17 Sunday Mar 2013
Posted in Anime / Animated Film, Events, Japanese
While others may be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day around this time of the year, anime fans have declared the early spring the moment to express their appreciation of animation filmmaker Shinkai Makoto. This year it’s not just Global Shinkai Day, but Shinkai Weekend.
What better occasion could there be for this post? I have had these musings on my mind for a while already, but this is perfect opportunity to assemble them into a post sooner rather than later.
16 Saturday Mar 2013
Posted in Anime / Animated Film, Events, Japanese, Korean
Couleur de peau: Miel.
The Leeds Young People’s Film Festival, the children’s offshoot of the regular festival, released its programme yesterday. The festival runs from March 25 until April 5 and tickets are fairly cheap (£2 for under-19, £5/£4 for adults), so if you live in the area, treat yourself. There are a few films from Japan & Korea:
16 Saturday Mar 2013
Tokyo Waka.
All kinds of things were happening this week, not quite substantial enough for each to make it into a post of their own and a bit too much to squeeze them into the Bonus Bits section of the Trailer Weekly, so, instead, I’ve assembled them into this post. Continue reading »
10 Sunday Mar 2013
The Pan Asia Film Festival began this week and I skipped my Japanese class to attend the screening of《女朋友。男朋友》(Nyeobungu. Nambungu/GF*BF, Taiwan, 2013) and somehow – despite that backlog of reviews that reaches to the moon - reviewed it within two days (admittedly, staying up till four in the morning was part of this)*. I didn’t however go to see Lotte Reiniger’s Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed), the world’s first feature-length animation from 1926, as I had originally planned – purely for reasons of laziness and the fact that it didn’t seem possible to book concession tickets at the Southbank online (and the £15 full price was a little steep). I am kind of kicking myself for this lack of self-motivation, because that is definitely not a film that screens every day, plus it’s just lame of me as someone who loves animation to skip such an event *hangs head in shame*. Coming up next week is more of the Pan Asia Film Festival, the bimonthly KCCUK screening and lots of the London Lesbian Gay Film Festival, which I’m super-excited for.
Trailers…….this Trailer Weekly somehow ended up being full of images (alternative posters and things of the sort) but most of all I think it’s a really fabulous selection of films this week. Just because I wish I could watch half of them like right now.
*And then of course, no one comments on the review that I lost sleep over! Oh, you lovely lurkers. Either that or it’s badly written. 
08 Friday Mar 2013
Year: 2012
Country: Taiwan
Language: Mandarin, Min Nan
Director: Yang Ya-che
Screenplay: Yang Ya-che
Cinematography: Jake Pollock
Soundscore: Baby C.
Cast: Chang Hsiao-chuan (Joseph), Gwai Lunmei, Rhydian Vaughan
Runtime: 105 min
Distribution: Atom Cinema
Trailer:
Seen at the film’s European Premiere and the Opening Night Gala of the Pan Asia Film Festival. It will also be shown on March 17, 2013 in Glasgow.
Note: This review is a little spoilerish – somehow I ended up detailing quite a bit of what happens.
It is a little strange to watch a film and realise that you were in the middle of some of the history playing out on the screen, but, having been a child, you never noticed any of it all. If someone had asked me before the Nyeobungu. Nambungu screening if Taiwan ever had martial law, I would have shrugged; if someone had inquired whether anything much exciting was going on in the Taipei of the early 1990s, I would have said “not really”, for the most historically significant event I remember from one summer in 1989 (when I lived there for three months) and from a year and half between 1990 and 1991 (when I lived there again) is the breakout of the Gulf War because it meant that the guards at my USAmerican school started checking everyone’s IDs in fear of a potential retributory attack. Continue reading »
05 Tuesday Mar 2013
Posted in Anime / Animated Film, Events, Film, Japanese, Theatre
Kodama, happily speechless at the announcement. 
