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Asian Beat: 'Au Revoir Taipei,' Hello Dallas
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Drama, Independent, Festival Reports, Cinematical Indie
Specialty film festivals can pop up in the most unlikely of places. While the the film community thinks of Dallas as a poor second cousin to Austin (not without good reason), local residents, including myself, treasure and champion the events that bring diversity to a movie-going scene too often dominated by Hollywood product. And so Friday night was a mob scene in the lobby of Landmark's Magnolia Theater as the Asian Film Festival of Dallas opened its ninth edition.
Now, to be fair, the Magnolia is often jammed up on a weekend night: the lobby is small! Yet I'm told that the official opening night film, Arvin Chen's Au Revoir Taipei, filled the room; a very decent crowd (myself included) then filed in to witness Wong Jing's I Corrupt All Cops (the best title of the year), and the midnight showing of Japanese splatter pic Robogeisha sold out, prompting management to add another theater to accommodate the overflow. (Check this revealing photo gallery from the film's screening at Fantasic Fest.)
Au Revoir Taipei is typical of foreign-language films that don't get distribution in the U.S. It's sweet, romantic, and quite commercial in nature, yet it doesn't feature any known stars and lacks an easily marketable angle. At the same time, it's the kind of audience-friendly fare that's often snubbed at the larger film festivals. Kai (Jack Yao) is learning French so he can go to Paris and reclaim his girlfriend. His unorthodox method is to study while sitting on the floor of a bookstore night after night. That gets the attention of Susie (Amber Kuo), a store clerk, but Kai ignores her until a fateful night when he's on a mission to deliver a package for Brother Bao (Frankie Kao).
SDCC: 'Machete' Rips Guts, Feeds Tacos to the People!
Filed under: Action, Festival Reports, Fandom, 20th Century Fox, Movie Marketing, Cinematical Indie, Trailers and Clips
Robert Rodriguez is a filmmaker who regards his audience with particular fondness. So instead of bringing his September exploitation-action pic Machete to boring old Hall H, Rodriguez set up shop on a corner in downtown San Diego to throw a Comic-Con street party for anyone who wanted to come!
Thursday night's Machete party drew a crowd that lined up down the block hours early for the chance to see footage and scarf complimentary tacos from the Machete-themed taco truck (which Rodriguez and stars Danny Trejo and Michelle Rodriguez had manned earlier in the day). Meanwhile, go-go dancers gyrated blithely to a mix of hip-hop, soul, and mariachi music while attendees admired a row of lowriders and classic cars. The drink specials? Tecate and margaritas, naturally.
With a nod to those who couldn't get in -- the folks still stuck behind the "border gates" -- Rodriguez and his two stars unveiled seven awesomely NSFW minutes of Machete, projected onto a building wall so large even fans outside the party boundaries could catch a glimpse.
SDCC: J.J. Abrams Sets His Sights On Spielberg With 'Super-8'
Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Festival Reports, Fandom, ComicCon
During Entertainment Weekly's Visionaries panel at the San Diego Comic-Con Thursday afternoon, writer-producer-director J.J. Abrams briefly discussed the origins of his upcoming project, Super-8. The film marks his first official collaboration with none other than Steven Spielberg, but he indicated that they sort of worked together many years before Abrams made any movies, much less this one.
"When I was 16 years old, Matt Reeves and I did a Super-8 film festival in LA," Abrams told a capacity crowd in Comic-Con's Hall H. "The LA Times wrote a story about it that came out the next day, and we got a phone call that day from Steven Spielberg's assistant, who at the time was Kathleen Kennedy." He explained that Spielberg wanted the duo to repair some of his childhood films whose splices had fallen into disrepair over the years. "We said, we've got finals, but we could probably make time to repair Steven Spielberg's movies. So we repaired the movies and they gave us $300, which was when I knew why they got us to do it."
New York Asian Film Festival Wrap-Up
Filed under: Festival Reports
Every year, elated but harried attendants of the New York Asian Film Festival look over the typically packed slate of features and just don't know where to start. Most press coverage of the festival seeks to help in that process. As a result, when the dust has settled and the festival has ended, many times viewers such as myself can't help but compare what they'd read about featured titles with what they actually saw. Naturally the biggest source of hype for the little grassroots festival that could is the programmers' description of the films. And I have to say, as usual, the festival really has outdone themselves in being both insanely effusive and weirdly accurate in their descriptions.
