Subway Cinema News

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.