News

Celebrating its 10th anniversary the Helsinki Cine Aasia festival will once again present a selection of the latest films from East and South-East Asia. Along with better known film countries like Korea and Japan, the program also includes films from countries like the Philippines and Cambodia. Many of the festival’s films have been seen at international festivals and have received awards. The opening film is Anatomy of Time (2021) from Thailand, and altogether the program includes 20 films from eight different countries.

Familiar filmmakers

Japanese film director Ogigami Naoko’s newest film Riverside Mukolitta comes to Helsinki Cine Aasia in May. Ogigami became well known to the Finnish audiences with her film Kamome shokudō (2006) which was shot in a restaurant at Punavuori, Helsinki where the story was also set. Ogigami has since become known for the unique characters in her stories. Her latest visit to Finland was in 2019 during the retrospective...

DeBose wins same award as Rita Moreno, her predecessor in the same role in West Side Story

• Follow all the action with our liveblog

• The full list of winners

Ariana DeBose has won the Oscar for best supporting actress at the 94th Academy Awards, currently under way at the Dolby theatre in Los Angeles.

DeBose won the prize for her role in the Steven Spielberg-directed West Side Story remake, in which she plays the key role of Anita, the girlfriend of Sharks gang leader Bernardo, and sings the famous number America. In the original film Anita was played by Rita Moreno, who also won the best supporting actress Oscar for the role in 1962.

“Steven had said that he wasn’t going to make the film if he couldn’t cast it correctly.”

Thus, explains casting director Cindy Tolan, assembling the perfect ensemble was of existential importance to Spielberg’s revisited “West Side Story.” The goal was to capture all the charisma of the beloved 1961 original, while avoiding its much-criticized, inauthentic approach to ethnicity.

“I looked to my office and I said, ‘We are not going to be the reason this film does not get made.’” An early, viral social media posting kicked off an 18-month worldwide search, involving open calls and appointments from the U.S. to Puerto Rico and Australia.

All told, she claims, “we saw 30,000 humans,” and in no sense did any have to be professionals or even trained. What they had to be was “quadruple threats: They had to sing, dance and act. And the camera had to like them.

The Osaka Asian Film Festival has unveiled its biggest ever program – a total of 76 films – to unspool next month.

Its competition section includes the acclaimed Korean debut film “Aloners,” which offers an exacting critique of the alienating effects upon life of modern capitalist economies; Hong Kong biopic “Anita”; the world premiere of “Angry Son,” which combines LGBT and mixed race themes in a heartwarming comedy; Kong Dashan’s new take on “Journey to the West,” as a ragtag group of people on a UFO hunt; “Mama’s Affair,” the second film by Kearen Pang, whose 2017 debut “29+1” won Osaka’s audience award, “No Land’s Man” from Mostofa Sarwar Farooki and festival circuit hit “Barbarian Invasion.”

The spotlight section includes ten titles. Among them are “The Ground Beneath her Feet” from Bangladesh’s Mohammad Rabby Mridha; “A Room of Her own” from China’s Xie Yiran; and Carlo Francisco Manatad’s “Whether the Weather is Fine.

“Limbo” is the favourite contender for the 40th edition of The Hong Kong Film Awards with a total of 14 nominations including Best Film, Best Director (Soi Cheang), Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Lam Ka-tung) and Best Actress (Cya Liu). “Limbo” is followed closely by “Anita”, a biopic of the late Anita Mui, that received 12 nominations, including Best Film and Best Director. The Award ceremony will be held in-person at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on April 17, unless the public health situation deteriorates further.

Best Film

Raging Fire

Anita

Limbo

Zero to Hero

Drifting

Best Director

Man Lim Chung for Keep Rolling

Benny Chan for Raging Fire

Longman Leung for Anita

Soi Cheang for Limbo

Peter Ho-Sun Chan for Leap

Best Screenplay

Ashley Cheung Yin Kei, Ho Siu Hong, Li Ho Ting and Ling Wai Chun for One Second Champion

Ho Ching Yi and Lam Ka Tung for Time

Au Kin Yee...

