April 14th, 2008
The Golden Rock - April 12th, 2008 Edition
Was just watching the Hong Kong Film Awards on (delayed broadcast) TV. I haven’t tallied everything because I missed over an hour of it, but I can report that The Warlords took most of the major awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Yes, Jet Li is now a bona-fide actor.), Best Director. In fact, Peter Chan was the big winner, with wins for Protege as well (including one for Andy Lau as Best Supporting Actor. Sorry, Nick Cheung). Meanwhile, it’s “time to hand the torch to the young ‘uns” night at Milkyway, with Eye in the Sky taking 2 of Milkyway’s 3 awards. Also: Love Is Not All Around: 1. Exodus: 0 More when the reports come out.
- It’s Taiwanese music charts time! Kenji Wu’s latest album spends another week at the top, while the highest ranked “new release” is Khalil Fong’s Hong Kong concert, which was released along with his debut album as well. Oh, the reason that Jordan Chan debuted all the way at 20th place is because his album was released a day before the cut-off date for the charts. Expect him to be at a much higher place next week.
- It’s also reviews time! Variety’s Dennis Harvey has an early review of The Forbidden Kingdom with Jet “Best Actor” Li and Jackie “I’m gonna be a serious actor to take that award next year” Chan. Japan Times’ Mark Schilling has a review of the kids-and-parents-friendly film Chesuto, which he wasn’t too thrilled about. From BC Magazine review Yvonne Teh are her reviews of Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh’s latest acting effort Escape From Huang Shi (Children of Huang Shi sounds better in that self-important way, though) and the Daniel Lee MTV-style epic extravaganza Three Kingdoms. The magazine also offers reviews of Sylvia Chang’s Run Papa Run by James Marsh and the Muay Thai action flick Chocolate by Brian “Asian Cinema - While On the Road” Naas.
- Just to show that some people do what I do better than I do, Ryuganji has a entry filled with useful snippets of recent Japanese cinema news.
- New Korean film producer Motion 101 is now headed for closure - before it even got started on its first project. Is the Korean film industry doing that bad, or was it just bad management?
- Takeshi Kitano has revealed his latest film Achilles and the Tortoise - another self-referential film about the making of art. Apparently, now Kitano has his own “trilogy”
- This week’s Televiews column on the Daily Yomiuri looks at new baseball drama Battery and the latest installment of the long-running drama Wataru Seken wa Oni Bakari. Oh, the writer also manage to work in a reference to Takashii Miike Cell Phone Detective, which only scored a 3.8% rating for its premiere (though it did only premiere on TV Tokyo, or is that a National network now?)
- Lastly, Jason Gray discovers another promising young filmmaker with an excellent debut feature at the Nippon Connection Film Festival in Germany.