Note: This blog expresses only the opinions of the blog owner, and does not represent the opinion of any organization or blog that is associated with The Golden Rock.
This type of irregular schedule of posting will probably continue until next Monday, but I’ll try to deliver as much as I can each time i post.
- I read a column on Ming Pao yesterday (that I’m not going to translate) and contributes to Spiderman 3’s current success in Asia to a weak market. Well, how can you have any type of market when Spiderman 3 is taking up 102 screens in Hong Kong? The usual Hollywood blockbusters opens on 50 screens at most. That’s probably why Spiderman managed a huge HK$2.35 million on Thursday’s opening day (technically it’s opening day for all films, but the only major release this week opened on Tuesday), which is a lot less than the record-breaking HK$7 million it made on Tuesday’s public holiday (the previous holder for opening day was Kung Fu Hustle with over HK$4.5 million), but still very huge. After 3 days, Spiderman 3 has already made HK$12.68 million, and expect it to pass the HK$25 million mark by the end of the weekend.
The films from 3rd place all the way down to the 10th all made under HK$50,000 on Thursday. That’s so sad I’m not even going to analyze it.
- Reporting this a little late here, but ratings for Japanese dramas was dealt with another blow last week as ratings continue to plummet overall. Sunday prime time drama Joudan janai drops further to a 13.2 rating, while second place Proposal Daisakusen drops only by 2.2 % in its second week for a 17.1 rating, which makes it now the number 1 drama this season. Kenichi Matsuyama’s Sexy Voice and Robo drops to a desparate 6.9 rating its third week. In fact, Proposal Daisakusen is the only drama that cracked the 15.0 rating, and no drama this season has cracked the 20 rating line, a line that 3 dramas crossed last season. Sad state of affairs, indeed.
- After the complaints received because of Hong Kong broadcaster TVB’s uncensored broadcast of the classic film An Autumn’s Tale, TVB is looking to get in trouble again, this time because of a protester’s foul mouth during a live broadcast.
- Korea Pop Wars has a story on how the Korean distributor of John Cameron Mitchell’s sexually explicit film Shortbus found a way to get around the Korean film board to get a general release.
- Anyone in Los Angeles heads up: The Visual Communications Film Festival is happening now, and it includes a screening of John Woo’s Hard Boiled, the Japanese film What the Snow Brings, and Korean blockbuster King and the Clown, among many more.
- Jason Gray has a few more tidbits, including the first photos of Yoji Yamada’s latest film, and Asian film- destroy…er, I mean remaker Roy Lee’s decision to scrap a remake of Battle Royale.
- Why, oh, why do they bother? First it’s Sin City, then it’s 300, and now, the latest Frank Miller graphic novel (a glorified way to say comics) ready for adaptation is “Ronin,” about mutants, thugs, and a ronin duking it out in modern New York for a sword, or something like that. And the directors’ pedigree continues to slip too - first it’s Robert Rodridguez, then Zack Synder (in all fairness, I surprisingly liked Dawn of the Dead), and now it’s the director of “Stomp the Yard.”
- Speaking of “why do they bother,” the trailer for Rush Hour 3 is up, and it just looks like a sillier version of Kiss of the Dragon with an annoying-as-usual Chris Tucker. Even Jackie Chan once said he was baffled at the success of Rush Hour.
- Hong Kong gets film development council to figure out what to do with the US$38 million film fund - good. Council then establishes four other committees to figure out more stuff in more detail - bad. This fund is in serious danger of being held up by bureaucracy.
- At least the man has the good sense to finally announce that he’s retiring in next 5 years. I wonder if that’s just action films, or all filmmaking, period.
- Continuing on “why do they bother” news, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh will be in auteur of crap Rob Cohen’s latest film “The Mummy 3.” Apparently they signed on a young actor named Luke Ford in order to have him carry the franchise. Just read the plot description for yourself.
