Alan Mak's Anti-Corruption Trilogy Set to Premiere in Lunar New Year

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Alan Mak's Anti-Corruption Trilogy Set to Premiere in Lunar New Year Alan Mak’s Anti-corruption Trilogy Set to Premiere in Lunar New Year Following his success in the “Infernal Affairs” and “Overheard” series, Hong Kong famous writer-director Alan MAK is planning a new trilogy about anti-corruption with the first instalment titled “Integrity” already in post-production and set to hit theatres in Hong Kong and China in February for the Lunar New Year. “Integrity” has brought A-list Hong Kong actors and actresses including Sean LAU, Nick CHEUNG, Karena LAM and Anita YUEN, etc. The action-thriller is written and directed by Alan MAK, co-produced by Alex CHONG and Ronald WONG, all of which are veterans in the Hong Kong film industry with MAK and CHONG best known for their co-directorial franchises, “Infernal Affairs” and “Overheard”. The film follows the story of a multi-year investigation into a conglomerate being on the brink of collapse after the disappearance of the CEO and the whistle-blower. A top ICAC agent is forced to team up with his estranged wife to salvage the case, risking their lives to bring the witness back to Hong Kong. Sean and Nick team up again in “Integrity” 5 years after their collaboration in director Benny CHAN’s “The White Storm” (2013). But they did not have many scenes together this time. Nick wished he had more scenes with Sean. “It is such a pity. Sean is one of the actors I want to collaborate with the most,” he said. “I shot my scenes in Hong Kong to save money so that Nick can go to Australia to film his scenes in the snowy mountains!” Sean responded, but he also praised Nick for making a great leap from acting to directing. When asked if he would be interested in working on a film with Nick as the director, he shook his head vehemently. “He would definitely seek revenge!” he joked. Karena is excited about having her first Lunar New Year film release. She was so devoted into the film and stayed in Australia for over half a month for her scenes, even though she missed her two daughters very much. While her partnering with Sean as a couple in the film is expected to bring audience a completely new spark, she does not have as many scenes with Sean as she does with Nick. “Director MAK arranged for Karena and Nick scenes to be without romance. They would not be as exciting and loving as those between me and her,” Sean kept joking. Anita plays the villain for the first time in her career in “Integrity”, which is her first film in five years. It also marks the reunion of Anita and Sean since their last collaboration in “Ciest la vie, mon chéri” (1993). But they are not a couple but opponents going head to head against each other in court this time. The director sees the chemistry of them working together. “Though they were not doing a gun action sequence, they controlled the intense rhythm very well. It was great to watch,” said MAK. The director, whose father and elder brother are both police officers, revealed that the inspiration of the film came from a cigarette smuggling case. “In 2003, ICAC dealt with a case of illicit cigarette trade, which caused quite a stir in Hong Kong. From then on, I had always wanted to shoot a film around smuggling. However, the Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) is a relatively closed-door department. Ordinary citizens do not understand how it operates. Thanks to a collaboration opportunity with ICAC two years ago, I got to talk with some ICAC officials and began to learn more about it. That is how I shaped the story of ‘Integrity’, said MAK. The film is scheduled for official release in cinemas in China and Hong Kong on 5 Feb and 7 Feb respectively. .
