Unfaithful: Mistress Dispeller film review
I just saw Elizabeth Lo’s new documentary feature, Mistress Dispeller, this past weekend and was intrigued and engrossed throughout. Lo uses stylized visual techniques to expand the documentary medium while never losing sight of the humanity of her subjects.
The film’s concept is interesting as it follows Ms. Wang, whose business in China specializes in hiring out to help to break up extramarital affairs. Her particular skills are engaged by Mrs. Li, a middle-aged woman who has discovered her husband is having an affair with Fei Fei, a younger woman from a nearby city. Beyond the novelty of the premise, Elizabeth Lo’s unobtrusive camera emulates a narrative fiction film and plays out like a parlor drama.
Lo’s last film, Stray, also used unconventional cinematic techniques, as it told the story of Istanbul’s stray dog population from the perspective of the dogs. That premise seems high-concept but Lo broadened its scope by also looking at the state of Istanbul’s refugee population. Similarly, Mistress Dispeller has a hooky concept, but Lo delves deeper than its seemingly sensationalistic premise. It would be easy to demonize the cheating husband or his girlfriend but Lo gives these characters a complexity that evades simple dichotomies. Although the basic love-triangle premise sounds like a reality show, there is no villain edit. Lo presents all of the main characters sympathetically and with complexity.
Lo also expands the visual style historically followed by many documentary filmmakers. Although her approach is related to cinema vérité, in the tradition of Frederick Wiseman and others who unobtrusively follow their subjects and who eschew narration, voiceover, or other techniques that guide the viewer, Lo’s film is a far cry from Wiseman’s oeuvre. Unlike Wiseman’s handheld camera and rough, 16mm aesthetic, Lo for the most part locks down her camera at a medium distance, or inserts aesthetically captured close-ups and establishing shots. Perhaps owing more to Jia Zhangke than Wiseman, Lo blurs the line between documentary and fiction film.
NOTE: I’m always happy to see movies at the Roxie, not in small part due to its outstanding popcorn, complete with freshly drawn butter and optional nutritional yeast. During the contentious battle to save the Castro its once-excellent popcorn had pretty much gone to shyte and now after its renovation I’m not optimistic it will be restored to its culinary glory. This leaves the Roxie, the Balboa, the New Parkway in Oakland, and other indie cinemas to carry on the Bay’s glorious fresh movie popcorn tradition.
Love Buzz: 2025 Mill Valley Film Festival
The 2025 Mill Valley Film Festival is upcoming this weekend and there is a treasure trove of Asian and Asian American films on the docket. Among these are some of the buzziest films from the current film festival season.
The festival’s opening night film is Hamnet, Chloe Zhao’s interpretation of the backstory of the creation of Hamlet. Zhao has a decidedly singular vision and the film promises to be an eye-opening and unexpected journey. Hamnet premiered at the Telluride Film Festival a few weeks ago and as with all of Zhao’s films it garnered a lot of attention for its unconventional vision and storytelling.
Probably one of the most talked-about films at the recent Venice Film Festival, Park Chan-Wook’s newest joint No Other Choice has its Bay Area premiere at MVFF ahead of its theatrical release later this year. With an A-list cast toplined by Lee Byung-Hun (Squid Game; Mr. Sunshine; A Bittersweet Life) and Son Ye-Jin (Crash Landing On You: The Pirates), the film is a black comedy about a white-collar worker (Lee) whose world is turned upside down when he suddenly loses his cushy corporate job. As expected in a Park film, things go sideways quickly. No Other Choice garnered a long standing ovation (reported as anywhere from six to nine minutes) at Venice and has presold to 200 countries.
Taiwan represents at MVFF with Left-Handed Girl (dir. Shih-Ching Tsou), another festival favorite that premiered at Cannes. Set in the night markets of Taipei, the film follows a single mother and her two daughters as they navigate life in the big city. The film is Taiwan’s nominee at the Academy Awards for Best International Feature.
Diamond Diplomacy (dir. Yuriko Gamo Romer) looks at the popularity of baseball in Japan as well as among the Japanese American community, exploring the ways that the game reflected and facilitated US-Japan relations both on and off the field. An encyclopedic look at its topic, the film spans more than 150 years from just after the Civil War to the present day, with appearances by Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Ichiro Suzuki, Masanori Murakami, and many more. The film is an intriguing examination of how sports, politics, celebrity, and soft power intertwine.
Chang Chen (A Brighter Summer Day; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; The Soul) stars in Lloyd Lee Choi’s directorial debut, Lucky Lu, which also premiered at Cannes. The film follows a New York City delivery driver, played by Chang, through a harrowing series of events as he roams the city in search of an acquaintance who’s run off with a large sum of his money.
Living The Land premiered at the Berlinale last February where director Huo Meng won the Silver Bear for best directing. The film is set in 1991 and looks at life in a small village in China as its inhabitants live through the vast changes in the country at the time.
Along with these feature films there are a plethora of shorts by Asian and Asian American directors among the festival’s several shorts programs. It’s a great chance to see these films in the friendly confines of MVFF, since unlike the feature films many of them might not get widespread distribution.
All in all, this year’s MVFF is an excellent opportunity to catch the newest and hottest Asian/American movies.
Sound and Vision: Yuan Goang-Ming, Isaac Julian, Ruth Asawa exhibit reviews
This year three of the major art museums in San Francisco had toplining shows of contemporary artists of color. While this might seem unremarkable in the 21st century it has in fact been a long time coming, especially here in the Bay. Despite the diverse demographics of the city, SF museums have a bit of a history of not exhibiting contemporary BIPOC artists.
