East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film

by Leon Hunt, Leung Wing-Fai, Julian Ross (Series Editor)

Cinemas from East Asia are among the most exciting and influential in the world. They are attracting popular and critical attention on a global scale, with films from the region circulating as art house, cult, blockbuster and 'extreme' cinema, or as Hollywood remakes. This book explores developments in the global popularity of East Asian cinema, from Chinese martial arts, through Japanese horror, to the burgeoning new Korean cinema, with particular emphasis on crossovers, remakes, hybrids and co-productions. It examines changing cinematic traditions in Asia alongside the 'Asianisation' of western cinema. It explores the dialogue not only between 'East' and 'West', but between different cinemas in the Asia Pacific. What do these trends mean for global cinema? How are co-productions and crossover films changing the nature of Hollywood and East Asian cinemas? The book includes in-depth studies of Park Chan-wook, 'Infernal Affairs', 'Seven Samurai', and 'Princess Mononoke'.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2008

Reviews

[S.P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of essays about the east Asian film industry. There is a lot of talk of influences back and forth between the Asian countries 'national' film industries and between them and the Hollywood machine, which is interesting, but ultimately depressing as it suggests that the individual character of the nations (if indeed if it ever really existed in film) will be subsumed into a single collection of narratives continuously reborn and re-imagined, with culturally complications airbrushed out to make way for a wider audience. I for one, want to keep them all in their separate boxes so I can enjoy something 'different' once in the while (or avoid Hollywood if I am honest).

Unfortunately the book is a product of a so-called academic industry that tries to justify itself by bouncing around the words 'juxtaposed' and 'contextualised' far too much and thinking that it has some sort of priori knowledge of the world – it doesn't. I think a proper historians, anthropologists, or even sociologists view would have be more enlightening than the pretentious meaningless waffle of a bunch of people who think you can make a living out of watching films and repeating film industry marketing bollocks in 'essay' form. DVD commentary, you understand is a valuable source of extra-primary text!

Worse, and I concede this may reflect reality, the marketing and 'business' aspects of the film-making really stand out in the essays, and spoils, for me, a couple of the films discussed here that I admire greatly – I don't really want to be told that the film that I think of a a work of genius, is in fact a product of focus groups, intense media bangwagonning, and the overwhelming power of a few media companies who have decided that 'this is the film you will watch this year'... I want to at least think that I am able to discern my own taste and am not there to be manipulated by tried and test formulae.

It's my own fault of course. I will endeavour not to read books about films any more. I just want to experience the film, decide for myself if I like it, and pretend that films are made as art, not to line the pockets of mega-business and used by 'film' academia as a means to confuse media students with content-free sophistry.

The book actually gets 3 stars, but one of those is lost because I didn't like being told I only like Princess Mononoke because it was a daihitto.

[Rain Mirage · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a mixed bag. Some of the essays, such as the one on Suriyothai, and the ones focusing on Hong Kong cinema, are interesting and thoughtful. Others, like the exploration of the term 'daihitto', take granular information too far and make sweeping gestures at an entire country's philosophy based on a single movie ad. Overall there is more good than bad, so I'd give it three and a half stars if I could.