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Sony Pictures Classics is out with Jane Austen Wrecked My Life in limited release, Angel Studios’ The Last Rodeo opens wide and A24’s Friendship added screens with few new indies braving the double whammy of live action Lilo & Stitch and Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning.

The former may have set a Disney record for Memorial Day weekend previews, Deadline reports, while Tom Cruise’s high octane eighth outing as Ethan Hunt may have set a record preview night for a Mission: Impossible.

Jane Austen in her own right “has become a bit of a rock star in the marketplace,” SPC brass rightly noted when the distributor acquired the feature debut by Laura Piani ahead of its TIFF world premiere last year. It’s opening on 61 screens in select markets including Lincoln Square and Angelika Film Center in New York and the AMC Grove and Laemmle Royal in LA.

Marking the third time Ann Hui adapts a novel by Eileen Chang (after “Love in a Fallen City” and “Eighteen Springs”), “Love After Love” is based on the short story “Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier”, a work that the director herself admitted was quite hard to bring to the big screen, particularly due to its dialogue-heavy nature. Nevertheless, Hui managed to gather an all-star team, including actors like Ma Sichun, Eddie Peng and Feye Yu, Dp Christopher Doyle and Ryuichi Sakamoto who handled the score. Let us see how the movie fares however.

“Love After Love” is screening at Asian Pop-up Cinema

Weilong is a young woman from Shanghai, who has come to Hong Kong to finish her education away from her strict father. Facing intense financial issues, however, she ends up at the gates of Madame Liang’s mansion, her father’s sister who was excommunicated from the family...

Who will be included for the special “In Memoriam” segment for Sunday night’s Oscars 2022 ceremony? For almost all other Academy Awards productions since the 1990s, producers typically select 40-50 people from the various branches. The 2021 segment had close to 100 people in a particularly fast-paced three minutes that was not very well-received since many of them were only on screen for a second or two.

SEECelebrity Deaths 2022: In Memoriam Gallery

Previous Oscar winners from acting categories passing away since last year’s late April ceremony are Olympia Dukakis, William Hurt and Sidney Poitier. Past acting nominees include Ned Beatty, Sally Kellerman and Dean Stockwell.

Almost all of the dozens on the list below were Academy members, previous nominees/winners or both.

Louie Anderson (actor)

Ed Asner (actor)

Ned Beatty (actor)

Marilyn Bergman (composer)

Val Bisoglio (actor)

Robert Blalack (visual effects)

Peter Bogdanovich (director)

David Brenner (editor)

Leslie Bricusse (composer...

Other contenders include biopic ‘Anita’, ‘Drifting’ and ‘Raging Fire’, the final thriller by the late Benny Chan.

Soi Cheang’s crime thriller Limbo leads the pack for the 40th Hong Kong Film Awards (Hkfa) with 14 nominations, as the event prepares to return as an in-person ceremony following last year’s cancellation as a result of the pandemic.

The black and white crime noir, which premiered in Berlinale Special in 2021, secured nods including best film, best director and for actors Lam Ka Tung[/link], Cya Liu and Fish Liew. The thriller centres on a veteran detective and rookie copy who team up to catch a serial killer.

Marking the third time Ann Hui adapts a novel by Eileen Chang (after “Love in a Fallen City” and “Eighteen Springs”), “Love After Love” is based on the short story “Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier”, a work that the director herself admitted was quite hard to bring to the big screen, particularly due to its dialogue-heavy nature. Nevertheless, Hui managed to gather an all-star team, including actors like Ma Sichun, Eddie Peng and Feye Yu, Dp Christopher Doyle and Ryuichi Sakamoto who handled the score. Let us see how the movie fares however.

“Love after Love” is available from Fortissimo Films

Weilong is a young woman from Shanghai, who has come to Hong Kong to finish her education away from her strict father. Facing intense financial issues, however, she ends up at the gates of Madame Liang’s mansion, her father’s sister who was excommunicated from the family when...

Emi Wada, the Japanese costumer designer who was an Oscar winner in 1985 for her work on the Akira Kurosaw classic Ran, has died at the age of 84.

Local media reported on Sunday that her family had confirmed she died on November 13, with a service held with close relations and friends. No cause of death has been provided.

