Asian Beauty Appreciation

The Flowers of War has been reported to be the most expensive film ever produced in China. I’ve seen the numbers and they are in the range of 100 Million US dollars.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, this epic film is about courage and sacrifice set against the ravages and horrors of war in 1937 in Nanjing, China. This film also marks the first time that a Western Actor has the lead role in a Chinese production.

The film has a limited opening playing only in a short list of select cities (just 21 theaters nationwide) beginning on Friday, January 20th, 2012.

Since it is not playing anywhere in Florida, I have to hope that it will achieve a wider distribution later on, or I’ll have to wait for the DVD to review it.

Christian Bale (an Oscar winner for The Fighter and he starred as Batman in The Dark Knight) has the lead role. He plays a traveling mortician, attending to the dead, not an adventurer, yet he’s kind of a wayfaring dissolute man who happened to find himself in Nanjing, and at the church, when the Japanese troops attacked the city in December of 1937.

By circumstances unknown to me, so I’ll call them luck and fate, he and a group of frightened Chinese Catholic schoolgirls and another group made up of a dozen beautiful courtesans, find themselves trapped inside a walled cathedral – which they hope will afford them safety from the marauding soldiers. Bale’s character, John Miller, will take up the role of the church’s priest, donning the clothing and vestments of a recently killed priest

That’s about all the set up I can provide not having seen the film. Zhang Yimou’s cinematic pedigree – Raise the Red Lantern (1991), Shanghai Triad (1995), The Road Home (2000), Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) are amongst his best known films that have garnered interest, praise and adulation from western audiences.

He’s worked with Gong Li multiple times (at least 5 films), and with Zhang Ziyi at least three times. So he’s got the talent and the rep to attract China’s most beautiful and best known actresses.

The reviews have been mixed, but if you are attracted to Asian beauties, love going to the movies, and you live in or near LA, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington DC, Houston, Honolulu, Seattle, or Atlanta – then you will have an opportunity to see the film on the big screen as soon as Friday, Jan. 20th.

I will be happy to help you publish your review if you do happen to take in the film in the near future, wish to contribute a review, and you don’t already have author status on this blog. You can contact me on the Scanlover Forum via Private Message.

For interviews with Director Zhang Yimou and lead actress Ni-Ni, visit Sidewalks.

To view a calendar with The Flowers of War beauties as the models visit Beijing Shots.

The trailer for The Flowers of War is below:

First we will set the stage. We are in Beijing, China, the time is present day, and most of the action will take place in and around a top-tier ad agency. Andy Lau plays Zi Gang Sun, an ad executive who is on a seemingly terrific career path.

He’s not only an eligible bachelor, but he revels in it. He’s unofficially – the hottest guy in the office. He’s also a male chauvinist, and his skill is in selling products to men. Girls working there fawn all over him, that is when they’re not flirting with him, or creating scenarios where they can bump into him.

On his way to the office one day – he meets a beautiful woman in the elevator. He offers to buy her a coffee, and she says she only drinks water. You can see the attraction. His for her is written all over his face, and she’s intrigued too, only she’s not so outgoing about it that you can easily tell what she’s thinking. She is Li Yu-long and she’s played by Gong Li. Lau’s Mr. Sun doesn’t know it, but she’s just been hired by his firm to become the Executive Creative Director of the firm – a position that he thought he would be promoted into that day.

After his boss, the firm’s CEO’s broke the news to him that Li got the job instead of him, he heads back to his office, where his staff had a surprise party set up for him – a celebration on his promotion. That he didn’t get. He dismisses them. Sorry guys, not today. Maybe sometime in the future.

The next morning, there’s a big meeting scheduled in the conference room to introduce this Li. Sun makes a bet with one of his buddies, that this Li, whoever she is, will look like a man. Soon after Li walks in and sits down. Sun goes over to chat her up.  He still hasn’t a clue as to who she is. He only knows that she is the woman from the elevator from yesterday. ”Oh – you also work here?‘, he says, amping up the wattage of his smile.

When Li takes off her glasses, Sun says, “You look good without your glasses.”

She replies, “You also look good … without my glasses.”

