By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

Chung-ryoul Lee’s documentary “Old Partner” begins with pain. An old man climbs a long set of steps to a temple. He carries a cane. He pauses after each step. He inhales sharply after each step, wondering if he will ever get to the top. The notion of enduring pain and suffering continues throughout the film.

Most of the film concentrates on a real-life family in rural South Korea. We see the old man, farmer Won-kyun Choi, his wife Sam-soon, and their draft animal, a seemingly-unnamed ox. Read the full story

By Irfan Shariff
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

International action film star Jackie Chan wants to prove that he can do more than just stunts. With the release of “Shinjuku Incident,” Jackie Chan proves he has a dark side.

From acclaimed Hong Kong director Derek Yee, “Shinjuku Incident” takes Chan’s character, Nick (a.k.a. Steelhead), and smuggles him out of China into a life of crime in Tokyo. Although, Steelhead tries to lead an honest life, strange twists of fate lead him back to the yakuza, the Japanese mafia.

Yee explains that he first had the idea for the film in the late 1990s when he heard news reports of illegal Chinese immigrants arriving in Japan. As he researched the idea, he became fascinated with migrant communities and their growth.

Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

Alexander Sokurov’s “The Sun” opens in an awkward fashion. On the surface, life seems ordinary enough at the Imperial Palace of Japan. A servant brings in breakfast for the emperor on a tray. A second servant reads off the itinerary for the day. The emperor must attend a meeting with his war ministers. Then he will study marine biology, his favorite subject.

The year is 1945, and this emperor is Hirohito. Japan, for the first time in its history as a nation, is losing a war — World War II. Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

2009 brought a wealth of Asian and Asian-related films to American theaters.  Here’s a quick look back at 10 films you should have seen — and if you haven’t, you should hunt these down at your local video store: Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

“Ninja Assassin,” the new film from director James McTeigue, begins with a Japanese tattoo artist working on a yakuza’s back. Blood flows down from the tattoo needle. With only short respites, blood also flows throughout the rest of the film. Blood isn’t enough, however, to compensate for the film’s anemia in other areas.

South Korean pop singer Rain stars as Raizo, a lonely ninja. As the film unfolds, we see how he learned to stalk and kill as a child from master Ozunu (played by Shô Kosugi, a veteran of many martial arts films in Japan). However, Raizo later broke away from Ozunu and the entire ninja clan, and went rogue. As a result, his former “family” is trying to kill him. Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

“Red Cliff” is John Woo’s first Chinese movie since 1991’s “Once a Thief.” His new film triumphs over the cutting of the footage which is almost as cruel as the cuttings of so many characters over the film’s running time. Conceived as a four-hour epic in two parts, it reaches the United States as a single film that runs two and a half hours.

However, one critic who watched the overseas version of the film complained that just as the huge epic battle at the end was about to start, the film ended. That was probably the end of part one. The edited Western version doesn’t have this problem. All of the promised shock, awe, and bloodshed are delivered. Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

Before leaving his home in Texas for Mongolia with his wife and autistic son, author and horse trainer Rupert Isaacson seems eager for the trip as he calls it a “gateway to adventure, a gateway to healing.”

The viewer will have to decide whether healing actually takes place in this documentary. The adventure, however, is right in front of our eyes.

Isaacson and his wife, psychology professor Kristen Neff, seek help for their son Rowan. Usually flailing, screaming, and unresponsive, Rowan becomes calmer when he’s around animals. Animals seem to sense his uniqueness and bond with him.

Isaacson also believes that the shamanic healers of Mongolia can help his son. Some of the most respected Mongolian healers herd and ride reindeers. Isaacson feels that Rowan can get benefits from both healers and reindeers. Read the full story

By Andrew Hamlin
Northwest Asian Weekly

At age 33, Thailand’s Tony Jaa seems poised to replace Jackie Chan in the world of Asian martial arts film. Like Jackie Chan, Jaa’s movies emphasize all-natural fights and stunts. They avoid the use of computer graphics and stuntman substitutions for the leading man.