Born in Kyoto and graduating from the Kyoto City University of Arts, Emi Wada would go on to have a remarkable career across multiple decades, designing costumes for both stage and screen.

She reached international prominence in 1985 when her work on Ran, the Akira Kurosawa film derived from King Lear and set in medieval Japan, won the costume design Oscar, the pic’s solitary win from its four nominations that year.

Wada would continue to work on Japanese films as well as branching out by taking roles on significant international productions, such as...

by Cláudio Alves

In 1986, at the 58th Academy Awards, Best Costume Design was the fourth category to be presented. The honor befell on Audrey Hepburn, who received a standing ovation upon her appearance. The shortlisted artists made up a prestigious lineup that included Oscar winners from years past, like Albert Wolsky and Milena Canonero. Considering Out of Africa's dominance over the night, one might have supposed its period fashions had the win in the bag. However, the Academy's long love affair with Japanese costuming bore fruit for a second time. Akira Kurosawa's last great epic, Ran, won its first and only Oscar, a merited recognition of Emi Wada's efforts. The designer had spent three years creating the thousands of pieces required by the bellicose narrative, using historically accurate techniques and custom textiles to produce a painterly masterpiece of color, motion, and striking silhouettes.

As we remember Wada's much-deserved triumph,...

Emi Wada, the Japanese costume designer who won an Oscar for her work in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, has died, Japanese media reports said Sunday. She was 84.

Wada died Nov. 13, the reports said, citing unidentified family sources and not giving the cause of death.

Wada was catapulted to stardom by the samurai costumes she created for the 1985 film Ran, a striking portrayal of bloody intrigue and betrayal inspired by William Shakespeare’s King Lear.

When accepting the award from the Academy in 1986, Wada held the man-shaped statue and said with a smile, “He doesn’t need my costuming....

Emi Wada, the Japanese costume designer who won an Oscar for her work in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, has died, Japanese media reports said Sunday. She was 84.

Wada died Nov. 13, the reports said, citing unidentified family sources and not giving the cause of death.

Wada was catapulted to stardom by the samurai costumes she created for the 1985 film Ran, a striking portrayal of bloody intrigue and betrayal inspired by William Shakespeare’s King Lear.

When accepting the award from the Academy in 1986, Wada held the man-shaped statue and said with a smile, “He doesn’t need my costuming....

Film Movement has acquired North American rights to “They Say Nothing Stays The Same,” the feature film debut of Joe Odagiri, a popular Japanese actor and musician.

The lushly lensed Japanese drama premiered at Venice and went on to play at Busan. Among its many accolades, the pic won best feature film at Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival in Turkey and was nominated for the Golden Star at El Gouana. It also played at the New York Asian Film Festival.

“They Say Nothing Stays The Same” will have a theatrical release in 2021, followed by a roll-out on digital and home entertainment platforms. The announcement was made by Michael Rosenberg, the president of Film Movement and Maki Shimizu of the Kinoshita Group.

Headlined by Akira Emoto, the film boasts a strong crew including Christopher Doyle, the cinematographer of “Paranoid Park”; Emi Wada, the costume designer of “Ran”; as well as Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan.

Mubi's series Ann Hui: Women Make the World is showing November 29 - December 31, 2020 in the United States.Ann Hui’s fascination with the late Eileen Chang is a story spanning four decades. Books by the revered Chinese writer had already served as inspiration for Hui’s 1984 Love in a Fallen City and her 1997 Eighteen Springs. In Love After Love, she summons Chang’s novella, “Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier”, to concoct a visually stunning, sprawling love story set in 1940s Hong Kong. At its center is Weilong (Ma Sichun), a Shanghainese student who’s left her family in hopes of continuing her education in Hong Kong. But money’s running out: as we first meet her, Weilong is tiptoeing inside the palatial villa owned by her estranged aunt Madame Liang (Faye Yu) to ask for help. Excommunicated from the family after she refused an arranged marriage, Madame Liang has...

