Candy Rain (2008)

CANDY RAIN
Four intimate, lyrical tales exploring the range of women loving women in contemporary Taiwan. In the first episode, a young girl escapes a broken love for the uncertainties of friendship (and more) in Taipei. In the second, another girl, seeking her ideal, finds herself involved with a wealthy woman instead. Yet another story follows a heroine trying to find a balance between marriage and separation from her true love. And the final story takes us into a dynamic and difficult foursome anchored by singer-actress Karena Lam. A rich, bittersweet spectrum of love and loss.
Based on true stories.





http://www.candyrain.com.tw/

REC 71%: Kids [2008]

Asato(Teppei Koike) who resembles an ordinary youth, actually has an unknown ability, he can take others' injury and pain , but the price will be its pain will shift to his own body.

Takeo(Hiroshi Tamaki) who discovered Asato’s ability to shift things brought him to a game shop to test his ability. While Takeo was inside the shop, Asato was grabbed by a few thugs to rob him of his money. Takeo had a sscuffle with the thugs and injured his hand. With gratitude, Asato’s healed Takeo’s hand, thus taking the pain and injuries onto himself.

Thus , this is the beginning of a strange friendship…..

TRAILER

DOC: Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (2008)

Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, is a documentary about the late avant-garde cellist and disco producer featuring appearances by, amongst others, Allen Ginsberg(archive footage), Phillip Glass, Jens Lekman.



Official site:
www.arthurrussellmovie.com

An interview with the director Matt Wolf and the people @Fecal Face, can be read here.

More about Arthur Rusell @Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_L

Grace Jones - Corporate Cannibal

dir. Nick Hooker

REC 67%: Mezon do Himiko [2005]

Director: Isshin Inudou

How a culture deals with its aging population and how it relates to its gay community are two measures of its humanity. The latest film from Isshin Inudo, who specializes in offbeat comedy, asks how Japan's aging homosexuals will fare, and the answer is, with the same outsider resilience that got them through life thus far. The House of Himiko is a beautiful seaside rest home for gay men, founded by the former proprietor of a legendary Ginza transvestite bar. Moving slowly through his domain, the stone-faced aging beauty in flowing kimono faces death from cancer. A devoted young assistant, Haruhiko, tricks Himiko's long-estranged daughter Saori into working at the home, which is populated by everyone from gentlemen chess players who spent a lifetime hiding their sexuality to cross-dressers whose burden of female identity has driven them “flaming.” Mezon do Himiko is a movie about the desire to love, and to die, as one chooses.

REC 70%: Vital [2004]

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto [Nightmare dective, Nightmare detective 2, Welcome to the Quiet Room, A Snake of June, Ichi the Killer, Blind Beast vs. Dwarf, Tetsuo, the Iron Man]

Director Shinya Tsukamoto delivers an effectively haunting tale with VITAL, a macabre story in which life, death, love, and memory all interweave. When Hiroshi Takagi comes home following an auto accident that robbed him of his memory, he is looking for clues regarding his old life. Strangely attracted to an old medical textbook on the subject of dissection, Hiroshi signs up for med school on the impulsive hunch that it may bring him closer to his past. Once there, the young man finds himself in the oddest of love triangles, stuck between his relationship with a fellow student and with the cadaver he is assigned to carve into.

REC 75%: The Warlords [Tau ming chong - 2007]

Director: Peter Chan and Wai Man Yip (co-director)

It's a heroic tale of three blood brothers and their struggle in the midst of war and political upheaval. It is based on "The Assassination of Ma," a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) story about the killing of general Ma Xinyi. The story was filmed by Zhang Che in 1973 as The Blood Brothers.

REC 68%: Bad guy [Nabbeun namja - 2001]

Director: Kim Ki-duk [Beautiful, Breath, Time, 3-Iron, Samaritan girl]

Kim Ki-Duk, the award-winning director of THE ISLE and SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER… and SPRING, has created a lurid fable of obsessive love, using a potent mix of dark romance, surrealist technique, and violent action. With BAD GUY, Kim paints a picture of a dark, hauntingly unforgettable neon-lit world, where two unlikely lovers meet on their own lonely street. Bad Guy exposes the virile beauty of pained yet true love, no matter what dark street it may be confined to.

[rottentomatoes.com]

REC 77%: Samaritan girl [Samaria - 2004]

Director: Kim Ki-duk [Beautiful, Breath, Time, 3-Iron, Bad guy]

Two teenage girls, Yeo-jin and Jae-yeong, decide to fund their escape to Europe through prostitution, with the former conducting the business and the latter "entertaining" the clientele. But when Jae-yeong suffers the consequences of their actions, Yeo-jin embarks on a quest to redeem herself by tracking down their former clients one by one to replicate the earlier transactions. But when her father discovers what Yeo-jin has been doing, he snaps and decides to avenge his daughter's innocence. Director Ki-Duk was awarded the Best Director prize at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival.

[rottentomatoes.com]

REC 75%: 3-Iron [Bin-jip - 2004]

Director: Kim Ki-duk [Beautiful, Breath, Time, Samaritan girl, Bad guy]

A young drifter enters strangers' houses - and lives - while owners are away. He spends a night or a day squatting in, repaying their unwitting hospitality by doing laundry or small repairs. His life changes when he runs into a beautiful woman in an affluent mansion who is ready to escape her unhappy, abusive marriage.

