Day: June 13, 2023

Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who in prose both dense and brittle took readers from the southern Appalachians to the desert Southwest in such novels as The Road, Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses, died Tuesday. He was 89.

McCarthy died of natural causes in Santa Fe, New Mexico, publisher Alfred A. Knopf said.

McCarthy, raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, was compared to William Faulkner for his Old Testament style and rural settings. McCarthy’s themes, like Faulkner’s, often were bleak and violent and dramatized how the past overwhelmed the present. Across stark and forbidding landscapes and rundown border communities, he placed drifters, thieves, prostitutes and old, broken men, all unable to escape fates determined for them well before they were born.

McCarthy’s own story was one of belated, and continuing, achievement and popularity.

Little known to the public at age 60, he would become one of the country’s most honored and successful writers despite rarely talking to the press. He broke through commercially in 1992 with All the Pretty Horses and over the next 15 years won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer, was a guest on Oprah Winfrey’s show and saw his novel No Country for Old Men adapted by the Coen brothers into an Oscar-winning movie.

The Road, his stark tale of a father and son who roam a ravaged post-apocalyptic landscape, brought him his widest audience and highest acclaim. It won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was selected by Winfrey for her book club. In his Winfrey interview, McCarthy said that while typically he didn’t know what generates the ideas for his books, he could trace The Road to a trip he took with his young son to El Paso, Texas, early in the decade. Standing out of the window of a hotel in the middle of the night as his son slept nearby, he started to imagine what El Paso might look like 50 or 100 years in the future.

“I just had this image of these fires up on the hill … and I thought a lot about my little boy,” he said.

He told Winfrey he didn’t care how many people read The Road.

“You would like for the people that would appreciate the book to read it. But, as far as many, many people reading it, so what?” he said.

McCarthy dedicated the book to his son, John Francis, and said having a child as an older man “forces the world on you, and I think it’s a good thing.”

In 2022, Knopf made the startling announcement that it would release McCarthy’s first work in more than 15 years, a pair of connected novels he had referred to in the past: The Passenger and Stella Maris, narratives on a pair of mutually obsessed siblings and the legacy of their father, a physicist who had worked on atomic technology. Stella Maris was notable, in part, because it centered on a female character, an acknowledged weakness of McCarthy’s.

“I don’t pretend to understand women,” he told Winfrey.

His first novel, The Orchard Keeper — written in Chicago while he was working as an auto mechanic — was published by Random House in 1965. His editor was Albert Erskine, Faulkner’s longtime editor.

Other novels include Outer Dark, published in 1968; Child of God in 1973; and Suttree in 1979. The violent Blood Meridian, about a group of bounty hunters along the Texas-Mexico border murdering Indians for their scalps, was published in 1985. His Border Trilogy books were set in the Southwest along the border with Mexico: All the Pretty Horses (1992) — a National Book Award winner that was turned into a feature film — The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998).

McCarthy said he was always lucky. He recalled living in a shack in Tennessee and running out of toothpaste, then going out and finding a toothpaste sample in the mailbox.

“That’s the way my life has been. Just when things were really, really bleak, something would happen,” said McCarthy, who won a MacArthur Fellowship — one of the so-called “genius grants” — in 1981.

McCarthy attended the University of Tennessee for a year before joining the Air Force in 1953. He returned to the school from 1957 to 1959 but left before graduating. As an adult, he lived around the Great Smoky Mountains before moving West in the late 1970s, eventually settling in Santa Fe.
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A young actress drags a suitcase despondently up a tree-shaded street, as a crew shoots a scene in a film about director Norris Wong’s unachieved dream of becoming a Cantopop lyricist. 

The movie “The Lyricist Wannabe” is the latest from Wong and part of an unprecedented trend in Hong Kong’s moviemaking history — the growth of its indie films.  

Hong Kong films used to be made by big production companies. They were exported around the world in the industry’s heyday from the 1970s to early ’90s when Hong Kong was considered the Hollywood of Asia, turning out stars such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat and recent Oscar Best Actress winner Michelle Yeoh. 

But the industry has declined in recent decades. Hollywood blockbusters flooded in and companies switched to making movies that appealed to China’s bigger and more lucrative market, according to industry players. 

“The Hong Kong market had totally collapsed. Very experienced directors all went to the mainland. They make $10 million films there, so they won’t make $1 million films here,” said Mani Man, vice president of mm2, a company that supports indie films. “It’s like the parents have all left, we’re like orphans creating a new world.”  

Now, Hong Kong may be starting to see a revival in its film industry. In the five years before COVID-19 hit, 275 locally produced movies were made, more than the 256 in the previous five years, including independent films by new directors, according to the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association. 

Fewer films were made during the pandemic, but several enjoyed great success, breaking box office records. 

What has helped drive this trend are Hong Kong’s tough COVID-19 travel restrictions, which kept directors and audiences at home, giving the former a chance to make local films and the latter the time to watch them. 

The government has also provided $50 million in funding to revive the industry in the past 15 years, including $30 million in just the past six years, enabling many small- and medium-budget films and new directors’ first feature to be made, according to statistics from the Film Development Council.  

Also, the 2019 social and political unrest in Hong Kong and Beijing’s passage of a national security law in response to it have made some worry about changes to their way of life. Industry experts say there is a yearning among audiences in the city for films that reflect their lives. 