It was so egregious that way back in 2004 and 2009 my pal Scott Tsuchitani staged two interventions at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum pointing out the museum’s lack of support for living contemporary Asian American artists. Both Memoirs of a Sansei Geisha: Snapshots of Cultural Resistance (2004) and Lord, It’s The Samurai (2009) satirically critiqued the AAM’s orientalist tendencies. Since then the AAM has tried to clean up its act, engaging Abby Chen in 2018 as the museum’s head of the department for contemporary art, where she’s booked shows on iconic Asian American artists including Carlos Villa and Bernice Bing. Most recently Chen has curated the first international show of Taiwanese video artist Yuan Goang-Ming, Everyday War.
Yuan’s show includes several single-channel pieces that feature everyday tableaux suddenly exploding or bursting into flames, but the piece that riveted my attention was “The 561st Hour of Occupation” (2014). The piece includes a long drone shot of an empty Taipei cityscape, shot during the country’s annual Wan’an air raid drill (萬安演習) where all residents are required to remain indoors for thirty minutes in preparation for any potential attack from China, Taiwan’s bellicose neighbor to the west. Combined with footage from the 2014 Sunflower Movement, where students peacefully occupied Taiwan’s legislative yuan for twenty-four days to protest a controversial Taiwan-China trade agreement. Yuan’s video piece is a reminder of the constant underlying threat of invasion in Taiwan, whether military or economic, from China.
The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park also recently featured the work of filmmaker and artist Isaac Julian, including several installations of his single and multichannel work. I enjoyed the lush, beautifully lit and photographed images from his more recent works that include fictional re-imaginings of historical events. Once Again . . . (Statues Never Die) (2022) (31 min) mixes in a bit of Africaphilia, gorgeous black and white cinematography, and a healthy dose of queer looks to critique the complicity of the museum system in colonization and exploitation.
Lessons of the Hour (2019) (28 min), a ten-channel installation starring Frederick Douglass (or rather, a reasonable facsimile), combines Douglass’s oratory, including his famous 4th of July speech, lovely landscapes, and images of ships, sailing and coastlines. As a self-identified sewist I also appreciated the images of Douglass’s wife Anna on her hand-cranked sewing machine industriously stitching away.
SFMOMA was the third of the major-museum triumvirate to topline BIPOC artists this year, with its blockbuster show Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, the first major exhibition of the influential Japanese American sculptor and arts educator. The show features a huge selection of Asawa’s iconic large-scale hanging woven wire sculptures, with the lighting design emphasizing the cast shadows of the pieces. I also appreciated the asymmetrical lozenge shapes of the platforms below the sculptures, underscoring Asawa’s midcentury aesthetic.
I had the privilege of collaborating with Ruth in 2002 on Each One Teach One: The Alvarado School Arts Program, a documentary about her arts education programs in the San Francisco public schools and seeing her show was very pleasurable for me. In addition to her famous wire sculptures the exhibit also includes several of her paintings and drawings as well as information about her many public art pieces throughout San Francisco and the Bay Area. I grew up seeing these public art pieces, including the nursing mermaid at Ghiradhelli Square, the origami fountains in Japantown, the bread-dough cast bronze round fountain at Union Square, and the woven wire medallion at the entrance to the Oakland Museum of California, so it was great to see documentation of those all collected together in one show.
I had visited Ruth’s house a lot when we worked on the movie together and remember many of her sculptures hanging from the high wooden beams of her living room. The SFMOMA includes a reconstruction of her living room, including the carpet and a facsimile of the chairs, which was a fun thing to see in a museum setting and which underscored the primacy of her family and community in her work. Several of Ruth’s children and grandchildren are working artists and uncounted numbers of children who worked with her and her fellow Alvarado School parents have felt the positive effects of her arts education programs. Along with her iconic woven sire sculptures and her ubiquitous and legendary public arts projects Asawa is truly one of San Francisco’s most important artists and culture workers and it’s great to see her legacy honored with a full-scale retrospective.
Along with the 2020 Dawoud Bey show, last year’s Amy Sherald show, the 2023-24 Pacita Abad retrospective and the current Kara Walker installation at SFMOMA, as well as the 2022 Faith Ringgold show at the de Young, it seems like major institutions in the Bay are finally catching up to the important and groundbreaking work that BIPOC artists have been creating for decades. It’s been a long time coming but hopefully it means that more people of color are entering the art world canon, or perhaps more cynically, that more of their work is becoming commodified. Whatever the reason, it’s good to see San Francisco museums showcasing work from artists that reflect the of city’s population.
Rise Up: Frameline San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival review
Because shit is so chaotic in the US right now I almost forgot about the Frameline LGBTQ+ film festival this year, but fortunately a friend reminded me that it was happening. I was lucky enough to do a quick pivot and catch a few select films at the festival.
The Hong Kong indie film Queerpanorama, directed by Jun Li, was definitely the edgeist of the films I saw. I’ve seen two of Jun Li’s previous films, Tracey (2021) and Drifting (2021), both of which focus on people on the margins of society in Hong Kong, and Queerpanorama follows in the same vein.
The premise is simple: A young guy in Hong Kong has a series of one-nighters with a variety of men. He asks them a bit about their life story before sex, then assumes their identities with the next hookup. It’s actually more benign than it sounds, without being overly dramatic or sensationalistic and in some ways it shows how we take on parts of everyone we encounter. It’s also about finding connections in a busy, anonymous city. The film captures the loneliness of modern life, as embodied by the fragility and strength of lead actor Jayden Cheung’s delicate physicality.
