ACF 1548: JAPAN CUTS begins today!

JAPAN CUTS: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema begins today and will run through July 28, 2012. This is the sixth consecutive year of this extraordinary showcase of recent Japanese films, with a classic or two thrown in as well. And once again JAPAN CUTS dovetails with the ongoing New York Asian Film Festival. From July 12-15, the two fests will co-present twelve films. After July 15th, JAPAN CUTS will continue on its own for another thirteen days.

JAPAN CUTS will showcase 39 films, 33 of which will be premieres of one sort or another. Leading things off is Asura (2012), which will have its North American Premiere at 6:30 pm tonight. It's a very dark anime about a savage child left on his own to survive as best he can in a land racked by war and starvation. Info and tickets here. And you can read Colleen Wanglund's review at AsianCineFest affiliate VCinema by clicking here.

Several special guests are scheduled to attend JAPAN CUTS, including the renowned Japanese actor Koji Yakuso. Six of his films will be featured, and at the July 20th screening of The Woodsman and the Rain (2011), he will receive the Cut Above Award for Excellence in Film, the first-ever JAPAN CUTS prize. Tickets for this screening and event are sold out. Sorry for this who didn't buy early, but don't blame AsianCineFest. Info about this year's JAPAN CUTS festival was posted here way back on June 14th.

Actress Masami Nagasawa in Love Strikes!

The JAPAN CUTS festival also provides special events for those who like to party hardy. The 7:15 pm screening of Love Strikes! on July 14th will feature an introduction and Q&A with actress Masami Nagasawa, a recipient of the NYAFF's Rising Star Asia Award. The film will be followed by the STRIKING LOVE party, which will feature a live performance by COBU. Tickets for this screening and the following party are sold out. (Love Strikes! will also be shown on Sunday, July 22nd at 1 PM. Info and tickets for that screening here.)

The International Premiere of Don't Stop! will have and introduction and Q&A with director Kenji Kohashi and will be followed by the DON'T STOP! JAPAN CUTS Party! (Click here for info and tickets for Don't Stop!)

For complete, current JAPAN CUTS info, tickets and trailers, click here.

ACF 1542: Two New York Asian Film Festival interviews at VCinema

The VCinema Show, an affiliate of AsianCineFest, has a special podcast episode with two interviews I conducted recently.

One was with Pang Ho-cheung, the Hong Kong director of Vulgaria, the raunchy and hilarious opening night film at this year's NYAFF.

The other was a joint interview with Giddens Ko and Michelle Chen, both of whom are from Taiwan. They are, respectively, the director and female lead of You Are the Apple of My Eye. It's a coming of age film, and Giddens'  feature directorial debut, that has set all kinds of box office records in several Asian markets. Michelle was awarded a "Rising Star" award at the festival pretty much on the basis of her breakout performance in it.

Check out the podcast here, or download it from the VCinema podcast listings at iTunes.

ACF 1540: DRAGON at NYAFF

Dragon / Wu Xia

Directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan

Hong Kong/China, 2011, 98 minutes

Starring Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tang Wei

When: Monday, July 9, 2012 at 7:45 pm

Donnie Yen will receive the Star Asia Award before the screening

Where: New York Asian Film Festival

The Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street, New York, NY

Map here

This screening is currently sold out. Visit the venue’s box office

on the day of the screening for any available tickets.

Prior to the start of this year's New York Asian Film Festival, I attended the press screening of Peter Ho-Sun Chan’s 2011 film Dragon (a.k.a. Wu Xia). The film stars Donnie Yen (Hero; Seven Swords; Kill Zone; both Ip Man films, etc.) He plays Liu Jinxi, a papermaker and seemingly run-of-the-mill fellow. He’s married to lovely Ayu (Tang Wei, Late Autumn; Crossing Hennessey; and Lust,Caution). They have two boys: the older is Ayu’s from her previous husband, who abandoned her and the child, the younger one is her’s and Jinxi’s. They live in a small, remote village in Yunnan in southwest China.

Their life of peaceful anonymity and marital bliss goes all to hell one day in 1917 when two thugs come into a village store and demand money. When the shopkeeper tries to resist, the pair go ballistic on him and everyone else in the store. Initially cowering behind a cabinet, Jinxi emerges and wraps his arms around the larger would-be-robber. Holding on for dear life, he is flung around the store and ultimately winds up in a river. But it’s the two robbers who somehow end up dead. When it turns out that one of them was a top wanted criminal, Jinxi becomes somewhat of a celebrity and is commended for his role in bringing the pair to justice, though he claims that he was just lucky.

