This volume examines Hong Kong cinema in transnational, historical, and artistic contexts.

Including reviews of 200 films, plus information about U.S. theaters, video stores, and mail-order sources that specialize in this white-hot, new genre, this is the first guide to an exploding popular culture phenomenon. Includes 75 photos.

“Showcases the extremes of one of the world’s capitals. From ghost stories, to historical thrills, to underworld brutality . . . endlessly fascinating.”—CrimeReads Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. In Hong Kong Noir, fourteen of the city’s finest authors explore the dark heart of the Pearl of the Orient in haunting stories of depravity and despair. This anthology includes brand-new stories by Jason Y. Ng, Xu Xi, Marshall Moore, Brittani Sonnenberg, Tiffany Hawk, James Tam, Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang, Christina Liang, Feng Chi-shun, Charles Philipp Martin, Shannon Young, Shen Jian, Carmen Suen, and Ysabelle Cheung. “The history of Hong Kong, once a fishing village, encompasses piracy, the opium trade, prostitution, corruption, espionage and revolutionary plots; grist for the 14 dark tales in Hong Kong Noir.”—BBC Culture “A delightfully dark collection of fiction from Hong Kong, a city where talk is cheap and cash is still king.”—Ritz-Carlton Magazine “Ng and Blumberg-Kason defy the fates by presenting a collection of 14 stores—by Chinese tradition, an ominous number—illustrating their city’s dark side . . . Readers can feel lucky to have such a collection.”—Kirkus Reviews "Hong Kong Noir digs below the financial center’s gleaming surface to unearth stories of the city’s ghosts and spirits.”—South China Morning Post

The 'Why factory' throws down the gauntlet to the city of Hong Kong. What role will Hong Kong be fulfilling in the future? Which specialism should the city focus on in the trial of strength with other cities, such as Shenzhen, Shanghai and Singapore? What objectives need to be set? What are the ingredients that would be appropriate? Can Hong Kong deploy its relatively high quality to develop itself further? And if so, then how? "Hong Kong fantasies" plots out alternative paths, new visions and strategies for Hong Kong's urban and architectonic future. Sustainability and globalization play a leading role in specific spatial interventions that underpin progressive developements in the future

Hong Kong's film industry gained global attention in the 1980s, at the time of negotiations over Great Britain's return of the colony to China. Uncertainty about the post-handover era accelerated Hong Kong's race for economic growth, and found expression in cinema's depictions of a 'city on fire.' In this accessible introduction to the extraordinary cinematic output of the colony, Michael Hoover and Lisa Stokes review the directors and films that have established Hong Kong cinema internationally: John Woo's martial arts flicks, Tsui Hark's wire-worked fantasies, Ann Hui's exile melodramas, Stanley Kwan's limpid romances, and Wong Kar-wai's stylish art films.

Chinese-speaking popular cultures have never been so queer in this digital, globalist age. The title of this pioneering volume, Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan already gives an idea of the colorful, multifaceted realms the fans inhabit today. Contributors to this collection situate the proliferation of (often online) queer representations, productions, fantasies, and desires as a reaction against the norms in discourses surrounding nation-states, linguistics, geopolitics, genders, and sexualities. Moving beyond the easy polarities between general resistance and capitulation, Queer Fan Cultures explores the fans’ diverse strategies in negotiating with cultural strictures and media censorship. It further outlines the performance of subjectivity, identity, and agency that cyberspace offers to female fans. Presenting a wide array of concrete case studies of queer fandoms in Chinese-speaking contexts, the essays in this volume challenge long-established Western-centric and Japanese-focused fan scholarship by highlighting the significance and specificities of Sinophone queer fan cultures and practices in a globalized world. The geographic organization of the chapters illuminates cultural differences and the other competing forces shaping geocultural intersections among fandoms based in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. “This important collection complicates our understanding of fan practices, showing how national and regional factors play an important role in how media texts and identities are understood. It also shows how the Chinese-speaking world is home to dense and often conflicting modes of audience reception of cultural texts deriving from Sinophone, Japanese, and Western contexts.” —Mark McLelland, University of Wollongong “An exciting anthology by a talented group of emergent scholars whose vibrant studies offer fresh insights on the diverse practices and transregional flows of queer fandom in the Chinese-speaking world. Local in its specificity and transnational in its scope, this book highlights the creativity of queer fan practices while critically locating them within the political and social structures that produce them.” —Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Simon Fraser University

The 'Why factory' throws down the gauntlet to the city of Hong Kong. What role will Hong Kong be fulfilling in the future? Which specialism should the city focus on in the trial of strength with other cities, such as Shenzhen, Shanghai and Singapore? What objectives need to be set? What are the ingredients that would be appropriate? Can Hong Kong deploy its relatively high quality to develop itself further? And if so, then how? "Hong Kong fantasies" plots out alternative paths, new visions and strategies for Hong Kong's urban and architectonic future. Sustainability and globalization play a leading role in specific spatial interventions that underpin progressive developements in the future.

With humor, rage, and confessional detail, Virginie Despentes—in her own words “more King Kong than Kate Moss”—delivers a highly charged account of women’s lives today. She explodes common attitudes about sex and gender, and shows how modern beauty myths are ripe for rebelling against. Using her own experiences of rape, prostitution, and working in the porn industry as a jumping-off point, she creates a new space for all those who can’t or won’t obey the rules.

Hong Kong films tore up kung fu stereotypes in the 80s/90s. Here's the definitive tome on stunt hazards, pistol ballets, snarky gangsters and toothsome molls, hopping vampires, and Hong Kong noir. Start with John, Jacky and Michelle -- evolve to Johnnie To, Ringo Lam, the fantastic world of Tsui Hark, and the auteurdrome of Wong Kar-wai. How and why did films from Hong Kong--a British Crown Colony and map-speck--become so popular? It started in the 50s, when Chinese tycoons named Shaw decided to produce their own films as they felt quality was lacking. The Shaw Brothers owned cinemas in Southeast Asia, but creative freedom was lacking in those territories. The Shaws built their studios in Hong Kong and were soon cranking out high-quality features for distribution across much of Asia -- and Chinatowns worldwide. When the Shaws dropped almost all their film production to feed nouveau riche Hong Kongers via their TVB television channel, Hong Kong experienced a sudden wave of new filmmakers. Golden Harvest became the de facto number one studio with a cadre of filmmakers led by Sammo Hung. The most famous was Jackie Chan, who rocketed to stardom and created his own stunt team. In film after film, Jackie and Sammo co-starred in and/or competed for audience thrills with films that showcased their martial prowess and respective senses of humor. More Sex, Better Zen, Faster Bullets explicates, amplifies, and just plain rips across genres and filmmakers in one of the world's most storied film industries. Become an afflictionado. More Sex, Better Zen, Faster Bullets contains the best bits of Sex and Zen & A Bullet in the Head (1996) and Hollywood East (2000)--the two best known tomes on Hong Kong films of the twentieth century. Neither has ever been released in digital format, so author Stefan Hammond crashed together the two books and added more insight...and more film reviews. The result is the most comprehensive encyclopedia of Hong Kong film available anywhere.

This is the first full-length English-language study of one of the world's most exciting and innovative cinemas. Covering a period from 1909 to 'the end of Hong Kong cinema' in the present day, this book features information about the films, the studios, the personalities and the contexts that have shaped a cinema famous for its energy and style. It includes studies of the films of King Hu, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, as well as those of John Woo and the directors of the various 'New Waves'. Stephen Teo explores this cinema from both Western and Chinese perspectives and encompasses genres ranging from melodrama to martial arts, 'kung fu', fantasy and horror movies, as well as the international art-house successes.