From Japanese horror to South Korean revenge thrillers, and from the new Hong Kong crime film to Thailand's boundary-breaking ghost stories, Western audiences have been stunned by a boom in challenging cult cinema from East Asia over the last decade. But how did this cycle of 'Extreme' Asian films gain such notoriety? How did distribution companies, journalists, critics and censors contribute to the rise of a new genre of forbidden foreign cinema?Extreme Asia: The Rise of Cult Cinema from the Far East charts the history of the recent cult Asian film invasion, covering a five-year period and focusing on the activities of the distribution company Tartan Films and their incredibly influential Asia Extreme brand. Through a series of case studies of individual releases and other exhibition events, this book examines strategies of film promotion and consumption in the context of differing theories about horror cinema, movie marketing, reception studies, and Orientalism. Covering the rise and fall of the Asia Extreme label, and the enduring legacy of an unforgettable wave of cult cinema, this is a comprehensive study of a film movement that has provoked passion and outrage in equal measure.

This book compares production and consumption of Asian horror cinemas in different national contexts and their multidirectional dialogues with Hollywood and neighboring Asian cultures. Individual essays highlight common themes including technology, digital media, adolescent audience sensibilities, transnational co-productions, pan-Asian marketing techniques, and variations on good vs. evil evident in many Asian horror films. Contributors include Kevin Heffernan, Adam Knee, Chi-Yun Shin, Chika Kinoshita, Robert Cagle, Emilie Yeh Yueh-yu, Neda Ng Hei-tung, Hyun-suk Seo, Kyung Hyun Kim, and Robert Hyland.

This collection examines the exchange of Asian identities taking place at the levels of both film production and film reception amongst pan-Pacific cinemas. The authors consider, on the one hand, texts that exhibit what Mette Hjort refers to as, "marked transnationality," and on the other, the polysemic nature of transnational film texts by examining the release and reception of these films. The topics explored in this collection include the innovation of Hollywood generic formulas into 1950's and 1960's Hong Kong and Japanese films; the examination of Thai and Japanese raced and gendered identity in Asian and American films; the reception of Hollywood films in pre-1949 China and millennial Japan; the production and performance of Asian adoptee identity and subjectivity; the political implications and interpretations of migrating Chinese female stars; and the production and reception of pan-Pacific co-productions. .

Despite the rapid economic growth and poverty reduction, inequality in Asia worsened during last two decades. We focus on the determinants of growth inclusiveness and suggest options for reform. A cross cross-country empirical analysis suggests that fiscal redistribution, monetary policy aimed at macro stability, and structural reforms to stimulate trade, reduce unemployment and increase productivity are important determinants of inclusive growth. The main policy implication of our analysis is that there is still room to strengthen such policies in Asia to better achieve growth with shared prosperity. In particular, scenario simulations based on our results suggests that the effect of expanding fiscal redistribution on inclusive growth could be sizeable in emerging Asia, since the estimated improvement in our proxy of inclusive growth – a measure of growth in average income “corrected” for the equity impact—ranges from about 1 to about 8 percentage points.

This book explores the range and dynamism of contemporary Asian cinemas, covering East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia), South Asia (Bollywood), and West Asia (Iran), in order to discover what is common about them and to engender a theory or concept of "Asian Cinema". It goes beyond existing work which provides a field survey of Asian cinema, probing more deeply into the field of Asian Cinema, arguing that Asian Cinema constitutes a separate pedagogical subject, and putting forward an alternative cinematic paradigm. The book covers "styles", including the works of classical Asian Cinema masters, and specific genres such as horror films, and Bollywood and Anime, two very popular modes of Asian Cinema; "spaces", including artistic use of space and perspective in Chinese cinema, geographic and personal space in Iranian cinema, the private "erotic space" of films from South Korea and Thailand, and the persistence of the family unit in the urban spaces of Asian big cities in many Asian films; and "concepts" such as Pan-Asianism, Orientalism, Nationalism and Third Cinema. The rise of Asian nations on the world stage has been coupled with a growing interest, both inside and outside Asia, of Asian culture, of which film is increasingly an indispensable component - this book provides a rich, insightful overview of what exactly constitutes Asian Cinema.

This publication reviews the economics of climate change in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. It confirms that the region is highly vulnerable to climate change, demonstrates that a wide range of adaptation measures are already being applied, and that it has great potential to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions globally. It shows that the cost to the region and globally of taking no early action against climate change far outweighs the cost of action. The publication urges Southeast Asia to play an important part in working toward a global solution to climate change, and to apply all feasible and economically viable adaptation and mitigation measures as key elements of poverty reduction and sustainable development strategies. It also argues that the current global economic crisis offers Southeast Asia an opportunity to start a transition towards a climate-resilient and low-carbon economy by introducing green stimulus programs that can simultaneously shore up economies, create jobs, reduce poverty, lower carbon emissions, and prepare for the worst effects of climate change.

This book presents a unique, interdisciplinary approach to disaster risk research, combining cutting-edge natural science and social science methodologies. Bringing together leading scientists, policy makers and practitioners from around the world, it presents the risks of global hazards such as volcanoes, seismic events, landslides, hurricanes, precipitation floods and space weather, and provides real-world hazard case studies from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific region. Avoiding complex mathematics, the authors provide insight into topics such as the vulnerability of society, disaster risk reduction policy, relations between disaster policy and climate change, adaptation to hazards, and (re)insurance approaches to extreme events. This is a key resource for academic researchers and graduate students in a wide range of disciplines linked to hazard and risk studies, including geophysics, volcanology, hydrology, atmospheric science, geomorphology, oceanography and remote sensing, and for professionals and policy makers working in disaster prevention and mitigation.

The revised edition of Southeast Asia provides a grounded account of how people in the region are responding to - and being affected by - the changes sweeping through the region.

Beginning in the sixth century C.E. and continuing for more than a thousand years, an extraordinary poetic practice was the trademark of a major literary movement in South Asia. Authors invented a special language to depict both the apparent and hidden sides of disguised or dual characters, and then used it to narrate India's major epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, simultaneously. Originally produced in Sanskrit, these dual narratives eventually worked their way into regional languages, especially Telugu and Tamil, and other artistic media, such as sculpture. Scholars have long dismissed simultaneous narration as a mere curiosity, if not a sign of cultural decline in medieval India. Yet Yigal Bronner's Extreme Poetry effectively negates this position, proving that, far from being a meaningless pastime, this intricate, "bitextual" technique both transcended and reinvented Sanskrit literary expression. The poems of simultaneous narration teased and estranged existing convention and showcased the interrelations between the tradition's foundational texts. By focusing on these achievements and their reverberations through time, Bronner rewrites the history of Sanskrit literature and its aesthetic goals. He also expands on contemporary theories of intertextuality, which have been largely confined to Western texts and practices.