Inspector Xu Baijiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro, Chungking Express, House of Flying Daggers, the two-part Red Cliff movie) is unconvinced. With his glasses and straw hit, he displays Sherlock Holmes-like investigative abilities, including that of recreating exactly what happened by carefully examining the evidence and the testimony of those involved. Having made the mistake of going easy on a young criminal in the past, a mistake that cost innocent people their lives, Baijiu is fanatical about enforcing the letter of the law. He doggedly pursues Jinxi, not believing his account of what transpired with the two crooks and convinced that he is hiding something from his background. As a result Ayu comes to question everything she thought she knew about her husband, and the lives of Jinxi, his family, Baijiu and all the villagers are threatened by a group known as the 72 Demons, led by Jimmy Wang Yu, star of the legendary Shaw Brothers film The One-Armed Swordsman (1967).

Truth be told, there were times during the screening when I almost thought maybe I was watching a Quentin Tarantino film, because Dragon alludes to so many other movies. The revealing of the surprising past of a seemingly ordinary family man is reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. Baijiu, as I’ve already indicated, comes across much like an early 20th Century Chinese Sherlock Holmes. There are visual flourishes of the body’s inner workings similar to goings on in Andrzej Bartkowiak’s Romeo Must Die. And besides the presence of Jimmy Wang Yu, who is absolutely fantastic here, there is, suffice it to say, another nod to The One-Armed Swordsman.

This is in no way to cast any pallor on Chan’s film. I loved the allusions (at least those that I believe I caught), but it won’t diminish your enjoyment of Dragon if you have no familiarity with any of the other movies alluded to.

Director Chan (The Warlords) has crafted a fabulous tale that features terrific martial arts. (Yen, besides starring, was also the action director). Dragon also offers compelling family drama and intriguing criminal investigative techniques. Underlying it all is the question — and it’s a big one that’s given serious and due weight here — of whether or not one can achieve redemption, atone for past mistakes, sins and crimes. I give it 3.5 out of 4 stars; very highly recommended.

According to the wonderful folk of Subway Cinema (who, along with the Film Society of Lincoln Center) present New York Asian Film Festival: “This version of Dragon runs 98 minutes, 12 minutes shorter than the Hong Kong cut. Director Peter Chan tightened up the movie after its Asian release and that’s the only version he’s made available to North American distributors.”

As I indicated in the info at the top of this post, Mr. Yen will receive the Star Asia Award before the screening of Dragon on Monday, July 9 at 7:45 pm. Today, Sunday, July 8 at 5:15 pm, he will engage in an onstage chat about his career after the screening of Kill Zone (a.k.a. SPL), in which he also stars. Tickets for Kill Zone are also sold out. You can visit the venue’s box office on the day of the screening for any available tickets.

For information about Dragon and the other films and special events of this years New York Asian Film Festival, click here.

[This post originally appeared in somewhat different form at VCinema.

ACF 1528: Meeting and interviewing Giddens Ko & Michelle Chen

Giddens Ko, left, yous truly, and Michelle Chen

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of spending some time interviewing Giddens Ko and Michelle Chen. They were in town for the New York Premiere of You Are the Apple of My Eye (Taiwan, 2011) at the 2012 NY Asian Film Festival.

Giddens wrote the novel upon which his screenplay was based and also directed. The film just happens to be his first feature film, but it's done with such a sure hand and fine sense of narrative development and pacing that one would never suspect that. It's an autobiographical teen coming of age story set in Taiwan in the 1990s. Michelle portrays Shen Chia-yi, an exemplary high school student who becomes the focal point of the attention of several young male co-students.

Michelle received a well-deserved Star Asia Rising Star Award at the Sunday, July 1st screening which was packed, as was yesterday's screening which took place right after our talk. The final screening will be next Monday, July 9th at 12;30 PM, and as of now, some tickets are still available.

While neither Giddens nor Michelle will be at that screening, just seeing the film is well worth your time. First because it's a sweet, touching teen rom-com that Giddens intended as an apology to a girlfriend to whom he never said "Sorry." Secondly, it also happens to have been wildly successful in several major Asian markets, and if you see it you'll understand why.

Further info about the film and a link to order tickets can be found here.

I'm hoping that the full interview will be run soon as a special podcast at VCinema. If that doesn't work out, I'll be posting a transcription here at AsianCineFest. Stay tuned.

ACF 1523: Opening Night at NYAFF

Scene from Pang Ho-cheung's Vulgaria

Last night I attended the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival's opening night screening of Vulgaria.

It was the most joyous film night of my life.

