You can never underestimate the power of hearsay. Sometimes, something sounding like it could be true is enough to convince people that it must be. And while this phenomenon can have disastrous real-world consequences when applied to science and politics, it’s also responsible for some memorable instances of collective storytelling.
From hook-handed murderers to gerbils becoming stuck inside famous actors, urban legends are the modern equivalent to ancient campfire stories about werewolves and vampires – which is why it makes sense that they’ve inspired some of most beloved genre films. And with so many of these allegedly “true” stories to choose from, we’ve decided to come up with a list highlighting six of the most underrated movies based on urban legends.
Naturally, we’ll be shying away from more popular films like Candyman and Jamie Blanks’ Urban Legend, but don’t forget to comment below with your own...
From hook-handed murderers to gerbils becoming stuck inside famous actors, urban legends are the modern equivalent to ancient campfire stories about werewolves and vampires – which is why it makes sense that they’ve inspired some of most beloved genre films. And with so many of these allegedly “true” stories to choose from, we’ve decided to come up with a list highlighting six of the most underrated movies based on urban legends.
Naturally, we’ll be shying away from more popular films like Candyman and Jamie Blanks’ Urban Legend, but don’t forget to comment below with your own...
- 3/8/2024
- by Luiz H. C.
- bloody-disgusting.com
Ripe Fruit
Fruit Chan has been named as the filmmaker in focus at this year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival (March 28-April 8). The maverick director will be honored with a commemorative book, a face-to-face interview and the screening of ten of his movies. These include: 1997’s “Made in Hong Kong,” 1998’s “The Longest Summer,” 1999’s “Little Cheung,” 2000’s “Durian Durian,” 2001’s “Hollywood Hong Kong,” 2002’s “Public Toilet,” 2004 “Dumplings,” 2014’s “The Midnight After,” 2015’s “My City” and 2018’s “Three Husbands.”
Pyramid Scheme
Singapore-based VFX company Vividthree has signed a non-binding term sheet with China’s Metavision International, a company that specializes in location-based experiences, to explore a stock swap and an investment in the company’s Tmp Immersive Expedition Center in Chengdu, China.
The center, which opens to the public on Friday, will host exhibitions and virtual reality experiences that showcase the wonder of travel and exploration. The first exhibition...
Fruit Chan has been named as the filmmaker in focus at this year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival (March 28-April 8). The maverick director will be honored with a commemorative book, a face-to-face interview and the screening of ten of his movies. These include: 1997’s “Made in Hong Kong,” 1998’s “The Longest Summer,” 1999’s “Little Cheung,” 2000’s “Durian Durian,” 2001’s “Hollywood Hong Kong,” 2002’s “Public Toilet,” 2004 “Dumplings,” 2014’s “The Midnight After,” 2015’s “My City” and 2018’s “Three Husbands.”
Pyramid Scheme
Singapore-based VFX company Vividthree has signed a non-binding term sheet with China’s Metavision International, a company that specializes in location-based experiences, to explore a stock swap and an investment in the company’s Tmp Immersive Expedition Center in Chengdu, China.
The center, which opens to the public on Friday, will host exhibitions and virtual reality experiences that showcase the wonder of travel and exploration. The first exhibition...
- 2/2/2024
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
(To celebrate "Titanic" and its impending 25th-anniversary re-release, we've put together a week of explorations, inquires, and deep dives into James Cameron's box office-smashing disaster epic.)
The year was 1998. The MTV series "Total Request Live" determined what was cool, "Dawson's Creek" aired its first episode and inspired a whole generation of overly eloquent teens, and "Titanic" was the biggest movie of the year. It felt like "Titanic" was the biggest movie of all time, because, well, it was. After it premiered in 1997, it stayed at the top of the box office for a ridiculously long time. "Titanic" fever was a thing, with reminders of the movie wherever you turned. Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" was everywhere — the radio, the mall, and of course on TV — and getting away from Rose (Kate Winslet), Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), and that big sinking ship was pretty much impossible.
"Titanic" was...
The year was 1998. The MTV series "Total Request Live" determined what was cool, "Dawson's Creek" aired its first episode and inspired a whole generation of overly eloquent teens, and "Titanic" was the biggest movie of the year. It felt like "Titanic" was the biggest movie of all time, because, well, it was. After it premiered in 1997, it stayed at the top of the box office for a ridiculously long time. "Titanic" fever was a thing, with reminders of the movie wherever you turned. Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" was everywhere — the radio, the mall, and of course on TV — and getting away from Rose (Kate Winslet), Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), and that big sinking ship was pretty much impossible.
"Titanic" was...
- 2/6/2023
- by Danielle Ryan
- Slash Film
Before becoming a full feature, “Dumplings” was a short film, part of a great horror trilogy titled “Three… Extremes”, which, apart from Fruit Chan’s, also included Takashi Miike’s and Park Chan-wook’s efforts.
The story revolves around two women. Retired actress Mrs Li wants to become young and beautiful again, in order to draw her husband’s sexual interest back to her, who, unbeknownst to her, keeps a mistress. Her efforts bring her to the second focal woman, Aunt Mei, a mysterious individual who claims to be much older than she appears, and offers dumplings that supposedly bring back youth and sexual vigor, to her overpaying customers. Mrs Li soon sees the benefits of her new diet, but is totally appalled when she realizes that Aunt Mei uses aborted fetuses to staff her dumplings. The repercussions of eating them and the ways Aunt Mei goes...
