why they say this actress popular in Japan b4...
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Academy Awards Redefine 'Foreign'
Films from other cultures and countries are big with filmgoers and Hollywood investors, and are being nominated in all Oscar categories
When the 79th Academy Award glitz-fest is beamed around the globe on Feb. 25, film fans in Tokyo, Mexico City, and Madrid will be awaiting news of who won with more than the usual suspense. Rarely has such a culturally diverse group of actors and directors been honored with nominations by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and many of the contenders are in major Oscar categories other than best foreign language film.
Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi is up for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as a troubled deaf girl in Babel, directed by Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu. (Babel co-star and Mexican actress Adriana Barraza also received a Best Supporting Actress nod.)
A complex drama shot in Mexico, Morocco, and Japan with dialogue in Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, English, and sign language, the Paramount film won a Golden Globe and is up for seven Oscar nominations. Two other Mexican directors are vying for best foreign film and screenplay Oscars, and Madrid-born Penélope Cruz is in the running for Best Actress for a Spanish-speaking role in Sony Pictures Classic's Volver.
Beyond Our Borders
Although Warner Bros. bankrolled Letters From Iwo Jima,, directed by Clint Eastwood, it's a Japanese-language film with a mostly Asian cast, and stars Kensaku (Ken) Watanabe, who received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role opposite Tom Cruise in he Last Samurai several years back. A Canadian-financed film called Water, directed by Indian-born and now Toronto resident director Deepa Mehta, is competing for best foreign language film.
U.S. films still rule the global cinematic marketplace, and it often takes the deep financial clout of Hollywood to get ambitious, big-buck international productions off the ground and distributed. Yet it is undeniable that film audiences from Tucson to Tokyo are hungry for more unconventional films that are global in outlook and offer glimpses into a way of life beyond their own borders. Big U.S. film studios view such films as extremely commercially viable.
That has opened up huge new career opportunities for foreign directors and acting talent in this decade. "Because the film industry, like others, is globalizing and nationality is getting fuzzy, casting will be decided irrespective of nationality," says Japanese film critic Yukichi Shinada, who contributes to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and other publications. He thinks the Eastwood film about the U.S.-Japanese military clash is reflective of this larger trend.
Not Afraid to Read
The explosion of DVD sales and pay TV channels globally that make financing a foreign film far less of a risky proposition has helped too. In this age of Google (GOOG) search and downloadable video clips from virtually any corner of the planet, there is doubtless greater curiosity about foreign cultures. And that is allowing filmmakers to experiment more with exotic plot locations, international casts, and other languages.
"People around the world want to see great stories—and they don't care if they have to read [subtitled] dialogue on the screen," says Richard Fox, executive vice-president, international, with Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner (TMX). In recent years the studio has upped its production, acquisition, and distribution of local-language films to learn more about foreign markets and of course to make smart bets on hit movies that will yield sizable returns.
One Warner-backed French film called Les Bronzes 3: Amis Pour la Vie, released last year, was a commercial winner that pulled in more than 10 million admissions. Back in 2004 the movie studio partnered with China Film Group and Hengdian Group to create Warner China Film, which released The Painted Veil last year. -
Actually, the problem isn't really with Bollywood itself. The problem is with a particular self-proclaimed Bollywood fan.
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Blood: The Last Vampire
Blood: The Last Vampire is a Japanese anime film produced by animation studio Production I.G. and Sony's anime production arm, Aniplex. It was distributed across North America by Manga Entertainment.
The film has been praised for its blend of 2D and 3D elements, with Academy Award winning director James Cameron stating: "Digital imaging has entered a new era. The world will come to consider this work as the standard of top quality in digital animation."[1] It received the Grand Prize for animation at the 2000 Japan Media Arts Festival.
Live action film
In May 2006, Bill Kong, producer of the acclaimed movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, officially announced that he will produce a live action adaptation, and Ronny Yu (Fearless) will be directing the film.[2]
As of September 2006, Ronny Yu disclosed the first preview aspects to the film's story[3] in an interview for Ain't It Cool News. The film is to be set at a United States Army camp in Tokyo during America's occupation of Japan right after the conclusion of World War II. When asked if he will be moving the story to the present day, the director denied so, vehemently replying that the movie will look more visually stunning if set at the midst of an immediate post-WWII Japan.
Technically, if it follows the canon of the film and subsequent works, the movie can be considered a prequel.
