Posts tagged ‘movies’
A God And A King: Chow Yun-Fat and Shah Rukh Khan
Chow Yun-Fat sparks it up, A Better Tomorrow, 1986
After viewing Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, my first Shah Rukh Khan film, at this year’s San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, I’ve been happily watching as many of his films as I can get my hands on. Since I’ve been living under a rock since my first daughter was born in 2000 I’d never had the pleasure of viewing one of Khan’s movies, though I’d heard of him before. His dominance in the Hindi-language film market reminds me of the heyday of Chow Yun-Fat, another flamboyant and charismatic actor who in his prime ruled supreme over his film industry and who in the 1980s and 90s was the undisputed lord of Chinese-language cinema. However, Shah Rukh Khan’s fate may be very different than Chow’s, as he’s so far chosen a different career trajectory than his suave Chinese counterpart.
King Khan looking suave, 2009
Khan, also know as SRK or King Khan to his fans, is the reigning monarch of Bollywood, India’s Hindi-language commercial film business that turns out movie musical extravaganzas by the hundreds every year and that’s one of the biggest film industries in the world. Khan is by nature an exuberant, flashy actor who’s also able to turn in more subtle performances as befits the role he’s playing. Like most Bollywood stars he’s also an excellent dancer and he’s got great comic timing as well. Not to mention dramatically arched eyebrows, dimples to die for and a recently buffed-out bod featuring a killer six-pack. Shah Rukh Khan’s first name literally translates as “face of the king” so it’s fitting that he’s the top actor in Bollywood. The 43-year-old performer has appeared in over sixty films since breaking into the scene in 1992, including Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, which has been running continuously in Mumbai theaters for a record-breaking 700 weeks since its release in 1995. Khan’s won seven Filmfare Best Actor statues as well as many other Indian film awards and his name is a virtual guarantee of box-office success throughout the subcontinent and beyond.
CYF in his prime, The Killer, 1989
Similarly, from 1976-1995 Chow Yun-Fat appeared in more than 70 films in his native territory of Hong Kong and he was the standard-bearer for the heyday of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s and 90s. His easy charm and screen presence, graceful athleticism and overall hotness garnered him huge critical and popular acclaim in classics like A Better Tomorrow, Hard-Boiled, and The Killer (all directed by John Woo), as well as City On Fire, Prison On Fire, and Full Contact (Ringo Lam), God of Gamblers and God of Gamblers Returns (Wong Jing), and An Autumn’s Tale (Mabel Cheung) and All About Ah-Long (Johnnie To). He was nominated ten times for Best Actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards, with three wins, for A Better Tomorrow (1986), City On Fire (1987), and All About Ah-Long (1989). Like Shah Rukh Khan, his name on the bill meant surefire ticket sales, not only in Hong Kong but throughout most of Asia. At that time the native film industries of Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and other Asian territories had not yet fully developed and audiences depended on Hong Kong imports for much of their cinematic fare. Chow was Asia’s biggest movie star and was commonly known as the “God of Actors.”
Thai Chow, Anna and the King, 1999
In 1997, Chow decided to try his luck in Hollywood, hoping to parlay his huge popularity in Asia into a successful career in the West. Things initially looked promising, with the Los Angeles Times declaring him “the coolest actor in the world,” before he had even appeared in a Hollywood movie. But his first U.S. films, including The Replacement Killers, The Corruptor, and Anna and the King, were less than successful and since then the roles he’s gotten have been a mixed bag. Hollywood has never really figured out what to do with Chow, as evidenced by his relatively paltry output of only nine movies in the twelve years since his trek across the Pacific (compared to his starring in ten films in Hong Kong in both 1986 and 1987 each). He’s been in a few successful films, including Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but his highest-grossing Hollywood film to date has been Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End, where he played a sinister Fu Manchu-type character that was such a stereotypical caricature that the Chinese government trimmed ten minutes of his performance “for vilifying and defacing the Chinese” before allowing the film to screen in China.
Chow Hawai'ian, Dragonball: Evolution, 2009
CYF’s most recent film, Dragonball: Evolution, is a supporting, Mr. Miyagi-type role that’s a far cry from the towering heroes of his prime. Chow is obviously cognizant of his disappointing travails in Hollywood. In a recent tour of Asia in support of Dragonball: Evolution, he noted, “American audiences know only Chinese kung-fu movies and nothing else about us, and I am not a kung-fu actor. We (Asian actors) don’t get any non-kung-fu or non-gangster/fighting offers. We only get Asian-specific roles. They don’t offer anything non-ethnic to us, not like they would do for Denzel Washington or Will Smith.” Chow has recently returned to Hong Kong cinema, appearing in Ann Hui’s The Postmodern Life of My Aunt (2006). His next role is the lead in the Chinese biopic of Confucius, the seminal Chinese philosopher and scholar, which began shooting this week.
Buff, toned and cut Shah Rukh Khan, Om Shanti Om, 2008
At 43 years old Shah Rukh Khan is now about the same age as was Chow Yun-Fat when he left Hong Kong in 1997 to try to conquer Hollywood. Khan is at the top of his game both as an actor and as a producer, with his Red Chillies Entertainment putting out hit movies like 2008’s Om Shanti Om, which is the second-highest grossing Bollywood film of all time. In 2008 Newsweek named him one of the 50 most influential people in the world (Barack Obama topped the list).
With his fluent English and charisma to burn it might seem like SRK could be a crossover performer, yet when asked if he’s likely to try his hand breaking into Hollywood, Khan is philosophical, noting, “It’s not like Steven Spielberg is waiting with a script for me. I don’t think I’ll ever be offered a great international film in my lifetime, so I’d rather be a king here.” However, SRK fans spotted him paired as a presenter with Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto at the last Golden Globe Awards and in front of an international television audience he came off like a champ.