Jaa, 22 years younger than Chan, has yet to break the majority of bones in his body. He remains, for the moment, young, strong, and up to the formidable challenges of his work.

The plot of the first “Ong-Bak” was quite simple. Jaa plays a humble marital arts student in a small Thai town. Gangsters steal the head of the town’s Buddha statue.

Jaa spends the entire film trying to get the head back. In the film, there are plenty of wild stunts and bad-guy punch-outs.

The new installment takes Jaa back almost 600 years, to 1421. He plays the role of Tien, a nobleman’s son.

Tien loses his father to assassins. A bandit leader adopts and raises him. As an adult, he must discover the truth about his father’s death and seeks vengeance.

When Tien resists becoming a slave, the slave master dumps him into a filthy and slimy pit. He soon discovers that he isn’t alone in the pit. A crocodile breaks the surface, going straight for Tien’s throat.

Later, after Tien escapes the pit and routs the slavers, the slave master crawls on the ground, begging for his life. Read the full story

By Vivian Luu
Northwest Asian Weekly

Oriya film legend Prashanta Nanda packs a political punch in his latest film, “The Living Ghost,” by honing in on the exploitation — sexual and economic — of a native tribe in India that is facing extinction.

The film was named “Most Provoking Film on Social Issues” at the Independent South Asian Film Festival on Oct. 4.

Nanda, as well as producer Akshay Kumar Parija and distributor Ashok Suvarna, were in attendance to accept the award.

The movie begins with drumbeats echoing through India’s Niyamgiri hills. A lone messenger bears grim news: The government has allowed a company to take over the region and scour the land’s rich bauxite, i.e., aluminum ore, deposits. Read the full story

The latest installment of Sex in Seattle is written by Kathy Hsieh and directed by ShawnJ West. (Photo provided by SIS Productions)

By Jason Cruz
Northwest Asian Weekly

“Sex in Seattle 17: Coming Clean” is this year’s installment of the lives of Jenna, Elizabeth, and Tess — three single Asian American friends coping with their complicated love lives. The play is currently showing at the Richard Hugo House on Capitol Hill through Oct. 17. Its subtitle, “Coming Clean,” refers to the romantic decisions that each woman must make so that she can be truly happy. Read the full story

By Ryan Pangilinan
Northwest Asian Weekly

In the early ’90s, there was a boom of independent filmmakers. The power of credit cards and sold memorabilia fueled personal passions.

As a result, the world was given movies like Kevin Smith’s “Clerks” and Robert Rodriguez’s “El Mariachi.” Made for a few thousand dollars, these films helped usher in a wave of would-be storytellers.

With the advent of affordable digital equipment and the Internet, people now have the ability to make their own films and bypass the studio system altogether.

In Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou’s film, “Take Out,” the audience follows an illegal Chinese immigrant, Ming Ding (Charles Jang). He has one day to pay back a debt or the debt doubles.

For a film that is entirely shot with a digital camera, Baker and Tsou do a masterful job of keeping it within the realm of surrealist cinema and less like reality television. The fact that the movie was not shot on film further accentuates the authenticity of Ding’s problem and makes it the viewer’s as well. Read the full story

By Irfan Shariff
Northwest Asian Weekly

Image provided by The Co-operative

Burma is sometimes a forgotten country. Officially called Myanmar by the country’s military junta, in late 2007, more than 100,000 people took to the streets of Rangoon in protest of the ruling regime. Called the “Saffron Revolution” because of the color of the robes donned by the monks who initiated the stand, the protest was quickly suppressed with brute force.

“Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country” is a documentary by Danish director Anders Østergaard. It shows how an event that took center stage in world news for a brief period is now on the brink of forgotten history.

The film recounts the story of “Joshua” (a pseudonym) and his team of video journalists, or VJs, working for the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB).

Joshua lives in the shadows, both figuratively and literally, as his face is always shadowed so his true identity is not revealed. Read the full story