Sure, okay – the latest issue of Scream from our friends over at Screen Power Group may have a cover by someone familiar looking – but it also has an unmissable extended interview with Eihi Shiina star of Takashi Miike’s J-Horror classic Audition and splatterpunk gorefest Tokyo Gore Police.
On shelves soon in Forbidden Planet, The Cinema Store and other specialist magazine retailers…
Having got their Year of the 12 Directors event off to a flying start with Lee Myung-se, the Korean Cultural Centre UK continue with the work E J-yong (Lee Je-yong), beginning with his debut An Affair (1998) this Thursday, 2 February.
The season continues with Dasepo Naughty Girls (2006) on 9 February, Untold Scandal (2003) based on the same French novel on which Dangerous Liaisons was based on 16 February. All screenings will take place at the Korean Cultural Centre UK, near Trafalgar Square, London. Admission is free but must be booked via the a title=”KCCUK Film Night page” href=”http://london.korean-culture.org/navigator.do?menuCode=201104050063″ target=”_blank”>KCCUK website.
The months events culminate in a screening of E J-yong’s last film Actresses (2009), followed by a Q&A with the director himself, at the Apollo Cinema, off Piccadilly Circus. Booking will be available for the event later.
As we mentioned a few weeks back, the first month of the KCCUK’s 2012 – Year of the 12 Directors season draws to a close with a Q&A with director Lee Myung-se (Nowhere To Hide, M) and a screening of Duelist.
What wasn’t clear initially was that this will not take place at the KCCUK, nor will it be free. (Shame, but this is one hell of an event?) The screening will take place at the Apollo cinema, Piccadilly Circus, and tickets can be purchased directly from their site.
We have three copies to giveaway of historical Thai martial arts epic epic Yamada: Way Of The Samurai on DVD, all you have to do is enter our competition!… (more…)
It’s hardly as if I’ve stopped banging on about it, but as part of BFI Southbank’s short season to bring in the Chinese New Year offer’s another chance to see A Simple Life (actually ahead of it’s Hong Kong release!)…
Directed by Ann Hui and with brilliant performances by Deanie Yip and Andy Lau, this moving film is littered with star-studded cameos – including a hilarious appearance by Tsui Hark. Unmissable for fans of Hong Kong cinema, it’ll also appeal to anyone that like intelligent filmmaking.
There’ll be two screenings in mid February. One’s a senior matinee, so I suggest getting your grey wig now in case tickets for the other showing have sold out!
The season will also include Confucius, Woman Basketball Player No. 5 (a freebie for Seniors – wtf?) a special selection of rarely seen documentaries under the banner Unseen China.
» See the BFI’s website for a full listing and details on how to book.
This year the Korean Cultural Centre UK’s Film Night takes a very different guise this year as they begin their 2012 – Year of the 12 Directors strand.
Each month will feature a different director, as films from their career are screened on a weekly basis culminating in a Q&A with the director himself.
First to be featured is Lee Myung-se, one of the first directors to emerge from the South Korean new wave of the 90s, his action thriller Nowhere To Hide was easily the earliest to get the scene noticed on an international scale (particularly here in the UK).
Nowhere To Hide kicked off the season last week (yep, sorry – was away in NZ!), it continues with M this Thursday (12th January) at 7pm, with Gagman the following week (19th) and finally Duelist on 26th, where the director will appear for a Q&A.
Admission is free. Places can be reserved by visiting the Film Night page on the KCCUK website and clicking on the film you wish to book.
Studio Ghibli’s marvellous Arrietty is released today on Blu-ray, DVD and a Deluxe Collector’s Double Play edition with 5 postcards by StudioCanal UK (formally Optimum Releasing) . A real return to form after the likeable but not quite classic Ponyo and disastrous Tales Of Earthsea, Ghibli head Hayao Miyazaki worked on the screenplay from Mary Norton’s much-loved children’s story, creating something really special with Hiromasa Yonebayashi taking the helm on directing.
All versions come with these extras: storyboards; trailers and japanese tv spots; interviews with Hayao Miyazaki and Hiromasa Yonebayashi; and Cecile Corbel “Arrietty’s Song” promotional video.
London Korean Film Festival truly done and dusted, their Korean Film Night returns this week with the appropriately festive Happy Eros Christmas, starring Kim Sun Ah, Cha Tae-Hyun and Park Yeong-gyu, and directed by Lee Geon-dong.
