Arthur Jones has been living and working in China for a fair while now, and he produces great films - not least of which are "The Poseidon Project" and "A Farewell Song", both now available on demand on Vimeo. "The Poseidon Project" looks at a six-year search for a sunken submarine, that started as a private obsession, but went on to challenge official accounts of the escape, and bring together the lost pieces of a story that touches on the history of Britain and China in the 1930s, the 1970s an...
Dec 12, 2015•26 min
Founded in 1938 by Otto Hertz, Scabal was originally a cloth merchant and supplier of fabrics. His successor was JP Thissen, who was assisted by his son Gregor Thissen, the third generation of the family owned business. Through the aquisition of fabric brand Wainshiell, Scabal traces a history back to the 18th century. Today Scabal employs almost 600 staff worldwide. Over the years Scabal has evolved into a producer of top quality fabrics to the most prestigious tailors and textile businesses ar...
Nov 08, 2015•18 min
Cambodia, 1996, the long-running Khmer Rouge insurgency is fragmenting, competing factions of the unstable government scrambling to gain the upper hand. Missing in the chaos is businessmen Charles Avery. Hired to find him is Vietnamese Australian ex-cop Max Quinlan. But Avery has made dangerous enemies and Quinlan is not the only one looking. Teaming up a Cambodian journalist, Quinlan's search takes him from the freewheeling capital Phnom Penh to the battle scarred western borderlands. As the po...
Jun 04, 2015•20 min
"It will stay with you for life boy. Either way you'll pay for it in your soul, but it's up to you if you want to pay for it with your time too." 1977, a scorching summer day in England. Teenage misfits Richard and Ali throw their cruel gang leader Blakes into a canal. Scared of the repercussions, they go on the run, pursued by the police as well as a dangerous ex-cop with unsound motives. The road less traveled throws up both obstacles and solutions. As Rich and Ali discover what it means to ca...
May 26, 2015•17 min
A vibrant new chapter in the spirit of the avant-garde Spanish cuisine movement, the constant intellectual search for new flavors that takes place not only in gardens and landscapes around the world but in the laboratory of a group of innovative Spanish chefs, has just begun. This time, spreading a platform of high impact and more energy than ever before, and marrying traditional flavors with special techniques is Chef Alain Devahive Tolosa, who is just finishing up his Asian tour of Ritz-Carlto...
Apr 24, 2015•29 min
Chef Aitor Olabegoya was the First prize winner at The International Competition for Young Chefs in Spain in 1999. He is also the most awarded Spanish Chef in Beijing. He leads the Migas kitchen team with his vast experience of having worked with many renown professionals in the industry, building a long career, despite his young age. He is constantly in search of new recipes and ways of cooking and creating fusions of different products from different cultures, and blending them with a special ...
Apr 12, 2015•18 min
After responding to a richly scented plea for help Chicago PI Scanner Grant teams up with the charismatic Max Zwoelstra to travel to Hong Kong in search of Max’s adoptive father who has disappeared while selling cheese to the Chinese. Closer to home, a slew of abductions and the gruesome murder of a young Tibetan girl severely rattle Scanner’s old friend and guardian, the esoteric taxi driver Lobsang. As both seemingly unrelated cases edge closer to an explosive finale, Scanner & Max need al...
Mar 27, 2015•16 min
Born in Malaysia, Patrick Chew has had nearly two decades of experience working with pastry. Starting as instructor's aid at culinary school, he has gone on to work in hotels around the world, first as a baker, and then later specializing in chocolate and pastry work. Patrick currently works at The Ritz-Carlton Tianjin, where he is the Executive Pastry Chef. I caught up with Patrick during a break in his busy schedule to talk to him about how he first started cooking, what drew him to working wi...
Mar 13, 2015•19 min
Welcome to London - where the ferryman always has to be paid and the price is two shiny pennies over your cold dead eyes. When the son of the city’s leading barrister asks ex-con turned private eye Charlie “Bars” Constantinou to look for a missing call-girl, Charlie thinks he might finally have found a way to do some good. But Charlie soon finds himself embroiled with a serial killer who believes that the soul of the city demands human sacrifices if it is to reward its inhabitants with spoils an...
Jan 27, 2015•20 min
Luo Shoucheng, Tu Weigang and Weng Zhenfa are celebrated musicians in China. They have played traditional instruments for 40 years or more and are about to take a leap into the unknown.They all retired last year, which means no more state-backed concerts and no more classes at the Shanghai Music Conservatory. They should be fading quietly into Shanghai’s cultural backwaters. However these three men, with their ready smiles and wit, have decided to take a gamble. As they begin to prepare a series...
