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Asian Pop Cinema: Bombay to Tokyo
An artsy design and lots of color stills, posters, and photographs decorate accounts of action, fantasy, samurai and swordsmen, monster, exotic, erotic, yakuza, and other films. Also here are interviews with directors and writers, including John Woo. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
132 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1998
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About the author
Lee Server
36 books18 followersLee Server specialises in books on popular culture and literary history.
He is the critically acclaimed author of such as 'Danger Is My Business: The Illustrated History of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines' (1993), 'Over My Dead Body: The Sensational Age of the American Paperback' (1995) and the biography 'Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care' (2001).
He is the critically acclaimed author of such as 'Danger Is My Business: The Illustrated History of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines' (1993), 'Over My Dead Body: The Sensational Age of the American Paperback' (1995) and the biography 'Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care' (2001).
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 26, 2013
More than time has passed since Asian Pop Cinema was published in 1999; the knowledge of Asian Cinema has become more ubiquitous with an abundant amount of DVDs and books that have been released since. For example, when writing about Thai movies he completely ignores Panna Rittikrai B action films that were plentiful and popular during the 80s and 90s, but it is hard to fault because they were not well known outside of Thailand until the popularity of Tony Jaa. Only five pages (and one of them a picture) are dedicated to Korean films. This would not happen if this book was written today with the brilliant, disturbing and unique cinema that comes out of South Korea.
Lee Server seems to favor filling too much information on erotica films (such as Japanese pinku or Philippine bomba films) while interesting are a bit disproportionate when considering the thesis of his book is "pop."
Several interviews with John Woo, Tomoaki Hosoyama, Jose Lacaba are the highlights of this book and a good reason to get it if you are an Asian movie fan as long as this book remains inexpensive.
The books works well as a primer glossing over cinema from Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Southeast Asia and India. It is weird that he has two specific chapters on Seijun Suzuki and Takeshi Kitano while ignoring most other directors or just barely mentioning them. Though even if you have a good knowledge of Asian cinema you are bound to get some idea of a future cinematic purchase (or rental) and this is where the book succeeds.
Lee Server seems to favor filling too much information on erotica films (such as Japanese pinku or Philippine bomba films) while interesting are a bit disproportionate when considering the thesis of his book is "pop."
Several interviews with John Woo, Tomoaki Hosoyama, Jose Lacaba are the highlights of this book and a good reason to get it if you are an Asian movie fan as long as this book remains inexpensive.
The books works well as a primer glossing over cinema from Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Southeast Asia and India. It is weird that he has two specific chapters on Seijun Suzuki and Takeshi Kitano while ignoring most other directors or just barely mentioning them. Though even if you have a good knowledge of Asian cinema you are bound to get some idea of a future cinematic purchase (or rental) and this is where the book succeeds.
Displaying 1 of 1 review