Edmund Yeo

I only managed to catch two films at the Tokyo International Film Festival last month before I got too busy preparing for the meetings at the Tokyo Project Gathering . The first one was the omnibus film headed by Mamoru Oshii, KILL. Which left me very underwhelmed , and immediately after that film, I went off to see THE CLONE RETURNS TO THE HOMELAND, because I was intrigued by its trailer and its title. Kanji Nakajima's THE CLONE RETURNS TO THE HOMELAND is a rare live-action Japanese science fiction film, and even rarer, an arthouse sci-fi film more in the vein of SOLARIS (I haven't seen either Tarkovsky nor Soderbergh's version, but that's what this film's been commonly compared with in other reviews) than STAR WARS. And being modestly budgeted, the film's aesthetics reminds me of the much-underrated GATTACA. It's more about the ideas and philosophy behind the science, it is the cinematic equivalent of a 'hard sci-fi' novel (that all my life,

I've just returned from Tokyo a few hours ago. Haven't been able to update the blog during the past few days because I've been busy with the Tokyo Project Gathering, a co-production market held in conjunction with the Tokyo International Film Fest and TIFFCOM.

poster of KILL I saw two films at the TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL today, the much-anticipated KILL ( official site ), and THE CLONE RETURNS TO THE HOMELAND, both Japanese films having their world premieres, I couldn't resist. Normally, I have a personal rule NOT to review films from film festivals I'm invited to (that's why I didn't review a single thing I saw at the SANTIAGO or HONG KONG film fests). I don't want to diss films that my own production is competing against because it'll make me look classless.