Exciting news from the Whole Hog Theatre today: They are taking their stage adaptation of Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke to Japan! Early this morning they tweeted the following: Continue reading »
03 Sunday Mar 2013
Posted in Dorama / K-Drama / TW-Drama, Film, Hong Kong, Japanese, Korean
I’m actually not multiple days late with this Trailer Weekly but just right on time! I haven’t had dinner yet though 
… but that’s more so because I can’t make up my mind what to have. Ideally soup (which is comfort food in my book) with dumplings (gyoza, mandu, momos, whichever) but I haven’t got any dumplings and I’m not about to start making any from scratch on a Sunday night at 10 p.m. (if I had wonton wrappers, maybe). Ramen would do as well, but no ramen noodles in the house either so I think it’ll end up being a soup concoction involving some sort of Asian noodles, seaweed and miso. No tofu though, boohoooo. I really wish, by the way, corner shops would carry tofu (I eyed some halloumi cheese today, vaguely hoping it might turn out to be a block of soy, but of course it wasn’t). Anyhow, before I get too deep into my food contemplations, better I go cook something and leave you to peruse this week’s Trailer Weekly selection.
02 Saturday Mar 2013
Tags
Year: 2011
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean
Director: Yeun Sang-Ho
Studio: Studio Dadashow, KT&G Sangsangmadang
Screenplay: Yeun Sang-Ho
Art Direction: N/A
Animation Direction: N/A
Soundscore: Eom Been
Voice Cast: Yang Ik-joon, Oh Jung-se, Kim Hye-na, Kim Kkobbi, Park Hee-von
Runtime: 97 min
Distribution: Terracotta (UK)
Trailer (subtitled):
Seen at the Terracotta on Tour screening at the Genesis Cinema thanks to winning tickets from Eastern Kicks. Special thanks also go to the Korean Film Council, which provided me with online access to the film. The King of Pigs will screen in London on March 8, 2013 as part of the Pan-Asia Film Festival and will be released on DVD by Terracotta on March 11, 2013.
This review is part of the K-Animation Season on Otherwhere.
Dark themes in Hakkyo 2013: Best enemies (top row); parental neglect & abuse (bottom left); driven to suicide (bottom right).
학교 2013 (Hakkyo 2013/School 2013, South Korea, 2013), a television drama that recently aired on KBS2, explores the life and struggles of high school students on a number of levels, tackling issues such as the pressure of academic achievement, strained relationships with parents and suicide, but also the hierarchical structures of classrooms and bullying, breaking with the silence that still surrounds many of these problems in Korean society. Hakkyo 2013 deserves praise for the candid as well as sensitive portrayal of these issues, but it does not go all the way, for although the picture it presents is surprisingly dark, it is not one entirely without hope. Indeed, as television productions face the judgment of a media regulation agency and weekly viewing figures from an audience that remains hesitant about open conversations on such issues, it is left to a few, audacious films to play out the worst scenarios imaginable until the very end. One of these films – in animated form – is 돼지의 왕 (Daegieui wang/The King of Pigs, 2011).
01 Friday Mar 2013
Posted in Anime / Animated Film, Japanese
Tags
Image: Artist unknown.
It has been there before and it’s back again, but it’s Studio Ghibli so who is going to complain? The Retrospective last had a stopover in Nashville, TN, in June 2012 – I blogged about it - and now returns to the Belcourt with a whole bunch of Saturday screenings for children. Continue reading »
01 Friday Mar 2013
Lots of stuff again – something from pretty much every (South East) Asian country. And nicely spread out over all the UK too, so it’s not just film-fun for Londoners!
Click on titles for links to trailers (when available).
As always, if I’ve missed anything, get in touch!
LAST UPDATED: 17/3/2013
28 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted in Anime / Animated Film, Japanese, OST
Another update from the lovely people preparing the (sell-out) stage adaptation of Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke: they have received the blessing from the Japanese animation studio and Hisaishi Joe to use the original music score of the film for their performance. Continue reading »
26 Tuesday Feb 2013
Posted in Anime / Animated Film, Film, Japanese
No, it’s not a vandal that has been scribbling on the poster encasing for Miyazaki Hayao’s upcoming animation feature「風立ちぬ」(Kaze Tachinu/The Wind Rises), but it’s Suzuki Toshio, the film’s producer, with a message for the fans: Miyazaki’s film will be released on July 20, 2013. This is reported via nausicaa.net, although I haven’t yet seen a confirmation from the Studio directly.