- In more screen development news, the big discovery in 2007 for Japanese music is the song “Sen No Kaze ni natte” sung by tenor Misafumi Akikawa, based on the poem, “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep.” The supposed history of how this song came about is that a Japanese author read the anonymous poem at Ground Zero in New York, translated it into Japanese, and wrote a song out of it. The song was sung at the annual Kohaku Singing Contest on New Year’s Eve this past year, and the single has now sold 920,000 copies to date. Anyway, I’m mentioning this song because Japan’s fascination with the song–>screen process is kicking in again, with a mini-series based on the song to be shown on TV in August.
With the pending issue solved, looks like I do have some time for a bit of news.
- As reported yesterday, Babel opened at 3rd place over the weekend in Japan. The numbers are out, and despite the 3rd place opening, the grosses are actually quite high. While Eiga Consultant reports the opening is only 94% of The Departed (1.6 billion yen total) and 55% of Letters From Iwo Jima (5.5 billion yen total), it’s probably more fair to compare to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s previous outing 21 Grams. Babel opened with roughly 272 million yen on 353 screens, while 21 Grams opened back in June 2004 with 49 million yen on 158 screens, which is only 18% of Babel’s opening. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty good to me.
- The largest Japanese girl pop group of all time Morning Musume is also now the best-selling Japanese girl pop group of all time. They’ve hit a slump lately with sales, but the fact that they’ve managed to hit this mark must mean that they were HUGE way back when (obviously, I’m not a fan).
- The blame game continues between China and the United States over piracy. Now a Chinese organization is saying that piracy in China is because Hollywood isn’t doing enough to spread legal versions of films in the country. Hmm, what about its stringent censorship laws?
This feature came to mind when I was thinking about the screening I attended for After This Our Exile at the San Francisco Film Festival. For those not in the know, After This Our Exile tells the story of how a family breaks down due to the actions of an irresponsible father, played by Aaron Kwok, who may be the worst father in Asian cinema since Takeshi Kitano’s character in Blood and Bones. A majority of the audience was non-Asian (or the couple of Asian people I heard talking seemed to sound quite Americanized), and they were just thoroughly shocked at what this guy is capable of. They gasp whenever he hits the kid, when he takes out a knife threatening to cut his fingers off, they even gasp sometimes when he says something bad to the kid. This blogger even calls it a “grueling film to watch.”
But for me, I felt it was actually one of the more gripping Hong Kong dramas in recent years because of the route it takes. Amongst the artsy fartsy Asian dramas coming out these days, I thought After This Our Exile is great in how it finds that balance between entertainment and art. So what’s so grueling about it?
For Asian audiences, one of the bigger surprises was probably how director Patrick Tam transformed this guy:
into this wreck of a man:
Kwok’s character of the father drives the actions of the film - from his wife abandoning her family to his new environment to his son’s final predicament. He is essentially the central character, and of course, he’s the one that’s most hated and feared by the audience. This in itself is already a problem - you have three characters: a mother who abandons her son to live the good life, a father that gambles too much and can’t take care of his own family, and a kid that should probably have known better. By default, the audience probably side with the kid because he’s too young to know better. In Western parenting, a parent ought to be supportive of the kids. Any type of abuse on a child is frowned upon, period. Of course, these basic values are universal, but - and I’m trying to not make a blanket statement about my own race here - there are some exceptions to the rule in the world of Asian parenting.
The biggest form of abuse by the father in the film is verbal abuse - the father yelling at the son whenever he pisses him off, calling the kid “stupid” and many other variations of it. The truth is, kids are raised that way all the time. There’s a familiarity in the way the father acts towards his son because to a far lesser extent, even I got this type of verbal attacks all the time. In Cantonese, a rather popular phrase parents say to the slacker kids is “giving birth to a BBQ pork would be better than giving birth to you.” I know, it seems a lot worse translated, doesn’t it? In fact, almost all the verbal abuse the father throws at the kid seems extremely harsh in English, but they are all familiar insults if you’ve ever grown up under Cantonese-speaking parents who’s lived the hard life.
