Darren Wee2013-05-23T05:18:29-04:00Darren Weehttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=darren-weeCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Darren WeeGood old fashioned elbow grease.Asian Film Festival Shines Spotlight on Taiwantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14227992012-04-13T08:31:16-04:002012-06-13T05:12:01-04:00Darren Weehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/darren-wee/Terracotta Far East Film Festival opened last night with Korean war epic My Way at the Prince Charles Cinema in Chinatown. A pan-Asian production with a star-studded cast from China, Japan and Korea, it was the perfect start to the festival.
Now in its fourth year, Terracotta is showing 16 films over four days, which festival director Joey Leung said were chosen from a longlist of 403.
"The main purpose of the festival is to bring quality Asian cinema to the UK. We made sure we could represent a broad range of countries and genres to represent the best of this year's vintage of Asian cinema. All of the films we are showing are premieres and almost all the films will not be shown here again."
This year's festival shines a spotlight on Taiwan. The small island nation produced some of the best independent Asian directors of the 80s and early 90s, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang and Tsai Ming-liang, as well as Oscar winner Ang Lee, but this year, Terracotta is introducing its new generation to UK audiences.
Seediq Bale, Taiwan's answer to Braveheart and The Last of the Mohicans, premieres tomorrow. Joey said it was about "300 Taiwanese aborigines who waged guerrilla warfare against the Japanese colonisers" and documented an important part of Taiwan's history.
Other Taiwanese films include Return to Burma, which "uncovers everyday life in Burma through the eyes of ethnic Chinese people returning from labouring in Taiwan", and Chinese co-production One Mile Above, which "features beautiful landscapes as it follows a lone cyclist fulfilling his dead brother's ambition to ride from Yunnan to Lhasa".
Seediq Bale star and aborigine hunter Da Ching is in London for the festival, as is Japanese actor Denden, director Toshiaki Toyoda and London-based Chinese author and filmmaker Guo Xiaolu. They are holding Q&A sessions and a series of acting, directing and writing masterclasses.
Joey said, "The audiences really love it when we have actors and directors here at the festival to introduce the film, it really gives both parties a chance to connect with each other. Actors are always on film sets and at press conferences and very rarely get a chance to talk to genuine film lovers."
This year's festival falls on Friday the 13th, giving the perfect excuse for a horror triple bill: Japanese "death stench" anime Gyo, modern classic The Grudge and Taiwan's first zombie film, Zombie 108.
Other festival highlights include documentary Arirang, which marks Korean director Kim Ki-duk's return after an actress narrowly escaped death while filming a suicide scene in his last film, and black comedy Inseparable, the first Chinese film with a Hollywood lead. Kevin Spacey plays an American expat who stops his Chinese neighbour (Daniel Wu) from committing suicide.
Joey said, "The UK cinema circuit is cluttered with Hollywood films and the independent cinemas have many subtitled films from Europe and Latin America, but very few Asian films get shown. Asian film is still a niche area, just as any segment of film will have its niche. Our job is to help grow that niche and the more people watch the films, the more accepting they are of seeing Asian faces on the screen, not hearing English on the screen, getting used to reading subtitles and slowly becoming familiar with the names of actors and directors. It's a slow process!"
]]>New Website Shows Korea's Dark Sidetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14132902012-04-10T08:44:05-04:002012-06-10T05:12:01-04:00Darren Weehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/darren-wee/Korea is more than kimchi, K-pop and plastic surgery, says the founder of new website koreaBANG
koreaBANG knows what Korea is talking about and apparently it is drunken women on the subway, tweeting politicians and how much they hate Japan.
koreaBANG is a new website that translates the most discussed news stories in Korea and their highest rated comments into English. Stories range from a Korean politician's drunken tweets to a cafe owner who secretly filmed over 900 women in his toilets, as well as Korean reaction to international news, such as the Korean-American school shooter.
