Film & TV

1. 5 top films like the Ring where screens aren’t a barrier to characters

   The longer we remain in lockdown, the more time we spend in front of our screens, immersing ourselves in fictional worlds to escape the monotony of our reality. These five favourites of ours examine what happens when characters step out of – and sometimes into – the screens that should otherwise bind them. 1. Sherlock, Jr (1924) A wonderful early example of breaking the fourth wall, Sherlock, Jr sees Buster Keaton’s lowly cinema projectionist dream of stepping into the mystery he is…

2. The next Parasite for Oscars 2021? Asia’s 10 hottest contenders to repeat the hit Korean movie’s success

   Last year, Parasite made history when it became the first foreign-language film to win the Academy Award for best picture. Bong Joon-ho’s darkly comic satire claimed four awards that night, including the newly retitled best international feature film Oscar, chalking up another first for South Korea.While it is unlikely Parasite’s triumph will be repeated any time soon (the academy has a long history of overcorrecting in the wake of progress), 27 Asian submissions are vying for this year’s…

3. Hong Kong protest documentary named best picture in 2020 Film Critics Society awards

   Inside the Red Brick Wall, a feature-length documentary chronicling a 13-day stand-off between anti-government protesters and police at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in November 2019, has been voted the best Hong Kong film of 2020 by a panel of critics, the Hong Kong Film Critics Society announced on Monday.The film, which has been shunned by commercial cinemas in Hong Kong, also won the best editing prize at the prestigious 2020 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.Inside the…

4. Netflix K-drama The Uncanny Counter’s writer leaves the hit show over creative differences in a surprise twist

   In a surprise off-screen twist, Yeo Ji-na, the writer of The Uncanny Counter, has left the hit Korean TV show. A representative for the OCN series announced the news on Sunday. Yeo’s last script was for episode 12, which aired on January 10. Yeo disagreed with the producers of the show over the direction its narrative was taking in the final episodes. Reports suggest that rather than a major blowout, a mutual split was decided after a long discussion between both parties. The news was met…

5. Netflix show Lovestruck in the City: a mockumentary in which the women are tough and in control

   The debut series of romance mockumentary Lovestruck in the City (Netflix, two episodes weekly) weighs in with an absorbing helping of both as it follows the adventures in love – or lack thereof – boasted about, admitted to, invented or concealed by six young men and women (three of each) making their way in the big city. Not that the city limits represent any geographical constraints, especially for on-again, off-again couple Jae-won (Ji Chang-wook) and Eun-oh (Kim Ji-won), who do their…

6. Martial arts meets special effects in The Storm Riders, where Ekin Cheng battled an invisible Fire Dragon against a blue screen

   Hong Kong cinema is constantly evolving, and martial arts directors are continually bringing something new to the genre to keep it current. The novel approach of The Storm Riders, released in 1998, was to use digital effects and computer animation in a wuxia film. The resulting martial arts fantasy, based on a popular Hong Kong comic by Ma Wing-shing, was a big hit with audiences in the city. It was helped by the presence of stars Aaron Kwok Fu-shing and Ekin Cheng Yee-kin in the leading roles,…

7. Bridgerton director Tom Verica talks working on Netflix costume drama – even though he’s not read any of the books series is based on

   Tom Verica is used to juggling.As a director, producer and actor for Shonda Rhimes’ production company Shondaland, he’s filmed dozens of episodes of gasp-worthy television. At one point, he was working behind the scenes on Rhimes’ ABC hit Scandal while moonlighting as a character (and sometimes corpse) on its time-slot neighbour How to Get Away with Murder .But it wasn’t until Bridgerton, the bingeable period romance filmed in Britain that’s the first fruit of Rhimes’ US$100 million deal with…

8. Marvel superheroes return … in WandaVision on Disney+, a quirky and original black-and-white sitcom

   When the Marvel superhero movies reached their box-office-shattering climax in 2019, nobody could have predicted the saga’s next instalment would be a kitsch, black-and-white TV sitcom called WandaVision.But a lot has changed since Iron Man and friends saved the world in that summer’s all-time record-grossing blockbuster Avengers: Endgame (and mopped up some loose plot points in Spider-Man: Far From Home shortly after.)The wildly popular franchise of 23 interconnected movies ground to a halt,…

9. Zhang Ziyi follows Jackie Chan, Tom Cruise in playing a character much younger than she is, but fans and critics are not impressed

   Emma Thompson did it in Ang Lee’s 1995 screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, as did Dustin Hoffman in the movie classic The Graduate in 1967. Actors taking on roles that are much younger than their real age – Thompson played a 19-year-old when she was 35 and Hoffman a college student at 30 – is nothing new.But when Zhang Ziyi attempted such a feat recently, the Chinese superstar received a torrent of criticism from audience and critics alike.Monarch Industry, a lavish 80…

10. Descendants of the Sun’s Song Hye-kyo, Kim Soo-hyun from It’s Okay to Not Be Okay cast in new K-dramas, and there’s a Korean Inside Out in the works

    As 2021 gets under way, the K-drama production pipelines are steadily filling up. Several major projects have been announced in the past few weeks, including reunions for the stars of Sweet Home and the star and writer of Descendants of the Sun, a Pixar-esque webtoon adaptation and a starry remake of a hit British legal drama. Black Sun Hot Stove League star Min Namkoong has signed on to appear in this new MBC drama. Min will play Han Ji-hyuk, a top agent of South Korea’s National…