Subway Cinema News

The terrific Fantastic Fest genre film festival, hosted by the Alamo Drafthouse, wrapped up last week in Austin, Texas. Here’s a short wrap-up of all the films I was able to catch while there. Only a few Asian-related ones (several of the others had already been screened by Subway this summer, like TOKYO GORE POLICE), but overall a great lineup, and a fun festival overall.

TOKYO! - two out of three ain’t bad. This high-profile anthology film features mostly Japanese casts in mixed-genre stories about Tokyo life. Unfortunately, the one that tries to concern itself the most with the city (the middle episode “Merde,” from French director Leos Carax) is the worst, and difficult to sit through. But the opening episode from Michel Gondry (”Interior Design”) more than makes up for it, telling a heartbreaking but beautiful story about a young girl (Steven Seagal’s daughter Ayako Fujitani) who comes to the city but finds herself feeling unbearably alone. Seguing into magical realism toward the end, and featuring a cast composed of big-name Japanese stars, it’s worth seeing the movie for this segment alone. What a treat, then, that Bong Joon-ho’s final segment (”Shaking Tokyo”) is also pretty damn good, about a middle-aged hikikomori (shut-in) who needs an act of nature to get him to change his life. Think of it as two excellent short films with an extra-long intermission.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD - the long-awaited “kimchee western” from A BITTERSWEET LIFE and TALE OF TWO SISTERS director Kim Ji-woon, which was featured heavily in the ACTION BOYS documentary we screened at NYAFF this summer. And as expected, the stuntmen are the true stars of the movie, no surprise for a film that reputedly used every single stuntman working in Korea at the time. It certainly shows onscreen, with some of the most jaw-dropping action sequences I’ve seen in recent years. But it’s also clear that this is what inspired Kim to make the movie, as it pretty much plays out as a series of great setpieces strung together by a threadbare plot that’s little more than a remake of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (and other Italian westerns, with a bit of THE ROAD WARRIOR thrown in for good measure). Song Kang-ho (THE HOST), playing “the Weird,” does his best to liven things up, and his performance manages to rescue several scenes that threaten to overstep the boundary between homage and rip-off, and overall the movie is marvelously entertaining, but just a bit disappointing for something that took so long to make and cost more than any other South Korean film in history.

GACHI BOY - another disappointment. This big-budget Japanese comedy felt more like a TV show than a feature film, despite its promising premise of a MEMENTO-like memory-loss victim who takes up amateur wrestling as a way of restarting his life following an accident. But with slow pacing, jokes that don’t quite work, and an overlong running time (also a problem with GBW, above), it quickly grated on my nerves.

Pink Eiga retrospective - this was a program I presented with Jasper Sharp, whose BEHIND THE PINK CURTAIN encyclopedia of Japanese sex cinema was launched at the festival. We screened four pink films, each from a separate decade, and I think it all went pretty well. For more details, see here.

SEVENTH MOON - not really an Asian film per se, but an American production directed by one half of the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT team, shot and set in rural China. But why?, I kept asking myself. One of the worst films I watched, this is a by-the-numbers story about a young married couple out of their comfort zone and trying to survive the night while being stalked by strange, supernatural creatures. The Chinese setting serves no purpose other than to make it more difficult for them to understand what’s going on, something that could have been achieved by setting the film in any number of other locations. Muddily shot on digital video and taking place almost entirely in the dark, this one was a trial from start to finish.

And now for the non-Asian selections…

ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO - Kevin Smith’s new comedy, which was also the opening night film. This one is about two Platonic friends (omnipresent Seth Rogan and Elizabeth Banks) who decide to shoot a sex film as a way out of their no-money situation. Intermittently funny, it’s never as filthy or transgressive as I think the filmmaker considers it to be, and in the end it’s just forgettable. For KS fans only.

ASTROPIA - another light-hearted comedy with a sexual element, but this time from Iceland. Iceland?! Yes, indeed, and the filmmakers are calling this the first commercial film ever made in that country, at least in recent years. It’s certainly a far cry from arthouse fare like COLD FEVER or 101 REYKJAVIK, shot on a miniscule budget and about a mainstream young woman who starts working in a role-playing game shop in order to make ends meet. One of the main geeks who frequent the store takes a liking to her, a humorous criminal subplot is introduced, and you can tell where things go from there. Innovative in its combination of fantasy and reality, and really hooked into the subculture it represents (what other film features in-jokes from Warhammer 2K?), it’s light fun and goes down easy.

