Sammo Hung, how do we love you? Let us count the ways! Most recently it’s because you totally steal the show with your co-starring role in IP MAN 2, which opens in the US on Friday, January 28. To celebrate, anyone who leaves a comment on this post telling how they love Sammo is eligible to win one of two Blu-Rays of IP MAN 1 that we’re giving away on Monday.

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Just leave a poem, a sentence, a photo, a link to a video, anything you want as long as it’s about Sammo – and on Monday we’re going to assign a number to all the commenters and then randomly select two. We’ll let them know who they are in a special post right here, late on Monday afternoon.

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And let me start things off by saying that THIS is why I love Sammo Hung:

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Comments (30) Jan 21 2011

In what is getting practically no attention, the Japan Society is bringing Japanese director, Sabu, and a retrospective of six of his movies (including one international premiere) to NYC from January 26 – Feb. 5. I haven’t seen news of this really anywhere in the press, so here’s their entire press release. (buy tickets here)

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Of special note….DRIVE, one of Subway Cinema’s favorite Japanese movies ever! (read our write-up)

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Monday
Wednesday, January 26, 7:30 PM
**Introduction and Q&A with director Sabu
**Opening screening followed by an afterparty
2000, 100 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Sabu. With Shinichi Tsutsumi, Yasuko Matsuyuki, Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima, Tomorowo Taguchi. Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation.
It is the mother of all Mondays for salaryman Takagi (Shinichi Tsutsumi), who wakes up fully clothed in a unfamiliar hotel room, with a massive hangover and no recollection of the past 48 hours and how he got there. As an envelope of purification salt (used in Japan to ward off evil spirits during a funeral) falls out of his pocket, memories blood back. From a funeral wake that literally ended with a bang, to a deplorable date with his girlfriend, and a drunken descent into a nocturnal world of scowling yakuza and hostess clubs, the increasingly consternated salaryman wonders exactly how wrong things went during his lost and found weekend. Winner: FIPRESCI Prize at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival, “for its austere, dark wit and keen eye for human foibles.”

Postman Blues
Friday, January 28, 7:30 PM
**Introduction and Q&A with director Sabu
1997, 110 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Sabu. With Shinichi Tsutsumi, Keisuke Horibe, Ren Osugi, Keiko Toyama. Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation.
In this wacky comedic thrill ride, both a superb parody of the gangster genre and a masterful exercise in style and storytelling, Sawaki (Shinichi Tsutsumi) is an ordinary postman whose unassuming life takes a strange turn when he crosses paths with his old high school buddy Noguchi (Keisuke Horibe), now a low-level yakuza drug mule, just as he finishes cutting off his finger as an apology to his boss. Unbeknownst to both men, Noguchi’s freshly chopped-off pinky rolls off the table and into Sawaki’s mailbag. The chance encounter and missing pinky land the postman in hot water when the police mistakenly identify him as a schizophrenic-paranoid drug dealer, sadistic murderer and terrorist working for the yakuza. Things get more problematic when the unwitting postman befriends two terminal cancer patients: a lone hitman called Joe (Ren Osugi) and a pretty woman named Sayoko (Keiko Toyama).

Non-Stop a.k.a. Dangan Runner (Dangan Ranna)
Saturday, January 29, 7:30 PM
**Introduction and Q&A with director Sabu
1996, 82 min., 35mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Sabu. With Tomorowo Taguchi, Diamond Yukai, Shinichi Tsutsumi, Akaji Maro, Ren Osugi. Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation.
Sabu’s 1996 debut feature, a wild forerunner to the German arthouse smash hit Run Lola Run, by Tom Tykwers, features Tetsuo star Tomorowo Taguchi as a down-on-his-luck would-be bank robber, whose desperate plan to retrieve cash and a semblance of dignity quickly go south. Caught red-handed stealing a gauze face mask to conceal his identity, he is given chase by a strung-out convenience store clerk (played by real life rocker Diamond Yukai), who happens to be a washed-up drug-addled rock singer. In turn, the irate employee is chased by his drug supplier, Takeda, a third-rate yakuza (Shinichi Tsutsumi). As they run for their lives and each other, their stories flash back and forth, continuing a strange chain of events that only gets stranger while the three-man race continues at full speed into the night and through the streets of Tokyo. “Effortlessly clever.”–Scott Tobias, The A.V. Onion Club

