Good article.
PS:The article has one error-- "Rumble in the Bronx" is New Line's movie, not Dimension's movie.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... =printable
Worldwide, Asian films are grossing millions. Here, they're either remade, held hostage or released with little fanfare.
- G. Allen Johnson, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, February 3, 2005
One of the best suspense thrillers of the year opens today, a police action film boasting top stars and exotic locations -- a real blockbuster worthy of any Cineplex.
Trouble is, it's not opening at the Metreon or the AMC 1000 Van Ness or any other venue where it can slug it out in the marketplace. And while it is one of the best suspense thrillers of the year, that year was 2002.
"Infernal Affairs" is opening at the Balboa, nearly two months after the Hong Kong movie, distributed by Miramax, was released in the United States on home video (the cheesy DVD cover features a gun-toting hot babe who's not in the movie). In fact, the Hong Kong DVD has been available since February 2003 at Bay Area stores specializing in Asian movies.
The plight of "Infernal Affairs" -- a movie so good that Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio are remaking it -- exemplifies a growing trend among American distributors: They seemingly don't know what to do with the Asian films they buy. Ironically, this comes as Asia's directors -- from Hong Kong to Japan to Thailand and all points in between -- are creating some of the most exciting, energetic cinema in the world.
And those distributors are buying a lot. A floodgate opened when Sony Pictures Classics decided, in a bold move that many thought was pure folly, to open its specialty art action film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" like it would open any Jerry Bruckheimer action behemoth: wide, in practically every multiplex in the country whether it was in Omaha, Neb., or San Francisco. Audiences made "Crouching Tiger" the first foreign- language film to break $100 million at the U.S. box office, topping out at $128 million. It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture. Since then, however, a glut of product is either not being marketed properly or is still sitting on distributors' shelves, leaving the filmgoer out in the cold. If you live outside the metropolitan areas of San Francisco, New York or Los Angeles, the situation is particularly dire.
After any major international film festival -- Cannes, Toronto, Berlin -- the top-quality European entries will be seen, almost without exception, on American art-house screens within a year. The best Asian films at the same festivals, even those that take top prizes, may take a year or two to reach U. S. theaters, if they do at all. Miramax is said to have the rights to nearly three dozen Asian movies it has not released, and it is not alone.
"The American public is really interested in Asian culture, interested in experiencing Asia (through films)," said Michael Barker, a co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics from his office in New York. "But there are cultural barriers. ... (Distributors) need to understand the Asian communities better and market to them, as well as trying to appeal to the Western psyche."
Some of the most head-scratching moves, or lack of moves, have come from Miramax, one of the distribution companies that has been bringing quality Asian film to U.S. audiences since the early 1990s ("Farewell My Concubine," from China, and "Shall We Dance?" from Japan), and its parent company, Disney.
Some examples:
-- In 2002, Disney acquired the rights to "Spirited Away," an animated movie by the Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki. The highest-grossing movie in Japanese film history, "Spirited Away" became the first animated film to win the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival and the first movie to have earned $200 million at the worldwide box office before opening in the United States.
Yet Disney, which reportedly had bought the picture at the urging of Pixar director John Lasseter, dumped an English-dubbed version into theaters without much of an advertising campaign, effectively killing any chance at the U.S. box office. The lack of promotion prompted an open letter of protest to Disney from Newsday critic John Anderson.
When "Spirited Away" earned a surprise Academy Award nomination for best animated film, Disney declined to mount the usual Oscar campaign or rerelease it because it was up against two of the company's own movies: "Lilo & Stitch" and "Treasure Planet." After an even bigger surprise -- "Spirited Away" won -- Disney dropped it back into theaters for two weeks before the DVD release. Without marketing, "Spirited Away" struggled to gross $10 million.
-- Miramax purchased the rights to "Shaolin Soccer," the top-grossing Hong Kong film of 2001. The initial strategy was to dub the film by comic master Stephen Chow as Miramax and its partner company Dimension had done to great success with Jackie Chan movies in the mid-'90s. "Rumble in the Bronx" made $32 million in 1996.
But an Internet campaign by fans of Asian films who demanded a subtitled release caught the studio by surprise, further delaying the movie. Finally, after more than two years, Miramax released a re- edited, rescored and subtitled version of "Shaolin Soccer" complete with digitally inserted English-language billboards and newspapers. The movie opened in April to strong reviews, but without much advertising power it failed to generate even a half-million dollars. To appease fans, Miramax included the original Cantonese cut of the film as an "extra feature" on the DVD release.
-- As mentioned in Peter Biskind's book, "Down and Dirty Pictures," Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein plopped down $20 million for "Hero." A martial- arts picture directed by Chinese master Zhang Yimou, it starred Jet Li, who had become a star in his own right in the United States.
