The birthday boy on his half-centennial

Just a quick fangirl shout-out to Francis Ng Chun-Yu, whose fiftieth birthday is this week. Francis has had a remarkably long and vigorous career that spans four decades (!), from his humble beginnings as a bit player at TVB back in the 1980s through various villainous and supporting roles in the early 90s to his current status as one of Hong Kong’s most popular and well-known actors. He’s part of an amazing generation of male Hong Kong acting talent that came of age in the 1990s, many of whom are also turning fifty this year or in the next few years. Andy Lau Tak-Wah and Anthony Wong Chau-Sang were also both born in 1961—soon to follow are Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (b. 1962), Stephen Chow Sing-Chi (b. 1962), Jet Li (b. 1963) and Lau Ching-Wan (b. 1964). Tony Leung Kar-Fai and Simon Yam each turned fifty a few years ago. All of these actors are still working today, although some of their output has decreased since the heyday of Hong Kong cinema back in the 1990s, and all of them are at the top of their game in terms of skill, talent, charisma, and screen presence.

Francis in naugahyde, Laughing Gor 2 premiere, Dec. 20, 2011

What’s perhaps less evident from this list is the dearth of similar talent in the generation of Hong Kong actors following them. The decline in Hong Kong film production in the past fifteen years since the 1997 handover has mightily impacted the development of stars of note, as indicated by the diminishing talent pool among younger actors. Of Hong Kong movie stars in their forties only Louis Koo Tin-Lok is a legitimate leading man, and his acting chops are nowhere near as masterful as the aforementioned group. Of actors in their thirties Daniel Wu and Nicholas Tse Ting-Fung ably fill the movie star niche, but their range and output have yet to reach the scale and impact of the class of 1961-64.

What’s also notable is that, although all of the abovementioned fiftyish movie kings are actively working today, only a handful of their female counterparts are likewise gainfully employed. Most female Hong Kong stars of the same generation have either retired (Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia; Joey Wang; Chingmy Yau), or moved to television (Anita Yuen; Cheung Man). Anita Mui Yim-Fong died of cervical cancer in 2003. Of those female stars who came of age in the 1990s only Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, Carina Lau Ka-Ling, Sandra Ng Kwan-Yu, and Michelle Yeoh are still working, although Maggie hasn’t really starred in a film since 2004.

Micheal Tse & Francis Ng meet the press, Laughing Gor 2 premiere, Dec. 20, 2011

So hats off to Francis on the anniversary of his solstice birth—show business is a cruel mistress and it’s a testament to his talent, determination, and savvy that he’s survived so long as a top star. Fingers crossed that he’s on the silver screen for at least four more decades to come.

UPDATE: Okay, I just realized that I accidentally left off Donnie Yen (b. 1963) in my above list. I’m not a huge Donnie fan but he is a big deal now so he’s gotta be included. But it also points out the glaring hole in the martial arts movie world–who will follow Donnie? Wu Jing? Andy On? Collin Chou, for god’s sake? Slim pickin’s–

Back in the day when I started out as a fledgling artist there was a reasonable amount of funding, both public and private, for artists, experimental filmmakers, and other folks working in the creative arts. Very few people actually made a living from grants and fellowships but there was enough modest funding out there that a person had a decent shot at getting a few bones for a short film, a performance piece, or some time in the studio. Although I didn’t rely on grants to do my art I received enough support to help me make the work—when I was fresh out of grad school I got $1,500 from the Film Arts Foundation to make my next experimental video, which absolutely gave me the encouragement to continue in my artmaking endeavors. I subsequently got some shekels from now-defunct granting organizations like the Rocky Mountain Film Center, Art Matters, and New Langton Arts, all of which in turn had gotten some federal funding to support their grants programs. Not that I advocate a complete dependency on feeding from the public trough in order to create artwork, but in many ways those little bits of money here and there were just enough to keep me going and to help me to finish some projects than I otherwise might not have had I gone without.

But in the twenty years or so since my days as a young artist public arts funding institutions like the National Endowment for the Arts have been under constant attack by Republican philistines such as Sen. Jesse Helms and his minions. At its height in the 1990s the NEA’s total budget was about $190 million—peanuts compared to the Pentagon’s 1994 budget of  $240 billion, but even back then the right-wing clearly understood the threat to their master narrative that unfettered arts funding posed.

The NEA’s 2009 budget was $160 million, which is about $92 million in 1990s dollars, or less than half its 1990 budget. This reduction has in turn has created a domino effect on arts funding large and small. I sat on the Board of Directors of two different media arts organizations (both of which in their heydays in the 1990s had memberships in the thousands) that have in the past decade become defunct due to greatly reduced federal, state, and private arts funding in this country. Although the worldwide economic recession and the end-times of late capitalism have contributed to its decline, the right-wing’s vendetta on the arts has certainly played a huge part in the atrophy of its funding in the U.S. It’s no secret that the Republican Party has been gunning for arts funding for decades since, unlike the left, it totally understands the significant role that culture plays in shaping public opinion and framing the national debate.

So it’s great that Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation continue to stand up for fringe elements like arts writers and other troublemakers who insist on stirring things up and questioning the status quo. Their support is a small but significant salvo in the continuing ideological war for this country’s cultural heart and soul.

Tatsumi, 2011 San Francisco International Animation Festival

After World War Two Japan was a wreck, economically, physically, and psychologically, yet from those unquiet times came much brilliant and innovative creative work. The legendary Japanese comics artist Yoshiro Tatsumi emerged from this milieu, remaking the manga field and creating a new type of comics, gekiga, that was aimed at the adults rather than children.

