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It’s a good day for fans of Tetsuya Nakashima, as today sees the release of both his scripted comedy Lala Pipo, directed by Masayuki Miyano, and his own highly enjoyable feature Kamikaze Girls, released in a new special edition 2-disc DVD and single disc Blu-ray boasting plenty of new features including the short film ‘Birth Of Unicorn Ryuji’, a making of featurette, interviews with cast and crew, and a music video with star Anna Tsuchiya.

Both Lala Pipo and Kamikaze Girls are available today from distributor Third Window.

The BFI continues to support Asian cinema in the UK with a special preview of Xiaolu Gu’s She, a Chinese on Wednesday 10 February, which will feature a Q&A with the director and novelist himself whose previous work includes How is Your Fish Today and A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. The film concerns an enigmatic young Chinese woman raised in a backwater, longing for a different life.

Find out more and book tickets »

Mad Detective writer/director Wai Ka-fai and lead Lau Ching-wan reunite for a sad, soppy, sloppy mess of a film… Read the rest of this article »

More good news for London-based film fans, as Asia House follows the success of their Pan-Asia Film Festival 2009 with a new monthly series at the Apollo Cinema, Piccadilly Circus. The series kicks off this Wednesday, 3 February, with Special Jury Prize Sundance Film Festival 2007 winner The Pool, followed by a director Q&A with Chris Smith. Shot in Goa and featuring incisive observations about the class divide and the mysteries of the human heart, this is a tale of a boy’s obsession with a glittering swimming pool and how it changes four lives in India.

23 March features what is described as a pre-release screening of God Man Dog (hey, isn’t that on DVD?) by acclaimed Taiwanese director Singing Chen. God Man Dog follows the emotional and literal journeys of a middle class Taipei couple, an alcoholic Taiwanese aborigine and his estranged daughter, and an amputee who drives on a truck glowing gods dispensing good fortune. Half road movie, half social-realist drama, this three-part narrative is interspersed with moments of beautiful comedy. Starring Jonathan Chang (A One and A Two).

On 27 April Asia House presents a special screening of 24 City, Jia Zhang-ke’s chronicle of the thunderous fall of a state-owned munitions factory and its conversion into a luxury high-rise apartment complex. Jia weaves the stories of three generations of factory workers into a fascinating history of post-revolutionary China. Blending documentary and fiction, interviews with workers are intercut with real and staged vignettes on life before and after 24 City.

Find out more on the screenings and book tickets »

It’s the Chinese New Year on February 14, year of the Tiger, and to celebrate the BFI are showing a short season of Chinese movies starting this Thursday. These include Xie Jin’s Two Stage Sisters from 1964, Chen Kaige’s groundbreaking Yellow Earth, featuring cinematography by Zhang Yimou, and Yimou’s own The Road Home. (Which is free, but only for seniors!)

Find out more and book tickets online from the BFI’s website »

A breathtakingly impressive directorial debut, and one of the best Asian films of 2009… Read the rest of this article »

Surely, no need to highlight that Park Chan-wook critically acclaimed Thirst gets released by Palisades Tartan on Blu-ray and DVD? Highly enjoyable, funny and intelligent, it’s everything you’d want from a post-modern vampire film but were too afraid you’d end up with Twilight, instead.

Also out today – and sharing a common theme in Catholism – is the four-hour epic Love Exposure, from writer-director Sion Sono (Exte: Hair Extensions). Highly inventive and less of an endurance test than you might expect at that length, to my mind the end result is flawed – not helped by the lack of chemistry between leads Takahiro Nishijima and the delightful Hikari Mitsushima.

We talk exclusively to Yang Ik-June about his fantastic debut feature Breathless… Read the rest of this article »

Lu Chuan’s latest film about the rape of Nanjing may be in black and white, but his characters most definitely are not… Read the rest of this article »

Dante Lam directs Nicholas Tse in a tense, extremely well-played thriller… Read the rest of this article »