August 11, 2005
In my last column I updated you on all the foreign offerings coming your way (I am excited for more films right now than I have been in recent memory). But I also had some other recent topics on my mind and have decided to fully update you on all the comings and goings (before going back to my usual routine of giving you more information than you thought was possible on various foreign films). So read and be updated. Impress your friends with your vast geeky knowledge. Didn’t Tarantino make liking Asian films cool? It’s not geeky anymore right? Right?
Coming and Going: Asian Entertainers in Hollywood and at Home.
While there are always Asian filmmakers who are coming to America, some are even going back to their native land. How long does it take to get fed up? It only took Tsui Hark two Van Damne movies to pack up and head home.
Going back: Despite starring in the upcoming PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN sequel, Chow Yun Fat has several projects planned in China -- The new John Woo, the new Zhang Yimou and the new Ann Hui. Cool. And that subsequently means John Woo is going home as well to film his BATTLE AT RED CLIFF (note: Woo has been trying to make the perfect war movie for years and it seems like it’s his Achilles’ heel, but let’s hope he figures it out this time). Jet Li, as reported in my last column, claims to be leaving martial arts films after his current film, HOU YUANJIA, a Chinese production at that.
Coming and going: Gong Li, after retiring and returning, finally has a Hollywood career with MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, MIAMI VICE and the Lector sequel. She’s recently reminded art houses of her beautiful existence in EROS and 2046. But she’s also rumored for Zhang Yimou’s next, which I believe would be their first collaboration since their break up some time ago. Jackie Chan tries to make one project at home then one Hollywood project and I do admire his loyalty to the fanbase and the industry he spent so many successful years in.
Going: Andrew Lau (STORMRIDERS, INFERNAL AFFAIRS, INITIAL D), admittedly my favorite Hong Kong director, is coming to America to work on a project that sounds downright terrible. The film stars Richard Gere and possibly Hilary Swank. Sigh. It’s called THE FLOCK and it’s a FBI thriller. Yawn. Well, I wish you luck Lau. I wouldn’t generally see a thriller starring Richard Gere and Hilary Swank, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll do it for you....
It’s tough to form an opinion on director’s leaving their home country. Who can blame them for wanting to make movies with more resources and to possibly be seen by a lot more people? But on the other hand, I generally feel like people should stay put. Because they usually only come over when they are successful where they are -- and why mess up a good thing? Especially since most of them do worse over here. Also, a large problem is that they have so much control at home and they have less than no control in Hollywood. It doesn’t matter how big you are in some foreign country, you are the lowest on the Hollywood totem pole. John Woo tried to do his Woo thing with the cutting and slow-mo in BROKEN ARROW and they thought he was crazy and kicked him out of the editing room -- what did you hire him for?
With the booming Korean film industry, very few people seem to be leaving -- except the remake rights to their products which are flying out the door. But a sales company, LJ Film, is setting up shop in Hollywood to further Korean film. They have a new picture set up with Sandra Oh and hope to promote Korean films and interests over here.
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Preview of Venice
Well after Cannes, Toronto, Berlin and Sundance...there’s Venice. To be fair, it’s probably the most well known and respected after Cannes (and Sundance if you’re American). The festival has an Asian flavor this year since it’s opening with Tsui Hark’s SEVEN SWORDS and closing with Peter Chan’s PERHAPS LOVE. These are two of my most anticipated films of the year and I can’t wait to see them. The trailer and reviews for SEVEN SWORDS show promise. And PERHAPS LOVE has a strong pan-Asian cast starring Jackie Cheung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Xun Zhou and Jin-hee Ji. For the ladies, it sounds like a hunky charisma fight between Kaneshiro and Ji. Fantastic.
Of the 20 films in competition 6 are US/UK/Hollywood films. Of the non-English, the ‘auteur’ names are few and far between but at the very least the festival will be showing SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE from Chan-wook Park. Because the festival takes place in Italy, there are several Italian offerings but you wonder how much of a chance they have against the American indie juggernauts they’re competing against.