Jan 16, 2015•16 min
The second Superindentent Le Fanu Mystery sees our intrepid British policeman on the trail of the murderers of an Indian Rajah. Under pressure from his superiors, pining for his lost love and allergic to the sight of blood, Le Fanu must navigate through a political mine-field of colonial intrigue in 1920s Madras. As the British tighten their grip on the sub-continent, Gandhi’s peace movement, British secret agents and armed pro-independence rebels complicate Le Fanu’s investigations further and ...
Dec 05, 2014•26 min
When con-man Ralph does a runner on the check at a shabby diner in an unfamiliar town, he doesn't expect it to catch up to him. But the waitress Arlene tracks him down and ropes him into a bizarre heist involving ugly family secrets, a violent stepfather, a well-secured safe, and most of all Arlene's mother Gracie—a sultry karaoke queen who tickles Ralph's fancy for older women. Ralph will need all his guile to make it through a job that has him wishing that he'd just paid for his meal. The Blin...
Nov 12, 2014•14 min
Madras in the 1920s. The British are slowly losing the grip on the subcontinent. The end of the colonial enterprise is in sight and the city on India’s east coast is teeming with intrigue. A grisly murder takes place against the backdrop of political tension and Superintendent Le Fanu, a man of impeccable investigative methods, is called in to find out who killed a respectable young British girl and dumped her in a canal, her veins clogged with morphine. As Le Fanu, a man forced to keep his own ...
Oct 02, 2014•20 min
Dublin’s underworld is run by the Doherty family, a clan of brothers harder than the Rock of Cashel and darker than a pint of Guinness. The head of the clan, Malcolm Doherty, has infiltrated all levels of public office and rules the city’s criminal landscape without mercy or compassion. Gerald O’Brien is the incorruptible cop on the Dohertys’ trail, obsessive and indefatigable, yet unable to bring them down. Nathan Corbally is a neglected and abused youngster. Raised by a monstrous father, Natha...
Oct 01, 2014•17 min
Mizuki is a Japanese restaurant, featuring four kinds of cuisine – featuring Kaiseki – Japanese traditional haute cuisine, Sushi, Tempura and Teppanyaki. This is a place where guests can enjoy artistic Japanese food, where each dish is born from the creative ideas of each chef. Mizuki is a world that stimulates all five senses, situated in a special space overlooking a rock garden and waterfall. Chisaki was in Tianjin, China, recently as a Guest Chef at The Ritz-Carlton Tianjin's Zest Restaurant...
Sep 28, 2014•12 min
Peter “Pop” Popovich is a 24-year-old unemployed glazier, anti-Semite and white supremacist who is pushed over the edge by his chaotic mother, his unresponsive lover, an uncaring stepfather and a right-wing hate machine that tells him liberals want to take away his guns and his liberty. While he waits to be executed for his crimes, “Pop” squibs sentences, whole paragraphs, a novel about life on Death Row in which he reprises the life that landed him there. Death Sentences is loosely based on an ...
Jul 01, 2014•17 min
Pulp is back, in style, and James Newman is the man leading it to the public. Based in Bangkok, Spanking Pulp Press gives authors from around the world a chance to have their work read, all in exchange for a review - it's raw and alive, interaction on a visceral level... a mainline shot of junk for the jaded literary soul. It was great talking to James about his work both as a publisher and an author. This interview ranges over James early writing, his time as a musician, how pulp fiction will n...
Jun 27, 2014•19 min
A genre-bender (think Animal Farm blended with The Big Sleep, spiced with a dash of Gulliver’s Travels and served with a side of Blade Runner), The Gwousz Affair is a dystopian-mystery novel in which the Western world is largely ruled by highly intelligent bovines. Yet at the heart of the novel lies a story that is pure noir. Cornelius Planke is having a bad decade. First, his wife of twelve years gives him the bum’s rush for another guy. Then he is canned from the force for no good reason that ...
Jun 27, 2014•17 min
The Second Detective Maier Mystery! Julia Rendel asks Maier to investigate the twenty-five year old murder of her father, an East German cultural attaché who was killed near a fabled CIA airbase in central Laos in 1976. But before the detective can set off, his client is kidnapped right out of his arms. Maier follows Julia’s trail to the Laotian capital Vientiane, where he learns different parties, including his missing client are searching for a legendary CIA file crammed with Cold War secrets....