Khan may also be approaching Hollywood from a different angle, as a mogul rather than as a performer. At one point there were reports that Walt Disney Productions planned to invest $30 million in Khan’s Red Chillies production house. This might ultimately give him more creative control over any roles he might take in Hollywood, since money talks in Tinseltown.
I can’t help but think that SRK has learned something by observing Chow Yun-Fat’s frustrating attempts to break into the top ranks of Hollywood. Other Hong Kong actors also seem to have been watching Chow’s painful efforts and are either approaching Hollywood with caution or are sidestepping it altogether. Comedy superstar Stephen Chow Sing-Chi so far has simply re-packaged his HK product for the U.S. market (Shaolin Soccer; Kung Fu Hustle), though at one point he was slated to star in and direct the big-screen version of The Green Hornet. Instead of braving Hollywood, Francis Ng has polished up his Mandarin and is mostly taking roles in Mainland China productions. And the numbers of Asian American actors who have had to flee from the U.S. to Asia to find success are legion, including Daniel Wu, Daniel Henney, and of course Bruce Lee. Although times are changing and Slumdog Millionaire won Oscar’s Best Picture this year, roles for Asian lead actors are still non-existent in Hollywood (sorry, John Cho). If Chow Yun-Fat, God of Actors, with his mind-blowing charisma, talent, and good looks, has had to struggle to make it in the U.S. and is relegated to crappy films like Bulletproof Monk, why should lesser mortals expect any better?
NOTE: Thanks to my colleague Marlon Hom for the Chow Yun-Fat interview translation.
UPDATE: Rumor alert! I just heard that Chow Yun-Fat is possibly slated to portray Sun Yat-Sen in the new Peter Chan-produced HK blockbuster, Bodyguards & Assassins. No link yet–will update when confirmed.
UPDATE 2: Alas, rumors about CYF playing Sun Yat-Sen were inaccurate. He decided to take the part in Confucius instead. Though I’m sure he would’ve been great as both Chinese icons. Now Leon Lai Ming is rumored to be Sun Yat-Sen, which would probably suck, since Lai Ming is boring, can’t act and has no charisma. But he’s tall, so maybe that’s all that matters.
UPDATE 3: Maybe SRK is heeding Hollywood’s siren song after all. Reports state that he’s angling to meet “serious” film director Deepa Mehta in hopes of landing a role in one of her arthouse flicks, the better to possibly attract the attention of Oscar voters in the near future. If this is indeed true, let’s hope that King Khan fares better than CYF in his dalliance with Hollywood.
UPDATE 4: Go here to read about my night with Shah Rukh Khan, as an extra on his latest film, My Name Is Khan.
Here are a couple Shah Rukh Khan musical numbers for your viewing pleasure.
Dard E Disco (Pain of Disco), from Om Shanti Om:
Suraj Hua Maddham, from Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham, with Kajol:
No Regrets: San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, part two
Xun Zhou abuses her lungs, The Equation of Love and Death, 2008
I’m sick as a dog this week with a pernicious chest cold and I blame it all on the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. I’d just started recovering from version one of this malaise when the Film Fest started last Thursday. But I had so much fun at the Opening Night party, the screenings, the receptions and the afterparties that I made myself thoroughly ill again. So now I’ve got version two, with a hacking cough that won’t go away. I’m chugging Wal-Tussin straight from the bottle and using up all of my Tiger Balm to try to get some sleep at night. But I’ve got no regrets, even when I’m coughing uncontrollably at three in the morning.
The SFIAAFF was especially good this year, with an embarrassment of riches of Asian American and international features, documentaries and shorts. I previewed several programs before the festival but I also went to see a bunch during the festival itself. It’s a testament to the depth and quality of the programming that the festival could only find a slot at noon on Saturday for an excellent film like Cao Baoping’s The Equation of Love and Death, starring chain-smoking A-list Chinese actress Xun Zhou, which in other years or at other festivals might have been an Opening Night movie. It’s equally telling that the screening at the cavernous Castro Theater was crowded with viewers despite its off-hour scheduling. It was like that for every show that I went to, including a Wednesday night short film program, the romantically inclined It’s Easy Because You’re Beautiful, which included Object Loss, A. Moon’s excellent, wistfully sad meditation on adoption, loss and patterns of behavior, as well as several slick Korean shorts that played like miniature versions of Coffee Prince.
Anushka Sharma & Shak Rukh Khan get down, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, 2008
I also had the pleasure of experiencing my very first Shah Rukh Khan film, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, which has made me a fervent fan of the sexy and charismatic King of Bollywood. I’m a sucker for men who can dance and Shah Rukh Khan brings it on that count in spades.
The parties, social events, and casual meet-ups with old friends make up the other half of the festival and they were especially fun this year–sometimes the SFIAAFF feels like one big frenetic Asian American filmmaking convention. I talked to a half-dozen people who had specifically planned their vacations around attending the festival, including journalist, author and muckracker Pratap Chatterjee, who showed me his string of tickets to about two dozen festival shows.
Trending
I also noticed the latest trend in headgear for fans of Asian American cinema. Everywhere I went there were stylin’ dudes sporting porkpie hats—at one party I counted twelve wearers of this little topper, including two of the bartenders.
Queues and toppers, San Francisco Chinatown, Arnold Genthe, 1895
Of course porkpies and other fashionable hatwear go way back in Asian American history. Turn-of-the-century San Francisco Chinatown was full of men in queues and felted hats.
Carlos Bulosan, fashion plate
Famed Pinoy author and poet Carlos Bulosan often wore a tasteful fedora in his publicity stills, and the porkpie was favored by other manongs as well.
Kaba hat, 2008
And Kaba Modern brought the porkpie to last year’s edition of America’s Best Dance Crew on MTV.
Tad Nakamura and Kevin Lim, porkpiers
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the porkpie has found favor in the Asian American scene. Here’s a couple natty porkpie wearers at the festival.
Mas porkpie, Temple Nightclub, SFIAAFF Closing Night Party, 2009
And here’s the picture I wished I’d taken that I cribbed from the festival’s Best Photo contest website.
So I’m laid up with a cold this week, rewatching my collection of Francis Ng dvds and trying to keep up with my responsibilities like feeding my children and editing my film. But even though I overdid it, the festival only comes around once a year and I’m glad to have been able to participate in such an excellent, significant event. As someone once observed, Chuck D. claimed that rap music is the CNN of the black community and filmmaking has become the Asian American equivalent. Maybe it’s because it’s a little less scary for Asian American parents if their kids want to make movies instead of, say, becoming performance artists or abstract painters, but the Asian American film community is alive and kicking and the SFIAAFF’s continued health and well-being is a testament to that fact. Here’s hoping it continues to successfully channel our cinematic glories for many more years to come.
Update: Xun Zhou just won Best Actress at the Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong, for The Equation of Love and Death.
Get It While It’s Hot: The 2009 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival
Hee Yeon Kim and Song Hee, Treeless Mountain, 2009
The 2009 version of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival starts next week (March 12) and runs until March 22 in San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Jose. Herein follows some of the movies I previewed from the festival, which is in its 27th year and will include 108 films in its ten-day run. The SFIAAFF is the biggest and one of the oldest of its type and kicks off the season for Asian American festivals around the country. Even if you don’t see something you like described below there are plenty of other treats to be had—go to the SFIAAFF website for more details. And buy your tickets early—shows sell out fast and some of these movies will never have another theatrical screening in the Bay Area again.
Ha Jung-Woo and Jeon Do-Yeon duke it out, My Dear Enemy, 200
My Dear Enemy, Lee Yoon-Ki
Powered by a charming, engaging performance by the talented Ha Jung-Woo, who may be becoming one of my favorite actors, this romantic drama follows two former lovers as they travel the streets of Seoul trying to settle a debt. Ha plays a ne’er-do-well ladies man and unemployed gambler whose fed-up ex-girlfriend (Jeon Do-Yeon, recent Best Actress winner at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival) finds him at the racetrack and demands repayment of a loan she’d made him before their breakup. The film skips lightly from one situation to the next, along the way commenting on life, relationships, intimacy, and dreams. One memorable scene features a newlywed couple whose husband is obsessed with his wife’s past lovers; another takes place at a barbeque party with a Korean motorcycle club. Throughout the film Ha and Jeon maintain a wary relationship with each other, trying to resist falling into old patterns while keeping from strangling each other.
Kim Yoon-Suk has a rough night, The Chaser, 2008The Chaser, Na Hong-Jin
A Korean movie of a completely different sort than My Dear Enemy, The Chaser also starts the versatile and charismatic Ha Jung-Woo, this time as a psychotic serial killer on the loose in Seoul. Brutally violent, with a touch of horror film layered on its crime-drama scenario, the film is a cat-and-mouse game between Ha’s nasty murderer and Kim Yoon-Suk’s world-weary pimp. The film features some gorgeous night-photography and good performances from its two lead actors but with a bit too much fetishized violence even for me, as well as too much psychosexual posturing, The Chaser doesn’t manage to transcend its genre into greatness.
Balmy Alley, Fruit Fly, 2009
Fruit Fly, HP Mendoza
Mendoza’s follow-up to the divine Colma: The Musical, and his directorial debut, Fruit Fly follows the story of Bethesda, a nice Filipina performance artist from Maryland (duh) who’s looking for her biological parents. Set amongst San Francisco’s queer boho crowd, the film lacks Colma’s poignancy and sympathetic characters, as well as Colma director Richard Wong’s cinematic flair. Fruit Fly makes good use of its San Francisco setting, including scenes in Balmy Alley, Dolores Park and various other real-life, non-touristy locations, and it has a great title sequence and nice graphics throughout, but it doesn’t quite have the urgency of Colma’s coming-of-age story, with Bethesda’s search for her birth mother shunted to the side in favor of backstage antics involving a vain magician and a few too many musical numbers with the quirky patrons of a gay bar.
David Choe, insane, Dirty Hands, 2009
Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe, Harry Kim
A lively and comprehensive portrait of batshit-crazy bad-boy Korean American artist David Choe, Dirty Hands follows Choe from his beginnings as a grafitti artist and tagger in Los Angeles to his current status as a blue-chip gallery artist. Choe is an insane mo-fo, but in a productive, creative way, channeling his self-described kleptomaniac, sex-addict, bipolar, OCD personality into a highly successful career as an illustrator and painter. Choe energetically narrates his own story, describing his experiences as an illustrator for porn magazines, his stint in a Japanese jail (for punching a plain-clothes cop), his discovery of and subsequent disillusionment with God, and his various trips to the Congo and other non-industrialized parts of the world. The doc goes easy on its wacky subject, skimming over the misogyny and messed-up violence in Choe’s art in favor of portraying him as a happy lunatic, but it’s a compelling portrait nonetheless. We also meet his long-suffering girlfriend, his family, and his friends, all of whom think Choe is the best thing since sliced bread. The focus is a bit too Giant Robot-hipster-Asiaphile-friendly to be a truly great film but it does a good job of capturing Choe’s insane outlook on life. As he succinctly notes, “If I’m normal in real life it fucks up my art.”
Que paso? Nuevo Dragon City, 2008
The Secret Lives Of Urban Space
This program of short films includes a couple intriguing selections. Sergio de la Torre’s Nuevo Dragon City focuses on a group of Mexican Chinese teens who gradually barricade themselves in an appliance store. Shot without dialog with beautiful cinematography, their mysterious actions lead to serenity. No answers are given for their inexplicable acts but the imagery is lovely and the mood is profound.