Once more with rather less feeling: after “Love in a Fallen City” and “Eighteen Springs,” acclaimed Hong Kong director Ann Hui returns to the work of celebrated 20th century author Eileen Chang with “Love After Love,” a not-at-all-short adaptation of a Chang short story laboring under the English title “Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier.” Hui has assembled something of an all-star lineup, with the young leads played by rising actors Sandra Ma and Eddie Peng, the legendary Ryuichi Sakamoto on scoring duties and Dp Christopher Doyle returning to the scene, if not quite the time period, of his greatest Wong Kar-wai collaboration, “In the Mood For Love.” Despite all this promise,

Tracking the very gentle wising-up of a naive, wide-eyed ingenue over the course of a few eventful pre-war years, the film begins as Weilong (Ma), a Shanghainese student come to Hong Kong to finish her education away from her stifling father’s influence,...

Amsterdam and Beijing-based sales company is also stepping into Asian TV series sales with Horizon Tower.

Fortissimo Films is launching sales at the Efm on two Chinese titles – fantasy action film The Yin-Yang Master: Dream Of Eternity and arthouse drama Hot Soup, directed by Zhang Ming, whose 2018 The Pluto Moment premiered in Cannes Directors Fortnight.

The Amsterdam and Beijing-based sales company is also stepping into Asian TV series sales with Horizon Tower, produced by Tencent Penguin Pictures. All three titles are currently in post-production and scheduled for delivery later in 2020.

Directed by Guo Jingming (Tiny Times franchise), The Yin-Yang Master:...

Love After Love

Hong Kong’s Ann Hui will be ready with her latest feature in 2020, the preliminarily titled Love After Love (which was the title of the 1992 Diane Kurys film as well as the 2017 indie film from Russell Harbaugh). Hui employs a stellar crew on her latest project, lensed by Wong Kar-Wai alum Christopher Doyle, costume designer Emi Wada (of Kurosawa’s Ran and Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers) and art director Zhao Hai (who also worked on Hui’s 2014 title The Golden Era). Eddie Peng (who worked on Yimou’s The Great Wall) and Ma Sichun (recently seen in Lou Ye’s The Shadow Play) headline.…...

The festival has assembled a strong programme for local audiences.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival (Eiff), proudly proclaiming its status as the world’s longest continually-running film festival (running since 1947) wrapped on Sunday with the world premiere of Adrian Noble’s Mrs Lowry & Son, starring Timothy Spall and Vanessa Redgrave.

The festival opened 10 days earlier with the scrappily entertaining Boyz In The Wood by Scottish director Ninian Dorff, setting the tone for the fifth edition under artistic director Mark Adams.

An eclectic range of features was dotted with the UK premieres of significant homegrown films in 2019 so far – Joanna Hogg’s Sundance-winner The Souvenir,...

Sales company Fortissimo Films has picked up international rights to three of the movies that will unspool in competition over the next ten days at the Shanghai International Film Festival. All are world premieres.

Top feature director Zhang Yang makes an appearance with “The Sound of Dali,” a documentary that examines the natural beauty surrounding Dali in Yunnan Province.

Noted actress, Qin Hailu makes her directorial debut with “The Return.” The film is a drama about an old soldier living in Taiwan who would like to return to mainland China. But doing so would mean leaving behind his companion from the Red Envelope Club singers. The film stars Chang Feng, Ge Lei, and Lei Kesheng. It is set for a theatrical release in China through distribution Companies Hehe Pictures, White Horse Film, and Pie Film Distribution on Sept. 12, 2019.

“Vortex” is a Chinese crime action film produced by Cao Baoping (director...

Crew includes DoP Christopher Doyle, costume designer Emi Wada and art director Zhao Hai.

Ann Hui’s Love After Love (working title) has started shooting in China with Eddie Peng, Ma Sichun and Faye Yu heading the cast.

The crew includes cinematographer Christopher Doyle (In The Mood For Love), costume designer Emi Wada (Hero), art director Zhao Hai (The Golden Era), sound designer Tu Duu Chih (In The Mood For Love) and editor Eric Kwong Chi-Leung (Battle Of Wits).

Peng starred in Hui’s 2017 drama Our Time Will Come and action hit Operation Mekong, while Ma’s credits include Lou Ye’s The Shadow Play,...

