Veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Tsui Hark (徿克) will make a rare foray into the horror genre and direct the third installment of the The Eye series, his wife said yesterday.
The Eye 3 will be about a woman haunted by visions after her husband is killed in a diving accident, Tsui's wife Shi Nansun (施南生) said.
Fellow Hong Kong director Peter Chan's (陳可辛) Applause Pictures, which produced the first two installments, will work on the latest Chinese-language film as well, said Shi, who is also the executive director of Tsui's production company.
PHOTO: AP
Shi did not reveal the cast of the movie.
The series began with The Eye, (見鬼) directed by twin brothers Oxide and Danny Pang. The film was about a young woman who sees the visions of a dead woman whose corneas she inherited in a transplant.
The remake rights to The Eye have been sold to Paramount Pictures, with Renee Zellweger reportedly cast in a starring role.
Tsui's repertoire is broad, encompassing animation, comedy and action. But he isn't known as a horror specialist.
Organizers of an evangelical summer camp for children featured in the documentary Jesus Camp are discontinuing the camp because of negative reaction sparked by the film and recent vandalism at the campsite in Devils Lake, North Dakota.
"We have decided to hold different activities in future," Pentecostal pastor and camp organizer Becky Fischer said.
Fischer was the central figure in Jesus Camp, a documentary about Pentecostal evangelical Christians, some of whom send their children to summer camp where they pray, "speak in tongues" and are urged to campaign against abortion.
In the months since the film was released the campground was vandalized and Fischer was inundated with negative e-mails and phone calls.
In one of the film's scenes, a cardboard effigy of US President George W. Bush is placed on stage before an assembly, so attendees can pray he make America "one nation under God."
The film has no voice-overs or narrative. Heidi Ewing, who directed the film with Rachel Grady, said the aim was to show a slice of American culture unfamiliar to many in America and abroad.
When it was released in May, a Variety magazine reviewer said, "Liberals might also be alarmed by images of seven-year-olds in camouflage face-paint performing spiritual war dances."
The film also features scenes with disgraced evangelical leader the Reverend Ted Haggard, who resigned as pastor of the 14,000 member New Life Church in Colorado Springs last week after a gay sex and drug scandal.
An adult book by best-selling children's author Daniel Handler about love — gay and straight — will be turned into a film, his agent said on Tuesday.
Handler, who uses the pseudonym Lemony Snicket for his mock-gothic award-winning children's books A Series of Unfortunate Events, will write the screenplay to Adverbs, a collection of 17 interrelated stories on the complexities of love.
The film rights to Adverbs have been sold to New York-based independent film company GreeneStreet Films, his agent Charlotte Sheedy said.
Sheedy would not say how much the deal was worth.
Borat star and creator Sacha Baron Cohen is being lined up to star in a remake of a French comedy, the movie industry trade press reported Tuesday.
Cohen, basking in the glow of a record box-office opening for Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan last weekend, has been penciled in for a part in a re-telling of Le Diner de Cons, to be titled Dinner with Schmucks.
The French film revolves around a Paris publisher who urges his friends to invite the most pathetic people possible to a weekly dinner party, Variety reported.
The adventures of politically incorrect Kazakh journalist Borat have scored a record-breaking hit at the US box-office, erasing doubts over whether America would "get" the satirical creation.
Borat raked in US$26.4 million in North America at the weekend, far exceeding industry expectations of around US$15 million.
The total is a US record for a film opening at under 1,000 locations, edging out Michael Moore's 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 which took US$23.9 million in its first three days.
Borat sees its sexist, anti-Semitic, mustachioed hero in a series of real-life situations alongside unwitting victims.
A Russian government agency said it would refuse to grant permission for Cohen's controversial comedy to be shown in the nation's theaters, its distributor said yesterday.
The Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography said the film could offend some viewers and contained material that "might seem disparaging in relation to certain ethnic groups and religions," according to Vadim Ivanov, theatrical sales director at Twentieth Century Fox CIS.
The agency informed the company in a letter that it would not grant the permission required to show the film in theaters.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist