‘Anita’ and Raging Fire’ Share Hong Kong Film Awards

Vivienne Chow Hong Kong boy band Mirror has pulled out of Japan’s Summer Sonic festival, organizers confirmed, while investigations continue into last week’s horrific incident that severely injured two dancers on stage during a live concert in their hometown.Summer Sonic announced on Friday that the 12-piece group has canceled the performance at the festival’s Tokyo Pacific Stage, originally scheduled for Aug. 20, “due to unforeseen circumstances.”“We sincerely apologize to all of you and hope to have the opportunity to participate again,” a comment from Mirror cited in Summer Sonic’s statement.The news follows a tragic incident on July 28, when a giant LED screen hanging above the stage fell and struck 27-year-old dancer “Mo” Lee Kai-yin in the head during Mirror’s concert at the Hong Kong Coliseum.

Video content budgets across India, Korea and Southeast Asia climbed 21% to reach $10.4bn in 2021, and are forecast to grow 15% to $12bn in 2022, according to a report from Media Partners Asia (MPA).

Tragedy struck for Hong Kong boy group Mirror during their concert last week.

Hong Kong officials said Friday they would open an investigation into a concert accident where a giant LED video screen fell down onto the stage and injured two dancers. Video clips from the Cantopop group Mirror concert Thursday night show a massive LED screen suspended above the stage crashing down, directly landing on one dancer before toppling over onto another as audience members scream in horror. The injured performers were immediately sent to the Queen Elizabeth hospital.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefOne of the two dancers injured by a falling LED screen at a Mirror concert in Hong Kong has been discharged from hospital. The other remains in a critical condition.Hong Kong authorities are now considering how to bend the city health regulations, which would normally require the overseas family of the still-critical dancer to endure a week of quarantine on arrival.

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Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefHong Kong authorities have ordered an investigation into the incident on stage Thursday when a giant LED screen fell from the ceiling at a concert by boy band Mirror, injuring two male dancers.“I have contacted the Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism, and instructed the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, together with relevant departments, to comprehensively investigate the incident and review the safety requirements of similar performance activities in order to protect the safety of performers, working staff and members of the public,” said the city’s Chief Executive John Lee. He described the events as a “a serious incident.”The incident happened around 10.35pm local time on Thursday at the Coliseum, a major venue for the Canto-pop music scene.

Two dancers were injured at a Cantopop concert in Hong Kong after a massive video screen suspended above the stage fell onto performers below. The concert on Thursday, by boy band called Mirror, was the fourth of a series of 12 scheduled concerts by the band held at the Hong Kong Coliseum. According to the Associated Press, two performers were injured onstage and three other female audience members were also reported as injured, police said.

Richard Kuipers The question of what it means to be a Hong Konger is examined in Chan Tze-woo’s innovative and affecting hybrid documentary “Blue Island.” Artfully editing footage of the 2019-2020 protests with dramatic recreations of events that have shaped the British colony turned Chinese special administrative region since 1967, “Blue Island” balances its unavoidably sobering picture of the current political landscape with uplifting testimony of individuals determined to preserve the spirit of Hong Kong, no matter what the future holds. Winner of the international documentary award at Hot Docs this year, “Blue Island” will likely never be legally exhibited in Hong Kong or China, though specialty outfit Icarus Films is distributing the film theatrically in selected U.S.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefLegal drama “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” is living up to its name following its international success on Netflix.Domestic Korean audiences for the series have spiked, in line with its streaming growth.The drama stars Park Eun Bin as a young female lawyer with Asperger’s syndrome who, thanks to her powerhouse 164 IQ, exceptional memory and creative thinking processes, graduates top of her class. When she joins a major law firm, she uses her particular skills to deliver results that others would not be able to achieve.

BAFTA has made tweaks to the voting regulations and eligibility criteria for its 2023 Film Awards. Scroll down for the changes in full.

Manori Ravindran International EditorBAFTA has made key changes to its awards eligibility and voting rules for next year’s film awards, handing back more power to its voting members in the performance and director categories.The British Academy faced scrutiny for the 2022 film awards, where only two nominees in each performance category were the result of votes by the membership, and four were selected by juries, while all six director nominees were selected by a jury. The resulting nominations were refreshingly diverse, but BAFTA was criticized in some circles for not placing more trust in its membership and voting chapters.For the 2023 awards, there will be an equal split between voting-based nominees and jury-based nominees in each performance category, while the directing category will include two vote-based nominees and four jury-based nominees.

Film award seasons, most of them, follow a curved track. The action begins in one place (at the Telluride festival), then loops around to end somewhere else (with the Oscars at the Dolby Theater, unless the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences exercises its early termination option with that venue in 2024).

Naman Ramachandran Popular stars Suriya and Ajay Devgn shared the best actor prize at India’s national film awards for 2020, which were revealed on Friday.The awards for 2020, were due to be announced in 2021. But they were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not immediately clear when the ceremony for the 2021 awards will be held.

Manori Ravindran International EditorJames Blunt, the British singer-songwriter behind the romantic anthem of the aughties, “You’re Beautiful,” is the focus of a new documentary.The project, which is jokingly described as “the story of an ageing, British pop star, still fighting for relevance some 17 years after his star momentarily twinkled,” will follow Blunt all across Europe during his 2022 Greatest Hit Tour.The doc, which is directed by Chris Atkin, will delve into Blunt’s backstory, from witnessing the genocide of the Kosovo War as a British Army soldier to recording “Back to Bedlam,” the biggest selling album of the 2000s in the U.K. The film will also detail how Blunt endured a harsh backlash following his meteoric success, but “tweeted his way back” by becoming a keen social commentator online.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefA marathon screening of all three “Infernal Affairs” films has been announced for the much delayed 46th edition of the Hong Kong International Film Festival.The three films, all restored and upgraded to 4K digital prints, lead off a six- film section of Chinese-language restored classics at the festival.The HKIFF was this year postponed from its usual March-April slot to August, due to the fifth wave of the COVID pandemic which closed Hong Kong cinemas for the first months of 2022. It will now take place from Aug.

Raging Fire, starring and produced by Donnie Yen, was awarded best film and best director for late action maestro Benny Chan at the Hong Kong Film Awards (HKFA) on Sunday night. The ceremony took place at Kowloon Bay International Trade & Exhibition Centre, the first time it had been held as a fully-fledged, in-person event since 2019.

Malaysian historical action movie Mat Kilau: Kebangkitan Pahlawan, directed by Syamsul Yusof, has become the highest-grossing local film of all time in the Asian country, breaking the record set by the director’s own horror film Munafik 2 in 2018.

The Locarno Film Festival has announced the full line-up and juries for its 75th edition, which is due to unfold August 3-13.