Wednesday, 09 April 2008 "Kung Fu Dunk"
Basketball and martial arts combine to mildly amusing effect in Manga-inspired vehicle for Jay Chou.

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Thursday, 27 March 2008 TLA takes "Epitaph" to North America
Distribber picks up directorial debut of Korea's Jung brothers.

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Saturday, 22 March 2008 Latido films find Asian homes
"Fados" scores China deal as sales company complete sales at FilMart.

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Saturday, 22 March 2008 Malaysian firms score at FilMart
Film Point, Orisa to co-produce three features.

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Saturday, 22 March 2008 SingTel scores with Euro soccer
Singapore company naps rights to Champions League and UEFA Cup.

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Thursday, 20 March 2008 Tumbleweed or 'price cut Thursday'

One of the canniest film buyers I ever met – from London – once told me his tactics for operating at film markets. On the first day of a market he would quickly jump on the movies he knew he was most strongly interested in, and if possible seal a deal there and then.

Having made it clear that he was serious about buying, he would then sit it out until the end for any other titles he was interested in, but were lower priorities. At the AFM he described this as waiting for "price cut Wednesday."

I mention this because Thursday/Day 4 of FilMart was pretty deathly. Most people had a lie in, went shopping or frankly rushed home in time for Easter.

However those left behind may have been on to something clever.

Having belatedly found out that I had a pass that got me in to the Dragon Lounge, I sat down for an hour with Kaiju Shakedown's Grady Hendrix.

The quality of the market stragglers put the Grand Hyatt Coffee Shop to shame. Around me as I nibbled the free biscuits and coffee were Mandarin Films' Nansun Shi, Arclight Films' Gary Hamilton, IDG's Ted Perkins, (UK) Showbox Entertainment Steven Rivers, Infotainment's Cindy Lin and Lotus Entertainment's Thomas Leong. Not too shabby.

(P. Frater)

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Thursday, 20 March 2008 Salon sets up shop as foreign service, investment vehicle
Back to fundamentals approach for Hengdian, Access Asia, Yoshimoto and Mediacorp.

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Thursday, 20 March 2008 FilMart finds role as launch platform for Chinese blockbusters
Deals thin on the ground, but event adds purpose as marketing platform. 

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Thursday, 20 March 2008 Hong Kong Forum give five prizes
Pang, Ning and Nimibutr among the HAF honorees.

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Wednesday, 19 March 2008 The Asian Film Awards 2008
I've spent what feels like most of my adult life - but what is really more like a month - working on the the Asian Film Awards that just went off last night. The show is conducted in English, because presumably that's the common language between a lot of the Asian film industries, so I was hired to help out with the script because what this means on a practical level is that you wind up with a pack of presenters who are very, very nervous about going onstage and chatting with an audience of 3,000 people in a language they're not 100% confident in. There are exceptions. Joan Chen and Harvey Weinstein were presenters who are pretty much native English speakers, but still you're dealing with public speaking and oddly enough that's just as intimidating to a professional actor as it is to the chairman of your local rotary club. Going on stage and delivering a speech to a crowded room is something that sucks the wind out of everyone's sails, except Derek Li, but more on him later.

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