Yoichi Sai's Quill

Just saw the wonderfull Quill at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, the life of a see-eye guide dog, from the pov of the dog. A sweet, sweet film. Now I feel like getting a puppy! Here's the imdb listing. Thanks for the tickets C!

The director, Yoichi Sai, is a fairly famous in Japan. Have to check out some of his other work althought it's quite different. he is more known for his "excursions into society’s underworld".

The film did very well in Hong Kong and Japan. The Film's Offical web site is in Japanese only, but you can see why there wasn't a dry eye in the crowd.

House Of Flying Daggers Press Conference

After the Toronto International Film Fest presentation of "House Of Flying Daggers" was the Press Conference, on Saturday, September 11, 2004, with the director Zhang Yimou and actress Zhang Ziyi.

I've mentioned "House" and "Hero" prevoiusly here and the TIFF here

(as an aside, my wife's niece was acting a a translator to the director)

Stan's Space and Domino Bloging

Welcome to the Lotus/ Domino Blog-osphere Stan Rogers a.k.a. Stan's Space, a frequent commenter on other Domino Blogs - like Mike Golding's NotesTips and Jake Howlett's CodeStore as well as the Lotus forums at Notes.net - Stan has taken the plunge from his seat in the Greater Toronto Area. I'm looking forward to his contributions (and comment on them).

Also the mothership of IBM has a piece on Domino blogging which does a decent summary with a list of resources, but they missed me and my own RSS reader for Notes!

More Core Wars

Nikkei Journal is reporting that Toshiba president Tadashi Okamura confirms that the CELL chip is nearing completion.

Sony said graphics workstations using the CELL could be available as soon as this winter.

Even if you figure late Winter (march-ish 2005) that's way sooner than I hoped.

Also Sun's Jonathan Schwartz shows off a Project Niagara chip: 8 cores * 4 threads per core = a 32-way computer. On a chip.

from the SlashDork dross I found this : Sony Cell CPU to deliver two teraflops in 64-core config from last November.

All this as a follow up on Dual Core Wars and The Other Shoe Droping.

Interesting times....

Saturday Night Hong Kong Films in Toronto (Omini TV )

If you love Chinese Films and get Omini TV in the Toronto Area, do yourself a favour and watch or record their Saturday at 9pm movies (allmost always with english sub titles). I just discovered the schedule for the rest of this year here.

Unfortunately they only review past movies (huh?), but LoveHK Film covers most of them. I'll add links as time permits.

September 4	Love For All Seasons	Sammi Cheng, Louis Koo. Tiger has a thing for girls called Susan.  silly but fun
September 11	Sound Of Colours	Sweet romantic Comdey.      Miriam Yeung Chin-Wah
September 18	Fantasia	very very silly.
September 25	Magic Kitchen	a sweet, if light, film.  Sammi Cheng  was her yummy self, and Elicia thought Jerry Yen (Yin Sing-Yuk) was very cute too!  To be added to the secret Sammi cheng dvd library.
October 2	Protege La Rose Noire	More Twins + Ekin Cheng silliness?
October 9	Love For All Seasons Herbal Tea	Although they have not update their web site, the local tv guide shows that instead of re-showing L4AS (see sept 4th ) it's this unusual , but likable, romantic comedy starting Candy Lo Hau-Yam and Jordan Chan Siu-Chun
October 16	Sex and the Beauties	Comedy masquerading as the Hong Kong version of "Sex in the City"?
October 23	Elixir of Love	Miriam Yeung Chin-Wah
October 23	Itchy Heart	Sean Lau Ching-Wan  Alert!!!
November 6	Life Express
November 13	Papa Loves You	1/2 Twin effect?
November 20	Love on the Rocks	Louis Koo Tin-Lok, Gigi Leung Wing-Kei, Charlene Choi Cheuk-Yin
November 27	The Foliage
December 4	Astonishing	No review on LoveHongKong Film (Astonishing!!)
December 11	Moving Targets	2004 film update of the popular Police Cadet serials from the 1980s
December 18	Dating Death	Horror, director Herman Yau Lai-To
December 25	Driving Miss Wealthy	Sean Lau Ching-Wan, Gigi Leung Wing-Kei • Driving Miss Wealthy goes by the Cantonese title Juet Sai Ho Bun

Hong Kong Film Festival, Toronto 2004

(Here you are Stella!) From the Arts NoteBook in todays Globe and Mail, I see that a Hong Kong Film Festival is showing at the ROM Theatre of the Royal Ontario Museum from OCT 2nd to 8th, 2004.

All films, subtitled in English, are being shown in the Calgary International Film Festival Sept 24 to Oct 2, before comming to Toronto.