Chris Chong’s Block B is a single static long shot of a high-rise housing project in Malaysia, moving from darkness to daylight and back through to night. The film’s bare-bones structure forces the viewer to focus on small mundanities during its twenty-minute running time—a woman drops a piece of laundry from a balcony and it flutters down the side of the building. Children run from one side of the frame to the other. Conversations in Malay emerge and retreat. At some point fireworks go off. Though some might find it incomprehesible, the film is beautiful and intriguing and truly challenges the way that we are accustomed to watching the moving image.
Two good kid actors, Children of Invention, 2008
Children of Invention, Tse Chun; Treeless Mountain, So Yong Kim
One of two “recession dramas” that I previewed, this engaging film looks at the tribulations of a Chinese American family in Boston falling through the cracks of the economic crisis. A single mom with two young kids gets caught up in “multi-level marketing,” a fancy name for a pyramid scheme that preys on immigrants and poor people. After mom gets thrown in jail as a material witness, the two kids are forced to fend for themselves. As the Top Ramen runs out and no adults are in sight, what will happen to our young protagonists? The movie has good, non-cloying performances by its two kid actors, following their fate in a realistic, unsentimental way.
A similar fate faces the two kids in the second recession drama, Treeless Mountain, So Yong Kim’s follow-up to her subtle and intriguing debut film In Between Days. Set in South Korea, the film follows two young sisters whose mother leaves them with an alcoholic auntie when she can no longer support them. Said auntie turns out to be an indifferent caretaker and the girls eventually end up catching, roasting and selling grasshoppers to local schoolkids to assuage their hunger and to make ends meet. Then things really start to go downhill. The movie is grim and beautiful, with an observational style that never veers into melodrama or histrionics, and its conclusion demonstrates the redemption of small kindnesses in the face of hardship.
The late, great Chris Iijima, A Song For Ourselves, 2009
A Song For Ourselves, Tad Nakamura
This short documentary centers on Chris Iijima, the seminal sansei musician who, along with Charlie Chin and Nobu Miyamoto, recorded A Grain of Sand, one of the most significant albums from the 1970s Asian American movement. Layered and emotional, the film looks at Iijima’s community activism, his music, and his later career as a lawyer and professor in Hawaii until his untimely death in 2005. Nakamura follows up on the promise of his earlier docs, Yellow Brotherhood and Pilgrimage, investigating the ties of family, friends, community, and creativity in a moving, resounding portrait of a singular personality.
Lam Yiu-Sing, future idol? High Noon, 2008
High Noon, Heiward Mak
24-year-old Heiward Mak brings it in her debut feature that follows a group of teenage Hong Kong schoolboys as they do drugs, chase girls, fight, eat and get into trouble. Shot on video, with frenetic computer graphics, the movie nicely captures the disposable lifestyle of post-millennial youth. The movie gets bonus points for featuring a sex scandal spread virally via cellphones (the internet is so five years ago). As the characters’ mischief escalates into more serious business, Mak’s strong visual sense and her sure direction of her peers makes the film a quintessential look at teenagers slamming up against their own mortality. Interestingly, Mak almost won the Hong Kong Film Critics Society’s 2008 Best Director award for this flick, nearly upsetting 30-year-veteran Ann Hui for the distinction. Side note: As I watched the movie I couldn’t help wondering which of the cute boys would be picked for this year’s idol status by the relentless Hong Kong media machine. Probably the dreamy one with the orange hair, though lead actor Lam Yiu-Sing has a quiet charm as well.
81st Academy Awards: Slumdog Takes It
Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, Slumdog Millionaire, 2008
Crazy as this may seem, tonight I was rooting for a movie I have yet to see. And when Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture I was jumping-out-of-my-seat happy. Identity politics at its worst? Maybe—but for me it was the joy of seeing Bollywood invade Hollywood, and Asians in the inner circle at last. (My heart was broken a couple years ago when Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash, not only because Brokeback was a much superior film but because I feared that homophobia as well as racism might’ve contributed to its defeat.)
The night started with a series of small wins for The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button and I fretted that it might be business as usual on Oscar night again, with the bland, big-budget, eurocentric Hollywood product taking the evening’s prizes. But at some point in the evening Slumdog started to pick up some awards and I started to feel a bit more hopeful. Then when composer A.R. Rahman won for Best Score and gave his acceptance speech in English and Tamil, followed shortly by Slumdog’s Danny Boyle taking Best Director (plus the film’s five other subsequent awards), I sensed the tide was turning. And, though it had nothing to do directly with Slumdog, when Sean Penn won an upset Best Actor victory against favorite Mickey Rourke, and gave a shout-out to our “elegant’ new President as well as calling shame on those who supported Prop. 8, I knew there was a paradigm shift in the making. Slumdog won the big prize immediately afterwards and the evening was complete.
Dev Patel & Freida Pinto looking pretty, Slumdog Millionaire, 2008
So tonight was a great win for Asian cinema, even though Slumdog is directed by an Englishman and strictly speaking, isn’t a Bollywood product. But its subject matter, stars, themes, and aesthetic are decidedly South Asian and the fact that the Academy chose to honor it over Brad Pitt’s conventionally Hollywood star vehicle seems somehow significant to me. Dare I say that it reminds me of Barack Obama and the barriers he’s shattered with his election? Some might argue that equating the Best Picture Oscar with the election of the U.S. President is a bit of stretch, but I’m in the business of cultural criticism and I think Slumdog’s victory is pretty relevant. It was thrilling to see the huge Slumdog contingent, British, Indian, and everything in between, up on the stage at the Academy Awards, which is the primary symbol and celebration of Hollywood’s cultural hegemony. So, yeah, I need to watch Slumdog soon, but because of its big win tonight, I feel like I’ve already seen what I need to see. In some small way, tonight the margins have moved a bit closer to the center.