As for the physical abuse, even the kid gets tired of it and yells back. Was he really getting hurt? Probably, but not as bad as the beating he gets by someone else that’s not his father towards the end of the film. I’m not saying it’s OK to beat a child, but to an Asian audience, smacking the kid upside the head isn’t really anything new in their lives.
What the film shows is an extreme case of such impatient parenting - a way of parenting that hopes to use the idea of conditioning to teach a child how to live. Let the kid make the mistakes, then they’d learn not to do it again to avoid negative punishment. Am I saying it’s the best way for parenting? No. Having been raised on a far lesser version of that, would I call it a traumatic way to raise a child? I would say no to that as well.
My point is this: An Asian audience (and I’m not saying this as a race thing, but as a regional thing) would have an easier time sitting through this film because the abuse shown doesn’t have a real impact on them. To them, the kid isn’t even getting beaten all that badly, or the stuff his father is saying isn’t really as nasty as it could’ve been. In fact, an Asian audience may even find the abuse a little too exaggerated to be taken seriously(Give credit to Kwok to take on such a role, but I thought he was overacting a little bit myself). However, they would still be able to find the film emotionally charged because the father really does some terrible things, but they are much more from his actions towards the end of the film that lead to their final predicaments rather than from the abuse.
But in the West, where child abuse is such a taboo subject on the screen, audiences might be shocked simply at what they’re watching (one person at the Q&A asks whether the kid suffered any psychological trauma from being in the film) right from the get go. And if they can’t get past that, how can they handle the father’s further shenanigans at the end? After This Our Exile is not a film to be taken lightly, that much is true. But is it grueling and hard to watch? That really depends on where you’re from.
After a small break yesterday, it’s time to catch up - in a big way.
- As always, let’s start with box office reports. Japan had the beginning of its Golden Week holiday this past weekend (Tuesday and Wednesday are technically business days, but people take them off anyway), so obviously numbers are gonna be pretty huge. However, Box Office Mojo doesn’t have their charts updated yet, so I’m relying on audience ranking for now. The big battle for this Golden Week weekend is the highly anticipated-Babel (due to the Academy Award nominated performance of Rinko Kikuchi) and the classic cartoon adaptation “Gegege Kitaro.” And the winner is…..neither. Conan the child detective film won the weekend at number 1, while “Gegege” does win the duel at number 2, and Babel still manages a number 3 opening. All the other top 10 movies stayed pretty close to their rankings last week, but expect Spiderman 3, which already opened today Japan time, to come and wipe them all out this coming weekend. Hell, its first day already attracted 400,000 people, which far surpassed the opening days of the last two films (248,000 for the first film, 301,000 for the second film). That’s OK, Babel was never meant to be a crowd-pleasing hit anyway.
- Speaking of Babel, after the negative press it got earlier in the year when the deaf community in Japan rightfully complained the lack of Japanese subtitles made the film hard to understand for them, the film is under fire again for making people sick. In one theater in Nagoya (funny how the press is only covering one of the some-300 screens it’s playing at), several moviegoers complained of feeling sick during the club scene, which features strobe lights. I rewatched the film recently, and having seen it on the big screen, I can see why that scene would be a problem, especially for those sensitive to such effects. But when I got uncomfortable, I just turned away for a second, which I think any sensible person would do….right?
Of course, it’s funny to see how comments on various Japan blogs that carry the story would go off-topic and take the opportunity to blast the film.
- Another weak weekend at the South Korean box office, as Paradise Murdered rules again. My Tutor Friend 2 (which I hear has nothing to do with My Tutor Friend 1, which I wished I enjoyed more, but didn’t) is a flop.
