Dan continues his look at 70 years of Asian cinema with epic drama The Spring River Flows East, released in 1947 and now considered one of the classics of Chinese film THE SPRING RIVER FLOWS EAST Cai Chusheng/Zheng Junli, 1947, China The eight or so years leading to the start of the Japanese invasion of China in 1938 are largely considered to be the first Golden Age of Chinese cinema…. Read More »
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Asia7070: Hurrah! For Freedom (1946)
Dan continues his look at 70 years of Asian cinema with the drama Hurrah! For Freedom, the first film made in Korea following the end of World War Two HURRAH! FOR FREEDOM Choi In-kyu, 1946, Korea As seen across the handful of films I’ve talked about so far in this series, the Second World War – and more specifically, Japan’s role in it – had a major impact on the… Read More »
LFF 2012 Review: End of Watch
I must confess that it was with some weariness that I approached End of Watch. The blurb in the LFF brochure did not inspire confidence – another corrupt cops on the streets of LA pic? Rampart screened at last year’s festival, and while I liked that more than many, it did feel like the last film in a tired genre. Even more so, this was another such movie from the… Read More »
LFF 2012 Review: Room 237
The question of whether the meaning of a piece of art begins and ends with the creator’s intention is explored in Rodney Ascher’s unusual ‘documentary’ Room 237, which uses Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining to show how an obsession with a film can produce any number of weird and wacky theories and conspiracies. The results are by turns fascinating, infuriating and downright crackers, resulting in a… Read More »
FrightFest 2012 – Looking Back, Looking Forward: Nightbreed – The Cabal Cut
As a horror-addicted teenager in 1990, I was very aware of Clive Barker. Already much loved as an author for his groundbreaking Books of Blood, Barker’s debut film Hellraiser had announced the arrival of a raw but impressive filmmaking talent. His second movie promised to be even better – based on his novel Cabal, Barker teased us that Nightbreed was to be the “Star Wars of horror”. Fangoria – my… Read More »
Videodrone 4: Zombi 2/The Beyond
Dan delves once again into his collection of cult movie soundtracks with two iconic horror classics from Italian maestro Fabio Frizzi… Fairly or unfairly, for most movie fans the musicians that first leap to mind when discussing Italian horror soundtracks are the members of Goblin. The iconic status of their work for Dario Argento during the 1970s has sealed their position as Italy’s highest profile cult movie composers – even… Read More »
Asia7070: A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo (1945)
Dan continues his look at 70 years of Asian cinema with the period drama A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo, directed by the great Mikio Naruse A TALE OF ARCHERY AT THE SANJUSANGENDO Mikio Naruse, 1945, Japan Among the founding fathers of Japanese cinema – not perhaps those who pioneered the form, but who created lasting work that influenced generations of filmmakers to come, Mikio Naruse is today perhaps… Read More »
The Fifth Dan: Arirang
The latest Asian movie releases. This week, Kim Ki-Duk’s strange, powerful self-portrait Arirang arrives in UK cinemas from Terracotta Distribution ARIRANG Kim Ki-Duk, 2011, South Korea UK theatrical (Terracotta Distribution) After spending many years telling the stories of others, it’s never surprising when filmmakers choose to turn the camera on themselves. Sometimes this means casting an actor as a fictionalised cypher (Fellini’s 8 1/2), sometimes the director will play that… Read More »
The Fifth Dan: Himizu
The latest Asian movie releases. Prolific Japanese director Sion Sono returns with Himizu, a dark teen drama out in cinemas today from Third Window Films HIMIZU Sion Sono, 2011, Japan UK theatrical (Third Window Films) The use of disasters – both natural and man-made – as a backdrop to film drama isn’t new. Events likes 9/11, Titanic, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 or the eruption of Mount Vesuvius have… Read More »
The Fifth Dan: Nightfall
The latest Asian movie releases. Simon Yam finds himself drawn into a strange murder case in the Hong Kong cop thriller Nightfall, out now on Region 3 DVD. NIGHTFALL Roy Chow, 2012, Hong Kong Simon Yam has been one of my favourite Hong Kong actors for nearly as long as I’ve been watching Asian movies. By 1992, Yam had been acting for well over a decade, but it was his… Read More »
