Friday, May 6, 2011

All about Asian Movie

Asian movie has developed very fast for these year. You can exactly get good story telling, gorgeous pictures, rich culture and different touching theme at the same time.




More and more people are not only concentrate on hollywood or French movie, but also have started to pay more attention on Asian movie. Are you interested in it? If you do, I'm sure your life will get more fun!

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Taipei exchange

Directed by: Hisao Ya-chuan
Produced by: Hou Hsiao-hsien
Written by: Hsiao Ya-chuan
Starring: Kwai Lun-chuan
        Zaizai Lin
        Hou Zhi-jian

This is an exchange story happens in a coffee shop. Doris opens a coffee shop with her younger sister, Josie. They ask their guests to bring a gift at the opening ceremony, but the gifts filled over the shop. So Josie gets an idea and starts to let customers to trade things that they think the item is equal value.

In my opinion, this story is really interesting, and also I like the style of directing which is really humor and funny. In the story, everyone has their own dream, and Doris’s dream is to open a coffee shop and exchange items in her coffee shop. One day she met one customer who is a pilot. He has 36 handmade soaps, then he shares his stories with Doris, and Doris draws for his stories which are basic on each soap. After that, Doris gets a dream because of his stories, which is traveling around the world. So she gives the store to a travel agency and her sister in order to exchange 36 cities’ airplane tickets.

When I watched this movie, I felt I was reaching my dream. I want to travel all over the world, too. In my point of view, keep going to follow your dream, no matter how hard to reach just keeps going to do, is important and hard thing to insist in everyone’s life. But you should believe that one day the dream will come true.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Confessions

Directed by: Tetsuya Nakashima
Written by: Tetsuya Nakashima
          Kanae Minato
Starring: Takako Matsu


This is a psychological film which is about revenging.

Yuko Moriguchi is a junior high school teacher whose daughter died by accident. But after her investigation, she finds the truth is her daughter killed by two students in her class. So she reveals the truth to all the students in the class in the last day before spring break. And she tells them that the milk they are drinking, she put her husband’s HIV contaminated blood in it. Since that day, she quit from school but her avengement starts. Because of the ADIS virus, every student in that class is very worried about themselves, and they blame on the two students and crowd out them. The class becomes a hell then, the mind of students starts to warp and pervert, and finally the two little killers’ frequent depressions and stress were the prelude to a complete mental breakdown.

Because it’s too violent, the trailer just could be shown on the internet. Its violence is not only reflected in the image, but also hit audience by its beats. Ethics or justice? The process of killer and avenger keeps touching the audience heart during the whole movie.

In my opinion, this is the best Asian movie in 2010.

Monday, May 2, 2011

A Moment to Remember

Directed by:  Lee Jae-han
Produced by: Cha Seoung-jae
Written by: Lee Jae-Han
                     Kim Yeong-ha
Starring: Jung Woo-sung
     Son Ye-jin
              Baek Jong-hak

                    A moment to remember is a classic Korean movie which tells a love story.

Sun Jin is born in a rich, she is pretty and kind but gets a bad memory since she was a kid. Chul Soo is an illegitimate child and lives in poverty. Because of Sun Jin’s bad memory, they meet and fall in love. In their married life, they live happily together. Everything goes well at beginning until Sun Jin’s memory gets worse and worse. She displays forgetfulness more and more everyday. And then they find she gets Alzehimer disease. She is going to forget everything include what she did, where she is, who her husband is, and who she is. Despite the disease, Chul Soo doesn’t give up and keep helping Sun Jin to get memory back by different ways, although she always forgets who he is and blames on him. At the end, Sun Jin’s family and Chul Soo replays the scene they met first time, and she seems remember everything then, they hug in the jeep finally.

Almost people cry because of this sad story. Actually, the story telling is old, but this film is good at detail expressing, so that’s why it becomes a triumphant success movie. The external and internal conflict of two characters is built perfectly. It’s really very touching to watch they change over the course and the other emotional moments.