Drive
Wednesday, February 2, 7:30 PM
2002, 102 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Sabu. With Shinichi Tsutsumi, Ren Osugi, Kou Shibasaki, Susumu Terajima, Masanobu Ando.
Salaryman Asakura (Shinichi Tsutsumi) is having a rather ordinary day, parking in the same spot from where he watches every day, at the same time, the fantasy figure of Kou Shibasaki as she walks around the corner, when an unwanted trio of bank robbers barges into his car, interrupting his reverie. Doubled-crossed and left stranded by one of their own, they hijack the unfortunate salaryman and order him to drive after the stolen loot. As it turns out, they didn’t quite pick up the ideal joyrider for the lam: the stressed white collar Asakura, first seen being diagnosed for hypertension, refuses to go over the speed limit. The gang quickly grows frustrated and decides to stop at a café to formulate a plan. More bad luck ensues, involving an edifying run-in with a punk rock band, more twists and turns, and angry ghosts.

The Blessing Bell (Kofuku no Kane)
Friday, February 4, 7:30 PM
2002, 87 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Sabu. With Susumu Terajima, Naomi Nishida, Seijun Suzuki, Reila Aphrodite.
A lyrical and meditative tale that is often reminiscent of both Mike Leigh’s Naked (1993) and Takeshi Kitano’s early yakuza films, The Blessing Bell follows the wanderings of its blue-collar protagonist, Igarashi (Susumu Terajima) through the 24 hours that follow the closing of the factory he works for. After a fruitless job hunt, the newly unemployed man walks into other lost souls: a yakuza boss who has literally been stabbed in the back, a man who murdered his wife’s lover (but not his wife), a hopeless single mother, the ghost of an elderly man in a hospital (played by director Seijun Suzuki) and a suicidal salaryman. Coincidentally, he also runs into a burning building, gets hit by a car and wins the lottery. Winner: Netpac Award, 2003 Berlin International Film Festival; and Grand Jury Prize, 2003 Cinemanila International Film Festival.

Troubleman (Toraburuman)
Saturday, February 5, 5 PM
**International Premiere
2010, 180 min., HD Cam, color, in Japanese. Directed by Sabu. With Shigeaki Kato, Terunosuke Takezai, Mayuko Iwasa, Riju Go, Susumu Terajima.
Sabu’s latest work, written for TV and presented for the first time outside Japan, stars Shigeaki Kato as Kazuo Tokuda, an insurance agent whose life is turned topsy-turvy when he gets thrust into a web of mystery and intrigue involving murderers, would-be rapists and a gang of angry yakuza! As things turn out, trouble is nothing new for this man, who might just be the very embodiment of bad luck.

Comments (1) Jan 21 2011

To my mind, there are two truly great books written about Hong Kong cinema. One is Stefan Hammond and Mike Wilkins’ Sex & Zen and A Bullet in the Head which is unadulterated enthusiasm in excelsis and a high water mark for fanboy writing done right. The other is straight out of academia and it’s David Bordwell’s Planet Hong Kong. Bordwell isn’t about themes and meaning and symbolism. Instead, he takes a movie apart like a swordsman, dissecting every frame and figuring out how it works. He’s not interested in telling us what Hong Kong movies mean, he’s interested in telling us how they’re made and how that’s changed over the years.

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Unfortunately, both books look like they’re out of print, and new copies of Bordwell’s Planet Hong Kong go for $99 (used are much cheaper, but still). Seizing the means of production in his socialist mitts, however, Bordwell has just released a new an improved Planet Hong Kong himself. The book is only available as a digital edition but it’s vastly superior to the first edition. With expanded chapters, color photos (the first edition is all black and white), and new chapters about changes in the Hong Kong film industry since he wrote the first edition, it’s a must have. It’s in pdf format so you don’t even need a fancy digital reader to read it. There’s lots of expanded info on Johnnie To that makes this book a must-have for To fans. Bordwell’s had a lot of access to Johnnie To over the past few years and this is the best writing about To and Milkyway Image out there.

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Priced at $15 (which is steep for a digital book – but here’s hoping price might come down) it’s available on his blog here.

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To promote the book, Bordwell is doing a lot of posts on his blog about Hong Kong cinema, including:

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- looking at Jackie Chan’s style of action

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- a precis on how Hong Kong gun action works

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- a long look at the late-90’s Hong Kong film industry

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- a thumbnail guide to 25 HK classics

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Buy the book here!

