Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6704 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-08-21
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: Japanese, Cantonese Chinese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 125 minutes

Synopsis
THREE...EXTREMES brings together a team of highly-regarded Asian filmmakers, featuring a trio of short works by Hong Kong's Fruit Chan (DURIAN DURIAN), Korea's Chan-wook Park (OLDBOY), and Japan's Takashi Miike (AUDITION). The trilogy opens with Chan's disgustingly entertaining DUMPLINGS, which he has also turned into a full-length film. DUMPLINGS stars Miriam Yeung Chin-Wah as Ching, a former TV star who is afraid of facing middle age. She visits Mei (Bai Ling), whose secret recipe for dumplings helps women look and feel younger. But when Ching discovers what's actually in the dumplings, she has some deep soul-searching to do. In Park's brutally violent CUT, Lee Byung-hun stars as a movie director who has everything going for him--a beautiful wife, hit films, a fabulous house, and an upstanding reputation. But an extra (Gang Hye-jung) decides to spoil the fun by placing the director in a no-win situation that could end in murder. Finally, Miike closes the frightfest with BOX, a brilliant psychological thriller in which a reclusive novelist (Kyoko Hasegawa) is haunted by her dead twin sister and a dark family secret. Although Miike is highly regarded for his comic ultraviolence, he turns off the blood quotient in this smartly paced, very creepy tale.

Customer Reviews

Uneven anthology of Asian stomach turners
These three short movies (each about 40 minutes long) are seemingly intended to show works by the most extreme directors in three Asian countries, all of which are known for their cinema on the edge. However, there's little here that compares with the directors' best work. Only "Dumplings" offers something new, and is definitely not for the squeamish.

Japan's Takashi Miike is the best known of the three directors in the UK thanks to his purposefully stomach-churning movies like "Audition" and "Ichi The Killer". His story here, "Box", isn't really much to rejoice about. It's less wilfully weird than most of his full-length works, which suggests that the short movie format doesn't suit him. As a highly stylized piece of "art" cinema, it will appeal to people who like films such as "Dolls", rather than Miike's more usual shlocker fans.

Fruit Chan's "Dumplings" is superb on two levels. First, it's a true cringe-inducing and repulsive movie. Second, it throws up a number of interesting questions, such as, what lengths will a vain woman go to, in order to fend off middle age? But more than this: it seems to show there is a definite line over which traditional Chinese medicine must not cross. To a western constitution, many Chinese herbal remedies are pretty repulsive. If "Dumplings" plays to a Chinese audience, it's interesting to know exactly where that line is drawn in the audience. Some might feel there is no problem with most of the events in the movie, and it's only when the woman's regular supply is cut off that she crosses the line. "Dumplings" is well worth the price of the DVD on its own -- though since the other two shorts aren't so good, you might be better off choosing to buy its own solo release, expanded into a full length movie. I haven't seen this, but you definitely don't need both versions.

"Cut" is the real disappointment of the three. Chan-wook Park has made some terrific movies, particularly the truly horrible "Oldboy", but "Cut" doesn't work. Certainly, it's not up there with Korean horror movies like Kim Ki-Duk's "The Isle". As a simple "what would YOU do?" scenario in which a man has to choose between the torture of his wife or the death of an innocent child, it bears much more in common with Hollywood shockers like "Saw" or the gruesome blood-fest of "The Hostel". In other words, it doesn't have that unique Asian twist on the horror genre that we see in the other works. And therefore, probably, its audience is a different one than "Dumplings".

Nevertheless, this anthology is well worth getting. It looks like there's a volume 2 too, so there's plenty more to enjoy once you've swallowed these tasty morsels. Just don't investigate what's stuck between your teeth.

Scary
A selection of 3 asian horrors. If you're a fan of 'The Ring' you should deinately try this dvd - if anyhing the stories are even scarier.

Cant review yet!!!!
My dvd player is broken, ouch!
Although I have seen the full length version of Dumplings which help my decision on this purchase