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Unless you live in Asia, you may be forgiven for not having heard of NANA, although possibly, not for very much longer. NANA has already been spotted appearing regularly in the USA and it must be assumed that Europe cannot be far behind. NANA's influence across Asia has been widespread and undeniable, invading everything from comic books and clothing lines to restaurants and video games. In 2005 it seemed to reach its natural peak, but the plans for 2006 have surfaced and there appears to be no letting up. So what exactly is NANA? In truth, it can no longer be described as one thing, or one person, but rather, NANA has become a movement, a trend, even a lifestyle choice, that all started... [read more]
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Ang Lee captured the Best Director Oscar at the Academy Awards 2006 for Brokeback Mountain, which also triumphed under the categories of Best Original Score and Adapted Screenplay. Previously, the film scored a number of significant wins, including the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival and the Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture-Drama and Best Director. For director Ang Lee, the film represents the latest success in a career studded with such achievements, with many of his works having won accolades at festivals and awards ceremonies around the world. Lee is undoubtedly the most successful Asian director working in Hollywood today, and one of the few to be equally successful on both... [read more]
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With the release of his latest film, Fearless, word leaked out that Jet Li, international martial arts superstar and arguably the most skilled practitioner of his generation, was quitting the genre for good. Following an outcry by his legions of fans, he has since retracted somewhat, stating that he will continue to star in action and kung-fu films in general, though will no longer make those involved with "wushu", as he feels that he has taken such roles as far as he can. What this means in practice is unclear, since "wushu" translates literally from Mandarin as "martial arts", though it also refers to a modern practice which uses traditional forms, promoting movement rather than force, in... [read more]
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In recent years, Korean romantic comedies have found a new place for inspiration - the internet. It all started when director Kwak Jae-Yong adapted a popular internet serial novel for his film My Sassy Girl. Its financial and critical success brought several more romantic comedies based on internet novels to the screen such as My Tutor Friend and 100 Days with Mr. Arrogant, both of which became local hits. How did the internet become a fountain of inspiration? The answer is simple: Over 50% of the population is connected to the internet in South Korea, making the internet a necessity for daily life. The easy access to the internet in South Korea allowed amateur writers to post their works,... [read more]
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The Condor Heroes Swordplay novels by Jin Yong (a.k.a. Louis Cha) have always been favored by producers and directors for adaptation into television and movies. Among all of Jin Yong's works, The Return of the Condor Heroes is perhaps the most frequently adapted. A 4-episode adaptation was made in 1960, starring Patrick Tse Yin (Hong Kong singer Nicholas Tse's father) and Nam Hung, followed by a longer TV series in 1976. The Shaw Brothers made two movies based on the novel in 1982. The first one Brave Archer and His Mate, directed by the famous Chang Cheh, stars Alexander Fu and Gigi Wong. The other version, titled Little Dragon Maiden, features the late superstar Leslie Cheung and Mary Jean... [read more]
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Whenever Lunar New Year (or Chinese New Year) comes around, the whole of Hong Kong is wrapped in festive red and gold decorations in celebration of a big day of money and laughter. Red pockets (or lai see, red envelopes filled with money), family gatherings, homecoming feasts, and all kinds of traditional cuisine and customs characterize this holiday season. The most important festival in Chinese society, Lunar New Year is also a time for relaxing entertainment during the long holiday - shopping malls may be closed, but never the cinema. Just as Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street have been the Christmas canons, romantic comedies the chocolates for Valentine's Day,... [read more]
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To Create Heaven in Inferno: Peter Chan's Filmmaking Career between Art and Commerce"Seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." - Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities After working as a film producer for a while, Peter Chan finally returns as a director with Perhaps Love, the closing film at the Venice Film Festival 2005 and Hong Kong's 2005 submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. In recent years, despite the decline of the Hong Kong film industry, the circulation of Chan's works continues to expand in Asia. In retrospect, he has indeed made many high quality films that generated decent box-office returns in the 1990s. From Producer to Director Peter Chan was born to a... [read more]
