If you don’t know Haruki Murakami, he’s one of Japan’s most popular and celebrated authors. His novels rarely develop in a straightforward manner and should give any director more leeway in translating to film. Norwegian Wood talks about a college student’s coming of age with two different women. Anh Hung Tran will direct. He filmed Cyclo, a well-received film in the mid 1990s His most recent film is I Come with the Night. That one stars Josh Barnett, Byung-hun Lee and Takuya Kimura. It looks pretty slick and the trailer’s more fascinating than pictures of Murakami, so the promo’s above.
Big dance competition taking place in Vegas right now. It just started on July 30th and goes until August 3rd. Hip Hop International brings together dancers of all ages from all countries to Sin City. You can expect more poppin’ than a 60 year old’s arthritic joints. Last year’s adult division saw Kaba Modern finish second. I guess some things never change.
Anyway, look forward to the world competition starting Friday. Not sure which countries will rep at the battles, but it’s sure to be off the chain. Word to your mutha!
When noted Korean group Fly to the Sky, performed in Northern California recently, Mayor Gavin Newsom made July 27th “Fly to the Sky Day”. Other people just called it Sunday. Anyway, if you saw the concert flyer, it was advertising the show as in San Francisco. In reality, they played in Hayward. That’s like advertising in Las Vegas and ending up in Henderson. Saying San Francisco just sounds better to the people back home.
She’s baaack! U go girl. Lee Hyori has her new album out and it’s topping the charts. Is it good? Well, that you can decide for yourself. She recently performed on Music Bank and she’s even tried to incorporate stepping into her routine. If she had only included the clapping and stomping, i.e. everything that makes stepping unique, it would have been more impressive. Plus, during “U-Go-Girl”, she has men dressed as tiny boy sailors prancing around. Well, umm…okay. They would seem to fit in more with gay disco, but who am I to judge.
While everyone was running out like little lemmings to see The Dark Knight, I was locked in my basement rewatching Fellini movies. Lemmings I say! Indecipherable Italian movies is art at its best. Are art at the best? Anyway…
According to Variety, The Good, the Bad, the Weird rang up the second fastest ticket sales ever at the Korean box office. It also beat outIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as the highest grossing movie this year in Korea. Take that Old Man Jones.
The movie is an ode to spaghetti westerns and was also recently picked up by IFC Films. IFC has quite the hungering for Asian films, as they also picked up Ping Pong Playa. So, not only do they have Transamerica, Y Mama Tu Tambien and Ping Pong Playa in their stable, they’ve added this cowboy movie. Now, you really don’t want to know where they put the ping pong balls.
So many films get lost in the abyss without distribution. Even when you get someone to spread the word, grabbing attention is hard to do. Thankfully, Ping Pong Playa, a solid comedy that’s been out for a year now, was picked up by IFC Films. Read more about it here. According to Hyphen Blog, they’ve also released Transamerica and Y Mama Tu Tambien. Somewhere, Ping Pong Playa fits in with transsexuals and Mexican threesomes. Wait for the special edition dvd. They’ll show you where they put the ping pong ball.
Big dance competition taking place in Vegas right now. It just started on July 30th and goes until August 3rd. 
While everyone was running out like little lemmings to see The Dark Knight, I was locked in my basement rewatching Fellini movies. Lemmings I say! Indecipherable Italian movies is art at its best. Are art at the best? Anyway…
