Gathering Storm:
A 'Typhoon' of Regional Asian Films
By Andrew Lam
When
it comes to movie making in East and Southeast Asia
these days, producers and directors follow this
motto: Think globally, act regionally.
Why? The region has never been as integrated or
as wealthy as it is now, two decades after the end
of the Cold War. Tastes have grown horizontally
as commerce, travel and communications intensify
in a region whose cultures previously knew little
of one another. Japanese girls love new Vietnamese
designs of ao-dai dresses; Koreans love Thai martial
arts star Tony Jar; Japanese mangas are popular
everywhere; and everyone seems to love traveling
to Vietnam, and watching Korean movies and soap
operas.
With regional integration comes an international
style of movie making. Movies from South Korea,
Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong and China seem
to have blended into one another. Co-produced internationally,
the movies' story lines oftentimes respect no borders.
The Bangkok International film festival last February,
as if giving a nudge to this understanding, opened
with "Invisible Wave," a murder mystery
directed by a Thai but with Japanese, Hong Kong
and Korean actors. Three languages are spoken in
the movie, which was filmed in three countries.
The movie made reference to the December 2004 tsunami,
which of course affected everyone in the region
and beyond.
Budget-wise it makes sense. Casting international
stars -- even if they can barely speak each other's
language -- ensures greater audience. It also procures
a bigger budget with international producers, something
that individual, smaller studios hadn't managed
to do before.
A big part of this regional movie making formula,
no doubt, has to do with the renaissance of South
Korea, known now as the Korean Wave. By the look
of how movie stars dominate billboards in major
cities from Tokyo to Shanghai to Hanoi to Bangkok
and beyond, one can see that Korea is the hottest
flavor of the day. Any movie that include one of
Korea's heartthrobs -- the beautiful Jang Nara,
say, or the energetic, sexy actor-cum-singer with
one name, Rain -- is a guaranteed international
box-office smash.
That's why Ji Jin-Hee, the Korean star of the mega-hit
soap opera "Jewel in the Palace," was
cast in the Chinese musical "Perhaps Love"
opposite multilingual, drop-dead handsome Takeshi
Kaneshiro (half Japanese, half Taiwanese), and Jackie
Cheung, a Hong Kong star. Produced by Andre Morgan,
the dances in the movie were choreographed by Farah
Khan, India's most famous choreographer.
Conversely, "Krrish," the new Bollywood
superhero movie, stars Hrithik Roshan. Roshan kung-fu
fights in Singapore when he's not dancing to seduce
his girl in India. The fighting is choreographed
by Hong Kong's legendary stunt master Tony Siu-Tung.
Hong Kong film director Stanley Tong followed suit
by casting Indian sex symbol Mallika Sherawat and
South Korean Kim Hee-Seon as two princesses to star
opposite Jackie Chan in "The Myth," an
action-adventure film a la Indiana Jones.
In "Fearless," coming to an AMC theatre
near you in September, Jet Li will fight for the
last time (he is reportedly to retire from the kung
fu genre) against an international cast. It's the
story of Chinese martial arts master Huo Yuanjia
(1869~1910), the founder and spiritual guru of the
Jin Wu Sports Federation. In the action packed movie,
Li fights Australian weight lifter Nathan Jones,
kick-boxer Jean-Claude Leuyer, American actor and
sword master Anthony de Longis and Kabuki-trained
actor Shido Nakamura.
So much action in the Far East has drawn Hollywood's
attention. Special overseas divisions or partnerships
to produce and distribute films in languages other
than English have been created by major studios
like Disney, Miramax and Sony pictures. East and
Southeast Asia is, after all, the fastest growing
regional market -- especially China and India, whose
huge populations make them potentially much bigger
markets than Europe could ever be. "Within
another two decades," according to Christina
Klein, writing for Yale Global Online, "Asia
could be responsible for as much as 60 percent of
Hollywood's box-office revenue... Asia is where
the action is, and will be for the foreseeable future."
For years, the East played a subservient role to
the West and remained at the receiving end of Hollywood
visions. Hong Kong movies, for instance, traditionally
copied Hollywood plots shamelessly. But the Asian
economic ascendancy, which started three decades
ago, has changed all that. Hong Kong began to find
itself in the late 1980s, and it was Hollywood's
turn to copy. Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola
and Quentin Tarantino all have expressed tremendous
enthusiasm for the martial art genre, and Tarantino
has admitted to being "inspired" by Ringo
Lam's "City on Fire" when making his film
"Reservoir Dogs."
In recent time, Hollywood too has made it a habit
to remake Japanese and South Korean blockbusters
like "The Ring," "Shall We Dance?"
and, the latest, "The Lake House."
Korea, like Hong Kong and China, has been eyeing
the growing market in the United States for Asian-style
movies. "Typhoon," a Korean movie about
international espionage and revenge, was the first
to be shown in a major US Cineplex (AMC theatre.)
The synopsis: a North Korean defector, betrayed
by the South, aims to destroy both North and South
Korea with dirty uranium, with the help of a typhoon
blowing over the peninsula. The National Intelligence
Service dispatches a secret agent to stop him. What
ensues is an international chase that stretches
to Thailand, Russia and China. The cast is as international
as the plot, whose script is in four languages.
The most expensive production ever made in Korea,
"Typhoon" unfortunately did not garner
many US viewers. But it is still a sign of what
is to come in Asian movie making: Big, bold, hybridized
and regionalized visions that will continue to blow
as regularly as hurricane season in the Far East.
- New America Media News Analysis
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