Written By Siu Heng
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The new wave of Korean cinema continues to grow in popularity across the world, and few have been more responsible for this than Park Chan Wook, a director of stunning inventiveness and vitality. Despite a somewhat slow start to his career, Park has gradually won over critics on the international stage, garnering a number of prizes at various festivals, including the prestigious Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004 for Oldboy (cast: Choi Min Sik, Yoo Ji Tae, Gang Hye Jung). This has been coupled with almost unanimous praise from within the industry, with the likes of Quentin Tarantino falling over themselves to herald him as one of the talented directors working in modern cinema. Perhaps the most... [read more]
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Asian film fans are receiving a tasty year-end present: a slew of worthwhile DVDs, all being released in and around the 2005 Holiday season. The Asian Cinema powers that be have jammed the holiday release schedule with too many titles worth mentioning. To alleviate any indecision, YesAsia.com Team has put together this guide to 11 new films, designed to highlight some of the more notable releases from Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea that we feel are worth checking out. These films represent the quality and diversity of the current Asian Cinema scene. There's something for everyone on this list of 11 new films - though you may wish to warn grandma before popping in Neighbor #13. All About Love... [read more]
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With the release of Johnnie To's Election, people are wondering if the Hong Kong Triad film might see a resurgence. This perspective, of course, assumes that it ever went away in the first place. The triad film has a long and illustrious (albeit checkered) history in Hong Kong cinema. And, like triads themselves, some are really good and some are really bad. People too often have a lot of fun at my expense when I tell them that Nick Cheung Kar-Fai is my favorite actor in Hong Kong. That's because, like Johnnie To, he can veer between the farcical and the psychotic. In Election, he creates an electricity that hovers around him like gasoline fumes impatiently waiting for a spark. His... [read more]
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Stanley Kwan's latest work Everlasting Regret has recently become the center of focus in the Chinese cinema scene. Apart from being an official selection for competition at the 62nd Venice Film Festival, the film has just won the Premio Open 2005 (Arte Communication) at Venice. Beginning his career as an assistant director, Kwan made his directorial debut Women (cast: Cherie Chung, Chow Yun Fat) in 1985 and then Love unto Waste (cast: Chow Yun Fat, Tony Leung Chiu Wai) in 1986, establishing himself as the representative director in Hong Kong's feminist cinema. Rouge: Ruhua's Obsessive Love and Nostalgia Rouge (1988) marked a new stage in Kwan's career. Adapted from Lilian Lee's famous novel,... [read more]
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My Lovely Sam Soon has reinvented the k-drama heroine, replacing the docile, beautiful princess, looking to marry a rich prince charming, with a hard-talking, overweight pastry chef, who'd easily drink the spoilt Chaebol under the table. After more than a decade of trend-setting stories and fashions, it seems the Korean TV drama has finally given the women a heroine they can relate to. Starting in Japan in the late 1980s, the idea of TV dramas targeting the younger generation, showcasing their struggles, ambitions and problems, quickly gained a strong following in Korea. Even though the foundation of Korean TV dramas had always been based on family-oriented or historical dramas, reminiscent... [read more]
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Lau Kar Leung is one of the most incredibly talented and pervasively influential action directors of Hong Kong cinema history. Most known for his films with Shaw Brothers from the late sixties to the mid-eighties, he made several of the most iconic films of the martial arts genre, first as an action choreographer and later on as a director. He began to learn martial arts at the age of seven in Canton, where he was born, under the tutelage of his father, Lau Cham. Lau Cham was a student of Lam Sai Wing, himself a student of Wong Fei Hung, the Chinese folk hero immortalised in so many martial arts films. Friends of theirs in the Cantonese opera industry suggested that the Lau family enter the... [read more]