- I had thought that Election 2 (renamed Triad Election in the United States) would not do very well, even in a cinephile city like New York. But look - at 71st place, it actually made a very impressive $10,811 on just one screen! I wonder if the theater is counting Election and Election 2 as one film, and since the two films require separate admission, it just happened that people stuck around for both films, thus inflating the gross? Who cares, the numbers look good either way.
- The Tarantino/Rodridguez flop Grindhouse was originally going to be released as a double feature in many European regions (apparently, Asia doesn’t “get” the idea of double features.). Looks like the Weinsteins are changing their tune now.
- Someone correct me if I get this wrong, but looks like both the big Japanese comedies expected this summer - Takeshi Kitano’s “Kantoku Banzai” and Hitoshi Matsumoto’s “Dai Nipponjin” - are both going to Cannes. “Kantoku” was previously reported to be in competition, and “Dai Nipponjin” had just been invited into the Director’s Week lineup. According to the report, Matsumoto was not intending to join the Cannes lineup, but seems to be changing his mind now.
- Twitch reports 2 upcoming DVD releases - the region 1 DVD for Katsuhito Ishii’s A Taste of Tea, which I marked down as a film I should have saw when I was in Japan, but just couldn’t get the motivation to rent the damn thing (or was it because the rental DVD didn’t have English subtitles?) on July 3rd, and Danny Pang’s Forest of Death (LoveHKFilm review) on May 10th.
- The Udine Far East Film Festival wrapped up on Saturday, and the Korean film No Mercy For the Rude won the audience prize, with After This, Our Exile at 2nd place and Memories of Matsuko at 3rd.
- With that, Variety Asia also covers the Udine Far East Festival as part of a trend that’s seeing Asian films penetrating into the mainstream market in Europe.
- File this under “idiotic Asian pop decisions”: The huge Taiwanese boy pop group F4 (the F stands for Flower), which got its name from their drama Meteor Garden, which was based on the Japanese comic Hana Yori Dango anyway (still following me?), is now changing their name to…..you ready for this? JVKV. The new name is comprised of the first letters of the members’ respective names - Jerry, Vic, Ken, and Vanness (which is a name I’ll never take seriously, seeing how we have a Van Ness Ave. in San Francisco). Just because I filed this under humor, don’t think that I made it up. I totally didn’t.
- And file this one under “bad gimmicks”: The second trailer for Takeshi Miike’s so-called “Sukiyaki Western” film “Django” is on the website (I suggest watching the Windows Media Player version), and it honestly looks pretty bad. The trailer itself is ridden with horrible English narration (I swear it sounds like it comes from a mock Grindhouse trailer), and the trailer shows that the film is actually completely in English (The problem lies in that the film has an all-Japanese cast). Yikes.
- Professor David Bordwell and Dr. Kristin Thompson go to Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival (which apparently will be renamed Ebertfest next year), where Ebert himself made an appearance, despite his recent condition. Oh, and they watch a couple of movies too.
- Daniel Wu and the alive boys really DID show up at the San Francisco International Film Festival. And SF360 has an interview with them that the Hong Kong media might have a field day with.
An interesting thing to note - there were quite a few Chinese people at the After This, Our Exile screening on Sunday, but at 22, I think I was the youngest person in the entire screening. As I was leaving, the line for The Heavenly Kings rush tickets, which was to be shown in about half an hour after that, was forming. Instead of the mature crowd that was at my screening, the people in line were much younger in comparison. I could see it already: screaming ABC girls as Daniel Wu comes out to introduce the film. That wouldn’t have been very pleasant. Who knows, there’s still one more chance to see the Alive boys….nah, probably not.
Instead of the song of the day, there will be a feature coming up.
The following is a compilation of the most notable news covered by The Golden Rock from April 23rd to April 29th.
- Everyone is picking on poor China. After the United States filed a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization over China’s rampant piracy of Hollywood films, Japan is now planning to file their own complaint against China as well. Oh, and sources say the EU is planning to do the same. Talk about the dirty Capitalists ganging up on the poor giant Communist.
