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Innocent Steps

Director: Park Young-hoon

Starring: Moon Geun-young, Park Gun-hyung

Prelude: Dance movies, even the mediocre ones,  have a certain   charm, given the passionate and romantic nature of dance.  The revival of the genre in Asia started with Shall We Dance (1997) - a Japanese romantic comedy  about a bored,  married accountant who signs up for a ballroom dance class to meet the beautiful dance teacher.

Hollywood last year  churned out a crude remake that starred  the listless Richard Gere and hopeless Jennifer Lopez. Other Hollywood films that define this genre   include Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain,  Saturday Night Fever,  Flashdance,  Footloose and, more recently, Save the Last Dance.

Hong Kong fans can check out Dancing Bull, a 1990 film directed by 'new wave' filmmaker Allen Fong. The film  stars Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (Infernal Affairs, Initial D) as a struggling young dancer.

The story:  Innocent Steps  has the all-too-familiar arranged marriage  scenario with a dancing twist, featuring South Korean starlet  Moon Geun-young  as an innocent villager  from China.  She marries Young-sae (Park Gun-hyung) - once Korea's greatest dancer - to start a new life. They prepare for a national competition by training  together  before eventually falling for each other.

The star: Moon's  features are far from delicate and her acting is rather one-dimensional. But she has    the sweet, innocent look that makes most  men fancy her.

In addition to her roles in comedies such as My Little Bride, she also  stars in the spine-chilling horror flick A Tale of Two Sisters.

How will it fare?   Girls will love it.

It's like a romantic Korean  soap that  grows increasingly soppy towards the end.

Mobile Suit Z Gundam: A New Translation - Heirs to the Stars

Director: Yoshiyuki Tomino

Prelude: Arguably the most popular Japanese animated series in Asia, Z Gundam was  created in 1985 as a  television series. It was made to follow  the success of the hit series Mobile Suit Gundam.   Movies, models, action figures and stationery followed, as well as  stacks of reference books and magazines. It may only be  a matter of time before  a design course titled Gundam Model Making 101 is offered in universities.

The movie: It's  the first part of a trilogy based on the original  television series. With the help of an animation technique known as acing,  new scenes have been blended seamlessly with old  television footage.

How will it fare? It may not  receive the same scale of publicity as Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, but the appeal of this time-tested Japanese animation series  should not be underestimated.



movie buff