film, reports CriEnglish. This seems particularly fitting to me, as Delon’s hard-boiled turns in the films of Jean-Pierre Melville greatly inspired HK New Wave actors such as Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung. Last year’s Election 2 may well be To’s masterpiece, see it at all costs!
• Speaking of Election 2, it won the Best Film award from the Hong Kong Critics Society this past week, and To also walked away with Best Director for another excellent picture, Exiled. Other notable prizes went to Best Actor Jet Li for his role in Fearless and Best Actress Gong Li for her role in Curse of the Golden Flower.
• With the increasing popularity of Asian film, it’s about time that a pan-Asian film award was created – this year will mark the first iteration of the Asian Film Awards! Organized by the Hong Kong International Film Festival, the extremely diverse lineup features an admirable race for Best Picture, with the aforementioned Curse of the Golden Flower and Exiled representing HK, The Host representing South Korea, Opera Jawa representing Indonesia, and Still Life representing mainland China.
• Fortune Star releases have been at the top of my list for the past two years, following a tried-and-true formula: take hard to find Hong Kong classics such as Bullet in the Head, Police Story and All About Ah Long, painstakingly digitally remaster them in high def, freshly translate the subtitles, and pack in dozens of extras. This week sees the release of a true masterpiece, long name-checked by Quentin Tarantino and out-of-print for more than a decade thanks to the gross incompetence of Miramax – Peking Opera Blues.
• Watch the trailer for Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest, Retribution, courtesy of Twitch. The film marks Kurosawa’s 8th pairing with Japanese everyman Koji Yakusho, starring as a detective who comes to suspect he may be investigating himself.
• And, if this humble 007 fan might stretch the semantics of “Asian Film”, Casino Royale opened in China yesterday, the first time in the 45-year history of filmic Bond that one of the character’s outings has seen official release! The BBC has the full story.

• Yesterday saw the first official press meet for Ang Lee’s latest film – Lust, Caution, via MonkeyPeaches – Lee was featured in a Regis retrospective at the Walker in 2005. The film will be the first pairing of Lee with Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung, and takes place during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.

• Japanese exploitation classic Sailor Suit and Machine Gun sees its first-ever release with English subtitles thanks to Kadokawa Films. Kaikaaaaaan!

• Rinko Kikuchi is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Babel - brush up before the Oscars by watching her in Taste of Tea (my personal favorite of 2004) and reading this interview at Midnight Eye.

• Bong Joon-Ho’s excellent The Host finally sees DVD release in Korea (with English subtitles, no less) – catch it as a double header with his masterful Memories of Murder and discover your new favorite director!