“Because of all these uncertainties in Hong Kong society, it inspired some local movies which try to tell the stories about Hong Kong people,” said Dorothy Lau, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Film. “People are trying to pursue their own identity, stories that belong to themselves.” 

For example, the highest recent local earner, “A Guilty Conscience,” a film about a lawyer trying to find evidence to get his innocent client acquitted, dealt with the issue of justice — a theme that resonated with moviegoers as they see pro-democracy activists, a newspaper publisher and protesters tried under the new law.  

“In the mind of many local residents, they look for justice but feel disappointed when they see reality. When they watch ‘A Guilty Conscience,’ they feel somebody is speaking their mind to inspire them to stay hopeful in what they see as the bleak reality,” Lau said. 

The government has said the law has restored peace after disruptive and sometimes violent anti-government protests in 2019. 

The film, which raked in $15 million, setting a record for a Hong Kong film, is among three that made it onto the list of Hong Kong box office hits over the past year, a list previously dominated by Hollywood blockbusters. 

Low-budget movies also made profits or broke even, while winning local and regional awards as they took on subjects that big studios neglected. Some of those include the struggles of blue-collar workers (“The Narrow Road”), the repressed love of closeted elderly gay men (“Twilight’s Kiss”), and homelessness (“Drifting”).

“It’s important for Hong Kong to have its own movies and stories to be told on the big screens because cinema has always been a very good medium that preserves local culture,” said the 36-year-old Wong, who cobbled together $294,000 for her latest movie, with a loan from a director friend and earnings from her debut film “My Prince Edward,”  which is about a woman who learns to assert herself. 

Still, there are limits to the kinds of topics that can be featured. The national security law and subsequent amendments to film censorship guidelines make subjects with political content untouchable. 

Several documentaries about the 2019 pro-democracy protests have been banned, according to media reports. Some content deemed sensitive has been deleted from films, including three being screened at a local film festival this month. 

In response to questions from VOA, the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration issued a statement saying the amendments “did not change the fact that the public and the film industry continue to enjoy freedom of creation and freedom of speech under the premise of abiding by the law and protecting national security.” 

It said that since the amended guidelines took effect in 2021, it has approved all but six of the more than 4,100 applications for film classification and public screening.  

Directors meanwhile continue to make films about Hong Kong, with some showing them overseas or switching to less sensitive topics. At the Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival, which runs from June to July, filmmakers highlighted censorship by replacing deleted scenes with black images and muted sound.  

Independent film and documentary maker Lam Sum’s 2021 film “May You Stay Forever Young” — about the 2019 protests — was not approved. But he went on to be nominated for Best Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards this year for “The Narrow Road.”    

“I didn’t think about giving up because I really like to make films. To me, this is a challenge for creators — how to tell stories in this space,” said Lam, 37.  

Despite the concerns about censorship, funding, and fewer audiences with the lifting of travel restrictions, directors believe now is as good a time as any to make films.  

“I’m quite optimistic. … We no longer need to have big production companies’ support to make a film,” Wong said. “It will bring about more Hong Kong homegrown films.” 
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In its heyday, Hong Kong was the Hollywood of Asia, turning out stars such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat and recent Best Actress Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. While the industry has seen a decline over the past two decades, Hong Kong is experiencing what some say is a film revival, despite stricter controls and censorship. For VOA, Cindy Sui reports from Hong Kong.
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Skyscrapers, bridges and other landmarks in South Korea’s capital will be lit up in purple Monday as the country begins celebrating the 10th anniversary of K-pop band BTS, whose global popularity is a source of national pride.

The lights will provide the backdrop for various social media-driven events marking the 2013 debut of the seven-member group, which is now on a temporary hiatus as its singers take turns releasing solo material while the others begin to serve their mandatory military duties.

From Monday evening, numerous Seoul structures, including City Hall, the 123-story Lotte World Tower, several Han River bridges, and the futuristic DDP — a Zaha Hadid-designed aluminum and concrete dome that’s often used for visual art — will be bathed in purple, a color associated with BTS, according to city officials and the group’s management company, Hybe.

Messages congratulating BTS were displayed on digital screens in buildings across Seoul, while postal authorities issued stamps marking the group’s anniversary, which will be available at post offices starting Tuesday.

Seoul officials hope that the celebrations, which will continue for around two weeks, will boost tourism. The city has designated more than a dozen sites associated with BTS, including places where the group held major performances or shot some of their famous videos.

Fireworks are planned at a park Saturday night near the Han River, hours after one of the BTS singers, RM, holds a live talk with fans that will be broadcast online.

Quickly garnering huge followings in Asia following their debut, BTS’ popularity expanded across the globe with their 2020 megahit “Dynamite,” the band’s first all-English song that made it the first K-pop act to top Billboard’s Hot 100. BTS has since performed in sold-out arenas around the world and was invited to speak at United Nations meetings, supported by a legion of global followers who call themselves the “Army.”

BTS’ activities as a full group are currently on hold as the artists begin to serve in the military. Two BTS singers – Jin and J-Hope – have already started their compulsory 18-month service and other members are to follow in the coming months, which likely means the group will reconvene around 2025.

In South Korea, all able-bodied men are required to serve in uniform 18-21 months under a system meant to deter aggression from rival North Korea.
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