CARGO 200 -the feel-bad movie of the festival! From successful Russian filmmaker Alexei Balabanov (BROTHER), this one tanked in its home country but ought to find an appreciative audience abroad among adventurous viewers, like Balabanov’s amazing 1998 period psychosexual drama about the birth of cinema, OF FREAKS AND MEN. Like that previous film, this one’s an ensemble tale but set in the period just before the birth of glasnost and Mikhail Gorbachev. The events depicted in the film are best discovered when you watch it, but they concern a young woman who’s abducted by a government official, an atheist university professor who begins to doubt his worldview, a rural couple implicated in a shocking crime, and the horrible, slimy hypocrisy of people in general, right at the dawn of what most Russians consider their emergence from the dark ages. Any surprise that audiences stayed away from this one at home? By the way, the title refers to the code name used by the government to refer to soldiers’ corpses being returned home from the war in Afghanistan. Yeah, fun stuff here. The small DVD label Disinformation picked this one up for the US market, one of the first nonfiction features they’ve acquired.

EX-DRUMMER - another feel-bad flick, this time from Belgium. Based on an ambitious novel, it follows an elitist writer who decides to go slumming one day and mess around with the lives of a trio of misfit losers who’ve formed a punk band. While it doesn’t quite descend to the depths of soul-crushing horror depicted in CARGO 200, it comes mighty close, depicting mass murder, anal rape played for laughs, infanticide, drug use, sexual terror, gay bashing, and hardcore sex. But it leavens its nihilism with a great soundtrack and stylish cinematography. A breathtaking debut from first-time feature filmmaker Koen Mortier, and amazingly still undistributed in the US.

REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA - SAW sequel director Darren Lynn Bousman’s dream project (co-conceived with composer and writer Terrance Dzunich) languishes in the same distribution hell that blew the release of MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN and THE BURROWERS (see below): stuck in-between studio heads at Lionsgate. But it may affect this film least of the three, as it’s a cult hit waiting to happen, a dark and bloody musical camp-fest starring Anthony Head from BUFFY, opera diva Sarah Brightman, Paul Sorvino, DEVIL’S REJECTS star (and TEXAS CHAINSAW 2 Chop-Top!) Bill Moseley, Nivek Ogre from Skinny Puppy and yes, Paris Hilton, whose face actually falls off at one point in the film. Set in a future society where people are addicted to both cosmetic surgery and an illegal painkiller created from corpse-fluid, it’s MOULIN ROUGE for the horror and Goth set, and a hell of a lot of fun. It’s definitely a love-it-or-hate-it proposition, and you’ll know in the first two minutes which side of the fence you fall on. I was a bit skeptical at the opening, but the songs get better as the movie goes on and by the midway point, I was hooked and can’t wait to see it again.

LEFT BANK - glossy Belgian thriller about a young woman who moves in with a new boyfriend across the river in the newly-gentrified “left bank”. An apartment building built on land with a mysterious and spooky history, paranoia about the people around her and wounds that won’t heal point to trouble on the horizon. Pretty by-the-numbers and not very scary, it’s predictable up until the final scene, which veers so far off into left field that it alienated most of the audience in the screening where I saw it. Despite this, it doesn’t add up to very much.

SAUNA - Fantastic Fest loves to pull in entries from all over the globe, and this Finnish horror tale is no exception. Gorgeously shot and set in the 16th century (!), it follows two brothers who are on a joint Swedish-Russian expedition to determine the new borders between their countries. One brother is a veteran of the recently-ended wars with double-digit deaths on his conscience; the other is a scholar with a sensitive disposition. Out in the northern wilds, they come across a village that shouldn’t be there, located in the depths of an unmapped swamp and inhabited by the cleanest peasants any of them have ever seen. The cleanliness comes from a sauna the village is guarding, not only as a place for baths and restoration but also for bathing the dead. And of course, something lurks in the sauna that nobody quite understands, but it’s malevolent and hungry. While this sounds like it could come off very silly, it’s actually incredibly moody and effective. Things turn bloody toward the end, but for the most part the film is a well-acted, slow-burning study of both the characters and the current of the times, between peace and war. It’s a heady film at times - nothing is really explained in the end - and covers BIG topics like God, faith, religion, death, war, guilt and brotherhood. But it’s a unique film in both its setting and ambitions, and will hopefully find a US distributor and audience patient enough to discover its secrets. It’s a big step up for the director, too, whose previous film was the oddball Finnish martial arts hybrid JADE WARRIOR.

