2007 Movie Reviews, Korean Movies, Movies |

Name: Shin-il Kang (강신일)
DOB: October 9, 1960
POB: South Korea
Height:

Users Rating: 10 (3 votes)

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Movies:
Public Enemy 3 | Gonggongui jeog 3 (2008)
Black House | Geomeun jip (2007)
Maundy Thursday | Urideul-ui haengbok-han shigan (2006)
Hanbando (2006) – Kim Yu-sik
Love Phobia | Domabaem (2006)
Mr. Socrates (2005)
Another Public Enemy | Gonggongui jeog 2 (2005) – Shin-il Kim
Some (2004) – Chief Oh
Silmido (2003)
The Legend of Evil Lake | Cheonnyeon ho (2003) – Minister Mun-su
Public Enemy | Gonggongui jeog (2002) – Chief Investigator Eom
Jail Breakers | Gwangbokjeol teuksa (2002)
Ejaesuuinan (1999)

Actors, Korean Actors |

Movie Review: The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia | Zukan ni nottenai mushi
Release Date: June 23, 2007
Country: Japan
Director: Satoshi Miki
Starring: Yusuke Iseya, Suzuki Matsuo, Rinko Kikuchi
Runtime: 103 Min
Editor Rating: 4.5

Users Rating: 6 (8 votes)

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Satoshi Miki has a signature style of making trippy movies, where the storyline takes a backseat to individual moments of slapstick absurdity. This probably goes back to Satoshi Miki’s earlier career in television where he created some of the zaniest Japanese television shows out there (”The Fountain of Trivia” & “The Life of a Laughing Dog”). His latest film “The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia” continues his trademark style and actually features an even more discombobulated storyline than usual, emphasizing individual moments of zany fun – in theory anyways.

Yusuke Iseya (Memories of Matsuko/Arch Angels) stars in “The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia” as a writer for the “Black Book” monthly. His next assignment is to uncover the mystery behind “Deathfix.” What is “Deathfix” you may ask? As Yuseke Iseya discovers, its a chemical emitted by rare insects that allows people to visit death and then come back to life.

On his way to uncover the mystery behind “Deathfix,” Iseya first enlists the help of his hippy pal “Endo” (Suzuki Matsuo) and then they pick up various stragglers along the way. Most noteworthy would be the S&M performer Sayoko (Rinko Kikuchi), a Yakuza fellow (Ryo Iwamatsu) and his androgynous assistant (Eri Fuse). Eventually Iseya and his motley crew uncovers the “Deathfix,” but get a little more than they bargained for.

The various slapstick moments in “Insects …” contains plenty of low-brow humor stuff that just wasn’t funny, either in its own right or as a collective whole. Fart gags, puke gags, and Yoshiyuki Morishita (!!!) running naked through the streets were moments I could have lived without. I will say the ending of the puke gag was creative – a Japanese pancake nonetheless. Also when they picked Rinko Kikuchi’s Sayoko character, the girl was shown to be suicidal and had many scars on her wrist as proof. Another semi-creative gag was then let loose, involving a radish and Sayoko’s course scars.

While Satoshi Miki’s “In The Pool” had genuine moments of fun and “Turtles Swim Faster Than Expected” had bucket loads of charm, “The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia” has none of these traits and in its place offers not-so funny gags and a plethora of weird for just weirdness sake moments. The movie was probably a lot of fun for the staff to make , but unfortunately that didn’t correlate to a fun movie to watch (e.g. Yusuke Iseya spent the entire movie with his mouth opened and giving the same quizzical “ehhh??” expression). In fact, if you ever sat with a bunch of stoned strangers and listened to their nonsensical jokes, while you were straight as an arrow, then that’s the feeling you will likely get again while watching “The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia” or you may just to think to yourself “eehhhh???”

Cast:
Yusuke Iseya – Na
Suzuki Matsuo – Endo
Rinko Kikuchi – Sayoko

Ryo Iwamatsu
Eri Fuse
Miki Mizuno
Takeo Gozu – Homeless
Hairi Katagiri
Yutaka Matsushige – Majima
Noboru Mitani
Toshifumi Muramatsu
Takashi Sasano
Eiko Shinya
Sion Sono
Keiko Takahashi
Hana Takamizawa – Police woman
Tetsushi Tanaka
Tsugumi
Hiroyuki Watanabe

If you like this movie you may enjoy: Turtles Swim Faster Than Expected, Funky Forest: The First Contact

2007 Movie Reviews, Japanese Movies, Movies |

Name: Ryo Iwamatsu (いわまつ りょう)
DOB: March 26, 1952
POB: Nagasaki, Japan
Height:

(No Ratings Yet)