- In true Japan fashion, while they blame the Chinese for not doing enough, the Japanese also have to praise themselves for cracking down piracy the right way. Oh, and they’re blaming foreigners for that too! I wonder if those Japanese street vendors at Osaka’s Electronic Street are still working the streets as if nothing is happening….
- British Airway wants to provide the latest hit movies for their passengers, but it doesn’t want to do it if a rival airline and its chairman show up in it. In a petty immature fashion, BA decided to cut out Virgin Atlantic chairman Richard Branson’s cameo in the latest James Bond film Casino Royale. They also blurred out the appearance of a Virgin Atlantic plane in the film. Oh, behave!
- Some sad news to report in the Asian cinema blogsphere. Hoga News, run by Michi Kaifu, will no longer be updated. Hoga News has been a great source for news even before this blog started, especially for someone who can only understand maybe about half the Japanese cinema news stories out there. Michi has been there to put things into perspective (and not to mention English), and Hoga News’ presence on the Japanese news front will be missed by all. Hopefully, my Japanese is still good enough to read Eiga Consultant’s entries, whose links I originally got from Hoga news. Best of luck to you, Michi!
- Hey, America, you ain’t so bad, with your formal complaints and shit. We Chinese already have pirated copies of your most anticipated movies a week and a half before anyone else is supposed to see it. Of course, it’s probably a scam set to cash in on the hype cheating the poor bastards who think they lucked out, but still, how about them apples?
Sony has confirmed that cheap suckers have been scammed by those amateur entrepreneurs. That’s right, the poor bastards who thought they got a chance to watch Spiderman 3 before everyone else in the comforts of their own home spent their hard-earned renminbi for just another copy of Spiderman 2 packaged as Spiderman 3. Ha-ha!
- In something that comes as absolutely no surprise, Hollywood has come out saying that they are backing the United States government’s complaint against China for intellectual copyright. In fact, they’re even threatening a ban, which means it might just rescue China from crappy Hollywood films, only to be replaced by more happy Chinese blockbusters promoting messages of peace and communism.
However, Silicon Hutong suggests that Hollywood might be bluffing because it probably needs China more than China needs them.
- The Asian media is not quite happy about how they are always in the shadow of Western media. They complain about how Western media only represents 1/7 of the world’s population, yet they control 2/3 of the world’s media, blah blah blah. Well, guess what, this report is right: Asian media does kind of suck. When they decide to stop sensationalist, inaccurate, and xenophobic reporting, then maybe someone will pay attention to you.
- Remember, Johnnie To’s Election and Election 2 is currently under a 2-week run at New York’s Film Forum. They even decided to add one more showing of Election starting tomorrow, Friday the 27th! Greencine has a round-up of reviews around the net, which seems to be generally positive, even though no one seems to be picking up the political implication in especially Election 2.
- After being on every Asian film buff’s shit list for buying up Asian films and either cutting them or leaving them on the shelf (in most cases, both), the Weinsteins now figure why do the buying and cutting when they can just make the damn things themselves? Honestly, I am almost sure no good films will come out of this deal, but I’m a pessimist by nature.
- A new Chinese film producer is making their big debut at Cannes this year, and they managed to find some big Hong Kong market players like Nansun Shi to help them out. Among the five films they’re bringing to Cannes is the latest by Tsui Hark, Ann Hui, Stanley Kwan, and Stephen Fung. Too bad all of them are “Chinese films,” not “Hong Kong films.”
Lots and lots of news today, because I’m going to be participating in this tomorrow:
- Hong Kong’s BC Magazine - THE magazine for foreigners in Hong Kong - has not only an article of Dancing Lion co-director Marco Mak, but if you scroll down, you’ll also see an interview with Ming Ming director and Hong Kong MTV legend Susie Au.
