Starting with the Visual Communications’ Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, the latest collaboration between director John Woo and actor Chow Yun Fat is making the festival rounds. However, it is not the medium that one might expect. You see, this incarnation is not a film per se- “Stranglehold” is actually a video game. But in a unique marketing campaign, Midway Games is making Stranglehold’s presence known via film festivals and a short film contest. By sponsoring the VC Fil...
Closing night for the 23rd Annual VC Filmfest: The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival ended with a bang, chop, and flying kick with Charlie Nguyen’s crowd pleasing film “The Rebel (Dong Mau Ahn Hung) on Thursday. The VC Filmfest is part of the Los Angeles based Visual Communications, “a year round, full service media art center with a mission to promote intercultural understanding through the education , presentation, preservation, and support of Asian Pacific American Media” (from...
Where it once started in San Francisco and blossomed in Park City, director Justin Lin has returned to his roots in more ways than one. The filmmaker, who launched his career with the independent film “Better Luck Tomorrow”, continued with studio products “Annapolis” and the box office hit “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”, has come full circle with his latest product, an independent featured called “Finishing the Game”. Having premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, it...
“Paradise Now, which was featured at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, plays tonight at the University of California at Santa Barbara.Over the past few months, Hany Abu-Assad’s film, “Paradise Now” has been honored and excoriated simultaneously. While being nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category, winning several other awards, and enjoying critical acclaim, the controversial Palestinian film about the last 48 hours of two would-be suicide b...
Despite the extra burden of responsibility of making a film in his native South Africa, filmmaker Gavin Hood has happily enjoyed riding the wave of film festivals to success. This has resulted in Hood’s film “Tsotsi” being nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at next month’s Academy Awards. The Oscars will held in Hollywood on March 5. Hood was recently on the South Coast to participate in the director’s panel at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Held ...
Santa Barbara- With several of his former students on hand, the late acting coach Roy London was feted during the Santa Barbara Film Festival showing of "Special Thanks to Roy London". Actors Sharon Stone, Gary Shandling, Julie Warner (who is also a producer of the film), Elizabeth Berkley, Arye Gross, and Rhonda Aldrich joined producers Tim Healy, Karen Montgomery, and director/producer at Santa Barbara's Victoria Hall Theatre on Saturday to screen the film. Afterward, film introducer Stone ...