JCVD - Grady pretty much summed this one up in his previous post, and I loved it, too. You will believe a fallen star action hero can actually turn in a great performance, and make you cry.

THE BURROWERS - the new film from SOFT FOR DIGGING and S&MAN director J.T. Petty, being billed as a horror western with monsters that owe a debt to TREMORS. Unfortunately, going into the movie with expectations like that will lead to disappointment, as J.T. has created a unique genre hybrid that doesn’t really satisfy the requirements of either the western or the horror film, but holds some charms of its own. Slowly-paced, but with a good payoff climactic encounter with the monsters, the charms of the movie really rest on the shoulders of its characters, led by one of my favorite character actors, Clancy Brown. Just seeing him all duded up, on the back of a horse, cradling a firearm, makes the film worth seeing.

Nacho Vigalondo short films - the charismatic director of last year’s TIME CRIMES (due this fall from Magnet Releasing) returned this year with a package of short films, including his Oscar-nominated “7:35 in the Morning”. I can’t think of many other new filmmakers out there with the kind of comic sensitibilities Nacho has, plus he’s pretty adept at lo-fi sci-fi, as well. Hopefully these shorts will find their way into the TIME CRIMES DVD package, as they’re all worth a watch. Check out the Fantastic Fest link for the titles and scour YouTube, if you’re interested - some of them have been posted there.

ESTOMAGO - a light but funny Brazilian film about a guy from the country who comes into the city and begins working as a chef, as well as romancing a local hooker. Lots of food porn here, and a bit of a twist ending (that’s easy to see coming), it’s forgettable but entertaining.

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD - one of the best films of the fest, a feature documentary on the heyday of Australian exploitation filmmaking, covering low-budget horror, giant animal movies, road rage films (like MAD MAX), sexploitation comedies, and more. Featuring interviews with just about everybody in the Aussie film industry (but where’s the Toecutter, Hugh Keays-Byrne?) and tons and tons of clips, it makes you want to run right out and find all the films it talks about. Which I’m doing right now.

And in connection with the NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD premiere, Fantastic Fest also had a mini-retrospective of some of the films covered in the documentary, including ROAD WARRIOR (presented outdoors in a parking lot), RAZORBACK and two I caught: the giant (pro-) crocodile movie DARK AGE and the action extravaganza THE MAN FROM HONG KONG, starring Jimmy Wang Yu, George Lazenby, and featuring cameos from Sammo Hung, plus Yuen Kwai, Yuen Biao and Lam Ching-ying in blink-or-miss-them cameos during a fight scene or two. It’s a super-entertaining film, and surprisingly the first narrative feature from its director, the prolific Brian Trenchard-Smith, who was on hand to discuss the film and the industry which produced it.

There were a couple of other retro titles presented at FF, as well: a newly-restored version of the fourth APES film, CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, which has been restored to its original pre-release, R-rated version, and is a stunner. FF also broke their budget in re-creating the “Percepto” seat buzzers William Castle originally created for screenings of his Vincent Price classic THE TINGLER. Fun, but the buzzers didn’t quite work.

Finally, three of the more anticipated titles of the fest.

ACOLYTES - Aussie director John Hewitt was in attendance at the fest, and seems like a really great guy. I wasn’t as thrilled by this KIDS meets a serial killer thriller, about a trio of youths in the suburbs who discover the identity of a serial killer in their midst, and then try to blackmail him into murdering a pesky bully for them. Things get bloody, and more than a little cliched, by the time it wraps up 90 minutes later. Stylishly directed, the script is the weak point here, never really pulling together the disparate elements of the story. In fact, I thought the Larry Clark-style youth relationships were handled a lot better than the thriller elements.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN - the lead characters get even younger in this moody and wonderful Swedish horror film that hasn’t yet gotten a negative review that I’ve seen. A young boy in a wintery suburb meets the girl next door, who happens to be a vampire. I thought the film had a major Stephen King feel to it, in a good way, based on how it uses an ensemble cast to tell the story of a small town beset by supernatural events but rooted in the characters and everyday lives of its inhabitants. And like a lot of early King works, it doesn’t skimp on the horror elements, with multiple bloody deaths and much vampire lore incorporated into the plot. But towering above all that are the performances of the two young leads, who create not only believable characters but also an authentic-feeling relationship between them.