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Let’s start with the title Overheard 2. Now wouldn’t this title alone lead you to believe that this film would, should, or could be a sequel to Overheard which I reviewed here. Then add in the following:

Same Three Lead Actors - Lau Ching Wan, Louis Koo, and Daniel Wu

Same Directors - Alan Mak and Felix Chong

Same Screenplay Authors – Alan Mak and Felix Chong

Same Producer - Derek Yee

Same Underlying Themes – Covert Electronic surveillance and Insider Trading

I’m not crazy, am I? Every indication would lead us to believe that Overheard 2 was a sequel to Overheard. Only it isn’t. Which brings us to the question: Is this shameless marketing?

In China, there is a state agency which we shall label SARFT. Yes, that is an acronym, and sorry, but no – I didn’t make up the acronym. This agency aka State Agency for Radio, Film, and Television are the folks that decide what is or isn’t acceptable content for the few billion Chinese people. They also oversee the Internet as it pertains to content and access within China.

Now I have already told you that I wasn’t able to access my blog while in Yangshuo in China earlier this month. Now you and I, and possibly a good number of the few billion Chinese people, will find a small barrier/speed bump created by SARFT for Overheard 2.

In Overheard, our three stars played Hong Kong cops who were conducting a covert surveillance to uncover financial shenanigans by corporate honchos in the form of stock manipulation and insider trading. Only these cops decided to follow up, with their own money, and get in on the insider info and make a bundle for themselves instead of submitting the incriminating sound bytes. But Big Brother SARFT had decreed that crime cannot go unpunished – hence our three eavesdroppers could not be brought back for a Round 2.

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Takeshi Kitano is back with another in his Yakuza ouvre of films. This film is from 2010 but is about to open in a limited release across the USA beginning December 2nd. In this one called Outrage, in which Kitano is the writer, director, and star, he has decided to skip anything at all that might be considered fun, family, or as familiar as going out in Tokyo for a bowl of Ramen noodles. Sorry – there was a scene that began in a restaurant that served noodles but that scene ended with someone’s fingers floating in the noodle bowl.

Kitano has decided that the whole Yakuza experience is nothing more than the human equivalent of the most deadly King of the Hill game you’ve ever seen. From the lowest members of a Yakuza family, who are the button men or soldiers (the drivers don’t count), to the very top of the mountain where the Chairman holds forth – we see nothing but a supreme battle for power. Loyalties are constantly shifting. Your sworn brother today is your executioner tomorrow. And someone else will take care of him on the next day.

We start with a summit of one family. There’s a long line of limos and black-suited chauffeurs. We hear that Murase family has been doing a bit of drug business and that the Chairman isn’t pleased. So he instructs the Ikemoto family to set up an office on the Murase turf and begin to annoy and bother them.

An Ikemoto guy runs up a huge tab in a Murase night club in one night (600,000 Yen). He then claims he doesn’t have the money on him. The Murase’s demand payment but then are embarrassed when they send a couple of low level guys out to collect and find out that the guy was with the Ikemotos. An apology is necessary as well as the money being returned. But this meeting gets out of control fast, and the Murase lieutenant gets beaten up, and loses enough face that he’s required to cut off his pinky.

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What do a stock broker, actually a bank rep who handles investments for clients, a homicide detective, and a low-level triad enforcer have in common? This is the question that famed Hong Kong film director Johnny To puts before us in his brand new film, Life Without Principle.

Johnny To has received world-wide acclaim  for his stylish and hard-hitting films in the cops and crooks genre but he doesn’t limit himself to just those. In fact, I’ve reviewed a couple of his more recent films - Vengeance which had a relatively low police presence, and Don’t Go Breaking My Heart which was basically a romance. Besides those, I have personally seen close to a dozen of his older films.  That was one of the plusses of living in Manhattan – my proximity to the NY Chinatown where I could easily buy Hong Kong films on DVD. This time I caught his new film, which opened about a month ago on the 20th of October, at a real movie house – the UA Cinema in Taikoo, Hong Kong.

Okay, okay – enough off topic chatter. Let’s get back to the film. The first of the three main characters that we meet is the cop. Richie Jen (below) plays Inspector Cheung. As we first lay eyes on him, he is working a case that he caught. He’s on-site of a fresh murder. One old timer, a pensioner, has murdered another. This event doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but the murderer and the Inspector will cross paths again.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Inspector Cheung’s wife, played by Myolie Wu, is hot to buy an apartment. He thinks they need to discuss it further. But she is vulnerable to the real estate broker’s sale pitch (and not so subtle pressure tactics) about how time is of the essence, and that other buyers are preparing offers. So Cheung and Mrs are looking at getting a hefty mortgage.

