Friday 15 June 2007

On The Case in Shanghai


The 10th Shanghai International Film Festival kicks off this weekend with a line-up stuffed to the gills with new Chinese movies, plus a number from Japan and Korea for good measure. Festival-goers may have to look beyond the main competition for the goods however - although the international Jin Jue Award nominees include some strong titles, movies such as Yau Nai-Hoi's Eye in the Sky and Yoji Yamada's Love and Honour have already done the rounds elsewhere, as have Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Go Master and Lee Joon-ik's Radio Star (the director's follow up to the massive success of The King and the Clown). Less known titles in competition include Yin Li's historical saga The Knot, which has already received theatrical release, and follows its protagonist, a teacher, from Taiwan to the Korean War and Tibet, with a love story in the mix, Japanese drama Bushan by director Isshin Inudou, and contemporary murder mystery Shanghai Red, the first directorial outing for a Hollywood producer by the name of Oscar Luis Costa.

But it's the Asian New Talents section which looks capable of the most surprises - with movies from Indonesia (Denias, Singing on the Cloud by John de Rantau), Vietnam (Saigon Eclipse by Othello Khanh), and Korea (For Horowitz by Kwon Hyung-jin) alongside several Chinese entries, the most interesting of which may be The Case (pictured). Set in a mountain guesthouse, the movie follows what happens when the guesthouse owner discovers a suitcase flowing down the river which is full of frozen female body remains. The grisly discovery coincides with the appearance of a suspicious couple at the guesthouse, whereupon events become steadily more sinister... The feature debut of documentarist Wang Fen, The Case made its world premiere at the recent Hong Kong International Film Festival, and looks worthy of investigation. Other titles included in the New Talents strand include The Cold Flame (Yang Shupeng, China), and Bliss (Sheng Zhimin, China), The Touch of Fate (Pan Zhiyuan, Taiwan), The Crossword Monologues (Hideaki Kataoka, Japan) and Veyil (Gurunathan Vasantabalan, India)...

Shanghai International Film Festival website

Thursday 14 June 2007

Made in Hong Kong, Showing in Manchester


Mancunians are currently getting the chance to enjoy some recent gems from HK at the Cornerhouse cinema in a season running until Monday 30 July. Entitled Made in Hong Kong: A Decade of New Cinema, and marking ten years since the handover, the season is led by Johnnie To's Exiled (pictured, reviewed by Firecracker here, and which a pedant might point out is actually shot largely in Macau rather than Hong Kong) and features such favourites as Shaolin Soccer, Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together and In the Mood For Love, To's Election 2, Infernal Affairs and Fruit Chan's Dumplings. While none of the titles screenings are exactly new, it's always nice to get the option of watching them on the big screen.

More interestingly perhaps, the event will feature a programme of HK animation, a symposium on HK movies, and a one hour intro into the films of Johnnie To.

Cornerhouse website

Metro Manila Rematch?


While indie eyes are on the line-up for Cinemalaya (post below) some of the movies competing in the 2007 Metro Manila Film Festival have been chosen and there's potential for a repeat of the controversy that coloured last year's event, when Star Cinema's wedding rom-com Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo (check out the site, where you can download some fetching wallpaper) lost out on the Best Picture award to OctoArts' kiddie fantasy adventure sequel Enteng Kabisote 3, or to use the full title (and why wouldn't you want to), Enteng Kabisote 3: Okay Ka Fairy Ko... The Legend Goes On and On (which stole a march on the recent glut of threequels by a full six months).

The Metro Manila Film Fest is something of a one of a kind event in world cinema, and bears little resemblance to what most people usually think of as a film festival. Taking place over the Christmas holiday period every year, most movie houses in the metropolitan area are blocked out to exclusively show the ten competing movies, which are chosen to receive funding before any shooting commences, and are often rushed through production and post-production in the months leading up to the event. A real movie institution in Manila (2007 marks the 33rd edition) it's very much a commercial endeavour, largely involving the big local studios, and standing in stark contrast to the independent ethic of relative newcomers on the Manila movie scene such as Cinemalaya. All the populist genres of Philippine cinema pop up at the MMFF, from slushy love stories to superhero flicks (such as last year's Supernoypi), to fantasy adventures like the Enteng Kabisote series, bird-people hokum Mulawin, or Erik Matti's Exodus (MMFF 2005), to melodramatic sagas such as Chinese-Filipino movie soap opera series Mano Po, the fifth installment of which graced the MMFF 2006, and is one of several recurring franchises. Often star- rather than director-led, the entries square up at the box office over the course of the festival and, with the criteria for Best Picture 40% box office take, the most commercially successful movie often takes top honours.

Things got a bit tasty last year however, when Enteng Kabisote 3 was awarded Best Picture, despite Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo's higher BO gross. Star Cinema, the studio behind the latter, lodged a complaint with the MMFF, tempers flared, and the incident triggered a lot of journalist ink, threatening to undermine public faith in the event.

Just as the storm has died down, it now seems that the two movie sequels are set to compete head to head in the next festival, Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo's rom-com sequel Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo (I sense a pattern emerging here) facing off against Enteng Kabisote 4, raising concerns about the spat blowing up all over again. Perhaps then it would be better if one of the other entries mounts a box office challenge this year - step forward sci-fi flick Resiklo, dramas Bahay Kubo and Katas ng Saudi and, best of all, Shake Rattle and Roll 9, the latest in what must be one of the longest running horror compilation franchises in the world...