The conversations in the film are quite tender, often contrasting with the vigorous sex scenes that follow them, and the film emphasizes that the talking and the fucking are just two different ways of trying to connect. At the same time, the main character always keeps his distance, pointedly mentioning his boyfriend as well as specifying that each encounter is a one-off. The character endlessly circles, never fully engaging despite the physical intimacy, underscoring the difficulty of truly engaging in these times.
Taiwan’s Silent Sparks (dir. Ping Chu) is much more conventionally styled, a moody and brooding film that recalls classic film noir, but queer. An ex-con gets out of prison and tries to adjust to life on the outside but the world of crime keeps calling to him. The twist here is that the film explores the homosociality of prison and gangster films and reveals the unspoken homoeroticism in many of them. It’s a classic crime film setup but it says the quiet part out loud.
The South Korean narrative Lucky, Apartment (dir. Kangyu Garam) follows a lesbian couple in Seoul dealing with societal expectations, metaphorically represented by a very stinky apartment just below theirs. The film cleverly connects past and present and ultimately demonstrates the significance of chosen family and creating community across generations. Director Kangyu Garam uses a light touch in her critique of homophobia, societal pressures to marry, gender roles, and other issues facing queer women in Korea.
Jota Mun’s documentary Between Goodbyes follows Mieke, a queer South Korean adoptee as she navigates between her Korean family and her life in the Netherlands, where she was raised by a deeply religious single mother. A much harsher critique of the capitalist system that promoted Korean adoptions than Deann Borshay Liem’s groundbreaking Korean adoptee film First Person Plural (2000), the film is an intersectional look at the ongoing impact of international adoption.
I also caught the shorts program It’s a Family Affair, which included a handful of Asian films.
Tara (dir. Ashutosh S. Shankar) follows the story of a transfemme in India who starts dating a hunky new man, but the kicker is that his family isn’t opposed to her based on her trans identity but on the fact that she’s dalit and he’s brahmin. The film is a sensitive look at caste-based prejudice in India.
Correct Me If I’m Wrong (dir. Hao Zhou) is a quirky little look at the lengths a Chinese family will go to in order to straighten up the girly boy scion of the family, including various traditional remedies that attempt to cure what ails him. The results, however, are dubious.
Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites (dir. Chheangkea) is a droll and entertaining tale of the foibles of the ghost of a Cambodian grandma who reappears to comment on her queer grandson’s impending nuptials to a woman.
The highlight of the festival for me was Rashaad Newsome and Johnny Symons documentary Assembly, which follows the creation of Newsome’s multi-layered Afrofuturist performance piece of the same name. Although Newsome and Symons are very different types of filmmakers their collaboration on Assembly somehow managed to effectively mesh their very disparate aesthetics. During these grim times in the US and beyond it was a tonic to see a piece of art that addressed difficult questions with joy, hope and beauty. I entered the film in a very dark state of mind and left afterwards uplifted and inspired.
During his introduction to Queerpanorarma, director Jun Li spoke about the optimism and happiness he witnessed visiting Frameline in 2015 when the community was celebrating the legalization of gay marriage, as compared to now, when things both in Hong Kong and the US are much more dire. We are definitely in some rough waters right now but events such as Frameline offer hope that creativity, joy, and passion will somehow see us through.
A Sleepless Night: CNBLUE North America tour review
NOTE: since this was such an epic event, my reflections on CNBLUE’s recent North America tour will be split into two parts.
CNBLUE rolled into North America last month for a whirlwind eleven-day tour of four lucky cities. It’s been eleven long years since CNBLUE toured the US so this was a big deal for their long-suffering fans who have been waiting more than a decade for them to return to these shores. I couldn’t make the first stop of the tour in Toronto but I was able to attend the other three shows and, needless to say, a good time was had by all.
CNBLUE was the very first South Korean band to have a world tour way back in 2013-14, which included two stops in the US, in New York City and Los Angeles, but since then they’ve concentrated their attention on Asia, to great success. But with the advent of the Kpop era in the West, after seemingly every other Korean act passing through the US, it was long past time that they came back. Because of the long gap since their last visit here, the fans were extra excited to see them. and vice versa, I think.
New York City
The word for the show in New York City is intense.
Their first US show was at the Knockdown Center in New York, a former glass factory in the middle of the industrial center of Maspeth, Queens. The venue is mostly known for its rave and DJ events, though other live acts including LCD Soundsystem, Frank Ocean, and Animal Collective, among others, have performed there. The big, flat space is spacious and industrial, with brick walls, exposed beam ceilings, and sliding barn doors. Capacity is about 2000 people, which is smaller than most of the venues that CNBLUE plays in Asia, where they average at least 10,000 people per show. I was lucky enough to be at the very front of the stage against the barricade but friends who were farther back at the bar said that the sightlines were good despite the lack of rake in the floor.
Due to various confusion in the line to enter there was some tension in the hall, but once the show got started it was a happy, high energy show. It was great to hear band leader Jung Yonghwa kibbutzing in pretty decent English and the relatively small venue meant that the audience was really close to the stage, so Yonghwa pretty much chatted with the fans throughout the show. He’s leveled up his English skills quite a bit and was able to carry on conversations and express complex thoughts fairly easily. In comparison, bassist Lee Jungshin’s English was somewhat rudimentary, with drummer Kang Minhyuk’s skills falling somewhere in between.