MARTYRS - again, I agree with Grady. This is one sick puppy of a movie, but oh so good. I think I switched allegiances three times in the film, initially appreciating it, then growing sick of it, and then realizing I loved it toward the end. It’s going to play with your emotions, possibly make you sick - or angry, and might even upset you so much that you wind up hating it, but it’ll definitely provoke some kind of strong reaction in everybody who sees it, which is more than you can say for most films these days. It’s a slasher movie where the victim is your soul.      —MW

The 8th Annual New York Turkish Film Festival starts this week at the Anthology Film Archives and runs October 3 - October 11, and if you don’t know nothing about Turkish cinema, this is the place to start. It’s not just arthouse films getting screened, but genuine hits and popular recent faves from Turkey. I don’t know much about what’s screening but you can find the full schedule and description here and here’s a list of some of the highlights:

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ON FERTILE LANDS (opening film) - a classic of Turkish cinema, this flick was banned in 1980 when it was released but went on to win prizes at international film festivals. Unfortunately, somehow all the prints of the movie were stolen and it was never widely released. A negative surfaced in Switzerland 28 years later and earlier this year a restored copy of the film screener to a standing room only audience at the Istanbul Film Fest.The film itself is a rough-hewn, working class epic about three friends struggling to find work and survive in Turkey’s fertile southeastern plains. As one program note for the movie says, “It will not end well for them.”

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AKAMAS - a ROMEO & JULIETTE story of a Turkish Cypriot boy falling in love with a Greek Cypriot girl, this flick caused a controversy in 2006 when its director refused to cut a scene that the government insisted he remove.

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ARA - this 2008 film was inspired by Harold Pinter’s Betrayal and it’s a family saga about the relationship between two couples over 20 years living in the same house. A critical hit in Turkey it played to small box office but major raves.

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KABADAYI - a massive box office hit in Turkey, this film also received rave international reviews when it opened in 2007 (read one here). A retired gangster is the king of his small neighborhood, keeping up with old colleagues and resolving minor conflicts. When he discovers that a one-time fling produced a son, now grown, he devotes his life to protecting his son from all enemies, including a ruthless young turk gangster.

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(Full festival info, including list of directors attending and ticket sales)

Starting this week, in conjunction with the New York Film Festival, Lincoln Center will be presenting a sidebar on rebel-rebel Japanese director Nagisa Oshima called “In the Realm of Oshima” (September 27 - October 13). I haven’t seen enough Oshima, and this is a perfect chance to correct my shortcomings as they present 26 of his films, half of them in brand new 35mm prints.

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We’ll be talking about highlights from the series all week, but here’s three that jump out of the program:

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BAND OF NINJA (Thursday, October 2 @ 8:40pm) - cinematic bomb-thrower Oshima making a ninja movie? An animated ninja movie? We’re there. Experimental to a fault, this rarely-seen flick is about a ninja-led revolution against a feudal lord. (Watch the trailer)

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IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (Saturday, Sept 27 @ midnight; Friday, October 3 @ 10pm) - a new 35mm print of Oshima’s most notorious movie, a recreation of the infamous Sada Abe sex murder case. This is the only porno movie ever made that’s simultaneously a work of art. Hardcore screwing mixes it up with hardcore political ideology, culminating in a revolutionary act of castration. Expect the raincoat crowd and the New York Times Book Review crowd to be out in full effect.

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MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE (Sunday, September 28 @ 6:45pm; Saturday, October 11 @ 9pm) - a new 35mm print of one of Oshima’s most unfairly dismissed. Starring David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto (who also did the shimmering score), Tom Conti and Takeshi Kitano in his first motion picture role, this movie was released in 1983 and folks pegged it as pop stars at play. No such thing. A simmering, volatile study of repressed sexual desire, masochism, sadism and mercy in a WW II Japanese prison camp, everyone should see this movie once. At times annoying and pretentious, at other times beautiful, gritty and poetic, it’s the kind of film that starts conversations and destroys expectations. (Also, if you think you’ve seen this movie, think again. Most video releases feature a hacked up international version of the film).

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Full info is here.