Tatsumi, Eric Khoo’s intriguing feature-length documentary about the master comics artist, screens this weekend as part of the San Francisco International Animation Festival. The film is an interesting hybrid as it both documents Tatsumi’s life as well as adapts several of his manga into short movies with the movie.

Tatsumi, 2011 San Francisco International Animation Festival

Tatsumi’s raw and gripping, beautiful manga are credited with revolutionizing the form in Japan in the 1950s. Post-World War Two Japan provides the backdrop for his stories and the spectre of a destroyed society attempting to rebuild constantly informs the tone of the work, with sorrow, inhumanity, and alienation the overriding themes. The five short stories animated in Tatsumi are mostly dark tales of human suffering, with protagonists who grapple with oppressive forces beyond their control. “Hell,” which looks at the horrors of the atomic bomb as well as the darkness within one person’s soul, “Beloved Monkey,” a parable about an ordinary man’s descent into misery and “Good-bye,” a tale of an emotionally and physically traumatized woman in postwar Japan, are all terribly sad and yet deeply compassionate stories. At the same time Tatsumi’s stories are leavened with a dark humor that acknowledges the foibles of everyday human existence, most notably in “Occupied,” a black comedy about a children’s book author with a taste for pornographic graffiti who falls into moral disgrace.

Khoo skillfully interweaves these bleak and sometimes harrowing tales with dramatized animated scenes from Tatsumi’s life that in some ways parallel the grim despair of his manga. Although he found some success as an artist as a young man, Tatsumi still grappled with the difficulties of everyday life in postwar Japan and his early career was shadowed by a jealous, bedridden brother who also had artistic aspirations.

Tatsumi, 2011 San Francisco International Animation Festival

Khoo worked closely with his subject on several aspects of the film, consulting with Tatsumi on the film’s color design and other elements of the project. Khoo also used a voiceover of Tatsumi himself recounting his life and work that is laid over animation based on the renowned artist’s visual style. In addition, Khoo took most of movie’s framing directly from the original manga panels, adding some layering and coloring effects but otherwise remaining true to Tatsumi’s compositions.

The result is an engrossing look at one of Japan’s most influential twentieth-century artists, one who used a popular medium to comment and reflect on some of the painful realities of Japan’s postwar existence. Tatsumi’s work is an excellent example of the way in which pop culture can serve both as a catharsis for and a critique of society’s ills.

San Francisco International Animation Festival

November 10–13, 2011
SF Film Society | New People Cinema

1746 Post Street, San Francisco CA 94115

Information: 415-525-8600

Full schedule, film descriptions, and tickets here.

A Letter of Fire, 2011 Third I South Asian Film Festival

This Wednesday sees the opening of the 2011 Third I South Asian Film Festival here in San Francisco, which is one of the best chances to see local theatrical screenings of films from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Tibet, and the South Asian diaspora. The festival primarily focuses on movies outside of Bollywood’s massive scope, including documentary, narrative, experimental and short films.

According to 2010 U.S. census data, South Asians are the fastest growing Asian American subgroup and have surpassed Filipino Americans as the second-largest Asian American ethnicity. In California the Indian American community grew an amazing 68% between 2000 and 2010, to more than half a million people statewide. This population growth is reflected in the increasing desi flava in pop culture, from banal TV sitcoms like Outsourced to Das Racist showing up on the cover of Spin magazine.

Not to conflate an entire subcontinent’s creative outlet, but since Slumdog Millionaire won big at the Academy Awards back in 2009, the profile of South Asian films has also increased here in the US. Of course Indian-centric theaters such as the Big Cinemas multiplex in Fremont have been showing Indian movies for years, but since Slumdog ran the table at the Oscars, Hindi-language movies have been making more appearances at mainstream cinemas. Just last week, Shah Rukh Khan’s deliriously escapist sci-fi superhero movie Ra.One opened in select theaters across the U.S. and scored the highest per-screen gross of any film that weekend, beating out Puss In Boots and other Hollywood releases.

The Third I festival brings an eclectic mix of films to the Roxie and Castro Theaters. Opening night film Big In Bollywood is a fun, energetic documentary that captures some of the star mania of the commercial Indian movie industry. The movie looks at the experiences of Indian American actor Omi Vaidya, whose meteoric rise to fame in India follows a supporting role in Aamir Khan’s 3 Idiots, the highest grossing film of all time in India. Vaidya’s small but popular role allowed him a taste of the fanatical devotion Indians have for their film stars as the documentary follows Vaidya from his home in Los Angeles to the Mumbai premiere of 3 Idiots. The doc captures the rapid escalation of Vaidya’s public profile as the film smashes Indian box office records. At one point Vaidya makes an appearance to what looks like about 5,000 cheering fans lining several city blocks, reprising some of his lines from the film as the massive throng wildly cheers him on.

Disheveled Imran Khan, Delhi Belly, 2011 Third I South Asian Film Festival

The festival’s centerpiece movie, Delhi Belly, exemplifies a new breed of Bollywood movies far removed from the conventional Hindi-language film industry. A hilarious, fast-paced, and vulgar flick, Delhi Belly follows the misadventures of three twenty-something slackers as they chase down jewel smugglers, gangsters, and other marginal denizens in India’s capital city, with one of the main characters fighting the severe gastrointestinal dysfunction that gives the movie its name. Running a tidy two hours, the film has none of the song-and-dance numbers for which Bollywood is reknowned (except for one tongue-in-cheek OTT production over the end credits that guest-stars executive producer Aamir Khan) and owes more to The Hangover than Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.

