Asian · Directors · Interviews
Talking to Hirokazu Kore-eda: On Maborosi, Nobody Knows, and Other Pleasures
“I simply want to look at people as they are.”
Category: Asian
Beyond Subtitles: Some Thoughts on Viewing Foreign Language Films
It’s the visuals, stupid
Asian · DVD & Blu-ray · Reviews
Stray Man: Kurosawa’s Stray Dog on DVD
Tokyo steams, Mifune screams, Shimura beams
Asian · Crime · SF & Fantasy
Camp Carnage: Takashi Miiker’s Full Metal Yakuza
And Frankenstein begat Robocop, which begat Ken
What We Talk About When We Talk About Ho Meng-Hua
How to strike at the heart of a beast with the heart of a beast
From Joy Luck to Better Luck: The title is a little too accurate
The title is a little too accurate
Asian · Essays · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
The Japanese Pink Film: Tandem, The Bedroom, and The Dream of Garuda on DVD
All jargon and no authenticity? Of the vast numbers of corporate-made genre films that flooded Japanin the 1970s, Donald Richie once remarked that the “West knows nothing of these pictures,[…]
Asian · Essays · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Better Beauty Through Technology: Chinese Transnational Feminism and the Cinema of Suffering
Feminism adrift in a sea of ogling orientalism, global capitalism, and fatalist aesthetics INTRODUCTION Chinese Women’s Issues Under the Polar Aesthetics of Female Suffering and Mulan-ism Since the 1919 May[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Beautiful Mystery and I Like You . . . I Like You Very Much on DVD
The DVDs of these two rare gay pink films could use some extras and better source prints, but at least they’re here! Sluggishly but steadily, one segment of once-inaccessible Asian[…]
Asian · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Art Film Hidden Inside the Chop-Socky Flick
Ang Lee: third-wave feminist? The reviews of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon have been positive – but the critics, somehow, seem more impressed by the trimmings than the turkey.[…]
Asian · Directors · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji: Uchida Tomu’s Conflicted Comeback from Manchuria (1955)
Resurrection and renewal in postwar Japanese cinema, as seen through Tomu’s 1955 masterpiece Following Japan’s surrender in World War II, the colonial tables were turned. The Chinese took control of[…]
The 2001 San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival
Gangbangers, sex robots, and babydykes, oh my! Now in its 19th year, the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) has become an increasingly plush and rather important venue for[…]
Asian · Historical & Epic · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Gohatto, or, the End of Oshima Nagisa?
Truly subversive or mere cinematic “seasoning,” in the director’s own phrase? I am the first to admit that Oshima Nagisa’s Gohatto (1999, more literally “Against the Law,” but titillatingly translated[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
The Boys of Bollywood: Kaizad Gustad’s Bombay Boys
These boys mix it up, sort of, in India’s first gay indie Writer-director Kaizad Gustad’s Bombay Boys (1998) is, of course, not the first Indian film to deal “seriously” with[…]
A Brief Historical Tour of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). Based on research by Sek Kei. Edited, with additional material, by Rolanda Chu and Grant Foerster[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Swordsman II and The East Is Red: The “Hong Kong Film,” Entertainment, and Gender
Two HK classics blur – make that erase – gender boundaries with thrilling results Films from Hong Kong have emerged to mainstream non–Chinese-speaking film audiences in the United States. Last[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Interviews
An Evening with Jackie Chan: Interview and Profile
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * Jackie spills his guts – verbally, this time I first met Jackie Chan in 1980,[…]
A Better Tomorrow? American Masochism and Hong Kong Action Films
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * Among their thrills, Woo’s homoerotic bullet ballets offered welcome distraction from 1997’s doomsday[…]
Asian · Directors · Interviews
Interview with John Woo
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * Hong Kong’s master of balletic blood ‘n bulletplay speaks John Woo, one of[…]
Asian · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Beautiful Beast: Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
A 19-year-old newcomer and a middle-aged veteran steal the show from two legends of Hong Kong cinema Director Ang Lee would not be an obvious first choice to direct a[…]
Links + BSA
