Japanese Director Kawase Naomi to Lead Cairo Film Festival International Competition Jury – Global Bulletin

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Singapore has banned the release of “#LookAtMe,” a feature film by local director Ken Kwek. The InfoComm Media Development Authority said that the film exceeds film classification guidelines because it denigrates a religious community. Supposedly based in true events, the film depicts a man who is offended by a pastor who preaches against homosexuality, but whose behavior contradicts his teachings. The protagonist’s viral video about the aberrant priest lands him in jail, causing the man’s gay identical twin to fight for justice. “#LookAtMe,” premiered at the New York Asian Film Festival and local media report that the film has been selected for next month’s Singapore International Film Festival. But the IMDA ruling means that it cannot now be shown in any form in Singapore unless Kwek is successful with an appeal.

John Leguizamo criticized the upcoming "Super Mario" remake for lack of diversity in the movie's casting. In a since-deleted tweet he wrote, "So glad #SuperMarioBros is getting a reboot! Obviously, it's iconic enuff [sic]. " "But too bad they went all white! No Latinx in the leads! Groundbreaking colour-blind casting in original! Plus I'm the only one who knows how to make this movie work script-wise!" he added. Leguizamo also shared photos of himself playing Luigi and Bob Hoskins as Mario in the original film, which was released in 1993.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Australia’s SLR Productions has announced production on season two of the award-winning original CGI animated series, “Space Nova” for ABC ME. The 15 x 22-minute season has received significant production funding from both Screen Australia and the Australian Children’s Television Foundation as well as development funding from ABC ME and Create NSW. “Space Nova” will be co-produced with Giggle Garage in Malaysia and distributed internationally by ZDF Studios, with ACTF representing the series across Australia and New Zealand. Targeting a six- to ten-year-old global audience, the first season sold to broadcasters or streamers in Germany, the U.K., Norway, Finland, Sweden, Poland, the U.S, Singapore, East Asia, Indonesia, and Brazil.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Homecoming, a patriotic rescue movie, dominated the mainland China box office for the third successive weekend. Overall numbers remained anemic in the first full week after the National Day holiday period, sometimes referred to as a ‘Golden Week’. “Homecoming” garnered $12.1 million (RMB85.6 million) between Friday and Sunday, according to data from consultancy and research firm Artisan Gateway. That gave the film a 64% share of the nationwide weekend aggregate. Accordingly, it was far ahead of second-placed film “Give Me Five,” which released on Sept. 9, 2022. “Give Me Five” earned just $1.9 million over the weekend, for a six-week cumulative of $63.8 million.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Netflix has come on board for the second year to support the Short Film Camp, a film industry training program for professionals from Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. The SFC is led by Purin Pictures, a film funding body backed by the Purin Foundation. The event, running for ten days (Dec. 2-12, 2022) in Bangkok, Thailand, will involve 12 teams of directors and producers. The 24 participants will receive mentoring that aims to hone their writing, producing and directing skills. The workshop culminates in a live pitch of their short film projects, where four winners will receive funding and post-production support to produce their short films.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Taiwan-based development and production operation Organic Media is teaming up with Los Angeles-based sales agency and content aggregator Shoreline Entertainment in a strategic pact that sees Shoreline take responsibility for much of Organic’s sales function. The pairing will make its debut at this week’s MIPCOM TV rights market in Cannes. It will follow that with an appearance at the American Film Market in Santa Monica in early November. Organic was co-founded in 2019 by veteran sales and production executive Steve Chicorel and Kelly Mi Li (“Bling Empire”) and now has operations in Taipei, Los Angeles, London, Riga and Brisbane. The operation, now headed by Chicorel and Shari Hamrick, is currently in post-production on two movies and the second season of “Cypher,” a series for Roku.

Shawn Mendes spent his Sunday showing off his toned arms and going shopping for plants.The 24-year-old singer was spotted leaving the farmer's market in West Hollywood, California on Sunday.He was carrying a new eucalyptus plant while showing off his toned arms during the outing.  Show-off Shawn: Shawn Mendes spent his Sunday showing off his toned arms and going shopping for plantsMendes stepped out wearing a white tank top with a thin gold necklace tucked under the shirt.He also wore dark sunglasses while holding a new eucalyptus plant on his solo shopping outing. The singer completed his look with brown pants and matching brown sandals.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief While the Busan International Film Festival was busily hailing a return to normality the slump at South Korea’s commercial box office deepened dramatically over the most recent weekend. Cinemagoing nationwide was worth only $4.20 million between Friday and Sunday, the lowest weekend total since April and a time before Korean cinemas shed their COVID restrictions. The weekend’s top film “Life Is Beautiful” managed the lowest first place score of any film this year, with a weekend haul of just $777,000, according to data from Kobiz, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).

Dikembe Mutombo, the gravelly voiced center whose finger-wagging shot-blocking made him a Denver Nuggets legend and built a cult following among basketball fans worldwide, is undergoing treatment for a brain tumor, the NBA said in a statement Saturday on behalf of him and his family.

Guy Lodge Film Critic The possessive claim in the title “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is a gutsy one. There’s confidence — some would even say arrogance — in filming an oft-told story at least as old as the hills, and suddenly branding it as your own: Even two auteurs as ballsy as Francis Ford Coppola and Baz Luhrmann didn’t slap their own names on “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet,” respectively. Still, you can hardly blame del Toro’s stop-motion spin on Carlo Collodi’s 19th-century chestnut “The Adventures of Pinocchio” for wanting to advertise its distinguishing vision up top: After umpteen tellings of the wooden-boy tale, and coming on the heels of Robert Zemeckis’ wretched Disney remake, Netflix’s rival adaptation has to announce itself as something different. That it is; it’s often delightful too.

Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi will no longer attend the London Film Festival premiere of his latest film Subtraction after authorities stopped him from boarding a flight to London. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Blackstone Publishing, Aethon Books and Sterling and Stone are among the first publishing partners to join Yonder, a new serialized fiction app combining mobile reading, a serialized experience and thousands of curated stories. Then venture is being launched by South Korea’s Naver, the tech giant that owns Webtoon and Wattpad, the story app that has germinated scores of book-to-film adaptations. The platform offers an ad-free reading experience with several chapters of each story available for free before readers are offered the chance to unlock additional material using virtual coins. At launch, Yonder is the home of exclusive new titles including “Bound to the Shadow Prince,” from Ruby Dixon, the international best-selling fantasy author of the TikTok viral sensation series “Ice Planet Barbarians”; “Bitten by Desire,” the first paranormal romance from best-selling author Ivy Smoak, (“The Hunted” book series”; and “Gravesong,” a spinoff of the popular web serial “The Wandering Inn,” from pirateaba.

Bolton Wanderers boss Ian Evatt has backed his strikers to get in the goalscoring groove once again and voiced his backing of them during the transfer window when he opted against bringing in further reinforcements in that department.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean film “A Wild Roomer” and India’s “Shivamma” have been announced as the joint winners of the New Currents competition, the prestige discovery section of the Busan International Film Festival. “We were particularly sensitive to the lightness and subtlety of the director’s view of his characters. Through his innovative cinematography, he creates original circulations between the characters within a house, and builds a very contemporary universe,” the competition jury said of the Lee Jeon-hong-directed “A Wild Roomer.” “We appreciated the originality and intensity with which the director was able to tell this very contemporary story. Here documentary and fiction meet in an organic and spirited way of making cinema. The generosity of the actors and the scenes create a closeness with this universal story that takes place in an Indian village,” the jury said of the Jaishankar Aryar-directed “Shivamma.”

Zack Sharf Scarlett Johansson revealed on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast (via IndieWire) that her orgasm recordings for the movie “Her” resulted in Joaquin Phoenix fleeing the set. Phoenix starred in the Spike Jonze-directed drama as a man who falls in love with his phone’s operating system, a Siri-like female voice named Samantha, played by Johansson. The two have a sexual relationship in the form of phone sex, which required Johansson to record herself fake orgasming. “We tried to get through one take, and he was, like, losing it,” Johansson said. “He left the studio. He needed a break.” Johansson added, “You don’t want to hear your voice ever. You definitely don’t want to hear what you sound like having an orgasm. You definitely don’t want to hear what you sound like having a fake orgasm — ew. It’s so gross. It was so bizarre.”

Shawn Mendes is looking fit and healthy. The 24-year-old singer was photographed after completing his workout, looking toned and comfortable.Shawn Mendes lends his voice to ‘Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile’ in an upcoming animated film‘The Voice’ contestant sings Shawn Mendes while Camila Cabello listens onMendes was photographed leaving his gym after he’d bought a tea that had a clear doodle of a heart on it.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief European-Australian firm Flying Bark Productions has been appointed as the animator of the first of three untitled ‘Avatar’ films from Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Animation. The film series, derived from the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and “The Legend of Korra “animated series, originally created for Nickelodeon by Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino, was announced earlier this year. The first feature will be directed by Lauren Montgomery, with Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino producing. Flying Bark, which is based in Belgium and has major facilities in Sydney, Australia, describes the film series as “[pushing] the style and boundaries of hybrid animation [..] it will couple traditional 2D animation with substantial CG elements.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese filmmaker, Bi Gan, best-known for his single-take feature “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” has seen his “A Short Story” picked up by Kino Lorber for distribution in North America. A fairy tale that follows the relationship between man and cat, the film had its world premiere in competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and now has its North American premiere in the Currents section of the New York Film Festival. Kino Lorber plans to qualify “A Short Story” for the 96th Academy Awards, showing it theatrically nationwide in early 2023 in tandem with a theatrical re-release of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” “Kino Lorber rarely acquires short films, but Bi Gan has packed more cinematic delight into the fifteen minutes of ‘A Short Story’ than many feature length films deliver in two hours,” said Kino Lorber SVP Wendy Lidell. The deal was brokered by Les Films du Losange.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic America has “Groundhog Day.” Now Malaysia has “Stone Turtle,” a beguiling, all-around gorgeous reimagining of Southeast Asian folklore that finds its characters caught in a loop of vengeance, lust and violence from which they cannot escape. Here, it’s a dead-serious political statement rather than rom-com karma that forces island-dwelling refugee Zahara (Asmara Abigail) and an intrusive outsider (Bront Palarae) to play out repeated versions of a cautious standoff: She deals in precious leatherback turtle eggs, he claims to be a wildlife researcher, but pursues her with a passion that suggests other priorities. “Stone Turtle” marks a welcome comeback for Woo Ming Jin (“Woman on Fire Looks for Water”), a leading voice in the Malaysian New Wave who spent the last decade working in more mainstream waters, churning out a mix of zombie flicks and popcorn movies. Now, having picked up a prestigious FIPRESCI prize at Locarno, he’s back on the international festival circuit with a project that intriguingly applies elements of genre filmmaking to a more anthropological art-house format. The result is a loony marriage between “The Wicker Man” and “Woman in the Dunes,” as an enigmatic siren in scarlet robes traps a man on the beach for all eternity, building to a dangerous ritual where lives are sacrificed and a straw effigy is set ablaze.