COMING SOON

From September 26 to October 12 the New York Film Festival hits NYC up at Lincoln Center. This one is huge and fat with Asian movies so get on up. There’s Wong Kar-wai’s new version of ASHES OF TIME and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s masterpiece, TOKYO SONATA, as well as new works from Jia Zhangke. And there’s a Nagisa Oshima retrospective (more on that tomorrow). Japan’s most rebellious director will blow your mind with his gritty insane flicks starring everyone from David Bowie to Takeshi Kitano.

(Full info)

NOW PLAYING

At Anthology Film Archives, Lee Myung-Se’s BITTER & SWEET screens on Thursday, September 25 at 6:30 pm.  Rarely seen on the big screen, this posh, stylish black comedy is a workplace freakshow featuring Korean screen legend Ahn Sung-Ki singing in the rain. If you liked NOWHERE TO HIDE or DUELIST then this flick will push your buttons. Very rare screening of a 35mm print with English subtitles. (More info)
New York International Children’s Film Festival is happening right now to mesmerize kids of all ages with animation hotshots from all over the world.  Check out the kid’s hits from Japan at select theatres. (More info)

At ImaginAsian, Manish Acharya’s LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS is a political Bollywood film that spoofs the “American Idol” craze as it follows the various contestants for the “Desi Idol” contest.   An oddly charming cast keeps you laughing and betting on the next big star. (More info)

At the Asia Society, now through October 18th, a series of five documentaries in the film exhibit, “Under Mao’s Red Sun: China’s Cultural Revolution on Film” that delve into the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).  Focusing on individual lives, the films probe the dramatic effects of Mao’s Revolution on everyday citizens. Complete listings and schedule.  (More info)

Back from Toronto, and here’s what I saw in no particular order.

BLINDNESS - my contender for worst movie of the year, so far. Pretentious claptrap that’s really a rape/revenge movie shot by a director who doesn’t have the guts to admit it. Notable only if you have a fetish for seeing Julianne Moore step in human feces in her bare feet so it squishes up between her toes.

DEAD GIRL - American indie about a bunch of teenagers who find a zombie lady chained up in a basement and turn her into their undead sex slave. This should have been a tasteless, over-the-top, stomach-churning tour de force but instead the directors (it took two) tried to twist it into a dramatic film about two best friends growing up. In doing so, they managed to water down their soup until it skipped “tasteless” and went right to “bland.” Note to future directors: a movie about teenagers raping zombies is not considered a “calling card” in Hollywood, so you’re probably better off not trying to make it one.

ACHILLES & THE TORTOISE - Takeshi Kitano says he’s “stuck” and in a creative slump. It shows.

GOMORRAH - imagine all three PUSHER movies, plus two more, crammed into one, sprawling picture about the modern day mafia in Naples. Then cast it with some of the funniest-looking people in Italian cinema, including a 6′1″ kid who weighs 70 pounds and has a nose the size of Rhode Island. Also: machine guns. One of the best of the fest and coming from IFC in January, 2009.

ASHES OF TIME REDUX - no longer completely off-the-wall and batshit-crazy, WKW has used a new, more mature soundtrack and a subtle, linear editing plan to transform ASHES from a surreal object of contemplation spiked with HK commercial cinema craziness into a movie that fits in well with his post IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE career. Something is lost in the process, something is gained. At least Norah Jones is missing.

DETROIT METAL CITY - the Japanese flick that settles several questions. First, when in doubt, inject more death metal, not less. Second, death metal deserves more movies. Third, Tim Burton should make those movies. Fourth, Kenichi Matsuyama (L in the DEATH NOTE movies, Sir Johannes Krauser II in DETROIT METAL CITY) is one of the best actors in Japan today.

JCVD - I’ve always thought that Jean Claude Van Damme was a better actor than he was given credit for, and I’m so happy to be proved right. He may never hit these heights again, but it’s as if his entire career to date was preparation for this movie. Is it perfect? Hell no. But I cried twice and the stuck-up audience of nerds and old fogeys at the Press and Industry screening where I saw it gave it cheers and applause at the end, something I didn’t see at any other P&I screenings.

TREELESS MOUNTAIN - if this was 1968, some exploitation distributor in America would give this Korean art film the total drive-in treatment. New title: THE BUG EATERS. Tag line: “See them eating the flaming bodies of crickets…while they’re still alive! They don’t wash their clothes! They don’t cut their hair! They wait and wait for a bus…that never comes! THE BUG EATERS!!!!!” The kind of movie that makes you want to adopt a little abused Korean child if they’re as cute as the ones onscreen.