The Slumdog crew at the Oscars, 2009
UPDATE: Breaking it down, via The Inspired Economist–a good, measured discussion of Slumdog, including a mention of the the film’s “poverty porn.”
Film review: Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
Scott in shades
Just saw the documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man last night with my pal Danny P. I’ve been waiting for the film to get Stateside distribution for a while (it was completed a few years ago and has been cruising the festival circuit since) so needless to say I was pretty excited to finally see it. At one point a few months ago I almost broke down and bought the movie on dvd but, being a big-screen kind of person, I’m glad I waited. (I think a film-watching experience is almost always enhanced by seeing a movie in a room full of people–for instance, seeing the excellent Arlene Dahl flick Wicked As They Come last Saturday at the sold-out Castro Theater with 1,400 other noir-crazed people was infinitely more thrilling than watching it alone in my house on Turner Movie Classics—but I digress).
Anyways, 30 Century Man traces the career ot Scott Walker, one of the greatest pop singers you’ve probably never heard of. With his 1960s trio The Walker Brothers (not really brothers, and not really named Walker), Scott busted open the British pop charts with a string of top ten hits including the soaring Burt Bacharach ballad Make It Easy On Yourself and the peppy gloom-pop classic The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Any More, both number one singles in Britain in the mid-sixties. Both Scott and his nominal brother John were pretty young things and they quickly became the subject of much teenybopper love in the two years that they were topping the UK charts. Scott in particular was an object of desire, not only for his blond Beatle bob but for his sweetly melancholic baritone voice and his talent for imbuing banal pop tunes with a suffusion of emotion and depth. Through interviews and archival footage the film does a good job depicting the substantial Walkermania in the UK at the time.
The Walkers with birds, 1967
After the Walker Brothers broke up in 1967, Scott reached a creative peak in four solo albums that contained a mix of orchestral pop songs ala Dusty Springfield (he shared the same producer, Johnny Franz, with the equally brilliant, mercurial Springfield), Scott’s own self-penned, poetic musings, and several covers of the songs of Belgian music-hall singer/composer Jacques Brel. The first three of these esoteric collections climbed high on the British charts, but the fourth, consisting only of Scott’s own compositions, failed miserably. Scott’s career went into eclipse until 1981, when The Teardrop Explodes’ frontman Julian Cope (amusingly described in the film as “a foremost expert on Britain’s stone circles”) packaged several of Scott’s songs in a none-too-subtly titled compilation, The Fire Escape In The Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker. Suddenly, after nearly 15 years, Scott Walker was cool again.
30 Century Man includes interviews with a veritable who’s who of edgy British pop singers—Jarvis Cocker, David Bowie (who also executive-produced the movie), Brian Eno, Marc Almond, Ute Lemper and a host of others—who speak admiringly of Scott’s singing and songwriting. The film utilizes the interesting technique of shooting each person listening intently to a Scott Walker song, their faces transformed by pleasure or emotion. As one who has been repeatedly captivated by Walker’s recordings, particularly Scott’s rich, lavish mid-sixties solo albums, I found these passages to be particularly effective in capturing his music’s ineffable allure.
The latter portion of the film focuses on Scott’s last three solo albums, starting from 1984 and released over a span of 22 years (!). During that period Walker’s music took a severe left turn and these collections are dark, haunting, and decisively anti-pop and anti-commercial. In the film Walker states that once he’s finished a recording he never listens to it again, and certainly some people feel the same way about this part of his oeuvre (a quick peek at Metacritic’s user comments of his last album, The Drift (2006) reveals only two ratings, 10 or 0, with almost no middle ground).
Scott Walker wails, 2005
30 Century Man features an extensive interview with Walker who, for a renowned recluse, is very affable and articulate. Now in his sixties, Walker retains his Midwestern twang (he was born in Hamilton, OH) and resembles a grown-up Opie from The Andy Griffith Show. The film nicely intercuts Walker’s intelligent and straightforward commentary with footage documenting the wacky process of recording The Drift, which included a percussionist pummeling a slab of ribs, a metal garbage can being slammed on a large wooden box, and an orchestral string section being asked to replicate the sound of tanks approaching from fifty meters away. Subject matter ranges from the collapse of the World Trade Center to Elvis Presley’s dead twin to Mussolini’s mistress, who insisted on being shot with her lover.
Like Scott himself, 30 Century Man is coy about revealing the personal details of Walker’s life, instead focusing on his creative output. While some might find this a flawed strategy, in a mediaworld littered with Behind The Music and The Osbornes, I though it was a refreshing change of pace. In the end, it’s all about the music, and that’s fine with me.
Three phases of Scott Walker’s career:
Early
Middle
Late
Quickie fangirl post: teaser trailer for new Francis Ng 吳鎮宇wuxia movie Tracing Shadow 追影
Francis Ng & deadly chopsticks, Tracing Shadow 追影, 2009
Just wanted to fire off a fast post about the appearance of a new, very brief teaser trailer (see below) for the upcoming Francis Ng wuxia pic Chasing Shadows. Looks like the movie will be full of the old-school 1990s style wire-fu & special effects that I cut my teeth on back in the day.
The very first Hong Kong movie that I saw long ago at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco was A Chinese Ghost Story, with its amazing action choreography by the great Ching Siu-Tung. His trademark style includes lots of beautiful night photography, swirling fog, gravity-defying synchronized stunt performers, flowing robes, and flying people bounding over rooftops and through forests. He’s the action director for classics including Swordsman 2, New Dragon Inn, and House of Flying Daggers, among many more.
