Subway Cinema News

Probably the most controversial, acclaimed, attacked, defended, studied and debated Korean director these days is Lee Myung-Se, director of the kinetic action movie, NOWHERE TO HIDE, the swooningly gorgeous swordplay film, DUELIST, and this year’s psychedelic romance, M. Director Lee has been a good friend of the New York Asian Film Festival for years, and we’re pleased as punch to announce that he’ll be here for the Tuesday, July 1 screening of M at 7pm. Director Lee will be introducing the movie and then conducting a Q&A afterwards - and if there’s ever a movie that leaves the audience wanting to know more, it’s M.

Starring one of Korea’s biggest male stars, Jang Dong-Won, M is a movie that director Lee started writing when he was living in NYC after the release of NOWHERE TO HIDE. Informed by a short story by Truman Capote, Haruki Murakami’s novel East of the Sun, West of the Moon, a dream he had about Alfred Hitchcock and a complicated and tangled dreamscape that grew in his mind based on his observations of New York City and his memories and dreams about Seoul, M sounds simple: a writer is followed by a young woman who claims to know him. She could be real, she could be a ghost, she could be a memory or a dream, and that’s when things get funky. It’s like dreaming with your eyes open, and here’s what critics have to say:

“The film’s initially disorienting avant-garde tropes and heavy noir atmosphere, as it progresses, gradually reveals its big, beautiful romantic heart.” - Meniscus Magazine

“… impressive and bewitching…” - New York Press

“Lee’s M drowns in style…Bodies overlap, rooms merge into one another or turn on their axis’; a running girl vanishes into a pitch-black alley and emerges into a sunny street that instantly becomes a noon-time thunderstorm.” - Brooklyn Rail

“There is little doubt that Korea’s Lee Myung-Se is one of the purest cinematic talents working in the world today.  His grasp of the language unique to cinema is staggering, his ability to merge cinematography, editing and sound unparalleled.” - Twitch Film

Tickets are available and on sale now. You really don’t want to miss this. Director Lee’s Q&A sessions are legendary, he’s truly a unique artist and his brain works in ways most of us don’t understand.

Trailer, complete write-up and showtimes here.

Rather than bore you with a list of what we showed, why not let Magic Marker Rembrandt tell the tale.

Friday

And finally!

Then Saturday we showed…

And evening shows of…

And finally, at midnight (Magic Marker Rembrandt tops himself)…

On Sunday the line-up was of two double features, the two LOVE ON SUNDAY movies and a back-to-back, six hour screening of the two KING NARESUAN films…

Currently, the KING NARESUAN movies are leading the audience award voting and there’s one last screening of KING NARESUAN 2 tonight, Monday June 30 at 8:15pm. Tickets, trailer and more info here.

Right now, all of us at Subway hate Kazuo Umezu, one of Japan’s greatest horror manga creators. The production company of AKANBO SHOJO was looking for an English title for their movie and so we suggested TWISTED SISTER, HELL BABY and INFANT FROM HELL. But they wanted something with Tamami, the name of the demon baby, in it and so we suggested TAMAMI NEVER DIES, THE SUN WILL COME OUT TAMAMI, JET LI’S TAMAMI, TAMAMI FORCE, WHAT PRICE TAMAMI? and even TAMAMI 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. Kazuo Umezu hated them all and so they ultimately went with TAMAMI: THE BABY’S CURSE.

Directed by Yudai Yamaguchi, who directed BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL and CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL, this flick looks like a 30’s gothic, haunted house thriller, shot in 1983 cheese-o-vision through a soft-filter lens and punctuated with geysers of gruesome, wet gore. But who is this Kazuo Umezu and why is he so crazy?

Umezu enjoys a status in Japanese pop culture like Charles Addams crossed with David Lynch, a living symbol of deep weirdness since he rose to massive fame and prominence in the 70’s with his series, THE DRIFTING CLASSROOM. What was it? It’s was the touching manga series about a school full of kids that is transported to another dimension. What happens there?

Things like this:

And this:

And this!

And this!

And this!

And, of course, then there’s TAMAMI…15 year old girl, versus 15 year old baby!

TAMAMI: THE BABY’S CURSE playing Friday, June 27 at 10:15pm and Monday, June 30 at 4pm.