Recommended publications
  • Feff Press Kit
    PRESS RELEASES, FILM STILLS & FESTIVAL PICS AND VIDEOS TO DOWNLOAD FROM WWW.FAREASTFILM.COM PRESS AREA Press Office/Far East Film Festival 19 Gianmatteo Pellizzari & Ippolita Nigris Cosattini +39/0432/299545 - +39/347/0950890 [email protected] - [email protected] Video Press Office Matteo Buriani +39/345/1821517 – [email protected] 21/29 April 2017 – Udine – Teatro Nuovo and Visionario FAR EAST FILM FESTIVAL 19: THE POWER OF ASIA! The irresistible road movie Survival Family opens the #FEFF19 on Friday the 21 st of April: a packed programme which testifies to the incredible vitality (both productive and creative) of Asian cinema. 83 titles selected from almost a thousand seen, and 4 world premiers, including Herman Yau's high-octane thriller Shock Wave , which will close the nineteenth edition. Press release of the 13 th of April 2017 For immediate release UDINE - Who turned out the lights? Nobody did, and the fuses haven't blown. And no, it's not even a power cut. Electricity has just suddenly ceased to exist, so the Suzuki family must now very quickly learn the art of survival: and facing a global blackout is not exactly a walk in the park! It's with the world screeching to a halt of the irresistible Japanese road movie Survival Family that the highly anticipated Far East Film Festival 19 opens: not just because Yaguchi Shinobu' s wonderful comedy is the festival's starting pistol on Friday the 21 st of April, but also for a question of symmetry: just like the blackout in Survival Family , the FEFF is an interruption .
    [Show full text]
  • Chinese Film Industry Visit to Uk 2015
    CHINESE FILM INDUSTRY VISIT TO UK 2015 ALIBABA PICTURES WEI ZHANG Ms. Wei Zhang is President of Alibaba Pictures and Senior Vice President of Alibaba Group. She joined Alibaba Group in 2008 to lead the Group’s investment and acquisition activities. She has also worked in the Group’s strategy department and led Alibaba corporate social responsibility efforts. Currently she is in charge of Alibaba Pictures’ international business and investment and acquisition activities. From 2005 to 2008, Ms. Zhang was the Chief Operating Officer of News Corporation STAR China, responsible for managing China operations, revenue, new media, and business development. From 2002 to 2005, Ms. Zhang was Managing Director of CNBC China, a division of General Electric Company, overseeing CNBC’s operations in China. She worked at News Corporation China from 2000 to 2002 in the role of Director of Business Development. Prior to that, Ms. Zhang was a Strategic Consultant at Bain & Company, and a Finance Specialistat General Electric Company and GE Capital. Company Profile Alibaba Pictures Group’s mission is to create happiness. Alibaba Pictures’ core businesses have been categorized into four main segments: film and television production centred on IP (intellectual property); internet-based promotion and distribution combining internet technologies and traditional off-line distribution; the building and operation of e-commerce platforms for entertainment as an extension of the Alibaba Group ecosystem and international operations that consolidate global resources, technologies and talents in order to participate in the global entertainment industry. www.alibabagroup.com BONA FILM GROUP LIMITED JEFFREY CHAN Jeffrey is currently the COO and a board member of Bona Film Group (NASDAQ: BONA).
    [Show full text]
  • Download This PDF File
    Humanity 2012 Papers. ~~~~~~ “‘We are all the same, we are all unique’: The paradox of using individual celebrity as metaphor for national (transnational) identity.” Joyleen Christensen University of Newcastle Introduction: This paper will examine the apparently contradictory public persona of a major star in the Hong Kong entertainment industry - an individual who essentially redefined the parameters of an industry, which is, itself, a paradox. In the last decades of the 20th Century, the Hong Kong entertainment industry's attempts to translate American popular culture for a local audience led to an exciting fusion of cultures as the system that was once mocked by English- language media commentators for being equally derivative and ‘alien’, through translation and transmutation, acquired a unique and distinctively local flavour. My use of the now somewhat out-dated notion of East versus West sensibilities will be deliberate as it reflects the tone of contemporary academic and popular scholarly analysis, which perfectly seemed to capture the essence of public sentiment about the territory in the pre-Handover period. It was an explicit dichotomy, with commentators frequently exploiting the notion of a culture at war with its own conception of a national identity. However, the dwindling Western interest in Hong Kong’s fate after 1997 and the social, economic and political opportunities afforded by the reunification with Mainland China meant that the new millennia saw Hong Kong's so- called ‘Culture of Disappearance’ suddenly reconnecting with its true, original self. Humanity 2012 11 Alongside this shift I will track the career trajectory of Andy Lau – one of the industry's leading stars1 who successfully mimicked the territory's movement in focus from Western to local and then regional.
