Asian Film Festivals and Awards

[GeneChing]

That's a weird pick of Donnie and Iron Mike. Makes me think they should have been cast for the Rush Hour TV series.

Jackie Chan, Mike Tyson help kick off Shanghai Film Festival
18th Shanghai International Film Festival - Opening Ceremony & Red Carpet


Mike Tyson, left, and Donnie Yen pose for a picture on the red carpet at the 18th Shanghai International Film Festival on June 13, 2015, in Shanghai. (Kevin Lee / Getty Images)

By Julie Makinen

A disease outbreak in South Korea and a film removed by censors dampen opening of Shanghai film festival

Jackie Chan, Mike Tyson and Fan Bingbing walked the red carpet Saturday night as a somewhat subdued Shanghai International Film Festival got underway in China’s bustling commercial capital.


Chinese actress Fan Bingbing poses on the red carpet during the opening ceremony of the Shanghai International Film Festival in Shanghai on June 13, 2015. (Johannes Eisele / AFP/Getty Images)

Concerns about the outbreak of MERS in South Korea and the removal of a Japanese film at the behest of Chinese government censors put a bit of a damper on the 18th annual event, which for years was the only substantial film festival in China until Beijing launched its own festival in 2011. Both events are under government control, but authorities seem to be pouring significant resources into raising the profile of the Beijing affair, which is held in April.

Festival organizers sent emails to some expected participants from South Korea, suggesting that they stay home; at the registration desk, South Korean attendees were asked to fill out a health history form.

In the lobby of Shanghai Movie City, a movie complex that is one of the central film venues, large printed screening schedules still carried the title “Attack on Titan,” but ticket sellers said the animated Japanese film had indeed been pulled from the lineup and replaced with another Japanese movie. The film was among 38 foreign animated properties deemed excessively violent or pornographic earlier this week by China’s Ministry of Culture.

Unlike last year, when “Transformers: Age of Extinction” closed out the Shanghai festival, this year’s lineup includes no Hollywood blockbusters, though Antoine Fuqua’s long-in-the-works boxing drama “Southpaw,” starring Jake Gyllenhaal, is having its world premiere at the festival.


Jackie Chan poses on the red carpet during the opening ceremony of the Shanghai International Film Festival in Shanghai on June 13, 2015. (Johannes Eisele / AFP/Getty Images)

The film, which is competing for the Golden Goblet award, centers on a lefthanded junior-middleweight champ (Gyllenhaal) whose is sent into a spiral by a tragic accident. With the help of a washed-up former boxer (Forest Whitaker), he starts to fight his way back to personal and professional redemption.

The opening film was the somewhat saccharine "I Am Somebody," directed by Derek Tung-Sing Yee, about Chinese movie extras trying to make a go of it on the studio lots in Hengdian, a major movie film center not far from Shanghai.

The closing night film on June 21 will be the China-Russia co-production "Ballet in the Flames of War," directed by China's Yachun Dong and Russia's Nikita Mikhalkov. Organizers said the movie “highlights the friendship between China and Russia through a love story unfolding in the midst of World War II.”

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, known in China as the War to Resist Japanese Aggression, and the festival has programmed a special section of films devoted to this theme, including “Casablanca,” German director Volker Schlondorff’s “The Tin Drum” and Andre Singer’s Holocaust documentary “Night Will Fall.”

The Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose “Leviathan” was nominated for the foreign language Oscar this year, is heading up this year’s jury for the Golden Goblet award.

The festival offers cinema-goers the chance to see a number of American films that were never imported into theaters in China, which restricts the number of foreign films that can enter the market each year. Among some of the U.S. films screening are “Whiplash” and “Birdman.” Former boxer Mike Tyson is attending the festival not because he has an American film in the festival but because he has a guest part in the upcoming Chinese movie “Ip Man 3.” DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg also attended the event.

This year, the Shanghai fest will offer fans the chance to see all six films in the “Star Wars” series, a first for the mainland. “Jackie Chan Action Movie Week” is expected to draw a number of international filmmakers, including Renny Harlin and Brett Ratner for a series of forums and screenings that organizers said “will leverage the prestige of Jackie Chan in the world of action movies, highlight Chinese culture reflected in action movies, and pool together worldwide resources in support of the globalization of Chinese films and culture.”

[Jimbo]

Because it was pulled rom the lineup, I now really want to see "Attack on Titan". IMO, the reasons they pull non-Chinese movies or 'edit' them for content is ridiculous. It creates an environment of movies with no edgy content.

[GeneChing]

It's still all about the Assassin there, with a nod to Ip Man 3.

Asian Film Awards: 'The Assassin' leads with Nine Nominations


'The Assassin'
Well Go USA

by Karen Chu 2/3/2016 4:43am PST
'Mountains May Depart, 'Veteran' and 'Mr. Six' each received four nominations.

