News Links - 4/13/07
Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 11:07 am
Zhou Xun's Latest Film "Ming Ming"
http://english.cri.cn/3086/2007/04/13/44@215807.htm
It's Johnnie To vs. Johnnie To at Hong Kong Film Awards
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/ ... Awards.php
Gangster, Art-House Films Tipped To Win HK Awards
http://e.sinchew-i.com/content.phtml?se ... 0704130002
Hope for languishing HK film industry as China relaxes rules
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/ ... 80/1/.html
Seven Chinese movies to enter Cannes race in May
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/entertainm ... 850190.htm
Jackie Chan Attends An Exhibition of Energy and Electronics Components
http://english.cri.cn/3086/2007/04/12/1161@215540.htm
Starry affair
http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story ... sec=movies
"Syndromes" withdrawn from Thai release after censorship
http://www.varietyasiaonline.com/content/view/1158/1/
When you wish upon a star - Michelle Yeoh
FROM way over here, far away from La-la land, it would seem as if Michelle Yeoh (pic) is easily moving from one high-profile role to another these days. But not so, according to Yeoh.
“It never gets easy,” said Yeoh during a phone interview to promote her latest sci-fi thriller, Sunshine. “It’s just as difficult because of competitors, and there are not many good roles running around.”
Fact is, though, that Yeoh has gone from strength to strength – from Hong Kong films to becoming a Bond girl to playing a warrior in Ang Lee’s epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to working with Steven Spielberg in Memoirs of a Geisha. And now she’s in a Danny Boyle film.
There’s more on the horizon. Since January, the Ipoh-born actress has been working under the direction of Mathieu Kassovitz on the set of Babylon A.D. in Prague. Before Babylon A.D. she filmed Far North for Asif Kapadia co-starring with Sean Bean, and it has been reported she may be in the third part of The Mummy trilogy.
“It is very challenging to take on different roles. I have been extremely lucky; from Memoirs of a Geisha in which I spent hours in the make-up chair to suddenly being an astronaut and having five minutes of make-up (because we are all very casual in space, we walk around wearing slippers). And then for the next movie, Far North, I spent three months in the North Pole. And then, now, I am in Babylon A.D.”
Modest about her impressive resume, the 45-year-old concluded: “It’s not so much that I choose the roles but the roles choose me. I hope that continues; they keep knocking on my door like that. But I enjoy working with directors that have a vision, directors who challenge me on a different level.”
Her profile went up even further when designer Tom Ford singled her out to represent the Asian contingent in Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue last year. And just last month, she did a photo shoot with designer Karl Lagerfeld for the 60th anniversary of Cannes Film Festival in which 60 actors were chosen.
Naturally, being this busy means she does not have much time for family. “You know, I miss my family so much. I have many families – one family in Malaysia, quite a few families in Hong Kong. It is very hard. And, you know, I am hopeless at e-mails and phone calls. I am really, really, bad at those kind of things, so I keep their photos close to me and them closer in my heart. It is really hard. So whenever I have the chance I dash back.”
http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story ... sec=movies
To infinity and beyond
Datuk Michelle Yeoh explores what is beyond the Earth’s orbit with a little help from director Danny Boyle in Sunshine.
MICHELLE Yeoh had always wanted to work with director Danny Boyle. As it happened, Boyle was looking for an international star to be in his next film. So when Yeoh was passing through London, her agent set up a meeting for her with Boyle and scriptwriter Alex Garland. Yeoh ended up as the first one to be cast in Sunshine. Boyle even allowed her to choose her role.
In an interview transcript provided by Twentieth Century Fox Film, Boyle said: “I’d seen her in the Bond movie (Tomorrow Never Dies) and the Ang Lee movie (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and I just wanted her to be in my film. And she’s an absolute delight. And the other thing about her – and you need this in an ensemble – is that she is a binder. Certain people separate people, they are divisive, but she binds them together and helps create a sense of community.”
In cahoots: Actor Cillian Murphy (left) and director Danny Boyle on the set of Sunshine.
Sunshine is set in the year 2057 when the Sun is dying, which means everything on Earth is also dying along with it. A spacecraft carrying a crew of eight astronauts and scientists, and a nuclear device, is sent to resuscitate the fading star. Yeoh plays Corazon, a biologist who upkeeps a garden in space which provides the spacecraft with oxygen and vegetables. Sunshine also stars Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Hiroyuki Sanada, Cliff Curtis, Troy Garity and Benedict Wong.