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Movies:
Tenten (2007)
The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia | Zukan ni nottenai mushi (2007)
Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad (2007)
Tonari machi senso (2007) – Tajiri
Faces of a Fig Tree | Ichijiku no kao (2006)
Damejin (2006)
A Cheerful Gang Turns the Earth | Yoki na gyangu ga chikyu o mawasu (2006)
Turtles Swim Faster Than Expected | Kame wa igai to hayaku oyogu (2005) (as Ryo Iwamatsu) – Shizuo Kugitani
Into a Dream | Yume no naka e (2005)
In the Pool | In za puru (2005) (as Ryo Iwamatsu) – General Manager Maenishi
Yaji and Kita: The Midnight Pilgrims | Mayonaka no Yaji-san Kita-san (2005) – The Foreman
Cutie Honey (2004) – Goki
Shinibana (2004)
Zebraman (2004) – Kanda
Kisarazu Cats Eye: Nihon Series (2003) – Ani, 30 years later
Hush! (2001) – Gynecologist
Coquille (1999) – Naoyuki Goda
Samurai Fiction | SF: Episode One (1998) – Muroto
Mind Game (1998)
The Five | Gonin (1995) – Man at the toilet
Quiet Days of Firemen | 119 (1994)
A Night in Nude | Nudo no yoru (1993) – Shimura
Sky Cannot Be This Blue | Sora ga konnani aoi wake ga nai (1993) – Banker
Ijo no hitobito: Densetsuno nijino sankyodai (1993)
Hikinige Family (1992)
Original Sin | Shinde mo ii (1992)
Beijing Watermelon | Pekin no suika (1989) – Policeman

Actors, Japanese Actors |

Name: Eri Fuse (ふせえり)
DOB: September 22, 1962
POB: Tokyo, Japan
Height: 157cm

(No Ratings Yet)

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Movies:
Tenten (2007)
The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia | Zukan ni nottenai mushi (2007)
Damejin (2006)
Midnight Sun | Taiyo no uta (2006)
Turtles Swim Faster Than Expected | Kame wa igai to hayaku oyogu (2005) – Etsuko Kugitani
In the Pool | In za puru (2005) – Editor-in-Chief
Hana and Alice | Hana to Arisu (2004)
Trick: The Movie (2002)
Shinsei toire no Hanako-san (1998)
Boiling Point | 3-4 x jûgatsu (1990) – Fumiyo
Fancy Dance (1989) – Masuho’s colleague

Actresses, Japanese Actresses |

Name: Satoshi Miki (三木聡)
DOB: August 9, 1961
POB: Japan

(No Ratings Yet)

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Director:
Tenten (2007)
The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia | Zukan ni nottenai mushi (2007)
Damejin (2006)
Jiko keisatsu (2006) (mini) TV mini-series
Turtles Swim Faster Than Expected | Kame wa igai to hayaku oyogu (2005)
In the Pool | In za puru (2005)

Writer:
Tenten (2007)
The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia | Zukan ni nottenai mushi (2007)
Damejin (2006)
Jiko keisatsu (2006) (mini) TV mini-series
Turtles Swim Faster Than Expected | Kame wa igai to hayaku oyogu (2005)
In the Pool | In za puru (2005)

Directors |

Name: Rinko Kikuchi (菊池凛子)
DOB: January 6, 1981
POB: Kanagawa, Japan
Height: 168cm

Users Rating: 7.75 (4 votes)

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Movies:
The Brothers Bloom (2008) – Bang Bang
Koi suru madori (2007)
Genius Party (2007) (voice)
The Insects Unlisted in the Encyclopedia | Zukan ni nottenai mushi (2007)
Arch Angels | Warau Mikaeru (2006) – Nobuko Sakurai
Babel (2006) – Chieko
Funky Forest: The First Contact | Naisu no mori: The First Contact (2005)
Portrait of the Wind | Taga tameni (2005)
The Reason | Riyu (2004)
Survive Style 5+ (2004)
69 (2004)
The Taste of Tea | Cha no aji (2004) (as Yuriko Kikuchi)
Tori (2004)
Mike Yokohama: A Forest with No Name | Shiritsu tantei Hama Maiku: Namae no nai mori (2002) – Number 51
Drug (2001) – Mai
Hole in the Sky | Sora no ana (2001) (as Yuriko Kikuchi) – Taeko
By Player | Sanmon yakusha (2000)
Will to Live | Ikitai (1999)

Actresses, Japanese Actresses |

Movie Review: Lost in Beijing | Ping guo | 迷失北京
Release Date: 2007
Country: China
Director: Yu Li
Starring: Tony Leung Ka Fai, Bingbing Fan, Elaine Jin, Dawei Tong
Runtime: 112 Min
Editor Rating: 7.5

Users Rating: 7.77 (26 votes)

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The rapid growth of Beijing into a modern economic powerhouse sets the backdrop for the black comedy “Lost in Beijing.” While the city goes through its expansive growth, multitudes of problems arise, none more so apparent than the gap between the haves and have nots.

Lin Dong is part of the nouveau-riche. He drives a Mercedes, wears a Rolex and owns the Gold Basin Foot Massage Palace. One of his more sought after employees is Ping Guo. She’s an immigrant that moved to Beijing with her husband An Kun to make a new life for themselves. They rent a small dilapidated apartment, while Ping Guo works as a masseuse and her husband works as window washer. Then one day, the two worlds collide when Lin Dong walks into a room to finds a drunken Ping Guo passed out on a couch. Lin Dong rather clumsily attempts to rape Ping Guo. That is until Ping Guo looks out the window and sees her husband, An Kun looking in the room.

