Blog Archives

One Nite In Mongkok (2004)

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Posted on March 11, 2007 by Deni

You might not think a lot can happen in one night, but then maybe you’ve never been to Mongkok, Hong Kong’s most densely populated area. At the heart of Derek Yee’s 2004 film One Nite in Mongkok is a city that never sleeps, that has so many streets and alleys and lanes and buildings and people, it might be more prudent to think that everything can happen. In an interesting departure from type, the director builds a suspenseful and refreshingly … (read more)

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The Hidden Blade (2005)

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Posted on March 11, 2007 by Deni

Yohji Yamada’s second film is soft with the same rural beauty that made Twilight Samurai such a remarkably refreshing period piece. It is a personal story, unconventional perhaps because its subject matter seems so very conventional, and Yamada is becoming something of a thematic auteur with his quiet, realistic portrayals of the samurai way of life, his harmless non-heroes, his uncomplicated humour and his slow sense of inevitable conclusion.

Munezo Katagiri (Masatoshi Nagase) is an unmarried samurai indentured to a … (read more)

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Tony Takitani (2004)

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Posted on February 11, 2006 by Deni

Quietly surreal in quality, populated by characters that redefine the words ‘quirky’ and ‘dysfunctional’, the internationally popular and highly critically acclaimed works of Japanese author Haruki Murakami are wondrous and fascinating and inarguably unique. But by the very same token, one probably would never have really considered any Murakami novel suitable for translation to film, if the idea ever even occurred to start with.

In taking Tony Takitani (a short story written almost a decade ago and printed in English … (read more)

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