Out of competition there are many more familiar auteurs and Hazao Miyazaki will be receiving a lifetime achievement award. There will be a new film on the anthology film front (a recent trend) called ALL THE INVISIBLE CHILDREN with shorts by Spike Lee, Ridley Scott, John Woo, Katia Lund, Emir Kusturica, Ridley Scott’s daughter and some lesser known foreign directors.
They’re also having a retrospective called ‘The Secret History of Asian Cinema’ showcasing Chinese classics -- a great take if you happen to be in Venice, considering how difficult Chinese films are to find (nevermind with subtitles).
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SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE
Another film I can’t wait to see. If you’ve never read this column before then let me tell you: It’s the third in a revenge trilogy by Korean filmmaker Chan-wook Park. The first film SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE bombed in Korea but found a cult audience in America and will be coming to our screens pretty soon from Tartan films. It was followed by OLDBOY starring Min-sik Choi, easily the best working Korean actor, and was a juggernaut. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes and did well at the Korean box office. Both these films are amazingly worth your time. Therefore I can’t wait to see LADY VENGEANCE as I’m sure it’ll be totally worth my time. Although you could see OLDBOY without seeing MR. VENGEANCE, you may want to watch those two films before LADY VENGEANCE as the early word is that there are some connections. The film opened in Korea two weeks ago to the highest opening weekend in Korean history! Beating last year’s highest grossing historical epic TAEGUKGI. This is probably due to the popularity of the star of the film Young-ae Lee. She starred in a television show that was huge in Korea, also huge in Hong Kong, Japan and other East Asian countries called DAE JANG-GEUM (”The Great Jang-Geum”).
As a side note, JANG-GEUM is a really, really great show. I’m halfway through it right now. I think it’s swept through those countries with such success because it’s so good. In fact, one of Hong Kong’s networks has a weekly show where they teach Japanese, but because of the success of JANG-GEUM it is being replaced with a showing teaching Korean. Funny. But anyway, JANG-GEUM is a 54 episode historical epic. That is a little daunting, I know. But great sets, great costumes and a great story is totally worth the effort. It took me a couple episodes to get into to be honest, but by about episode 5 I was totally hooked. I spend all my free time watching it. I despise writing this column right now because it’s keeping me from JANG-GEUM. Tangent end.
Box Office Slump and Foreign Films
Everywhere you go in Hollywood, people are talking about the box office slump. But who cares about those big Hollywood films? The question is -- is it reflected in the foreign releases?
It seems like a lot of indie American films and docs might be affected by the slump -- although there has been breakouts in each category (CRASH and MARCH OF THE PENGUINS -- which is also techinically foreign) -- and many indie and documentary releases crash and burn every year anyway. When it comes to the foreign offerings, there hasn’t been any big breakouts yet this year (except maybe KUNG FU HUSTLE which grossed well above other foreign films this year so far). But a lot of distributors are only really releasing foreign films with a built in audience (martial arts pictures, auteur movies, Bollywood) and are getting so-so returns of about exactly that audience. While no foreign film has spread into the mainstream this year yet, it’s true that a foreign film doesn’t break through every year. The LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL’s and CROUCHING TIGERS’s are often years apart. But oftentimes, there are more moderate blockbusters like HERO and AMELIE.
This year hasn’t seen that many auteur releases: SARABAND, 2046, LOOK AT ME. But they’ve been doing alright. 2046 opened last week on only 4 screens with a great $28K screen average.
A number of Korean films have been released so far this year but have not quite caught on -- although many of them had pretty small releases. 3-IRON, MEMORIES OF MURDER, SAVE THE GREEN PLANET and OLDBOY are all terrific films but none are in the top 10 foreign grossers. Speaking of which....