- Too bad Ming Ming is flopping in Hong Kong. According to those nasty Sunday numbers, Ming Ming only made HK$140,000 on 12 screens for a 4-day total of HK$570,000. At least Ming Ming isn’t doing as bad as Dancing Lion, which only made HK$100,000 on 19 screens on Sunday for a 4-day total of HK$350,000. As expected, Love is Not All Around (Which Lovehkfilm’s Kozo is already calling one of the worst of the year) rules the weekend again with HK$660,000 on 38 screens for a 11-day total of HK9.36 million, which can only suggest that the HK teen audience is only as shallow as Hollywood’s teen audience.
Meanwhile, Spider Lilies, which Kozo also reviewed this week, is beginning to die down a little bit with only HK$80,000 on 9 screens for a 18-day total of HK$3.01 million, which is pretty good for a limited-release Taiwanese film. The Painted Veil actually shows some staying power with HK$100,000 on 5 screens for a 11-day total of HK$910,000. This week’s best limited release goes to opener Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, which made HK$70,000 on just 2 screens for a 4-day total of HK$180,000.
For reference: US$1=HK$7.8
- In my attempt to do what Hoga News did with its translation of Japanese news site Sanspo, the new adaptation of the classic cartoon Gegege No Kitaro opened on Saturday just in time for Golden Week in Japan. Shochiku, not embarrassed enough from their miscalculation of Tokyo Tower’s box office, saw opening day’s audience number was 150% of the opening day for Takeshi Miike’s The Great Yokai War, which made 2 billion yen. So they decided to declare that Gegege is going to make 3 billion yen. Should I buy into that estimate? I think not…
- In other Japanese box office news, the trend of small animated films making it big continues with the 9-screen opening last weekend of the “Dengeki Bunko Movie Festival.” According to Eiga Consultant, the Tokyo theater it played in found 4155 people over its opening 2 days. That’s 415.5 people per show, which is pretty good, considering the biggest screen on the multiplex holds 426 people. On 9 screens, the film opened with a 15.82 million yen, which seems to be encouraging the distributor to expand it all that much more.
On the other hand, Eiga Consultant also looks at the first wide weekend of Rocky Balboa last weekend. While the film opened to around the same numbers as Sylvester Stallone’s last starring role in Driven in North America, it ended up making more than double Driven’s final gross. On the other hand, Rocky Balboa only opened in Japan at 58% of Driven, which grossed 1.6 billion yen. Can Rocky stay a few more rounds in Japan, or will it always remain the film that “only almost beat Driven?”
- A while ago, I reported Korean star Lee Byung-Hun putting a cameo in Kimura Takuya’s latest film, the film adaptation of the drama Hero. Now, see the man on the set for yourself.
- The 43rd Baeksang Film Awards in Korea happened last week, and if an award can make it to its 43rd installment, it’s gotta be pretty respectable, right? Twitch has the results.
- New news source Filmphilia has details about personal favorite Edmond Pang’s latest film Exodus, which sounds like a dark comedy in the vein of Men Suddenly in Black. But his next film, which he recently got funding for at Filmart, sounds even better.
- Apparently, Quentin Tarantino is going to be bringing more of his “Grindhouse” installment Death Proof to Cannes - 30 minutes more???!!!! As if Tarantino didn’t have enough self-indulgent show-off dialog already, he actually managed to find more to put more into what is essentially a self-masturbatory short film with no plot and a kick-ass car chase. With that said, I still would like to check it out.
Next, best of the week, and look for a revised report of the my SFIFF experience. By the way, because of the feature, there’s no song of the day today.
Roger Garcia and Patrick Tam at the after-screening Q&A, where I actually asked a question. For those at the Q&A, I was the kid that asked about Aaron Kwok shedding his pop star image, to which Tam actually called Aaron Kwok a very smart man.
I apologize for the bad quality of the pictures, which is partially due to the low lighting and not enough time to mess with the camera setting. With the sign strictly prohibiting photography, I wasn’t sure if I should attempt taking a picture, but when several audience member took pictures of Tam himself (with flash, no less!), I decided to give it a try as well.
