nyaff Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Forget about Kung Fu Panda. Wash the memory of Forbidden Kingdom out of your brain. Ignore the trailer for The Mummy: We Love China, Yes We Do! (or whatever it's called). The real deal is on view this weekend as the New York Asian Film Festival opens for business.

The 7th edition of the festival kicks off tomorrow afternoon at the IFC Center in Manhattan with the North American premiere of Masato Harada's The Shadow Spirit. The first evening presentation features the world premiere of Ryo Iwamatsu's Then Summer Came, with the director in attendance.

This year the festival will show 43 movies, plus two short film programs, their most ambitious outing yet. Organized and presented by Subway Cinema, a "New York-based film programming, exhibition and marketing collective," as they describe themselves, the selections lean toward the pop side of Asian film culture, which happens to be my favorite kind; in fact, I've already written about The Butcher and Public Enemy Returns.

If you're a New Yorker, this should be etched on your viewing calendar, but even if you're an outsider looking in, like me, the program notes are very much worth reading. To give you a further taste, check out our gallery, and then visit the NYAFF site to read and see more about one of the very best festivals in the world.

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.

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.

With its mix of serious documentary-style footage and outrageous CGI, Ski Jumping Pairs: Road to Torino 2006 is nothing if not unusual. The film, co-directed by Riichiro Mashima and Masaki Kobayashi, grew out of a CGI short about people ski jumping together (not side-by-side, mind you -- on the same set of skis) made by Mashima in 2002; Kobayashi directs the live-action sequences. The idea of pairs ski jumping is a very funny one and, indeed, parts of the movie are hilarious. But it bogs down in the middle, and so frequently derails itself that audiences are left wondering what might have been.

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.