Top grossing foreign films so far this year:
1. Kung Fu Hustle $17
2. Bride and Prejudice $6.6
3. Downfall $5.5
4. Ong Bak $4.6
5. Howl’s Moving Castle $4.5
6. High Tension $3.7
7. Walk on Water $2.7
8. Look at Me $1.7
9. The Chorus $1.5
10. Paheli $1.4
KUNG FU HUSTLE is currently no. 65 on the overall list for the year. But martial arts films always have an audience so seeing KUNG FU HUSTLE and ONG BAK is no big surprise.
But there are some surprises and let downs. HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE is not performing anywhere near SPIRITED AWAY -- yet it’s not anywhere near as good as well. BRIDE AND PREJUDICE is in English with Hollywood actors (Martin Henderson, Naveen Andrews -- even a guest appearance by Ashanti), so it only half counts. LOOK AT ME is an auteur with a following and THE CHORUS, a hit in it’s native France, was nominated for two Oscars and is the kind of film that older art house audiences flock to. WALK ON WATER is an Israeli thriller I know nothing about, slipping right by my radar but it comes out on DVD at the end of the month. PAHELI is a Bollywood film with my favorite Bollywood star, Shah Rukh Khan.
In comparison, there were four foreign films last year that grossed over $10mil and made the list of the top 150 grossers of the year: HERO ($53.7), YU-GI-OH:THE MOVIE ($19.8), THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES ($16.8) and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS ($11).
Now, I think we will safely dismiss YU-GI-OH, as I have no interest in talking about it. But this year, there hasn’t been any releases with stars like Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi (although she’s in the recently released 2046, so we’ll have to wait and see what it’s ultimate gross ends up being). But UNLEASHED only did half the business HERO did, despite how generally well regarded it was.
As for biopics about well known historical figures directed by well known auteurs and starring an attractive relatively well known actor -- DOWNFALL does not quite add up to last year’s THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES. But then again, the filmmaker is not as well known, the cast is not as attractive, the historical figure is not as revered (well, he’s not revered at all) and there are less German speakers than Spanish speakers living in the United States. But one thing to be said for DOWNFALL, in Los Angeles it played for a long, long time. I don’t remember any movie recently that stayed in theaters as long as it did. It’s like the old days, when movies stayed in theaters so you could actually get out to see them. I saw DOWNFALL like 2 months after it’s initial release (and it’s great btw).
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As for blink-and-you’ll-miss-them films, I didn’t get to see NOBODY KNOWS or KONTROLL in the theaters and would have liked to. They did not have significant grosses but I feel like I didn’t know they were out and they weren’t out long. I didn’t even hear about the existence of KONTROLL until it was already in theaters. It sounded awesome but by the time I even knew about it -- it was gone. I intend to review it once it comes out on DVD. A Hungarian techno-mystery -- it seems full of promise. Check it out.
As for NOBODY KNOWS, I loved Kore-eda’s previous film AFTER LIFE very much. I was really looking forward to this film since I heard about it at Cannes last year. It did stay in theaters a couple weeks at least but was only playing on the other side of town so I didn’t get over there. There’s no DVD release date soon, but I’ll be the first in line. It looks like this.
In the interest of full disclosure, I work at the trailer house that cut both those trailers. I didn’t work there when they made those trailers though or when those films were released. They just happened to be the two films I missed this year and wanted to see and two films that I think could have performed a lot better if given a chance. Anyway, my connection to them -- Coincidence, I promise.
But overall there has been no real break out hits in the foreign arena so far, with some decent contenders yet to be released. Is the slump hitting the foreign films? It’s hard to say, there aren’t big hit foreign films every year, but if there aren’t a couple more mid-level grossers by the end of the year I’d be hard pressed to say it wasn’t.
IN TWO WEEKS: AKIRA, it’s a classic for a reason, many reasons, and I’ll tell you all of them.
In the meantime, this is Richard Corliss’ list of the five best anime films on DVD. I expected it to be stupid, but it’s, uh, not. Check out my old reviews of STEAMBOY and PERFECT BLUE if you are so inclined.
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