Asian · Music & Musicals · Reviews
If “Asian face” isn’t bad enough, how about names like Nanki-Poo and Yum Yum? Mike Leigh’s 1999 film Topsy-Turvy reenacts Gilbert and Sullivan’s staging of The Mikado, the 1885 comic[…]
Activist & Political · Asian · Reviews
An acclaimed auteur’s new film gets caught in the cultural crossfire. Author’s Statement In February this year I traveled to India to work as a camera assistant on the film[…]
The cruelty and clarity of life in a sand pit in Japan, circa 1964 Revisiting past pleasures – long-past pleasures in this case – has its particular perils. In the[…]
The great director’s legendary version of Chushingura is finally available in a sparkling DVD transfer Genroku Chushingura, also known as The Forty-Seven Ronin of the Genroku Era, or in the[…]
The roots of artistry are often sought in autobiography, and for filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi, this seems an especially appropriate place to start. Mizoguchi, with Ozu and Kurosawa one of the three undisputed masters from[…]
Nobody suffers like Oharu The first time I went to see Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu, I asked a friend who was familiar with the film to come with me. Although[…]
Three of Kurosawa’s scathing critiques of Japanese society past and present – in beautiful new video transfers. Akira Kurosawa has been seen as one of the three components of a[…]
Asian · Books · Exploitation & Erotica · Horror
VideoHound’s Vampires on Video, by J. Gordon Melton (Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1997). Trade paper, $17.95, 335pp. ISBN 1-57859-002-7. Vampires continue to be an important fixture on the cultural landscape,[…]
“I refuse to fever in the lousy ballroom of Mongkok!” Hong Kong cinema is in clear disarray with the transfer to China, a star system in virtual collapse, talent dispersing[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Hong Kong’s gender-benders are the stuff of legend; director Patrick Chan adds two key works to the canon in these 1996 bookend satires of fame, pop music, and forbidden kisses.[…]
“The Blade is the director’s paean to the muscular, exposed male body and a virtual catalog of ways to assault it – pummeling, whipping, biting, beating, and hacking . . .” Tsui Hark’s[…]
“Her mechanistic thinking precludes her from pursuing the noodle vendor in the usual ways; she can only see him after she has killed, and her sudden appearances and disappearances in[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Historical & Epic · Reviews
This epic set in the 16th century deals with war, honor, courage, and yes, that homo subtext ever present in male bonding movies – punctuated by Toshiro Mifune’s bold butt-baring[…]
Jackie’s almost eclipsed by the great Michelle Khan. Watch out for that building! Supercop is the second crucial step, after Rumble in the Bronx, in the repackaging of Asian superstar Jackie Chan for American[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian · Reviews
Jackie invades America for the second time. Is America finally ready? Jackie Chan’s “newest” film, Rumble in the Bronx, is only new to U.S. audiences. This film was released in 1994[…]