Due to meniscus surgery on his right knee, Yonghwa had a more than two-month layoff from performing live, which seemed to have been good for him as he was in very good voice, showing off his huge vocal range and ably singing everything from high-powered rock songs to tender ballads. One of the highlights of the show was a two-song mini-set of the ballads To.My Love and Then, Now, and Forever, where Yonghwa played piano and sang. After the conclusion of both songs the audience was rapturously silent for several seconds absorbing the sheer emotional beauty of his voice.
Yonghwa also belted out all the rock songs, effortlessly hitting ululating high notes on several of the band’s most energetic songs including In My Head, I’m Sorry, and Coffee Shop. The two-month layoff seems to have done wonders for his voice as it was strong, stable, and rich. He also looked a bit less bulked up than in recent tours, also possibly due to being laid up after his knee surgery. He also wasn’t able to run around quite as vigorously as in the past, and when he jumped he favored his right leg a bit, sometimes surreptitiously hopping on one foot, and he didn’t climb on top of the piano during Radio like he usually does. But he managed to exude a huge and infectious amount of energy and enthusiasm and within two songs he had the audience screaming and jumping along with him. Any fears that his knee injury would lessen the intensity of his performance were quickly laid to rest.
Minhyuk was alternately smiling and fierce throughout the show, holding down the beat with his steady, formidable drum skills. Jungshin strode around the stage on his long legs and provided able second vocals. Being so close to the stage I could more easily see the coordination between the band members as they hit their marks and the rapid musical changes, such as the jazzy break in Tattoo that they nailed perfectly.
Yonghwa also showed off even more of the lead guitar chops that he’s been working on lately. He’s getting pretty good and his guitar runs are notably faster and more varied than when I saw the band live six months ago in Seoul. Their usual sideman Jung Jaepil wasn’t available for this tour, so his brilliant lead guitar was absent, but that role was ably filled by Keun Park, who remained in the shadows but whose sparkling guitar fills greatly accentuated the arrangements. Also missing was CNBLUE’s usual fifth man, session keyboardist Klozer, whose work usually fattens up their live sound, but in the smaller and more intimate venues, with a more rock-based setlist, it wasn’t that critical. The three main members were easily able to fill up the hall with their presence and with their musical skills.
The setlist was a streamlined version of the concert that I saw back in Seoul last September, with fully six songs absent (Face To Face, Y Why, Feeling, Have A Good Night, Let Me Know, and Blue Stars), so the show roared along at top speed. The smaller venue also meant that steam jets replaced the firepots from their arena shows, but there were still confetti guns shooting out shredded paper bits at strategic moments. Despite the snafus getting into the venue the show turned out just fine, as CNBLUE performed with their usual skill and intensity, and everyone went home happy and satisfied.
Los Angeles
The word for the show in Los Angeles is energetic.
Unlike his styling in New York, where his hair was wild and curly, in LA Yonghwa had his hair straight and slicked back and he wore a black leather jacket and black trousers. It was a much slinkier, glamourous look than New York, where he seemed to be harkening back to The Ramones in his black t-shirt and jeans. Jungshin and Minhyuk also wore basic black.
Interestingly, during the sound check session, a short, three-song set for those audience members paying extra, Yonghwa wore loose Carhartt shorts which revealed the analgesic patches on his right knee. During the show he also stumbled slightly at one point toward the end of the set and needed a bit of a hand getting up off the stage after sitting down for the photo session. But other than that he didn’t seem too hampered by his recent knee surgery as he studiously avoided overly strenuous jumping and running. I think for most of the audience who might have been unaware of his recent injury he didn’t seem to be bothered at all and appeared to be his usual energetic self.
Yonghwa also repeated a version of the same ments as he had in New York, but he did it with such sincerity that it seemed very naturalistic. The man is a born entertainer, not least in his ability to convincingly deliver his lines night after night. As with the New York show, he kept up his running dialog with the audience almost exclusively in English, with a bit of Korean thrown in. He also expounded on his love for tacos, which he’d also eaten in New York. I hope someone takes him on a taco crawl through Boyle Heights the next time he’s here so he can have some real Mexican food. Yonghwa also threw out a few random Spanish phrases like “Te Amo” and “Hola!” He also dropped more slang, at various points in the show randomly shouting phrases like “Awesome!” “Bussin!” “Slay!” “Periodt!”and “Facts!” and at one point claimed “I am a language genius.” He also continued his swearing streak, at one point shouting “Make some fucking noise!” to the delight of the audience. Once again his jumping was much more restrained than usual, restricted to a few modest hops and spins. But that isn’t to say that he was standing still, as he was in constant motion during the entire show, whether dancing, swaying, tossing his mic, or waving his arms, as well as playing guitar or piano.
The sound was also a bit cleaner and much louder than in New York–I could feel the bass drum speaker reverberating through my body and my ears were ringing after the show. And at least from my vantage point, the audience seemed to have more Asian members as well, probably reflecting the Southern California demographics. As in New York the band’s engaging stage presence and humorous patter quickly had fans eating out of the palm of their hands and the floor shook when the audience jumped along with the music.
The band members also seemed a bit more relaxed at this show, either getting over their jet lag or their opening-night jitters, or just getting more into the groove of the tour. For me the highlight again was the piano-focused version of Then Now and Forever. Yonghwa put every ounce of emotion into this version and after the climactic vocal descension at the bridge he seemed to struggle a bit to hold back tears. Minhyuk played most of the song with his eyes closed, and he also seemed to be feeling the strong emotions of the song.