Indian American actor-director Ajay Naidu debut feature Ashes gives a desi spin to the venerable gangster genre. Set in New York City, the film follows a small-time pot dealer (also portrayed by Naidu) as he struggles care for his mentally ill brother while trying to resist falling deeper into the vortex of New York’s underworld.

Dhanush & friend, Pudhupettai, 2011 Third I South Asian Film Festival

Closing the festival is the awesome-looking Tamil-language crime thriller Pudhupettai, starring the intense and feral Dhanush, which follows the rise of a Chennai gang lord. As seen in the clip below, the film manages to be gritty and realistic while also including outstanding dance numbers. Also notable are Vipin Vijay’s surreal feature length experimental narrative The Image Threads, and  A Letter of Fire, Asoka Handagama’s gorgeous drama of a wealthy, twisted family in Sri Lanka. The festival also features two programs, The Boxing Ladies + Shorts: Gender/Sexuality in Frame, and The Family Circus: Local Shorts, which showcase often-overlooked short films.

While South Asian films have yet to completely break through to the mainstream in the U.S., the Third I festival is an excellent opportunity to see the wide range of production from the region and beyond, reflecting the growing desi influence in this country’s cultural landscape.

The 9th Annual 3rd I San Francisco South Asian Film Festival (SFISAFF),

November 10-13, 2011

Roxie Cinema & Castro Theater

Tickets, complete schedule, and film descriptions here.

Brilliant dance number from Pudhupettai, 2011 Third I South Asian Film Festival

My current bank (but not for long), Oakland, Nov. 2, 2011

Nov. 2, 2011: Spent a good part of the afternoon at the general strike demonstrations in Oakland today. I’d fully meant to get in a good day’s work editing my new film but once I got on the twitter feed my good intentions went out the window. The revolution was happening just across the Bay Bridge and I realized that my creative process would probably benefit most from the knowledge that I could glean from what was going on in the streets, not from wrangling with the intricacies of Final Cut Pro.

So after sketching out a couple ideas I decided to skive off the rest of the day and head over to Oakland to show my support for Occupy Oakland. As noted in my last post, OO got worked over pretty good last week by the Oakland Police Department, with help from outside agencies including seventeen different regional police departments and a rumored assist from Homeland Security. After that mess the folks at Occupy Oakland’s general assembly voted for a general strike, which took place in spectacular fashion today.

Keeping it clean, Ogawa/Grant Plaza, Oakland

When I emerged from BART into the warm autumn sunshine at Frank Ogawa/Oscar Grant Plaza this afternoon the area was full of excited but peaceful demonstrators. I met up with fellow Asian American Studies @ SFSU prof Eric Pido and we took a quick spin around the plaza, checking out the various speakers and performances both scheduled and impromptu, as well as the happy line of people waiting for free grindz dished up by the Food Bank and other kindly folks. The outdoor kitchen included an orderly cleanup station that included compost bins and recycling (!)

Marching, Oakland, Nov. 2, 2011

We circled back to the main intersection in time to hook up with a large march headed up Harrison Street toward Grand, passing by the Caltrans building where curious workers stood on the sidewalk watching the demonstration pass by. At one point I observed a couple office ladies confer with each other, then gleefully join the march as it continued up Grand Avenue. I headed back to San Francisco shortly thereafter and followed the rest of the protest on twitter as tens of thousands of people shut down the Port of Oakland and effectively prevented any activity there.

Gift economy, Oakland, Nov. 2, 2011

As I write this around 11pm there are still many hundreds, if not thousands, of people peacefully massing at Ogawa/Grant plaza. The police are keeping their distance, although I’m sure they’re chomping at the bit for any excuse to brutalize the demonstrators. Here’s hoping that things will stay calm, and that this amazing day will continue into the night.

Memory Is Solidarity, diptych, Kenji Liu, 2011

NOTE: Oakland writer and artist Kenji Liu has produced an excellent diptych of posters, Memory Is Solidarity, that connects the dots between Frank Ogawa and Oscar Grant, whose names grace the downtown Oakland plaza that is the hub of Occupy Oakland. He eloquently explains why he thinks that we should remember both Ogawa and Grant, since both were victims of institutional racism–Ogawa was imprisoned at the Topaz internment camp during World War Two, and Grant of course was murdered by BART policeman Johannes Mehserle in 2009. Liu also notes the importance of other significant place-names including Wall Street, which was indeed originally a wall that separated European Americans from the indigenous Lenape people in lower Manhattan. It’s great that the Occupy movement is spawning so much thoughtful and interesting debate–a true sign of a successful campaign.

UPDATE: 11.53p: About 300 police have shown up at Ogawa-Grant plaza. Protestors chanting “Oscar Grant! Oscar Grant!” Teargas and rubber bullets fired–livestream here: http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

UPDATE 2: 12.14p. Alameda County sheriffs have just moved on the occupiers in Oakland. Teargas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades being used on protestors. All went down just after the television news crews packed up and went home. Luckily an intrepid cameraman has been livestreaming the entire event. Don’t let this unbridled show of police brutality go unwitnessed.

Here’s what I gleaned from the livefeed: Protestors were dancing in the streets  just before midnight. Some had occupied a foreclosed building adjacent to the square. A couple hundred police in riot gear arrived and without warning or a dispersal order fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd, which had dwindled quite a bit from earlier that day. Several of the police, who appeared to be from the Concord Police Department among other agencies, had masking tape covering their names and badge numbers. When challenged about this I heard one cop say, “Go home,” to a demonstrator, who then said, “I have a right to peacefully protest.” A hostile bystander then replied, “He has a right to kill you.” When I finally succumbed to fatigue around 1am the police and protesters were still in a standoff.