In a telephone interview with Yeoh, when she was in Hong Kong for the recent film festival, she said: “Corazon is more like a maternal character because she is the provider, of oxygen and food. She’s lucky because she’s surrounded by greenery most of the time, compared to others who are listening to waves or turning knobs. Character-wise, she’s more spiritual; perhaps, it’s the Asian influence or that she’s always constantly surrounded by organic things – she’s very grounded and more down-to-earth.”
Bonding in space
To prepare for their roles as people who live together for 16 months as they make their journey millions of miles from Earth, Boyle made the eight actors live together in a student flat to let them bond. Boyle also made them attend lectures by physicists and had psychologists come and talk to them, to make sure his cast understood perfectly what it would be like to be out in space, travelling in a limited space, with even more limited companionship.
Yeoh reminisced: “When we started off in this film, I really thought I was going to an astronaut camp. He wanted us to live those characters, and it was difficult because astronauts are quite a bleak group. We live ordinary lives in comparison. Once you go out to space what else is there to do (in life), where else do you go? The sort of lives (they lead) is that at any moment, if anything goes wrong, it’s death there and then.
“Their acceptance of these things made us talk on subject matters that we normally take for granted or don’t talk about that much. And I discovered this group of people to be intellectual, emotional and spiritual as well. I think Danny chose his cast like how the astronauts are profiled. The ensemble was chosen with amazing precision.”
Deciding factor: The crew of Icarus IImust launch a nuclear bomb into the Sun to revive it in Sunshine.
The cast in Sunshine comprises Asians and Caucasians. Yeoh theorised that Boyle believes that, in the future, the East and West would work together.
Yeoh had worked with Sanada, who hails from Japan, in the 1986 film Royal Warriors, and said that by the end of the Sunshine shoot, she became sort of like Wong’s elder sister. Wong is a Hong Kong-born actor who is now based in London.
“It was a great idea to make us stay together as we really got to know each other. We became friends,” she revealed, divulging a few little known facts such as that both Sanada and Wong are great cooks, and that Evans and Curtis enjoyed playing guitar in their downtime.
Although Yeoh admitted to being a big fan of The X-Files and believes that something is “out there”, this is her first sci-fi film. Then she further clarifies this by saying that Sunshine is not so much science fiction but a space thriller based on scientific fact.
One of these facts is that stars do not live forever, one dies in the universe every second.
Although scientists estimate our star will burn for another five billion years, screenwriter Garland was intrigued when he read an article about what would happen to mankind from a “physics-based atheistic perspective” when the Sun fades out. After extensive and detailed research, Garland wrote a script and approached Boyle about it some years back.
Together, they started fine-tuning the screenplay and ended up with about 30 drafts that they worked on for another year before it was ready to film.
Staring at the Sun: Searle (Cliff Curtis) cannot help but be fascinated by the Sun in Sunshine.
To psyche themselves up for the project, Boyle and Garland watched a lot of classic sci-fi films and confessed that Sunshine’s foundation is somewhat based on three films – 2001 Space Odyssey, Solaris (the 1972 version) and Alien.
Influences from those films are apparent in Sunshine. Especially at the start of the movie, when some of the characteristics of these astronauts are explored – including being bored.
Yeoh explained: “When you are in a spaceship, these people do the same thing every day; there’s nothing else for them. We have to show you through the little moments that it is a struggle to be cut off from all other company except for the eight people. Boredom will kill you. It was very interesting, to learn how to be bored.”
Another challenge was the use of green screens during filming to represent infinite space.
“It really challenges your imagination,” said Yeoh. “When you look out of your spaceship, it’s green screen. You have to imagine the Sun is out there. When you have to work in green screen you have to stretch your imagination even further. It was very, very hard to imagine. ”
She added: “When you step outside the spacecraft everything is surreal. Inside the confines of the spaceship, everything is very organic. Solid. Everything’s real. It was built to feel exactly like that. We could live there. But outside everything was computer generated.
“And Danny had amazing an computer graphics company do the effects. When you see it, it will take your breath away.”
http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story ... sec=movies
Yi Begins His Quest for NBA Career
http://english.cri.cn/2886/2007/04/13/63@215777.htm