Just before 6 pm I left my apartment in Riverdale, a section of the Bronx near the Hudson River. Walked east several blocks, then up the three flights of stairs to the Number 1 train for the ride down to Lincoln Center, which takes a bit under an hour.

Grabbed a chili-dog from a street vendor after I got out at the 66th Street subway stop and ate it on the short walk to the Walter Reade Theater of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which is on 65th Street just east of Broadway.

The terrific 2012 NYAFF T-shirt

I had some time before my scheduled interview with Pang Ho-cheung, director of Vulgaria, at 7:15, so I got my 2012 NYAFF t-shirt which features terrific graphics from Oldboy, which will be shown at 1 pm today (Saturday) and King Boxer, a.k.a. Five Fingers of Death, which is playing at 5:30 today. I also grabbed a copy of the gorgeous,, full color NYAFF festival brochure and some other materials about NYAFF and the upcoming Japan Cuts festival, which will run July 12-28, 2012.

When the time came, I was led up, around and down various stairways and hallways to one of the "Green Rooms" where I had my 15 minute interview with director Pang. (I made this trek a couple of times for interviews at the 2011 NYAFF and have almost gotten the hang of it. But I still think I might get lost if I had to do it on my own.) Pang's English was very good, and the available interpreter was only needed briefly a very few times. Hope to get the interview online very soon.

With director Pang after our interview

I then hooked up with Colleen Wanglund; she writes for the VCinema blog, to which I also post as well as serving as a co-host on the VCinema podcast. I was glad to have the presence of mind to introduce her to the members of Subway Cinema who were passing by from time to time.

Then it was time for the 8:30 screening of Vulgaria. After the prime movers of Subway Cinema were introduced, Grady Hendrix, one of the original founders of Subway Cinema gave his usual energetic and rousing, P.T. Barnum-like address to the audience, which pretty much packed the theater. Pang spoke briefly, then the film began.

And it was a rousing success. This was the first time that I'd attended the opening night screening at NYAFF, and it was just as I expected. The film (which I've reviewed here at ACF) was a perfect choice. The audience roared with laughter, over-and-over-and-over again, and there were empathetic responses to some of the touching scenes involving the main character's young daughter, scenes that serve as beautifully measured counterpoints to the raunchy vulgarity that dominates the film.

I wasn't able to stay for Pang's Q&A after the film or for the free beer provided by festival sponsor Kirin. Wish I could have.

But it still was as perfect an evening as I could've dared hoped for. And I think that probably was that way for just about everyone else who attended.

ACF 1518: Win Tickets to See VULGARIA at the New York Asian Film Festival [NYAFF 2012]

VCinema, an affiliate of AsianCIneFest, has a pair of tickets to give away to the 8:30 pm screening of Vulgaria at the NY Asian Film Festival this Friday, June 29th.

To win you must answer one simple question. That question, rules and info can be found here.

But you must hurry as entries must be received by Wednesday, June 27th, 2012, midnight PST.

Read Pierce Conran's review of Vulgaria at VCinema.

Read my review of Vulgaria at AsianCineFest 1513.

ACF 1517: Win Tickets to See WAR OF THE ARROWS at the New York Asian Film Festival [NYAFF 2012]

VCinema, an affiliate of AsianCineFest, has a pair of tickets to give away to the 6:30 pm screening of War of the Arrows at the NY Asian Film Festival this Friday, June 29th.

To win you must answer one simple question. That question, rules and info can be found here.

But you must hurry as entries must be received by Wednesday, June 27th, 2012, midnight PST.

Read Pierce Conran's review of War of the Arrows at VCinema.

ACF 1513: VULGARIA at NYAFF

A photo shoot in producer To's office space

Vulgaria

Directed by Pang Ho-cheung

Hong Kong, 2012, 90 minutes

In Cantonese and Profanity with English subtitles

When: Friday, June 30, 2012 at 8:30 PM

North American Premiere

Where: New York Asian Film Festival

The Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street, New York, NY

Map here

Buy tickets

This hilarious, raunchy romp through the process of film-making as experienced by a CAT III Hong Kong producer is the Opening Night Film at this year's New York Asian Film Festival. And it more than lives up to its title.

To Wai-cheung (actor Chapman To) is a down-on-his luck producer of the kind of films whose premieres are never shown on TV. He's being interviewed about just what it is that a producer does by a Professor Cheng in front of an auditorium full of students. He explains that, just as pubic hair reduces friction between a couple fornicating, so a producer is responsible for easing friction between people! And we -- and the film -- are off!

