Worth noting (since the Hollywood Reporter article doesn't) that FXX used the word a few weeks back in an Always Sunny episode.

Unsimulated penetrative sex.

It's getting a "limited" day-and-date release, which means it will play in some theaters but not necessarily any near you. Shit like this is why my heart sinks a little whenever I hear a movie I'm looking forward to has been picked up by Netflix (see also: Nocturama). At least we know it'll be getting some theatrical…

Not really related to Okja, but I read something a few days ago that apparently hasn't made it into English-language media yet: Bong was attached to direct Arrival, but dropped out because he thought the script was too "standardized" (specifically that it was too similar to Contact) and the studio said the actors'…

There was a documentary about Samuragochi last year called Fake from director Mori Tatsuya (best known for the Aum docs A and A2). It's just about Samuragochi's life since the revelations came out (he's spent most of it cloistered in his apartment) and it's compelling viewing. He still insists his deception was…

There's lots of places that were early hubs for filmmaking before the industry consolidated around New York and Los Angeles. I keep meaning to read more about Jacksonville, Florida's outsized role in silent cinema (including race films—cf. Norman Studios, best remembered today for The Flying Ace).

The Blade is great—brutal, stylish action that's also the closest Tsui has ever come to recapturing the nihilist streak of the early HK New Wave, including his own Dangerous Encounters: First Kind and We're Going to Eat You—but it's been dogged by availability problems stemming from its sale to Warner Bros., who…

This looks so little like Kanye I wouldn't be surprised if the "sculptor" got a steep discount on an old statue of a deposed African dictator, then tweaked it for this project. The alternative is that he's a hugely untalented tool, but c'mon, what are the odds of that?

And regarding "holy grails," my main answer is one I gave a couple months back during some discussion of lost films: A Window on America, a Chinese film from 1951 or 1952 in which a laid-off worker intends to jump out of the window of a New York skyscraper, then gets sidetracked when a businessman suggests he leave…

Miramax almost did it in the late '90s with Russell Wong. IMO if any Hollywood studio wants to do a story about a Chinese detective minus the stereotypical/yellowface aspects, then they're better off creating a new character instead of dragging in the baggage of Charlie Chan. It's not like the name is going to have…

Or the Chinese Charlie Chan films from the '30s, where instead of sons he has a wacky daughter who invents stuff to help him solve crimes.

I'm writing this in response to last week's bit about Xu Haofeng, which I missed thanks to the AV Club's habit of yanking this column from the front page after only a few hours. I had no idea Judge Archer was out in the U.S.—Lionsgate actually picked it up at the same time as The Sword Identity, but then the Chinese…

I don't want to be a killjoy, but… do they actually have permission to do this? It's a non-profit fan film, but even those aren't legally in the clear if the IP holder doesn't approve.

I imagine the thinking there was to make up for the fact that the "the" of the English title can't be translated directly, since Chinese doesn't use articles. The English title isn't necessarily referring to the Milky Way, but it's definitely referring to one particular galaxy. Translating "galaxy" as the generic 星系…

In China it actually was translated more or less directly, as 银河护卫队 "Milky Way Guardian Team." (Hong Kong used the same title but with a different word for "guardian.") nilus is referring to the title in Taiwan, where they tend to be a bit freer with their title translations. The best theory I can come up with off the…

I doubt there were any. Nobody was in any position to require them except Lucas himself and I'm sure he preferred to keep it under wraps as much as possible.

King James Bible first edition, signed by the original author, GOD.

Not just in Japan either. In Hong Kong it played in theaters for half a year, in a market where a lot of films don't stay on past their opening week. (That means it was still playing when Out of the Dark opened, in which Stephen Chow plays a pretty direct parody of Léon.) It was never released in China, but its…

I've always wondered how anybody associated with True Lies saw La Totale! It was a hit in France, but it never got U.S. distribution and it was hardly a festival movie. Was Schwarzenegger doing PR in France and he just happened to walk into a theater showing it?

Reservoir Dogs was also big overseas, especially in the UK where it single-handedly turned Tarantino into a mainstream figure. The controversy over the violence (it was initially banned from home video, meaning it could only be seen theatrically) probably had a little to do with that.