WHAT HO, JOHNNIE TO?

And I don't mean "What ho!" as in: "Which skanky prostitute is being referenced here?" But "What ho!" as in the hunting cry of the British upper class.

The Johnnie To news keeps piling in - the guy has something like 80 movies coming out before the end of the year. He was just in NYC for the NY Film Festival screening of ELECTION 2 (which went extremely well but prompted some walk-outs during the doggie scene) and Ed Douglas over at ComingSoon was able to get the updates on the status of LINGER (his romance), TRIANGLE (his movie with Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam) and THE SPARROW (his pickpocket movie).

Then Monkeypeaches has the news that it looks like EXILED, To's latest film, won't be allowed a theatrical release in China, even though it will be allowed a DVD release. The reasons given are that it's too violent and the subject matter is all about gangs with no cops playing much of a role. I think this is a bit of a stretch. The real reason, I suspect, may also include the fact that the film takes place on the eve of Macau's handover to China and the event is referred to as basically a new gang taking over. People talk about settling scores before the handover, and just ensuring that things appear to go peacefully during the transition which is very different from things actually going peacefully during the transition.

Finally, more news on the PTU sequels we mentioned before. It turns out that this is actually a television miniseries. The entire cast (Lam Suet, Simon Yam, everyone) will return for four 90-minute episodes, each helmed by a different director. I'm actually pretty excited about this and I'm dying for it to come out on DVD. PTU's not one of my favorite movies, but I really like the world it created and I'd love to see these characters get more life.