Kwan Finds Tradition and Trasfiguration in Chinatown
No major city is without a Chinatown, each with its own cast of colorful characters, their shops stocked with traditional oriental goods, all hocked through old school methods where nearly everything is negotiable. But as times change and the original immigrant populations die out and are replaced by youth uninterested in their parents’ time-honored means of living, many of these communities are in a state of rapid transformation. Nearly a decade after Julia Kwan’s debut, Eve and the Fire Horse, took home the Special Jury Prize from Sundance, the director has taken to the streets of her hometown’s own Chinatown in Vancouver. As it turns out, the situation there is no different, its lingering shops hang in the balance as elders reach their 80s and 90s, young entrepreneurs reinvent recently closed up storefronts, big business outsiders reap the benefits of cheap...
No major city is without a Chinatown, each with its own cast of colorful characters, their shops stocked with traditional oriental goods, all hocked through old school methods where nearly everything is negotiable. But as times change and the original immigrant populations die out and are replaced by youth uninterested in their parents’ time-honored means of living, many of these communities are in a state of rapid transformation. Nearly a decade after Julia Kwan’s debut, Eve and the Fire Horse, took home the Special Jury Prize from Sundance, the director has taken to the streets of her hometown’s own Chinatown in Vancouver. As it turns out, the situation there is no different, its lingering shops hang in the balance as elders reach their 80s and 90s, young entrepreneurs reinvent recently closed up storefronts, big business outsiders reap the benefits of cheap...
- 4/29/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
The only constant is change. There’s truth to that no matter where you live, and in keeping with the times, that change sometimes happens way too fast. If there’s an area in Vancouver that seems like a step backwards in time, it’s Chinatown, but that is quickly changing. Although the people in the area are less than thrilled about the idea, many of them are also old timers who are powerless to do much about amongst some of the most expensive real estate in Canada. But they persevere, and they keep working day to day as if the world isn’t changing around them. Everything Will Be is their story.
Director Julia Kwan, who made the Sundance Jury Award-winning Eve and the Fire Horse, approaches the subject in a “day in the life” style, where her camera captures the action of these typical days on the streets of Chinatown,...
Director Julia Kwan, who made the Sundance Jury Award-winning Eve and the Fire Horse, approaches the subject in a “day in the life” style, where her camera captures the action of these typical days on the streets of Chinatown,...
- 4/28/2014
- by Adam A. Donaldson
- We Got This Covered
Shanghai Red
Shanghai International Film Festival
SHANGHAI -- The evocative title might mislead one to imagine Shanghai Red as one of those pre-Liberation epics like A Time to Remember (1998) or a propaganda film about the fiery days of the Cultural Revolution. In fact, the film is an attempt at an Eastern La femme Nikita with an interracial romantic twist set in contemporary Shanghai.
As a U.S.-Chinese co-production with Shanghai Film Group Corp., the film could gain theatrical release in China and draw in crowds curious about how their own city appears in a Hollywood film. Beyond that, some Asian-American festivals also might consider it for their selection.
Vivian Wu (The Pillow Book, Eve and the Fire Horse) plays Meili, an interpreter who becomes an angel of vengeance when her husband is shot dead on his way to sign a joint-venture contract. The appearance of an enigmatic American who claims to be a kind of troubleshooter for companies draws her into a web of deceit, love and guilt.
Still ravishing after all these years, Wu is the biggest interest-sustaining factor in the film. She gives subtle gradations in performance for the three phases and identities in her life but still maintains continuity of personality in spite of the film's more contrived moments, like when Meili slips into a scarlet red cheongsam and dons wide-brimmed Ray-Bans -- that really helps her blend in with the crowd when being tailed by the police on her way to assassinate her adversaries!
Director Oscar Luis Costo (Wu's husband) is a recognized Hollywood producer, so production quality is what one would expect of Hollywood. Costume and production design are thoughtfully consistent, with the film's color schemes of green, red and gray conceived to reflect the three stages and states of mind of the female protagonist.
However, the script is compromised by an attempt to make the film accessible to both American and Asian audiences by throwing together a mixed cast from U.S., Hong Kong and China. Ge You (To Live, The Banquet), a superstar in China, gets only a cameo role as the inscrutable boss, with little to do except look shady. Kenny Bee, once a Hong Kong heartthrob and now a veteran actor, spends most of his time playing a corpse or a ghostly apparition.
