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I have always been a slut for media; it's the result of being alienated in an atomized, media-saturated society. Junk culture? For an insecure over-achiever like me, it's a safe and happy sanctuary where I don't have to think about media policy, JavaScript, or critical theory. So it was natural that I would end up for eight years as a community radio martyr, and also made perfect sense that I would become a Godzilla movie junkie soon after. And when the Fant-Asia Festival started up in Montreal in 1996, I was there, and getting turned on to stuff I hadn't seen before, when I thought I'd seen it all. This Web site is the continuation of a project I started that year that initially focussed on happenings at the Fant-Asia Festival and where to get Hong Kong flicks in Montreal. But things have changed a lot since 1996. John Woo is directing Mission Impossible 2, Jet Li is starring in Hollywood action flicks, and everyone seems to know what anime is. Where can you find Hong Kong movies in Montreal? Try Amazon.com, or those mega-screens on rue St-Catherine. These days it seems like you can get your hands on pretty much any piece of media pretty easily. The trick now is being able to place what you are experiencing into some kind of context. On a Halloween night a millions years ago, the first evening Halifax's famous Club Flamingo was open, the DJ or whoever was spinning the Smiths and the Cure while showing scenes from, I think, Italian horror films. Not that I can say for sure, of course. For a similar effect, just crank up some Rob Zombie on your MP3 player and watch, say, the "24 Hour Mix Channel" at broadcast.com. Can you smell what I'm cooking? Take a look at the image which graces the top of this page. Have you ever seen anything like that before? What on earth is this woman on about? Is she happy, sad, enraged? As it turns out, she is all these things, as this is Brigitte Lin as The Bride with White Hair. No Westernn tragic heroine this. Instead, imagine Shakespeare's Juliet coming back from her grave to kick both the Montagues' and Capulets' roody-poos, and you are halfway there. The music, lighting, shots, choreography... the first time you see a film like this, you might just think it's the best thing you have ever seen. And there's the attraction. Another way to be human. Some other sides to life. Cruel reality, sometimes. John Stevenson ~ 2000.03.28 |
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Fant-Asia
& Beyond: Another Fant-Asia Festival is upon us, and Donna and I are reorienting our Web site to focus on our own particular rants and raves about the festival. As some of you know, I've relocated to Ottawa, so I'll also be adding information for people in my neck of the woods on how to find Asian and other fantasic cinema in the nation's capital. The Fant-Asia Festival itself has a new and very good Web site at http://www.fantasiafest.com/; it's the best place to find out the lastest info about what looks to be a great festival. We'll still be maintaining a listing of some places where you can rent and purchase Asian film on video, and will be expanding our hot list of Asian film resources. Mostly, though, we'll be ranting and raving about what we see at the festival (and other places), beginning with (I hope) Drunken Master 2 tonight. In a sort of odd way, Fant-Asia really started for me when I went to see Face/Off with Donna two weeks ago, and hopefully she will have some comments about what could be the best action movie of the past several years. This site is maintained by John Stevenson and Donna Williams. If you have any comments about this page, good or bad, or would like to contribute some material, feel free to email me. John, 10 July 1997 |
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As something of a rabid kaiju fan, the first thing which attracted me to Fant-Asia this past summer was seeing the new Gamera on the big screen. On something of a lark, I sat down for A Chinese Ghost Story 2 (1990) with really no idea what to expect, and I have to say that it was probably my most enjoyable two hours of the festival. Summarizing the plot of any one of the Chinese Ghost Story series (there are three movies all together) is pointless - each is a swirling kalidiscope of martial arts, humour, horror, and an odd sort of erotic energy which owes a great deal to the wonderful presence of Joey Wong. Chinese Ghost Story 3 is part of the upcoming Fant-Asia Weekends series, and well worth a view, especially for those who have never seen a Hong Kong film before." - John Stevenson ~ 1996.11 |
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New Legend of Shaolin Hollywood can't hope to match these films. They're the best. Actors? In Hong Kong, the actors can act, do comedy, and execute two film hours' worth of death-defying stunts, all while looking extremely cool and speaking several of the languages of China. Arnie, meanwhile, can¹t get his palate around an English vowel to save his life. And stuntmen do his dirty work. Hollywood stunts are all about camerawork and computer wizardry. Hong Kong stunts come out of a tradition that was already ancient when everybody else¹s ancestors were crawling around in the mud. Ancient tradition and myth. That¹s where they get their plots, and these stories are as packed full of action as the human body can stand. The heros, both men and women, are so hugely archetypal that they can afford to have a big sense of humour. That makes them realistic, despite the extreme illusionism practiced in Hong Kong cinema. You can catch glimpses of the face of the actor behind his mask, as it were. Just the way the ancient Greeks wanted it. The consummate artistry becomes clear to you, and your intelligence isn¹t insulted. All this, mind you, while you¹re being outrageously entertained. Go see one, and keep track of, say, the bad guy's facial expressions. Those have a history deep in Peking Opera, even if the story's set in the 60s. But the actors who've mastered the ancient code won't seem uniform to you. Each one sets himself (and yes, definitely herself) apart, so