Continue reading »
24 Sunday Feb 2013
Posted in Dorama / K-Drama / TW-Drama, Indie, Language
Tags
24 Sunday Feb 2013
This is actually last week’s Trailer Weekly, with a second one to follow later. At least I hope so, because I’m having a bit of hard time getting myself to do anything today. It’s the after-effect of having pulled an almost all-nighter - a friend from Costa Rica was passing through London so we chatted till about 3 a.m. at which point we were so tired that we slept for a couple of hours before my friend had to head off to Heathrow to catch his morning flight back to lovely Ticolandia ♥ (i.e. the country of Ticos, as Costa Ricans are affectionately known). I’m absolutely chuffed about all the Costa Rican goodies I’ve now got in the house now, from coffee from Heredia to Café Britt chocolates to dried piña-banano, but also very nostalgic, wishing I could myself hop on a plane to Central America this instant – I haven’t been back since I left in 2009 and that’s just too long. 
21 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted in Anime / Animated Film, Film, Japanese
Tags
Also hot off the press today is the first trailer for「言の葉の庭」(Kotonoha no Niwa), Shinkai Makoto’s forthcoming feature animation film. Continue reading »
21 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted in Anime / Animated Film, Film, Japanese, Theatre
Tags
Hot off the press: The lovely people from the Whole Hog Theatre have officially announced twelve further London performances for their stage adaptation of Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke between 18-29 June, 2013. Continue reading »
19 Tuesday Feb 2013
Leesong Hee-il
The BFI has released its line-up for this year’s London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, with Leesong Hee-il films appearing threefold:
We have a feature and two mini-features from one of the most exciting contemporary gay Asian directors Leesong Hee-il with White Night, and Going South and Suddenly, Last Summer – moody, melancholic tales of suppressed desires.
Continue reading »
16 Saturday Feb 2013
15 Friday Feb 2013
Posted in Dorama / K-Drama / TW-Drama, Film, Japanese, Manga / Manwha / Comic
Tags
Sunday was Chinese New Year so I will begin this Trailer Weekly with 恭喜发财! (Gong xi fa cai!). I actually ventured out to London’s Chinatown with a friend, fully intent on enjoying some Taiwanese food but the restaurant I had in mind had a queue about a mile long, even at 3 in the afternoon. In the end we opted for Japanese (vegetable & tofu tempura bento, plus lovely gyōza) and later watched a Japanese film at my friend’s house (Ghibli’s 「おもひでぽろぽろ」/ Omohide Poro Poro/Only Yesterday, 1991, after initially considering 「火垂るの墓」 / Hotaru no Haka/Grave of the Fireflies, 1988, even buying some comfort food and then copping out. Jajaja…). Anyhow, it ended up being a pretty un-Chinese Chinese New Year, despite all intentions. Ah well.
In terms of this belated Trailer Weekly, I thought it was time for another ‘Special’, with J-actresses that I know from doramas as the focus: Anne, Karina, Koyuki, Yoko Maki, Ueno Juri and Takeuchi Yuko. Continue reading »
14 Thursday Feb 2013
Tags
Year: 2012
Country: France/Japan
Language: Japanese
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Screenplay: Abbas Kiarostami
Cinematography: Yanagijima Katsumi
Soundscore: Mohamadrez Delpak, Kikuchi Nobuyuki
Cast: Takanashi Rin, Okuno Tadashi, Kase Ryō, Denden
Runtime: 109 min
Trailer:
Seen at the film’s UK premiere at the 56th BFI London International Film Festival. Like Someone in Love will be released in select British cinemas via New Wave Films on June 21, 2013.