As the Korean wave sweeps over Asia and the rest of the world, there is a growing audience for all things Korean. There are already dozens of K-pop sites, allkpop has 75 million views a month, but koreaBANG has a harder news edge.
The site was founded by two British students of Korean. Cambridge University student James Pearson said koreaBANG's sister site, chinaSMACK, was his first port of call while a student in Beijing, but he was hard-pressed to find a Korean equivalent. He approached chinaSMACK with the idea of a Korean version and launched koreaBANG in January with his co-editor and Korea University student, Raphael Rashid.
The site now has four regular contributors, half Korean and half non-Korean, and attracts just under 3500 daily visitors from 154 countries. Bang (방) means room in Korean and refers to the PC bangs (internet cafes) where millions of young Koreans while away their time. Some have even died of exhaustion in them and one woman even gave birth in one.
Raphael said Western media tends to focus on North Korea, not what the Korean man in the street, or on the internet, is talking about. For example, Western media gave extensive coverage to last week's Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) in Seoul, but Koreans themselves were not that interested - it was not even in the top 10 stories that week. Instead, they were talking about beer woman, a drunken woman filmed drinking and smoking on the Seoul subway. Beer woman made it onto koreaBANG, the NSS did not.
"If Koreans are talking about it, so are we," said James. "If it's popular, we choose it, regardless of how off-the-wall it may seem to a non-Korean audience. Same goes for many of the comments, we tend to take the top 20 or so rated comments from each article and translate those."
Raphael said Korea is trying to brand itself "under a flawless veneer". The government has even founded a Presidential Council on Nation Branding and pays bloggers to upload thousands of photos of the country. Korean dramas give a distorted image of the country to their fans around the world, an image doctored nearly as much as their stars' faces.
"Korean dramas and celebrity culture convey a somewhat fairy tale-like image of Korea, where everyone is tall and handsome," said Raphael. "Disillusioned tourists come in their masses to live the Korean Dream, but find themselves confronted with a reality that is not too dissimilar to their own."
While well aware not all Koreans want their dirty laundry aired in public, Raphael said they were sincere in "presenting an otherwise unreported world in all its raw unedited glory".
Whether or not they have Korea's blessing, koreaBANG is making waves. Ripples compared to the Korean wave, which is now more a tsunami, but the site is blowing up. BANG!]]>The Hunger Games v Battle Royaletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13797342012-03-26T11:01:15-04:002012-05-26T05:12:01-04:00Darren Weehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/darren-wee/The Magnificent Seven was an adaptation of Japanese film Seven Samurai and more recently The Departed won an Oscar for Best Film for basically just translating Infernal Affairs from Cantonese into English.
While The Hunger Games is not a word-for-word translation of an Asian film, it does bear an uncanny resemblance to Quentin Tarantino's favourite film (since 1992, the year in which his first film Reservoir Dogs came out) Battle Royale, which was also adapted from a book. This has not escaped fans of either film, who have engaged in their own battle of words on the internet.
Battle Royale is like the reality TV show Survivor, but contestants aren't voted off the island, they're killed. The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins told the New York Times she "had never heard of [Battle Royale] until [her] book was turned in", but had the idea while watching reality TV and news footage of the Iraq War. Battle Royale wasn't distributed in America and a Hollywood remake of a film about Asian students killing each other didn't seem such a good idea after the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, so maybe Collins did write The Hunger Games in blissful ignorance.
I have an unhealthy obsession with The Hunger Games trilogy, I read each book in under 24 hours, but I also spotted the similarities. So is it a remake or a rip-off and does it even matter?
The Hunger Games is set in a dystopian future, where every year a totalitarian government randomly chooses a boy and girl from each of Panem's (North America) 12 districts to fight to the death in an arena, as the whole of Panem watches on TV.
Battle Royale is set in a dystopian future, where every year a totalitarian government randomly chooses a class of 21 male and 21 female high school students to fight to the death on an island, as the whole of the Republic of Greater East Asia watches on TV.