    [Show full text]
  • Warriors As the Feminised Other
    Warriors as the Feminised Other The study of male heroes in Chinese action cinema from 2000 to 2009 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chinese Studies at the University of Canterbury by Yunxiang Chen University of Canterbury 2011 i Abstract ―Flowery boys‖ (花样少年) – when this phrase is applied to attractive young men it is now often considered as a compliment. This research sets out to study the feminisation phenomena in the representation of warriors in Chinese language films from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China made in the first decade of the new millennium (2000-2009), as these three regions are now often packaged together as a pan-unity of the Chinese cultural realm. The foci of this study are on the investigations of the warriors as the feminised Other from two aspects: their bodies as spectacles and the manifestation of feminine characteristics in the male warriors. This study aims to detect what lies underneath the beautiful masquerade of the warriors as the Other through comprehensive analyses of the representations of feminised warriors and comparison with their female counterparts. It aims to test the hypothesis that gender identities are inventory categories transformed by and with changing historical context. Simultaneously, it is a project to study how Chinese traditional values and postmodern metrosexual culture interacted to formulate Chinese contemporary masculinity. It is also a project to search for a cultural nationalism presented in these films with the examination of gender politics hidden in these feminisation phenomena. With Laura Mulvey‘s theory of the gaze as a starting point, this research reconsiders the power relationship between the viewing subject and the spectacle to study the possibility of multiple gaze as well as the power of spectacle.
    [Show full text]
  • FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: Nicole Bae Asian Cinevision [email protected] Asian American International Film
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media contact: Nicole Bae Asian CineVision [email protected] Asian American International Film Festival 2016 Presents a fantastic group of Chinese and Chinese American Films NEW YORK - Like years prior, AAIFF 2016 will be featuring a plethora of Chinese and Chinese American films from both young and experienced filmmakers and actors. This year, the Centerpiece presentation of A TALE OF THREE CITIES, Closing Night presentation FRONT COVER, as well as narrative features IN THE ROOM and documentaries like BREATHIN: THE EDDY ZHENG STORY. AAIFF is also proud to present ten short films with Chinese directors, actors, and settings that are in every shorts programs, which represents both the complexity and variety of Chinese and Chinese American artists and stories. FEATURE FILMS A TALE OF THREE CITIES Based on the true story of Jackie Chan’s parents and brought to the screen by two of Asia’s biggest stars, Sean Lau (MY NAME IS FAME, LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE, OVERHEARD 3) and Tang Wei (LUST, CAUTION; FINDING MR. RIGHT; THE GOLDEN ERA; BLACKHAT), director Mabel Cheung tells a story about love that reflects a generation’s strength in a time of despair, and a country’s hope for a brighter future. FRONT COVER AAIFF 2016 will be closing with FRONT COVER, which tells the story of Ryan Fu, a gay Chinese American who rejects his Asian heritage and has learnt to suppress it to climb up the social ladder. Through talent and hard work, he has attained his dream job as an assistant to a celebrity fashion stylist, Francesca.
