Month: October 2018

The esteemed Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto was back in the news over the summer, when the New York Times reported that he was so irked by the song selection at a favorite Manhattan restaurant, he politely wrote to the chef and offered to take charge of the playlist. Something about the story felt typically Sakamoto:

There is, at most, one beautiful day contained in Korean director Jéro Yun’s “Beautiful Days,” whose ironic title refers to a kind of false nostalgia for a family bliss never experienced by any of its characters. That’s not to say the film is a miserabilist chore exactly, though it very nearly could have been, had

Staff handed out plastic ponchos. Red carpet-goers toted capes and umbrellas on Thursday night in Busan’s Centum City. But the storm clouds whipped up by Typhoon Kong-Rey served more to add to the atmosphere of the Busan International Film Festival’s opening ceremony, rather than to dampen spirits. After three years being buffeted by a political

October 4, 2018 5:23AM PT Celina Jade, the breakout actress from “Wolf Warriors II,” is set as the star of Chinese big-budget tomb-raiding action film “Mojin X.” The film is a sequel to 2015 hit “Mojin: The Lost Legend.” Directed by Li Yifan, “Mojin X” also stars Zhang Hanyu (“Assembly”) and Jiang Wu. Working through

Hong Kong pop queen Faye Wong, mainland Chinese actress Zhao Wei and Taiwan’s Shu Qi are believed to be among the celebrities from around greater China who are now rushing to ensure their finances are on the right side of the law in the Middle Kingdom. Their haste has been triggered by the recently announced

Jero Yun, the Korean filmmaker behind Busan International Film Festival’s opening night film “Beautiful Days,” is a Busan-born filmmaker who has spent more than a decade studying and filmmaking in France. Yun is best-known for his shorts and documentaries about North Koreans in China, including “Promise” (2010), “Looking for North Koreans” (2012) and “Mrs. B., a

October 4, 2018 1:35AM PT Fall festival favorites including “Manta Ray,” Jinpa,” and “Cities of Last Things” will line up in the main competition of next month’s Tokyo Filmex festival. The event runs Nov. 17-25 at venues in the Hibiya and Yurakucho suburbs of Tokyo. Directed by Phuttiphong Aroonpheng “Manta Ray” recently won the Horizons

October 4, 2018 12:29AM PT Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing, who has been at the center of a storm over unpaid taxes, is said to be at liberty after a period of government detention. Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, citing unnamed sources, reported Thursday that Fan has returned to Beijing after an unspecified period of

The Philippines will be the country of honor at this year’s Singapore Media Festival. The umbrella event, with festival and market functions, set its dates as Nov. 28 – Dec. 9, 2018. The two-week SMF jamboree includes core continuing events Asia TV Forum & Market (ATF), ScreenSingapore, Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF), and SMF Ignite. The recently announced

October 3, 2018 9:10PM PT The Busan International Film Festival’s plans for outdoor populist events look set to be blown sideways – literally – again this year. With the impending arrival of Typhoon Kong-Rey, Busan organizers have taken the precaution of moving some of the outdoor greetings, hand printing, and open talk events away from

October 3, 2018 8:43PM PT Nine films chosen from Busan’s A Window on Asian cinema strand will vie for the festival’s annual Kim Ji-seok award this year. Japan’s Kazuya Shiraishi, whose debut feature “Lost Paradise in Tokyo” was a Busan New Currents award nominee in 2009, is in the running for the Kim Ji-seok prize

With the exception of “Lady Bird” director Greta Gerwig, for whom the slightly antiquated yet worldly sounding moniker nicely reinforces her hipster brand, it seems hardly anyone is called Greta these days. You hear “Greta,” and the mind already starts to paint a picture, conjuring someone from another generation, perhaps an escapee from one of

October 3, 2018 7:18PM PT A rideshare goes awry in this middling indie thriller. A short trip to a hazy finish line, thriller “Ride” has a decent premise in the driver of an Uber-type rideshare service finding himself imperiled by the hidden agenda of an increasingly threatening passenger. But despite its brief runtime, writer-director Jeremy

In today’s film news roundup, free screenings of “The Hate U Give” are announced, the Napa Valley Film Festival is opening with “The Green Book,” and Jason Blum receives an award from the Israel Film Festival.  FREE SCREENINGS Twentieth Century Fox Film and AMC Theatres are offering free screenings of “The Hate U Give” for

In his lengthy and varied career, Val Kilmer has played everyone from Jim Morrison to Doc Holliday to Mark Twain – in multiple projects. He’s played Moses in the lavish musical “The Ten Commandments” and voiced KITT the car in the “Knight Rider” reboot. Along the way, he’s worked with filmmakers from Oliver Stone to

October 3, 2018 4:36PM PT New Line has hired “The Curse of La Llorona” director Michael Chaves to helm “The Conjuring 3.” “The Conjuring 3” will be the sixth movie in New Line’s Conjuring Universe, which has grossed $1.57 billion at the worldwide box office to become the highest-grossing horror franchise of all time. Last month’s

Jon Stewart looks to have found his next gig after staying off the grid since leaving “The Daily Show” in 2015 — and he’s bringing a familiar friend on board. The former talk show host will direct “Irresistible,” a political satire based on his original idea, sources tell Variety. Sources say Steve Carell is the

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of those supreme American figures who made looking like a creature of contradiction seem the quintessential way to be. His contradictions were luminous, larger-than-life, and he wore them with a tall, puckishly smiling Irish pride. He carried himself like a patrician — the bow tie, the mop of gray hair