(Tickets, showtimes, trailer and more info here)

(Kazuo Umezu’s official website)

So PUBLIC ENEMY RETURNS opened in Korea this past weekend. It’s the third stand-alone part in the hugely successful PUBLIC ENEMY series about a corrupt cop who puts aside his hunger for a quick buck in order to take down some pillar of society or prominent citizen who really gets his goat. With a script by Jang Jin (THE KING AND THE CLOWN), the lead role played by Sol Kyung-Gu (CRUEL WINTER BLUES) and direction by the most powerful producer and director in Korea, Kang Woo-Suk (SILMIDO) it’s being viewed as the movie that will save Korea from a really bad year. Did it live up to the hype? It just opened in Korea and here’s the box office report from Variety Asia:

“PUBLIC ENEMY 3, the third installment in a series helmed by Kang Woo-suk about a righteous, but weird cop, took a boffo $8.82 million in its opening four day weekend at the South Korean B.O.    Produced by Cinema Service and released by CJ Entertainment, pic locked up 1.4 million admissions at 764 crime scenes. Score is the second best arrest record this year behind INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL… And it is the first time in eleven weeks that a local picture has topped the chart. Last was GP 506. ENEMY 3 also enjoyed the biggest opening day by a Korean film this year, taking $1.2 million from over 200,000 ticket sales. That exceeded the opening day scores of this year’s biggest hits FOREVER THE MOMENT and THE CHASER.”

(Here’s the full article)

And what about the reviews? Here’s what folks had to say:

“The film is well crafted, with complex layers of narrative unfolding in an organic form, interjected with just the right amount of comic relief. Yet some might find this movie more disturbing than previous ones as it involves teenage crime…This may be an auspicious sign for the struggling Korean film industry, which marked a record low in May.” - The Korea Times (full review here)

We’re showing it just one time on July 3 at 6:30pm at the IFC Center and advance sale tickets are available at the link below. More reviews will be posted as they come in.

(Full screening info, tickets, trailer and showtimes)

Surprisingly large audience for DOG IN A SIDECAR but also a good audience for KALA and a sold-out crowd for the NYC premiere of Johnnie To’s SPARROW. We called Milkyway Image, Johnnie To’s production company, from onstage before the screening of SPARROW and reached the company’s manager, Shan Ding, who gave us a few words via cell phone before the screening. The audience was so inspired that they wept tears of joy and illumination. We’ll probably call Milkyway again before the July 2 screening of SPARROW. If we can’t bring over Johnnie To, at least we can bug him on the phone.

Let’s take a closer look at that SHAMO drawing:

Feel those rabies! One more screening of SHAMO left on July 2 at 4:40pm (a matinee!).

This was the slow day. It’s the end of the first week of the festival, about a third of the way through, and I imagine it’s a bit like the part in Columbus’s voyage to the New World where they were just floating around in the middle of the ocean and every morning some sailor would pop his head up through a hatch, look around, say, “More ocean,” and then they’d all go back to sleep. Magic Marker Rembrandt wasn’t sleeping, though!

After its second screening, ASSEMBLY continues to lead the Audience Award votes but its lead has been reduced to a hair.

Also we all sat around and came up with a great set of super-prizes for our July 3 screenings at the IFC Center. That’s the day when we do the heavy metal line-up of joycore headbangers: THE REBEL, followed by Miike’s LIKE A DRAGON, followed by the shocking TOKYO GORE POLICE, followed by the massive Korean blockbuster, PUBLIC ENEMY RETURNS, followed by ACTION BOYS with the director and stuntmen present and then finishing off the night with SASORI, the sleaziest women-in-prison movie ever made. The best thing about July 3 is that THE REBEL, LIKE A DRAGON and TOKYO GORE POLICE are all matinee shows so you can buy the Subway Matinee Six Pack (6 tickets, coming in at about $8.25 each instead of $11.50) and use them to bring friends to these shows. It’s your chance to see LIKE A DRAGON, TOKYO GORE POLICE and THE REBEL for super-cheap.

Magic Marker Rembrandt returned with a vengeance!

Another sold out screening of L: CHANGE THE WORLD, preceded by a t-shirt giveaway/strip tease that saw one Subway Cinema member reveal his naked, burly chest and shock the entire theater with his mandom. The line for L started an hour before showtime and wound up reaching the end of the block. Here’s the photographic evidence:

Witness…The End of the Line.

Tonight’s other big show was KALA and an Indonesian theater director came out of the screening (she’s teaching at NYU right now) and started filling us in on fun facts about the actors. It turns out that almost every single actor in KALA does most of their work in Indonesian experimental theater.