Can you image if you get this kind of disease that makes you forget everything you did and you have, and you can’t do anything against it? It is worse than “lost everything”, because the people who around you gets hurt. And there is nothing should be blamed on. That’s the saddest part.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Battle Royale

Directed by: Kinji Fukasaku
                      Produced by: Kenta Fukasaku
                    Kimio Kataoka
                     Chie Kobayashi
                          Toshio Nabeshima

Written by: Kenta Fukasaku
                      Koushun Takami

This is a horror movie, not only about violence, bloodiness and betrayal, but also about faith.

A high school class which has forty students are selected government and shipped to a deserted island where they get random weapons and forced to fight to the death. There only one survivor can get back his or her freedom and leave the island.

This is a heart-stopping action film which teaches us a worthy lesson of teamwork and determination, but wrapping them up in a provocative, shockingly violent package. It’s surprise to watch the high school students form alliances and turn on each other and drop off one by one for surviving. The reality is cruel for everyone.

As usual, Fukasaku directs Battle Royale with force and conviction, it shouldn't be easily ignored, and also will not be easy to forget. The faces of those kids will linger long in your mind after the movie ends.


Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Curse of the Golden.Flower

Directed by: Yimou Zhang
Produced by: William Kong
                         Weiping Zhang
                      Yimou Zhang
Written by: Yimou Zhang
Starring: Chou Yun-fat
       Li Gong
       Jay Chou
       Junjie Qin

In this movie, the image is fantastic. Your eyes can get a great visual enjoy during the whole movie. The gorgeous golden color can’t be erased in your mind after the movie done for a while. Compare to the sense of sight, the story and theme become very weak. The external and internal conflict is not strong enough for each character. It is just like a beautiful melodrama and can’t touch the heart of audience at all. 

The simple story is about a general steals the throne and has taken the princess of a neighboring province as wife. She has borne him two sons and raised his eldest during China's Tang dynasty. Now his control over his dominion is complete, including the royal family. But he lost everything except the high kingship at the end.

The emperor looks endowed with civil and martial virtues, but actually he is avaricious and relentless. That’s why he can get the throne. And the sad ending is directed by him. The empress is the victim of political marriage. She never gets any love from her husband. Because of loneliness, she falls love with her stepson. By the affair being found out, she becomes the target that the emperor wants to kill. One of her son is good kung fu and valued by the emperor. For protecting his mother, he decides to break with his father and plans an uprising. But his plan is failed and he is killed by the emperor.


Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Directed by: Ang Lee
Produced by: Li-Kong Hsu
                          William Kong
                Ang Lee
Starring: Chou Yun-fat
                   Michelle Yeoh
            Ziyi Zhang
                Chen Chang

This movie is beautiful and elegant; great shot and directed; touching and humorous. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the movie of 2000.

This is the story of two women during the Ching Dynasty. One of them tries to find justice and honor in her whole life, but it’s too late to discover the unfulfilled love. Another woman tries passionately to break free from the constraint society; even if it means giving up her privileges for a life of crime and passion. There’s an ethereal dramatic effect here that transcends a primary function of imagination and storytelling. Successfully applies its fantastical elements to develop story, character, and a kind of poetic license that captures the beauty of its own spirit.

It’s an action movie that doesn't try to blow you out of your seat, but rather it captures you in suspended awe for prolonged periods of time. Going into the film, I was prepared to be awed by the spectacular martial-arts sequences. But what caught me by surprise was how emotionally invested I became in the characters.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Shaolin Soccer

Directed by: Stephen Chow
Produced by: Yeung Kwok-Fai
Written by: Stephen Chow
                            Tsang Kan-Cheung
Starring: Stephen Chow
        Wei Zhao
           Ng Man Tat
          Patrick Tse
                                   Danny Chan Kwok Kwan

It seems none of Stephen Chou’s movie meant to be taken seriously, when Kung Fu and sports collide in his devilishly entertaining, so just turn off your brain and enjoy the silliness.