Ronny Yu further disclosed that filming will start in early January 2007 in Tokyo, Melbourne, and Buenos Aires, with a release date for the movie to open in the United States expected in Spring 2008, although this has recently changed. The filming will now be starting March 2007 in China and Argentina.
Korean actress, Jun Ji-Hyun[4] (My Sassy Girl, Windstruck) will play the role of Saya. Additionally, the French firm Pathé will be in charge of producing the movie and managing the distribution rights and license under the consent of Production I.G., the studio which owns the original copyright to the film.
As of March 2007, the director had been changed to Chris Nahon (Kiss of the Dragon).
The film is expected to come out before June 2008.
from www.wikiepedia.com -
Hollywood warms to Asian movies, American-style
Renie Graham
New York Times News Service
Feb. 15, 2005 12:00 AM
One of the most discussed movies this year is one that won't even be in theaters until 2006.
A Boston-based crime thriller, "The Departed," boasts an A-list cast including Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Mark Wahlberg. Jack Nicholson has reportedly signed on for a crucial supporting role, and Martin Scorsese will direct. Despite all the buzz, what many people won't know is that it's a remake of the taut, stylish Hong Kong drama "Infernal Affairs," a 2002 film that got a brief run at the Brattle Theatre last November.
If there's a trend to be found in recent cinema, it's the decidedly Eastern persuasion of more than a few American movies. "The Grudge," "The Ring," and "Shall We Dance?" were all based on Japanese originals, and together they pulled in nearly $300 million domestically.
And that's just the beginning: Major studios are continuing to snap up the rights to films from South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong with the intention of remaking them with American actors. By some estimates, at least two dozen Asian films are slated for remakes, including South Korea's "Old Boy," "Il Mare," and "A Tale of Two Sisters," and "The Eye," a Hong Kong/Thailand production. And before even a single frame of the "The Departed" has been shot, Scorsese and DiCaprio are already in negotiations to remake yet another Asian movie, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's 1948 noir "Drunken Angel."
Mercifully, we aren't likely to have to endure anything as unsightly as, say, Brad Pitt, Renee Zellweger, and Ben Affleck in an American remake of "House of Flying Daggers," the current art-house film by acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou. But high-wire martial arts stories are about the only Asian films that aren't garnering major attention from Hollywood.
For all the effort being dedicated to remaking Asian movies, however, some wonder whether the same vigor and funding would be better spent promoting the original films, which are often more audacious and challenging than the sometimes watered-down remakes that wind up in American multiplexes.
"Personally, I think 1/8remakes 3/8 are a good thing because it provides exposure for the original source material," says David Leong, news editor of Kung Fu Cult Cinema (kfccinema.com), a popular Asian-film website. "But it's also a bad thing, because the remakes are rarely up to the standards of the originals. Some of the themes are denser in the original source, and they - Hollywood studios - tend to dumb them down. Character development is taken out or plot points are roughed over, and that's a sore point for a lot of fans who like Asian films."
While Hollywood's burst of interest in Asian films might be new, for decades savvy Western filmmakers have taken inspiration from their counterparts in the East. John Sturges's 1960 Western "The Magnificent Seven" was a remake of Kurosawa's 1954 classic "Seven Samurai." Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" provided the blueprint for Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" (as did actor Toshiro Mifune's droll ronin for Clint Eastwood's iconic Man with No Name), as well as Walter Hill's "Last Man Standing," a lousy 1996 film starring Bruce Willis. And a prime influence for George Lucas's "Star Wars" was "The Hidden Fortess," also by Kurosawa.
Yet, except for cinephiles, most folks are more familiar with the American remakes. These days, Roy Lee, a partner in the independent production company Vertigo Entertainment, is Hollywood's point man for Asian remakes. Lee finds what he considers the best Asian films, negotiates the remake rights, and sells them to Hollywood studios. He facilitated the remakes of "Ringu," "Ju-on," and "Infernal Affairs," as well as upcoming Americanized versions of the South Korean comedies "My Sassy Girl" and "My Wife Is a Gangster."
"These are films people here were never exposed to in a way that would make them adaptable to the US market," Lee says. "We take the projects, match them up with actors, writers, and directors, and pitch the studios as to exactly how we would do it in the United States. Before that, 1/8Asian films 3/8 were watched by the acquisitions side of the studios, looking at them only for release purposes."
And remakes, with recognizable actors and no subtitles, tend to be far more profitable than foreign films.