Richard Burgi (Hostel: Part II), on the other hand, gets the most screen time as the international love interest. Although he looks the part as the handsome "man of mystery," he and Wu have as much chemistry as a fish and a bicycle. She hits off much better with Sun Honglei (The Road Home, "Zhou Yu's Train"), another well-known Chinese actor who plays her defense lawyer in the film's overlapping narrative.
Although their interaction takes place exclusively in the confined space of a prison, it generates more dramatic tension as the two alternate roles as confessor and confidant, judge and therapist. Yet any attempt at psychological penetration is distracted by all the action, suspense, romance and Shanghai city tours that fill up the film's running time.
Moviegoers who choose this film for a bit of Oriental mystique will get their money's worth, from panoramic views of the Bund to lessons on how to eat xiaolongbao (soup-filled dumpling), with some modern images of snazzy, skyscraper-filled Shanghai thrown in. Those looking for the essence of Shanghai had better stick to Lou Ye's Suzhou River.
SHANGHAI RED
MARdeORO Films Inc. USA/Shanghai Film Group Corp.
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Oscar Luis Costo
Director of photography: Adam Kane
Producer: Ren Zhonglun
Production designer: Jeff Knipp
Music: Randy Miller
Editor: Josh Muscatine
Cast:
Zhu Meili: Vivian Wu
Michael Johnson: Richard Burgi
The Lawyer: Sun Honglei
The Boss: Ge You
Running time -- 115 minutes
No MPAA rating...
SHANGHAI -- The evocative title might mislead one to imagine Shanghai Red as one of those pre-Liberation epics like A Time to Remember (1998) or a propaganda film about the fiery days of the Cultural Revolution. In fact, the film is an attempt at an Eastern La femme Nikita with an interracial romantic twist set in contemporary Shanghai.
As a U.S.-Chinese co-production with Shanghai Film Group Corp., the film could gain theatrical release in China and draw in crowds curious about how their own city appears in a Hollywood film. Beyond that, some Asian-American festivals also might consider it for their selection.
Vivian Wu (The Pillow Book, Eve and the Fire Horse) plays Meili, an interpreter who becomes an angel of vengeance when her husband is shot dead on his way to sign a joint-venture contract. The appearance of an enigmatic American who claims to be a kind of troubleshooter for companies draws her into a web of deceit, love and guilt.
Still ravishing after all these years, Wu is the biggest interest-sustaining factor in the film. She gives subtle gradations in performance for the three phases and identities in her life but still maintains continuity of personality in spite of the film's more contrived moments, like when Meili slips into a scarlet red cheongsam and dons wide-brimmed Ray-Bans -- that really helps her blend in with the crowd when being tailed by the police on her way to assassinate her adversaries!
Director Oscar Luis Costo (Wu's husband) is a recognized Hollywood producer, so production quality is what one would expect of Hollywood. Costume and production design are thoughtfully consistent, with the film's color schemes of green, red and gray conceived to reflect the three stages and states of mind of the female protagonist.
However, the script is compromised by an attempt to make the film accessible to both American and Asian audiences by throwing together a mixed cast from U.S., Hong Kong and China. Ge You (To Live, The Banquet), a superstar in China, gets only a cameo role as the inscrutable boss, with little to do except look shady. Kenny Bee, once a Hong Kong heartthrob and now a veteran actor, spends most of his time playing a corpse or a ghostly apparition.
Richard Burgi (Hostel: Part II), on the other hand, gets the most screen time as the international love interest. Although he looks the part as the handsome "man of mystery," he and Wu have as much chemistry as a fish and a bicycle. She hits off much better with Sun Honglei (The Road Home, "Zhou Yu's Train"), another well-known Chinese actor who plays her defense lawyer in the film's overlapping narrative.
Although their interaction takes place exclusively in the confined space of a prison, it generates more dramatic tension as the two alternate roles as confessor and confidant, judge and therapist. Yet any attempt at psychological penetration is distracted by all the action, suspense, romance and Shanghai city tours that fill up the film's running time.
Moviegoers who choose this film for a bit of Oriental mystique will get their money's worth, from panoramic views of the Bund to lessons on how to eat xiaolongbao (soup-filled dumpling), with some modern images of snazzy, skyscraper-filled Shanghai thrown in. Those looking for the essence of Shanghai had better stick to Lou Ye's Suzhou River.
SHANGHAI RED
MARdeORO Films Inc. USA/Shanghai Film Group Corp.
