Latest news with #BlueSunPalace
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Avatar: The Last Airbender' Set To Begin Production On Season 3; Unveils New Cast
Season 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender is in the can and production is set to begin on the third and final season of Netflix's live-action adaptation. You can see an on-set cast video announcement below. The streamer also revealed new cast members who round out the Season 2 line-up. Terry Chen (Lucky Star) portrays Jeong Jeong; Dolly de Leon (Triangle of Sadness) plays Lo and Li; Lily Gau (Blue Sun Palace), is Ursa; Madison Hu (The Brothers Sun) plays Fei; and Dichen Lachman (Severance) portrays Yangchen. More from Deadline Comedian Earthquake Prepping Second Special For Netflix Streaming Ad Tiers Catch Fire, Make Up Nearly Half Of U.S. Subscriptions For SVODs That Offer Them, Study Says It Starts On The Page (Limited): Read 'Adolescence' Episode 3 Script With Foreword By Stephen Graham & Jack Thorne They join previously announced new S2 cast members including Miya Cech, Chin Han, Hoa Xuande, Justin Chien, Amanda Zhou, Crystal Yu, Kelemete Misipeka, Lourdes Faberes, Rekha Sharma, alongside returning cast Gordan Cormier, Kiawentiio, Ian Ousley, Dallas Liu, Elizabeth Yu, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Daniel Dae Kim, Momona Tamada, and Thalia Tran. New cast members for Season 3 include Jon Jon Briones (Ratched) as Piandao and Tantoo Cardinal (Dances with Wolves) as Hama. Avatar: The Last Airbender is a live-action reimagining of the beloved Nickelodeon animated series following Aang, the young Avatar, as he learns to master the four elements (Water, Earth, Fire and Air) to restore balance to a world threatened by the terrifying Fire Nation. Christine Boylan, Jabbar Raisani, Dan Lin, Ryan Halprin, Brendan Ferguson, Albert Kim executive produce. Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds All The 'Mission: Impossible' Movies In Order - See Tom Cruise's 30-Year Journey As Ethan Hunt Denzel Washington's Career In Pictures: From 'Carbon Copy' To 'The Equalizer 3'
New York Times
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Blue Sun Palace' Review: A Whole World Inside
The first scene of 'Blue Sun Palace' lingers on a couple at dinner, eating a mouthwatering chicken, speaking Mandarin to one another. The man seems older than the woman. They're on a date, but you can tell something is a little off — like this relationship is very new, or there's some unresolved power dynamic. It's not until after dinner, and a subsequent trip to a karaoke bar, that the pieces of Constance Tsang's sensitive, lovely and ultimately devastating first feature fall into place. The man is Cheung (Lee Kang Sheng), a married Taiwanese migrant who is working a menial job and sending money back to his wife, his daughter and his mother. The woman is Didi (Haipeng Xu), who works in a massage parlor in Flushing, Queens — the Blue Sun Palace — which officially doesn't provide any 'sexual services' but is frequented by a series of men, most of them white, looking for just that. Didi and Cheung, however, have a different kind of relationship, one built partly on companionship, and she sneaks him into Blue Sun Palace to spend the night. But Didi's closest friend is another of the Blue Sun Palace employees, Amy (Ke-Xi Wu). Tsang's film starts out like a chronicle of workplace friendship, albeit an unusual workplace. Amy and Didi hang out on the staircase in their building, eating lunch and sharing dreams and plotting toward the day they'll head to Baltimore, where Didi's daughter lives with her aunt, and open a restaurant together. Wu and Xu's performances are light and full of life, two women who are making the best of a situation that isn't ideal but certainly could be worse. They and their other co-workers form a network of support and joy. In these early moments, 'Blue Sun Palace' feels like it could have some kinship with 'Support the Girls,' both films about the community that women build together to survive a world that isn't made for their them to thrive in. But 'Blue Sun Palace' is gentler, with the cinematographer Norm Li's camera drifting around the space, capturing the play of light or air on a curtain. This first section is a prelude. On Lunar Near Year, sudden tragedy strikes the massage parlor. It happens so abruptly, and with so little cinematic heralding, that it feels almost happenstance, the full blunt weight of the impact only landing moments later. To underline this, Tsang borrows a page from a number of other films in the recent past (perhaps most notably Ryusuke Hamaguchi in 'Drive My Car') and delays the film's credits till 30 minutes into the movie, signaling to us where the real story has begun. It turns out this is not a tale of friendship; it's a story of grief, and of the unexpected, fraught bonds people build in the midst of it. In the wake of violence, Amy and Cheung fall into a kind of friendship, two people brought together by mutual pain and by their shared experience as immigrants with jobs of necessity. Cheung takes her to the restaurant he took Didi, to the karaoke bar where they'd gone afterward. But Amy is not interchangeable with her friend, or any other woman, as much as the men around her might like to treat her that way. Exploitation and its tricky contours is a key element in 'Blue Sun Palace.' Technically, Amy can leave her job at any time. Technically, Cheung can escape his, too. But in reality, the idea of doing something else is full of peril. Cheung, who sends money to his family back in Taiwan, is outrunning a dark past there. Amy, on the other hand, might be able to find her way out of here. 