A soccer player gets unfair injured by his nemesis during a match. When he gets near bottom, he meet the people who are also unlucky in the life, so he puts together an unlikely group of players headed by kung fu. Their kung fu soccer beat a lot of teams, and they plan to use Shao Lin kung fu to be champion and win 1 million at a local soccer tournament.

The story for this movie is a little ridiculous, but that's what makes this film so entertaining. There are a ton of other movies with ridiculous stories that just sucks, but Stephen Chow doesn't let that happen in his movie. He has a good skill for directing and telling story. And he is a scarce great comedy actor in Asian too. In the movie, the quick pace keeps you from falling asleep. It takes a while for the soccer to become key point, but everything leading up to it makes sense and it is well worth the watch.

The whole film is played with such an infectious sense of fun and at such a snappy pace that you can't help being swept along by it.If you have a chance to see this, take it. Don't hesitate.


Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Kung Fu Hustle

Directed by: Stephen Chou
  Written by: Stephen Chow
Huo Xin
Chan Man-keung
Tsang Kan-cheung
      Starring: Stephen ChowYuen Wah
Yuen Qiu
Danny Chan
Bruce Leung

The story happens in Shanghai in the ‘30s. A gangster aspires to join the notorious "Axe Gang" while residents of a housing complex exhibit extraordinary powers in defending their turf.

This movie pokes fun at the earnestness of recent films in the genre, like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Hero," and "House of Flying Daggers." Nothing is taken seriously here. It attempts to bring a different style to the forefront of popular cinema but fails to be more than a shoddy mischaracterization of the Asian culture. And it is made with such infectious humor visuals it's easy to simply surrender all over again to Chow's brand of lunacy. Stephen Chow gives himself a fun hero to play, and he's also written a very clever screenplay. You’d better pay careful attention to the early scenes, because clues that you might be tempted to shrug off as just being silly bits of embellishment actually become quite important later on.

Few directors in world cinema are working so competently and consistently in any mode as Chow is in this one.


Friday, April 8, 2011

Hot Commercial movie in April

I read this post from Film Asia<Don't Go Breaking My Heart> has just been on theater on 31st March. Recently, I heard a lot of people talk about this movie. It already become the most popular movie in China in April.

Don't Go Breaking My Heart (單身男女) [Hong Kong] - 2011


Country: Hong Kong
Production Company: China Film Media Asia Audio Video Distribution Co./ Media Asia Films/ Milky Way Image Company
Genre: Romance/ Comedy
Director: Johnnie To/ Wai Ka Fai
Starring: Gao Yuan Yuan, Louis Koo, Daniel Wu, J.J. Jia, Lam Suet, Terence Yin, Selena Li
Length: 120 mins
Date of release: 31st March, 2011
Synopsis

Cheng Zhi En (Gao Yuan Yuan) comes from mainland China and works as an investment analyst in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong her personal love life and career are not running smoothly. His ex-boyfriend is married and the investment market suffers from financial crisis.

Her work is always stressful and her best consolation is a male executive working opposite her office called Zhang Shen Ran (Louis Koo), who is handsome and always advises her during the times of need.

One day while she is taking a tram she accidentally meets up with her ex-boyfriend (Terence Yin) and his pregnant wife (Selena Li), and leaves them immediately. During that incident she almost get knocked down by a car. She got saved her life by Fang Qi Hong (Daniel Wu) who dresses like a beggar.

And in order to thank him she gives all the things given by her ex-boyfriend to him so that he could sell them away. Actually Qi Hong is a frustrated architect and always get drunk. Zhi En encourages him to quit drinking, start from scratch once again and leaves him a horned frog.

Zhi En has plan to date Shen Ran but he already have an appointment with another lady. She feels sad like a broken hearted woman after knowing this. She also has an appointment with Qi Hong at the park but she herself fails to show up.

Three years later Shen Ran becomes Zhi En's boss. She feels his boss is very low class due of his 'playboy' character and Shen Ran has intention to marry Zhi En. At the same time Qi Hong quits drinking and becomes the country's renowned architect.

