APA Top Ten: Female Martial Artists in Asian film
On the occasion of JeeJa Yanin's explosive performance in Chocolate, APA recounts our top ten ass-kicking heroines in Asian martial arts films over the years.
Mathematics +/- Memory
Yoko Ogawa's latest novel to be translated into English is The Housekeeper and the Professor, a story about a curious friendship that is illuminated through the complexity of numbers.
Subscribe to the APA Newsletter
February 20, 2009: News from Abroad
Preity Zinta nominated for Canada's Genie Award, Old Partner breaks Korean indie records, and Jackie Chan film "banned" for violence. All this and more in the latest edition of News from Abroad.
Shinjuku Incident skips Chinese market
Jackie Chan, the all-time king of action comedy, has turned to the dark side. He is starring in a new movie that is deemed so violent that director Derek Yee decided not to release it in China. The film, Shinjuku Incident, presents Chan as a refugee who becomes an assassin for a mob in Japan. Scenes with his hand being chopped off and stabbed with knives are among the few that may be questionable for censors. However, not willing to cut these graphic portions of the film, the director decided not to release it to mainland China. China has no ratings system, and every film released should be able to be seen by audience of all ages. Besides the issue of violence, another potential problem might be the setting itself: Japan. China and Japanese relations still have not warmed, and remain terse because of Japan's history of occupation of China. Shinjuku Incident will be released in Hong Kong and Japan on April 2nd and May 1st, respectively. --Joyce Huang
Preity Zinta's Genie Nomination; Amal gets six
Can it be? Is there is an upside to watching Bollywood's dimpled darling being brutally beaten over and over again by her onscreen husband? Preity Zinta's role in Deepa Mehta's latest offering, Heaven in Earth, has been garnering the actress much international attention. She won the Best Actress award at the Chicago International Film Festival, and now she has been officially nominated for the Best Actress in a Leading Role category at the Genie Awards, Canada's equivalent of the Oscars. She is up against Susan Sarandon (Emotional Arithmetic), Ellen Burstyn (Stone Angel), Isabelle Blais (Borderline), and Marianne Fortier (Maman est chez le coiffeur). Also worth noting: Richie Mehta's Amal has emerged a worthy contender as well, up for six Genie awards: Best Motion Picture, Best Directing, Best Sound, Best Screenplay, Best Actor for Rupinder Nagra, and Best Song for Rahi Nagufta's "Dr. Shiva." Amal, which won the Best Narrative Award at last year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, is Mehta's first feature film, and the screenplay was co-written by his brother Shaun Mehta. The Genie awards will take place March 4th in Ottawa. --Ada Tseng
Old Partner and new wave in Korea
The Korean film industry has been falling ever since the ratification of a free trade bill between the United States and South Korea which loosened the latter's screen quota system, and ensured a market for local films by requiring theaters to show Korean films. However, South Korea has recently had an increase in the productivity of its independent film industry. This past year, Speed Scandal sold tickets to over 8 million Koreans, which beat out Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005) to become the 7th highest-attended Korean film in the domestic box office. The other major film to draw attention was Old Partner, a story of a crippled farmer and his long-surviving ox. This arthouse documentary has already drew in over 250,000 viewers this past weekend, taking the film to 4th at the box office -- no small amount for a film that cost a mere $142,000. The film similarly hopes to draw a non-Korean audience and is soon to be released in Korea with English subtitles for the many foreigners living in the country. --Frederick Stiehl
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra back with Delhi-6
Rang De Basanti director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's latest film Delhi-6 opened internationally on February 20th to the largest box-office opening so far in 2009. Telling a myriad of stories that take place in Delhi, the film's main storyline features Abhishek Bachhan as an Indian American who returns to his roots in Chandni Chowk with his sick grandmother (Waheeda Rehman). Other actors in the film include Sonam Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Deepak Dobriyal, Om Puri, Supriya Pathak, Atul Kulkarni, and Vijay Raaz. The director and main cast members have been busy traveling with the film, where it had previously played in New York's MOMA as well as the Dubai Film Festival. A.R. Rahman composed the score to Delhi-6, bringing audiences a new number called "Masakali," which can be listened to here. --Ada Tseng
Jay Chou to direct TV series
Taiwanese megastar Jay Chou recently held a press conference on February 16th for a drama series tentatively to be named Panda Men. Jay was quoted saying he "love[ed] watching Super Hero movies, but Chinese people didn't have a modern day hero. All Chinese heroes are from the ancient times, so [he] want to do something that no one else has yet done." Panda Men will be set in the year 2030. Jay will not only be the director, but he will also play the role of the police chief of the city that his super heroes will be protecting. --Kristie Hang
Drama fans have seen this Before
Since its January debut, the Korean drama Boys Before Flowers has grown in popularity amongst drama fans around the world, no doubt propelled by its similarities to Taiwan's Meteor Garden and Japan's Hana Yori Dango. Boys Before Flowers depicts a typical girl by the name of Jan Di, someone supposedly at the bottom of the social ladder, who clashes with four rich and haughty boys known as Flower 4, or F4. She is admitted to the notoriously rich Chin Hwa College on the basis of having saved someone from committing suicide. Sound familiar? Like its Taiwanese and Japanese counterparts, Boys Before Flowers is based on the Japanese manga Boys Over Flowers. --Joyce Huang
Firaaq takes Best Film at Kara Film Festival
Director Nandita Das has gotten a lot of festival attention for her film Firaaq, and in February, she took home the grand prize at the Kara Film Festival in Karachi, Pakistan. Firaaq is inspired by the 2002 Godhra incident in Gujarat, and it weaves together many individual post-riot stories that trace the ways in which violence affects people's lives. Das is known for her acting work in Deepa Mehta's Fire and Earth films, and is Firaaq her directorial debut. The film will be released on March 20, 2009.
Another big winner at the Kara Film Festival was the documentary Superman of Malegaon, a superman spoof directed by Faiza Ahmed Khan. The special jury award went to Rashid Farooqui for his performance Ramchand Pakistani (also starring Nandita Das), and Pakistani telefilm Burns Road Ki Niilofer took home two awards for best screenplay and best supporting actress. --Ada Tseng
Miike stays honest with Yatterman
The controversial Takashi Miike is back again. But this time he's tackling Yatterman, an adaptation of a Japanese animated television series. On transitioning from gruesome dismembering and beheading (see Ichi the Killer) to the kid's genre, Miike has this to say: "Whatever the subject matter is, I just respond towards it honestly and truly. And sometimes that response is much more towards violent material and sometimes it's geared towards children. But for me it's not different." Aside from the challenge of this new material, Yatterman also allows Miike to take on a favorite cartoon of his teen years. Yatterman also features Japanese pop star Sho Sakurai. --Joyce Huang
Supriyo Sen's Wallah short wins in Berlin
To mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this year's Berlin Today competition theme at the Berlin Film Festival was "My Wall." Director Supriyo Sen took home the award for his short documentary Wagah, which shows the change-of-guard ritual that is performed at the frontier post along the Wagah border of India and Pakistan. Sen has been documenting issues surrounding the partition for over a decade, and Wagah completes his trilogy of films about the subject -- the first two being 2003's Way Back Home (tracking his parents' return to East Bengal, present day Bangladesh, after emigrating to Calcutta after the 1947 partition) and 2007's Hope Dies Last in War (about 54 Indian soldiers, taken as Prisoners of War during the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971, who still are waiting to return home.) After its win, Wallah was screened during the closing ceremony of the Berlin Film Festival on Feb 15th. --Ada Tseng
Date Posted: 2/20/2009