An Kun then tries to exploit the situation by asking for $20,000 from Lin Dong. Lin Dong has none of it and throws him out. Ping Guo then becomes pregnant and things turn far more dramatic. Ling Dong’s wife, Mei Wei, happens to be barren and unable to have children. Lin Dong offers to pay An Kun $100,000 and adopt the child, if the child turns out to be his.

When “Lost in Beijing” began its film festival appearances earlier this year, the movie faced the scorn of Chinese censors. Although the sex scenes in “Lost in Beijing” were mild by Western standards, the Chinese censors demanded that 10 minutes of the film be excised. Eventually the filmmakers won over the censors and the movie was shown in its original state. This is obviously a good thing as the sex scenes were integral to the story itself. What probably raised the ire of the censors more than the sex scenes were the harsh vantage points given to the city of itself. Corruption, poverty, and pollution were all shown in various forms – with the city’s smog being tangible from the film.

The film’s strength lies squarely with its impressive cast. Bingbing Fan, Elaine Jin, Tony Leung Ka Fai, and Dawei Tong all gave spot-on performances, able to turn on a dime from absurdist moments to bleaker passages. Even the rape scene stood out for the odd moment when Tony Leung Ka Fai’s Ling Dong confronted Dawei Tong’s An Kun through a window high above the city.

The script was solid as well, but not without blemishes. The sudden re-appearance in the second half of Xiao Mei (Meihuizi Zeng) felt jarring and quite frankly, unneeded. The transformation of the main characters in the second half were also done in a way where it was difficult to understand why they felt the way they did. In particular Ping Guo’s shift in allegiance lacked clarity. Was it for love, money or maternal instincts?

Having traveled to China this past summer, what was shown in “Lost in Beijing” felt authentic and representative of the things I saw there. The city has an explosive dichotomy of rich and poor, urban and rural, young and old, and Maoist understandings surrounded by materialistic icons like Mercedes Benzs, Louis Vuitton bags and Rolex watches. If you want a glimpse of that then you should watch “Lost in Beijing”. A solid story is there and some very impressive performances as well.

Cast:
Fan Bing Bing – Ping Guo
Jin Elaine – Weng Mei
Tony Leung Ka Fai – Lin Dong
Tong Dawei – An Kun
Meihuizi Zeng – Xiao Mei

If you like this movie you may enjoy: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Whispers and Moans

2007 Movie Reviews, Chinese Movies |

Mozilla’s Firefox 3 Beta 2 has been released and it has a lot to offer! Over 30 memory leak fixes, new graphics and font handling (Gecko 1.9), improved download manager, resumable downloads, location bar on steroids, improved places organizer, improved booksmarks folder and much more. Furthermore Firefox 3 Beta 2 is just way ffffaaaasssttttt. As an added bonus for Linux users, the Linux version now uses the native GTK theme. Firefox 3 Beta 2 can be downloaded here (for Windows, OS X, and Linux).

What’s New in Firefox 3

More Secure
* One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. In later versions, Extended Validation SSL certificate information will be displayed.
* Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. You can test it here (note: our blacklist of malware sites is not yet activated).
* New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. You can test it here.
* New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate.
* Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
* Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
* Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
* Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
* [Improved in Beta 2!] Effective top-level domain (eTLD) service better restricts cookies and other restricted content to a single domain.
* [Improved in Beta 2!] Better protection against cross-site JSON data leaks.

Easier to Use
* Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
* Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
* [Improved in Beta 2!] New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and displays where a file came from.
* Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
* Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images.
* Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
* Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
* Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
* Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
* Text selection improvements: multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in “word-by-word” mode; triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
* Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
* Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
* Integration with Vista: Firefox’s menus now display using Vista’s native theme.
* Integration with the Mac: Firefox now uses the OS X spellchecker and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.
* [Improved in Beta 2!] Integration with Linux: Firefox’s default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.

More Personal
* Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
* Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
* [Improved in Beta 2!] Location bar & auto-complete: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you’re looking for.
* [Improved in Beta 2!] Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar.
* [Improved in Beta 2!] Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.
* [Improved in Beta 2!] Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
* Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

Improved Platform for Developers
* New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
* Native Web page forms: HTML forms on Web pages now have a native look and feel on Mac OS X and Linux (Gnome) desktops.
* Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.
* Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users).
* A more complete overview of Firefox 3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.

Improved Performance
* Reliability: A user’s bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.
* [Improved in Beta 2!] Speed: Major architectural changes (such as the move to Cairo and a rewrite to how reflowing a page layout works) put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in Beta 2, and will show further gains in future Beta releases.
* [Improved in Beta 2!] Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation. Beta 2 includes over 30 more memory leak fixes, and 11 improvements to our memory footprint.

News, Tech News |

Name: YosiYosi Arakawa (荒川良々)
DOB: January 18, 1974
POB: Saga, Japan
Height:

Users Rating: 5.5 (2 votes)

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