Homegrown films update

Mike Tsai's great article in the Honolulu Advertiser about James Sereno and Ryan Kawamoto of Kinetic Films is out today.If you don't know already, James is the director of this year's LVHIFF trailer. Kinetic's upcoming project sounds great, especially with the beautiful Kelly Hu attached to star.

Both James and Ryan have won awards at LVHIFF. James' SILENT YEARS won the Hawaii Film & Videomaker Award at LVHIFF 04 and Ryan's SAND ISLAND DRIVE-INN ANTHEM won the Hawaiian Airlines Audience Award for Favorite Short at this year's festival. These guys are on the forefront of Hawaii's indie film scene!

Martin Scorsese to shoot period drama in Japan

Martin Scorsese announced that he wants to make a Japan-set period drama called SILENCE as his next project. He declared this on Sunday at the 5th Marrakech Film Festival in Morocco, where he received a lifetime achievement award.

An adaptation of a Japanese novel by Shusaku Endo, SILENCE is the martyrdom-themed tale of two 17th century Portuguese missionaries who return to Japan to minister to Christians, who've been outlawed. "I hope it comes together. I've been trying to make the movie for 10 years," Scorsese said at a press conference.

His latest film, the docu NO DIRECTION HOME: BOB DYLAN recently aired on PBS's American Masters and is available on DVD. He is currently in post on THE DEPARTED, a remake of the HK crime caper INFERNAL AFFAIRS.

Kung Fu Hustle sweeps Golden Horse Awards

The Taiwanese Golden Horse Awards, purportedly the Chinese-speaking world's premiere film awards were presented over the weekend with Stephen Chow's KUNG FU HUSTLE taking all the major awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, the BBC reports. Here is a full listing of award winners.

American Fusion to screen at SFIAAFF!

Sylvia Chang and director Frank Lin share a laugh on set of AMERICAN FUSION. Collin Chou is in the background.

AMERICAN FUSION, winner of the Hawaiian Airlines Audience Award for Favorite Feature at tbe LVHIFF 2005, and a world premiere at our festhas just been accepted to the San Francisco Int'l Asian American Film Festival presented by the Center for Asian American Media (formerly NAATA). AF just had its world premiere at the LVHIFF this year. Wishing director Frank Lin great success, especially since 4 sold-out screenings in Hawaii alone is not too shabby!

Brokeback Mountain, Oscar contender

LVHIFF was honored to screen BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN as the Centerpiece presentation this year. The film has been garnering rave reviews and there's one posted on aintitcoolnews from the screening in Hawaii a couple of weeks ago.

On a side note, I recently ran into director Ang Lee in Koreatown in Los Angeles of all places! I thanked him for making the film and allowing the festival to screen it. Looking very tired, Ang was taking a short break from his whirlwind of promotions for the film, which opens commercially Dec. 9th!