Jun 02, 2014•16 min
Iwasaki Shiro, a 46 year old salaryman in Tokyo is having a midlife crisis. Unexceptional in his IT job, he works in the shadow of his boss’s charisma. His children are embarrassed by his mediocrity and his wife rarely thinks of him as an individual. He has nothing to show for decades of conformity and doing the right thing. Shiro needs purpose in his life, so he begins to plot the murder of a neglected housewife on his street. He takes trips to scout places to dispose of a body, researches kniv...
Mar 24, 2014•14 min
Benedict Jones’ novella Skewered takes us onto the mean streets of South East London. An Asian business tycoon has been kidnapped and Charlie ‘Bars’ Constaniou, just out from a third stretch in prison and stuck working in his uncle’s kebab shop, is more than ready to hand over the ransom money for a cut of the action. But simple plans never pan out and soon Charlie is up to his neck in a crooked family feud that involves a stellar cast of misfits including a psychotic torturer and a classic femm...
Feb 20, 2014•14 min
Chef Ornato Antunes is the Executive Chef of The Ritz-Carlton, Tianjin. He joined The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company in 1999 as Chef de Partie Banquet of the Hotel Arts, Barcelona, Spain. Prior to joining The Ritz-Carlton, Tianjin, Chef Ornato worked at other Ritz-Carlton properties, including Hotel Penha Longa in Lisbon, Portugal and Hotel Abama in Tenerife, Spain. His 20 year career has seen him serve and lead at the Four Seasons, The Ritz London, Concorde Group, Starwood and Warwick. He was part ...
Oct 29, 2013•19 min
Chef Ornato Antunes is the Executive Chef of The Ritz-Carlton, Tianjin. He joined The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company in 1999 as Chef de Partie Banquet of the Hotel Arts, Barcelona, Spain. Prior to joining The Ritz-Carlton, Tianjin, Chef Ornato worked at other Ritz-Carlton properties, including Hotel Penha Longa in Lisbon, Portugal and Hotel Abama in Tenerife, Spain. His 20 year career has seen him serve and lead at the Four Seasons, The Ritz London, Concorde Group, Starwood and Warwick. He was part ...
Oct 29, 2013•22 min
In 1931, Britain’s most advanced submarine collided with a cargo ship off the coast of China and sank. Three hours later, six sailors surfaced, barely conscious. They were the first men ever to escape from a sunken submarine using a proto-scuba device. Their story hit headlines and went on to inspire a feature film. The miraculous escape changed marine safety forever. But their names, and their submarine, gradually sank into obscurity. Beijing-based scuba instructor Steven Schwankert was looking...
Oct 23, 2013•20 min
Working Tokyo nightclubs is easy money for beautiful and troubled American Val Benson - until a wealthy client with a dark past and sinister hobbies reluctantly gives up a map to one of the greatest treasures lost in World War II. With yakuza, motorcycle gangs, rogue CIA, treasure hunters, pimps, Thai boxers and her Congressman father snapping at her high heels, Val burns a trail of destruction across Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand and the Burmese borderlands to get the loot before someone less dese...
Oct 08, 2013•17 min
In 1931, Britain’s most advanced submarine collided with a cargo ship off the coast of China and sank. Three hours later, six sailors surfaced, barely conscious. They were the first men ever to escape from a sunken submarine using a proto-scuba device. Their story hit headlines and went on to inspire a feature film. The miraculous escape changed marine safety forever. But their names, and their submarine, gradually sank into obscurity. Beijing-based scuba instructor Steven Schwankert was looking...
Sep 29, 2013•21 min
Test.
Nov 15, 2012•3 sec
Wil is a stand up first and foremost, touring Australia and the world at every opportunity, performing more than a hundred shows a year. His stand up is a densely written, high-speed ride though one of the most wonderful comedic imaginations in the country. Politics, pop and the banal come together in a Wil Anderson routine, always delivered with more conviction and enthusiasm than any man’s vocal chords can take. Previously host of ABC-TVs AFI Award winning program, The Glass House, Wil returns...
Aug 08, 2011•31 min
Why did I do this interview? That's a good question... I did it because I wanted to. Because I like Doug Stanhope, and I want to introduce him to other people. Doug Stanhope is a stand-up comic. Has been since 1990. His material ranges from true-life graphic perversion to volatile social criticism. Doug is vulgar, opinionated, brutally honest and shockingly uninhibited and is certainly not for everybody. He started his career in Las Vegas doing jack-off jokes for free drinks. Not much has change...
Oct 27, 2009•32 min