UPDATE 3: OakFoSho has corrected my belief that a cop said, “I have a right to kill you.” Apparently it was a heckler standing nearby who said it. Fixed.

You can see the archived livestream, or follow oakfosho on twitter for more information.

On a similar tip, here’s a great video of a couple demonstrators who came across an Oakland policeman with his name-tag taped over.

We ask a OPD officer why he had his name badge covered…. from BLK PXLS on Vimeo.

UPDATE 4: Davey D. from Hard Knock Radio breaks it down in an excellent overview and analysis of the day.

UPDATE 5: Great discussion of the turn of events on Thursday here on dailykos.com.

UPDATE 6: The Occupy movement, and attendant police violence, has spread to the UC Berkeley campus. asiansart.org has a great on-the-ground description of the demo yesterday, including videos of UC police beating on peaceful student protestors.

Oakland Police Department fires teargas into peaceful crowd, Oct. 25, 2011

Been following the heinous acts of police brutality tonight in Oakland as the Oakland Police Department cracks down on peaceful protestors trying to demonstrate in support of Occupy Oakland. Twitter feeds from Davey D, Josh Holland, and a great livestream from jlevinger on qik.com have been providing immediate on-the-ground updates of the violence against peaceful and lawfully assembled demonstrators. Throughout the night the police have fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash-bang grenades, and used sonic cannons to harass the thousands of people exercising their right to peacefully assemble.

Right now I’m listening to the the police repeatedly playing a chilling warning demanding that the crowd disperse or face arrest and that, “regardless of your purpose,” they face “possible serious injury” and that “chemical agents will be used.” Who knew that when the regime in Iran was cracking down on peaceful protesters back in 2009 that the OPD would be using similar shock tactics to prevent U.S. citizens from exercising their constitutional rights?

Navyman holding a copy of the Constitution faces down the OPD, Oct. 25, 2011, Oakland, CA. Photo: North Oakland Now

Luckily, on the protesters’ side cooler heads seem to be prevailing so far and there have been no rash acts on their part. But who knows how long folks will tolerate being gassed before they break down and fight back? The OPD knows they just have to provoke one misguided fool into breaking a window or lighting a garbage can on fire and it will be all over the front page as justification for their misdeeds tonight.

At one point in the livestream (now looping previous information as the cameraperson’s phone batteries recharge), jlevinger say, “I’m no pro videographer here, it’s just a fucking iPhone.” But he’s doing much more than the so-called professionals working for the TV news. Earlier tonight ABC-Live had a live feed from one of their traffic helicoptors following the demonstrations, but, mysteriously, just as the police started to fire the first tear-gas cannisters, the chopper pulled away from the scene and the live-feed stopped. ABC-Live tweeted that they helicopter needed to refuel–I call bullshit. Mysteriously, the #OccupyOakland hashtag on twitter has intermittently been inoperative through the night as well. Inadvertent technical glitch or deliberate censorship?

As Davey D tweets, “All folks were doing was trying to create a better living situation for many damaged by economy and now it’s copters & tear gas.” Is this how the U.S. government is going to deal with lawful dissent? If so, we need to be really worried really fast.

My friend Rebecca Solnit has taken up another guerilla tactic, this time on facebook. She posts,

By the way, I just wrote this note to the letters section of the Chronicle and then started posting it on Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s (facebook) wall. It gets taken down after a few minutes. Feel free to post it if you like. “Dear Editors, Even if you’re a conservative you should be against the kind of police brutality we just saw in Oakland, because the courts are not going to be as enthused about beating people bloody, throwing tear gas at crowds that include children, and denying people their civil and constitutional rights. It is going to be really expensive for the city of Oakland to pay for the brutality and denial of rights lawsuits, and the plaintiffs will deserve every penny they get. As for the rest of us, we’re against it because it’s inhumane, undemocratic, and vicious. As well as expensive. Police brutality is an indulgence, a luxury, a spendthrift activity most cities can’t afford any more.”

Mayor Quan, by the way, was a student activist in the Third World Liberation Front at UC Berkeley during the Third World Strike back in 1969. Sadly, her presence, her leadership, and her ethics are nowhere to be found tonight and her absence has allowed the OPD to wild in the streets of Oakland unchecked. Shame on her–

Incredible video of OPD firing teargas into peaceful crowd, shot by Kazu Haga.

Taivalu, Taiwan Film Days, SFFS, 2011

Taiwanese cinema has produced several world-class filmmakers, including Hou Hsaio-Hsien, Edward Yang, and Tsai Ming-Liang, but fans of those arthouse titans would be hard-pressed to recognize the current crop of Taiwanese films now popular on the island nation. Cape No. 7 (2008), the second-highest grossing film in Taiwan of all time (just behind Titanic), was a frothy, melodramatic little flick that nostalgically recalled the Japanese occupation of Taiwan (!), and Monga (2010), another recent blockbuster, had more in common with Hong Kong’s gangster movies than Hou or Yang’s thoughtful, epic dramas. Taiwan’s biggest box office hit this year, popular novelist Giddens Ko’s adaptation of his book, You Are The Apple Of My Eye, is a coming-of-age comedy that’s light years from earlier Taiwanese arthouse fare.

