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Posted: 13 Jun 2011 03:57 AM PDT

SHANGHAI (AP): Mike Medavoy walked the red carpet, mingled with Chinese studio executives and attended industry seminars. But unlike other Hollywood producers pressing the flesh at the Shanghai International Film Festival, he isn't just shopping for projects in what is fast becoming America's hottest foreign movie market.

For the producer who worked on films like "Rocky," "Apocalypse Now" and "The Terminator," the festival is a homecoming of sorts. Medavoy was born in Shanghai in 1941 to Russian-Jewish parents and lived there for six years before moving with his family to Chile and then the US. His grandfather moved to Shanghai to avoid the pogroms of imperial Russia.

And now the veteran producer has found the perfect project to honor his Chinese roots - an adaptation of a Chinese love story set against World War II-era Shanghai, where many European Jews sought refuge from persecution.

Medavoy announced on Monday that he and partner Shanghai Film Group will turn Chinese author Bei La's "The Cursed Piano" into a feature film and shoot an accompanying six-hour TV miniseries exploring the Jewish experience in Shanghai, based on the Daniella Kuhn story "Tears of the Sparrow."

"I feel a great deal of responsibility to get this story told," Medavoy said.

"My fear of course is based on the fact that I have to measure up not only to the standards that these gentlemen have set for the project," he said, referring to his Chinese partners, "but I also have to measure up to my own standards and the standards my parents brought to me when they decided to have me born here."

Medavoy said he hoped to complete the project while his 90-year-old mother is still alive.

He received a vote of confidence from Bei.

"I think he will create something outstanding by pouring in his own emotions and his parents' emotions," Bei said.

Medavoy shared vignettes from his family history. He said his father became a car mechanic in Shanghai at age 12 before shifting to a telephone company.

When the Medavoy family moved to Chile, his employment options were limited because he didn't speak Spanish - but he could fall back on the car repair skills he had picked up in Shanghai.

Medavoy's Shanghai heritage has cropped up quite a few times since the festival kicked off on Saturday.

He proudly told a red carpet interviewer at the opening ceremony that he was born in Shanghai.

Speaking at a panel discussion on film finance on Sunday, he described his parents' emotional return to Shanghai 18 years ago, when they traveled with him to the inaugural Shanghai International Film Festival.

"As soon as I got down (from the plane) and my father started walking out of the Shanghai airport, he started to cry," Medavoy said.

Asked why he was so upset, his father responded, "I'm crying because this is the place that saved our lives. I don't think any of us would have existed without the friendship of the Chinese people during the war."

"The Cursed Piano" is not Medavoy's first Shanghai-related project. He also developed the script for the 2010 film "Shanghai," a World War II-era thriller starring John Cusack, Chow Yun-fat, Gong Li and Ken Watanabe, but later sold it to fellow American producer Harvey Weinstein.

"Sommersby" and "The Human Stain" screenwriter Nicholas Meyer is to pen the "Cursed Piano" script.

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Land of horror

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 01:18 AM PDT

A family of four is haunted by a dead maid when they move into Laddaland. Get spooked!

It's a dream come true as the day finally arrives when you can afford to buy a big and beautiful house for your family to live in. In Laddaland, this scenario plays out like a typical real estate TV commercial.

Thee gets a new job with a higher salary and decides to move his family to a big and beautiful housing project in Chiang Mai called Laddaland. Moving into his new home with his wife Parn, his daughter Nan and his son Nat, life seems perfect for Thee. But, little does he know what lies in store, or perhaps, what lurks in the storeroom.

Right after moving in, a homicide is discovered at the house next door. The Burmese domestic help, Makin, who used to live in their house, was brutally murdered and her battered body was found stuffed inside the refrigerator in their neighbour's house. Thereafter, the hauntings begin as Makin's ghost scares everyone in Laddaland by continuing to visit various houses doing her usual chores.

So the question here is: if you had spent all your hard-earned savings buying a beautiful new house for your family but find out that the place is haunted by a creepy ghost, would you continue to stay there or move out immediately?

And to make things more exciting, Laddaland is partly based on a Thai urban legend about a haunted recreational park in a housing development in Chiang Mai that has long been abandoned.

Laddaland (also known as The Lost Home) is directed by horror specialist Sophon Sakdapisit, who helmed Coming Soon (2008) and co-wrote prominent Thai horror flicks like Shutter (2004 and the 2008 Hollywood remake) and Alone (2007) and even contributed to horror omnibuses like 4bia (2008) and Phobia 2 (2009).

Constantly on the lookout for a fresh spin on the horror yarn, Sophon commented in a recorded interview, "I believe this is very new because most horror films usually work on a plot that starts from the ghost. But for Laddaland, my co-writer and I focused on the family's issues first. So, the story is very tense and it will be an even scarier horror film."

The family of four in this story comprises the father, Thee ('Kong' Saharat Sangkapreecha), the mother, Parn ('Pock' Piyathida Woramuksik), the daughter, Nan ('Punpun' Suthatta Udomsilp), and the son, Nat ('Gobgab' Apipich Chutiwatkajornchai).

