home
 
 
Search LoveHKFilm.com
Site Features
- Asian Film Awards
- Site Recommendations

- Reader Poll Results

- The Sponsor Page
- The FAQ Page 
 
Buy Planet Hong Kong
 
support this site by shopping at
Click to visit YesAsia.com
 
Asian Blu-ray discs at YesAsia.com
 
 
 
 
 

 
   

Last Site Update: February 20th, 2011

Site Review Count: 1982
   

Don't Go Breaking My Heart
 

Louis Koo, Daniel Wu
and Gao Yuanyuan in
Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai's
DON'T GO BREAKING MY HEART

Johnnie To To and Wai Ka-Fai attempt to enter the mainland market with Don't Go Breaking My Heart, a romantic comedy starring Hong Kong's Louis Koo and Daniel Wu and China's Gao Yuanyuan, among other, lesser stars. This is only To and Wai's first mainland strike, with a Louis Koo and Sammi Cheng romcom currently shooting and a possible Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng romcom in the works. One day To will return to his crime film roots and the film geek websites will probably light up like a Christmas tree. We're only in it for good movies, so if three or four romcoms is what it takes, we'll be glad to see them. Anyway, we'll always have Election.

Don't Go Breaking My Heart opens on March 31st.


Recent Stuff
- Review: All's Well Ends Well 2011 NEW
- Review: What Women Want
NEW
- Review: Shaolin
NEW
- Review: I Love Hong Kong
NEW
- Review: GANTZ
NEW
- Review: Confessions
NEW
- Review: Don Quixote
NEW
- Review: The Five Venoms
NEW
- Review: The Karate Kid
NEW
- Review: Raging Phoenix
NEW
- Review: House
NEW
- Awards: 30th Hong Kong Film Award Nominations

- Awards: 17th Hong Kong Film Critics Society Award Winners
- Awards: 47th Golden Horse Award Winners

Slowdown Approaching
Posted 02-20-11

Yay, we finally updated LoveHKFilm.com! With 11 reviews! We know it's not a big deal to you, but it's one to us. Please don't rain on our parade.

Sadly, we probably can't update much in the immediate future, since we're entering the busiest time of the year. Besides attending the upcoming Hong Kong International Film Festival, the people behind this site have to work for the Asian Film Awards, the Udine Far East Film Festival, the LoveHKFilm Awards and also that daytime YesAsia.com job. If you see us at all in March, it'll be a miracle.

LoveHKFilm.com is now 9 years old, which is a full 63 in dog years. Back in the beginning, we updated 3 times a week but this year, we'll be fortunate if we can update once per month. Consider it diminishing returns. Was 24 as good in its final seasons as it was in those first 3 or 4? Likely not. Anyway, we're happy to still be alive as an embarrassingly low-tech HTML site in this brave new Web 2.0 world. Thanks for visiting, as always.

Next time: as usual, we hope there will be a next time.

News, Notes and Nonsense

Updated February 20th, 2011

Previous Updates archived at MySpace

Planet Hong Kong 2.0
Posted 02-20-11

A quick plug for something you'll see over on the left hand border of the page: the updated 2.0 edition of David Bordwell's Planet Hong Kong, available now in a downloadable PDF. The original 2000 edition of Planet Hong Kong went out of press some years back, which is a shame as it contained the best and most comprehensive case for Hong Kong Cinema as a popular art form that you'll find in print. It would be an understatement to call the book an indispensible resource for the Hong Kong Cinema fan.

Professor Bordwell has updated his 2.0 edition with edits and corrections, plus some new sections covering the last decade of Hong Kong Cinema. Please click on through to read about Planet Hong Kong 2.0, available for download for US$15, or check out Professor Bordwell's many other articles covering cinema from Hong Kong and beyond.

Note: all links to Professor Bordwell's Planet Hong Kong 2.0 on LoveHKFilm.com are testimonials and not advertisements. Proceeds from the book benefit those who worked on it.

30th Hong Kong Film Award
Nominations Announced
Posted 02-08-11

The Nominations for the 30th Hong Kong Film Awards were just announced, and as always they're a fistful of entertainment. It's apparently the year of the action movie because all the Best Picture nominees have hitting, shooting or both. Up for Best Picture: Gallants, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, Ip Man 2, The Stool Pigeon, and Reign of Assassins. Not a terrible movie in the bunch, though there's plenty to laugh at in a few of them. Go ahead and figure out which.