Qi Hong moves to the office building opposite Zhi En's and the two get back together once again. He also has love interest with Zhi En. Both men are after her at the same time. Who will Zhi En choose in the end?



the recipe for success of this movie is the two hero. They chose two most popular actors in China. These two men are dream lovers to almost all girls.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Departures



Director: Takita Youjirou
Starring: Masahiro Motoki
        Tustomu Yamazaki
        Hirosue Ryoko
 
This movie is not a horror Japanese movie. It is not boring for a single instant and will make you cry by the end of the movie.
Daigo Kobayashi decides to start over his life, he moves back to his hometown with his wife to look for work. And he got a job is actually funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. His wife and other people all despise that job. But he takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect it as art. He just acts as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his heart goes deeper and deeper. It tells about joy and meaning of life and living. 
This movie is very unique and inspired. With the beautiful story, performance with the picturesque surroundings and wonderful score, the movie really deserves the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Love Letter

Directed by: Shunji Iwai

<Love Letter> is the first long story movie directed by Shunji Iwai. After the release in Japan, it became the most popular Japanese movie in 1990s. A lot of critics thought it was the most important work as the new Japanese film movement.
I watched it when I was in high school, I couldn’t fully understand at that time. But I could tell it is so delicate, psychological records small changes that with the increase of age, I can start with a lot of back reliving the memory.
In this film, it shows not only kind of a distant memory, but also performs the pure flavor of first love. It certainly reflects the trail exhaustive; it is so beautiful and sweet. Even growing up, when we look back over the events of that period of time, we will also be difficult to calm down.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Hana & Alice


Director: Shunji Iwai
Producer:Shunji Iwai
Screenwriter: Shunji Iwai
Starring: Anne Suzuki
                Yû Aoi
Tomohiro Kaku

This movie is not only about puppy love, but also about two girls. The focal points are their friendship and the turmoil of puberty.

Two best friends named Hana and Alice go to high school together. They are inseparable. They take train to school everyday, and they both notice and become interested in a boy who takes same train with them and he is their schoolmate. Hana likes to follow him home secretly. One day the boy banged his head against the wall by accident. Hana lies and convinces him that he gets amnesia, because she was his girlfriend when he wakes up. During the time of Alice helps Hana to keep her beautiful lie, she starts to be attracted by this boy. She exposes Hana’s lie to him finally and tells the new lie to him.

The whole movie likes a nice painting with light music. There is no intense plot or sudden, surprising turn, but you still can remember many beautiful images, savor this warm story, and it stirs your sympathy.

Monday, March 7, 2011

The Love of Siam


Director: Chukiat Sakveerakul
Screenwriter: Chukiat Sakveerakul
Cast: Witwisit Hirunyawongku
Mario Maurer
Laila Boonyasak

What are humans do in a real world that is not tamed by our rule?
What can we possibly do if we cannot bear to lose the one we love?
What if we go on life without loving anyone at all?

Through the interconnected lives of two boys who are on the verge of self-awareness amidst their own individual conflicts and the people surrounding them, The Love of Siam as simply a gay teen romance is to misjudge its power and intention. Within the two and a half hour running time of the film, it’s not only the two young leads' reunion and inevitable attraction but also a family's slow and painful road to accepting a long-delayed reality.

The director ended up choosing as plot construction regarding characters' emotions and actions. Instead of picking the conventional expression that would usually indicate 'sad', 'she is going to blow up', and 'angry', the scenes selected to continue the flow and plot of the movie are rather life-like.

Therefore I suppose the reason so many people like this movie because it exemplifies humanity's constrained reaction. This movie doesn't construct explicitly the events and personality surrounding each character as concrete context of the story, which is often a technique used by mainstream films to materialize climax and logic of a movie's plot. Also, I enjoy the mellow and subtle plot-weaving, and the overall picture painted by the music.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

All about Lily Chou Chou

Director: Shunji Iwai
Cast:Lchihara Hayato 
Oshinari Syuugo 
Ho Itoo 
Aoi Yuu 
When I was in high school, I saw a number of fine films, but the one that has stuck in my mind the most, indeed haunted me at that time, was Shunji Iwai’s All about Lily Chou-Chou.