THE BURROWERS - seeing the Lionsgate logo on the front of this film conveys instantly that this 19th Century Western monster movie is destined to go direct to the video store shelves, and that’s too bad. Its ambition outstrips its abilities, but this SEARCHERS meets TREMORS flick is smarter and better made than it has any right to be, given its low budget and its oddball, unclassifiable genre. It’s bound to disappoint action fans because it’s got more mood than monsters, but it’ll also disappoint the arthouse crowd to whom its “White people are bad” message is old hat. Resting uneasily in some twilight zone, neither fish nor fowl, it’s the kind of movie that people are going to discover for themselves on DVD and wonder, “How did this get made? Why didn’t I hear about it sooner? What kind of world do we live in where a movie this good gets less of a push than MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN?”

MARTYRS - French people are sick. That’s the only explanation I have for the rash of horror flicks coming out of the land of stinky cheese: INSIDE, FRONTIER(S) and now this. The less you know about it the better, because this movie switches gears like a hungover trucker on an uphill drive: frequently and with the scream of shredding metal and the smell of burning oil. Slated for the video store shelves courtesy of the Weinstein Company, this is the next step in horror movies - a film not content to scare you or gross you out, but wanting to make a philosophical point doing so. In the last third it’ll lose most of its audience (myself included) but then it comes back with a mind-blowing ending that sent one viewer at Midnight Madness out into the lobby, blowing chunks. Have you ever thought about god, power, life and death while heaving out your guts in the toilet bowl? After seeing MARTYRS, you will.

SKY CRAWLERS - Mamoru Oshii has made a masterful animated picture. Too bad it’s really, really boring. After turning on a massive audience of fans with GHOST IN THE SHELL, Oshii seems to be devoting the rest of his career to turning them right back off. If boring the audience to death is his intent then: mission accomplished.

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD - the surprise of the fest. A documentary about Australian exploitation movies that is one of the most entertaining movies of the year. You will come to like Quentin Tarantino. You will want to see HOWLING 3 - THE MARSUPIALS. You will learn to hate Jimmy Wang Yu. Up is down and black is white.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE NAGA - a commercial Thai film about a bunch of crooks who become Buddhist monks in order to infiltrate a monastery and rescue their hidden loot from a recent bank job. Being a commercial Thai film, it mixes melodrama, religious films, gangster movies, a little bit of horror and some comedy until you have a starnge mish mash that works more as a cultural curiosity and an essay on Thai Buddhism than it does as a crime film.

EDEN LOG - another French film, and one that’s bound for America via Magnolia’s Magnet imprint. It’s great to see ambitious, cerebral, HEAVY METAL-influenced low budget filmmaking especially when it’s pulled off with this much confidence, swagger and style. But when the director came out for the Q&A and asked, “Can anybody tell me where to get some cocaine?” I looked around to see if I could score, too. The operative word here is “brooding.” This movie broods like a mofo.

If you live in upstate New York, you probably figured you’d never see the world’s most jaw-dropping, head exploding, gut-crunching, sleazy, wild, crazy and totally bonkers horror movie: TOKYO GORE POLICE. Ha! You were wrong! Subway Cinema member, Paul Kazee, works at Proctor’s in Schenectady and he’s one of the people responsible for IT CAME FROM SCHENECTADY a 24 hour marathon of sci-fi flicks screening up there on September 13 - 14, from noon to noon.

Some of the movies being screened will be:

- the latest cut of BLADE RUNNER

- BARBARELLA

- DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH, a new documentary about Harlan Ellison

- ENEMY MINE

- A BOY AND HIS DOG

- CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON in 3-D

- TOKYO GORE POLICE

And many, many more. Go! Support! Without you guys buying tickets Schenectady will never see the likes of TOKYO GORE POLICE again!

(Five minutes of insane, eye-shredding footage from TOKYO GORE POLICE)

(Complete info on the line-up and you can buy tickets here)

(Some of the press this event is getting)

SUBWAY CINEMA NEWS Wednesday, September 10 – Thursday, September 18

Welcome to Subway Cinema – A cartoon fish, a gigantic pool, TV turtles, and big red suns.  Snippets of newsworthy Asian film events in New York City.

