Finishing our Visible Secrets coverage, Paul Loudon represented Podcast On Fire and interviewed Claustrophobia director Ivy Ho. Before the interview we have the Magnificent Trio discuss last Ivy Ho movies watched and we also cover her biography. Enjoy!
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Cornerhouse have sent out a Press Release about Visible Secrets going on tour;
A new Cornerhouse touring film season Visible Secrets, is set to celebrate and highlight Hong Kong’s female film directors in major cities across the UK this autumn. Launching this celebration is Ivy Ho’s directorial debut Claustrophobia, starring Hong Kong megastars Karena Lam and Ekin Cheng.
Claustrophobia, will launch the UK wide tour of Visible Secrets with a special gala screening at Curzon, Mayfair in London on Monday 02 November.
Visible Secrets: Hong Kong’s Women Filmmakers will tour to venues across the UK including: New Park Chichester, Eden Court Inverness, Pictureville Bradford, Showroom Sheffield, Broadway Nottingham, Watershed Bristol, QUAD Derby, Chapter Cardiff and Barn Dartington.
POF 57 guest Paul Loudon has done a terrific job bringing us several excellent reviews, which we will do a final post with all the highlights and a very special interview.
Shown as part of the Visible Secrets season at the Manchester Cornerhouse, Anna & Anna is a movie about what happens when Anna played by Karina Lam crosses paths with an alternate version of herself.
In the leaflet that I picked up about this season of movies, it mentioned that Karena Lam features more than any other performer. Well they were not wrong; she is in three of the four movies which I have the honour of reviewing. In each movie the impression I get is that the film crew absolutely adore Karina, the camera is more often than not, right in her face for long sultry-eyed shots where she gets away with barely saying a word. Not content with one Karena to drool over this movie features two of them with longer, lengthier silences which seem to last an age. Someone please yell cut for god’s sake! Anyway I digress, the point I would like to make here is that her omnipresence must mean that she is something of a star. Whilst watching this movie I had the tenuous thought that all stars at some point make a movie in which there are two of them (or more if you count Michael Keaton in the shite that was Multiplicity). Usually it is action guys like Jean Claude, Arnie and Jackie Chan that get to do the whole twin thing. But for its slow, considered, artfully shot shenanigans can Anna & Anna offer us anything more to think about than the slap-fest Twin Dragons? Read on to find out. (For those of you with less time to spare the answer is no.) Read More
The tenacious “Aunt” of director Ann Hui’s 2006 film is something of a middle aged battle-axe at odds with the ever changing sprawling city of Shanghai in which she lives (Ye Rutang played by Gaowa Siqin) we join her meeting her nephew Kuan Kuan at the train station. He soon finds his aunt to be something of a weirdo; she lets her birds fly around the flat, has an empty fridge and no mobile phone. Ergo he decides not only to escape her tenacious ways but also to fake his own kidnapping for financial gain. What happens thereafter to the poor Aunt are a series of tragic, events in which characters drift in and out whilst attempting to con “Aunt” Ye Rutang out of her money. For the first half of the movie these events are interspersed beautifully with comedy then things all get a bit too much for Ye Rutang and she retires to live with the afore-mentioned nephew in a smaller industrial town in Manchuria. Read More
The Podcast On Fire Network aims to provide a large, continually expanding overview of Asian cinema. On the flagshow Podcast On Fire, the big guns out of Hong Kong cinema gets a spotlight through discussion and review while the remainder of the network shows gives you insight into Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese cinema and the history of adult oriented Hong Kong cinema!