Also outstanding was the live version of their latest title track, A Sleepless Night. The song itself is a basic groove, following a simple three-chord progression, which allows the band to embellish and elaborate over it. Jungshin’s bassline in particular was strong and supple in this song, and I loved his slowed-down finger-picking that closed out the song.
San Francisco
The word for the show in San Francisco is ecstatic.
The concert in San Francisco was the loudest and mostest yet. CNBLUE put on a flawless three-hour show, full of high-energy, musical chops, emotion, humor, and gorgeous music. Opening up with six of their rockiest rock songs makes me think that they designed this setlist with North American audiences in mind, especially for those who might not be familiar with their more recent material. Though they made their name back in the day as kpop idols it felt like they wanted to update audiences to their more recent incarnation as a full-fledged rock band.
Seeing three different shows in a row, it was amusing how Yonghwa’s between-song patter followed the same script with slight variations, yet he delivered it so smoothly and naturally that it felt entirely spontaneous. He’s also so comfortable in his own skin onstage that the very few mistakes he made he shrugged off easily. At one point he started to say “ten percent” when he meant “one hundred percent,” but he quickly recognized his error and laughingly corrected himself. As on the previous stops he also deployed a few f-bombs and hell yesses, which you’re definitely not gonna hear in Japan or other Asian territories. His delight in this was very evident, like a small child tasting a sweet for the first time.
Since it was the last night of the tour he and the other two members left it all out on the stage and once again their enthusiasm and love of performing was infectious, as the audience lustily sang along throughout the show. The effects were not extensive, but the confetti was strategically abundant. At one point red and blue streamers shot from cannons at the front of the stage, draping dramatically on the riggings on the Warfield’s high ceilings. Yonghwa also slightly favored his right leg again, but he still managed to dance exuberantly and hype up the crowd, especially during the last set, which included their disco classic Cinderella. The high-powered rock song Between Us, the penultimate song of the show, took off like rocket fuel while Yonghwa danced like a dervish and adlibbed ecstatic high notes and harmonies.
During the first encore at the climax of an exuberant version of Can’t Stop Yonghwa belted out a high note that fully lasted fifteen seconds, and to be able to bust out a lengthy and stable extended high note after singing nearly twenty songs over the course of two and a half hours is a testament to his vast talents as a singer and a performer, and at that moment Yonghwa was clearly very pleased with himself. By the end of the show in San Francisco he was flying, and the audience reflected back his ecstasy. He also expressed his pleasure and satisfaction with the tour, commenting “We need to start again at Toronto, then New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco again.”
On this tour Yonghwa flexed his fluid and elastic vocals, but he’s also added in guitar solos on top of his rhythm guitar duties. As with his singing, his solos are innovative, fun, and precise. I hesitate to make the comparison but he’s approaching Prince territory in the range of his abilities, from stellar songwriting to blistering guitar work to wide-ranging, emotional, and powerful vocals, He also played the piano beautifully, danced joyfully, and projected to the balconies with ease. Jungshin on the bass effortlessly held down the beat and mixes up thumb popping, plucking, and slides up and down the frets. Kang Minhyuk as always was tireless on the drums.
CNBLUE had a monster year last year, releasing a full-length album in Japan and a mini-album in Korea and playing more than sixty concerts, as well as their usual Korean celebrity activities, so by the end of 2024 they probably were pretty exhausted. And although the two-plus month layoff waiting for Yonghwa to recover from knee surgery may have at first seemed like a setback, in fact the enforced rest seems to have done them all well, so they entered this tour with guns blazing.
Though it’s been a long eleven years since their last shows here in the States, their return to North America went brilliantly. Judging from the rhapsodic responses of the audiences at the three shows I saw, as well as the band’s joyful delight at performing here, I don’t think it will be long before they’re back again.
Let’s Go Crazy: CNBLUE’s North America Strategy
After more than ten years, CNBLUE is finally touring North America again, with shows planned in April in Toronto, New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. During those ten years the band has gone through a lot of changes, due to a two-year plus hiatus for their mandatory military service, the scandal-ridden departure of their lead guitarist, and the COVID-19 pandemic. But in the past couple years they’ve come back strong, with an especially stellar 2024, so now it seems they’re re-setting their sights on a more global presence.
Although CNBLUE was the very first South Korean band to have a world tour way back in 2013-14, for the most part since then they’ve focused their attention on building audiences in Asia, which they’ve done to massive success. But that means they’ve only played a total of two shows in the US in their fifteen-plus years of existence (not counting a joint performance with their labelmates FTISLAND and a few stages at KCon). With the rise of Kpop in the US in the past several years, it seemed like everyone and their mother was touring here except CNBLUE, but now that’s about to be rectified. But as a band and not a dance group they have less appeal to mainstream Kpop audiences in the US, so they’re not likely to be a breakout success like BTS or Blackpink. Instead, it seems more likely that they’ll have to follow the lead of another Asian band that’s also hugely popular in their home country, One OK Rock from Japan.
OOR started touring the US way back in 2014, right around the time that CNBLUE last played in this country. But unlike CNBLUE, OOR has been coming back to the US on the regular, with follow up tours almost every year since then (except during the COVID-19 pandemic years of 2020-21). For most of those years they played in 3000-5000 capacity halls, but after more than ten years touring in the US, OOR is now moving into somewhat bigger venues here, including the 12,000-seat Prudential Arena in New Jersey. On the West Coast they’re playing in 8000-seat houses, but in most of the rest of the country they’re still playing 3000-5000 seat venues. So despite their vast popularity in Japan, where they routinely sell out the 55,000-seat Tokyo Dome for several nights in a row, OOR are still something of a niche attraction here in the US. But they’re gradually moving up, after many years of hard work touring in North America.
