Father Geek here with Darius25's Thursday Asia-AICN, Tons of info this week so I'll jump aside and let you get right to it...

Asia-AICN

Hey folks, hope you've all been well since last week. We have a packed column for you this week, including info on Farz (Duty), Dream Catcher, Yuen Woo-Ping, the HK Film Critics' Awards and Siberian Express part 2. Now here's the latest from Asia.

INDIA

- This is from Dark Horizons and I'm sure you must know this by now but I'll just post it in here. Garth reports that the reps for Aishwarya Rai (who I know all AICNers are familiar with) are trying to get her to be the next Bond girl. If they succeed, Ash would be the first major Bollywood star to appear in a Hollywood blockbuster (Kabir Bedi or Om Puri don't count).

- Raveena Tandon will star in a new film titled Dream Catcher which will be directed by Tabrez Noorani. The film is about Indian models living in LA, who get trapped in the world of underground porn. Kashmira Shah, Tara Sharma and Gulshan Grover also star in the thriller.

- Director Vimal Kumar's next film, Aashiqui Deewangi (A Crazy Romance) has just started shooting in Bombay. The film stars Karan Nath and Kirti Reddy.

- Actor Aamir Khan's film Lagaan (Tax) has been postponed once again from its April release to sometime in June. The reason for the delay is that Khan (who's producing the film) was originally attempting to use the sync-sound technology (rarely used in Bollywood) in order to retain most (if not all) of the film's original dialogue during the shooting. This takes away all of the dubbing problems (such as lips and words not synched) that most films face. Anyway, Khan was not fully satisfied when he heard the film's dialogue and has decided to dub the entire film, much to the dismay of the director and other producers, who just want the film to be finally released.

- Newcomer Juhi Babbar (actor Raj Babbar's daughter) has left director Kuku Kohli's Yeh Dil Hai Aashiqana (Romantic Heart) over creative differences. The main problem was that this was to be Juhi's first film and she felt uncomfortable doing a kissing scene and asked Kohli to change the scene. Kohli insisted that she either do the scene or walk so Juhi left the project. Of course Juhi has many offers lined up so she's not the loser in this case. So far, there's no word on Juhi's replacement in this film.

- Actor Jeetendra will produce a film titled Saajan Re Jhooth Mat Bolo (Don't Lie, Love), to be directed by David Dhawan. The comedy will star Govinda, Sushmita Sen, Tara Deshpande, Anupam Kher and Mohnish Behl.

- Last week's new release was the absolute BADASS film, Farz (Duty), directed by Raj Kanwar. The ultraviolent film stars Sunny Deol as the new ACP in town who declares a war against a drug lord (Jackie Shroff). The story isn't anything new or original. The first half is a buddy flick with Sunny paired up with an old cop (Om Puri), but the focus shifts to Sunny Deol after the interval. But listen here seriously, I didn't go to see this because of the story. I went for the blood and guts. Holy shit, I can't even begin to describe how violent the film really is. People die by the tens and hundreds. For the first half, there is a shootout every 10-20 mins, and atleast 10 people are killed in each shoot out. You do the math. There's an absolutely amazing car chase right after the interval where atleast 20 bad guys die. This is followed by Jackie's revenge scheme on Sunny and of course, the climactic showdown in an abandoned factory, followed by a chase through a mine field all ending up in a helicopter fight. The acting by the cast is decent. Jackie Shroff is in his second straight negative role after Mission Kashmir, and he's even better here. In that film he looked cool but didn't really do anything, in this, you won't believe the measures he resorts to in order to make Sunny Deol's life a living hell. Sunny is ok as usual, showing absolutely no remorse for the hundreds of people he's killed in this film alone. Preity Zinta is wasted in a nonexistent role and the rest of the cast is decent. The director, Raj Kanwar, is in fine form yet again and has succeeded in giving a much needed action fix to Bollywood. He knows that this is just for pure action lovers - providing unnecessary and unrealistic violence that all fanboys love. Just how unrealistic is the violence - let's see, Sunny gets crushed under a car, shot at by a million guys, steps on a landmine, jumps off a multi-story building, and literally flies through the air, yet has no scars to even prove he's hurt. Oh and the hits to misses ratio for bullets is really high, going into many thousands. That might be an exaggeration, but you get the idea - Farz is definitely for all action lovers.