"There's still tremendous resistance to subtitles" among American filmgoers, says Martin Grove, an online columnist for The Hollywood Reporter. "People aren't used to 1/8reading subtitles 3/8, and they don't like doing it." (One of the few exceptions to this rule is Yimou's "Hero," which pulled in more than $53 million last year. It was greatly helped by action star Jet Li's above-the-title billing and a hearty endorsement from devoted Asian film fan Quentin Tarantino.)
Still, in opting for a remake, American audiences are sometimes cheated of an original film's singular charm and viewpoint. Such was the case with last year's "Shall We Dance?," based on a Japanese film of the same name released here in 1997. That film's cultural component didn't have the same resonance in the American version. In Masayuki Suo's movie, a businessman, stifled by his country's restrictive cultural order, achieves emotional freedom when he enrolls in a dance school. In the American version, Gere's workaholic lawyer seeks a refuge from life's demands, yet the remake lacks the original's poignancy and subtle social critique.
"Certain things just don't translate on a one-to-one basis," Leong says. "The whole idea of being a bottled-up, repressed worker and finding release in dancing just didn't work as well because America is a totally different society.
"I believe if you treat your audience with respect, you'll get the payoff," he maintains. "Unfortunately, the studios don't think American audiences are intelligent enough to follow a movie plot that's not American. There's a lack of respect by Hollywood studios that, in the end, irritates people. They change the flow of a movie, the intent of a scene; you change the original director's vision, and you end up with trash."
In acquiring the rights to Asian films, Lee has developed a sense for which films probably won't work as remakes. He likes comedies, thrillers, and horror films, but tends to steer clear of "dramas rooted into the culture with family and relationships. They're just harder to translate."
Still, as Leong asserts, Hollywood's interest in Asia has also created a small but burgeoning market for original Asian films. Last year, Kino Video released "The Wong Kar-Wai Collection," featuring five films from the Hong Kong auteur, as well as prolific Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike's outrageously graphic "Dead or Alive" trilogy. Home Vision Entertainment put out "The Yakuza Papers: Battles Without Honor & Humanity," Kinji Fukasaku's tremendously compelling five-part gangster epic, which has often been compared to the "Godfather" films. -
And films such as "Ringu," "Ju-on," "Shall We Dance?," and "Infernal Affairs," once only available as expensive imports or dodgy bootlegs, are now regularly stocked in stores selling or renting DVDs.
"I had these awful copies of 'Ringu' from the UK and Hong Kong - the subtitles were bad, the picture quality was terrible. Now the best copy out there is the Region 1 1/8DVDs playable in North America 3/8," says Jimmy Nguyen, a Kung Fu Cult Cinema film critic. "With all the remakes and attention toward Asian cinema, even films that aren't being remade are being released on video. That's a great thing. You'd go to Blockbuster, and you were really limited in the foreign section, but now there's all these Korean and Japanese films. It's cool."
The trend has also presented opportunities for Asian filmmakers. "The Grudge" was remade by its original director, Takashi Shimizu. And Hideo Nakata, who helmed "Ringu" and its sequel, was tapped for "The Ring 2," scheduled for release here next month. Others such as Hong Kong's Johnnie To are also being courted, much as American studios enticed Ang Lee and John Woo in the 1990s.
In April, "The Departed" is scheduled to begin shooting in Boston, and expectations for the film's success are high. Some also hope this remake will respect the integrity of its Hong Kong inspiration, "Infernal Affairs," which might have found an American audience if it had been given a real chance.
"I'm looking forward to it because Scorsese is a great filmmaker, and it'll be interesting to see how he vamps off the originals," Leong says. "But I also dread it because if they pretty it up, it could be a totally different movie." -
Don't wait for a remake, see the originals
"Old Boy"
(2003, directed by Park Chan-wook, South Korea)
A young businessman is kidnapped, imprisoned, then suddenly released after 15 years. More a "whydunit" than a "whodunit," this emotionally violent revenge tale is an absolute stunner. Won the Grand Prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Also well worth checking out from this director: "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and "JSA: Joint Security Area."
"Memories of Murder"
(2003, Bong Joon-ho, South Korea)
Two ill-matched detectives race to discover who is raping and murdering women in a rural village. Unlike most serial-killer movies, this film is more concerned with the sociopolitical upheavals of the 1980s that allowed the murders to persist. Based on the unsolved case of Korea's first recorded serial murders.
"Infernal Affairs"
(2002, Alan Mak and Andrew Lau, Hong Kong)
A cop who has infiltrated a mob syndicate and a criminal posing as a cop are assigned by their bosses to find the rat in their ranks, as they also try to uncover each other's true identities.