Info for all this is carefully guarded on ROM's web site, in case someone actually found out, but I've braved the nav links and found the info buried treasure like on the ROM's calander of events for Oct

prices are very good: Tickets: Adult: $6.50 Senior/Student: $5.00 ROM Mbr: $5.00.

I've screen scrapped much of the stuff from the ROM site, reformed it and added reviews, but double check since "Information Subject to Change".

Box Office: ROM Information Desk www.rom.on.ca 416-586-8000
Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto www.cccgt.org 416-292-9293

Oct 2/04

Magic Kitchen (4:00 pm)
Director: Lee Chi-ngai;Cast: Sammi Cheng, Jerry Jan, Andy Lau

Chef/owner of a restaurant has successful career and empty love life. All changes when she meets an old flame during her appearance on the popular Japanese TV show “The Iron Chef”.

Review by LoveHKFilm.com. I am such a sucker for Sammi Cheng.

Floating Island (7:00 pm)
Director: Carol Lai; Cast: Karena Lam, Elkin Cheng, Liu Ye

Haunted by the death of her lover, heroine struggles to accept a new life in this touching romance.

I finally found a review of this movie with the english name "The Floating Landscape" as reviewed by LoveHKFilm.com.

Oct 3/04 Golden Chicken 2 (7:00 pm)
Director:Samson Chiu; Cast: Sandra Ng Kwan-yu, Leon Lai Ming,Kacky Cheung

82 yr old wise man meets teenager who is abusing the “Forget Love Pill” and schools him to find happiness and good memories.

It's worth noting that this is a sequal to the award winning Golden Chicken from 2002. Ask your Cantonese speaking friends to explain what "chicken" is slang for.

Oct 4/04 Running on Karma (7:00 pm)

Director: Johnny To, Wai Ka-fai; Cast: Andy Lau, Cecilia Cheung

Bodybuilder, stripper and former Buddhist monk with psychic powers helps rookie cop track down dangerous criminals.

Review by LoveHKFilm.com. Looks better than you would expect.

Oct 5/04 Lost in Time (7:00 pm)

Director: Derek Yee Tung-sing; Cast: Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi, Sean Lau Ching-wan, Louis Koo Tin-lok.

Heart wrenching drama about star crossed lovers.

Review by LoveHKFilm.com. I've see this one and it's very good (but now even more afraid of HK mini-buses, a.k.a. “suicide buses”!) Sean Lau Ching-wan is Elicia's Favourite (after me), and is very good.

Oct 6/04 Heroic Duo (7:00 pm)

Director: Benny Chan Muk-sing; Cast: Ekin Cheng Yee-kin, Leon Lai Ming,Francis Ng Chun-yu, Karena Lam

Member of elite G4 force enlists the assistance of psychologist to track down stolen gems in this cat and mouse thriller.

Reviewed by LoveHKFilm.com

Oct 7/04 Elixir of Love (7:00 pm)

Director: Riley Yip;Cast: Richie Ren Yan-qi, Miriam Yeung, Kenny Bee

11th Century storybook princess plagued by unfortunate curse is rescued from isolation by unexpected suitor who becomes her royal consort.

Reviewed by LoveHKFilm.com

Oct 8/04 20:30:40 (7:00 pm)

Director: Sylvia Chang; Cast: Sylvia Chang, Rene Liu, Angelina Lee

Tale of three women ages 20, 30, 40 are woven into a single story as they tackle the complexity of modern relationships.

Reviewed by LoveHKFilm.com

Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle

Had it's World premiere in Toronto last night at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2004

Looks very promising. Anti-it-Cool has 2 reviews: 1 & 2

Here the offical Movie website : http://www.kungfuhustle.com/

Since Kung Fu Hustle is not being release until Dec 23 (2004), Big White Guy is going to have to wait for this one.

Update : So the second showing (the next day on Sept 16th) did not happend. Boing Boing reports that Sony pulled it due to concerns about digital cameras etc, not because the "print was damaged in the first screening".


Another update : came across this story

Hong Kong king of comedy Stephen Chow's latest epic, Kung Fu Hustle, or Gong Fu in Chinese, hit the big screen at the Toronto Film Festival Tuesday night, China Radio International reported Wednesday.

But the veteran film star, who promised to show up at the grand world premiere, couldn't make it.

So the film's two leading actresses, Yuan Qiu and Eva Wong, did the honors instead.

Stephen Chow and Spiderman's sound effects man were reportedly busy with the final editing of Kung Fu Hustle's sound effects.

"Spiderman's sound effects man"? That's the guy who sings "SpiderMan, SipderMan, does whatever a spider can" right?

Stephen Chow is best known in North America for Shaolin Soccer, which showed up in movie preview 2 years before finally making it to screens here in Aug 2003 in a dubbed version.