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Comments (0) Jan 15 2011

Twitch has an interview with Korea’s Kim Tae-Gyun up right now. Director Kim is the man behind the ever-popular VOLCANO HIGH and Korea’s submission to this year’s Oscars, A BAREFOOT DREAM. It played as the first Korean Movie Night of 2011 and the audience were tearing the seats up. Go! Read! Learn!

Comments (0) Jan 14 2011

PETITION (starts January 14 @ Anthology Film Archives)
This acclaimed documentary from China (the NY Times calls it “…brave and wrenching…”) is all about the people who travel to the big cities petitioning higher courts for justice. It’s a feudal concept, grafted onto a modern legal system, and it’s resulted in shantytowns of petitioners springing up around the central petitioner’s office, and blunt applications of state force to discourage petitioners who have nothing left to lose and who are desperate for justice. (read a review) (full info)

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HOUSE, the crazed Japanese masterpiece, is screening at the IFC Center on weekend midnights again. Holy crap! Nothing can kill this movie! (full schedule)

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The Museum of the Moving Image has reopened out in Astoria, and it’s got a bunch of Asian films screening to celebrate. First up is HA HA HA (Sunday, February 20 @ 6pm) the latest from Hong Sang-Soo, Korea’s master of awkard arthouse comedy, which won Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year. (read a review) (screening info)

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The Museum of the Moving Image will also be showing MUMBAI DIARIES on Sunday, January 16 @ 7pm. (more info)

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Also opening this week from India is the acclaimed political thriller, NO ONE KILLED JESSICA, based on the Jessica Lal murder case in which a cocktail waitress was killed at a party in front of dozens of witnesses. Her accused killer, the son of a powerful rich man, was later acquitted of all charges, leading to nationwide protests. (more info) (screening times across the city)

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Comments (0) Jan 14 2011

Viz Pictures is hosting the World Premiere of the GANTZ live action film on Thursday, January 20th at @ 8pm. It’ll be simultaneously premiering in 325  movie theaters and playing one time only. Also, please note, it will be dubbed in English, not subtitled. To buy your own tickets to the screening, or for more details, just go here. The theaters it’ll be playing in NYC are the Union Square 14, the AMC Empire 25 and the theater at First Avenue and 62nd Streets. Like we said, more details are here.

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Based on the hit, bizarro anime series and manga, GANTZ is all about some dead kids who suddenly wake up in a room with a featureless black sphere nicknamed Gantz that forces them to hunt down aliens using super-high-tech weapons. It’s a huge series in Japan and this live action movie starring Kenichi Matsuyama (L from the DEATH NOTE movies) and Kazunari Ninomiya (LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA) is a big budget, large scale blockbuster. And we’ve got free tickets.

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All you need to do is join the Subway Cinema News mailing list and on Tuesday, Jan. 11 we’ll be sending out a special newsletter with instructions on how to win tickets. Usually we do a trivia question and then we take all the right answers and draw the winners from those. We’re determining how many pairs of tickets we can give away now, and we’ll be posting the number as soon as we have it.

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So join the Subway Cinema News Army and get yourself some tickets!

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Comments (7) Jan 09 2011

The Korean Cultural Service’s free screening series returns for year 2! Once again, they’ll be screening free movies on 35mm every other Tuesday at the Tribeca Cinemas. The films start at 7pm and seating is first come, first served. Doors open at 6:30pm. And the first series of films they’re screening? Sports movies!

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Everyone loves a sports movie – underdogs facing impossible odds, no talent, no hope and yet somehow they pull victory from defeat at the last possible second. Korea understands the underdog in an almost spiritual way and as a result the past three years have seen a string of sports movies become major box office hits in Korea. Full of edge-of-your-seat drama, the sports movie has practically replaced the romantic comedy as Korea’s genre of choice these days, and over the next eight weeks they’ll be showing you some of the best.

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Tuesday, January 11 @ 7 pm
A BAREFOOT DREAM (2010, 119 minutes, US Premiere)
Korea’s entry for the Oscars (where it hopes to win “Best Foreign Language Film”) this movie tells the true story of Kim Won-Kang, a former player for Korea’s national soccer team who hit the skids after he got too old for the game. Traveling Southeast Asia, he lurches from one get-rich-quick scheme to another finally landing in war-torn East Timor. He scrapes by renting cleats to kids playing soccer in a local park but slowly he gets sucked into their lives and winds up becoming their coach. Director Kim Tae-Kyun (VOLCANO HIGH) knows action, and he shoots his soccer games fast and hard, while keeping the melodrama quotient low so that the film never becomes sentimental. A scrappy burst of soccer adrenaline, A BAREFOOT DREAM is one of 2010’s most sure-fire crowdpleasers.