The film will be screened this Thursday evening at 7pm, 15 December. Screenings are free but places must be booked in advance. Note that visitors cannot be admitted after 7.10pm.
Well done to the winner of our competition for a years’ digital subscription to The Dark Side. You should be contacted very soon about your prize.
We’ll have more chances to win great prizes soon, so for the rest of you stay tuned for our next competition!
Courtesy of Tiger Rock, Steve Kerridge’s book The Bruce Lee Chronicles: Volume 1 reveals the true story behind the making of his most personal movie, Way of the Dragon.
Packed with rare and collectable photographs, many from the Lee Family Archive, this extraordinary first volume features a foreward from Bruce Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee and takes an in-depth look at every pre-production milestone, preparations at the legendary Golden Harvest studios and much more!
The Bruce Lee Chronicles: Volume 1 is available to buy on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Kindle (rrp: £5.99) from Monday, 5 December.
You can pre-order the book for Apple platforms here.
Yep, another great episode of The Story Of Film this week from Mark Cousins. As he looks at the last great decade of celluloid, before digital took over, this week’s Asian filmmakers include Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai, Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming-liang (Goodbye Dragon Inn, The Wayward Cloud) and the start of Japan’s J-Horror scene with cyberpunk director Shinji Tsukamoto (Tetsuo), Takashi Miike (Audition, 13 Assassins) and Hideo Nakata (The Ring, Dark Water).
Catch the full episode while you can.
The ongoing We Love Amine festival makes its way to The Ritzy tomorrow, 26 November, including screenings of Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva; Mardock Scramble: 1st Compression & 2nd Combustion, about a 15 year-old girl who is given the choice of living as a cyborg to help investigate the men who tried to kill her; and Tekken Blood Vengeance 3D, focusing on the hunt for a missing student, Shin Kamiya, the sole survivor of a twisted experiment to unlock the secrets of eternal youth.
You can find out more about the films and book from the following links:
» Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva
Mark Cousins’ The Story Of Film series this week features a section on the blossoming Chinese cinema scene of the 80s before the incidents around Tian’anmen crackdown. He looks at the work of Tian Zhuangzhuang (The Horse Thief), Chen Kaige (Yellow Earth) and Chen’s cinematographer gone director in his own right, Zhang Yimou (Raise The Red Lantern, House Of Flying Daggers).
(Hey, has anyone noticed how hard it is to get a decent copy of some of these films?)
You can view the whole episode here, but for a limited time only.
Premiere Japan begins tomorrow and runs to Sunday, moving venue to the Barbican for it’s seventh year.
the weekend of new Japanese cinema proves to be as good as ever, opening with Locarno International Film Festival winner Tokyo Park (Tokyo Koen), by director Aoyama Shinji on Friday 25 November. On Saturday 26th, Sketch Of Mujo (Mujo Sobyo) by Omiya Koichi is a sensitive documentary, the first to be made shortly after the massive earthquake which hit the north-east of Japan in March. Yazaki Hitoshi’s look at the fragility of relationships in Sweet Little Lies (Suiito Ritoru Raizu) is the film adaptation of a recent best-selling novel of the same name. Fresh from London Film Festival, My Back Page (Mai Bakku Peeji) by Yamashita Nobuhiro recreates the political turmoil of Tokyo in the late 1960s. Sunday 27th starts with Legend Of The Millennium Dragon (Onigamiden), a fantasy anime of the battle between humans and demons set in mediaeval Japan and finishing with the family drama, A Man With Style (Azemichi Do Dandi) by the young director Ishii Yuya.
This year, each screening is preceded by a short film chosen from submissions made by students, both Japanese and non-Japanese, and the University of the Arts London. (Interestingly not too unlike the competition the London Korean Film Festival ran this year, hmmmm?)
Premiere Japan 2011 is presented by the Embassy of Japan, in cooporation with the Barbican Centre and with kind support from the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and the University of the Arts London. Films selected by Tony Rayns, Alexander Jacoby and Rayna Denison.
You can book tickets on the Barbican site.
Park Chan-wook risks stealing the show at a UK screening of Mise en Scéne short films. Just as well there’s some other great little films by promising up-and-coming filmmakers… (more…)
