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Elsewhere on the Web
Madman bringing Miyazaki’s ‘The Wind Rises’ to cinemas in 2014
A press release came in on the wire today from our friends at Madman, announcing their acquisition of The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ, Kaze Tachinu), which famed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki has said will be his final film.
The story follows an aircraft engineer in pre-war Japan, loosely based on Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of the Zero fighter plane used in WWII. It’s an interesting choice of subject matter for the staunchly pacifist director, who has recently spoken out against … (read more)
Posted in Australian News, Cinema Screenings
Tagged Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki, The Wind Rises
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Pluto (2012)
Last year’s Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) brought us three very different films that shone a light on the pressure (shading towards the horror, in some cases) of high school in South Korea: the harrowing true story Silenced, the wistful, nuanced drama Bleak Night and the snarling animated film The King of Pigs.
This year they have programmed Pluto, another feature film that takes the pressure-cooker environment of the final years of high school as … (read more)
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A Werewolf Boy (2012)
This year’s opening film for the Korean Film Festival in Australia, which I caught at the sold-out KOFFIA opening night in Sydney, is Jo Sung-hee’s A Werewolf Boy. It’s a great choice for an opening film — it’s a genre crossover (romantic melodrama with werewolves!) with stars in lead roles, it’s got a fresh new talent in the director’s chair, and it made serious bank back home: Werewolf Boy sold more than seven million tickets in South Korea, and … (read more)
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Giveaway: 5-Film Passes to ‘Action, Hong Kong Style’ (Brisbane)
Not content with just putting on an amazing program of Hong Kong action classics (see our post and their website), the folks at GOMA have been kind enough to give us three five-film passes to give away to readers for their upcoming Action, Hong Kong Style program.
These will get you into any five screenings on the program; they can be used either by one person to see five different films, or by multiple people seeing the same screening … (read more)
Action, Hong Kong Style at GOMA (Brisbane, 6 Sep to 8 Nov)
If you go to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and you ask it for the earliest version of Heroic Cinema they have on file (Nov 3, 1999), you’ll find that we used to have a tagline on the front page: “Hong Kong movies are the best movies.”
It appears that the amazing people at GOMA in Brisbane agree with us, as they have just announced a huge program called Action, Hong Kong Style, an in-depth retrospective of Hong Kong’s … (read more)
Posted in Cinema Screenings
Tagged Brisbane, GoMA
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This week in cinemas: ‘Unbeatable’ (HK/China)
Hitting (and kicking, and throwing…) Australian cinemas this week is HK/Chinese mixed martial arts film Unbeatable, from director Dante Lam (Beast Cops, Fire of Conscience, The Viral Factor). It’s an action/drama piece set in Macau about three down-and-out characters: a former boxer (Nick Cheung), his younger protege (Eddie Peng) and a single mother (Mei Ting).
The trailers on YouTube overwhelmingly focus on the film’s MMA fight sequences, but this review from HK film experts LoveHKFilm … (read more)
Posted in Cinema Screenings
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Architecture 101 (2012)
The popular Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) is already underway in Brisbane, with Sydney and Melbourne soon to follow. So far already, our Editor has reviewed the period drama Masquerade, while fellow Team Heroic members have written about the thrillers Berlin File and The Tower. Screening this afternoon is the 2012 smash hit romance film Architecture 101, which I have had the pleasure of catching, and I am pleased to tell you that if you are … (read more)
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OzAsia Festival 2013 (Adelaide, 13-29 Sep)
Keeping pace with the other Asian cinema events happening in the eastern states is this year’s solid film line-up from the OzAsia Festival in Adelaide, with 21 films showing this year between 13 and 29 September.
You can find a full list on their website, but there are a few screenings in particular I want to highlight:
Drug War (China, 2012), the first Chinese Mainland-shot crime film from HC favourite director Johnnie To, starring Louis Koo, Sun Honglei and … (read more)