    [Show full text]
  • Distribution Agreement in Presenting This
    Distribution Agreement In presenting this thesis or dissertation as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree from Emory University, I hereby grant to Emory University and its agents the non-exclusive license to archive, make accessible, and display my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known, including display on the world wide web. I understand that I may select some access restrictions as part of the online submission of this thesis or dissertation. I retain all ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. Signature: _____________________________ ______________ Tianyi Yao Date Crime and History Intersect: Films of Murder in Contemporary Chinese Wenyi Cinema By Tianyi Yao Master of Arts Film and Media Studies _________________________________________ Matthew Bernstein Advisor _________________________________________ Tanine Allison Committee Member _________________________________________ Timothy Holland Committee Member _________________________________________ Michele Schreiber Committee Member Accepted: _________________________________________ Lisa A. Tedesco, Ph.D. Dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies ___________________ Date Crime and History Intersect: Films of Murder in Contemporary Chinese Wenyi Cinema By Tianyi Yao B.A., Trinity College, 2015 Advisor: Matthew Bernstein, M.F.A., Ph.D. An abstract of
    [Show full text]
  • Download the Press Kit Here
    SSFL PK.V1 – 2016 OCT 1 OF 34 JASMINE A SHANGHAI STREET FILMS PRODUCTION PRODUCED, WRITTEN, & DIRECTED BY DAX PHELAN STARRING JASON TOBIN, EUGENIA YUAN, GLEN CHIN, SARAH LIAN, & BYRON MANN PRODUCED BY STRATTON LEOPOLD, ERIC M. KLEIN, JASON TOBIN, JENNIFER THYM, CHRIS CHAN LEE, MARTIN STRACHAN, GUY LIVNEH PRESS KIT – OCTOBER 17 , 2016 (ver. 1) SSFL PK.V1 – 2016 OCT 2 OF 34 TAGLINE He loved her. LOGLINE JASMINE is a mind-bending psychologicAl thriller About A mAn who’s struggling to come to terms with his grief neArly A yeAr After his wife’s unsolved murder. SHORT SYNOPSIS JASMINE is a mind-bending psychologicAl thriller About A mAn, LeonArd To (JAson Tobin), who’s struggling to come to terms with his grief neArly A yeAr After his wife’s unsolved murder. Hoping to move on with his life, LeonArd reconnects with GrAce (Eugenia YuAn), A womAn from his pAst, And his outlook begins to brighten. But, when A visit to the site of his wife’s murder leAds him to A mysterious interloper (Byron MAnn) who he believes is her killer, LeonArd decides to tAke justice into his own hands And things tAke A stArtling turn towArd the unexpected. LONG SYNOPSIS LeonArd To (JAson Tobin, “Better Luck Tomorrow”) is A mAn who’s struggling to come to terms with the unsolved murder of his beloved wife, JAsmine (GrAce Huang, “OverheArd,” “Cold WAr,” “The MAn With The Iron Fists”). NeArly A yeAr After JAsmine’s deAth, LeonArd returns home to Hong Kong, determined to move on with his life once And for All.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 “Ann Hui's Allegorical Cinema” Jessica Siu-Yin Yeung to Cite This
    This is the version of the chapter accepted for publication in Cultural Conflict in Hong Kong: Angles on a Coherent Imaginary published by Palgrave Macmillan https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-7766-1_6 Accepted version downloaded from SOAS Research Online: http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/34754 “Ann Hui’s Allegorical Cinema” Jessica Siu-yin Yeung To cite this article: By Jessica Siu-yin Yeung (2018) “Ann Hui’s Allegorical Cinema”, Cultural Conflict in Hong Kong: Angles on a Coherent Imaginary, ed. Jason S. Polley, Vinton Poon, and Lian-Hee Wee, 87-104, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Allegorical cinema as a rhetorical approach in Hong Kong new cinema studies1 becomes more urgent and apt when, in 2004, the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) begins financing mainland Chinese-Hong Kong co-produced films.2 Ackbar Abbas’s discussion on “allegories of 1997” (1997, 24 and 16–62) stimulates studies on Happy Together (1997) (Tambling 2003), the Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002–2003) (Marchetti 2007), Fu Bo (2003), and Isabella (2006) (Lee 2009). While the “allegories of 1997” are well- discussed, post-handover allegories remain underexamined. In this essay, I focus on allegorical strategies in Ann Hui’s post-CEPA oeuvre and interpret them as an auteurish shift from examinations of local Hong Kong issues (2008–2011) to a more allegorical mode of narration. This, however, does not mean Hui’s pre-CEPA films are not allegorical or that Hui is the only Hong Kong filmmaker making allegorical films after CEPA. Critics have interpreted Hui’s films as allegorical critiques of local geopolitics since the beginning of her career, around the time of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 (Stokes and Hoover 1999, 181 and 347 note 25), when 1997 came and went (Yau 2007, 133), and when the Umbrella Movement took place in 2014 (Ho 2017).
