Tag: little brother

DÌDI (弟弟,
translates as
‘little brother’)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 30 July 2024
No Comments on DÌDI (弟弟,
translates as
‘little brother’)
Sticky post

Director – Sean Wang – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A young, Taiwanese-American teenager must deal with issues of ethnicity, family and love in 2008, when social media has become a significant element of growing up – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

2008. California. Summer. 13-year-old Taiwanese-American Chris (Izaac Wang), who prefers to go by the nickname Wang Wang, is rebelling. Mandarin is spoken at home by Nai Nai (‘grandma’; Chang Li Hua) and mum (Joan Chen), but that doesn’t stop mega-sweary English language shouting contests at the supper table between Wang Wang and elder sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) who is due to attend UCSD later in the year. When she’s out, Wang Wang hangs out in her room and posts as her on her Facebook (about which, amazingly, she never comes back to him). In the bathroom, he pees into her moisturising cream (leading to her threatening to period him in the mouth if he ever does it again).

Outside the house, he hangs out with his peers Farhad Mahmood (Raul DIal) and Jimmy Kim aka SOUP (Aaron Chang). Egged on by them in the manner of pubescents everywhere, he attempts to hang out with Madi (Mahaela Park), the girl he fancies.… Read the rest

Tags 13-year-old Izaac Wang, 2008, Aaron Chan, alcohol, amateur painter, autobiographical, bathroom, bedroom, brothers and sisters, California, Chang Li Hua, childhood, Chinese, Chiron Cillia Denk, coming of age, culture, Cynthia Lee, Dìdi, drink, drunk, ethnicity, Facebook, family, filmer, gaffe, grandma, grandmother, grandmothers and grandsons, high school, home movie, Joan Chen, little brother, love, Mahaela Park, Mandarin, moisturising cream, Montay Boseman, mothers and sons, Nai Nai, painter, party, peer group, peers, period, pubescent, puke, Raul Dial, rebel, room, Sean Wang, Shirley Chen, sibling rivalry, siblings, skateboarders, skateboarding, skill set, social media, summer, Sunil Maurillo, supper table, Taiwan, Taiwanese-American, teen, teenage rebel, teenager, throw up, UCSD, US, video

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Deep Sea
(Shen Hai,
深海)

Director – Tian Xiaoping – 2023 – China – Cert. PG – 112m

Subtitled ***1/2 / Dubbed **

A girl on a cruise, who never got over her mother leaving, falls overboard into fantastical worlds – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 7th

A red child’s coat with a hood lies abandoned on the sea bed. A girl’s feet stagger through a blizzard. She calls out for her mama. But her mama (voice: Ji Jing), a swirling mass of dark hair and eyes, is leaving. And now, the girl is lifted above the sea bottom (as we now realise this location to be) by what appears to be swirling red paint. She wakes, in her coat, on the bus. It was a dream.

Her stepmum (voice: Yang Ting) tells Shenxiu (voice: Wang Tingwen) not to mess around on the bus as she starts pulling faces at her little brother (voices: Dong Yi, Fang Taochen). She boards a big cruise ship, looking at texts from her absent mum, who is separated from her dad (voice: Teng Kuixing). Mum told her about the Hyjinx – if you made a wish on your birthday, it would come and make your wish come true.… Read the rest

Tags 2D animation, 3D animation, absent mum, animation, birthday, blizzard, bus, China, Chinese ink painting, clown, computer animation, cruise, cruise ship, customers, dad, deck rough seas, deep sea restaurant, Dong Yi, drawn animation, dream, eyes, Fang Taochen, film projector, fish, giant duck, hair, hoodie, Hyjinx, Ji Jing, little brother, magic trick, mama, marketplace, monster, parental separation, picture book, propellers, red coat, red ink, red paint, restaurant, rubber ring, sea, sea bed, separated, Shanghai Animation Studios, snow, soup, stallholder, stepbrother, stepmother, stepmum, storm, Su Xin, swept out to sea, swirling red paint, Teng Kuixing, texts, thrown off the boat, Tian Xiaoping, undersea, walrus. Cook, Wang Tingwen, waterspout, wish, Yang Ting, Yi Qiao

Animation Features Movies

Weathering With You
(Tenki No Ko,
天気の子,
lit. Child Of Weather)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 3 April 2023
No Comments on Weathering With You
(Tenki No Ko,
天気の子,
lit. Child Of Weather)

Director – Makoto Shinkai – 2019 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 112m

***1/2

A runaway teenage boy in a constantly raining Tokyo falls for a girl who can replace rain with sunshine – Makoto Shinkai’s feature returns to cinemas for one day only on Wednesday, April 5th, ahead of the release of Shinkai’s new film Suzume on April 14th

A bravura opening shot pulls from rainswept Tokyo in through a hospital window to a girl waiting by a patient’s bedside, recalling nothing so much as the heroine of everyone’s favourite anime identity thriller Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) reflected against a train carriage window with a Tokyo cityscape visible beyond, but where Kon uses such imagery as an entry point to multilayered realities, Weathering With You’s vision never really extends beyond trying to recreate and repeat the formula that rendered its director’s previous Your Name (Makoto Shinkai, 2016) such a runaway success.

Like Your Name, Weathering With You centres on a teenage boy / girl romance but instead of the gender body swap and time travel devices in the earlier film – which probably shouldn’t have worked but somehow did – Weathering has an equally flimsy plot device about a girl named Hina who possesses the ability to turn rain into sunshine.… Read the rest