for shots of Sunny Deol (left) and Jackie Shroff in Farz: Visit Here

and to see Sunny Deol in Farz: Click Right Here

CHINA / HK

The following was reported by "AccSpy":

- Master Yuen Woo-Ping, the fight choreographer of "The Matrix" and "CTHD", gave a short interview to Oriental Daily recently. He denied that he ever threatened to walk away from "The Matrix 2 & 3" and said that the training is now going really well and even the Keanu Reeves' broken ankle report was a false rumour. Yuen also clarified that Jet Li was never in serious talks to star in the sequels. Yuen shows high anticipation to the sequels, referring to the original as "foreplay" and saying that "here comes some serious stuff".

- Sean Lau Ching-Wan's long-awaited follow-up after "Running out of Time" is a Canadian production titled "Lunch with Charles", co-starring Theresa Lee, Nicholas Lea, Bif Naked and Francoise Yip. The movie will open on Jan 26 in Vancouver. Here's the official website: Right Here

- Actor Louis Koo was hospitalized last week. Koo fainted due to the flu and high fever during the shooting of a sci-fi TV series. The actor will play "Striding Cloud" in the upcoming sequel to the "The Stormriders".

- Last weekend, HK audiences were still crazy about the controversial Japanese flick "Battle Royale", which has grossed $6 millions HKD within 10 days. Andy Lau's "A Fighter's Blue" and Aaron Kwok's "China Strike Force" were at no.2 & no.3 respectively. Both successful blockbusters have just crossed the $20 million HKD milestone. The horror flick "Lost Souls" debuted at no.4, "Red Planet" slipped one spot to no.5, Kelly Chen's "Lavender" was still at no.6, and "Vertical Limit" entered at a disappointing 7th place. The Chinese New Year is coming this weekend, which means Jackie Chan's "The Accidental Spy", his first HK movie in two years; Sammi Cheng's period comedy "Wu Yen"(aka "Chung Mo Yim"), co-starring Anita Mui and Cecilia Cheung; and Nicolas Tse as "Chan Ho-Nam" and "Striding Cloud" in the comic fantasy "Comic King"(aka "Chaos of Comics") all invade theaters in HK. Here's two stills from "Wu Yen" and "Comic King":

To see Nicoles Tse in "Comic King": Go Here

for "Wu Yen": Just Click Here

- "Bio-Cops", a cheap thriller which aspires to live up to the excellence of "Bio Zombie", is now on DVD. Starring Stephen Fung and Sam Lee, it's nowhere as great as 1998's "Bio-Zombie" but still a pretty fun flick. Worth a watch. You can buy the DVD at: This Site

- This year's HK Film Critics' Awards were just announced on Tuesday. Here's the list of the winners:

Best Picture: Durian, Durian (directed by Fruit Chan)

Best Director: Wong Kar-wai - "In the Mood for Love"

Best Actor: Francis Ng - "2000A.D." (Accspy : This REALLY surprised me! Not because Francis has won this award the second year in a row, but the win for "2000 A.D."! Especially considering the fact he turned in marvelous performances in "Juliet in Love" and "A War Named Desire" last year, while in "2000A.D.", he's just in a supporting role requiring only four days of shooting.) Runner-up: Andy Lau - "A Fighter's Blue"

Best Actress: Qin Hailu - for her debut performance in "Durian, Durian" Runner-up: Sammi Cheng - "Needing You..."