Finally, if you’re buying tickets, SPARROW, TOKYO GORE POLICE, PUBLIC ENEMY RETURNS, ACCURACY OF DEATH, SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO (with a party afterwards), the 7/1 screening of M (with director Lee Myung-Se present) and ALWAYS: SUNSET ON THIRD STREET 1 and 2 are selling out fast. Get your tickets quick before they’re all gone and you’re left with nothing but tears staining your face and a pocketful of regrets.

We’re in business today. Got the box office numbers for the weekend and, well, even Indiewire is covering the kind of biz we did on our opening weekend. Go here to read what they have to say. It almost sounds like we know what we’re doing.

Doing the festival isn’t all about the ticket sales, but they’re a good reflection of a weird feeling we’re all having this year: somehow we’re over the hump. We bust our butts to sell every ticket to the New York Asian Film Festival and, suddenly, people are showing up far out of proportion to the amount of work we were able to do. This must be like what the New Kids on the Block felt like once! The shows are almost all packed, and people are genuinely rowdy this year - and the ticket sales are way over where we were last year. Usually doing the onstage introductions gets to be a bit of a grind but the audience is so pumped that we’re all actually looking forward to them.

To top things off, Dave Fear (film critic for Time Out New York and one of our jury members) appeared with the Time Out NY crew to challenge Subway member, Marc Walkow, to a yakuza trivia contest. It’s part of a series of competitions TONY is running where a member of the public takes on one of their experts. With questions contributed from many sources, including the inimitable Patrick Macias (whose stumpers became a grueling bonus round that caused both contestants to sweat blood and vomit pain), Dave and Marc went at it in a battle in which two men entered the Thunderdome, but only one warrior emerged with his manhood intact. Which gladiator won? You’ll have to check out the July 3rd issue of Time Out New York to see the carnage for yourself.

Dave Fear and Marc Walkow put on their “Man” faces. In the middle is the bottle of sake they had to swig every time they got a question wrong. It was gone in about 10 minutes. Behind them? The Japanese poster for ROLLERBALL.

The only downside to the day was the complete and total absence of Magic Marker Rembrandt.

It’s the saddest dry erase board in the world…

The third day of the New York Asian Film Festival and the screenings are selling out left and right. But what you really want to know is: what’s Magic Marker Rembrandt up to?

Let’s see a close-up:

Just feel the humanity in that drawing of ASSEMBLY. These magic markers weep for the tragedies of mankind.

Every year, our audience at the New York Asian Film Festival votes to give the Audience Award to one deserving film. It’s our very own popularity contest with the winning film getting a metaphorical hug and a diamond tiara while the losers have to stand in the back of the room, bitter and mumbling amongst themselves. Over the years the award has gone to MY SASSY GIRL, PING PONG, PLEASE TEACH ME ENGLISH, THE TASTE OF TEA, ALWAYS: SUNSET ON THIRD STREET and MEMORIES OF MATSUKO. These are the most popular movies at our festival but they fly in the face of conventional distributor wisdom which says that Americans want to see action and horror from Asia and nothing else. In every single case, none of these movies have been picked up for US distribution except for PING PONG, which got picked up almost five years later by Viz and went straight to DVD, and THE TASTE OF TEA which was also picked up by Viz but got an abortive, miniature theatrical release, barely deserving of the name.

After opening weekend at this year’s festival we totaled up the Audience Award ballots and here’s what’s in the first three places:

#1 ASSEMBLY - here’s a shocker. Feng Xiaogang’s war film blew the audience away at yesterday’s screening and they ranked far ahead of the rest of the pack, putting it in a strong first place lead. There’s only one more screening of ASSEMBLY left, and that’s this Wednesday, June 25 at 6:00pm (at the IFC Center). Tickets are still available to the second (and final) screening. (Tickets and showtimes)

#2 MAD DETECTIVE - Johnnie To’s reunion film with Lau Ching-wan sold out the house far in advance of last night’s screening, and it’s come in at a very strong number 2 in the Audience Award polling. There are no more screenings left, but it opens at the IFC Center on July 16. (More info)

#3 TOKYO GORE POLICE - the number three film in the Audience Award polling, this flick destroyed the sold-out audience at Saturday night’s screening. There are two screenings left, one of which is a matinee show, meaning that you can buy a Subway Six Pack, bring five friends, and you’re only paying $8 each for your tickets, instead of $11.50 (go here for details). The remaining screenings are a midnight show on Friday, June 27 (starting at 12:15am at the IFC Center) and the matinee is on Thursday, July 3 at 4:20pm at the IFC Center. (Tickets and showtimes)