Lau Ching Wan (below) plays the triad guy known as Panther. He’s a guy in his 40′s and he’s well known in the triad world. He serves as a bagman, he sets up dinners, he’s a go-fer, and above everything else he believes in loyalty. Panther will run around trying to raise bail money when that’s needed for one of his associates.He’s very well known in the Hong Kong triad circles, and everyone in his triad is his ‘sworn brother’.

Today, he’s going to need a ton of money and he’ll need to get it fast because one of his triad buddies has been running an internet investment house, and the market is turning, and his client has threatened him with mayhem or worse.

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Yui Aragaki has finally achieved her first lead female role in a J-TV Series. After playing a series of high school sweeties, and ingenues, “Gakki’ has finally been tabbed for a starring role. The series is called Zenkai Girl or Full-Throttle Girl. As we meet her in the opening scenes, she has just graduated from law school and has landed a job at an international law firm.

Yui is cast as Wakaba Ayukawa, and she’s good at everything she does – she graduated at the top of her class, she’s multi-lingual, and she has what is takes to become an ace lawyer. Only her first assignment is to baby-sit her boss’s five year old daughter, who is five going on 30, or so it seems.

Wakaba is driven because as child she grew up in rather desperate circumstances – her father was in debt from gambling to the Yakuza loan-sharks.

Little Wakaba got them out from under this by studying and then filing a motion and getting a decree for Voluntary Bankruptcy. That set her on her path of wanting to be lawyer and for seeing anything that she took on to its finish. In her own personal lexicon, there was no such thing as not finishing anything to the best of her ability.

But she hadn’t counted on taking a smart-ass five year old girl to pre-school every day. However everything was not all bad. At the law firm every once in a while she got to do a project, or a report, or a translation of a law-brief, and people took notice of her skills. At the pre-school she ran into a single parent Dad whose step-son also attended this school. This was Ryo Nishido as Sota Yamada , a would-be chef.

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You might think, after hearing about a TV Series entitled The Bull Doctor, that the series would be about a veterinarian whose medical practice included bulls, cattle, and the like. You might think that the setting would be out in the American west, and you’d probably consider that the show would include some cowboys. If you thought any or all of the above, you’d be dead wrong – emphasis on the ‘dead’.

The Bull Doctor is a Japanese TV Series about forensic pathology – or the study of why a person or people have died. We have Makiko Esumi (below) in the lead role as Dr Tamami Oodate (Oodate Sensei). She’s just been asked back to the Joto University Hospital to work as a forensic doctor – in short conduct autopsies. The last time I watched Makiko in a role, she played a brilliant surgeon who had the worst luck in finding a guy to be with. That show was called The Love Revolution (produced in 2001 but I saw it just a few years ago. This one is her first appearance in a TV series since 2007. Welcome back. (Okari)

Also on hand is Satomi Ishihara (below). I’ve seen her in a high school baseball TV series called H2 (2005), as a nurse in the TV Series Ns’ Aoi (2006), as an athletic airline stewardess – sorry – cabin attendant/basketball player in The Flying Rabbits film (2008), as a high school teacher in the TV series Puzzle (2008), and one more – as a forensic medical student in the series Voice (2009). This time she’s a homicide detective working with forensic doctors. Go figure.

So what is this one about, besides the overview of forensics? Read more…

I’ve introduced you to many of the Japanese TV Series featuring the beautiful Meisa Kuroki. In virtually all of these she’s played either the lead female role in a romantic or romantic comedy, or a supporting role. She’s usually cast  because of her looks.

What would you say if I told you that Kuroki is in a J-TV series that is currently airing in which she plays a tough as nails lady cop. The full title of the series is: Jiu: Keishichou Tokushuhan Sousakei, but most are simply calling it Jiu.

As the series opens, Kuroki’s character is a member of the SIT (Special Investigative Team). She’s a loner, she repels all and any invitations of friendship from either colleagues or outsiders, at least in the first couple of episodes. She’s barely able to hold conversations with her colleagues; not because she is inarticulate, but because she doesn’t see the point of it.

By the end of the opening episode she has saved a female detective who had been asked to go into a hostage situation by posing as a delivery from a restaurant. Kuroki’s character – called Isaki Motoko, guns down the perpetrator before he can slit his own throat in an attempted suicide.