If they’re lucky, CNBLUE will follow a similar trajectory, and I’m sure they’re itching to jump in the game in North America. A further plot twist—sometime late last year CNBLUE’s frontman Jung Yonghwa torn his meniscus in his right knee and in mid-January underwent surgery to repair it. As of today he seems to be on the way to recovering, but for a little while it seemed a bit iffy if it would be a good idea for the North American tour would go forward, since Yonghwa’s signature stage presence includes continuously running and jumping on stage for upwards of three hours at at time.
But this tour is hopefully just the first of many to come, so if Yonghwa isn’t able to tear around the stage at full speed like he usually does it’s not the end of the world. This is just the first foray into a long-term commitment to expanding outside of Asia and if the example of OOR is a guideline it’s going to take a long time and several tours for them to successfully break into the US market. If their shows on this tour are somewhat less manic it’s okay, and CNBLUE will hopefully come back again next year or the year after when Yonghwa is back to his old self and can fully jump around. Despite the ten-year gap since their last show here, I have a feeling it’s not the last time CNBLUE will play in the US, and they’ll be back much quicker this time.
This tour is a little appetizer, so if they’re not able to be their fully hyped-up selves on stage it will be okay, since there will be other chances—this time they’re just dipping their toes in the water. As OOR has shown, this market is a tough nut to crack no matter how popular you are in Asia. There’s only one way to get to where OOR is and that’s through hard work and diligence, and if CNBLUE wants to succeed here they’re going to have to do the same and grind away at smaller venues until they build their fanbase here. This tour will be the first step in a long road, but I think it’s totally worth it, since they’re good enough to be globally popular and to compete in the world market. This time around Yonghwa will just have to come up with creative strategies to allow for his current physical state, which I’m sure he’ll do brilliantly. And above all, I have faith in the power of CNBLUE’s music. Their concerts are not only about running around on stage, but also about the sheer genius of their songs. That brilliance will shine through no matter what form their stage performance takes.
To buy tickets, go here:
Toronto, Ap. 16: https://www.ticketmaster.ca/cnblue-voyage-into-x-toronto-ontario-04-16-2025/event/1000624CAEC01BF6
NYC, Ap. 18: https://dice.fm/event/yolkla-cnblue-voyage-into-x-live-tour-18th-apr-knockdown-center-new-york-tickets
Los Angeles, Ap. 24: https://www.axs.com/events/846222/2025-cnblue-live-voyage-into-x-in-north-america-tickets
San Francisco, Ap. 27: https://www.axs.com/events/845376/cnblue-tickets
Winter Again: Harbin film review
The South Korean historical action thriller Harbin opened recently in the US and as expected it’s a gorgeously appointed piece of commercial cinema. Based loosely on the true story of Korean independence fighter Ahn Jung-Geun, the movie is set in 1909 at the very start of Japan’s occupation of Korea. The film is full of A-list stars, beginning with Hyun Bin (Crash Landing On You) as Anh, as well as Park Jeong-Min (Reply 1988; Hellbound), Jo Woo-Jin (Hard Hit; Mr. Sunshine, The Drug King) and Lee Dong-Wook (Goblin: The Lonely and Great God), among several others. (I believe that Woo Jung-Sung also makes a cameo as a drunken arms-dealing hermit but he’s so covered with matted hair that I wasn’t quite sure.)
Beautifully shot by Hong Kyung-pyo (Parasite; Broker; Burning), the movie opens with a striking overhead long shot of Ahn wandering across a dark frozen lake that’s laced with white fissures. Set in the titular northern province of China, Hong also takes advantage of Harbin’s icy wintertime, with shadowy leafless trees framed against gray skies and snowy cityscapes creating a bleak, moody atmosphere.
Woo Min-Ho has directed two outstanding films starring Lee Byung-Hun, the corporate crime film Inside Men and the political thriller The Man Standing Next, as well as the Song Kang-Ho vehicle The Drug King, which has a retro Tarantino vibe, and in those films as well as in Harbin he evokes a strong sense of place and history. In Harbin, Woo stages several tense scenes in swaying train cars, their constrained spaces contributing to the tension of the action, while other scenes utilize a chiaroscuro lighting scheme, with characters’ faces in deep shadow or obscured by hats, which echoes their moral and ethical ambiguity. Woo also effectively uses wide shots and long takes, as when he frames Ahn in a wide shot as he stumbles through the wreckage of a bombed-out building, his lone figure dwarfed and surrounded by the numbers of dead bodies he finds. The framing magnifies his anguish and contributes to his sense of overwhelming grief and guilt.
Hyun Bin as Ahn is Hyun Bin, meaning he is broodingly handsome even with long unkempt hair and dirt on his face. He effectively conveys Ahn’s single-minded han, but I couldn’t help but wonder what Lee Byung-Hun or Hwang Jung-Min or Ha Jung-Woo, all of whom possess mad acting skilz, would’ve brought to the role.
The movie has been at the top of the box office in South Korea in the three weeks since its release and it has a particular resonance at this moment in time. A Japanese official in the film observes, “Korea’s common people are the most troublesome. Their nation gives them nothing, but in times of national crisis they wield a strange power,” and this sentiment applies directly to current events in South Korea. President Yoon Suk Yeol has just been arrested for illegally declaring martial law at the start of December, as well as having been impeached, in large part due to citizens protesting in the streets every day for the past six weeks despite the freezing cold winter weather in Seoul. After the events depicted in Harbin, Japan occupied Korea for 35 more years, but after much armed resistance and much blood spilled by independence fighters, Korea eventually regained its sovereignty. Harbin is a reminder to those currently demonstrating in Seoul that the road to freedom may be long but ultimately justice can be served.
