April 30th, 2008
Back for more
Hey, I went to Italy. Yotsuba went too.
I took more pictures of this toy than I did of myself.
Back from the Far East Film Festival, and already my calendar is jam-packed. Aside from a pile of stuff at work, some social obligations, many loads of laundry, and the potential time-sink of Grand Theft Auto 4, I now have a review backlog totaling 20 MOVIES. That’s 20 films that I could potentially write about, starting with the HK independent movie The Way We Are all the way through Johnnie To’s Sparrow. In between are movies from Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and even more Hong Kong. I better get started writing. Right now.
Sadly, I’ll likely write about only 10 of the 20 movies, and leave the others to never, as I’m not sure what my memory capacity is. I didn’t take many notes, and am relying mostly on festival catalogs to refresh my memory. If I find that my impressions of any of the films have faded too far, I’ll have to throw those to the wind. Hopefully Sparrow won’t be one of them.
“LoveHKFilm.com can’t remember my movie?
Yay! That’s one less negative review!”
In any case, this is the other stuff I will do over the next two weeks.
- See Happy Funeral, Barbara Wong’s sequel to Truth or Dare: 6th Floor Rear Flat
- See My Wife is a Gambling Maestro, the new Wong Jing-Nick Cheung epic
- Skip The Forbidden Kingdom, because it’s leaving Hong Kong in a hurry and I know it’ll be on video damn quick. With English subtitles.
- See Besieged City, the Lawrence Lau-directed film that I missed at HKIFF because I was sick.
- Get a haircut.
- Go on a diet to shed some of the 50 pounds of cheese and ham I ingested in Italy.
- Look at the possibility of two more LoveHKFilm Blogs.
- Get coffee with a friend who I put off getting coffee with for over one month.
- Solve one of those pesky content sharing deals I seem to get roped into all the time
- Arrange for the LoveHKFilm Awards Jury Dinner. Hot pot is a possibility.
- Sleep. Maybe.
- Write a review and update this blog.
I may publish a few photos from my trip to Italy, though I must warn people that they’re not very Asian-film related. At the very least, I took this one:
Man, those are some huge lips.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:28 am
Well, I’ll take those hints as a sign that The Sparrow was good. I will wait for a review too.
Any celebrity sightings? Like celebrities that are actually worth semi-fawning over/gawking at?
And you did not mention the fact that Carina Lau has apparently confirmed a wedding later in the year? Isn’t this like the third time she’s said the marriage to Tony was imminent?
April 30th, 2008 at 6:23 am
Yay, you’re back. Waiting to hear about your time at the festival and in Udine in general. Did you travel outside Udine also?
I’ve often wondered how you remember details from movies when you watch a lot of them at festivals and such. When the count goes up rather quickly to 20 (or even 10), recalling the exact feeling you walked out with from each movie itself seems hard, let alone remembering the specifics. You must have a remarkable memory.
April 30th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Now I’m really disappointed — I swear to God I had that Shu Qi poster right in front of the house I was living in in Taipei. Even took a photo of it and meant to upload it to the Lovehkfilm Facebook group. Now it’s too late — damn you Kozo
April 30th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Welcome back Kozo! I’m eager to read whatever review you end up writing. It sure will be better than a lot of the stuff out there
Glenn this time it is true (one hint is that Tony admitted it himself more than once)
April 30th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Kozo, you should have stuck your head in Shu Qi’s lips and taken a picture.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:04 am
Maybe you don’t need to write full 800 word reviews for every film - why not just leave some short comments on your blog for the ones you don’t want to spend so much effort with? Well, I guess you had the idea yourself already. But tell us about the Tactical Unit installment, please…
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Yes, we want to heard all about those celebrities whose eyes you met across a crowded room.
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:13 am
I have at least one photo with a celebrity, plus a few of celebrities that don’t feature me. I’ll post a couple next time. Reviews are going slow. 3 down, 18 to go. I’m ticking them off like items on a checklist. Started Sparrow, finished Tactical Unit, working on The Way We Are. Must catch Beseiged City, saw Happy Funeral, may skip My Wife is a Gambling Maestro. No time for Grand Theft Auto IV. Need to catch up on sleep. It’s been quite a week.
The Shu Qi display was too big for me to get close to. Had I been with a friend of mine, I’m sure he could have thought of much worse things to do near that display than just stick his head in her lips. I left that friend back in Hong Kong.
I also have not heard of the Tony-Carina union. Hopefully it’ll happen this time and Tony will be a happier man. If that happens, however, I’m sure Wong Jing will look for a new regular melancholy lead. After his participation in Blood Brothers, I nominate Chang Chen.
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I hope Tony-Carina is for real this time. Wonder what took so long. Maybe because Wong Kar-wai probably promised to direct the wedding video.
December 31st, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Are Shu Qi’s lips original?