Frater Asia: Last News

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Busan International Film Festival put aside many of its recent internal and local political problems to Tuesday unveil a large selection ranging from bleeding edge art titles to international festival favorites. “The difficult times are not behind us, but hard work has made this year’s festival better than ever,” said programmer and interim festival chief Nam Dong-chul, speaking at an online press conference. International guests expected to attend the festival include Luc Besson, Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing, Japanese directors Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Kore-Eda Hirokazu, Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Korean Americans Justin Chon (“Gook”) and Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”). Hong Kong-based superstar Chow Yun-fat has been named as Busan’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year and will be in person to receive the award.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Oppenheimer” landed on top of the mainland China cinema box office with an impressive score for a Hollywood movie in the current climate. More typically, gaming adaptation “Gran Turismo” failed to get far off the start line. While most films open in China on Fridays, Christopher Nolan’s nuclear opus was given a wide release from Wednesday. It scored $21.3 million (RMB154 million) over the conventional Friday to Sunday weekend and $30.7 million (RMB221 million) over its opening five days, according to data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Oppenheimer” remained the top performing film in South Korea for the third successive weekend. It earned $2.04 million for a 19-day cumulative total of $22.4 million. The row of wins for “Oppenheimer” demonstrates again Korean audiences appreciation of top acting skills.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Renowned Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai ditched his quiet, brooding persona on Saturday in Venice, where he is to receive a Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award. Instead, at a press conference in his honor, Leung positively gushed about his upcoming first European movie role and about the strengths of the “golden era” acting training he received in Hong Kong in the 1980s. Leung has made a speciality of saying little in many of his films.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hong Kong-based, Mainland China-born auteur Yonfan has scandalized and enthralled Chinese-speaking parts of Asia in a career that has spanned fine-art photography, filmmaking and journalism. Further afield, he has become a regular on the Lido. His 1995 feature “Bugis Street,” which has been restored and is screening in the Venice Classics section, achieved notoriety at the time of its debut. It is set in the red-light area of Singapore, at a time shortly after the country had achieved independence and before it earned its buttoned-up, conservative reputation. Loosely structured, the film follows a 16-year-old woman (played by Hiep Thi Le), who’s an employee at the appropriately named Sin Sin Hotel.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “City of Wind” depicts a version of Mongolian everyday life that is both traditional and modern. Ulaanbaatar is shown as messy and sprawlingly urban in a fashion that will be familiar to millions of city dwellers in Asia — even if there are yurts in the front garden. Presented in Venice’s Horizons section, and then Toronto, “City” starts as a story of a shaman, who is still of school age.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Ten Korean independent films will have their world premiere in the Busan International Film Festival’s Korean Cinema Today section. Selectors said on Friday that this year’s crop are films that “delve into profound themes of life, agony, family affection, and personal introspection, inviting audiences to contemplate their meaning.” They add that, “the imaginative depiction of a diverse array of stories, free from the typical rules of genre, adds anticipation.” Delivery presents a “suspenseful irony” as an affluent couple deal with infertility and a young, financially struggling couple face an unplanned pregnancy. “FAQ” is a comic fantasy where an elementary schoolchild innocently picks up a bottle of Korean rice wine or makgeolli at a field camp and then gets to know the secrets of the world through alcohol.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Almost exactly a year after Amazon’s Prime Video officially set foot in Thailand, the company is this week launching its first locally-made ‘original.’ Produced for the streamer by Liminal Entertainment in conjunction with Malin Films Production, and executive produced by Jef Lim, Marilyn Tan and Malin Pongsapipatt, the show follows six well-known actors to an almost utopian island, where the only thing missing is laughter. The celebrities are tasked with performing improvised skits to lift the locals’ gross happiness index. The series launches on Thursday, delivering the first three of its six episodes.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Production is under way on season two of “The Twelve,” a crime drama which follows a controversial murder trial as seen through the lens of the 12 jury members, ordinary members of the public with their own realities and struggles. On completion, it will screen on Foxtel’s Binge streaming service.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief CAA China has teamed up with the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society to unveil a joint initiative that will foster Chinese-language genre film projects. The HGC initiative will operate an open call for projects from Monday until the end of October.