The Straits Times

6 stories

The Straits TimesSingaporeAt ‘China’s Hollywood’ in Hengdian, visitors become stars as consumers spend more on experiences Hengdian World Studios saw more than 2,000 people shooting their own dramas.

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The Straits TimesSingaporeSupernatural songs add thrills to Creative Sync and Lirica Arts’ Halloween concerts The Creative Sync's Lucia Di Lamur set Lucia Di Lammermoor in 1950s Malaysia and Lirica Arts' lecture-recital The Supernatural In Opera is part of its Opera 101 series.

11.02

The Straits TimesSingaporeAuteur Lee Chang-dong is back after eight years with Possible Love — and he’s on Netflix Possible Love' reunites auteur with Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu ahead of a world premiere in competition at Venice

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The Straits TimesSingaporeUS director Michael Mann accidentally shoots himself at Los Angeles gun range It was unclear what type of gun Mann had been using, or if he had been released from the hospital.

11.02

The Straits TimesSingaporeJapan’s anime market hits record high of $36 billion in 2025 The growth appears to have been driven by the rapid expansion of streaming services such as Netflix.

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The Straits TimesSingaporeSomething Strange Festival celebrates Friday the 13th with horror film marathon, haunted backrooms The inaugural horror-themed festival will take place at Cineleisure from Nov 13 to 15.

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Our mark is 銀幕, ginmaku — the silver screen, and the same two characters in Japanese, Chinese and Korean.

I came to Tokyo at twenty-three for a summer job at a Shibuya mini-theatre and the job never quite ended. Fifteen years of festivals later I still think the only review that counts is the one the room gives you: where the laugh lands, the moment three hundred people stop moving at once, whether anybody stays for the credits.

Cinepuuulse follows Asian cinema — Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand — across about a hundred and twenty sources. A good number of them are Spanish, French and Portuguese, because those countries programme this work seriously and write about it better than most of the English-language trade. Genre and art-house get the same seat here. I am not ranking them, and nothing is scored out of ten.

Each story is a headline, a short excerpt, one still and a link to the outlet that did the reporting. We never republish the piece, and the still belongs to its studio or its photographer. A Korean trade paper appears in Korean, a French review in French. We point at the work; we do not put words in anyone's mouth.

— Daren Wise, Tokyo