Action thriller “Limbo” and “Anita,” a biopic about the late Canto-pop queen Anita Mui lead the nomination race for this year’s Hong Kong Film Awards, which is holding its 40th edition after being postponed from last year.

“Limbo,” a Cantonese noir that follows a cop duo’s hunt for a serial killer, received 14 nominations including best film, best director for Soi Cheang, best screenplay, best actor for Lam Ka-tung and best actress for Cya Liu. The film had earlier won the critics heart at the annual Hong Kong Film Critics’ Society Awards, which named “Limbo” as best film and Liu best actress for her role as a young addict.

“Anita” received 12 nominations, including best film and best director for Longman Leung. The film’s lead actress Louise Wong, who plays the role of the late superstar in her big screen debut, is nominated for both best actress and best new performer.

Other contenders include biopic ‘Anita’, ‘Drifting’ and ‘Raging Fire’, the final thriller by the late Benny Chan.

Soi Cheang’s crime thriller Limbo leads the pack for the 40th Hong Kong Film Awards (Hkfa) with 14 nominations, as the event prepares to return as an in-person ceremony following last year’s cancellation as a result of the pandemic.

The black and white crime noir, which premiered in Berlinale Special in 2021, secured nods including best film, best director and for actors Lam Ka Tung[/link], Cya Liu and Fish Liew. The thriller centres on a veteran detective and rookie copy who team up to catch a serial killer.

"Licorice Pizza" is MGM's Oscar-nominated 'coming-of-age' comedy-drama, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper and Benny Safdie:

"...in the San Fernando Valley in 1973, 'Gary Valentine' prepares for his high school picture day. He notices 25-year-old 'Alana Kane', a photographer's assistant, and strikes up conversation with her. She rebuffs his advances, but meets him for dinner and they begin a friendship. Gary attends auditions and appears in a variety show with 'Lucy Doolittle' and when Gary's mother 'Anita' cannot take him to perform in New York, Alana chaperones him instead. On the plane, Alana meets 'Lance', one of Gary's co-stars in a Doolittle film; they begin dating, but break up after an awkward dinner with Alana's family...”

Click the images to enlarge...

Action thriller “Limbo” was named best film of 2021 at the annual Hong Kong Film Critics’ Society Awards. The film’s female lead, Chinese actress Cya Liu, was crowned best actress for her role as a young addict.

Results of five awards and 10 recommended films were decided on Jan. 16, 2022 after nine hours of deliberation and three rounds of votes. A total of 48 films released in 2021 met the entry criteria for the awards, which is in its 28th edition this year.

Critics said the Cantonese noir “Limbo,” based on the novel of the same name by mainland author Lei Mi, was an “extraordinary work.” It was directed by Soi Cheang.

The grim, crumbling slum that serves as a backdrop for the story revolving around a cop duo’s hunt of a serial killer—just like how an imagined southern Chinese city depicted in the novel—is one metaphor for a “near future,...

Theatrical box office in Hong Kong more than doubled in 2021, but the outlook remains unstable, according to local trade body, the Motion Picture Industry Association.

Gross revenues reached Hk$1.21 billion in 2021, compared with just Hk$536 million in 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, last year’s total remained some 37% below the pre-covid total of Hk$1.92 billion in 2019, according to data supplied by Hong Kong Box Office Ltd, a company controlled by the Mpia and the Hong Kong Theaters Association.

Hong Kong has significantly recovered from the coronavirus, but the government continues to operate a zero-covid policy which means strict border and quarantine controls and ongoing local restrictions concerning businesses and social distancing.

Cinemas in Hong Kong were closed for the first 48 days of 2021, including the calendar new year period and the major Chinese New Year festivities. They reopened with a surge in mid-February and have not been shuttered since.

Melissa Claire Egan had been popping up in some video conference calls as Chelsea on The Young and the Restless, but now she’s back in Genoa City full-time and ready to make her presence felt once more! The former con artist, who left town to take care of her mother (Catherine Bach’s Anita), has been anxious over Adam’s (Mark Grossman) relationship with Sharon (Sharon Case) and discovers some new dynamics upon her return. While there’s always going to be a bond between Adam and Sharon, he has a new woman in his life: Sally Spectra (Courtney Hope). Will Chelsea find the redhead to be a formidable adversary? Egan’s got some on-screen conflict however, in real life, she’s a happy mom, having given birth to s. TV Insider checked in with Egan about her return to soaps, the role she enjoys playing the most — new mom to son Caden Robert,...