Chasing Shadows, in which Francis Ng not only stars but codirects, with Marco Mak, looks like a throwback to those glorious movies. According to news sources,
“As a form of tribute to past wuxia films, not only does the film contain various well-worn wuxia elements, but it also has the protagonist, his nemesis, and the four exponents named directly, onomatopoeically, metaphorically, in part or combination after the famed wuxia directors: Chang Cheh, Li Han Hsiang, Tsui Hark, Chor Yuen, Sammo Hung, Liu Chia Liang, Tong Gai and King Hu, possibly with some of them doing cameos.”
The movie also stars Jackie Chan’s son Jaycee Chan and Pace Wu. Ching Siu-Tung’s protege, Ma Yuk Sing, is the action choreographer for Chasing Shadows and Ching’s influence is pretty clear in the trailer.
The lady in red, Tracing Shadow 追影, 2009
Needless to say, my anticipation meter is off the charts with this one.
UPDATE: According to Twitch, as of late March the film’s title has been altered to “Tracing Shadow 追影,” which I’m not sure I like more than the original. “Chasing” seems a bit more active and dynamic than “tracing,” but I’m not the marketing expert so who am I to say? Looking forward to it at any rate & hoping it rocks.
Here’s the teaser trailer for your viewing pleasure. There’s a very short subliminal of Francis at the very end of the clip fyi.
UPDATE 2: New trailer for Tracing Shadow 追影 below, which lists a July 2009 release date. It’s mostly in Mandarin, except for one cryptic English intertitle that states “kung fu all star,” and seems to be living up to previous reports that the film will be a martial arts comedy. Francis Ng appears briefly about halfway through, getting water thrown in his face, striding across the screen, and later comically twitching his eyebrow. The rest of the trailer heavily features clips of Jaycee Chan, backed by a raucous electric guitar riff, no doubt aiming straight for the lucrative youth market. I’m sure I’m missing lots of other significant information due to my lack of Chinese-language skills–if anyone else wants to fill in the blanks it would be much appreciated.
Director Ng & cast at Tracing Shadow 追影 press conference, June 16, 2009
There’s also a lot of information in the Chinese press this week about the launching of the film’s website but the translation I got through google translate gives me a headache so I can offer little insight. But here’s a picture from the press conference. Francis has his hair in the little topknot he seems to have adopted for his role in Laughing Gor, which he’s shooting at the moment.
UPDATE 3: English translation about the press conference here, plus another view of Francis’ topknot.
Happy Francis with topknot, Tracing Shadow 追影 press conference, June 2009
UPDATE 4: Go here for The Making Of Tracing Shadow 追影. Caveat: it’s on youku.com, the Chinese streaming site, which sometimes loads awfully slow, and the video is all in Mandarin. But it’s got nice behind-the-scenes footage of the movie shoot, with interviews with all of the stars including Francis, Jaycee Chan, and Pace Wu. With the movie being released in just a couple weeks the hype is becoming deafening. Huayi Brothers are obviously banking on this to be a big summer hit and every other day there are more movie stills, interviews, and other fluff about the movie all over the Chinese press. It will be interesting to see the actual box office once the movie’s out.
Tracing Shadow 追影 movie poster, July 2009
UPDATE 5: Here’s the latest Tracing Shadow 追影 poster, and here’s the official website. Navigation is in English, though the movie clips, synopsis and other info are in Chinese. The gallery has tons of stills that showcase the movie’s fancy costumes and art direction, featuring lots of animal furs, elaborate upswept hairdos, and saturated blacks and reds.
twitchfilm.net also has the first English-language review of the film and it’s pretty favorable.
And here’s the cool little music video from the movie—it takes several scenes from the film and incorporates them into a comic-book style layout. The song is Zhui Ying 追影 and the singer is Cong Haonan 丛浩楠.
Francis Ng drowns his sorrows at Laughing Gor: Turning Point premiere
UPDATE 6: Alas, despite the massive hype, it looks like Tracing Shadow has tanked at the box office in mainland China. Apparently it went head-to-head with Wong Jing’s latest inane comedy, On His Majesty’s Secret Service, and lost big time–according to NetEase Enterntainment, OHMSS earned over $100 million yuan at the box office, while Tracing Shadow took in a measly $13 million. Not only that, but Wong Jing apparently claimed in an interview that he wasn’t afraid of duking it out with Tracing Shadow because Francis Ng’s earlier directorial efforts (9413; What Is A Good Teacher; and Dancing Lion) also tanked at the box office. Way to rub salt in the wound, dude! It’s especially painful because earlier Francis had predicted that Tracing Shadow would easily take in at least $100 million. No wonder Francis Ng looked so tweaky at the Laughing Gor: Turning Point premiere. He had probably just heard the bad news about ticket sales for Tracing Shadow.
The film opened today (Sept. 2) in Hong Kong to much less fanfare. Wonder if HK audiences will give their homeboy some support or if the movie will die a slow death in the Special Administrative Region as well.
UPDATE 7: Tracing Shadow just hit the torrent streams so that probably spells an end to any theatrical box office. Some commentators on twitter were less than charitable about the film.
tracing shadow is a very indiscriminate mess
tracing shadow is a lousy movie. i’m sad that I spent more than half an hour to get to this conclusion.
watched the film tracing shadow online, download a waste of time, a waste of computer hard-disk space
You know it’s bad when people who watch the movie for free are dissing it.
But Francis might take some comfort in the fact that On His Majesty’s Secret Service also got reamed by the tweeters:
this is really a rare year of lousy movies—tracing shadow and OHMSS are tied.
Strangely enough, Huayi Brothers might not be too fussed about Tracing Shadows less-than-stellar performance. The film presold to several Asian territories, so chances are that HB got its investment back even before it was released.