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Oscar Luis Costo
Director of photography: Adam Kane
Producer: Ren Zhonglun
Production designer: Jeff Knipp
Music: Randy Miller
Editor: Josh Muscatine
Cast:
Zhu Meili: Vivian Wu
Michael Johnson: Richard Burgi
The Lawyer: Sun Honglei
The Boss: Ge You
Running time -- 115 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 7/11/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Quebec films dominate Genie noms
TORONTO -- Quebec films dominated nearly all the major categories as nominations for the Genies, Canada's top film honors, were unveiled Tuesday in Toronto.
In the best picture competiton, Ivan Reitman-produced Trailer Park Boys: The Movie was the lone English-language Canadian entry. It will face off against four Quebecois films: Erik Canuel's Bon Cop, Bad Cop, Charles Biname's Maurice Richard/The Rocket, Jean-Francois Pouliot's Guide De La Petite Vengeance and Robert Favreau's Un Dimanche A Kigali.
The same quartet of French-language filmmakers surfaced again in the best director category, an all-Quebecois affair rounded out by La Vie Secrete Des Gens Heureux helmer Stephane Lapointe.
"Maurice Richard/The Rocket," a French-language drama about the legendary hockey player, led the Genies field with 13 nominations, followed by bilingual buddy comedy Bon Cop, Bad Cop with 10 nominations.
Terry Gilliam's Tideland, a British-Canadian co-production, grabbed five craft nominations and a best actress nod for Jodelle Ferland, while Julia Kwan's Eve and the Fire Horse earned a best supporting actress nomination for Vivian Wu and a best supporting actor nomination for Lester Chit-Man Chan. Otherwise, English-language Canadian movies, which garner a paltry 1% of cinema screen-time nationwide, look set to play second fiddle to their French-language counterparts when the Genies are handed out next month. Quebec films similarly overshadow the acting categories, with Colm Feore (Bon Cop) going up against Roy Dupuis (Maurice Richard), Belgian actor Olivier Gourmet (Congorama), Patrick Huard (Bon Cop) and Luc Picard (Un Dimanche A Kigali) in the best actor competition.
In the best actress category, Sigourney Weaver, nominated for her role in Snow Cake, will challenge Julie Le Breton (Maurice Richard), Fatou N'Diaye (Un Dimanche A Kigali), veteran Quebec star Ginette Reno (Le Secret De Ma Mere) and Jodelle Ferland (Tideland).
The Genie nominations, which came on the second day of Canada's actors strike, were announced at a Toronto press conference with no nominated directors or actors on hand for the assembled media.
In the best picture competiton, Ivan Reitman-produced Trailer Park Boys: The Movie was the lone English-language Canadian entry. It will face off against four Quebecois films: Erik Canuel's Bon Cop, Bad Cop, Charles Biname's Maurice Richard/The Rocket, Jean-Francois Pouliot's Guide De La Petite Vengeance and Robert Favreau's Un Dimanche A Kigali.
The same quartet of French-language filmmakers surfaced again in the best director category, an all-Quebecois affair rounded out by La Vie Secrete Des Gens Heureux helmer Stephane Lapointe.
"Maurice Richard/The Rocket," a French-language drama about the legendary hockey player, led the Genies field with 13 nominations, followed by bilingual buddy comedy Bon Cop, Bad Cop with 10 nominations.
Terry Gilliam's Tideland, a British-Canadian co-production, grabbed five craft nominations and a best actress nod for Jodelle Ferland, while Julia Kwan's Eve and the Fire Horse earned a best supporting actress nomination for Vivian Wu and a best supporting actor nomination for Lester Chit-Man Chan. Otherwise, English-language Canadian movies, which garner a paltry 1% of cinema screen-time nationwide, look set to play second fiddle to their French-language counterparts when the Genies are handed out next month. Quebec films similarly overshadow the acting categories, with Colm Feore (Bon Cop) going up against Roy Dupuis (Maurice Richard), Belgian actor Olivier Gourmet (Congorama), Patrick Huard (Bon Cop) and Luc Picard (Un Dimanche A Kigali) in the best actor competition.
In the best actress category, Sigourney Weaver, nominated for her role in Snow Cake, will challenge Julie Le Breton (Maurice Richard), Fatou N'Diaye (Un Dimanche A Kigali), veteran Quebec star Ginette Reno (Le Secret De Ma Mere) and Jodelle Ferland (Tideland).
The Genie nominations, which came on the second day of Canada's actors strike, were announced at a Toronto press conference with no nominated directors or actors on hand for the assembled media.
- 1/9/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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