Eddie Peng (“Operation Mekong” “The Hidden Man”) will head the cast of “Love After Love” the new film by Hong Kong’s Ann Hui. He plays opposite Ma Sichun.

The picture, which started shooting on Wednesday in China, is the story of a young woman from Shanghai who travels to Hong Kong, borrows money, and falls in with a rich crowd whose luxury lifestyle is beyond her means. The story is a reworking of an Eileen Chang short story “Aloeswood Incense” and is Hui’s third Chang adaptation after “Love in a Fallen City” and “Eighteen Springs.”

The film is backed by Alibaba Pictures, Hehe Pictures, Qingniao Pictures, Maxtime Culture, Black Ant Film and Dongtai Each Media. Fortissimo Films, which itself is backed by He He, handles international sales. The project was introduced to international distributors this week on the margins of the Cannes Film Festival.

A multi-award-winning crew included director of photography Christopher Doyle,...

“Candyman” director Bernard Rose has helmed a new Japanese film, “Samurai Marathon,” which HanWay Films will introduce to buyers in Berlin. The picture has an original score by Philip Glass and is produced by HanWay’s Jeremy Thomas.

Thomas has a pedigree in Japanese cinema, making films including “13 Assassins” and “Hara-Kiri.” He has again teamed with Toshiaki Nakazawa, who produced the Academy Award-winning “Departures,” on “Samurai Marathon.”

Having an English director on the Japanese-language project is an unusual twist for a samurai movie. Thomas told Variety that Rose gives a subtly adjusted take on the genre but remains true to the form.

“I suggested why don’t we try and make a samurai film with an English director, or one not so entrenched in the tradition of samurai, which is a very traditional form of Japanese cinema,” Thomas said, adding that Rose “was fascinated by the challenge.”

The story...

After the films from the area that won an Oscar, it is time to present the individual awards. As you will see, the winners are many since they have begun netting the golden statue since 1954.

Haing S. Ngor from Cambodia won in 1984 the Oscar for Actor in a Supporting Role, for “The Killing Fields”

Miyoshi Umeki from Japan won in 1957 the Oscar for Actress in a Supporting Role, for “Sayonara”.

Ang Lee from Taiwan won twice the Oscar for Best Director, in 2005 for “Brokeback Mountain” and in 2012 for Life of Pi. He was the first Asian to win in this particular category.

Peter Pau from Hong Kong won in 2000 the Oscar for Best Cinematography, for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”.

Timmy Yip from Hong Kong won in 2000 the Oscar for Best Art Direction, for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”.

Sanjo Wada from Japan won in 1954 the Oscar for Best Costume Design, for...

• Tian Zhuangzhuang is becoming the latest fifth generation filmmaker to make the leap into big scale action epics and he has tagged actioner starlet Maggie Q for the lead female role. The actress whose made the leap into English language fair over the past couple of years and most recently contributed to the love poem in New York, I Love You will take over for Tang Wei - who has been banned from, get this, China screens after her risqué turn in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. Variety reports that The Warrior and the Wolf is a combat epic about two warriors in ancient China and has already begun shooting in Xinjiang province, with an eye to a late 2009 release. Personally I've only caught three of the filmmakers' works - his most celebrated films in The Horse Thief  and The Blue Kite and a couple of years back the slow-paced Springtime in a Small Town.

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HONG KONG -- Crime thriller Infernal Affairs and Zhang Yimou's extravagant martial arts epic Hero finished neck-and-neck at the 22nd Hong Kong Film Awards by winning seven awards each. Affairs had been the favorite going into the awards with 16 nominations, while Hero was nominated in 14 categories. But Hero surprised pundits by taking seven awards within the first hour of the ceremony. Hero started the night off sweeping aside all competition in the categories for best cinematography (Christopher Doyle), best art direction (Huo Tingxiao, Yi Zhenzhou), best costume and make-up (Emi Wada), best action choreography (Tony Ching), best original film score (Tan Dun), best sound design (Tao Jing) and best visual effects (Ellen Poon, Murray Pope, Richard Schlein and Luke O'Brien). But it was Affairs that ended up with the night's most coveted awards. Andrew Lau Wai-keung, who produced and co-directed the hit movie, was visibly emotional as he accepted the bronze statuette for best director as well as best film.