Get ready to add another name to the list of prominent Asian art film directors to try their hand at making a kung fu film.  Ang Lee has done it.  Chen Kaige has done it.  Zhang Yimou has done it three times.  And now Hou Hsiao-Hsien has announced that he will reunite with his Three Times star Shu Qi for an as-yet untitled kung fu project.  No time period, no budget, no details of any sort announced yet, really, other than the fact that the script is in development and they aim to have it ready for 2008.

Hong Sang-soo, in Paris last September for the casting of his next film, will return this fall to shoot Nuit et jour (Night and Day), but it will no longer be in French. The dramatic comedy is about a debt-ridden painter who must flee Seoul for Paris, leaving his wife behind. This being a Hong Sang-soo film, it comes as no surprise that the artist soon finds himself romantically involved with a young Korean student. The lead actors, known mostly for their work in television, include Kim Young-ho, who has had small roles in films, including My Wife is a Gangster. The French-Korean co-production, to be filmed mostly in Korean, will be released in early 2008.

[Source: Cinémasie]

Funny thing.  I’ve been keeping an eye on Kongkiat Khomsiri’s Muay Thai Chaiya for a long time now, ever since seeing the very first promo reel prepared for it at the American Film Market back in November.  I’ve seen two other reels from it since then and could’ve sworn we’d written a fair bit about the film in these pages - would’ve sworn to it if anyone had asked - but after seeing a post at 24 Frames Per Second announcing that the first trailer had appeared online and thinking that couldn’t possibly be right I did a search of our archives here and lo and behold, it was.  Virtually nothing from the film has been available publicly before now so we simply haven’t written about it.

Now, here’s why you should care.  Beyond the simple fact that the promos have all looked fantastic and they hired a real muay thai fighting champ to play the lead - they actually had to send him to learn screen fighting after he hurt a few stunt men on set - Kongkiat Khomsiri is best known as one of the team of directors behind the hugely over-achieving Art of the Devil 2 and also the screen writer for Wisit Sasanatieng’s The Unseeable, a favor Sasanatieng repays here by serving as Khomsiri’s art director.  If you’ve seen any of his work (Tears of the Black Tiger, Citizen Dog) you know why having Sasanatieng as an art director is cause for celebration.  Plus there’s the fact that the venerable WiseKwai - who has excellent taste in such things - caught the first ever screening of the film when it closed the Bangkok Film Festival and rated it a 9/10.  So, off you go, then ...

Best known as a regular performer in the films of Tsai Ming-Liang, actor Lee Kang-Sheng took a first step behind the camera with 2003’s The Missing - a film that won him a number of awards - and he has returned to the director’s chair for Help Me Eros, a film just announced as part of the Vanguard lineup at the Toronto International Film Festival and also in competition in Venice.  We’ve just been passed a quartet of stills from the film and it certainly appears as though Lee is taking a page from Tsai’s The Wayward Cloud and laying on some technicolor skin though I’m told it’s quite difference in terms of pacing and the way Lee tells his story.  Here’s the synopsis:

Ah Jie lost everything in the stock market due to a severe economic crisis. He now spends his days in his sealed apartment, smoking joints and looking after the marijuana plants that he secretly grows in his wardrobe. In desperation, he calls a suicide helpline and gets to know Chyi, whose sweet and gentle voice causes him to fall in love with his fantasized image of her. He tries to ask her out but is repeatedly rejected. He begins projecting his fantasy of Chyi on Shin, the new girl working at the betel nut stall downstairs. Shin is always sexily dressed in order to lure male customers. He becomes closer to her and soon the two of them sink into a world of erotic and psychedelic pleasures. At the same time, Ah Jie begins to stalk Chyi.

Click here to continue on for the stills.

There is nothing more dangerous than a man who no longer believes.

His first theatrical release since the cult classic Dellamorte, Dellamore - known on these shores as Cemetary Man - Michele Soavi’s Arrivederci Amore Ciao stars Alessio Boni as Giorgio.  Once a young idealist and political rebel, Giorgio has been forced to live in hiding for the past fifteen years, driven out of his home and into the welcoming arms of Central American guerrilla fighters after he is fingered for a political bombing in his homeland.  But time has dulled Giorgio’s youthful fire.  He has lost the faith.  He no longer cares.  All he wants is to get out of the jungle and go home.  And if the price of his departure, the proof of his continuing loyalty to the cause, is the execution of his closest friend then so be it. 

Continue Reading "ARRIVEDERCI AMORE CIAO (The Goodbye Kiss) Review"...

Some surprising pick ups for Funimation Entertainment announced at this year’s Comic Con, along with one great big one that should put a smile on people’s faces.  The surprising ones first ...

Funimation have picked up domestic rights to Kore-Eda’s Hana and Yoji Yamada’s Love and Honor.  It’s not that these are live action titles that makes the pick ups surprising, the company has maintained a strong live action line for a good while now, it’s that both are very serious drama’s from very serious directors who already have well established fan bases and business relationships these shores.  Who’d have thunk that either of these two directors would have films being released by an outfit that specializes in anime here?  Regardless, given Tartan’s rather half hearted treatment of Yamada’s first two entries in his samurai trilogy - those being The Twilight Samurai and Hidden Blade - I’m not at all upset to see this final entry going elsewhere where it will hopefully be treated better.