Taiwan Film Days, the upcoming three-day festival at the San Francisco Film Society which is now in its third year, reflects the recent upswing in Taiwan’s commercial film industry and showcases its wide range of moviemaking styles and themes. Opening night film Formosa Mambo (2011, dir. Wang Chi-tsai )bears no relation to Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Millenium Mambo, and in fact, other than its country of origin, is pretty much unrelated to the Taiwanese auteur in any way. A quirky and breezy movie that touches lightly on the Taipei underworld, the story follows several characters including a gang of incompetent kidnappers, an underemployed businessman running a popcorn chicken stand, and a group of shady entreprenuers involved in a telephone scam. After the kidnappers snatch a schoolkid various hijinks ensue, with the hapless gang attempting to collect ransom from the kid’s recalcitrant single mom, who can ill-afford the modest ransom. The film’s interlocking stories comment on fate and free will against a backdrop of modern-day Taiwan.

Gangsters, Ranger, 2011

Ranger, (2010) a much darker gangster movie, closes the festival. Wen-Sheng, a convicted killer, is released from prison after 25 years and finds himself immediately re-enmeshed in the hard-knock life. A gritty and observational crime drama, Ranger is also a character study of a man seeking redemption after a wasted life. Director Chienn Hsiang makes good use of the mean streets of Taipei and the film’s handheld camerawork underscores the everyday brutality of Sheng’s woeful existence. Lead actor Wu Pong-fong effectively conveys the resilience of his worn down but not yet defeated character.

Honey Pu Pu (2011, dir. Chen Hung-i) presents a dreamy, visually imaginative view of Taiwanese society, following a group of young groovesters as they ramble the streets of Taipei apparently in search of the a totemic beehive. The screener DVD that I tried to view was alas very janky and I wasn’t able to watch the film in its entirety but the little I saw was engaging, full of pretty young art-student types blithely wandering through trippy, experimentally framed cityscapes.

Groovesters, Honey Pu Pu, 2010

Also notable at the festival are Giddens’ aforementioned hit film (although both screenings have gone to rush), as well as the intriguing documentary Taivalu (2011, dir. Huang Hsin-yao), which looks at the effect of climate change on the southern Taiwan city of Tainan, and Pinoy Sunday (2009, dir. Ho Wi-ding), a comedy that follows the travails of a pair of Filipino immigrants in Taipei. The festival opens with two screenings of Formosa Mambo sandwiching a reception and party.

Taiwan Film Days

October 14–16, 2011

San Francisco Film Society | New People Cinema

1746 Post Street, San Francisco, CA

(415) 561-5000

Tickets and full schedule for Taiwan Film Days here.

Buzz Chung, astronaut, Echoes of the Rainbow, 2010

This weekend the San Francisco Film Society presents Hong Kong Cinema, the first of two Chinese-language film festivals, which runs for three days with seven films from the former Crown Colony. Although it doesn’t include any blockbusters, the brief festival runs the gamut from romantic comedies to crime films to melodramas and is a good look at the range of films coming out of Hong Kong these days.  Herewith are a few of the films included in the series.

Punished

A sleek, economical crime film that’s actually a family drama in disguise, Punished is produced by Johnnie To and directed by Law Wing Cheong, To’s editor and frequent second unit director. The story moves along at a brisk and efficient pace, emphasizing the dysfunctional family relationships behind the kidnapping drama.

Moral choices, Anthony Wong and Richie Jen, Punished, 2010

Anthony Wong is outstanding as Wong Ho-chiu, a ruthless and powerful businessman seeking vengeance for his errant daughter’s kidnapping and death–his performance is subtle and explosive and as usual he can do no wrong. Richie Jen is also excellent as Anthony Wong’s bodyguard and hatchet man with his own family issues to deal with. Supporting performances are uniformly strong and the mood is mostly realistic throughout–the bad guys aren’t too bad and the good guys aren’t too good, so the film possesses a great deal of moral complexity. Each person has a motivation for his or her actions, justified or not, and no one is completely evil or completely good.

In the end, it’s a mother-daughter relationship that’s the catalyst for the resolution of Wong’s moral crisis. As with the best Hong Kong films the movie is also unafraid to tap into the characters’ deep emotional responses–men cry, women swoon, and children weep unashamedly. Director Law keeps things pretty straightforward, with none of the annoying quirks of fellow Milkywayer Wai Ka-Fei. The film makes intelligent connections between the corruption of big business, damaged family dynamics, and immoral criminal activity.

Meeting cute, Gao Yuan Yuan and Daniel Wu, Don't Go Breaking My Heart, 2011

Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart

An adequate rom-com that attempts to capture the uber-success of early 2000s Johnnie To flicks Needing You and Love on A Diet, Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart stars Louis Koo, Gao Yuan Yuan, and Daniel Wu in a love story set in Hong Kong and China. The three play young urban professionals, with Gao unable to decide between playboy Koo and nice guy Wu.

Gao’s dilemma becomes tedious pretty quickly since Louis Koo’s character is so clearly a womanizing asshole. It’s hard to understand what she sees in him, especially with the charming and sensitive Daniel Wu also courting her. But the plot demands a love triangle so the audience must suffer through her indecision for nearly two hours (whatever happened to the excellent concept of the 90-minute Hong Kong movie?) while she dithers between her two beaus. Director To even cribs from his own most successful romantic comedy, Needing You, by using the device of would-be lovers communicating the movie’s catchphrase by signage. There’s some clever usage of messages pasted on office building windows but even that seems awfully contrived by the end of the movie. Though both are cute and dimply, Gao and Koo never seem to really spark–Gao and Wu’s chemistry is better, with Wu nicely conveying a sense of romantic longing. Gao lacks the manic goofiness and exquisite comic timing of To’s usual rom-com muse Sammi Cheng and Louis Koo just isn’t charming enough to warrant Gao’s long-term fascination. Daniel Wu is very sweet as the long-suffering third party but he doesn’t have much character development except his ongoing dedication to a neon green frog. But as rom-coms go, this one is serviceable, with three good-looking and well-dressed lead actors amidst the glamorous backdrop of Hong Kong’s skyscrapers.

