Manuel Benitez, a former child actor whose credits include Galactica, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and Stand and Deliver, was shot to death by police in the back of a Chinese Restaurant in El Monte, California, ending a four-year manhunt for the 38-year-old.
Benitez’s 7-year-old son was injured as police used a flash grenade to get into the [...]

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If you do you might not want to admit it here (but feel free to join me in the comments section). This is Shigeo Tokuda, a 74-year old JAV star who specializes in elder porn or other parts requiring a grandfatherly figure.  
Jokes aside, there’s a very interesting translation of an interview with him at [...]

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Interesting article here from the LA Times’s Barbara Demick about her trip to the recent Pyongyang International Film Festival. I wish there were a few more photos, but I’m sure one takes what they’re given when covering a film festival in Pyongyang.
After some run-of-the-mill “closed country,” “no Internet,” no “BlackBerrys,” she reveals a few tidbits:

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City Without Baseball  (official site) is a new film by Lawrence Lau Kwok-Cheung, and is ostensibly about the Hong Kong national baseball team. However, according to reviews I’ve read there is no actual baseball in the film, this despite the fact that actual members of the Hong Kong national baseball team play themselves in the [...]

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The Chinese film The Assembly, by Feng Xiaogang won the top prize at this year’s Pyongyang International Film Festival, which wrapped up during the weekend. Xiaogang also won best director. The film is about a group of communist soldiers at the end of the Chinese civil war in the late 1940s.
 Here’s the U.K. trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VG1DrvN4rE

The [...]

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About a week ago Korea Beat translated a preview/review of a good-looking Korean film called Crossing (크로싱), which opened in theaters here in early June. After reading some about the making and marketing of the film, my guess is it will open in the U.S. and other countries in the not too distant future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThXzb4QSMzE

Synopses from [...]

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I doubt too many people heard about this, but prior to his major league debut last Saturday at Yankee Stadium, Reds pitcher Daryl Thompson, along with fellow rookie Jay Bruce, got on the No. 4 subway line headed for the Bronx. Except, they got on the platform headed to Brooklyn.
When I lived in Brooklyn I [...]

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For those of you living in the US or Canada I want to point out the June 19 airing of a documentary — Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story — about a 13-year-old Japanese girl abducted by North Korean spies on her way home from school. The film played at several film festivals and won a [...]

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Check out this trailer from The Good, the Bad, and the Weirda movie by Korean director Kim Ji-woon that’s going to be one of the big blockbusters in Korea this summer.
It’s the story of three Korean outlaws in 1930s Manchuria and their dealings with the Japanese army and Chinese and Russian bandits. A spaghetti western [...]

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Last month  a dental nurse and several friends walked into a Higashi Matsuyama Itoyokado McDonald’s in Saitama Prefecture, but what followed was no ordinary meal.
According to the Mainichi Daily News:
The group apparently took up a corner counter not easily visible to serving staff and went about their purportedly pornographic proclivities.
Ochiai apparently spent the time with [...]

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There’s a trailer for the US version of My Sassy Girl that’s been making its way around the Korean blog circuit. For those unaware, My Sassy Girl  was a Korean film starring Jun Ji-hyun, made about a decade ago. The American version will star Elisha Cuthbert.
Remakes of fairly recent films are always easy targets, [...]

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This was at the Pusan International Film Festival this year, though I didn’t see it because it was a quick sellout. Now the film is set to get a release in Japan, and right-wing groups aren’t happy about it.

“The threats began about two months ago, when we started press screenings of the movie in [...]

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I’d been wanting to see this movie for a while but surprisingly had a hard time finding it, despite the fact it came out just a few years ago. This is a Korean film based on the true events of Gam Sa-yong, a ateelworker who tried out for and made the Sammi Superstars — one [...]

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Great post on the China Beat debunking five of the most well-known urban legends involving Shanghai.
Number four on the list concerns something that was the subject of one of the most famous scenes of Bruce Lee’s film career — a sign supposedly posted in front of a Shanghai park banning “Dogs and Chinese” from entering.
Here’s [...]

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Hong Sang-soo is probably my favorite Korean director and I highly recommend his Saenghwalui balgyeon (2002) aka Turning Gate. His most recent film Haebyonui yoin (2006)  aka Woman on the Beach is also great and the dialogue for the film  became my Korean study tool for some time.  Why? Because Hong’s films typically show real [...]

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After a lengthy battle spanning nearly two years the controversial Chinese film Lost in Beijing  had its screening license revoked by the state ministry known as the SARFT. In addition to the ban the ministry announced it would carry out punishment against the film’s producers.
Plot summary from Danwei:
The film presents a bleak picture of [...]

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I remembered hearing about this when it was released just before I moved to Korea. Then, by accident I found this review in the From the Archive section on Reverse Shot, read it, and got a hold of it right away (it’s also posted on YouTube w/subtitles in 17 parts).
All About Lily Chou-Chou, which was [...]

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Hot on the heels of the Hitler bar is this —  coming to a theater near you (well, likely just in Nippon), a new movie called The Truth About Nanjing, which according to the director sets the record straight about the massacre.
There is one indisputable fact: there was no massacre at Nanjing. We don’t want [...]

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Halloween  where I live  is pretty non-existent except in nightclubs and apartment complexes where rich families who spend   75% of their income on English lessons live. I’m guessing China is much the same.  They’re more into it in Japan, although given this from the NYT, I’m not sure if I’d be diving into the [...]

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Best known for her roles in the  action/erotic movies known as Pink Films (aka  Pinky Violence)    Ike Reiko  became a  Japanese sensation during the 1970s, before  running  into various legal difficulties and dropping out of acting all together by the end of the decade.
With titles like Hot Springs Mimizu Geisha, Terrifying Girls High [...]

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