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Mixing fantasy elements in martial arts films creates an immersive world and adds excitement to the story. Technological advancements have improved the execution of fantasy in martial arts films. Martial arts films that incorporate fantasy elements can still receive critical acclaim and recognition for their unique concepts.

Mixing fantasy elements into a martial arts film creates an exciting opportunity for world-building and heightened stakes for the film's characters. These fantastical elements, such as magic, monsters, and fictional settings, can sometimes be pulled from legends and mythology originating in Asia. Examples of this include well-known ghosts and demons in Journey to the West and the popular story of Mulan.

Fantasy within East Asian cinema is not new, as the genre of wuxia has roots going as far back as 300-200 BC. Though it's not a required element in modern wuxia cinema, films in the genre tend to include fantasy elements in their stories,...

Preparing for an upcoming flight isn’t just limited to packing your clothes and toiletries — have you thought about how you’re going to keep yourself entertained? The idealist in all of us might say we’re gonna read that book we’ve been putting off, but depending on the length of your flight, that may be easier said than done. If it’s on the longer side, it can be easy to get distracted and start to really feel the minutes crawling by.

The good news is that in recent years,...

This Warrior review contains spoilers.

Warrior Season 2 Episode 6 heads for the Mexican border for a No Holds Barred tournament that has been teased all season long. Apart from Ah Toy’s (Olivia Cheng) trips to Nellie’s (Miranda Raison) Sonoma winery in the previous episode, Warrior seldom leaves San Francisco except for one notable exception – Season 1 Episode 5: “The Blood and the Sh*t.” That was an outlier tale where Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) and Young Jun (Jason Tobin) were transporting a coffin and got trapped by bandits in a desert saloon with several bystanders.

With undertones of The Seven Samurai, it was an homage to spaghetti westerns, complete with a classic ride into the sunset and even a “The End” credit. It was one of the best episodes of Season 1, almost a standalone story because it did nothing to advance the overarching tale, while this new episode is pivotal...

To be completely honest, I’ve never been a big subscriber to the Chinese brand on VFX-heavy fantasy films. Not only do they, for the most part, miss their mark in the story-telling department, the VFX often feels excessively used and frankly, unpleasant to the eye at times. It is, thus, with increased trepidation that I approached Teddy Chen’s new feature “Double World”, which is based on the popular online Chinese video game Zhengtu.

A reimagined ancient China is the setting of the story, where the otherwise warring regions Northern Yan and Southern Zhao have known peace for a number of years, which now seems to be coming to an end. When a plot to assassinate the young king of Southern Zhao is foiled, the kingdom’s Grand Tutor Guan proposes to hold a tournament to choose the Kingdom army’s Grand Field Martial, a tradition that’s been dead since the peace.

Like so many 2020 films, Double World was slated for a major theatrical release this summer. But due to the pandemic, it has become one of the first big films to jump online in some hopes of recouping its costs. It’s a shame because Double World is the kind of film that was made for the big screen. It opens a spectacular new fantasy world, brimming with ravishing visuals. Haven’t heard of it? Don’t feel bad. It’s from China. Had 2020 gone as planned, Double World might have had a limited North American theatrical release at best, but now we can see it on Netflix.

Double World is based on a popular Mmorpg called Zhengtu, which is the movie’s original title in Chinese. Zhengtu means ‘way to conquer’. China’s massive population has the world’s largest online gaming community and Zhengtu is one of China’s top five online games,...

With the summer starting to wind down, Netflix appear to be taking their foot off the gas a little bit when it comes to releasing high-profile original movies. Over the last few months, the streaming service has debuted a string of in-house projects that have either been subjected to widespread critical acclaim or racked up huge viewing numbers, and frequently both.

Netflix can sometimes be fairly secretive about their viewership data unless they’re shouting their success from the rooftops, and having recently revealed their Top 10 most-watched original movies ever, you can understand why they went public. If you include the reported 72 million streams for Charlize Theron’s The Old Guard that would see it claim sixth spot in the rankings, then four of the Top 10 were released between March and July of this year alone.

However, despite having a huge number of high-profile originals scheduled for the rest of the year,...

HBO Asia has set “Dream Raider” as its first original sci-fi commission. The show is an 8-episode Mandarin language series, produced in Taiwan.

Set in the near future, “Dream Raider” features a misfit team of scientists and cops that are trying to get to the bottom of a criminal conspiracy that exploits human consciousness. The series opens with detectives investigating a case of missing girls and uncovers a mysterious cutting-edge technology that enables them to enter the dreamscapes of others in search of the truth.

Directed by Daniel Fu and Simon Hung, the series boasts a cast headed by David Wang, Vivian Hsu, Jason Wang, Weber Yang, Ellen Wu, Wu Ke-Xi (“Nina Wu”), Jun Kunimura, Aggie Hsieh, Garfield Chung, and Bella Wu.

Produced with the support of the Taipei Film Commission and the Taipei Cultural Foundation, the series is executive produced by renowned Hong Kong-based filmmaker Soi Cheang.

Starting on Aug.

As we quickly approach the end of the month, things have been slowing down a bit as far as new content on Netflix is concerned. That’s to be expected, though, as most streaming sites usually drop the bulk of their new arrivals on the first of any given month, with the remaining days seeing smaller batches of new movies and shows being added.

Unfortunately, today is another somewhat slow day for the big N, as the platform has only brought us 4 new titles, consisting of 3 films and 1 TV show. That being said, it’s far from an underwhelming drop and there are at least a few things here that may catch your attention.

See below for the full list of what arrived today:

3 New Movies

Banana Split (2018) Double World (2019) Zookeeper (2011)

1 New TV Series

Shameless (Season 10)

Television-wise, your one and only option is season 10 of Shameless, though that’s far from a bad thing.

The full list of nominations for the 39th Hong Kong Film Awards has been revealed. However, the dates are still unknown; the mid-April event in fact, will be probably postponed due to the Covid-19 (a.k.a. coronavirus). So for now let’s just have a look at the nominees.

This year’s edition sees Derek Tsang Kwok-Cheung’s “Better Days” leading the competition with an amazing 12 nominations, followed at close range by Heiward Mak’s “Fagara” with 11 nominations and Wong Hing-Fan’s “I’m Livin’ It” with 10. Moreover, Wilson Yip’s “Ip Man 4: The Finale” bagged 9 nominations, including Best Director and Best Action Choreography.

Read the full list of nominations below:

Better Days by Derek Tsang

Best Film

Better Days by Derek Tsang

Suk Suk by Ray Yeung

Fagara by Heiward Mak

I’m Livin’ It by Wong Hing-fan

The New King Of Comedy by Stephen Chow

Best...