Choices, Teddy Robin and Ella Koon, Merry-Go-Round, 2010

Merry-Go-Round

Though it looks great, with beautiful, rich cinematography and art direction, Merry-Go-Round, (dirs. Yan Yan Mak and Clement Cheng) is just a bit too long and a bit too dependent on coincidence to be completely effective. Ella Koon and Nora Miao play two Hong Kong ex-pats living in San Francisco who return to the former Crown Colony after long absences. Koon’s character is a young bohemian with a hidden past, and Miao’s is a master herbalist who left Hong Kong to follow her bliss in the United States. Their lives converge in somewhat forced circumstances– the film’s narrative links its many characters with overly convenient plot twists.

Merry-Go-Round takes a light but serious look at death, loss, and separation. The film uses the idea of returning home as a metaphor for going back, not forward, in life, with several characters attempting to make amends for past misjudgments or dealing with the results of long-gone choices. It also makes some nice points about the advantages of moving on with life instead of dwelling on past traumas, with one character wistfully telling another, “I would have forgotten long ago but you keep reminding me.”

Teddy Robin, who won Best Actor for Gallants (also directed by Clement Chang) at last year’s Hong Kong Film Awards, is very effective as the lovelorn manager of the coffin home/mortuary where Koon ends up working. Also excellent is Nora Miao as the imperious herbalist who so long ago followed her fate to the U.S. But the time structure of the film seems a little skewed–if some of the characters were young adults in 1938, that means that they would be in their nineties now, and the actors playing them in the modern-day sequences seem much too young to be nonegenarians.

Despite its handsomely mounted production design, Merry-Go-Round’s storyline is a bit too unfocused to be completely convincing. But it’s nice to see a Hong Kong film that’s a serious drama instead of the martial arts/triad/comedy flicks that the city’s film industry usually puts out.

Shoemaking, Simon Yam and Sandra Ng, Echoes of the Rainbow, 2010

Echoes of the Rainbow

A charming family drama set in 1960s Hong Kong, this melodrama by Hong Kong New Wave director Alex Law stars Buzz Chung Shiu-Tiu as Big Ears, a young boy whose shoemaker father, his mother and his older brother strive to make an honest living making and selling shoes in their working-class neighborhood. Though a bit soft around the edges, the film is best when it illustrates the community neighborliness found amongst the residents of the street. One pleasant moment occurs when Big Ear’s family takes its nightly meal out to the street behind their house to eat on a homemade dinner table built on top of a tree stump. They’re joined by the rest of their neighbors who are also dining al fresco, presumably to escape the heat of their small, non-airconditioned houses. This small but engaging scene underscores the sense of belonging, safety, and comfort found in an earlier, less hectic time and place.

The film also makes cogent point in its examination of class differences between Desmond (Aarif Lee) and his girlfriend Flora (Evelyn Choi). In one scene Desmond walks for a very long time from his humble street to visit Flora, eventually arriving at the toniest neighborhood in town. The length of his journey and his awkwardness and discomfort in such rarefied surroundings contrasts nicely with the sense of ease and belonging he feels in his own neighborhood and underscores the great gulf in social status between himself and his wealthier sweetheart.

Simon Yam and Sandra Ng are excellent as the cobbler and his wife, and Buzz Chung is endearing without being saccharine. Aarif Lee is suitably modest despite his blazing hotness and Evelyn Choi is sweet and charming as his love interest. Eventually the film succumbs to extreme melodrama but it still remains a lovely rendering of a more innocent time in Hong Kong history.

Ass-kicking, Sandra Ng, Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, 2011

Mr. and Mrs. Incredible

A period piece directed by Vincent Kok, the sometime collaborator of king of comedy Stephen Chiao, this superhero comedy feels a lot like a Lunar New Year film, with its wacky concept, broad humor, slapdash production design, and lead performances by popular stars Louis Koo and Sandra Ng. Koo and Ng play a married couple who are also the retired superheroes formerly known as Gazer Warrior and Aroma Woman (both excellent superhero names). The two erstwhile heroes have renounced adventuring and have settled down incognito in a quiet village where they run a pork bun shop. Their attempt to start a family and to live anonymously in peace is interrupted by a martial arts contest, a life-force sucking villain, and other outlandish circumstances.

Goofy and mild, with humorous banter between its amiable co-stars, the film is a bit talkier than you’d expect from a movie about costumed heroes. It’s carried by the charming performances of Koo and Ng, who are unafraid of looking ridiculous and whose good-natured interplay makes the film an innocuous and pleasant timepass.

Also screening: Redoubtable auteur Ann Hui’s All About Love, a lesbian love story starring Sandra Ng and Vivian Chow, and Benny Chan’s City Under Siege, an action film that involves toxic waste, mutants, circus performers, and other everyday Hong Kong denizens, starring Aaron Kwok and Shu Qi, with production design by the legendary William Chang Suk-Ping (In the Mood for Love, Rouge, 2046).