While it may have missed out on an Oscar foreign-language nomination, The Assassin has emerged as frontrunner at the Asian Film Awards. Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's martial-arts film picked up nine nominations, followed by Mountains May Depart, Veteran and Mr. Six, each with four.

The Assassin was nominated in the best film, director, actress, supporting actress, cinematography, original music, costume design, production design, and sound categories. The film bowed in competition at the Cannes Film Festival last year.

The best film race consists of The Assassin, Chinese co-production Mountains May Depart, India's Bajirao Mastani, Japan's Three Stories of Love, China's Mr. Six, and South Korea's Veteran.

Donnie Yen of Hong Kong box office hit Ip Man 3 is nominated for a best actor gong, with Nagase Masatoshi of Japan's An, Feng Xiaogang of China's Mr. Six, Lee Byung-Hun of South Korea's Inside Men, and John Arcilla of The Philippine's Heneral Luna also in contention.

The best actress category is a contest between Zhao Tao of Mountains May Depart, Shu Qi of The Assassin, Ayase Haruka of Japan's Our Little Sister, Kim Hye-soo of South Korea's Coin Locker Girl, and Karena Lam of Taiwan's Zinnia Flower.

The nominations included thirty-six films from nine countries. Twenty-two films from China or Chinese co-productions were nominated for awards in fifteen categories, followed by sixteen from Japan.

A new category, best sound, was introduced this year.

The fifteen-member jury will be presided by Hong Kong auteur Johnnie To this year, with jury members including Hong Kong actor Sean Lau and Chinese actress Gao Yuanyuan.

Marking the tenth edition of the Asian Film Awards, organized by the Asian Film Awards Academy, the awards ceremony will be held on March 17 at the Venetian Theater in Macau.



Asian Film Awards Nominations

Best Film

Mountains May Depart (France, Japan, China)

The Assassin (Hong Kong, China, Taiwan)

Bajirao Mastani (India)

Three Stories of Love (Japan)

Mr. Six (China)

Veteran (South Korea)



Best Director

Jia Zhang-Ke, Mountains May Depart

Hou Hsiao-Hsien, The Assassin

Kore-Eda Hirokazu, Our Little Sister

Guan Hu, Mr. Six

Ryoo Seung-wan, Veteran



Best Actor

Donnie Yen, Ip Man 3

Nagase Masatoshi, An

Feng Xiao-gang, Mr. Six

Lee Byung-Hun, Inside Men

John Arcilla, Heneral Luna



Best Actress

Zhao Tao, Mountains May Depart

Shu Qi, The Assassin

Ayase Haruka, Our Little Sister

Kim Hye-soo, Coin Locker Girl

Karena Lam, Zinnia Flower



Best Supporting Actor

Max Zhang, Ip Man 3

Michael Ning, Port of Call

Asano Tadanobu, Journey to the Shore

Oh Dal-soo, Assassination

Cheng Jen Shuo, Thanatos, Drunk



Best Supporting Actress

Zhuo Yun, The Assassin

Tsuchiya Anna, Gonin Saga

Cherry Ngan, Mojin – The Lost Legend

Ueno Juri, The Beauty Inside

Park So-dam, The Priests

[GeneChing]

The way that caption is positioned, it makes Chuck look like he is William Shakespeare...

William Shakespeare, Bruce Lee to Be Honored at Hong Kong Festival
Variety By Patrick Frater
February 5, 2016 7:03 AM


William Shakespeare and Bruce Lee are both to be honored at the upcoming Hong Kong International Film Festival (March 21-April 4, 2016).

Marking the festival’s 40th edition and the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the HKIFF will program three vastly different film interpretations of Shakespeare’s stage play “Macbeth.” The trio are Akira Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood,” Roman Polanski’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and last year’s “Macbeth” by star Australian director Justin Kurzel.

“’Macbeth’ has challenged filmmakers around the world as they have reimagined the interplay of fate and magic, human motivations and soul-wrenching questions of loyalty and destiny. Yet, the violence at the heart of the play, with battles, beheadings and assassinations, also imposes demands on actors and audiences as powerful as the poetry of the Bard’s composition,” the festival said in a note.

The festival will also present additional films based on Shakespeare’s plays in its off-season Cine Fan April/May program.

(Separately, it was announced that the Shanghai International Film festival in June will also pay tribute to Shakespeare. It did not divulge its lineup, though it said that British actor Ian McKellen will attend.)

Reviving a local legend, the HKIFF will also present restored, digital versions of four Bruce Lee-starring films. It will screen Lee’s 1971 Hong Kong homecoming “The Big Boss”; nunchaku-wielding 1972 epic “The Fist of Fury”; “The Way of the Dragon,” which Lee also directed; and “The Game of Death,” the 1978 movie assembled and released five years after Lee’s death.