"In the Mood for Love"
(2000, Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong)
A man and woman discover their respective spouses are having an affair, and they soon find themselves also developing feelings for each other in this lushly photographed, achingly romantic story.
"Audition"
(1999, Takashi Miike, Japan)
Not for the faint of heart, this shocking film does for dating what "Fatal Attraction" did for extramarital affairs. -
I remember once under one of your different nicks, you commented that Japan only knew how to produce shows like Ring and Ju-On. But these are precisely the kind of shows Hollywood has been making into remakes. (although actually has much more than that, just that you're too ignorant)Originally posted by BoxHiller:is that yr assumption?
He posted some nice pics eye catching.
If u dont like it, then just get the hell out of this topic and not be such a pain in the arse....
Although not being much of a thriller fan myself, I also pointed out to you how the shows that are popular in US were shows like "I know what you did last summer" or "Scream". Shows that have the same kid of appeal as shows like "The Ring" or "Ju-On".
You try to pass yourself off as a movie buff but in fact, you are totally clueless. I'm barely even a fraction the movie buff some of the forumites here are and I can point all this out to you.
Yet all you know is Bollywood, and your knowledge of Bollywood in itself is lacking. -
STFU
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Future of tamil cinema
SHriya Saran Status - top
Upcoming
Trisha 2002 -future
Nayantarah 2004 - future
Asin 2004 -future
Samiksha 2004 -future
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Future of tamil cinema
SHriya Saran Status - top
Upcoming
Trisha 2002 -future
Nayantarah 2004 - future
Asin 2004 -future
Samiksha 2004 -future -
shriya (2007 tamil actress)
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stop talking about yr crappy p0op sh&t horror show!
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mhcampboy. all yr posts logged for evidence..
and all yr posts will comeout St times tomm...have a nice day -
sumone = mhcampboy = clones of fireice...
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yaaawwwn....Originally posted by Bar happy hour:mhcampboy. all yr posts logged for evidence..
and all yr posts will comeout St times tomm...have a nice day
ok.. make sure come out ok... dun make me waste my few cents in buying it... -
You continue to show how silly you are.Originally posted by Bar happy hour:sumone = mhcampboy = clones of fireice... -
Shriya Saran is destined to repeat the success of the levels that Simran and Meena archieved in tamil cinema. in the 1990s.She is also set to woo hollywood too with "The Other End of the Line".
this face cut always win.
Meena 1991-2001
Simran 1995 -2004
Shriya Saran 2004- future
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lol.. from last yr.. this blachan... keep saying im FI's clone..Originally posted by SumOne:You continue to show how silly you are.
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You obviously did not note what I have posted. Not that what anyone else matters to you anyway. Asian film is more than just Horror flicks.. Letters From Iwo Jima is one example already.Originally posted by Bar happy hour:stop talking about yr crappy p0op sh&t horror show!
About horror shows, they're not 'mine', at least not in the sense you think it means. I'm just showing you how little you really know about movies. I've told you more than once that I'm not a fan, I'm just pointing out certain facts to you. I know you have a problem with reality (otherwise you won't think I'm campy's clone).
That clone comment coming from you is rather ironic, given your track record. This thread alone you've been talking to yourself. Or is it your spilt personality talking? -
He's been saying I'm FI's clone since 2005, or maybe even earlier. He even called me Jason's clone. All this just shows how poor a grasp on reality he has.Originally posted by mhcampboy:lol.. from last yr.. this blachan... keep saying im FI's clone.. -
wow.. u r my shifu sia!!Originally posted by SumOne:He's been saying I'm FI's clone since 2005, or maybe even earlier. He even called me Jason's clone. All this just shows how poor a grasp on reality he has. -
Actually, I've mentioned quite a few other shows that are not horror shows, you just as usual fail to pay attention.Originally posted by Bar happy hour:stop talking about yr crappy p0op sh&t horror show!
Already mentioned:
1) Letters from Iwo Jima (Not a horror show)
2) The Departed (not a horror show) -
Please.... this kind of thing nothing to be proud of. It just shows how long this crazy guy has been bluffing himself.Originally posted by mhcampboy:wow.. u r my shifu sia!! -
Let's talk about some other remakes of Asian shows;
Starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock
A remake of
NOT A HORROR MOVIE!!!!! -
A remake of
NOT A HORROR MOVIE!!!!!