Hong Kong Cinema

Sept. 23-25, 2011

San Francisco Film Society New People Cinema

1746 Post Street, San Francisco

San Francisco

full schedule and film descriptions here

Andy Lau, sleuthing, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, 2010

Two more Chinese-language films have their theatrical releases in San Francisco, and, although they are completely different in subject, tone, and treatment, both are testaments to the vitality of the new Chinese cinema.

City of Life & Death, dir. Lu Chuan, 2010

My head was spinning when I walked out of the screening for City of Life and Death, Lu Chuan’s devastating and uncompromising look at the Rape of Nanking (or Nanjing).  City of Life and Death is an unflinching look at the infamous Japanese occupation and destruction of the Chinese capital in 1938–the film is a stellar example of the ways in which cinema can both explicate and elevate events from real life. Lu masterfully utilizes wide-screen, black and white, mostly hand-held cinematography, subtle and emotional performances, and a story structure that precludes simplistic nationalism.

Civilians, City of Life and Death, 2010

At the very start in the first hour of the film Lu kills off one of the main characters, forcefully undermining any pretense of a conventionally told story and serving notice that the film will be merciless in the treatment of its characters. As in the real-life occupation of Nanjing, no one is safe and no one will be spared from the casual brutality of wartime and the mentality it fosters. The film also refuses to focus on acts of heroism, although though there are brave and unselfish acts throughout the film’s 2.5 hour running time. No single character is a savior, nor are there any simple answers to the inhuman violence that was perpetrated upon the citizens of Nanjing.

As a Chinese filmmaker Lu makes the unusual choice of presenting the well-known story, which has been used in China to demonize Japan, in part through the eyes of Kadokawa, a Japanese soldier. The opening shot of the film is a close-up of the wide-eyed and impressionable Kadokawa’s terrified face as he and his fellow Japanese soldiers prepare to storm the walls of Nanjing. Kadokawa’s horrified responses to the violence surrounding him as well as the pivotal choices he makes at the end of the film belie any condemnation of the Japanese as inherently bestial or subhuman, The film refuses to lay the blame for the events in Nanjing on inborn flaws in the Japanese national character, instead placing responsibility on the insanity of militarism itself.

Atrocities, City of Life and Death, 2010

Viewers shouldn’t be deterred by the grim subject matter as this is filmmaking of the finest order. The wide screen black and white cinematography underscores the huge scope of the atrocities, and director Lu Chuan understands the value of a long, long take in creating an almost unbearable tension. The performances are also uniformly outstanding. Liu Ye is excellent in his brief but significant role as a pragmatic Chinese officer, utilizing his sensitive, evocative face to great effect. Wei Fan is also very effective as a bureaucrat working for the Germans who realizes too late that his position does not grant him immunity from the horrors around him.

A scene near the end of the film where the Japanese soldiers perform a celebratory dance underscores the violent group psychosis of war. While taiko drummers beat out a mournful cadence, the crouched-over soldiers move through the rubble-filled streets with blankly fierce expressions on their youthful faces. After the screen carnage of the past two hours their procession seems like an exercise in group insanity as the men move in hypnotic lockstep, driven by a rhythm dictated to them and with little will of their own. The scene becomes a grim and surreal commentary on the collective madness of war and the indoctrination that makes young men such as Kadokawa into unfeeling, obedient machines of destruction. This image and many others in City of Life and Death make the film absolutely essential viewing, The film’s current theatrical release makes it possible to experience it on the big screen, where its vast and detailed rendering can completely engulf the viewer and magnify its cataclysmic impact.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, dir. Tsui Hark, 2010

Andy Lau investigates, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, 2010

A film epic of a completely different sort than City of Life and Death, Tsui Hark’s extravagantly fun and fantastic movie is another example of the outstanding product coming out of China and Hong Kong. Like Benny Chan’s Shaolin, Detective Dee is a brilliant blending of traditional Hong Kong moviemaking with the super-high production values of recent mainland films.

Detective Dee is very loosely based on the exploits of real-life historical figure Di Ren-jie, also known as Judge Dee, who has been the subject of several Hong Kong and Chinese films, books, and television series. Here Dee is played by the ageless Andy Lau, as an implacable sleuth assigned to determine the cause of a spate of spontaneous human combustion.

Carina Lau plays another historical figure, Wu Zetian, who was the only woman to ascend to the Chinese imperial throne. Both Andy and Carina, who started their careers at TVB long ago in the 1980s, are excellent as the titular sleuth and the Empress who may or may not be his adversary. Carina Lau holds the distinction of being one of the only actresses of her generation (along with Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh) who is still working, and she brings a presence and authority to her role. Andy Lau has turned into an excellent screen actor and his ability to convey thoughtfulness and depth (despite his incredible good looks) is a result of his experience in more than a hundred films. He’s not afraid to take roles that emphasize his maturity, as seen here and in Shaolin, which is a nice testament to his graceful aging.

Phatasmagoria, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, 2010

As expected from a Hong Kong fantasy film, Detective Dee includes a surfeit of cleverly staged action set pieces, underscored by director Tsui’s fantasmagoric set designs and kinetic camerawork. But Detective Dee moves beyond earlier Hong Kong films’ visual realizations with its excellent use of extensive digital effects. The world of digital effects has finally caught up to Tsui’s gloriously saturated cinematic vision and in Detective Dee he makes the most of them. Whereas Tsui’s 1990s fantasy classics such as Green Snake featured charmingly unconvincing rubber prosthetics and matte paintings, Detective Dee has the advantage of a full slate of DFX, here outsourced to a well-known Korean effects house. Tsui utilizes this to full effect in realizing his lavishly imaginative vision, which includes transmogrifying faces, a herd of talking (and fighting) deer, characters convincingly immolating from the inside out, and a skyscraper-sized statue of a female bodhisattva.