Perfect example: at the festival's website, Doman Seman, the new film by Go Shibata, whose Late Bloomer was showcased at the 2005 NYAFF, is heralded thusly: "Imagine A Hard Day's Night if it was about Aleister Crowley instead of The Beatles." Wonky as that may sound, it's kind of true. Shibata's film rides high with the anarchic zeal of Richard Lester's iconic sketch comedy and does center on the power of the occult to save the world from capitalism. Doman Seman is the requisite "So Crazy it's Amazing" title at this year's NYAFF and if it's your thing, it'll probably be one of your favorite movies of the year. It's essentially a buddy comedy about a pair of bums and a reformed spree killer that work together to free the world from the clutches of the Human Enslavement Project. Because they're bums, they're apparently in tune with the spirit of creative chaos that is the only way to fight the moneylenders that the Human Enslavement Project uses to keep people in line. It's like Southland Tales's long-lost twin sister and I mean that as a compliment.
New York Asian Film Festival Review: Alien Vs. Ninja
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Foreign Language, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Festival Reports
Reviewing Alien Vs. Ninja is strange considering that it requires one to willfully sit down and watch a movie that one should probably only stumble upon when channel-surfing after midnight. Alien vs. Ninja is a low-budget Japanese riff on Predator that looks like it was filmed on VHS tapes over the course of a week. The costumes and sets were probably the most expensive things in the film's budget, which isn't saying much considering that the aliens are dressed up in green stretchy latex-type pants that even the guys playing the Sleestaks from the '70s Land of the Lost show would laugh at. That kind of Z-grade indie genre film is apparently going to be the bread and butter of Sushi Typhoon, an American extension of Japan's Nikkatsu Studios that's using Alien Vs. Ninja as its flagship title for home video audiences. I can't see this thing working for viewers unless they see it with an audience but more power to ya if cheapy make-up effects and ninjas fighting aliens in cosplay outfits is your thing.
The plot of Alien Vs. Ninja is...oh come one, it's in the damn title. A group of ninjas, led by a talented but angry young ninja played by Masanori Mimoto, are stalked by a group of aliens in the woods. They fight in sped-up action scenes that are only entertaining when those scenes revolve around make-up effects, like the scene where one of the ninjas has his legs melted down to just his bones by some kind of alien acid. Tis a silly film.
London's FrightFest Announces 2010 Line-Up
Filed under: Horror, New Releases, Festival Reports
The full schedule of screenings for London's premiere horror film festival, FrightFest, has been announced.
The event, which takes place at the Empire in Leicester Square, will present four days of blood-soaked terror to keen audiences. No fewer than six world premieres are planned, including first showings for Adam Green's Hatchet II, Aussie director Josh Reed's Primal and Brit horror flick Dead Cert from Steve Lawson.
An unmissable retrospective sees director Tobe Hooper come to the city for the first time in almost 20 years to present a screening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and participate in an on-stage interview after the film.
British directors are well represented, with seven titles at the event. Highlights include Gareth Edwards's incredibly impressive feature debut Monsters (pictured), which had its world premiere at SXSW, and Paul Andrew Williams's latest chiller, Cherry Tree Lane, fresh from its debut at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
Silverdocs Review: Utopia in Four Movements
Filed under: Documentary, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Exhibition, Other Festivals
Have you ever seen -- or even heard of -- a live documentary? That's what David Cerf and Sam Green's Utopia in Four Movements is labeled, and it is and has the capability to be more organic than most non-fiction films. Really, it's more of an academic lecture with accompanying score and PowerPoint presentation (well, Apple Keynote presentation), but you know a lot of documentaries are like that anyway, just without the in-house presence of the narrator and band. Green recites, with some apparent improvisation, what would otherwise be voice-over, while Cerf mixes the soundtrack from a laptop as members of the Brooklyn-based group The Quavers perform ambient music on guitar, trumpet, violin and vibraphone.
The focus of the film/lecture is the idea of utopia, how it has been attempted and how it likely will never exist, just as Thomas More presumed when he coined the term (utopia = "no place" in Greek). Utopia in Four Movements argues that the progression of events of the 20th century is evidence for why utopia is so difficult to achieve, whether they're related to "good" communities or those horrible pseudo-Utopian societies that squash others with conflicting ideals (see the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, the KKK, Stalin's Soviet Union, North Korea and way too many other genocides, regimes and organizations from the last hundred years). Yet he does highlight some developments, such as the invention of the shopping mall and the endurance of Castro's Cuba, that at least hint at possibilities for modest utopias, whether based in capitalism or communism.