As someone facing the potential for an authoritarian regime here in the US, I also was uplifted by the film. Despite its typically dramatic flourishes, it’s still heartening to see a story where resistance matters and where evil forces can be vanquished. No matter how long it takes, the people of Korea didn’t give up and continue to not give up, which is a narrative that I need to see right now.
Jump In My Car: New Wave documentary film review
Elizabeth Ai’s engaging documentary New Wave starts out as an examination of the significance of new wave music in the Vietnamese American community, then broadens its focus to be all about generational trauma, unresolved family dysfunction, and the long term damage from the Vietnam War on the Viet refugee community in the U.S.
The film intertwines the stories of two prominent members of the Vietnamese new wave scene, Lynda Trang Đài & Ian “DJ BPM” Nguyen, as well as that of filmmaker Elizabeth Ai. Foregrounded is much wonderful synth pop music, many fabulous archival photos of Viet teens with big teased-up hairdos, and lots of clips of jerky 80s dancing. But although the movie starts out being about the scene, it morphs into something completely different by the end of its runtime.
Extensive photos and clips of big-hair Vietnamese American kids grooving to the beat totally capture the vibe of the scene circa the early 1980s, right after the fall of Saigon, when many Viet refugees landed in the U.S. As the film notes, the parents were dealing with unaddressed PTSD from the war and many of the kids were left to their own devices, including the filmmaker. The film delves into Ai’s fraught relationship with her mother. who opened a series of successful nail salons and eventually became responsible for helping many other refugees to do the same in the US. But due to the demands of supporting her siblings and extended family, as well as complete strangers, Ai’s mother had no bandwidth for raising AI and her sister, so one of their young aunties took up the task. It was through this auntie that Ai was first exposed to the new wave scene as a child, which was roaring along in the Vietnamese community in the US at that time.
Having only peripheral knowledge of the Viet American party/music scene (mostly via Paris By Night), it was great to see an in-depth look at the career of Việt Kiều goddess Lynda Trang Đài, who made her debut as a teen covering new wave classics and gained fame as “the Vietnamese Madonna,” along the way revolutionizing images of Vietnamese American women performers. Adopting a more modern look than previous singers who performed in floor-length áo dài and sang traditional Vietnamese music, Lynda took the community by storm by singing in short skirts and crop tops and rolling on the floor during her high energy sets. However, the film demonstrates that all has not been roses for Đài as she too bears the responsibility of caring for an extended family as well as being under the scrutiny of the entire Vietnamese American community.
Ai sensitively handles Đài’s story as well as Nguyen’s tale of his relationship with his dad, detailing Nguyen’s youthful rebellion and his estrangement from his father, a well-known author who objected to his son’s interest in the new wave party scene.
The film effectively weaves together the stories of Đài, Nguyen, and Ai, using new wave as a backdrop to looking at the experiences of Vietnamese refugees in the U.S. Its abundance of archival images and clips, combined with dramatized re-enactments of the main characters’ youthful lives, turns what starts out as a fun trip down memory lane into a much richer story, full of sympathy for the main subjects. Ai’s direction possesses a perspective and a depth of understanding that can only come from someone who witnessed firsthand the events she’s documenting, which has long been hallmark of the best of Asian American cinema.
Experimental film in the time of coronavirus: CROSSROADS 2024 film festival recap
The Crossroads 2024 experimental film festival happened at Gray Area in San Francisco Aug. 30-Sept. 1, 2024, and it was excellent. I soaked up a lot of movies and saw a lot of friends so it was a very fine and enjoyable event. My very subjective diaristic experience below.
Day One
Got my new COVID vaccine on Friday afternoon so I was expecting a hangover sometime after that but by the time early evening had rolled around I was still feeling okay. So I headed over to Gray Area for the Opening Night screening, which was mobbed with experimental film stans. It was good to see such a big turnout for something that is relatively niche.
Program One included Simon Liu’s latest maximalist extravaganza, Single File (2023). Opening with an image of two people looking out the window at Hong Kong’s cityscape, the film is a frenetic, densely layered kaleidoscope overlaid with a percussive electronic soundtrack. The words Promise Rebuild flicker onscreen towards the start of the film and towards the end the film includes images of a large mass of people in the streets, which would now be illegal in Hong Kong. Created in the aftermath of the 2019 protests and the 2020 implementation of the repressive National Security Law in Hong Kong that criminalizes dissent, the film reflects this moment in the Special Administrative Region when oppositional voices have paused but not ceased and where they wait for a more opportune and less dangerous time to speak.
Day Two
Vaccine hangover kicked in and I felt mildly achy and feverish so I spent the day on the couch watching Korean dramas, which in some ways are stylistically the farthest I could get from experimental films. Hoped to feel better for Day Three on Sunday. However, although I couldn’t attend in person, I did manage to catch several of the films via the magic of online press screeners.
Among those I enjoyed Niyaz Saghari’s Ripple Effect (2024), an elegy to Iranian martyr Navid Afkari, who was executed by the Iranian government for participating in protests in 2018. The film opens with the brief quote, “The diver plunges into sea (death), but also into life (eternity), where he will discover the primordial waters of life” (Pierre Lévêque), and the film’s central imagery is a rephotographed clip of Afkari diving into a pool of water, suggesting that even in death Afkari remains a symbol of resistance.
