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
Movies
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
October 3, 2018 1:40PM PT Armie Hammer has joined Gal Gadot in Fox’s “Death on the Nile,” a follow-up to last year’s “Murder on the Orient Express.” The studio has hired “Orient Express” director Kenneth Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green to return for “Death on the Nile.” Branagh will reprise his role of the mustachioed
October 3, 2018 12:37PM PT Disney has launched development on a remake of its animated comedy “Lilo & Stitch” as a live-action/CG hybrid movie. Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich of Rideback are producing the remake with Mike Van Waes hired to write the script. Rideback’s Ryan Halprin is co-producing. Lin and Eirich are producing Disney’s
October 3, 2018 12:34PM PT This coming-of-age story, set in Soviet Estonia during the time of the Stalinist terror in the 1950s, is both affecting and richly visualized. Gentle period drama “The Little Comrade” is an affecting and richly visualized coming-of-age story set in Soviet Estonia during the Stalinist terror of the 1950s. Adapting two
There are moments of life-and-death crisis in which time simultaneously stops and stretches, becomes both immaterial and absolutely of the essence, and few spaces do more to blur it than a hospital — where lives end, begin and are drastically altered in seconds that pass like centuries. In her wrenching debut feature “Blind Spot,” Norwegian
Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media are holding free screenings for the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary “RBG” on Oct. 29 in seven cities in California, Florida, and Texas. The companies said the screenings — set eight days before the midterm elections — are part of a partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union and Rock the
Early reviews are in for the latest big superhero movie, and it looks like the titular character isn’t the only venomous thing about it. Currently sitting at a 32% on Rotten Tomatoes, “Venom” has released to mixed reactions, many of which have been highly critical of the film despite a strong performance from Tom Hardy.
On Warner Bros.’ remake of “A Star Is Born,” actor-director Bradley Cooper and co-star Lady Gaga refused to settle for the traditional practice of pre-recording their songs and later lip-synching on set. Instead, they embraced the more risky approach of performing the movie’s songs live. The studio was aware of the danger, but with the
“The Chronicles of Narnia” are coming to Netflix. The streaming giant announced Wednesday that it will develop new series and film projects based on C.S. Lewis’ iconic book series. The projects are part of a new, multi-year deal between Netflix and The C.S. Lewis Company. All of the series and films produced through the deal will
October 3, 2018 7:25AM PT Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has released “Has Ended,” a second song from his soundtrack to Luca Guadagnino’s forthcoming film “Suspiria,” which arrives Oct. 26 on XL Recordings. The album consists of 25 original compositions written by Yorke specifically for the Guadagnino’s reimagining of the 1977 Dario Argento horror classic, which
October 3, 2018 7:01AM PT Three Indian, two Chinese and one Korean film are among the movies that will compete for the Best Asian Film Award, presented by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards. The nine nominees include China’s two hit drama’s “Youth” and “Dying to Survive.” From India, the contenders include
October 3, 2018 7:00AM PT Natalie Portman’s “Vox Lux” has been selected as the opening night film of the Austin Film Festival & Writers Conference on Oct. 25. The drama, directed by Brady Corbett from his own script, had its world premiere at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 4 and will be
October 3, 2018 6:15AM PT [embedded content] Christian Bale’s drastic transformation into Dick Cheney takes center stage in the first trailer for “Vice,” released Wednesday. The biopic, directed by Adam McKay, chronicles Cheney’s life as the former vice president under President George W. Bush. Starting with his beginnings as a Washington bureaucrat, the film explores Cheney’s service under the
Hit with monumental fines for tax evasion, Chinese actress Fan Bingbing made a fulsome apology Wednesday, saying she felt “ashamed and guilty for what I did.” It was her first public statement after months of silence on her Weibo social media account and after fevered speculation over her disappearance from view. Fans and industry observers
October 3, 2018 12:00AM PT Corin Hardy is joining the gang. Fresh from helming box-office smash “The Nun,” Hardy has boarded Sky and Cinemax’s hotly anticipated drama series “Gangs of London.” Hardy will direct three episodes of the show about warring gangs, which marks Vice-backed Pulse Films’ move into high-end TV drama. Vice is producing
October 2, 2018 8:54PM PT Ryuichi Sakamoto, the Japanese composer who will this week be honored as the Asian Filmmaker of the Year in Busan, will head the jury for the best original score prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. It is the first time that the APSAs, now in their 12th edition, present
UPDATED: Missing Chinese celebrity Fan Bingbing is to be heavily fined for tax evasion, it emerged on Wednesday. China’s State Administration of Taxation said that, following an investigation into her finances, Fan is to pay “hundreds of millions” of yuan in back taxes and fines. According to state news agency Xinhua, the extent of Fan’s payments could