NOW PLAYING

Playing now at Village East Cinema, David Kaplan’s YEAR OF THE FISH, an animated feature film set in Chinatown that eases in and out of fantasy and reality. (More info)

At Film Forum, Chris Smith’s THE POOL featuring legends and stars of Indian films playing until September 16. While working at a five star hotel, Venkatesh’s curiosity is peaked as he interacts with the wealthy and glimpses his own future in the process. (More info)

At the ImaginAsian, currently the Bollywood action movie HIJACK is playing. It’s about…a plane hijacking! You may have figured that out from the title. The reviews are mixed, but it could be a lot of fun. (Showtimes and tickets)

At MoMA, Two films featuring Nam Jun Paik screen Sunday, September 14 at 2pm.

THE STRANGE MUSIC OF NAM JUNE PAIK directed by Camera Three follows video artist Nam June Paik’s genesis as a composer and classical pianist.  Witness the underpinnings of his musical passions and the influence of John Cage on Paik’s sprawling installations. Also in NAM JUN PAIK: A TRIBUTE TO JOHN CAGE, Nam Jun Paik directs and splices together interviews, performances, and stories that reflect the scope of Cage’s influence and inspiration on his work. (More info)

At the Asia Society starting September 12th through October 18th, a series of five documentaries in the film exhibit, “Under Mao’s Red Sun: China’s Cultural Revolution on Film” that delve into the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).  Focusing on individual lives, the films probe the dramatic effects of Mao’s Revolution on everyday citizens. (Complete listings and schedule)

Tomorrow, Tuesday September 9, First Look will be throwing a free screening and party for SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO in Los Angeles. Free sushi, a DJ playing spaghetti western mash-ups and it’ll take place at The Montalban, Nike’s event space in LA (1615 Vine Street). The reception starts at 7pm and the screening takes place at 8. The Montalban is a 1927 cinema, by the way, so it looks like the screening will be in 35mm.

If you want to attend, just RSVP here.

Up at the Toronto International Film Festival and, to be honest, it’s pretty sleepy in terms of Asian films. Here’s what I’ve seen:

BLINDNESS - not an Asian flick per se, this adaptation of the award-winning novel of the same name is about a plague of blindness that strikes the world, leading to the infected blind being quarantined in unsupervised prison camps that quickly descend into anarchy and hideousness. Mark Ruffalo goes blind and his still-seeing wife, Julianne Moore, follows him into quarantine. Danny Glover is on hand, as is Gael Garcia Bernal and Sandra Oh, who has a small part as Minister of Health. This is one of those annoying movies that stretches for allegory, where characters have numbers instead of names, and many of the most annoying tropes of psuedo-intellectual filmmaking such as “Wise Old Black Man who Utters Wisdom” (Danny Glover - what? Morgan Freeman wasn’t available?), “Cleansing Showers of Rain that Wash Away Everyone’s Sins” and “Piano Being Played beautifully in Middle of Bombed Out City.” Tedious, moronic and tiresome this is a movie that constantly features running water, showers, rain, spilled liquids and dripping milk and it’ll send you running to the bathroom every five minutes to pee. Yoshino Kimura, the hooker with the heart of gold in SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO, plays the wife of the first victim of the blindness, who’s played by Yusuke Iseya (DOG IN A SIDECAR, MEMORIES OF MATSUKO and he and Yoshino were in SUICIDE SONG together). They’re both good, but the movie’s such a bore that it hardly matters. Their paint just dries a little better than everyone else’s.

ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE - the newest flick from Takeshi Kitano, this is a straight-forward story of the making of a young painter, covering his life from youth to middle age. If there wasn’t Kitano’s name on the credits and if it didn’t start with an anime sequence, it would feel like a mid-century, human realist film from Shochiku. Tons of fun paintings, a lot of them by Kitano, and sharp editing make the first 2/3 of this movie a low key treat. But the second Kitano himself shows up playing the artist in middle age, careful observation is traded for leering slapstick and by the time it ends with a typically Kitano reaffirmation of the bonds of marriage you’re already heading for the exit.

GOMORRA - the best foreign film I’ve seen up here so far, this Italian flick only features Chinese folks incidentally, but it’s an amazing crime film about the reach of the modern day mafia in Naples that’s slated for a January 2009 release from IFC Films. If you liked the PUSHER movies then this is like taking all three of them at once.