Best Screenplay: Chan Hing-kar, Amy Chin Siu-wai - "Jiang Hu: The Triad Zone"

Recommended Films besides the Best Picture:

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (You all know how I feel about this - D25)

In the Mood for Love (This one's really good as well, but definitely not for your average moviegoer - D25)

Jiang Hu: The Triad Zone

Juliet in Love

Needing You... Spacked Out

Special Achievement Award: Yuen Woo-Ping ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon")

JAPAN

The following was reported by "Pigmon":

- Kazuki Oomori's ("Godzilla vs Biolante", "Natu, the Legend of the Dancing Ninja") next film will be "Run Ichiro!", which Toei will be producing. The film features 5 short stories in Kobe, a city destroyed by an earthquake in 1995. Japanese baseball star, Ichiro (who just joined the Seattle Mariners) appears as himself. The film will be released in May.

- Sony Pictures is getting closer to produce "Astro Boy", based on Osamu Tezuka's famous cartoon. (Loved that cartoon!! - D25)

- Mamoru Oshii's excellent film, "Avalon" will be showing at a sixth of the total screen in Korea, which will be the country's widest foreign release. The film will open on February 3rd.

- The French film "The Crimson Rivers"("Les Rivereres Pourpres") is getting lots of positive reviews from a couple of advance screenings in Japan. The film stars Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel and feels like a weird hybrid of "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Vertical Limit". You can enjoy some of the film's photos at www.Crimson-jp.com.

- "Siberian Express part 2" has just opened at 2 theaters in Tokyo and is already becoming a cult favorite. Directed and starring popular film critic Haruo Mizuno, the film is supposed to be a thriller but feels more like a comedy. The film is about a general investigating a murder in 1941 China.

- "Kaze Hana", directed by Shinji Somai and starring Tadanobu Asano and Kyoko Koizumi is already an early contender for the best Japanese film of 2001.The story is simple. It is road movie about 2 persons with no place to go. The guy works for the government and the woman is a prostitute. They both decide to take a trip to see the prostitute's child, whom she has not seen for 5 years. Their meet various characters on their way, and their relationship evolves by the end. The film's slowly paced narrative is wonderful and features FANTASTIC cinematography. The director, Somai, knows how to control the actors and make them behave extremely natural, especially Tadanobu Asano. I hope this film is released in North America and Europe.

ANIME

By Scott Green

EW Name GiTS Essential DVD

The January 19th issue of Entertainment Weekly includes a list of "The Fifty Essiantial DVDs" . Ghost in the Shell weighs in at number 49. The summary include in the line "Forget the bad dubbing - turn on the subtitles and enjoy the movie the way it was meant to be heard." Other films that should interest anime fans include Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai at 30, Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon at 32, and the Matrix at 20. Other animated movies include A Bug's Life at 2, and the Yellow Submarine at 33. A "Movies Missing in Action" side bar points out the conspicuous absences of Akira, and Rashomon on DVD.

English AIC Page

AIC the makers of Tench, El Hazard, Bubblegum Crisis, ect have opened an English language page http://www.a-i-c.co.jp/e/index.html

New Sonada Anime

According to AIC's English website Kenichi Sonada, creator of Gunsmith Cats and character designer for Bubblegum Crisis, has announced his newest project. The project is entitled "Wrestloid Baby", although the final English title may vary, and focuses on a future sport of Female robot wrestling, "FWFG-Female type Wrestloid Fighters Grand prix" which takes place in Japan sometime in the future. According to the website the English version is due on January 15th, 2001. However no North American distributors have made any announcement regarding this.

AIC Announced Third Tenchi OAV

According to an interview posted http://www.anime-int.com/e/interviewpage/index.html AIC will be creating a third OAV of the popular science fiction romantic comedy Tenchi Muyo, with Masaki Kajishima who was a co-creator of Tenchi directing it. Kajishima has plans to do two more Tenchi related OVA series afterwards. Apparently, the production of Tenchi Muyo! Series 3 has been affirmed, and Kajishima is in charge. He also has 2 other titles under his belt : "Galaxy Police" and "Saint Pilot" (both are working titles only). In Tenchi Muyo! series 3, the main storyline will be dual between the "hazy guy", which is named "Z", and the motive of the 3 top goddess, especially Tokimi. Kajishima also describe ser ies 1, 2 & 3 are the war time series, and the latter series, series 4 & 5, are the post-war peace period series. Most details will be available in AIC Comic Love Vol.8 which will be released on 1/19. During the story Tenchi will be forces to make decide which of the female! characters he loves.