Doc Talk: Silverdocs Wrap-Up; 'Great Directors'; 'Please Remove Your Shoes'
Filed under: Documentary, Festival Reports, Other Festivals, Columns, Cinematical Indie
Since last week's Doc Talk, which posted near the beginning of the Silverdocs documentary festival, I've seen a lot more titles to report on from my first, lengthy visit to Silver Springs, Maryland. Unfortunately I can't review everything, or even give as much attention to each as I would like, but I will try to highlight most of what I watched, especially the stuff I liked. Additionally, following the festival wrap-up, I take a look at two non-Silverdocs films, one that's opening this week in theaters and one that arrives on DVD.
Festival Report: 2010 AFI Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival
As I noted in my previous column, I had to take a break from heavy subject matter, particularly human rights-issue films. So, I avoided the Peacebuilding on Screen program, which partnered the fest with the U.S. Institute of Peace. I may have missed another film as amazing as War Don Don, which was a part of the program, but I just couldn't deal with depressing stories. I did at least attempt La Isla - Archives of a Tragedy, about discovered secret police documents related to disappeared citizens, and recognized some quality filmmaking. My head was just not in it.
I also couldn't bear the downer of a tale presented in Familia, the second film I walked out of due to my preference for "fun" docs. From there, I stumbled into something with relative subject matter -- a struggling Latin American family -- yet Circo is set in a Mexican circus and has a much lighter tone. It's not great, but I love films taking place under the big top, so despite its being perfect reality show fodder, I did enjoy the child performers and behind-the-scenes look at a multi-generational family-operated traveling operation.
New York Asian Film Festival is Go!
Filed under: Festival Reports
(Full Disclosure: I volunteered for the New York Asian Festival from 2004-2006)
When the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) began nine years ago, the Subway Cinema crew was screening their films at NYC's Anthology Film Archives on 2nd and 2nd Avenue. It was the beginning of summer so it was hot and the air conditioning occasionally malfunctioned and some of the prints and DVDs had technical difficulties. This year, the festival screens its films uptown at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade theater. Their status bump is well-deserved, a sign that they really are the NYC festival for cinephiles that want a truly democratic slate of films. NYAFF has it all: action, romance, science fiction, comedy, documentaries, monster movies, exploitation, you name it. What other festival would screen Tien An Mien, a docudrama about the erection of the Tien An Mien Gate and a night of "Pink" films, subversive hour-long softcore porn with titles like Groper Train and The Japanese Wife Next Door?
The key thing to remember if you're looking over this year's stacked program and can't decide what to see during the next 10 days is that NYAFF is very much an event festival. That means they try to make each screening include a movie (duh), a prize give-away, an amped-up introduction by festival co-programmer Grady Hendrix, receptions and a post-screening Q&A. Try to get tickets for the events that seem more "eventful" than others and you won't be disappointed. No other film series in the NYC puts on a show quite like the NYAFF crew.
Silverdocs Review(s): The Kids Grow Up; Monica & David
Filed under: Documentary, Independent, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Other Festivals, HBO Films, Cinematical Indie
Sometimes we have to do things we don't like. Maybe for you this includes humoring your father while he documents every minute of your day with a video camera. For most of my fellow writers, it entails seeing and then reviewing stuff like Grown-Ups. For me, as a documentary critic, it means bucking up and watching Doug Block's latest film, The Kids Grow Up, despite my immense distaste for his self-indulgent style and subject matter. I hadn't planned on including the film in my Silverdocs viewing and admit I only forced myself after walking out of something else, but what I came away with was at least an appreciation for this as a follow-up and compliment to 51 Birch Street and the qualification to honestly recommend it to at least fans of that earlier doc, of which I disappointingly know there are plenty.
Like Block, who is more of a home movie maker than a journalistic documentarian, I often explore things about myself that I don't quite understand. While he has made films in order to investigate what it's like to lose a parent and now what it's like to let go of a child, I attempted to work out my hatred of first-person films that serve as family therapy not by seeing them but by attending a Silverdocs conference titled Documentary Ethics Inside the Family. It was a fitting panel given that along with The Kids Grow Up, there were three other subjective docs of this sort (Monica & David, Family Affair and Beyond This Place) playing the festival, yet I unfortunately left the event no more tolerant of such narcissistic and nepotistic works. If anything, I was more annoyed at Block for claiming that his films are not made to be personal therapy but they end up being personally therapeutic. Surely, the latter is always to be expected and must somewhat drive him as a filmmaker.
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