At the same time Tsui doesn’t let the digital madness take precedence over plot or characterization. The film’s story is a clever and well-developed mystery, and Andy Lau, Carina Lau and Li Bing Bing portray intriguing and complex characters. Tony Leung Kar-Fei is excellent as a revolutionary with a long grudge against the empress. In fine Hong Kong movie tradition, Li and Andy Lau court and spark as conflicted would-be lovers separated by duty and circumstance. As is his wont, Tsui also throws a bit of political commentary into the mix in his critique of the corruption of power.

Detective Dee won Best Director and Best Actress statues at the most recent Hong Kong Film Awards and represents a comeback of sorts for longtime auteur Tsui. Although it was financed by mainland Chinese money and performed in Mandarin, Detective Dee is still a Hong Kong movie through and through, and is an outstanding example of what might come from the integration of mainland and Hong Kong commercial cinema.

City of Life & Death

opens Fri. Sept. 23, 2011

Landmark Opera Plaza Cinema

601 Van Ness Ave.

San Francisco, CA 94102

(415) 267-4893

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

now showing

Landmark Embarcadero Cinema

One Embarcadero Center, Promenade Level
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 267-4893

Landmark Shattuck Cinema

2230 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 464-5980

Manongs, Some Doors, and a Bouquet of Crates, installation view, Carlos Villa, 2011, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Art

Carlos Villa’s beautiful new show, Manongs, Some Doors, and a Bouquet of Crates, at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Art (MCCLA) is a selective survey of his work, and the show is a great introduction to Villa’s formal, thematic, and stylistic range. The show’s title is indicative of the diversity of the work from Villa’s long career, which has spanned more than seven decades.

As Filipino American cultural critic Theo Gonsalves notes, some art historians as well as some Asian American Studies scholars have had a hard time placing Villa’s wide-ranging body of work. As a Filipino American, Villa has never shied from referencing his cultural heritage in his work, most notably in his striking, large-scale cloaks of feathers, bone, shells, hair, and other evocative organic materials. But Villa also has a large body of non-representational pieces that don’t easily fit into culturally specific pigeonholes, which puzzles the more literally minded multiculturalists among us. However, his ability to move easily between culturally rooted work and work that less directly references his cultural background is perhaps what best defines Villa as an Asian American artist. As Stuart Hall famously notes in his essay, Cultural Identity and Diaspora, “Cultural identity is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being,” and the variety of approaches in Villa’s work speaks to that constantly evolving state of becoming. The current show at MCCLA is an excellent example of the broad scope of Villa’s ongoing concerns.

Where My Uncles Went West, 2002-2004, Carlos Villa

Upon entering the gallery at MCCLA the viewer hears a recording of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” sung by manong Freddy, one of the tenants of the original International Hotel who was involved in the long and bitter struggle to save that Manilatown landmark. The audio track immediately locates Villa’s work in Filipino America and reinforces the deep cultural connection that informs all of his work. Other suggestions of Pinoy culture are found in Where My Uncles Went West, a tall, shallow rectangular box with geometric white lines painted on a black background–both the box and the lines resemble doorframes, suggesting the entrances and exits of the immigrant experience. The side panels of the piece also pay tribute to the various journeys of the manong in their travels from the Philippines and throughout the U.S., with inscriptions including “Cebu to Fresno” and “Watsonville from Honolulu” suggesting the travels of first-generation Filipino Americans in their search for itinerant labor. Centered between the door-shaped geometric lines is a porkpie hat, another significant element of manong culture. Here Villa evokes the transitions and translocations faced by those Filipino immigrants from the early 20^th century, suggesting both their origins as well as their destinations.

The show also includes a sampling of Villa’s earlier work, including some beautiful geometric studies on paper as well as photographs of several plywood sculptures that presage some of the work that makes up the bulk of the MCCLA show. A series of large-scale, hand-built wooden boxes marked with carefully drawn lines on colored backgrounds, this body of work is a good example of the way that Villa’s non-representational pieces echo the concerns found in his more culturally specific work.

Manongs, Some Doors, and a Bouquet of Crates, detail, 2011, Carlos Villa, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Art

The boxes at the MCCLA show are hinged panels that are displayed in the gallery’s center. The viewer is able to circumnavigate the boxes, seeing both their painted and etched “front” as well as the structural supports of the “back,” thus evoking packing crates, suitcases, and other forms associated with transiency and migration. Beautifully hand-etched with precise, closely spaced parallel lines, these pieces are displayed ajar, both opening and closing, echoing the transitional mindset of many immigrants.

Like Ruth Asawa, another great Asian American artist of the same generation whose carefully crafted non-representational work defies easy categorization, Villa is biliterate and bicultural, belonging in many worlds and utilizing a multitude of frames of reference. By refusing to fit neatly into a single, simple classification, Villa’s work redefines what it means to be an artist, a Filipino American, and an American.

Carlos Villa: Manongs, Some Doors, and a Bouquet of Crates

August 13- October 5, 2011

Mission Cultural Center for Latino Art

2868 Mission Street, San Francisco CA 94110 (map)

An Evening with Carlos Villa
September 17, 6:30-9:30p / FREE Admission

Mission Cultural Center for Latino Art
Join Carlos Villa and distinguished guests for a night of storytelling and dialogue, as we celebrate the release of Villa’s new monograph, Carlos Villa and the Integrity of Spaces, edited by Theodore S. Gonzalves.