NewYorkAsianFilmFestival 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.