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Tuesday, January 25 @ 7pm
TAKE OFF (2009, 145 minutes, New York Premiere)
1997. Muju, Korea. In an effort to bring the 2010 Winter Olympics to Korea, the country has to demonstrate that Koreans enjoy the sports of the Winter Olympics. One problem: no one knows squat about ski jumping. No problem, they assemble a team, train them on waterslides and sends them into competition. It’s a true story, and a lot like COOL RUNNING (the tale of the Jamaican bobsled team) but it’s given a distinctly Korean flavor in this popular, mainstream blockbuster that’s the flat-out funniest in this series and that stars four major Korean stars: Choi Jae-Hwan, Ha Jeong-Woo (the killer from THE CHASER), rapper Kim Ji-Seok-I and Cha Heon-Tae from MY SASSY GIRL.

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Tuesday, February 8 @ 7pm
LIFTING KING KONG
(aka THE BRONZE MEDALIST) (2009, 120 minutes, New York Premiere)
If second place is first place for losers, then let’s not even get into what third place means. Popular actor Lee Bum-Soo plays real-life Olympic weightlifter, Ji-Bong, who quits the sport after a gruesome powerlifting injury. The only job he can find is coaching weightlifting at a small town school. Even worse, it’s a girl’s school and if there’s one group of people on this earth who do not want to bulk up and gain muscle mass, I would guess it’s Korean high school girls. Complications ensue. Downbeat and gritty to the point of being almost nasty, LIFTING KING KONG displays people in all their awful greediness, but this commitment to not flinching from the bad side of life makes the inevitable comeback and triumph of the human spirit feel that much more touching, and that much more earned.

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Tuesday, February 22 @ 7pm
FOREVER THE MOMENT (2008, 124 minutes)
Probably the world’s only movie about women’s handball, if there’s one film in this series that is going to break your heart, it’s FOREVER THE MOMENT. Based on the true story of Korea’s women’s handball team competing at the 2004 Summer Olympics, it’s about a retired player from the national team recruiting some of her now-middle-aged former teammates when she’s asked to step in to coach the new national team at the last minute.  Directed by Lim Soon-Rye, one of the few female directors in Korea, it became a major word-of-mouth hit in 2008, and it remains one of the greatest sports movies ever made, from any country. Seriously, if you’re going to make one movie in this series, this is the one.

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Comments (0) Jan 08 2011

January is the time when a lot of studios dump their product that they’re worried about, and what this means is that it’s the one month of the year when smaller distributors are willing to take a chance because there’s less competition from big blockbusters, and January 2011 is no different. Here’s a list of what’s coming up this month:

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JIGOKU (Jan. 21 @ 7:30pm) – the Japan Society continues its ZEN & ITS OPPOSITE series with this trippy, technicolored horror flick from 1960. Ever wanted to spend time in Buddhist Hell? Now’s your chance!  (more info)
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IP MAN 2 (opens Jan. 28) – the rip-roaring, modern day martial arts classic, IP MAN 2, starring Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung opens in NYC and LA! (watch the trailer and read more about it)

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ONG BAK 3 (opens Jan. 14) – the third “Tony Jaa breaks skulls with his knees” movie hits the big screen at NYC’s Village East cinema today. (more info)

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EVANGELION: 2.0 YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE (opens Jan 21) – the second, animated Evangelion feature film hits screens. If it’s any comfort, this one is getting vastly better reviews than the first revamped Evangelion feature film from a year or so ago. (read a review)

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THE HOUSEMAID (opens Jan. 21) – this remake of Kim Ki-Young’s seminal Korean 1960’s freak-out, THE HOUSEMAID is bizarre. Lush, seductive, sexy and dangerous it turns into a full-on train wreck in the final five minutes. But before you get there you get a movie that wins my vote for “Best Sex Movie of 2011.” (watch the trailer)

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And don’t forget Jay Chou, Chinese heartthrob, co-starring in THE GREEN HORNET that opens on Jan. 14

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Comments (1) Jan 08 2011