I also liked Bisagras (2024), by Venezuelan filmmaker Luis Arnías, which was filmed in Senegal and Brazil and which utilizes contrasty black and white footage, with some negative imagery, to explore the linkages between slavery and colonialism in Africa and the Americas.The film’s ambient soundtrack is a nice change from a lot of the angsty noise-based soundtracks from a lot of the other films in the festival.
Day Three
COVID vaccine hangover completely gone as of Saturday night so I rallied to see three more shows on Crossroad’s final day at Gray Area. Consuming that much experimental content made it all a blur but I did enjoy new work by Deborah Stratman and TT Takemoto.
I appreciated the economical interweaving of images, text, and sound in Stratman’s Otherhood (2023). Rather than overexplaining, Stratman gives the viewer the benefit of the doubt, which creates a much more satisfying viewing experience.
TT Takemoto’s latest gem, For Jina (2024) is an ethereal blend of hand-manipulated film imagery combined with a dense, evocative soundtrack. The film is a tribute to Mahsa “Jina” Amini, an Iranian woman who died in police custody in 2018 after being arrested and beaten for wearing an “improper” hijab. Takemoto lifts the emulsion from photos and footage of Iranian women protesting after Amini’s death as part of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement as well as from the 1979 Women’s Day marches in Tehran, re-affixes it to clear leader, colorizes it with nail polish and then digitizes and slows down the footage to highlight the fleeting moments they’ve captured in the process. The film’s final image is of a woman defiantly shouting, suggesting that her voice will not be silenced. Though more fragmentary than some of their longer pieces, this short still demonstrates Takemoto’s sure hand with re-imaging found images and their continued interest in memorializing and elevating historical events that are threatened with erasure.
All in all, this year’s Crossroads was a great chance to see many experimental films as well as catch up with the many experimental filmmakers who were in attendance. As well as watching movies, these kinds of events are all about building community and I appreciated the chance to hang out, eat tortas, and shoot the breeze. It’s always a pleasure to get out and get away from my individual screens at home and to interact with real live people, along with watching movies on the big screen.
NOTE: Through Oct. 12 go here to watch Crossroads Online Echo, a streaming selection of Crossroads programming. Free!
Where You Are: Searching For CNBLUE
The first time I went to Seoul in Spring 2016 Jung Yonghwa and CNBLUE were comfortably ensconced in the South Korean entertainment scene.
I ran across their images all over the place, and I heard their music everywhere, on sound systems in cafes and in the malls.
I even bought a cute little pair of socks with a cartoon Yonghwa on it.
The next time I went to Seoul, in June 2017, CNBLUE was still there, with Yonghwa’s smiling face looking down from a billboard overlooking the freeway from Seoul to Incheon airport, and on both a large video wall as well as a birthday billboard for Yonghwa in the Gangnam subway station that was covered with sticky notes from his adoring fans.
Like any popular South Korean celebrity, Yonghwa’s face adorned skincare ads, calendars, posters and other random merch all over the city.
CNBLUE were also models for the South Korean eyeglass manufacturer BIBIEM and their bespectacled faces were on billboards overlooking the Myeongdong area.
In Fall 2019 when I went to Seoul again, CNBLUE had enlisted in the military and their presence was a mere whisper, but I still saw various posters, calendars, and other stray paraphernalia sporting their likenesses at the street markets and Kpop shops.
At one store I managed to dig up a coffee mug with Yonghwa’s face on it in a mall somewhere in Dongdaemun.
My most recent trip to Seoul was in Fall 2023. After spending five days all over town I didn’t see any sign of CNBLUE’s presence on the city’s streets. CNBLUE debuted back in 2010 and thirteen years is truly an eternity in Kpop years, so it wasn’t that surprising to find that their images had been supplanted by merch featuring newer, younger groups. But I still felt a bit of melancholy seeing how they’d seemingly vanished from the public consciousness despite consistently releasing brilliant music throughout the years.
But late 2023 also marked a turning point for the band. Yonghwa dropped a new solo mini-album, Your City, in September of that year and instead of promoting on the usual Kpop music shows such as Inkigayo and Music Bank he instead got onto the campus music festival circuit. He played one, then two, then four and eventually six or seven different college festivals that fall, showcasing his superlative live performance chops to audiences outside of the usual Kpop listeners or CNBLUE fans.
Possibly due to the buzz around those shows, CNBLUE was invited to the Someday Christmas festival in December, their first music festival in South Korea after more than a decade of existence, and they also blew the roof off of that venue, playing the only encore out of sets by several different acts.
Earlier this summer they tore it up at the Peak Festival in Seoul and they’re scheduled for the Soundberry Festival, also in Seoul, upcoming later in July.
Yonghwa is one of the best and most versatile pop music composers in the world and he and CNBLUE have been popular for years in Japan and across Asia for their blistering live performances, but for some reason in South Korea they haven’t been able to fully shake their image as an idol band. By playing these indie and college music festivals they’re reinventing and reintroducing themselves to a South Korean audience who may have only thought of them as a Kpop group. CNBLUE is finally making the transition from being regarded as just a Kpop idol band to being recognized in South Korea as a legit live band and actual musical artists.
All of these recent shows in South Korea seem to have amped up CNBLUE’s and Yonghwa’s name recognition again in their home country. Recently a fan reported finding socks and other merch for sale once again with Yonghwa’s face on them in street markets in Seoul. Despite being a completely unscientific indicator of popularity or success, this somehow feels like a good omen to me.
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