The story revolves around two women. Retired actress Mrs Li wants to become young and beautiful again, in order to draw her husband’s sexual interest back to her, who, unbeknownst to her, keeps a mistress. Her efforts bring her to the second focal woman, Aunt Mei, a mysterious individual who claims to be much older than she appears, and offers dumplings that supposedly bring back youth and sexual vigor, to her overpaying customers. Mrs Li soon sees the benefits of her new diet, but is totally appalled when she realizes that Aunt Mei uses aborted fetuses to staff her dumplings. The repercussions of eating them and the ways Aunt Mei goes...
- 12/19/2019
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Above: The Midnight AfterAs we near the end of not just a year but a decade, we’re becoming inundated with even more lists than usual, as we look back at the last ten years in cinema and are compelled to rank movies for some unknown, possibly nefarious purpose. My default answer for the question of which film has most defined this past decade is Fruit Chan’s The Midnight After (2014), a response which is usually greeted with benign indifference, bemusement, or confusion. But for those of us on its wavelength, no film more perfectly defines this accelerationist decade than the story of the end of the world as seen through sixteen people on a Hong Kong minibus who have no idea what has happened to them, why it happened, or what they should do next. They fumble through explanation after explanation as they are whittled down one by one...
- 11/22/2019
- MUBI
Kyoko (Kyoko Hasegawa) is a successful novelist whose latest work is especially popular among readers. However, despite her popularity, Kyoko feels somewhat empty and haunted by the memory of her twin sister Shoko (Yuu Suzuki) whose demise, caused by Kyoko herself, has been the cause of numerous nightmares.
Feeling guilty for having left her for dead, Kyoko travels back to the circus tent where she performed together with Shoko and their benefactor Yoshii (Atsuro Watabe) only to find the past is anything but dead but lurking within the insides of her sister’s last resting place.
Following the concept of the omnibus film “Three” (2002) which featured the works of Peter Chan, Kim Jee-woon and Nonzee Nimibutr, “Three … Extremes” consists of short films by various Asian filmmakers dealing with the general subject of extremes. After “Dumplings” by Fruit Chan and “Cut” by Park Chan-wook, Japanese director Takashi Miike...
Feeling guilty for having left her for dead, Kyoko travels back to the circus tent where she performed together with Shoko and their benefactor Yoshii (Atsuro Watabe) only to find the past is anything but dead but lurking within the insides of her sister’s last resting place.
Following the concept of the omnibus film “Three” (2002) which featured the works of Peter Chan, Kim Jee-woon and Nonzee Nimibutr, “Three … Extremes” consists of short films by various Asian filmmakers dealing with the general subject of extremes. After “Dumplings” by Fruit Chan and “Cut” by Park Chan-wook, Japanese director Takashi Miike...
- 8/8/2019
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
The first announced guest of the 13th edition of the Five Flavors is Fruit Chan. The diector will be in Warsaw for the Master Class accompanying the retrospective of his films. This will be the first opportunity in Poland to meet this rebellious and always up-and-coming artist and see the key films for the period of Hong Kong’s handover to China.
Coincidentally (or maybe not), Asian Movie Pulse is about to start a new “Fruit Chan Project” in which we will review the whole body of work of the Hong Kong Maestro.
Director Fruit Chan appeared in Hong Kong cinema in the second half of the 90s as an independent artist. The groundbreaking “Made in Hong Kong” – shown at the 11th Five Flavours in 2017 – had no budget or stars and was filmed on leftover film stock. But the picture had something that was more and more often lacking in...
Coincidentally (or maybe not), Asian Movie Pulse is about to start a new “Fruit Chan Project” in which we will review the whole body of work of the Hong Kong Maestro.
Director Fruit Chan appeared in Hong Kong cinema in the second half of the 90s as an independent artist. The groundbreaking “Made in Hong Kong” – shown at the 11th Five Flavours in 2017 – had no budget or stars and was filmed on leftover film stock. But the picture had something that was more and more often lacking in...
- 7/25/2019
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
Remains after a 90-minute feast of fetus-filled dumplings concocted by director Fruit Chan is not the horror that typically follows a movie classified as such. Instead, it’s a farrago of trepidation (indeed), unrelenting sadness, and nostalgic longing. Embellished by Christopher Doyle’s mesmerizing visuals, Chan’s “Dumplings” elevates a gruesome tale of cannibalism to a classy metaphor of Hong Kong after 1997, caught amid hysterical attempts by its dwellers to hold onto bygones.
There in Hong Kong it’s said, Aunt Mei makes the most delicious dumplings. Her recipe a mystery, its efficacy an established fact, and its results a cause widely sought after. Eternal youth and beauty so long as money is put into Aunt Mei’s hands. A handsome deal for well-to-do Hongkongers.
And so, having lost her wealthy, 50-something husband’s affections to a much younger masseuse, a retired actress – Miss Lee – reluctantly ventures...
There in Hong Kong it’s said, Aunt Mei makes the most delicious dumplings. Her recipe a mystery, its efficacy an established fact, and its results a cause widely sought after. Eternal youth and beauty so long as money is put into Aunt Mei’s hands. A handsome deal for well-to-do Hongkongers.
And so, having lost her wealthy, 50-something husband’s affections to a much younger masseuse, a retired actress – Miss Lee – reluctantly ventures...
- 3/16/2019
- by AmselLuu
- AsianMoviePulse
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