New York Asian Film Festival Tagged Articles at Cinematical

For my money, the scariest butcher in horror film history was Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. His brute force, his sharp-edged implements, his bloody apron, even his height, combined to make Gunnar Hansen a frightening, lethal monster. Of course, any profession in which a practitioner is expected to slice up meat makes an irresistible subject for a horror movie, and many flicks have featured meatcutters as mad villains.

The latest example is an independent production from South Korea that will be screening next week at the always reliable New York Asian Film Festival. Directed by newcomer Kim Jin-Won, The Butcher puts a pig mask on the titular character. "A team of snuff film producers are discussing their gruesome handiwork," according to the festival's program notes, "torturing their captives to death, one by one, and selling the tapes overseas to foreign audiences hungry for footage of Koreans murdering one another. " It's told entirely from the point of view of two video cameras, one for the hapless victims and one for the perpetrators.

So we've got torture porn crossed with a shaky cam aesthetic. What's not to love? Fangoria got the tip on a teaser trailer (NSFW, unless you're a sadistic butcher). Rodney at Twitch posted a review and says that The Butcher boils "horror conventions down to a raw, wet core ... using the agility of video to furiously rub the audience's face in it. " You have been officially warned.

Two days ago, the organizers of the New York Asian Film Festival sent around a mass e-mail announcing the sudden, unexpected departure of their main sponsor, Midway Games. Here's the first paragraph of the e-mail: "Subway Cinema never thought that the people who invented Ms. Pac-Man would kick us to the curb, but a mere four weeks before the start of the New York Asian Film Festival, Midway Games, who had been working with us as the festival's presenting sponsor, have pulled out of the festival entirely." The email goes on to state that the organizers of the fest didn't even know they had been abandoned until Midway representatives failed to show up at a scheduled meeting. "They never showed up, and they never called. When we finally tracked them down by phone in Chicago they curtly informed us that they were not giving us the sponsorship money, the decision was out of their hands and offered little in the way of further explanation."

The festival will now be "downsized," but apparently not abandoned, even though the email goes on to state that "now we don't even have a quarter in the bank to soothe our woes with a game of Tron." The NYAFF still has some degree of support from Magnolia Pictures, ImaginAsian and the festival's own organizers. If Midway has any kind of statement on this, they can send it to us at ryan.stewart@cinematical and we'll be happy to run it. Otherwise, I'd have to say that this sounds like a really poor way to conduct business.

The New York Asian Film Festival is celebrating its fifth birthday this year with its largest-ever slate of films: 25 features on just two screens, most of which are making their New York or US debuts. The festival is dedicated to exploring "the latest and greatest movies from Asia," and the 2006 line-up includes works from Japan, China, Korea, India, Thailand, and Malaysia. The festival runs from June 15 to July 1; watch the official website for ticket and showtime information.

A Bittersweet Life is an utterly gorgeous film. Filled with surfaces so polished they seem to glow, and tableaus so carefully composed they look like paintings, it aspires to and often achieves a magical sort of visual perfection. Each scene and face is lit with aggressive disregard for reality; director Kim Ji-woon's only concern is what looks best, and his meticulous attention to detail is our reward as we take in one sumptuous image after another.

For a time, the film's content matches its look. At the center of A Bittersweet Life is Sun-Woo, a tightly controlled gang enforcer who, after seven years of service, has earned the trust of his employer. Played by Lee Byung-hun in a narrow black suit, Sun-Woo's resemblance to Alain Delon's Jef in Le Samouraï couldn't possibly be accidental. Lee shares Delon's wide, blank eyes, as well as his uncanny ability to make his face go completely slack. Like Jef, Sun-Woo is disciplined, unquestioning, and careful. And, like Jef, he make a conscious choice to disobey his employer over a woman. After the betrayal, both men use their ruthlessness and skill for themselves for the first time, a choice that makes turning back impossible. In Le Samouraï, Jef's actions are smart, informed, and decisive. In A Bittersweet Life, however, both Sun-Woo's and the film's careful control fall apart, and what had been an intelligent, highly promising convergence of character and structure turns into a bloody mess with a sky-high body count and very little in the way character development.

The New York Asian Film Festival is celebrating its fifth birthday this year with its largest-ever slate of films: 25 features on just two screens, most of which are making their New York or US debuts. The festival is dedicated to exploring "the latest and greatest movies from Asia," and the 2006 line-up includes works from Japan, China, Korea, India, Thailand, and Malaysia. The festival runs from June 15 to July 1; watch the official website for ticket and showtime information.

Linda Linda Linda was the biggest hit for Japanese rock band Blue Hearts. Even for those who understand only the song's chorus -- predictably "Linda, Linda! Linda, Linda Linda-a!" -- it possesses a catchiness that almost defies logic. As I sit here, fully a week after I heard the song for the first time, I can't remember a waking moment in which I was not quietly singing it to myself. The fact that I'm not remotely annoyed -- let alone suicidal -- is an indication of the song's charm, a trait it has very much in common with the 2005 Japanese film that shares its name.

Nobuhiro Yamashita's Linda Linda Linda is a straight-forward, deliberately understated movie about four girls who form a band for the talent show at their high school's annual Holly Festival. Due to injury and infighting, the membership of the band experiences a shakeup just a few days before the festival: The guitarist leaves with a broken finger, the keyboardist (Kei, Yu Kashii) switches to lead guitar, and a new singer -- a painfully shy exchange student from Korea (Son, Bae Du-na), no less -- is recruited. Lacking the time to rehearse and learn original music, the group decides to perform a set of Blue Hearts covers, highlighted, of course, by Linda Linda Linda. Faced with such a depressingly cliched plot, one could be forgiven for imagining shot after shot of adorable Japanese school girls, mugging cutely and giggling adorably over boys and rock stars. What's so wonderful about Linda Linda Linda, however, is how utterly wrong it proves us.