Ozu’s Good Morning on DVD
Schoolboys on strike, farting contests, and a mysteriously acquired washer make up the world of this Japanese classic Of the three great directors of classical Japanese cinema, Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) remains[…]
Category: Asian
Achievement and Crisis: Hong Kong Cinema in the ’80s
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * A comprehensive look at a seminal decade in one of the world’s great[…]
Alive and Kicking: The Kung Fu Film Is a Legend
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * HK’s martial arts film stylishly bridge time, space, and now cultures More popularly[…]
Masterpieces of Japanese Silent Cinema on DVD-ROM
Japanese silent films are no longer silent in this fabulous – and expensive – DVD-ROM Western interest in Japanese film falls mainly into three realms: the Godzilla movies and their endless cheesy[…]
Three Early Kurosawas: Drunken Angel, Scandal, I Live in Fear
Tubercular yakuza, scandalous artists, and postwar paranoids duke it out with the world For a variety of reasons, Western audiences have enshrined Kurosawa as the preferred director of Japan’s golden[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
When Worlds Collide: Damien O’Donnell’s East Is East (1999)
Stereotypes and social critique spar in this culture-clash dramedy East Is East, based on Ayub Khan-Din’s play and directed by Damien O’Donnell, is a huge hit in England but has[…]
Asian · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Dis-Orientation: Japan from a Western Viewpoint: Topsy Turvy and The Mikado
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
The Politics of Deepa Mehta’s Water
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[…]
Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964) on DVD
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[…]
Tragic Poignancy: Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Loyal 47 Ronin
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 Spirit Moves: The World of Kenji Mizoguchi
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[…]
Brought Low by Life: Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu
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[…]
Kurosawa on Video: Stray Dog, The Bad Sleep Well, The Lower Depths
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
Book Reviews: Video Premieres, Vampires on Video, Jackie Chan, Immoral Tales, Filmmaking on the Fringe, Horror and Science Fiction Films
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,[…]
Hong Kong Films, 1997: Enjoy Yourself To-Night, Final Justice, Midnight Zone, Once Upon a Time in China and America
“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
Bending the Gender Till It Breaks: Hong Kong’s Who’s the Man? Series
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.[…]
Tsui Hark’s The Blade (1995)
“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[…]
Patrick Leung’s Beyond Hypothermia (1996)
“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
“Richer Films . . .” Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954)
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[…]
Supercop (1992): Letting Jackie Be Jackie
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[…]
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