Ah, the genius of marketing. I used to own a videotape of the American release of Mike Leigh’s Life Is Sweet (1991) that had a laughably inappropriate cover: candy-colored font, a giant donut with rainbow sprinkles on it, and Jane ...Read More
Earlier this year, when I was still teaching, I was supposed to teach a summer class on Southeast Asian cultures and literatures. That didn't happen, unfortunately, but I did get to the point where I had constructed a syllabus, and had ...Read More
2008 saw the release of two Chinese historical action dramas by two major Hongkong directors not previously known for the genre: one, the first half of a four-hour epic; the other, a re-edited version of a 1994 original. It's probably ...Read More
In this new media-synergistic world, we're now used to seeing merchandise spread out on different platforms: the movie, the officially licensed T-shirt, the videogame, the novelization, the cheap plastic toys that come with your burger. The constant lesson, though, is ...Read More
It's a little dispiriting when you realize, about fifteen minutes after you pop in the video, that the thoroughly unremarkable movie you're watching is essentially a remake of another thoroughly unremarkable film. The movie in question is Bryan Bertino's The ...Read More