Hong Kong’s Oscar submission is an entertaining feel-good biography of So Wa-wai, the national sporting hero who won 12 medals in five Paralympic Games from 1996 to 2012. Focused on the powerful bond between the disabled runner and his fiercely dedicated mother, “Hero” injects just enough gritty drama about the champion’s financial and emotional battles to prevent the story being overwhelmed by sugary sentiment applied liberally elsewhere. The first film directed solo by “Love Off the Cuff” writer Jimmy Wan struck gold in Hong Kong cinemas in August and is likely to be the silver medalist behind “Anita” as top-grossing local film of the year. “Hero” sprinted onto Netflix in the U.S. and other territories on Nov. 5.

Following the conventions of sports biographies from the first frame, Wan’s film opens with the athlete known as “Wonder Boy” poised on the starting blocks at the 2012 Beijing Paralympics. No sooner has...

West Side Story—a curious exception in the modern glut of sequels and remakes, with its powerhouse combination of hallowed subject matter and director—announces itself immediately. Where the 1961 original, helmed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, began with a series of aerial shots over New York City, director Steven Spielberg opts for an elaborate crane shot that etches out an important distinction: this story is set amid slums in the process of being cleared for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the immaculate Manhattan arts complex where, it must be said, the film premiered a few days ago. While previous incarnations of the Romeo and Juliet-inspired musical—with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by the dearly departed Stephen Sondheim—were identifiably set in a downtrodden New York, an entirely different sense of precarity begins here, woven into the fabric of the film, as the Jets’ struggle with...

Yeung will continue to grow We Pictures’ slate, while broadening its business in the areas of content creation, IP development and distribution.

Former Edko Films executive Esther Yeung has been appointed chief operating officer of Hong Kong filmmaker Peter Ho-sun Chan’s We Pictures.

In her new role, she will continue to grow We Pictures’ slate, while broadening its business in the areas of content creation, IP development and distribution. She will report directly to Chan.

Yeung most recently served as general manager, head of sales and distribution, at Bill Kong’s Hong Kong-based producer-distributor Edko Films. During her tenure,...

Move aside, Billie Eilish; it’s time for Anita to take back the stage. Lok Man Leung’s “Anita” delivers a loving tribute to Anita Mui — legendary Cantopop singer, actress, and activist. Much like Eilish, Mui too had a seamless start to her career. After years of performing on the streets, Mui underwent a fateful vocal cord surgery that lowered her pitch by an octave. Mui’s new voice charmed audiences though – and she skyrocketed to fame by winning the New Talent Singing Awards at the tender age of 19. She then polished her baritone pitch and outfits with Cantopop factory Capital Artists and fashion heavyweight Eddie Lau. She collaborated with movie icons too – like Stanley Kwan, Leslie Cheung, and Maggie Cheung, to name a few – in her first forays into the film industry. By the age of twenty-six, she already reaped the coveted markers of success in both music and...

Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” didn’t manage to catch a swift current in its China debut, drifting to a slow $3.3 million first three-day weekend, according to data from the Artisan Gateway consultancy. The Maoyan data platform currently estimates it will gross a total of just $6.19 million.

The adventure tale has clearly lost steam since its simultaneous release in U.S. theaters and on Disney+ in July, and even Dwayne Johnson’s star power hasn’t helped the park attraction vehicle paddle to farther reaches in the “Fast & Furious” franchise-loving country.

Instead, the local parodic thriller “Be Somebody” took the lead, earning $19.9 million in its first weekend following a Thursday opening day. It has earned $21.9 million in total so far and is predicted to ultimately go nearly ten times the distance of “Jungle Cruise” with a $54 million cume.

The movie directed by Liu Xunzi Mo is a send-up of crime drama tropes,...