Spanish Anime News

TV Azteca is currently running Sailor Moon (they have 199 episodes except 89, the episode was 45 mins long and the dubber Intertrack didn't want to cut it), Magic Knight Rayearth, Captain Tsubasa J, but because of complaints they mov ed Escaflowne from weekdays to Sundays at around 11 AM. It is not known whether they will be showing the Escaflowne movie. The magical girl St. Tail series has replaced Escaflowne in its 1:30pm weekday time slot. St. Tail has been effect by dubbing chan ges byCentral-America having name changes and the "god please forgive me" transformation phrase changed. The rival national channel of TV Azteca: Televisa is rerunning Robotech and the first season of Virtua Fighter. They are premiering Digimon 01 and rerunning Pokemon. There are rumors they may get His or Her Circumstances and Evangelion this year. On the cable side of things Sakura Card Captors was premiered on Cartoon Network in November, but there is a strong demand for Tenchi to be aired.

Unicable (small channel associated to televisa canal 5) aired Revolutionary Girl Utena, renamed of El Anillo Magico, the Magical Ring in English, but took it off after deciding that the content was too strong for young kids. After seeing Utenas rati ng they decided to air Lost Universe, and have been very pleased with the show. There is currently a movement to convince the station to air the last 9 episodes of Utena.

Locomotion is actually not exclusive of the DirecTV satellite system, but it's also in Cablevision, but in the expensive packages only. It has many uncut anime, and on January 20 and then Jan 27, they will put a subbed version of AIKA in two parts. They will put this anime in their 2 hour long weekday anime exclusive "Japanimotion" slots. On January 21, they will premiere Ghost in the Shell in Spanish. They are planning to bring these anime later in 2001: rerun Blue Seed, Silent Möbius, Supermilk, Cybuster.

They had to remove Blue Seed after only one premiere run because they are currently getting new and better technology. "It's s bit bizarre, but it's a very good channel for the older anime fans, it even has "Those who hunt Elves II", which is not available in the USA. " Thank you very much to Nancy Foster Arzamendi for passing along this news. For More information see www.animedia.com.mx

Fox Kids latin america (a cartoon/kids channel like cartoon network) will make an 4 days anime marathon beginning in February 24th, premiering the movie "PatLabor 1 Mobile Police" and "DinoZaurs" the series. In the marathon also will be Super Cerdita (Super pig, a Saban's adaptation of Tonde Burin), Genki y los monstruos Cibernéticos (Monster Rancher, of BKN), Flint el detective del tiempo (the time detective, of Saban) and "Digimon Digital Monsters" (dubbed from original japanese version / in japanese with SAP). The announcement was made by Jacqueline Cantore, executive director of programming for Fox Kids.

Japanese Powerpuff Girls Page Opens

A web has opened to spotlight the Japanese version of Powerpuff Girls at Powerpuff Shoujo-tachi here Sarah Bellum is voiced by Takano Urara who voiced Tiger on Saber Marionette J as well as Maria Tachibana of Sakura Taisen. Mojo Jojo is voiced by Ishii Kouji who voiced Fujisawa-sensei on El Hazard and Tanaka Ouji on Black Heaven.

New Sailor Moon Series?

Fanboy Inc. has learned that there is a rumor circulating though Tokyo industry insiders that Naoko Takeuchi is currently in the process of updating her now "classic" Sailor Moon series for 2001. While it can not be officially confirmed (and may not be for a while), the rumors make sense given the current boom of classic manga and anime revivals in Japan.

Sources indicate that the popular Sailor Moon characters will be changed and updated for a whole new generation of manga readers and anime viewers later this year. There seem to be conflicting rumors though as to if Ms. Takeuchi is simply updating the old Sailor Moon characters, creating an entirely all new cast of Sailor Scouts or combining aspects of both.

