April 28th, 2010
Arnold meets LGM
Enjoying myself here in Udine at the Far East Film Festial, but have neglected a lot at the website and blog. I don’t think I ever published my Top 20 Hong Kong movies of the 90s, so that ancient poll still isn’t done. I also have laundry to do so life is full of troubles.
The evil ash cloud has prevented many a filmmaker from attending, but a host of people have shown up, including Chapman To, directors Derek Kwok and Clement Cheng, Pang Ho-Cheung, and also Patrick Lung Kong, the focus of the main retrospective. Saw a lot, and may write some, but it’ll have to be after I clear my main backlog of reviews.
Anyway, met Derek Kwok and he’s a big fan of Hong Kong action figure manufacturer HOT TOYS. He even brought along the new TERMINATOR 2 Movie Masterpiece 1/6th scale action figure and is snapping photos. I added my own toy and we got a crossover going:
LGM enjoys the feel of Ah-nuld’s hair beneath his toes
I’m doing work here for YesAsia plus LoveHKFilm, but the Udine Far East Film Festival is also largely a holiday for me. No real pressure, I can talk to directors or actors during lunches or while lounging around, and the staff is always exceptionally helpful. I sincerely doubt I would ever enjoy Cannes or other high pressure film fests. Hell, the HKIFF always threatens to make me sick. In Udine, I can just be and you can’t really put a price on that.
See you in a few.
April 29th, 2010 at 8:22 am
I’m really looking forward to DREAM HOME. Hope the uncensored cut gets good reception at the fest. Something tells me Pang should’ve switched the schedules of PUFF and DREAM, but that’s just me.
April 29th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Disagree on that AlHaru - PUFF would have totally gone under beneath the DREAM HOME release. As of now, it can be considered the surprise of the year and one of the finest romcoms to make it out of HK in the last decade. Not sure if people would still have looked it that way if it was the other way around.
April 30th, 2010 at 6:58 am
Well I guess both ways work out just fine. Two drastically different movies, one small timeframe. Pang is making enough noise by having these two movies released in a chronological order - any chronological order should work fine.
I’m curious of a reversed order - having DREAM loosen up and destroy the foundations of heavy censorship and the taboo of both social-economic issues and category-III, then embrace the lighter mood of a romcom to break even the madness. Audiences of PUFF are obviously not ready for DREAM, but DREAM’s viewers can breathe easy by watching PUFF after (given these two groups of people are all interested in Pang’s work, casual viewers and not necessarily his fans). Putting DREAM to play second makes it feel incomplete; probably just me. Based on his track record, Pang has not triggered deserving attention to his previous works by allowing a generously-timed release schedule to promote them appropriately.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Did anyone recognize you are the mastermind behind LoveHKFilm.com? Or do people know about the website at all?
May 2nd, 2010 at 12:29 am
Hi laicheukpan, I did one interview on the strength of LoveHKFilm.com, but generally nobody recognizes me. That’s good, because I may have insulted their movies.