Blog Archives

When the subject of Asian gangster films is raised there are certain traits that one expects, since the genre has been around long enough to establish a number of expected tropes.  And, whilst there’s a certain amount of violence, gang loyalty and vicious romanticism that comes with the territory of living at the fringes of society as an outlaw, The Show Must Go On turns this expectation on its head.  To start with, the title: The Show Must Go On… (read more)

Well, there seems to a plethora of comic book based movies nowadays, with the ever-increasing ability of digital effects to recreate the comic book panel.  So whilst skimming over a cinema guide recently, my mind slowly drifted to one of the first comic book digital effects spectacles that I could remember: The Storm Riders.  It was convenient then that Pinnacle are about to do an Australian DVD release, meaning I get to revisit this 1998 ‘classic’.

Ah, nostalgia – … (read more)

Wu Xia is billed as a martial arts murder mystery, and one needs to wonder whether there are many more genre mash-ups still left to be made (of course making that thought is sufficient for some unknown combination to come forth).  That, of course, is the central premise of Wu Xia: that Jinxi’s (Donnie Yen) intervention in a robbery draws the attention of  magistrate Baijiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who is convinced that Jinxi’s good deed was only possible through the … (read more)

Certainly a sign of advancing years when one starts reminiscing of times past.  It’s hard not to be nostalgic when revisiting a series that first began and ended almost 10 years ago but that’s certainly the case when the new Blu-ray disc of FLCL arrived in the mail.

I have fond memories of the show though the exact details as to why eluded me up until the point I pressed play for the entire series.  The Pillows soundtrack came on … (read more)

So let’s get some levels of expectation for Treasure Hunter out of the way first of all. Whilst I thought Jay Chou was fine in both Initial D and Curse of the Golden Flower, his performance in both instances was such a blank slate, it was just a masterstroke casting decision to give him characters that were similarly bland. So certainly not a fanboy of the man. Have probably heard a song or two of his but certainly don’t … (read more)

I’ve always wondered exactly what it was that made giant monsters and their traipsing through downtown Tokyo a genre unto itself. Having watched merely a handful of examples of the genre, I can still say I really don’t ‘get it’.

But watch it I will, and having seen a handful of examples and with a cerebral understanding of what others might see in the genre, maybe I can at least get the gist of what Big Man Japan is about. … (read more)

I must admit that of all the films being shown during Reel Anime 08, Vexille is perhaps the one film I knew nothing about. Appleseed I managed to catch at SIFF; Girl Who Leapt Through Time has been on my radar for at least a year now though I never got around to actually watching it and Batman… – well Batman is Batman isn’t it? How much do you really need to know about Batman that, as an internet-browsing, … (read more)

Ah, The Ring. The film that drew our collective attention to Japanese horror after being desensitised by rivers of blood and latex gore. It took a slow moving, internalised film to really bring back that sense of dread that made you sleep just that little less soundly than before. And we were hardly disappointed — soon what followed were films like Ring 2, Dark Water and The Grudge (though admittedly I wasn’t that big a fan of that … (read more)