Fanboy Inc. has learned that there is a rumor circulating though Tokyo industry insiders that Naoko Takeuchi is currently in the process of updating her now "classic" Sailor Moon series for 2001. While it can not be officially confirmed (and may not be for a while), the rumors make sense given the current boom of classic manga and anime revivals in Japan. Sources indicate that the popular Sailor Moon characters will be changed and updated for a whole new generation of manga readers and anime viewers later this year. There seem to be conflicting rumors though as to if Ms. Takeuchi is simply updating the old Sailor Moon characters, creating an entirely all new cast of Sailor Scouts or combining aspects of both.

News Anime Series Acquired

Some interesting anime acquisition news has come out of the VSDA/CES conventions this weekend. FUNimation, currently best known for releasing Dragon Ball Z has acquired the rights to Yu-Yu Hakusho. The series is a fighting anime about super powered characters in a martial artists tournament. Many compare the series to Dragon Ball Z, but with slightly more romance and comedy. It was also announced that Rhino has acquired the rights to the classic Gatchaman series, which they'll release it as Battle of the Planets but I've been told that the extras on the DVD will include Japanese Gatchaman episodes subbed in English. They cannot release stand-alone Gatch aman releases due to contractual reasons with Tatsunoko." As part of the VSDA news it was announced that Rhino will be releasing episodes of the 80's American cartoons Robotix and Inhumanoids. Robotix has a few good moments, but many remember Inhumanoids for its cool Cthuhlu-esque monster named Tendril, and introducing many children to giant undead beasts.

Discontinued ADV Titles Update

The VHS and DVD versions of Battle Angel are going on hiatus from production, but they are not out of production. A number of ADV's series that have had single episode tapes, such as Golden Boy, are being consolidated into fewer tapes but not discontinued.

Bandai Announces Plans for 2001

Bandai has announced their anime release plans for 2001. The release dates of new titles are:

· Gundam Wing: The Movie - SPECIAL DVD - February

· Saber Marionette J - DVD COLLECTION 1 - February

· Crest of the Stars - DVD 1 - March

· Angel Links - DVD 1 - April (Outlaw Star spinoff)

· Dark Soldier D - DVD - April

· Big O - DVD 1 - June

· Gundam MS08th - DVD 1 - July

· Mobile Suit Gundam (TV dub)- DVD 1 - August

· Gundam 0083 - DVD 1 - September

· Gundam 0080 - DVD 1 - October

· Pilot Candidate - DVD 1 - November

The first Gundam series Mobile Suit Gundam, and its TV edited version "First Gundam" will be released as dubbed only DVDs because of permission issues with the series' creators Sunrise. English-only release will not affect any of our other DVD releases of other Gundam titles (such as 0083, 0080, and MS08) or any of the other new titles (like Big O and Candidate for Goddess), as this is a specific licensing issue that applies only to the Mobile Suit Gundam television series.

A special DVD containing the TV movie version (all 4 OVAs edited into one movie) in English DD 2.0 for Blue Submarine No. 6 will be made available in April. The uncut version of Blue Submarine No. 6 in DD 5.1 Japanese and DD 2.0 English will still be available on their four discs as released last year, for anime collectors who desire the complete uncensored OVAs. Mobile Suit Gundam, the original TV series that started the Gundam Saga, will be made available in the United States in English language DVD and VHS formats. A TV-version English language DVD of Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz will be sold in April. Please note that this is a different DVD than Gundam Wing: The Movie Special Edition DVD that will be released in February. The TV-version will retail for $19.98, while the Special Edition Bilingual DVD with Extras will retail for $29.98. A Cowboy Bebop Perfect Collection DVD Boxset is scheduled for November, with a suggested retail price of $199.98. This is a higher price th! an if one purchased the DVDs individually, but the DVDs come in a nice box, with other premium incentives being looked into. The full schedule can be seen at here.

You're Under Arrest TV Bit

AniHabara is listing the new You're Under Arrest TV season as coming out in Japan in April, and describing it as "Saori graduated from high school and became a policewoman at last (This episode is not told at original work). "

Darius 25 back to say goodbye. Remember, if you have information regarding any film industry in Asia, please contact our Asia-AICN offices . See you all next week.

- Darius25