Results will show up towards the end of April, right before the 13th Udine Far East Film Festival, which just debuted its new festival trailer right here. The trailer was directed by Clement Cheng and features Teddy Robin, and both are up for Hong Kong Film Awards this year!
Both are also likely to be somewhere in the running for the 16th LoveHKFilm Awards, which will hopefully be announced sometime in March. Hard to tell, what with how lazy we are over here.

Next time: film reviews, if we feel like it.


  Previous Updates

NEW for February 18th, 2011
- Added Kozo's reviews of All's Well Ends Well 2011 (2011), Shaolin (2011), I Love Hong Kong (2011) and Don Quixote (2010).
- Added Kevin Ma's reviews of What Women Want (2011) and Confessions (Japan, 2010).
- Added Calvin McMillin's reviews of GANTZ (Japan, 2011), House (Japan, 1977), Raging Phoenix (Thailand, 2009), The Karate Kid (USA, 2010) and The Five Venoms (1978).

NEW for February 8th, 2011
- The nominations for the 30th Hong Kong Film Awards were announced.

NEW for January 18th, 2011
- Added Kozo's reviews of Lover's Discourse (2010), If You Are The One II (China, 2010), Marriage With a Liar (2010) and Reign of Assassins (2010).
- Added Kevin Ma's review of The Road Less Traveled (2010).
- Added Calvin McMillin's reviews of The Green Hornet (USA, 2011), Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974) and White on Rice (USA, 2009).
- The winners of the 17th Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards were announced.

Featured Review

Alls Well Ends Well 2011
Donnie and Louis

All's Well Ends Well 2011
What’s Lunar New Year without one of producer Raymond Wong Bak-Ming’s All’s Well Ends Well movies? Who really knows? Every January or February, if there isn’t an All’s Well Ends Well movie jammed into the local cinema, you only have to flip cable channels until you run into the 1992 original, which gets so much play every year that it borders on tiresome. Basically, if it’s Lunar New Year, there has to be an All’s Well Ends Well movie playing somewhere. This axiom is, of course, only applicable to Hong Kong, which is fine because these films are meant for Hong Kong audiences. Local pop culture, local stars, local laughs – the All’s Well Ends Well films are all about those. If you’re a Milkyway fanboy, now’s the time to turn around. (more)

 

New HK Reviews New PanAsia Reviews
Please tell me too
What Women Want
China seems to be an ideal place to set a remake of the Hollywood romantic comedy What Women Want. (more)
 
Good guys are bald
Shaolin
Like its predecessors, Chang Cheh's 1976 classic The Shaolin Temple and the same-titled 1982 Jet Li vehicle, Shaolin takes the fact-based destruction of the Shaolin Temple... (more)
 
That's the place for you
I Love Hong Kong
Eric Tsang and TVB join forces once again for their 2011 Lunar New Year special, I Love Hong Kong. (more)
 
Patrick Kong meets good filmmaking
Lover's Discourse
Four-story drama Lover's Discourse treads familiar ground, and features a diverse Chinese cast playing individuals afflicted, troubled or perhaps obsessed by love. (more)
 
We've been down this road before
The Road Less Traveled
Derek Yee steps back to take the role of producer for Derek Chiu’s The Road Less Traveled, a thematic continuation of sorts from Lost in Time... (more)
 

That's "Five Deadly Venoms" to you

The Five Venoms
While the Shaw Brothers catalogue contains a plethora of acclaimed martial arts films, only a select few earned a devout following upon their release in the West. (more)
 
Patrick Kong returns. Joy.
Marriage With a Liar
Set your cinema quality alert to orange. Not only is Marriage with a Liar directed by Hong Kong’s highest profile purveyor of quality-impaired cinema, Patrick Kong... (more)
 
Not really a John Woo film
Reign of Assassins
The swordplay film gets a satisfying update with Reign of Assassins, an entertaining genre flick from writer-director Su Chao-Bin... (more)
 
Do what the big black ball says
GANTZ
From director Shinsuke Sato comes Gantz, the first of two live-action film adaptations of Hiroya Oku’s popular manga, which takes a familiar sci-fi premise... (more)
 
This is my revenge
Confessions
Commercial director Tetsuya Nakashima’s film career truly took off with Kamikaze Girls and Memories of Matsuko, two potentially dreary art films that he made accessible... (more)
 
Windmills, ho!
Don Quixote
The concept was inspired, but the actual movie? Less so. 2010 Filmko Pictures release Don Quixote... (more)
 