Whether Collins heard of Battle Royale or not, The Hunger Games is a rip-off, but didn't the Romans do it first thousands of years ago in the coliseum?
Besides the basic premise, the films are separate entities. Battle Royale author Koushun Takami had the original idea, but Collins took that idea and created an entire world, although the games are a central part of it. Battle Royale is a Japanese horror film about the inhumanity of its villains, whereas The Hunger Games is a Hollywood blockbuster about the humanity of its heroes.
Having said all that, I'm with Tarantino on this one - The Hunger Games is a guilty pleasure, but Battle Royale is one of my favourite films and books (since 1992).]]>The Apprentice Recap: Season 8, Episode 1tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13720652012-03-22T07:55:50-04:002012-05-22T05:12:01-04:00Darren Weehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/darren-wee/
The eight men and eight women walk across the Millennium Bridge, which is nowhere near the Gherkin but whatever, and into Lord Alan's boardroom where he tells them he's not looking for a friend but the Marks to his Spencer, the Lennon to his McCartney...the Brad to his Angelina.
The first task is a printing one - buy blank material, brand it and sell it. It's girls against boys and the team with the highest profit wins.
In the cab ride back to the house, we meet "business superstar" Ricky Martin, who is a professional wrestler by night. We also meet capitalist convert Bilyana from "a Communist block of flats in Bulgaria" and restaurateur Maria, a tanned, slightly more intelligible version of Stacey Solomon.
The boys name their team Phoenix (blah) and the name Sterling comes to beauty salon owner Jenna in a dream. Sterling has got to be the best team name in all eight series, although it would have been stronger before the recession. Technology entrepreneur Nick reluctantly leads team Phoenix and "quirky" architect and publishing business owner Gabrielle volunteers to lead team Sterling.
The girls design a range of baby clothes, business developer Jade draws three ugly animals everyone seems to love and Irish co-founder of a food manufacturing company Jane bangs on about margins. Nick is disappointed with quiet Katie, who calls herself the blonde assassin. I call her the unnatural blonde assassin, those eyebrows aren't fooling anyone.
The boys play it safe with teddy bears wearing Union Jack tees and "This is a (picture of a red double decker)" bags for tourists and somehow think £15 is a reasonable price for a bear. On the second day, they set up a stall on Southbank and half the boys go to St Pancras station. The girls set up a stall in Greenwich Market and Billy, the blonde assassin and Miss Margins go to the zoo. They're stuck in traffic all morning and their sales approach doesn't go over well. The ever-lovely Jane says, "There's a daddy with a little baby over there that I want to attack."
Halfway through day, the boys haven't sold any bears - no one will buy a bear for £15, not even an American tourist, go figure. They mark down the bears and they start selling but an unsatisfied customer refunds 10 bad-quality bags.
In the boardroom, the boys win with a profit of £616.20 to the girl's £214.80 and Lord Sugar lays out an "art-inspired reception" for them, a classy affair which involves licking edible reproductions of a Kandinsky painting off plates.
After another lengthy discussion on margins, Sterling team leader Gabrielle brings Billy and Katie back into the boardroom. Gabrielle admits defeat and Katie is silent and sullen but when Billy interrupts Lord Alan for the third time to tell him about her childhood in Bulgaria, she's sent packing. I'm from Wales, which has the economy of a small eastern European country so I was rooting for Billy. She was a real character but her big mouth saved tight-lipped Katie.
I'm sad to see Billy go and the girls had a better product but they didn't do the maths and in the end, they lost by a wide margin! A sterling first episode.
In related news, last year's winner, inventor Tom, recently released his latest product, an S-shaped nail file that retails for £4.95. How many times can one man reinvent the humble nail file?!
I'm happy to announce I'm also entering the lucrative nail file market. My inhouse R&D team has also "invented" a nail file in the shape of a letter I chose randomly from the alphabet after extensive market research found no one cared.]]>