    [Show full text]
  • You Have to Overcome Your Fears, Simply by Taking a Risk
    Wardrobe by Gieves & Hawkes Navy wool flannel three-piece suit, blue denim shirt, navy and grey stripe wool and silk melange tie Makeup Monida Tse Hair Jun Ho @ Suave Location East Hotel, Hong Kong A TALE OF THREE CITIES DOUBLE BILL plungethe One of Hong Kong’s most versatile and celebrated actors, Sean Lau Ching-wan returns to the big screen in period romance drama A Tale of Three Cities. He talks to Arthur Tam about those who made Hong Kong great, the evolution of the film industry and why he’s been jumping into freezing lakes. Photography by Calvin Sit ough, tough and charming are just a few words to describe You have to Sean Lau Ching-wan. With over 30 years of experience in overcome R the movie industry and over 100 films to his name, Lau your fears, sits in the company of other legendary figures such as Tony Leung Chiu- simply by wai and Maggie Cheung Man-yuk s who got their break as actors on taking a risk television station TVB, before dominating the big screen. ▶ CALVIN SIT CALVIN 20 timeout.com.hk timeout.com.hk 21 1508007_T04 21/08/2015_PDF1.4_upload Wardrobe by Gieves & Hawkes Plum textured wool jacket, plum textured wool waistcoat, brown wool slim fit chinos, burgundy long sleeve cotton shirt and burgundy silk tie Although best known for staring in a string of gritty action-thrillers for totemic director Johnnie To – few actors can claim a better run of films than Too Many Ways to be Number One (1997), A Hero Never Dies (1998) and Running Out of Time (1999) – Lau is no one-dimensional, copy-and-paste star.
    [Show full text]
  • 2017 Movie Line up Tulip Fever Alicia Vikander, Dane Dehaan
    2017 Movie Line Up Tulip Fever Alicia Vikander, Drama, 31 August Set in 17th century Amsterdam, Dane DeHaan, Romance 2017 TULIP FEVER follows a married Christoph Waltz, woman (Alicia Vikander) who Zach Galifianakis, begins a passionate affair with an Cara Delevingne, artist (Dane DeHaan) hired to paint Jack O’Connell, her portrait. The lovers gamble on Judi Dench, the booming market for tulip bulbs Holliday Grainger as a way to raise money to run away together. Director: Justin Chadwick The Mimic (Korea) Yum Jung-Ah, Horror, 31 August A story of the Jangsan Tiger, who Park Hyuk-Kwon Thriller 2017 mimics human voices to lure them close, and a family affected by the Director: Huh Jung creature. Midnight Runners (Korea) Park Seo-Joon, Action 7 September Story about two Korean National Kang Ha-Neul 2017 Police University students Ki-joon (Park Seo-joon) and Hee-yeol (Kang Director: Ha-neul) who witness a kidnapping Kim Joo-Hwan and track it down. The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature Jackie Chan, Animation, 7 September Following the events of the first Katherine Heigl, Will Adventure, 2017 film, Surly and his friends must stop Arnett, Bobby Comedy Oakton City's mayor from Carnavale, Maya destroying their home to make way Rudolph for a dysfunctional amusement park. Director: Cal Brunker Let Me Eat Your Pancreas (Japan) Shun Oguri, Keiko Drama 14 September Based on the novel ‘Kimi no Suizo Kitagawa, Yusuke 2017 wo Tabetai’ by Yoru Sumino, the Kamiji, Daichi story follows a high school teacher Morishita, Takumi who recounts the memories of his Kitamura, Minami time spent with a terminally ill Hamabe, Karen childhood friend.