[GeneChing]

When Bruce Lee Left Hollywood to Become 'The Big Boss'
8:33 AM PDT 3/14/2016 by Patrick Brzeski


Photofest

Exactly why Hong Kong has declined to tap Lee’s enduring star power to serve as one of the city’s icons is still the subject of some debate.

For decades, Hong Kong movie buffs have been perplexed by their city’s neglect of its most famous native son: Bruce Lee.

Hong Kong has no Bruce Lee museum, no Bruce Lee Boulevard, not even a proper Bruce Lee memorial. The city’s Avenue of Stars, Hong Kong’s version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, features a lone statue of the star, but its erection was the result of a global fan initiative, not the local government’s largesse.

In 2011, the owner of Lee’s former mansion in Kowloon Tong offered to donate the home to the city so that it could be made into a commemorative museum, but the project fizzled within the city bureaucracy.

Exactly why Hong Kong has declined to tap Lee’s enduring star power to serve as one of the city’s icons is still the subject of some debate — most suggest that the local elders never viewed Lee as a true native, given that he was born to Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, USA (even though he returned to Hong Kong when he was three months old and grew up there until he returned to California at age 18).

But this year, for its part, HKIFF is taking steps to right the oversight. The 40th edition of the fest is honoring Lee with screenings of restored, digital versions of four classic Bruce Lee kung fu flicks, beginning with The Big Boss, the film that brought him back to Hong Kong and launched him into superstardom.

In 1971, having grown frustrated with the side parts and choreography work he was getting in Los Angeles, Lee returned to Hong Kong on the advice of producer Fred Weintraub to make a feature film that would showcase his skills for executives in Hollywood. After signing a two-picture deal with Golden Harvest, Lee played his first leading role in director Lo Wei’s The Big Boss opposite James Tien, already a big star in Hong Kong.

Lee’s charisma and fighting style made the film a phenomenon, and it soon became the highest-grossing picture in Hong Kong history, not to be surpassed until the release of Lee’s second Golden Harvest vehicle, Fist of Fury (1972).

The global success of these movies had the intended effect: in 1972, Warner Brothers offered Lee the lead role in Enter the Dragon, the first Chinese film to be produced by a major Hollywood studio. Tragically, this artistic and entertainment industry milestone would be Lee’s last onscreen appearance before his mysterious and untimely death on July 20, 1973, at the age of 32.

Finally. Took them long enough.

[Jimbo]

Finally. Took them long enough.

Gene, I suspect that it may have to do with the city of HK possibly being ashamed that the most famous person from HK was a MAist. In my observation, if BL had been a famous pianist, violinist, conductor, business mogul, etc., he most likely would have been recognized decades ago. "Kung Fu" or MA is probably considered too coarse or lowly a pursuit to receive a high honor by HK's bureaucrats.

[GeneChing]

Still all about the Assassin...

Asian Film Awards: 'The Assassin' Dominates with Eight Awards
7:30 PM PDT 3/17/2016 by Karen Chu


'The Assassin'
Courtesy of Wild Bunch

The Hou Hsiao-hsien-directed film won the biggest prizes including best film, best director, best actress for Shu Qi and best supporting actress for Zhou Yun.

Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin dominated the 10th Asian Film Awards on Thursday, winning eight out of 15 categories.

The period thriller took top honors for film, director, actress (Shu Qi), supporting actress (Zhou Yun), cinematography, original music, production design and sound.

Hou was not at the award ceremony to accept the accolades in person; the best film and director awards were accepted by cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing on the helmer's behalf.

South Korea's Lee Byung-hun was named best actor for his role of a political henchman in Inside Men, while Japan's Asano Tadanobu took home the best supporting actor prize for his work in Journey to the Shore.

The best newcomer award went to Jessie Li of Port of Call, the Hong Kong film that also earned best editing honors.

The Asian Film Awards, held at the Venetian Macao in Macau, gave out two lifetime achievement awards: one to Japan veteran actress Kiki Kirin (Chronicles of My Mother, An) and another to Hong Kong master of action choreography Yuen Woo-ping (The Matrix Trilogy, The Grandmaster).

Full list of winners:

Best film: The Assassin
Best director: Hou Hsiao-hsien, The Assassin
Best actor: Lee Byung-hun, Inside Men
Best actress: Shu Qi, The Assassin
Best supporting actor: Asano Tadanobu, Journey to the Shore
Best supporting actress: Zhou Yun, The Assassin
Best newcomer: Jessie Li, Port of Call
Best screenplay: Jia Zhangke, Mountains May Depart
Best editing: Port of Call
Best cinematography: The Assassin
Best original music: The Assassin
Best costume design: The Throne
Best production design: The Assassin
Best visual effects: Bajirao Mastani
Best sound: The Assassin