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Often described as the Steven Spielberg of Asia, few film makers can be seen to typify Hong Kong cinema as Tsui Hark, the director, producer and actor whose name has come to be synonymous with almost every genre imaginable. With an excess of fifty films under his belt, and in a career that has spanned more than twenty-five years and with no signs of slowing down, Tsui Hark was at the heart of the revitalised new wave of Hong Kong cinema which blossomed in the eighties, scoring critical and commercial successes both at home and internationally to the point of becoming an icon in his own right. Now, with the release of Seven Swords, his latest epic blockbuster, Tsui Hark has returned to the... [read more]
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Someone once asked me what I liked so much about Hong Kong cinema. What, they wondered, could possibly be so great about it that I bought them by the hundreds? I thought about it for a moment, and then I told them: There's always The Moment. In just about every Hong Kong movie I've ever seen, there is at least one moment that propels me out of my seat, sometimes literally. It can often be as subtle as a remark made by an actor (any Stephen Chow Sing Chi movie), an unexpected camera movement (Big Bullet), an especially visceral stunt (Full Alert's motorcycle "landing"), or a blown stunt that looks so good (read: painful) that it is left in the film, occasionally shown more than once (Tiger on... [read more]
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Jay Chou started his music career as a songwriter, and found instant fame in 2000 with his self-titled debut Jay, impressing people with his unique musical talents. Since then Jay Chou has committed himself to producing quality work in a variety of musical styles, most notably in R&B. His film career began with a brief cameo as himself in the movie Hidden Track(2003), and in 2005 he finally made his staring debut as the male lead Takumi Fujiwara in Initial D, the movie version of the popular manga. Known by his fans to be an avid car enthusiast, it may seem that the role of a slow and emotionless boy racer was the ideal role for Jay to make his big screen debut. But now the dust has settled,... [read more]
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The Film The much-hyped motion picture Initial D has been a miracle for the moribund Hong Kong film industry, grossing over HK$35 million within one month. Three Hong Kong actors, Anthony Wong, Edison Chen, and Shawn Yue, joined Taiwanese singer Jay Chou in creating this box office miracle. We interviewed them to see what they had to say about Initial D. Anthony: The film is enjoyable and exciting, and it matches the standards of Western movies. I can only think of one or two Western car racing films that I find enjoyable. It's really difficult to make a car racing film, and Andrew Lau has demonstrated what it should be like. The camera movements and sequences bring out a cartoon-like... [read more]
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The Hong Kong film industry has undergone a recession in recent years. As a result, the number of Hong Kong "event" films continues to decrease every year. While that may bad news for the industry in general, that also means that every "event" film in Hong Kong will come not only with heightened exposure, but heightened expectations as well. This year, the ultimate event film is not a Stephen Chow or Jackie Chan film, as it has been in the past. Instead, it's an adaptation of a little Japanese comic book named Initial D. Initial D: Marketing Heaven Initial D (referring to the word "drift," the primary racing technique used in the series) first arrived in comic form in 1996. Created by... [read more]
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If he is lucky, an actor might get such a scene once in a lifetime. A North Korean guard of the 38th parallel is being visited (such is the central conceit of the film) by two South Korean guards. They are buddies by now, having shared many secrets and laughs. On this visit, the senior, chubby-faced guard with a knife scar under one eye is given a South Korean confection, a Choco Pie. Like a guilty child, the North Korean stuffs the chocolate disc into his mouth. One of his visitors suggests that if he defected to the south, he could eat Choco Pies until he burst. Defection. It's been a subject that their joyful, clandestine, friendship has successfully avoided... until now. The North... [read more]
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Tsai Ming Liang is a renowned Taiwanese director whose success alongside contemporaries such as Hou Hsiao Hsien and Edward Yang has brought Taiwanese cinema to the forefront of international attention. Tsai's films are often endearingly described as films where nothing seems to happen, yet each film magically conveys a deep, heartfelt and humane emotion. Ultimately though, Tsai is best known for his unique film style which skillfully blends extreme long takes with a keen eye for staging and frame dimension, allowing the viewer to unobtrusively witness the complex behaviour of his lovably obscure characters. Tsai Ming Liang was born in Kuching, Malaysia in 1957. His love for the cinema began... [read more]
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