Tag: goddess

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Features Live Action Movies

Moana
(2026)

Director – Thomas Kail – 2026 – US – Cert. PG – 115m

***1/2

Disney’s live action remake of its Polynesian heroine mythological romp – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 10th

It’s a curious experience watching Disney’s live action remake of Moana (John Musker, Ron Clements, 2016), one of the Studio’s better animated movies of recent years. Of course, some audience members (particularly small children) may never have seen the orginal, or, equally, because Disney are very, very good at marketing their films to a mass audience, they may already be familiar with it. Either way, the film is likely to be enjoyed by both those who know the original and those who don’t.

The original had its roots in Maori mythology, and this live action retread follows much the same path. It’s set on the island of Te Fiti, a resting goddess whose heart (a small, round, green stone) has been stolen from her in order to give humans the power of creation by the demigod Maui, and then lost along with his giant fishhook which bestows shapeshifting powers upon him.

As a small child, the chief of the island Te Fiti’s daughter Moana can’t stop thinking about venturing beyond the reef, a trangression forbidden by her father Chief Tui (John Tui) and his ancestors.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

A Chinese Odyssey
(Sai Yau Gei,
西遊記)

A Chinese Odyssey: Part One – Pandora’s Box (Sai Yau Gei: Yut Gwong Bou Haap, 西遊記第壹佰零壹回之月光寶盒)

A Chinese Odyssey: Part Two – Cinderella (Sai Yau Gei: Sin Leui Kei Yun, 西遊記大結局之仙履奇緣)

Director – Jeffrey Lau – 1995 – Hong Kong – 87 + 98m

***

The Monkey King is banished to earth with loss of memory for a series of encounters with monsters and romantic interludes – screened as part of Focus Hong Kong 2022 Chinese New Year on Saturday January 29th

These two films are the first and second parts of the same story, so it makes sense to screen them together as a double bill. The starting point is the 16th century Chinese novel Journey To The West, which has also spawned such productions as the seminal Chinese animation The Monkey King (Wan Laiming, Cheng Tang; Part One, 1961; Part Two, 1964) and the long-running Japanese TV series Monkey (1978-80). The novel’s plot concerns a monk and his three assistants Pigsy, Sandy and Monkey who journey to the West (i.e. Central Asia and India) to obtain Buddhist texts.

Less an adaptation of the novel than a tangential story that uses the novel’s framework as its starting point, the films are bookended by two sequences, one at the start of Part One, the other at the end of Part Two, which start the tangential story rolling and wrap it up respectively.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Movies Shorts

Golden Conch
(Jin Se
De Hai Luo,
金色的海)

Director – Wan Guchan – 1963 – China – Cert. N/C U – 36m

*****

A mermaid falls for a poor fisherman and moves in with him arousing the wrath of her sea goddess mother – available to rent online from Friday, February 12th to Wednesday, May 12th in the UK & Ireland as part of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio Retro in the Chinese Cinema Season 2021

A coral island, drifting mists, drifting faerie maidens. Underwater. Every morning, says the female narrator, a fisherman goes out in his boat and sings to these mermaids. But their mother the sea goddess doesn’t like to be disturbed so she hides the girls from him by increasing layers of blue fog. 

The fisherman goes about his work and his net keeps picking up a conch shell which he keeps throwing back in the water. When he returns home, there is food prepared on his table, which is odd because he lives alone. 

Next day when he’s out, the camera closes in on his simple cottage. Inside there’s an urn, inside the urn floats the golden conch (the image distorted by patterned glass) which lap dissolves into a faerie maiden. She walks round the house, magics a fire alight in his stove and opens the window to marvel at his singing. … Read the rest