Like Someone in Love premiered in Cannes last year, where it sharply divided the critics, leaving some rather disenchanted, if not highly irritated, in particular with its rather abrupt ending. “[T]he curtain comes down with an arbitrary crash” noted Peter Bradshaw, resident film critic for The Guardian, while Mike D’Angelo (A.V. Club) gave it a “WTF” rating, declaring the final scene “a startling, truncated conclusion that seems completely out of proportion with the lazy, anti-urgent meandering that precedes it”, ending with the words ”I know there’s something happening here, but I don’t know what it is”. Continue reading »
07 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted in Dorama / K-Drama / TW-Drama, Events, Film, Japanese, Review
Tags
Year: 2009
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Director: Inudo Isshin
Adaptation from: Matsumoto Seicho’s bestselling novel of the same title (1959)
Screenplay: Inudo Isshin, Nakazono Kenji
Cinematography: Takahiro Tsutai
Soundscore: Ueno Koji (Theme song: Nakajima Miyuki)
Cast: Hirosue Ryoko, Nakatani Miki, Kimura Tae, Nishijima Hidetoshi, Kaga Takeshi, Nomaguchi Tori, Sugimoto Tetta, Kuroda Fukumi, Honda Hirotarō
Runtime: 131 min
Distribution: Toho (Japan)
Trailer:
Seen at the ICA as part of the Japan Foundation’s 10th Touring Film Programme “Once Upon a Time in Japan”. The film screened February 3 (sold out) and 5 (nearly sold out), with a Q&A with the director following on both days. The JPF also organised a Director’s Talk with Inudo on February 6. For further screenings in the UK see Bonus Bits below.
To make an author’s most popular bestseller into a successful film can never be easy, but imagine the challenge if that the story has already been told on the screen multiple times – once as a film (1961, dir. by Nomura Yoshitaru), sixfold as a TV dorama (1961, Fuji TV; 1971, NKH; 1976, Nippon Television; 1983, TBS; 1991, again Nippon Television and 1994, NKH Nagoya). It also doesn’t help if the tale in question is a mystery drama and everyone, thanks to the original’s and the numerous screen adaptations’ popularity, already knows whodunnit. Yet this is the challenge that Inudo Isshin, commissioned by the production studio, took on when setting out to make another Zero no Shōten film in time for the 100th anniversary of the novelist’s birthdate. Continue reading »
04 Monday Feb 2013
Posted in Anime / Animated Film, Film, Japanese
Tags
adaptation, documentary, ICA, London, Okada Masaki, trailers
In an effort to not fall behind with the Trailer Weeklies even more, I’m doing a double Trailer Weekly today – lots of films thus. I am a little late with that too, but that’s because I got to see「ゼロの焦点」 (Zero no Shōten/Zero Focus, Japan, 2009) from the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme tonight last night when I thought I wouldn’t (the screening was sold out but I got lucky in the end as the first one on the waiting list ). It was quite a thrill to watch – a murder mystery set at a turning point in time for the Japanese nation. 「八日目の蝉」 (Youkame no Semi/Rebirth, Japan, 2011), another film on the Touring Film Programme that I saw on Friday, I enjoyed even more, but hopefully I’ll be able to share my thoughts with you in detail in some reviews soon.
Before we tackle the monster list of eleven trailers, I just wanted to mention (in case you missed it) that I added a new page on Otherwhere: a schedule of all the 2013 (South East) Asian film releases (both home and cinematic) in the UK.
01 Friday Feb 2013
Tags
Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Film Festival, Glasgow, ICA, Japanese Embassy London, KCCUK, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Nottingham, Sheffield, Studio Ghibli
You are not going to run out things to do (or, rather, films to watch) in February, regardless of where you are in the UK.
Note: I’m not really providing synopses this time round, there are simply too many films. Just click on the external links, where you’ll find more info.
As always, if I’ve missed anything, get in touch!
LAST UPDATED: 6/2/2013
31 Thursday Jan 2013
The programme for the Fifth Pan-Asia Film Festival has been finalised and, as I predicted, there are several more goodies for us to enjoy now. In addition to films already announced - 穷人榴莲吗要偷渡客 (Qióngrén liúlián ma yào tōudù kè/Poor Folk, Taiwan/Myanmar/Thailand, 2012), पतंग (Patang/The Kite, India/USA, 2011),「ラビット・ホラー３Ｄ」(Rabitto horā 3D/Tormented 3D, Japan, 2011), 111 Dokhtar (111 Girls, Iran/Iraq, 2012)* and ฝนตกขึ้นฟ้า (Headshot, Thailand, 2012), see also my previous post on the festival - there are seven more feature-length productions, plus a slot for shorts. Continue reading »
22 Tuesday Jan 2013
Posted in Anime / Animated Film, Film, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese
Tags
I had a friend visiting over the weekend so I was a little distracted. Me apologies for being late here…