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Susan Sarandon, playing the U.S. Secretary of State Alaska Adams, gets the better of Bryan Brown, as the Australian prime minister, in a fast-paced verbal duel that represents the first footage from the Sean Penn-produced satirical comedy series “C*A*U*G*H*T.” An elite team of Aussie soldiers is sent to an island nation to retrieve a secret file that has gone astray.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival has announced dual opening night titles, both inspired by faith and local memories, as well as its closing gala presentation. The festival will open with “Snow in Midsummer,” directed by Chong Keat-aun, a former winner of the Golden Horse Film Awards’ best new director prize with “The Story of Southern Islet,” and “Be With Me,” by Hwarng Wern-ying, who previously won Golden Horse prizes for art direction, costume and makeup. The festival, which runs Nov.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The main competition section of the Busan International Film Festival is set to showcase two new features from Bangladeshi directors, the feature debut of Japanese documentary maker Mori Tatsuya and ruminations on Hong Kong by mainland Chinese director Choi Ji. The festival on Wednesday unveiled its New Currents competition section, reserved for films by directors making their first or second works of fiction, as well as its Jiseok section, a showcase for somewhat more established Asian auteurs. In addition to the Bangladesh duo, New Currents includes two films from Japan, two from Korea and one each from China, Thailand, Malaysia and India. From Bangladesh, Iqbal H. Chowdhury’s “The Wrestler” sees an old fisherman challenge a wrestling champion to combat, and in “The Stranger” Biplob Sarkar tells a coming-of-age, gender-identity tale. From Japan, Mori recounts the events of the Great Kanto earthquake in “September 1923,” while Yamamoto Akira delves into profound and shocking love in “After the Fever.” New Currents’ Korean contributions come from Lee Jong-su, whose “Heritage” tracks a man who opts out of military service and his supervisor, and Sohn Hyun-lok, whose “That Summer’s Lie” blurs truth and fiction in memories of a past romance. India’s Rajesh S.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Wim Wenders’ acclaimed “Perfect Days” will open the Tokyo International Film Festival in October. The event will close with “Godzilla Minus One,” the latest addition to Toho’s iconic monster movie franchise on Nov. 1. “Perfect Days” follows the routine and revelatory chance encounters of a simple toilet cleaner in Tokyo.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief External investigators hired by Johnny and Associates, the Japanese talent agency whose founder, the late Johnny Kitagawa, is accused of sexually abusing his young clients, have called for the resignation of company president Julie Fujishima. Published Tuesday, the report said that the company must accept that the claims of abuse are true, apologize and make amends. It recommended that Fujishima, who is Kitagawa’s niece, depart in order to avoid issues of family control and to ensure “total reform” of the company.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Lost in Perfection,” the second film by journalist-turned-filmmaker Sung Hsin-yin (“On Happiness Road”), has set Oct. 27 as the date of its commercial release in Sung’s native Taiwan. Ahead of the Taiwan release, the film is expected to have its world premiere at a major festival.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief HYBE Corp., the K-Pop powerhouse behind BTS, and the U.S.’s Geffen Records are to bring their global girl group audition efforts to Netflix as a docuseries that will launch next year. The two music companies announced the 2024 series and a companion-piece online show that kicks off on Thursday as their “The Debut: Dream Academy” moves up a gear. Having begun the selection process in November 2021 and screened some 120,000 submissions from young women hopefuls from around the world, they have now narrowed the field to just 20 candidates.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean actors Lee Je Hoon and Park Eun-bin, star of “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” are set as hosts of the opening ceremony at the Busan International Film Festival. The event will take place on the evening of Oct.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese crime action film “No More Bets” headed the mainland China box office for the fourth consecutive weekend, cementing its place as one of the biggest films in the world this year. Between Friday and Sunday, it earned $33.5 million (RMB241 million), according to data from specialist consultancy firm Artisan Gateway. Global data provider Comscore ranked that as the third highest performance of the weekend anywhere in the world, narrowly behind “Barbie’s” $35.3 million. The latest increment advanced “No More Bets’” cumulative score to $469 million (RMB3.37 billion). “Papa,” a comedy about parental efforts to improve their son’s education, held an unchanged second place in its second week.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Three years into its local production effort in Australia and New Zealand, Netflix has greenlighted two new series, one feature film and one full-length documentary from Australia. These are in addition to previously announced renewals of teen series “Heartbreak High” and “Surviving Summer” and the go-ahead for prestige book-to-series adaptation “Boy Swallows Universe” and kids animation “Eddie’s Lil Homies.” Set in the Australian Outback, epic succession tale “Desert King” revolves around billionaire miners, traditional owners, cowboys and desert gangsters fighting over the world’s biggest cattle station the size of Wales.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Production begins next month on “Black Tide Island,” a historical drama series that presents a Taiwanese insight into the Korean War. Production is headed by Hakka TV and Go Inside. Halla TV is the local Hakka-language linear satellite television channel operated by Taiwan Broadcasting System.