See more on the controversy over at the Philippine Inquirer.

Read the Firecracker article on Metro Manila Film Festival 2005

Tuesday 12 June 2007

Tribes Go To War


Buzz is building ahead of next month's Cinemalaya Film Festival in the Philippines, with a strong looking competition line-up, and one title in particular piquing the interest of the local press. Jim Libiran's debut feature Tribu [Tribes] looks set to be a raw, hard-hitting portrayal of teenage gangs in Manila's tough district of Tondo, which earned some coverage in the papers when it transpired that the Tondo-raised director had sourced his entire cast from real-life gang members through a poster calling for teenagers to audition, resulting in some of Tondo's 100 some gangs being represented on film (read more in the Philippine Inquirer). The film looks at the street and gang life of youths through the eyes of a ten year old, and if advance word is to be believed, comparisons to City of God might not be too wide of the mark, and even if not it will certainly provide a nice point of comparison with Ato Bautista's powerful tale of urban disaffection Awaken, now available to view on Firecracker TV.

Libiran has used local hip hop artists for the movie's soundtrack to complete the package for Tribu. All in all, it's one to look forward to. Check out a slide show of images from the movie here. And there's a link to Libiran's earlier short film on a similar theme Pancit Canton over at Twitch.

Tribu is not the only one of the ten finalists that look promising...

2,999 (James Ladioray), set in 1986 on the fall of the Marcos dictatorship, tells the story of a young boy who comes into possession of one pair of Imelda Marcos' 3000 pairs of shoes. Ladioray scripted the acclaimed black comedy Cut.

Tukso
(Dennis Marasigan), the next work from the director of the acclaimed digital drama Sa North Diversion Road (2005), which was based on a well-known play. Tukso takes a Rashomon style approach to the different versions of events that surface during the investigation into a girl's death.


Gima (The Goat) by Adolfo B. Alix Jr., marks the return to Cinemalaya of the director of Donsol, which scooped a couple of awards in the 2006 edition. The busy Alix was also recently announced as an awardee of the Cinema One Originals programme.

Pisay (Auraeus Solito), the third film from the director of The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveiros and Tuli (Berlin Film Festival 2007). Pisay is a school drama set in the 80s.

Endo (Jade Castro) follows a young man trapped in a succession of dead-end short term jobs when forced to drop out of school and provide for his family
. Castro wrote the script for Joyce Bernal's ghost comedy D'Anothers, and was a co-producer of The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveiros.

Sinungaling Na Buwan
(Ed Lejano Jr.), an unconventional comedy drama about relationships, was based on an award-winning drama, and comes from the director of Seroks, one of the Cinema One Originals movies from last year.

Still Life
(Katrina Flores), debut feature from Katrina Flores in which a talented painter discovers he's suffering from a paralyzing disease.

Gulong (Sockie Fernandez), from the director of acclaimed short Liyab, the light-hearted story of a kid who longs to have a bicycle to take a summer trip with his friends.

Ligaw Liham (Jay Abello), another debut feature, is based on true life incident on the provincial island of Negros years ago, when the workers at the post office simply stopped working, cutting villagers off completely from the outside world.


The Cinemalaya competition chooses ten projects at script stage and provides a seed grant of P500K to each. Those behind the initiative include celebrated director Laurice Guillen (American Adobo, Firecracker Philippines, & Santa Santita/ Magdalena, Firecracker Showcase 2005). Last year's winner was Michael Sandejas' Tulad ng Dati, a fictionalisation of the story of real-life 80s Filipino new wave band The Dawn.

Monday 11 June 2007

Ambroisine Videos Online


French Asian movie expert Frederic Ambroisine has spent the last few years travelling the festivals of the world building up a library of filmed interviews with almost everyone who's anyone in Asian cinema.

While his own site remains under construction over at www.fredambroisine.com, it looks like he's now started making some of his treasure trove available on Youtube, here. Early days perhaps, but there's already some footage of the openings of Infernal Affairs II and III with the directors briefly interviewed, plus a more lengthy interview with Danny Pang dating back to the Pusan Film Festival of 2002 (pictured), and an excerpt from Frederic's doc about HK indie flick Ho Yuk. In his own words: "Inside Ho Yuk is a 52 minutes documentary about Yau Ching's Let's Love Hong Kong (original Cantonese title : Ho Yuk), the first Hong Kong independent lesbian movie, starring Wong Chung-ching, Ericam Lam, Colette Koo & Maria Cordero."

And Grand Bell Winners Announced...


The weekend's Grand Bell awards left Kim Tae-yong's acclaimed family drama Family Ties with the Best Film award, The Host's Bong Joon-ho awarded Best Director, it's been announced over at Screen Daily... Family Ties is only the second film from writer-director Kim after 1999's unconventional horror Memento Mori, which formed the second part of the Whispering Corridors "school horror" trilogy. Scooping Korea's top prize marks some return to the director's chair...


Other major awards were as follows...

Leading Actress: Kim A-jung (200 Pounds Beauty)

Leading Actor: Ahn Sung-ki (Radio Star)

Supporting Actor: Kim Yoon-suk (Tazza: The High Rollers)

Supporting Actress: Shim Hye-jin (Over The Border)

Cinematography: Park Hyun-chul (200 Pounds Beauty)