Anyway, this is my first viewing of After This, Our Exile on the big screen and with an audience. I was a little hesitant because of the length of the director’s cut (160 minutes!) and a possibly unappreciative audience (i.e. those who don’t know HK cinema), but I’m very glad I decided to sit through the film again. As far as I can remember, there aren’t any huge changes from the theatrical cut to the director’s cut. The extra 40 minutes of footage is spread out pretty evenly throughout the film, and some were cut probably not for length, but for language. There were at least three scenes where the “forbidden” Cantonese swear words were used, which would’ve landed the film in category III territory (no one under 18 admitted). Some of the notable changes, not in order, include (and I can’t be sure all of these were new scenes, nor can I guarantee these are all the changes):
SPOILER WARNING:
Aaron Kwok’s character having to break the lock he used to lock in his wife, played by Charlie Yeung, along with him swearing.
We realize Aaron’s character isn’t much of a cook.
The man that Charlie Yeung’s character is seeing is actually a much cleaner-looking and a suit-wearing Aaron Kwok. Yup, the mother is attracted to a version of her husband that can offer her the opposite of what she’s going through.
An extension of the scene in which Aaron is threatened by loan sharks. He goes back into the kitchen and gets into an heated argument with his co-worker, which probably led to his firing.
The entire sequence where Aaron’s character plays pimp to his prostitute girlfriend, played by Kelly Lin. Turns out the customer is an 80-year-old man on vacation, and Aaron’s character says he needs the money to send Kelly Lin’s character to study abroad.
Before Aaron Kwok’s character decides to abandon Boy for England, they have one last dinner together, where Aaron serves his son beer.
Boy beginning to realize why his mother left him, the argument that ensues between him and his father, and Boy wandering away again. Also, the scene afterwards feature Aaron almost becoming a thief himself.
SPOILER END.
And obviously, there are small moments scattered here and there that I didn’t list and can’t recall right now. But I’m sure the question is: how is the director’s cut? Anyone who felt that the theatrical cut moved too slow is obviously gonna find it even slower, as the film’s methodical pacing really shows here. Anyone who felt the epilogue is too short and sudden (like me) is gonna find that the epilogue is exactly the same, except the second viewing and Tam’s explanation of the ending really helped me warm up to it. Some of the abrupt breaks in storytelling (like how the father and son decide to leave the house they live in during the first act) are still there, but the addition of the small moments really help to smooth out the story as a whole. There isn’t any significant plot point added, but it’s amazing none of the scenes added felt like filler. Every scene seems to be where they’re supposed to be (except an awkward music cue around the middle, you know which one I mean), and After This, Our Exile remains a great film. It was also interesting to hear how the audience was into it based on their reactions - ranging from disgust for the actions of Aaron Kwok’s character to nervous laughter.
Oh, anyone that wanted more of the sex scenes won’t get any - they remain the same in the director’s cut.
Random trivia about the film:
The idea came from Tam’s student, who found an article in the newspaper about a father who forces his son to break into houses to steal for him. He brought the idea to Tam, and they began to craft the screenplay from there.
The screenplay was completed in 1996, and contained 135 scenes. The final product has 77. So the theatrical cut pretty much contains only half the original story.
The English title - “After This, Our Exile,” comes from a Catholic prayer.
The music in the film was personally picked by Tam himself, and many of them played very personal roles in his life, from his favorite Malaysian pop songs to his mother’s favorite piano piece.
Other starstruck moment: I was standing only 5 feet away from Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells. I was tempted to walk up and talk to the man, but I was just standing in line. I don’t think he went to the screening though.
Of course, only a film geek like me would consider seeing Jeffrey Wells, Roger Garcia, and Patrick Tam in one day an extremely rewarding day.