All About Lily Chou-Chou a teenager film set in Japan. But it’s not much like any other teen film that I have ever seen. It’s a history of pain and humiliation: bullying among 13 and 14 year old boys and girls moving from various forms of petty theft, enforced prostitution, rape, and murder. And all this is shown primarily from the point of view of the victims, though the film also bears witness to the startling rapidity with which friendships can shift, so that a victim suddenly becomes a torturer.

The film is leisurely and contemplative, even when it presents scenes of painful brutality. The movie takes its time to reach its goals; it even seems to be drifting randomly at times, only to lead up to scenes that knit everything together with extraordinary force and concision.

The conjunction of sound and image is of course a big part of what makes the film so powerful. Because of this, the events that the film narrates are secondary to the feelings that those events evoke; through evocative music and fragmented images, Iwai tracks the minutest shifts of affect in the lives of the characters.

Many individual scenes from All about Lily Chou-Chou stick in my mind so far. And they remind me about my youth memory. I think I should watch it again this weekend.

the Road Home (My Father and Mother)

Director: Yimou Zhang
Cast: Ziyi Zhang
     Honglei Sun
     Hao Zheng
The story is about the “Remembrance”. A teacher wants to give his knowledge to the next generation and a farm wants to share her soul with the man she loves. They meet and fall in love. Even though the story doesn’t have a happy ending, it still make audience cry with smile.
There are thoughts about life, death, love, loss and loneliness. The contrast of the black and white present with the ecstatic color flashback scenes of the past are so sharp, it is almost emotionally overwhelming. Snow drifts across the frozen earth and there are scenes of the bitter cold. Your vision is in complete bliss as an aesthetic awareness of nature swirls around you in pictures and sounds in a rural Chinese setting. 
This movie is beautiful because its simplicity. It is pure in its deepest emotions of hope and longing and rich beyond material possessions in the beauty of love. 

Not One Less

 Director: Yimou Zhang
Cast: Zhimin Wei
     Huike Zhang
This is a real story. The whole cast of this movie are real and ordinary people. They play themselves in the movie.
Yimou Zhang went to the poverty-stricken area parts China to tell a story about a 13 year old peasant girl Mizhi Wei's be the only teacher of the only primary school in that area. She tries so hard to keep her all students studying at school.
This movie is Zhang's daring experiment to use "normal reality" to tell reality, and he has achieved convincingly his goal. All characters in this movie are real as in reality. So all their emotion is real, and they tell their life to audience. it’s very easy to be touching.
Unlike many other Yimou Zhang's movies which are persistently followed with complaint by Chinese audience for "being tailored and catering to foreign taste and curiosity", "Not One Less" is very well received in China

Lust, Caution

Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Tony Leung .....Mr. Yi
     Wei Tang .....Wang Jiazhi
     Lee-Hom Wang .....Kuang Yu-Min

The project, set in World War II-era Shanghai, reunites Ang Lee with "Brokeback" distributor Focus Features and his longtime collaborator, Focus CEO James Schamus, who will executive produce. The screenplay will be adapted from Ailing Zhang's short story by Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" screenwriter Hui-Ling Wang.

This film is about a woman enticing a top ranking official in the occupying Japanese government, in order to assassinate him.

The film is two and a half hour long, but I don’t feel that. In fact, I am glad that Ang Lee gives us enough time to appreciate the beauty of the film. The plot is gripping, and there is a lot to be pondered on. Men have to caution against lust, while for women, they may have to caution against something else.

This film is a really beautiful masterpiece. By the way, the sexuality in this film is so extremely the polar opposite compared to Ang Lee's last film "Brokeback Mountain". I find this very interesting.