'Blue Sun Palace' glides at a pace both deliberate and lyrical: We can see what Cheung is doing and sense the grief and pathos behind it. And yet we sense, along with Amy, the exasperation of feeling stuck, of trying to navigate her own sadness and bursting need to get away. Tsang brings a perceptive subtlety to the story, creating a whole world inside the parlor and its inhabitants, while letting us discover along with them what lies beyond. Instead of leaning into trauma or misery, the filmmaker gives us complex characters who nonetheless speak very little — everything happens in their expressions, the quick flash of a twitch across a cheek when the other isn't looking. It's often said that New York is a city of neighborhoods, little galaxies contained within themselves, but the truth is more granular: We walk by a dozen Blue Sun Palaces a day, and never dream the whole cosmos of human emotion is inside.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Wu Ke-xi wins Best Actress at HKIFF
23 Apr - Taiwanese actress Wu Ke-xi has recently been named Best Actress at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. The actress won the Firebird Award for Best Actress on 20 April for her performance in "Blue Sun Palace", which revolves around migrants living in Queens, New York. Wu, who wasn't able to attend the event due to work obligations in the US, dedicated the award to all who live and work in a foreign country. "You are not alone," she said. "All the suffering or pain will pass, and become nutrients for you to become a better self." The judges' reason for the award was that it was a story about the ideals of a group of people living in a foreign land. "They brought to life the vicissitudes, powerlessness and wandering of the shared destiny of immigrants, allowing the audience to be more deeply immersed in a world where women are oppressed by reality. Wu's smart performances in the film are indispensable and won unanimous recognition from the judges." This marks Wu's first award at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. (Photo Source: Wu Ke-xi IG, IMDb)
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cannes Critics' Week Winner ‘Blue Sun Palace' Unveils Trailer (EXCLUSIVE)
Distribution company Dekanalog has released the official trailer for 'Blue Sun Palace,' the migrant drama and feature debut of filmmaker Constance Tsang. 'Blue Sun Palace' is set in the Chinese community of Queens with a cast led by award-winning Taiwanese actor Lee Kang Sheng ('Rebels of the Neon God'), Golden Horse award nominee Ke-Xi Wu ('The Road to Mandalay') and Chinese actor Haipeng Xu ('Venus By Water'). More from Variety 'Blue Sun Palace' Review: A Moody Debut Shines Light on Sisterhood Among Chinese Immigrants Working in a Massage Parlor In 'Blue Sun Palace,' U.S.-Made Critics Week Charmer, Constance Tsang Reframes the Chinese Immigrant Tale With Empathy - and a Stellar Cast Charades Boards Cannes' Critics Week Migrant Drama 'Blue Sun Palace,' Unveils Clip (EXCLUSIVE) The official synopsis reads, 'Within the confines of a massage parlor in Flushing, Queens, Amy and Didi navigate romance, happiness, and the obligations of family thousands of miles from home. Despite the physical and emotional toll their work extracts, the women who live at the parlor have fortified an impenetrable sisterhood. 'When tragedy strikes on Lunar New Year, Amy is forced to consider her own destiny for the first time ever. Despite finding solace in the company of Cheung, Amy must leave the city and prioritize her own spirit in order to survive. In an unseen part of New York, Blue Sun Palace explores the lives of transient souls trying to find a sense of permanence.' 'Blue Sun Palace' nabbed the French Touch prize from the 2024 Cannes Critics' Week jury. Variety's review of the film reads, 'More akin to European art films than to American indies, 'Palace' prioritizes mood over plot. Tsang allows her experienced actors plenty of breathing space to convey the melancholy of their existence in situations where dreams are more likely to be deferred than to come true, but are necessary nevertheless.' 'Blue Sun Palace' is produced by Sally Sujin Oh, Eli Raskin, and Tony Yang. Tsang's debut feature will have its Los Angeles premiere at The American Cinematheque on April 22, and will then open theatrical runs at both the Laemmle Glendale in L.A. and Metrograph in New York City on April 25. Watch the trailer below. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Grammy Predictions, From Beyoncé to Kendrick Lamar: Who Will Win? Who Should Win? What's Coming to Netflix in February 2025
