Tsui Hark likes to talk

Some more clips of the once and future king of Hong Kong cinema at the NY Asian Film Festival.

Post-screening Q&A for The Blade:

Tsui receives a Lifetime Achievement Award from his mentor, director Patrick Lung Kong:

The Dreamweaver: Tsui Hark, live from New York

Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain
(Image: Golden Harvest and Senses of Cinema)

I can't think of another living filmmaker I'd want to see in person more than Tsui Hark. And that little dream just came true, as you can read about in the third and final chapter of my coverage of the New York Asian Film Festival at the intrepid LoveHKFilm. Honestly, I'm so excited this happened that I still wet my pants a little just thinking about it. Damn, there it happened again.


OK, I'm back. Anyway, I decided to put up some supplementary materials here at my homebase - particularly videos of the post-screening Q&As with Tsui, even though Grady's blinding suit plays havoc with the picture. You might notice that I actually got some details wrong in my hasty note-taking.

Zu:

Dragon Inn (three parts):

Christmas in July for Asian movie cultists

My entourage and I arrive on the red carpet for opening night.
[Editor's note: That's actually Takayuki Yamada in Milocrorze: A Love Story.]
(Image: Milocrorze Seisaku Iinkai and Village Voice)

For the past couple of weeks, I have given over my body, my mind, my soul and my sleeping patterns, as I always do around this time, to the New York Asian Film Festival, the hinge of my moviegoing year and officially (officially, I tell you!) the Most Fun Thing That Happens in New York City. If you don't believe me, check out the official (actually official) NYAFF trailer:

This time around, I managed to threaten the intrepid webmaster Kozo (aka Ross Chen) of the bravely loyal, always entertaining and very necessary LoveHKFilm into letting me cover the festival at his blog. You can see the first two installments here and here. I hope a third and final will be up tomorrow. 


So big thanks are due to Kozo, from me if not from his regular readers, for letting me briefly borrow his sizeable audience. As for people coming here from his site: Hi. Stick around, it's not a bad place. Not always.

Suneohair in Abraxas.
(Image: Bitters End and Film Society of Lincoln Center)

Collect them all!

(Image: Hasbro & MDVerde's Flickr page)

Some favorite Transformers 3 critical blurbs:

"I would say that this movie objectifies women, except for the obviously deep respect and affection it shows for objects." -Rob Thomas, Capital Times (Madison, WI)

"At some point merely extending an experience, whatever the attraction of the experience may be, doesn't add to it. It just makes you later getting home." -Steven D. Greydanus, Decent Films Guide

"Guys, stop telling Hollywood you want more story in your blockbusters. They don't get it. They think it just means adding more explanation. Each sequel has a BIGGER plot that overshadows the action by sheer magnitude." -Fred Topel, Screen Junkies

"The result is still like being urinated upon, but at least this time Michael Bay was considerate enough not to ingest asparagus first." -Garth Franklin, Dark Horizons

I should mention, in all honesty, that I've never seen any of the three movies. And that I kind of like the way asparagus pee smells.

(Go here for more: Rotten Tomatoes)

(Special Added Extra Transformers 2 Bonus: The Greatest Movie Review Ever Written)

Ren and fan

Apropos of nothing, here is a picture I just stumbled across of the indispensable Japanese character actor Ren Osugi with a kitty-cat, courtesy of J-Film Pow Wow.

You're welcome.

Bad boy makes good: Takashi Miike on the border between trash and art

Don't you love it when directors turn out to look
exactly how you thought they would?
(Image: Subway Cinema News)

It's a small satisfaction to see that conventional wisdom is catching up to Takashi Miike, and realizing there's more to him than meets the punctured, fluid-leaking eye. He's reached a milestone with his latest to get a U.S. release, the samurai action-drama 13 Assassins, which has even earned him favorable comparisons with Akira Kurosawa - which has got to be a first with this guy, although as serenely self-confident as he appears to be, I'm sure he knew it was just a matter of time.

Miike's rep in the West has for a long time been based largely on two factors: his ridiculously prolific work habits - most counts credit the 50-year-old director with somewhere around 80 feature films over the past 20 years; and a predilection for outrageous grue and gag-reflex-inducing perversity.  The fact that he's a smart, talented and ambitious, if inevitably uneven, artist, if it gets mentioned at all, comes third (oops, there it happened again).  

The other China, Part Deux

(Image: Hong Kong Movie Database)

It occurs to me that I never finished commenting on last month's "Taiwan Stories" series at Lincoln Center, and I know you're all tearing your hair out over it.  Fear not!  I return!  This time, two older classics (one of which is only one year older than I, a fact I'm just not going to think about).  I don't seem to have taken notes, so at this remove, I can't comment in as much detail as I'd like.  Bad blogger, bad!  


Both, unlike the previous two I reviewed, are full-blown studio melodramas.  What's more, interestingly, and perhaps queasily, each prominently features a woman who sacrifices herself emotionally and sexually for others.


Autumn Execution (1971) - Li Xing's film, apparently a revered classic, took some work for me to warm to (this reviewer was less able to than I), as it's a would-be heart-tugger whose two most prominent characters are quite repellent.