In a series of flashbacks, To elaborates on what befell him in the course of making his latest movie. He has had to deal with his ex-wife, a barrister to whom he is behind in his alimony payments. She wants to severely curtail, if not completely end, his visitation rights with their daughter, Jacqueline. To's further suffers from his almost totally incompetent female assistant. And then there's the matter of a bounced check, or two, or three, or four, or more.

Double the pleasure of Clerks II?

A call from a friend results in him hooking up with Brother Tyrannosaurus, a mainland gangster with money to born and some peculiar culinary and sexual inclinations. Brother T says he'll back a film remake of the porn classic Confessions of a Concubine, providing it again stars Yum Yum Shaw, who was in the original.

This puts To in a quandary because, as Yum Yum indicates when she and To "do lunch," she wouldn't think allowing herself to be shot in the nude at her age and that no one would want to see her like that anyway. When he hooks up with a would-be starlet named Popping Candy, To comes up with a brilliant plan to make everyone happy. Tyrannosaurus will get the porn star he loved when he was a youth in the film he's financing. Yum Yum will get to star but not reveal her aged body. Popping Candy finally will get to star, at least to a degree, in a movie. And best of all, To will get to make a movie and hopefully lots and lots of money!

Director To with aspiring actress Popping Candy

[Popping Candy, I must note, is played by the lovely and extremely well-endowed Dada Chan (best known as "E-cup Babe"). The character's name, build, and nature bring to my mind the character Kandi (played by April Bowlbi) who became Alan's second wife and was in a total of fifteen episodes of Two and a Half Men from 2005 to 2007.]

Needless to say, things do not go according to To's plans. But he has an angle and an answer for everything. And he also proves himself to be a masterful manipulator as he slyly arranges to save his completed film from pre-release purgatory.

Subway Cinema, the group that presents the annual NYAFF, says this about Vulgaria: "Shot in just 12 days, on a microscopic budget, the actors, director, and screenwriter wrote this porno Apocalypse Now as they went along." All I can say in response is that to have come up with a comedic triumph like Vulgaria under these circumstances is INCREDIBLE!

This is a "be sure to see it if you can" screening. Just also be sure to stick around through the credits or you'll miss some final touches that further cement this film as one helluva terrific comedy.

I'll be there even though I've already watched a screener DVD. I can't wait to see it again, especially in the context of NYAFF's opening night with what's sure to be a huge, enthusiastic and appreciative audience.

Plus, special guest, director Pang Ho-cheung, will attend the screening!

This screening of Vulgaria is part of Return of the King: Hong Kong Movies 15 Years After the Handover, a festival sidebar update on the status of the Hong Kong film industry fiften years after the handover to Mainland China.

And for another positive review of Vulgaria, this one by Pierce Conran at AsianCineFest associate VCinema, click here.

ACF 1510: NYAFF 2012 Trailer

The trailer for the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival is now available online. It is not to be missed. So click here and watch it already!

ACF 1508: Win tickets to GOKE: BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL

AsianCineFest affiliate VCinema has two pairs of tickets to give away to the midnight screening of GOKE: BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL on June 30th, 2012 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of the New York Asian Film Festival. Info and contest rules here.

ACF 1506: An overview of the 11th annual New York Asian Film Festival

It’s just under two weeks until the annual feeding frenzy for Asian film fans begins. Subway Cinema, an incredible group of devotees began presenting the annual New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) in 2002. This year’s fest will run from June 29 to July 12, 2012. The bulk of the fifty-plus films (THAT'S FIFTY+ FILMS!!!!!) will be shown at the Walter Reade Theater of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, co-presenter of the festival since 2010. The end of NYAFF, as it has for the past few years, will feature some co-presentations with the Japan Society, whose Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema will run from July 12-28, 2012, and which I’ll discuss in a separate post.

I’ve been covering NYAFFs since 2006 at AsianCineFest; last year I began contributing articles, reviews and a podcast interview with Hong Kong director and producer Tsui Hark to VCinema. (This year I'm coordinating coverage of NYAFF and Japan Cuts by four other VCinema writes and myself.) Based on these experiences, I truly feel that the New York Asian Film Festival is most certainly North America’s preeminent showcase of pan-Asian cinema. In fact, NYAFF just may be the biggest, bestest and most diverse Asian film festival in the world!

While films from Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea dominate (as is to be expected), one can also find films from Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan and elsewhere. In fact, one of the sidebars of the fest this year is Warriors and Romantics: the New Cinema from Taiwan. It will feature seven films, including Wei Te-Sheng’s Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale, which is about the resistance of indigenous Taiwanese natives to Japanese occupiers in the 1930s. Since it’s actually two movies (with a total running time of 274 minutes) one could say that this sidebar actually consists of eight Taiwanese films. Your count, your call.