Where is the love? The Asian guy in Milk
Kelvin Yu as Michael Wong is not in this picture, Milk, 2008
Don’t get me wrong—I really liked Milk, the new Sean Penn biopic about San Francisco’s own gay martyr and political icon. As someone who was (just barely) old enough to remember the actual events portrayed as they happened (or do I just remember watching The Times of Harvey Milk?), I thought the movie did a great job depicting the sexy, exhilarating place that was the 1970s Castro district as well as the political intrigue of San Francisco’s City Hall. Gus Van Sant’s not afraid of lots of gratuitous boy-kissing and as far as I’m concerned there can never be enough shots of James Franco’s bare ass. As a Bay Area native, the real-life San Francisco locations resonated for me and the final scene of the candlelight procession brought this heartless beyotch to tears.
But a little fly in the ointment, as usual, was the depiction of the film’s Asian American character, Michael Wong, who was one of Harvey’s inner circle. Apparently the real-life Wong’s extensive diaries from the time were an invaluable resource for the filmmakers, but those expecting a breakthrough Asian American male role in this film will be disappointed. Kelvin Yu as Wong is little more than a flower vase, pretty much relegated to window dressing despite the fact that he’s supposed to be one of Harvey Milk’s closest advisors. Throughout the film Milk affectionately calls Wong “Lotus Blossom,” which is cute but a little too close to the usual emasculated Asian male epithets for my liking. Kelvin Yu claims that the character is “biting, caustic, acidically comedic and intelligent,” but too few of those characteristics come through in the final cut. Instead we see Wong on the sidelines supporting Milk, with precious few actual interactions between the two. There are also makeout scenes galore for most of the characters major and minor, but Wong doesn’t seem to rate a kiss from anyone, male or female.
Some of this may stem from lingering issues resulting from the infamous casting call for the character, which described Wong as “asexual” and “the ultimate dork. Very, very nerdy.” Kelvin Yu states that Gus Van Sant eventually decided against portraying Wong as sexless and dorky, and apparently the real-life Wong has given the depiction his stamp of approval, but in the finished product Wong is still bland and mostly invisible.
Dork or not? Kelvin Yu
It doesn’t help that the good-looking Yu was made homely, with Ugly Betty glasses and an unflattering haircut (although this is apparently is true to the real Wong’s actual appearance at the time).
I’m trying to overcome the tendency to nit-pick any Asian American portrayals I see in Hollywood movies but it’s a hard habit to break, especially when those images are still few and far between. Here’s hoping John Cho fares better in Star Trek—
UPDATE: For a longer take on the film in general, see Sunny Vergara’ s nice little dissection.
The end of the world as we know it: crunchyroll deletes user-uploaded files.
The new year brought an unwelcome surprise to the 4.8 million people who belong to the on-line video streaming site crunchyroll.com, sometimes referred to as the Asian youtube (though it was founded by UC Berkeley undergrads and it’s based in San Francisco). Since its launch in 2006 until Jan. 1, 2009 the site had hosted music and games as well as literally thousands of films, anime, and Asian dramas. Almost all of its content was illegally uploaded by members, meaning that anyone could stream from a huge selection of material at absolutely no cost. As expected from such a massive, unrestricted site, depending on the source material and the skill of the uploader, image quality ranged from good to crappy.
For example, due to the ineptitude of the member who posted it, the site’s version of Exiled had Mandarin and Cantonese audio tracks running
Gratuitous Francis Ng pic, Exiled, 2006
simultaneously, which led to a surreal viewing experience to say the least. Other movies had serious sync problems or were uploaded from vcds, but almost all of the material had English subs and the streaming was fast and reliable, so it was a great place to indulge in a lot of no-cost Asian movie watching. (In contrast, watching a non-subbed movie on youku.com, the Chinese-language streaming site, is slow torture. Aside from the language barrier, the site streams like cold molasses and a ninety-minute movie can take twice that to get through.)
Free is always a good price and I can attest to crunchyroll’s addictive quality–it enabled my Francis Ng binge from last month and I was able to watch at least a dozen of his movies, including a couple not yet available in the US on dvd such as Shamo and One Last Dance. I was also able to wallow in all 35 episodes of one of Francis’s turgid HK melodramas, The Great Adventurer, wasting a week of my life wending through its labyrinthine storyline.
Crunchyroll’s dilemma began when the site started offering higher quality streams for members who “donated” six dollars per month. Because of its legal murkiness, this opened the site to potential licensing lawsuits, as it began profiting from copyrighted materials it didn’t own. Suddenly it wasn’t one big happy filesharing family—with nearly 5 million members someone was making some coin, and the site recently made moves to correct this possible legal sinkhole. No doubt realizing the thin ice such flagrant copyright violations implied, at the start of 2009 crunchyroll purged its entire stock of non-licensed programming and began to host only legally licensed shows. Gone were all of the Korean, Hong Kong, and Japanese soap operas, the extensive library of films and anime, and everything else that made the site imperative for obsessive Asian media-watchers. As expected, most of the membership let out a collective shriek, but in order to further cover its ass legally, the site will likely not add back those titles. It’s instead instituted a subscription system that, in cooperation with anime distributors, will allow paying customers to selectively view whatever shows the site can license.
As for those of us who gorged on free movies and dramas, the ride is over. Of course it was too good to last—I’m glad I was able to enjoy it while I could. Here’s hoping another similar site crops up soon.
UPDATE: Oops, busted! Looks like Huayi Bros, the big-time Chinese film producer and distributor, is going after several Chinese-language sites for illegally hosting the brand new Mainland China film, If You Are The One, which was released on Dec. 18 and has already hit the intertubes. Named in the lawsuit are Sina.com, Sohu.com, Youku.com, Tudou.com and VOC. Maybe crunchyroll pulled out of the illegal filesharing game just in time.
UPDATE 2: Interesting analysis here about how China’s latest crackdown on Internet smut may be a harbinger of larger things to come. Good discussion of the issue in relation to the recession, politics and the social compact of China’s economic boom.