The other pick up of note is Sori’s Vexille, the dazzling new feature from the producers of Appleseed that is about to have its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.  Yes, a theatrical release is planned prior to the DVD release.

Thanks to Ryan for the pointer

Not that I want to cast aspersions on the rest of the TIFF 07 Real to Reel lineup of documentary features but, hey!  There’s a new Werner Herzog film in there and I just kind of stopped reading and did a little dance when I saw that.  Read on for the complete list and all the details.

Continue Reading "New Herzog in the TIFF 07 Documentary Lineup!"...

Of all the additions and changes made to the program of the Toronto International Film Festival in ‘06 the most welcome was, without a doubt, the addition of the Vanguard program - a home for edgy, oftentimes genre based new film that is too strange for the mainstream programs but yet not quite strange enough for Midnight Madness.  Vanguard is back this year and was already looking good with J.S. Bayona’s The Orphanage and Anton Corbijn’s Control among the early announcement and now the rest of the lineup has been announced.  The complete list of titles includes:

The Orphange by JS Bayona
Control by Anton Corbijn
Les Chansons d’Amour by Christophe Honore
Naissance des Pieuvres by Celine Sciamma
Paranoid Park by Gus Van Sant
Defecit by Gael Garcia Bernal
Chrysalis by Julien Leclerq
Ex Drummer by Koen Mortier
Help Me Eros by Lee Kang-Shen
Me by Rafa Cortes
Ping Pong Playa by Jessica Yu
XXY by Lucia Puenzo

Read on for the complete festival descriptions.

Continue Reading "Remaining Titles For TIFF 07’s Vanguard Program Announced!"...

The first eight titles for the 2007 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness program were announced a little while back - you’ll find them all here - with the promise that the final two slots would be announced soon.  And soon, evidently, is today.  The final two films?

Sukiyaki Western Django by Takashi Miike, and
The Third Mother by Dario Argento

Continue on for the festival write ups for both.

Continue Reading "Miike And Argento Complete The Madness"...

A trailer for Ryûichi Hiroki’s M has been added to the official website for the movie. (Thanks to Twitch’s own logboy for bringing this to my attention.) The movie had its world première at the 19th Tokyo International Film Festival (Dai-19-kai Tôkyô Kokusai Eigasai) - “TIFF” for short - on October 22nd of last year, and its international (i.e., outside-of-Japan) première at the 36th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) on January 27th. Happinet K.K. (K.K. Hapinetto) plans to release it at the Euro Space (Yûro Supêsu) in Tokyo in September. Gold View Y.K. (Y.K. Gôrudo Byû) is the international sales agent for it.

Continue Reading "Trailer for Ryûichi Hiroki’s M"...

Two titans of cinema in the same week (see also Bergman) comes as a blow to cinema lovers, especially the heyday of Europe in the 1960s and 1970s.  Michelangelo Antonioni’s deliberately paced masterpieces L’Avventura, Blow-Up and The Passenger fused psychodrama, emotion and landscape in a unique way that remains influential to this day. 

Max Makowski, the man at the controls of recent Singaporean gangster flick One Last Dance.  It’s an interesting choice, really.  Makowski’s certainly got the visual chops to pull it off provided he tames his genre mashing tendencies enough to keep things feeling like a single coherent film rather than a couple of competing ones mashed together.  The remake will set the action in Hong Kong with a romance springing up between members of rival multinational security forces who have been feuding for 160 years.  Those wacky multinational security forces, always holding a grudge ...

... can the boy wizard be trumped at the box office by a transgendered martial arts comedy.  Yup.  Kung Fu Tootsie just staved off the release of the new Harry Potter film to hold on to top spot at the Thai box office.  No, it doesn’t really matter at all, but it makes me giggle ...

Fans of Neil Marshall might want to head over to doomsdayiscoming.com for fresh images from his latest epic Doomsday.
Marshall turned allot of heads with his debut Dog Soldiers and then pretty much twisted off the rest of them with the superb Descent.

Doomsday revolves around a group of elite soldiers in post apocalyptic England where Scotland has been quarantined from the rest of the country. The soldiers have to travel to Scotland to recover a cure, 25 years after a viral outbreak. I have to say that the pictures on the site look mighty purdy. Doesn’t hurt that the lovely looking Rhona Mitra is in one of the leads plus Malcom McDowell and Bob Hoskins (who are not as good looking but great none the less)

Doomsday website

Title - Weekend Admissions - Total Nationwide Admissions

1. May 18th- 284,200- 1,325,000
2. Die Hard 4.0 127,200 2,363,800
3. Ratatouille 82,700 279,800
4. Transformers 63,000 6,986,000
5. Harry Potter 5 53,500 3,441,000
6. Evan Almighty 33,800 128,100
7. Muoi.  21,100 112,500
8. Alone (Siam) 13,900 457,500
9.Attack of the
Pin Up Boys 9,200 58,100
10. Power Rangers
Magic Force 4,900 89,600

Continue Reading "Korean Box Office. 2007.07.27~2007.07.29"...