Link again!

Nope No new review ready this time either. I've been working alot latley. Hopefully I'll finish a review sometime this weekend. There's so many fun films to write about. In the meantime here's yet another link for you.
Jasongray:Jason Gray is a japan correspondent for screen international as well as a freelance writer on japanese cinema for other publications including Japan Times. He even played a ramones memeber in Linda Linda Linda!
With all that to his name you'd think hed be financially secure enough to shell out $10 a year or so for his own domain name, but anyway his blog is nice for sure.

Another Link & The same cup of tea

Yet another good review site.

LoveHKFilm:Unsuprisingly this site focuses on Hong Kong cinema but they also write reviews about other asian cinema as well. It's a very good site with reviews that are well written and have just the right mixture of humor and serious criticism to them.

Links & tea

A cup of green tea and a new link for the page.

A Nutshell Review:This is a a blog about singapoeran film. The guy who runs this blog seems to watch pretty much every film that gets made in his home country. So if you're interested in seeing what comes out of this small but interesting country check his blog out.

Singapore Gaga - Review

Singapore Gaga is a 2005 Singaporean docu made by a Singaporean director about Singapore. It also takes place in... Singapore!

As far as documentaries go this one does not really do a whole lot of documenting per se. It's more of a personal take on Singaporean life by Tan Pin Pin. What she has chosen as a subject is the sounds and music of her home country.

The film starts with a lonely busker playing old time music to no one in particular in the subway and from there on we get to met more buskers, an avant garde toy piano player, school kids cheering in Arabic, old men who sing in Latin, the woman who is the voice of Singapore’s subway, the country’s most famous ventriloquist, and many more.

As you can guess from the above I think the main goal of the film is to show in a quirky fashion the uniqueness and diversity of this small country.

In this I think she succeeds, she got me stoked to visit if I ever get the chance. I mean a small country with that much ethnic diversity, and they speak English as main language? Sign me up!

Back to the film itself, is it any good? It has it’s bright spots and it’s not so bright ones I guess.

Even though she was aiming for a free going style the editing seems somewhat chaotic to me. She cuts to and from the various people in a very disorganized fashion. Some that I found more interesting I could have certainly spent a longer time with.

However she does manage to cram a lot in to a 55 minute long little film. If you want to learn something about Singapore this is not a good film to watch but if you want to get the feeling of country as shown by a native who clearly loves her home it does an excellent job.

You can visit the homepage for the movie at www.singaporegaga.com. There is also a trailer you can watch there.

Links and nap time

It's just before bed time but I wanna add something to the page. Lacking the energy to finish the review I'm working on I'll just add another link for now.

Asian cinema:this generically titled page has a nice look to it and has a bunch of well written movie reviews by two Danish guys who write in English. They cover all kinds of movies and it's an enjoyable site to give a quick browse. Confusingly enough it's a sub domain to their fan page dedicated to Taiwanese born actress Shu Qi. To be honest I don't really care much about her...

Time to hit the snooze.

Jonathan Ross' Asian Invasion - review

Asian Invasion is a three part miniseries made for BBC by British TV personality and renowned Japan- and asianophile Jonathan "Wossy" Ross. In the three parts Ross packs an array of colorful suits and visit in turn Japan, Hong Kong and Korea to give an overview of each country’s contemporary cinema.

Each one hour episode contains a quick rundown of specific conditions that has shaped the cinematic output of the country, showcases of various genres of films, clips from said films and interviews with some important directors.

Similar in style to Ross' japanorama series the tone is fairly light and there might be a few to many wisecracks instead of actual insights into the subject and for the real enthusiast(that would be me) there are some annoying omissions and poor choices.

Criticizing new Japanese filmmakers for not having enough depth and emotional content by showcasing films like Casshern, Ping Pong and the Calamari Wrestler hardly seems fair.

Most enjoyable of the interviews are easily the ones with Ryuhei Kitamura and Stephen Chow simply because these are conducted in English and with Ross and the interviewed director interacting face to face. All others are made talking head style and with an interpreter providing a voice over.

These are to me a big problem the voice over is always heavily accented and in some cases just sound plain stupid. Having a regular native English voice or subtitles would have been much preferable to me.

Some of the other directors do however provide more of an insight into their filmmaking the Ki-Duk Kim interview in the Korean episode is particularly interesting as Kim talks a lot about the conditions that his films are made under.

In short I think this is a decent distraction much like Japanorama but to really learn a lot about these countries and their cinema you should probably look elsewhere, you might even have to read a book.

As far as I know Asian Invasion is not available for purchase but you just might be able to find it anyway me thinks...

EDIT: you can actually find the whole thing on youtube as well as all of his 3 season Japanorama series. Don't think I would have the patience to watch all of it like that though.

Karaoke Terror - Review

Karaoke Terror is a Japanese film from 2003 directed by Tetsuo Shinohara. It's original Japanese title means "The complete show era songbook", slightly less catchy but also a bit less idiotic sounding.

The script is apparently based on a novel by Ryu Murakami, an author who has himself also dabbled in filmmaking a couple of times. I've read a few of his novels but not this particular one. His biggest claim to fame for most western film viewers is having written the script for Takahashi Miikes Audition.

Karaoke Terror tells the story of two groups of karaoke aficionados who end up in a brutal cycle of murder and revenge against each other. Basically there's Murder, plotting, dining and slight reminicising over a lost friend. All this in an escalating cycle of violence. Oh, and of course there's song and dance too.

The first gang that we get to meet is a group of young men who seem to have little direction in their life but their shared karaoke passion. Any and all glimpses into the characters life outside of their respective groups are of the snapshot variety. These young men like to drive out with a van to an abandoned pier where they perform their song and dance numbers in full costume. A slight sense of clockwork orange might appear upon watching their initial performance.

One of the group’s members by the name of Sugioka makes an unsuccessful attempt at picking up an older woman on her way home from her luxury shopping trip, upon rejection he instead slashes her throat.

This is where the ball is set rolling as the woman is revealed to be Midori Yanagi a member of a group of middle aged divorcees who are all named Midori and who all of course love karaoke.

This film has a somewhat odd structure. There is no clear main character, even though we are treated to an early voiceover from one of the young guys he is quickly relegated to a peripheral character for much of the film.

The focus then shifts from one group to the other several times throughout the film as they plan their various murderous revenge plans, an activity that seems to promote bonding way better than the karaoke.

These group interactions together with the outlandish murder scenes are the main source of the films humor as well as any social commentary one can find in the film. The basic plot is treated in a very self consciously ridiculous manner. A couple of minor characters are used to provide plot advancing deus ex machinas aplenty.

Personally I would have to say that my main enjoyment of the film came from those group interactions. some of the scenes between the Midori's were particularly hilarious. As someone who's seen his fair share of Asian movies of the quirkier variety I didn't feel this movie ever really put its foot on the gas pedal into sheer insanity nor does it ever flesh out its characters enough to make me care for them as individuals.

It's still an amusing watch though and though it's 112 minutes in length it didn't feel at all long to me. One thing though: there's just not enough karaoke!

As per usual here's a trailer I nabbed from youtube:


Now the world's more refined japanophiles are collectively holding their breath for the American filming of coin locker babies one of Murakami's best novels.