Takeshi then and now: The Warlords, Red Cliff and the aesthetics of dirt
His role in The House of Flying Daggers (2004, dir. Zhang Yimou) notwithstanding, Takeshi Kaneshiro has almost always appeared in modern-day movies. But in 2007 he was cast in two prominent historical dramas, The Warlords (dir. Peter Chan) and Red Cliff (dir. John Woo). How did Takeshi’s decidedly modern visage affect these two Hong Kong costume dramas? The results in each film are somewhat different and are a telling indication of perceptions of Chinese films in Asia and in the West.
Movie kings dress down, The Warlords, 2007
In The Warlords, Peter Chan’s gritty, realistic flick about a 19th century Qing Dynasty power struggle, Takeshi and his equally famous and glamorous co-stars Jet Li and Andy Lau are called upon to play their parts clad in animal skins and splattered with blood, sweat and mud. Jet Li reportedly gained weight and dirtied up to play his part (and was rewarded with his very first Best Actor statue at the 2008 Hong Kong Film Awards); he and the usually dapper Andy Lau also shaved their heads and grew scruffy beards for the film. At the start of the film Li vomits convincingly and Andy Lau has sex still dressed in his war togs.
Takeshi in furs, The Warlords, 2007
Takeshi, however, did not shave his head, though he did sport a tidy beard. Still, it was hard to spot Takeshi-the-movie-star in this flick, due to the strength of the film’s mise-en-scene. The film’s blood-caked impalings, stabbings and general fisticuffs, and its evocative smoky-toned cinematography overcame Takeshi’s good looks and he managed to fit into the overall rough-hewn look of the movie despite being one of the most beautiful people on the planet.
In Red Cliff, however, the film’s art direction is much less down-and-dirty and much more stylized and this somehow makes Takeshi’s perfect nose and expensive haircut more anachronistic than in Peter Chan’s film. John Woo’s film aims for the heroic, not the realistic, and here Takeshi’s Prada-model gorgeousness shines a bit too brightly for a period piece. Although co-star Tony Leung Chi-Wai cuts no less a handsome figure, he’s a bit stronger actor and is a little more convincing as a third-century Chinese warrior. Tony also gets to wear armour and swing a sword in a big fighting scene, whereas Takeshi watches on the sidelines in pristine, flowing white robes without a hair out of place.
Pristine Takeshi, Red Cliff, 2008
Somehow Takeshi’s overt modernity works against him much more in Red Cliff than in The Warlords and this is underscored by each films’ respective directorial vision. Peter Chan’s film feels much more in step with current Chinese cinematic trends, moving away from superficial heroic images towards a deeper, more serious critique (in the same way that Johnnie To’s Election 1 & 2 completely deglamorized the Triad film, in contrast to the gauzy romantic fantasies of gangster brotherhood from Andrew Lau’s Young & Dangerous series). In comparison, John Woo’s film seems like a nostalgic, old-fashioned look backwards at classic Shaw Brothers and 1990s wuxia productions. Interestingly, a truncated version of Red Cliff is slated to open in the U.S. and Europe in 2009 while The Warlords has not received distribution outside of Asia. This perhaps reflects outdated perceptions of Hong Kong films in the West, where the most recognizable HK actor is the long-dead Bruce Lee and most viewers relate Chinese films to out-of-sync dubbing and chop-socky action pieces. Since precious few Western viewers keep abreast of current trends in Chinese cinema it stands to reason that John Woo’s conventionally retro, faintly Orientalist vision of history is more marketable outside of Asia than Peter Chan’s more contemporary presentation.
The Warlords was a big box office hit in Asia and, Red Cliff, Part 1 similarly broke box office records across Asia. Release of Red Cliff, Part 2 was moved up to capitalize on the success of Part 1 and it premiered in Beijing on Jan. 4. The Warlords cleaned up at both the 2007 Hong Kong Film Awards (eight awards including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor) and the 2008 Golden Horse Awards (Best Picture, Best Director). Red Cliff, however, was shut out of the major awards at this year’s Golden Horse presentation, with only four nominations and no wins. Perhaps as with the Academy Awards and the last installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Red Cliff, Part 2 will fare better at awards time than its predecessor. For now it remains to be seen whether it will duplicate the The Warlords’ hometown awards success.
One Last Dance revisted
Just rewatched One Last Dance (2005, dir. Max Makowski) last night and liked it much more upon another viewing. It starts a bit slowly but once Francis Ng shows up, playing a world-weary contract killer in nocturnal Singapore, the film’s focus snaps into place and he carries the movie after that. The film’s non-linear narrative is much easier to follow the second time around and, although there are some rough patches in the movie, there are also several pretty interesting moments. Notable among these are a scene in which Francis’s hitman character evades several security cameras at a Singapore train station and an amusing exchange with a prepubescent girl in which she and Francis discuss the meaning of life. Francis also gets into a staring contest (guess who wins?) and, as mentioned in a previous post, has a classic scene in which he extracts information with the help of plastic wrap, scotch tape and a fork.
Francis as a hitman, One Last Dance, 2005
The film wraps up its unconventional structure fairly well by the end of the movie and Francis delivers another subtle and nuanced performance that occasionally explodes into swift and efficient violence. There are a few moments of slapstick humor that some Western viewers might find jarring but anyone familiar with the rapid-fire genre-switching found in many Asian films should be able to deal with it. Definitely worth a look.
Francis helps Vivian Hsu with her aim, One Last Dance, 2005
Interestingly enough, Brazilian-born director Makowski has been attached to direct a couple Hollywood films on the strength of this picture, though it never received stateside distribution. Makowski’s slated to direct the live-action version of Voltron as well as a big-screen version of the lamentable 1970s television series Kung Fu. Also attached, though his role is yet to be clarified, is none other than Francis Ng. Surely he’s too old play Caine–hopefully they’ll find him a better part than the old blind guy with the pebbles in his hand.
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