By John Liu NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY It’s a documentary on pandas! I get excited just writing that. This movie wastes no time flooding the screen with panda cuteness with images of baby pandas who are too young to move. Apparently, baby pandas are stationary for the first three months of their lives. While kids will […]
Isle of Dogs is a treat with bad aftertaste
By John Liu NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY What do you get when you combine producer and director Wes Anderson with cute stop-motion animated dogs? Isle of Dogs! I’ve had my eye on this movie for awhile. From seeing the trailers, it looked like a very unique story. However, if you have not already seen the trailers, […]
A transcendent family portrait in “Oxhide II”
By Andrew Hamlin NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY A man finishes his work for the day. His wife and his daughter join him. They make dinner. And that, objectively, is about all that occurs during Jiayin Liu’s second feature film, “Oxhide II.” Over 132 minutes, we watch the family, as the evening meal progresses from scratch ingredients […]
Dream Empire — Deception, disillusion in modern China
By Andrew Hamlin NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY “Foreign faces wanted, little-to-no experience wanted. Apply any time. Big money!” Well, that’s not actually, factually, the advertisement which David Borenstein, an American citizen living and studying in China, responded to. But he saw an ad with pretty much that content, and he applied. And his documentary forms the […]
“Big Fish & Begonia” puts China on the anime map
By Andrew Hamlin NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY The anime feature “Big Fish & Begonia,” directed by Xuan Liang and Chun Zhang, took 12 years to complete, and was systematically designed to put China on the map in a style and tradition dominated by the Japanese (with some interesting incursions from South Korea). It’ll do that, handily, […]
Ready Player One — Are you ready? Because I wasn’t!
By John Liu NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY Children were not the only ones hunting for Easter eggs last weekend. Adults were also looking for Easter eggs in the Oasis. Ready Player One, a novel written by Ernest Cline in 2011, was released on Easter weekend. The story centers around the Oasis, which is a virtual world […]
“Pacific Rim Uprising” — A darker side to giant monsters and robots
By Andrew Hamlin NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY Guillermo del Toro’s “Pacific Rim,” from 2013, was the director’s love letter to two long-running Japanese traditions: “Kaiju Eiga,” stories featuring giant monsters, and “Mecha,” stories featuring giant robots piloted by human operators. Del Toro had the robots fight the monsters, with the fate of humanity at stake, naturally, […]
“A Brighter Summer Day” — Sad saga, secret Seattle connection
By Andrew Hamlin NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY It begins simply enough, with a concerned parent wondering to school faculty, why his son, a good student, did poorly on a test. It ends four hours later in murder, madness, the destruction of lives, and the loss of hope. Edward Yang’s epic film “A Brighter Summer Day,” released […]
“Legend of the Mountain” balances sacred, profane, and funny
By Andrew Hamlin NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY Film director/writer King Hu (1932-1997) was born in Beijing, but achieved success working in Taiwan and Hong Kong. He shot several classic “wuxia” (martial arts films set in ancient China), but by the time he made “Legend of the Mountain” in 1979, he’d moved beyond the relatively simple martial […]
“Detective Chinatown 2” — A raunchy romp caught up short
By Andrew Hamlin NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY I couldn’t choose between the Duck Mascot Fu or the Cheap Spiderman Costume Fu. Fortunately, I didn’t have to. “Detective Chinatown 2,” directed by Sicheng Chen, picks up where the hit original “Detective Chinatown” left off. Once more, we’re watching Haoran Liu as Qin, the intense, shy, and soft-spoken […]
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