As always, there’s no shortage of very, very, very special guests at NYAFF. A total of twelve are scheduled to be present so far, including:

Donnie Yen in Dragon which will be shown at NYAFF 2012

 - Donnie Yen – the action star and choreographer will receive the Star Asia Award.

Choi Min-Sik as Oh Dae-su in Oldboy

- Choi Min-Sik – this revered Korean actor will have a four film mini-retrospective that will include Park Chan-Wook’s Oldboy.

Chung Chang-Wha interviewed on the King Boxer DVD from Dragon Dynasty

- Chung Chang-Wha – the Korean director who is best known for the game-changing Hong Kong classic King Boxer (a.k.a. Five Fingers of Death) will receive the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award.

For me NYAFF means not only an incredible opportunity to see a lot of terrific films and to interview some wonderful, talented people, but to share these experiences in person at some screenings and to write and talk about them at VCinema and here on my blog.

But what about those of you reading this who have no way of attending any of these screenings and special events in person? Well, as I’ve said and written previously, NYAFF, and Japan Cuts, gives you an opportunity to find out about films that’ll certainly be of interest to you. Some may have theatrical releases, others may show at festivals, and many — if not most — are or will be available on the internet. Case in point: Dragon (a.k.a. Wuxia), a terrific martial arts drama starring Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei.  The Weinstein Company has North American rights to the film, and while I don’t know this for a fact, I’m pretty sure that there’ll be a theatrical release here before long. And I’d bet heavy that there’ll be a Dragon Dynasty DVD not too far down the road, most likely a two-disc edition.

So keep your eyes peeled for NYAFF and Japan Cuts reviews at VCinema and at AsianCineFest.

And do give these webpages a look:

- Subway Cinema NYAFF 2012 – the site includes trailers for many, if not every, film that will be shown

- FSLC NYAFF 2012

- Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema – this site also offers film trailers

- A complete listing of VCinema’s coverage of the New York Asian Film Festival 2012 – coverage from years past will soon be added to this page

[This post appeared in slightly different form at the VCinema website on June 15.]

ACF 1459: The 11th New York Asian Film Festival to run June 29 - July 15

Pang Ho-cheung’s VULGARIA is the Opening Night selection

 Chung Chang-Wha (FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH)

to be honored with Lifetime Achievement Award

Special focus on Taiwanese films featured

The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Subway Cinema with programming support from Japan Society has announced some major highlights for this year’s New York Asian Film Festival (June 29 - July 15).

The opening night film will be Pang Ho-cheung’s comedy VULGARIA. A movie about making movies, VULGARIA was shot in just 12 days, and features gangsters with names like Brother Tyrannosaur, sleazy lawyers, the sex film industry, and men who love donkeys perhaps a little too much. Pang Ho-cheung will be in attendance himself, as the festival also presents his new romantic comedy, LOVE IN THE BUFF, about a couple who meet in the smoke break alley outside their office building and try to make their romance work despite cell phones dropped in toilets, friends who have the death touch, and corporate moves to Beijing.



The 2012 NYAFF Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Chung Chang-Wha, the great Korean action director whose 1972 movie for Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers studio, FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH, was the first international martial arts hit to break through in the West. It launched the Kung-Fu craze in the USA, and he will attend the screening of that classic.

Choi Min-Sik (OLDBOY), regarded by many to be one of the finest actors in Korea, will attend the screening of his latest film, NAMELESS GANGSTER, as well as OLDBOY and his underseen and heartbreaking boxing film, CRYING FIST.


NYAFF will host a special focus on Taiwanese films, including a Fourth of July presentation of the uncut, four-and-a-half-hour SEEDIQ BALE, which could be described as that country’s exhilarating, decapitation-filled version of BRAVEHEART, all about its indigenous people fighting for their freedom in 1930. Also screening, will be the hit romantic comedy, YOU ARE THE APPLE OF MY EYE, which set box office records in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Mainland China.


Filmmaking legend and NYAFF favorite Takashi Miike will be represented by PHOENIX WRIGHT: ACE ATTORNEY, NIGHT FISHING, a 30-minute short film from Korea’s Park Chan-Wook and his brother Park Chan-Kyung, NASI LEMAK 2.0, a Malaysian food movie directed by and starring controversial rapper, Namewee, KING OF PIGS, a brutal animated feature fresh out of Cannes, and SCABBARD SAMURAI, the latest film from Hitoshi Matsumoto (director and star of SYMBOL) round out the highlighted titles previewed by NYAFF.