"Thee is a hard-working man who loves his family very much and wants nothing more than a happy home. His wife, Parn, comes from a rich family and has a very strict mother, who opposed their marriage because he was not well off like them. Their teenage daughter, Nan, was brought up by the grandmother (Parn's mother), who made her believe that her dad doesn't love her. Their son Nat is still very little, so there is nothing complicated about his thoughts," Sophon explained in brief about the new family in the haunted village.

The 30-year-old filmmaker also spoke about some of the scary scenes from the movie that are shown in the teaser trailer.

Commenting on the scene where some teenagers get spooked by a ghost at the haunted house, Sophon shared, "The haunted house is there for those curious teenagers who love the mystery. So, this scene is about Nan's friends going there late night after completing their reports. While they are taking Nan home by motorcycle, they pass by this house and figure they should check it out.

"The hard part about shooting a horror film is the cast normally won't have any experience with ghosts in real life. So the acting must be from their own interpretation of feelings that they never experienced before."

He then spoke of the scene where the villagers get a group of monks to conduct a ceremony to appease the murdered maid Makin, whose ghost still walks around the houses she used to work in.

"The residents grouped up at the meeting clubhouse where the monks started to pray. Parn notices that one monk keeps looking at the corner of the room. So Parn gets even more scared when she observes the monk getting shocked and the residents become even more scared of the ghost."

Another challenging scene to shoot was where Thee dragged Nan into the haunted house. Thee doesn't believe in ghosts and wanted to show his daughter that there are none. But Nan knows very well that the ghost exists because she has already seen it. So, the challenge lay in the tug-of-war between the angry and frustrated father and the scared and resistant daughter.

"It's a very difficult scene because it deals with the feelings of the two characters. So, I told Punpun to remember that she is Nan and she won't get inside that house no matter how hard Kong (who plays her dad) tried to pull her in. So Kong had to do many takes because we shot from many different angles."

> Laddaland, rated 18, opens in local cinemas on June 16.

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US, Chinese stars usher in Shanghai film festival

Posted: 11 Jun 2011 06:50 PM PDT

SHANGHAI (AP): Susan Sarandon cracked jokes with Chinese actor Zhang Guoli. Matt Dillon tried out his Mandarin and Rupert Murdoch touted the new movie his Chinese-born wife is producing.

Hollywood's elite joined China's biggest stars at the Shanghai Grand Theater to usher in the 14th edition of the country's leading international film festival on Saturday - in a sign of respect for what is fast becoming one of the American movie industry's key foreign markets.

Chinese box office numbers surged 64 percent to hit $1.5 billion in 2010. And despite import restrictions that effectively limit the country to 20 foreign blockbusters a year, American movies are doing brisk business. Last year, the James Cameron 3-D sci-fi epic "Avatar" - distributed by the Hollywood studio Fox, a unit of Murdoch's media company News Corp. - brought in $204 million as it became China's top-grossing release in history.

Keen to gain exposure in this blossoming market, American stars were well-represented on the red carpet that kicked off the Shanghai International Film Festival in the eastern financial center.

It was Sarandon's first visit to China, but she wasted no time in picking up on local cultural cues. After receiving a lifetime achievement award from festival organizers, she jokingly asked veteran actor Zhang to give her acceptance speech on her behalf. Zhang had just finished delivering a lengthy ribbing to Chinese director Feng Xiaogang, who was honored for outstanding achievement to Chinese cinema.

The "Thelma and Louise" star then invited Zhang to a game of table tennis. Sarandon owns several table tennis clubs and bars in the US.

"Maybe he'll play pingpong with me if we open one in Shanghai. And that would be a good excuse to come back to China," she said.

Zhang stood up and obliged, joking that he was an ace player.

"My acting is much better than my pingpong. Maybe you can wear a blindfold," Sarandon responded.

Sarandon's appearance is telling because she has been critical of the Chinese government in the past, joining other Hollywood celebrities in signing letters urging Beijing to ease up on film censorship and calling on Washington to scrutinize China's human rights record.

Earlier, Dillon stumbled through the Chinese greeting "Shanghai Film Festival: Here I am" on the red carpet and then thanked fans for braving the heavy rain.

Mischa Barton from the American teen TV drama "The O.C." also greeted fans.

Barton, Dillon and Sarandon were in Shanghai just to attend the opening ceremony. None of the three is promoting movies at the festival.

Murdoch also attended with his third wife, Wendi Deng Murdoch, and was quick to mention the upcoming film she is producing, Chinese-American director Wayne Wang's adaptation of the novel "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," which stars Chinese actress Li Bingbing and South Korea's Jun Ji-hyun.

"I'm very proud of my wife and her film 'Snow Flower,"' Murdoch said.

Murdoch and wife and Fox Film Entertainment Chief Executive Jim Gianopulos are also scheduled to speak at a panel discussion on film finance on Sunday.

An American director is chairing the jury for the Shanghai festival's Golden Goblet prizes. "Rain Man" director Barry Levinson is leading a seven-person panel that also includes British screenwriter Christopher Hampton, Japanese director Yoichi Sai, French-Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung, Spanish actress Paz Vega, Chinese director Wang Quanan and Chinese actress Zhang Jingchu.

A second panel headed by Japanese filmmaker Shunji Iwai will hand out prizes to promising young Asian directors.

The Shanghai International Film Festival runs until June 19.

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Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Isnin, 13 Jun 2011

The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

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