Isaki’s actions are noticed by the higher ups in the Tokyo police. But they don’t know what to do with her. Is she a loose cannon about to go off like a Dirty Harry. Is she a danger to her colleagues?

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It has been said that there are only two kinds of men in the world: Those who cheat on their wives, and those who want to. At least this is what is said more than once in the 2011 Hong Kong romantic comedy Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. Co-directed by the illustrious duo of Johnny To and Wai Kai-Fai, the film proposes a possibility for us to consider; that there is a third kind of man. At least that is what the film’s female lead wants.

She is Zixin, played marvelously by Gao Yuanyuan. She’s a financial analyst. She’s been dumped by a guy, and nearly sleepwalked herself into a tragic accident with an automobile on a Hong Kong street. At the last second she is snatched out of harm’s way by a seedy, scruffy, wino drunk. He is Fang (Daniel Wu has the role). Turns out he is, or rather was, an award winning architect who burned out on success and now the only thing he looks forward to is his next drink.

She works in an office tower and across the way, in the next building, we find Cheung. Louis Koo has the part.  He is the CEO of an investment bank. He has just two rules (actually three but bear with me a minute). Rule Number One - we never lose money. Rule Number Two - we never forget rule number one. Anyway Cheung and Zixin began a window to window flirtation. Ultimately she agrees to a coffee date with him via post it notes and hand held signs.

But she has forgotten that she made a date a week ago with the down and not quite out architect who saved her life for that very evening.

Meanwhile, Cheung has noticed a very busty babe working two floors below Zixin. She notices Cheung’s window flirtations and thinks they are meant for her. So a second coffee date is arranged at the same place.

Louis Koo as Cheung

There’s some confusion – Cheung is called an asshole (via a handwritten placard) by a thoroughly pissed Zixin after Cheung doesn’t show for their date and she sees him with the bimbo who made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Meanwhile Fang the architect has taken Zixin’s advice, and decided to get his act together as well as getting his groove back. He waits for her but she never shows.

There’s your set up and there’s your Act One. As Act Two begins we see the fall of Lehman Brothers on a big news screen playing on the side of a Hong Kong Building.

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When you hear about electronic skullduggery, as in wire-taps, hidden voice activated microphones for eavesdropping, sorry – make that surveillance, and surreptitious cameras planted in offices, you might think of, if you are of a certain age, the goings on in a Washington DC office/apartment complex called Watergate, or if you like Asian films, you might think of Overheard, the 2009 police thriller from Hong Kong.

Overheard aka Sit Yan Fung Wan, was co-directed by Alan Mak and Felix Chong,  with Chong also having written the screenplay. These are two-thirds, with Andrew Lau being the third, of the group that created the Infernal Affairs trilogy which later became the inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.

We start (literally the movie’s opening images) with a colony of rats, the four-footed kind, scurrying about doing their business in a garbage strewn back alley in the lees of a Hong Kong skyscraper. Within seconds, we are far above this mean street and its night crawling denizens. This places us now in a high floor in this office tower, and a group of agents who work for the Hong Kong Police Department’s Commercial Criminal Bureau (CCB) are scurrying about doing their business which is to plant eavesdropping equipment. The target firm is E & T, a firm whose stock has exhibited such erratic price swings, that the Hong Kong version of the SEC has decided to investigate it.

The cops – Johnny, played by Lau Ching-wan, Gene played by Louis Koo, and Max played by Daniel Wu, are very good at what they do. And to prove it, the film calls for the man whose office they are bugging to make an unexpected late night return to his office while these cops are still in it. The tension is remarkable, and the suspense is truly pulse-pounding.

Of course, there is a back-up plan, called Plan B, and they go undiscovered. With the bugs in place, they will come to learn that the E & T stock’s share price is going to be artificially manipulated in a day or so.

With this – Mak & Chong present us with a moral dilemma. They’re good cops but being a cop in Hong Kong means low pay, long hours, and lots of danger. And our three cops also have some private issues to deal with.

A suggestion is floated. Let’s delete this audio exchange, let’s not report it, and let’s grab a piece of this insider trading knowledge for ourselves. We’ll buy the shares in the morning, ride the price up and then we’ll sell it off later in the day for a big profit.

There’s your set up.

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