Teach me, Jackie!
The Karate Kid
Seemingly more common than sequels or prequels these days, the remake seems to be the vehicle du jour for studios... (more)
 
Just plain rage
Raging Phoenix
For Western audiences, part of the allure of 80s and 90s Hong Kong action cinema was the belief that even the big name actors did all their own stunts. (more)
 
It's a spooky pandemonium
House
It’s a good thing LoveHKFilm.com never implemented a ratings system because I don’t know how I could even begin to rate House, a cult classic from Japan... (more)
 
You mean he still doesn't know?
If You Are The One II
You asked for a sequel to Feng Xiaogang’s 2008 romance If You Are The One, right? The likelihood is that you didn't, but that's too bad because they made one anyway. (more)
 
It's a gas gun

The Green Hornet

It’s no secret that the latest adaptation of The Green Hornet had a troubled production history. Not only did the character rights jump from studio to studio... (more)
 

Subscribe to the
LoveHKFilm.com RSS Feed
on del.icio.us

Follow lovehkfilm on Twitter

Join our group at
LoveHKFilm Facebook Group


LoveHKFilm
Blogs

Off-Site Resources
- LoveHKFilm Search Plug-In
- East Screen/West Screen Podcast at KongCast.com

Newer Hong Kong Reviews:
- 14 Blades
- 72 Tenants of Prosperity
- Accident
- Adventure of the King
- All About Love
- All's Well Ends Well 2011
- Amphetamine
- Bad Blood
- Beauty on Duty!
- Black Ransom
- Bodyguards and Assassins
- Break Up Club
- Bruce Lee, My Brother
- The Child's Eye
- City Under Siege
- Crossing Hennessy
- Curse of the Deserted
- Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
- Dream Home
- Echoes of the Rainbow
- Ex
- The Fantastic Water Babes
- Fire of Conscience
- The Five Venoms
- Flirting Scholar 2
- Frozen
- Future X-Cops
- Gallants
- Girl$
- Here Comes Fortune
- Hot Summer Days
- I Love Hong Kong
- Ip Man 2
- The Jade and the Pearl
- Just Another Pandora's Box
- La Comedie Humaine
- The Legend is Born - Ip Man
- Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
- Little Big Soldier
- Love in a Puff
- Lover's Discourse
- Marriage With a Liar
- Merry-Go-Round
- Ocean Heaven
- Once a Gangster
- Perfect Wedding
- Reign of Assassins
- Revenge: A Love Story
- The Road Less Traveled
- Shaolin
- Showtime
- The Stool Pigeon
- Triple Tap
- True Legend
- Vampire Warriors
- What Women Want
- Womb Ghosts

Newer China reviews:
- Aftershock
- Confucius
-
If You Are The One II
-
My Ex-Wife's Wedding
-
Princess Iron Fan
-
Uproar in Heaven
- What Women Want

Newer Taiwan reviews:

- Au Revoir Taipei
-
In Case of Love
-
Like a Dream
-
Love in Disguise
-
Monga
-
Taipei Exchanges

Newer Japan reviews:

- 10 Promises To My Dog
- Confessions
- Dear Doctor
- GANTZ
- House
- The Last Princess
- Love Exposure
- MW
- Oppai Volleyball
- Sanjuro
- Still Walking
- Tsubaki Sanjuro
- Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers

Newer Korea reviews:
- Castaway on the Moon
- The Chaser
- The Good, The Bad, The Weird
- Haeundae
- The Insadong Scandal
- Iri
- Maybe
- Mother
- My Father
- My Friend and His Wife
- One Shining Day
- Paradise Murdered
- The Scam
-
Someday
-
Take Off
- Thirst

Other PanAsia reviews:
- 4BIA
- The Green Hornet
- Ice Kacang Puppy Love
- The Karate Kid
- Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires
- Ong Bak 3
- Raging Phoenix
- Slant, Volume 1
- The Stranger and the Gunfighter
- Tears of the Black Tiger
- Where Got Ghost?
- White on Rice

Site Resources
-
Glossary of HK film terms

Regional Coverage:
Hong Kong
- Broadway Cinemas
- Cityline.com
- HK Headline
Los Angeles, USA
- The Asian Film Foundation
San Francisco, USA
- Four-Star Theater

support this site by shopping at


   LoveHKFilm.com Copyright © 2002 - 2011 Ross Chen