that you may not remember their names, but you will definitely, forever after, remember their faces. The appearance of one of those faces in an ad or on a screen will make you eager to watch whatever film she--or he--has made. Now, as that pureminded Senator from the South remarked at the Anita Hill--Clarence Thomas showdown hearings, costume drama releases a woman's inner beast, and I, who am a woman, shore do agree. Fellow gals, and all you guys who will or won't admit it, the clothes in these babies are the best. First of all, treat yourself to every film set in the pre-industrial China that you can find. Hey, they invented silk, and most of the gorgeous colours it can be. Need I say more? And they're chic as hell in the post combustion-engine era films. Maybe that¹s because they're almost never massive and beefy with distended bones and big feet (read 'tall'). I'd just like to tip my bonnet to the gal who attended the November 2nd showing of New Legend of Shaolin. You could tell by her very cool authentic flight suit and hog helmet that she was one of the audience elite, a member of Montreal's own gang of stunt artists, working in our decadent city's only thriving industry, film. These films are to Hollywood action what Howlin' Wolf is to the Rolling Stones: seminal. They have everything: mythological, archetypal plot, pagentry, colour, exquisite grace, bawdy farce, originality, and extreme ancientness of tradition. Watch the New Legend of Shaolin and you¹ll see actors skilled at comedy, tragedy, and acrobatics that go way beyond the stunts (the stunted skills) of Hollywood, and not performed by stand-ins, either. - Donna Williams ~ 1996.10 |
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Iron Monkey
The plot is nothing special - essentially a take on Robin Hood - but the martial arts are superb and the characterizations wonderful. My favorite sequence remains Miss Orchid (Jean Wong Ching-Ying)'s kitchen battle with three renegade monks, where dishes, utensils, and a rolling cart become weapons. I can't recommend this enough. This is simply the best of the historical martial arts films to come out of Hong Kong in the 1990s. If you are interested in Hong Kong pop cinema and are looking for a place to start, this is the film. The plot is accessible, the acting very good, and the action amazing. Oddly enough, Iron Monkey wasn't a great success when it was released in Hong Kong in 1993. Perhaps it was seen as playing on the success of the Once Upon a Time in China films, as Monkey presents the classic hero Wong Fei-hung as a young boy. Regardless, this is more than equal to the best of the Once Upon a Time series. - John Stevenson ~ 1996.10 |
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Gamera: Giant Flying Monster Mid-Air Battle (1994) is a rather odd thing - a Japanese kaiju (giant monster) film which comes very close to actually working as straight science fiction, but is most entertaining in great part because it doesn't. A revitalization of the Gamera series of the 1960s and 70s, this new series from Japanese studio Daiei is giving Toho's Godzilla a serious run. - John Stevenson ~ 1996.09 |
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Hard Boiled I'm not a massive fan of director John Woo's Hong Kong stuff; I find his particular style of violence somehow trivializing. But I suppose that's exactly what makes Hard Boiled (1992) work: it's so far over the line that one can't help but be entertained. The film's climax - a grand shoot-out in a hospital filled with babies - is beyond description. This was Woo's last Hong Kong film before coming to Hollywood, and there probably isn't any better example of his Hong Kong style. The star is a scowling, clarinet-playing Chow Yuan-Fat, who plays a cop bent on revenge after his partner is killed by the Triad. Hard Boiled hasn't made it to Fant-Asia, and probably won't - you can rent a dubbed version of this film at many larger video stores in the city." - John Stevenson ~ 1999.08 |
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Hong Kong Movies on CFMT Each Saturday night at 9 p m, local TV station CFMT (channel 47 cable 4, also seen in London and Ottawa) shows a recent Hong Kong movie. http://www.interlog.com/~dmatth/tor-HK-movies.html#cfmt Montreal Wah Fung (1013 St-Laurent, Montreal) in Chinatown rents Hong Kong films on VHS tape - usually two tapes per movie. They even have a special section of films featured at the Fant-Asia events. Harmony Chinese Music (1008 Clark, Montreal) sells Chinese and Japanese music and magazines, as well as an interesting collection of MPEG-compatible Video CDs. These can be viewed on a PC with an MPEG board or a Mac with the MPEG Quicktime plug-in. For a very good selection of Japanese anime, we suggest Empire Comics at 1233 rue Crescent. La Boite Noire (4450 St-Denis, Montreal) had a decent selection of both Hong Kong stuff and Japanese anime - they have added a lot of interesting stuff just in the past few weeks. Of course, if you're interested in non-Hollywood, non-North American films of any kind, this is the best place in the city to look. Ottawa Laser and Video Services. In Chinatown at the corner of Somerset and Bronson streets. Toronto Suspect Video and Culture (619 Queen St. W. at: Bathurst St. Toronto M5V 2B7 phn: (416) 504-7135). Sean Davids writes: "Nowhere else in Toronto can you rent Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Kurosawa's Ran and the 1978 Star Wars Christmas Special at the same place (except their other location. Suspect Video, the black-and-red bastion of eclectic and off-beat video rentals, has it all. Cult and trash classics, artsie euro-films, blaxploitation and an exhaustive collection of Japanese anime are just a few of the twisted faves hidden on their cramped, dusty shelves. Suspect also rents out all the usual mainstream movies, and features an impressive rack of small press books and magazines." |
Finding
Videotapes, Video CDs, and DVDs:
Montreal,
Ottawa, Toronto
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Asian Film Resources on the World Wide Web
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