Today comes another joke song. A song worthy of an album title, it’s Europe’s “The Final Countdown.”
Why? I’ve been watching reruns of the great TV comedy Arrested Development on TV, and its use of the song prompted me to use it today. It needs very little introduction and reason anyway. It’s more 80s greatness, courtesy of The Golden Rock and Youtube.
Here is one of the numerous uses in Arrested Development
- Yesterday, I wrote about the relatively weak performance of the new Kenichi Matsuyama film Shindo. Turns out Japan Times has a review for it this weekend, in case you’re curious. Sounds like an interesting character drama.
- While Hollywood is threatening to boycott China to back up the complaint by the United States government at the World Trade Organization, Silicon Hutong suggests that Hollywood might be bluffing because it probably needs China more than China needs them.
- After being on every Asian film buff’s shit list for buying up Asian films and either cutting them or leaving them on the shelf (in most cases, both), the Weinsteins now figure why do the buying and cutting when they can just make the damn things themselves? Honestly, I am almost sure no good films will come out of this deal, but I’m a pessimist by nature.
- A new Chinese film producer is making their big debut at Cannes this year, and they managed to find some big Hong Kong market players like Nansun Shi to help them out. Among the five films they’re bringing to Cannes is the latest by Tsui Hark, Ann Hui, Stanley Kwan, and Stephen Fung. Too bad all of them are “Chinese films,” not “Hong Kong films.”
- Someone in China finally fought the censors, and she won! Read about her story.
- Jeff Lau, the man responsible for the great Stephen Chow Chinese Odyssey movies and the shitty A Chinese Tall Story, is continuing Alex Fong Lik-Sun’s reign of terror by casting him in his latest film, also starring Gillian Chung of the Twins. The rest of the report is gossip, so you can just read it in Chinese here.
That’s it for today. Tomorrow - San Francisco International Film Festival for the screening of the After This Our Exile director’s cut, hopefully with Patrick Tam in attendance. Reports and more news to come then.
Today’s song is a bit of a back-up for when I can’t think of any songs to put on here. From Shunji Iwai’s brilliant film Swallowtail, and from its promotional tie-in album Montage by Yen Town Band, it’s Chara’s interpretation of the classic song “My Way.”
Why? It deviates from the traditional way of interpreting the song (the American Idol, let’s scream it like you mean it way), and it’s one of the best moments of the film.
WordPress database error: [Expression #1 of ORDER BY clause is not in GROUP BY clause and contains nonaggregated column 'webkozo_wordpress.gr_posts.post_date' which is not functionally dependent on columns in GROUP BY clause; this is incompatible with sql_mode=only_full_group_by] SELECT DISTINCT YEAR(post_date) AS `year`, MONTH(post_date) AS `month`, count(ID) as posts FROM gr_posts WHERE post_type = 'post' AND post_status = 'publish' GROUP BY YEAR(post_date), MONTH(post_date) ORDER BY post_date DESC
WordPress database error: [Expression #1 of ORDER BY clause is not in SELECT list, references column 'webkozo_wordpress.gr_posts.post_date' which is not in SELECT list; this is incompatible with DISTINCT] SELECT DISTINCT MONTH(post_date) AS month, YEAR(post_date) AS year
FROM gr_posts
WHERE post_date < '2025-03-01'
AND post_type = 'post' AND post_status = 'publish'
ORDER BY post_date DESC
LIMIT 1
WordPress database error: [Expression #1 of ORDER BY clause is not in SELECT list, references column 'webkozo_wordpress.gr_posts.post_date' which is not in SELECT list; this is incompatible with DISTINCT] SELECT DISTINCT MONTH(post_date) AS month, YEAR(post_date) AS year
FROM gr_posts
WHERE post_date > '2025-03-01'
AND MONTH( post_date ) != MONTH( '2025-03-01' )
AND post_type = 'post' AND post_status = 'publish'
ORDER BY post_date ASC
LIMIT 1