REC: 50% Beautiful [Arumdabda - 2008]

Director: Kim Ki-duk [Dream, Breath, Time, 3-Iron, Samaritan girl, Bad guy]

Eun-young is a woman cursed with great beauty. Wherever she goes, she gets unwanted admiration from men and jealousy from women. One day, one of her stalking admirer invades her place.

Dream [Bi-mong - 2008]

Director: Kim Ki-duk [Beautiful, Breath, Time, 3-Iron, Samaritan girl, Bad guy]

'Bi-mong' draws an unusual love story between a man (Jo Odagiri) who believes dreams to be reality and a woman (Lee Na Young) who suffers from sleepwalking. She encounters the man’s dreams in her reality, and wanders among his dreams as a mysterious figure.

Nightmare detective 2 [Akumu Tantei 2 - 2008]

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto [Welcome to the Quiet Room, A Snake of June, Ichi the Killer, Blind Beast vs. Dwarf, Tetsuo, the Iron Man, Vital]

REC 55%: Nightmare detective [Akumu Tantei - 2006]

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto [Welcome to the Quiet Room, A Snake of June, Ichi the Killer, Blind Beast vs. Dwarf, Tetsuo, the Iron Man]

Japanese detective Keiko Kirishima discovers that two suicide cases were in fact murders after the evidence reveals that both victims were attacked in their dreams. This supernatural thriller follows Keiko as she tries to enlist the help of the NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE, her only hope against a paranormal serial killer.

[rottentomatoes.com]

トウキョウソナタ TOKYO SONATA

An ordinary Japanese family slowly disintegrates after its patriarch loses his job at a prominent company.


Winner of Un Certain Regard at Cannes Festival 2008.


Kiyoshi Kurosawa was born in Kobe, Japan, and studied sociology at Rikkyo University. He studied the art of filmmaking under Kazuhiko Hasegawa and Shinji Somai. He made his directorial feature debut in 1983 with Kandagawa Wars, and won a Sundance Institute Scholarship in 1992 for his original screenplay Charisma. Kurosawa was the featured director in the Festival's Spotlight programme in 1999. His films include The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl (85), Eyes of the Spider (97), Serpent's Path (97), Cure (98), License to Live (99), Barren Illusion (99), Charisma (99), Séance (00), Pulse (01), Bright Future (03), Doppelganger (03), Loft (05), Retribution (06) and Tokyo Sonata (08).

Martin De Thurah

WE WHO STAYED BEHIND trailer from martin de thurah on Vimeo.

"10-year-old Adam is one of the few kids left behind after all the grown-ups have succumb to hopelessness and abandoned the city, leaving it in a state of disarray. Adam tries to make sense of it all, along with his friend Ida. But soon she too is struck by the same symptom of disillusion: Her blood turns gray, her look is empty, and she sets off from the city. Determined to put a stop to this madness and bring Ida back to life, Adam leads the children in their struggle to make the city a place worth living in once again."



YOUNG MAN FALLING TRAILER from martin de thurah on Vimeo.

"Official Selection - International Critics' Week '08 - Cannes Film Festival

Robert Award winner for best Danish short film '07 - The Danish Film Academy

Young Man Falling tells a simple story of the complex emotional world of a troubled teenager. The film dives deeply into the psyche of 17 year old Hue, that uncomfortably alienates himself from life due to the stress of taking final exams, the loss of a family member and this thing called love. A visual captivating film with a poignant modern style. "

http://www.myspace.com/martindethurah

Thank you for existing and being a continuous inspiration.

REC85%: Memories of Murder [Salinui chueok - 2003]

Director: Joon-ho Bong [The Host]

In 1986, in the province of Gyunggi, in South Korea, a second young and beautiful woman is found dead, raped and tied and gagged with her underwear. Detective Park Doo-Man and Detective Cho Yong-koo, two brutal and stupid local detectives without any technique, investigate the murder using brutality and torturing the suspects, without any practical result. The Detective Seo Tae-Yoon from Seul comes to the country to help the investigations and is convinced that a serial-killer is killing the women. When a third woman is found dead in the same "modus-operandi", the detectives find leads of the assassin.

[SOURCE: imdb.com]

Plastic Tree [プラスティック トゥリー]

Japanese rock band Plastic Tree (aka PuraTuri / プラトゥリ):

Andro Metamorphose



Ghost



Kuuchuu Buranko



Makka na ito



Aoi Tori




SOUND

Early in their career, their music was dark and had heavy visual kei influences. As time went on, their sound seemed to change and evolve with every album. Due to this, the band does not think that they should be placed into any certain genre.

Plastic Tree has also stated that their sound has been considerably influenced by British bands such as Radiohead and The Cure, though the most recognizeable signature of Plastic Tree is the melodic, child-like voice of Ryuutarou. It is often described as very 'ethereal', and adds to the unique quality of their music. Their sound is also aided by Ryuutarou's unique lyrics.

Plastic Tree's current sound ranges from hardcore rock to pop. Before the album Träumerei (2002 - the band being formed in late 1993) was released, Tadashi (bassist) wrote nearly all the songs, usually with Ryuutarou writing lyrics. However, more recent releases have had Akira (guitar) and Ryuutarou writing both lyrics and music more frequently.

[source: wikipedia.org]