According to Biskind, Weinstein had hoped for "Hero" to become the next "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," yet the natural window of opportunity, when "Hero" was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film in February 2003, came and went with the epic sitting on the shelf. And there it stayed as fans of Asian movies mounted another Internet campaign to urge the film's release; Miramax's only official response was to obtain a court injunction against video stores that were selling the imported Chinese DVD version that came out the same month "Hero" was nominated for an Academy Award.
Enter Quentin Tarantino. An avowed Asian film fan, Tarantino had previously championed Wong Kar-Wai's "Chungking Express" and Takeshi Kitano's "Sonatine" to art film success on home video, and "Iron Monkey," a 1993 martial-arts movie, to a surprise $14 million gross in 2001.
Tarantino had trailers for "Hero" attached to release prints and DVDs of his "Kill Bill" films, and even did a whirlwind press tour to promote it. The result: "Hero" was released on Aug. 27 and became the first Chinese-language movie to place No. 1 at the American box office (where it stayed for two consecutive weeks ) and went on to earn $53.6 million, second only to "Crouching Tiger" as the highest-grossing Asian film of all time in the United States.
Miramax had fumbled the movie, but thanks to Tarantino, the studio was able to recover and score a touchdown. (Miramax executives declined to be interviewed for this story.)
So, where should Asian film distribution go from here? Ask Sony Picture Classics' Barker, and the sport that comes up is baseball.
"Too many companies are looking for the home run," said Barker in a thinly veiled dig at Miramax. "We're very happy with a base hit or a double."
Barker insists that "House of Flying Daggers" is a home run, despite earning a disappointing $10 million or so since its wide theatrical release late last year. He points out it will still be the third-highest-grossing Chinese-language film released in the United States. He did admit, however, that the delayed release of "Hero" may have diluted the box-office impact of his product -- "It didn't help" -- and that Zhang Ziyi is not yet the star in America that Jet Li is.
However, Sony Pictures Classics seems to be a company that does it right. Like distributors in the 1950s and '60s that filled major city art houses with films from Japanese directors Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Nagisa Oshima, Barker's company feels it needs to be director-driven.
Sony Pictures Classics has released eight Yimou films and has signed on for a ninth. It is following South Korean director Kim Ki-Duk's "Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall and Spring," an art-house hit last year, with "3-Iron" in March. And, it will wait only two months -- not two years -- to release "Shaolin Soccer" director Chow's "Kung Fu Hustle," which is the highest- grossing film of 2004 in Hong Kong, where it is finishing its theatrical run.
"You have to think long term; you want to still be making money on video and TV years from now," Barker said. "That's why you have to shoot for quality, and that's where some of these companies that overpay films get into trouble, because they can't transcend the moment."
Perhaps as a result of some of the missteps by bigger distribution companies, smaller companies like Kino, Strand and a new one, Tartan USA, see an opening, especially with edgier fare.
Tartan USA is releasing "Old Boy," a South Korean blockbuster that placed second to "Fahrenheit 9/11" at Cannes, in March; Magnolia Pictures' "Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior," a 2-year-old Thai film that harkens back to the tough hand- to-hand combat days of Bruce Lee, rides a wave of positive buzz from its New York release into Bay Area theaters on Feb. 11.
Unfortunately, it's too late to save "Infernal Affairs."
"We were hoping for a breakthrough," co-director Andrew Lau said. "It would have been good for Hong Kong."
And film fans in America, too.
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Delayed in translation
Four notable Asian international hits fumbled by their U.S. distributors, and four we'd like to see soon:.
MISHANDLED
"Infernal Affairs": Made in Hong Kong in 2002, it spawned two sequels, but Miramax is keeping it low profile even though Martin Scorsese signed on for the remake.
"Hero": An unexpected hit a year and a half after receiving an Academy Award nomination for best foreign film because Quentin Tarantino rescued it from the Miramax scrap heap.
"Shaolin Soccer": Asia's box-office champ in 2001 that Miramax almost dubbed, then dumped.
"Spirited Away": First film to open in the United States having already grossed $200 million worldwide, but Disney dropped the ball..
ON THE SHELF
"2046": The latest Wong Kar-Wai film awaits a U.S. release date after its premiere at Cannes in May.
"Old Boy": The South Korean sensation was a runner-up to "Fahrenheit 9/11" at Cannes, but tiny Tartan USA has distribution rights.
"Kung Fu Hustle": Hong Kong's 2004 box-office champ by Stephen Chow, the director of "Shaolin Soccer," is just finishing its theatrical run at home.
"Jasmine Women": Joan Chen and Zhang Ziyi star as a mother and daughter in a multigenerational Chinese saga -- how can it miss?
-- G. Allen Johnson
E-mail G. Allen Johnson at
ajohnson@sfchronicle.com.
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