    [Show full text]
  • Charting a Postcolonial Hong Kong Identity Through the Tv Screen
    NARRATIVES / AESTHETICS / CRITICISM DECODING THE TRADING FLOOR: CHARTING A POSTCOLONIAL HONG KONG IDENTITY THROUGH THE TV SCREEN WINNIE L. M. YEE Name Winnie L. M. Yee ABSTRACT Academic centre University of Hong Kong This article adds to the analysis of Hong Kong TV culture E-mail address [email protected] by investigating recent trends in television production. It demonstrates that the small screen has become a means KEYWORDS of grappling with postcolonial Hong Kong identity, most Hong Kong; Financial Crime Thriller; Postcolonial Identity; noticeable in its reinvention of the genre of the financial Local; Transnational. crime thriller. This analysis must be considered against the background of two new developments in television: the growth of transnational collaborations intended to appeal to the Asian market, and the advent of TV series that replicate the experimentation of American shows and dispense with the traditional episodic narrative. 83 SERIES VOLUME V, Nº 2, WINTER 2019: 83-94 DOI https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2421-454X/9159 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TV SERIAL NARRATIVES ISSN 2421-454X SERIALS IN EAST ASIA NARRATIVES / AESTHETICS / CRITICISM > WINNIE L. M. YEE DECODING THE TRADING FLOOR 1. INTRODUCTION After providing a brief background of Hong Kong tele- vision culture, this article will focus on two shows that deal TV dramas are not among the most widely researched with financial issues, The Greed of Man (1992) and The Trading products of Hong Kong popular culture. But we should not Floor (2018). The controversial 1992 TV drama The Greed of therefore assume there are fewer TV viewers than cinema Man (translated also as Great Times, Dashidai) created new audience members, or that Hong Kong TV does not appeal expectations in Hong Kong audiences and served as a proto- to a shared sense of Chineseness.
    [Show full text]
  • Day 1 001 Ad Cover.Indd
    MONDAY, MARCH 24 2014 DAY 1 AT FILMART www.ScreenDaily.com Editorial +852 2582 8959 Advertising +852 2582 8958 fatal_encounter-ad_245x266_fin_전달용 1 2014.3.14 5:41:12 PM MONDAY, MARCH 24 2014 TODAY DAY 1 AT FILMART Hot titles: Korea, page 16 www.ScreenDaily.com Editorial +852 2582 8959 Advertising +852 2582 8958 NEWS Pan-Asia Academy expands Hong Kong, Busan and Toyko outline Academy plans » Page 4 Desen teams with Weta REVIEWS The Midnight After Fruit Chan’s opening night film proves a quirky apocalyptic horror on 3D epic Zhong Kui » Page 10 Jamie Marks Is Dead BY LIZ SHACKLETON Weta Workshop is providing FEATURE China’s Desen International Media character and scenery design for Hot titles Celluloid Dreams has brought on board top VFX the fi lm, while its sister company Screen profiles Korean cinema houses including Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post works on compos- highlights acquires Jamie Weta Workshop for $27m 3D fan- iting. The film is one of the first » Page 16 tasy adventure Zhong Kui: Snow Chinese films to use full perfor- Marks Is Dead Girl And The Dark Crystal. mance capture, which will be han- SCREENINGS Acclaimed Hong Kong DoP dled by leading Korean VFX house » Page 19 BY JEAN NOH Peter Pau is serving as producer, Li Bingbing Macrograph (Journey To The West: France’s Celluloid Dreams has DoP and VFX director on the fi lm, Conquering The Demons). picked up international rights on which is currently shooting in stereographer Vincent E Toto Other behind-the-scenes talent Sundance competitor Jamie Marks China with Chen Kun, Li Bingbing, (Dredd).
    [Show full text]