10th Annual New York Asian Film Festival Previewby Wilson Morales
June 30, 2011
This weekend marks the 10th Annual New York Asian Film Festival with the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater (July 1 – 14), in partnership with the Japan Society’s “Japan Cuts” program (July 7 – 10), showcasing 46 films from the Far East.
Yoshimasa Ishibashi’s ‘Milocrorze: A Love Story’ is slated as the opening night film selection.
This freaked-out slab of solid psychedelia is what movies will look like in the year 23,000 AD! Makes Matthew Barney look tame. A bizarro musical/variety/samurai/love story directed by Yoshimasa Ishibashi, the mad genius behind “The Fuccon Family” television show, and starring Takayuki Yamada in three different roles, Milocrorze: A Love Story defies description. Following a scene where a young boy falls in love with the title character, only to have his heart broken by her, the film introduces us to three young men who are all in Milocrorze thrall, either literally or figuratively.
Also a highlight of this year’s festival is Andy Lau‘s starring role in Benny Chan‘s ‘Shaolin,’ which will be the centerpiece film.
As feuding warlords fight to expand their power, the noble monks of the Shaolin temple clean up the mess left behind, tending to the injured while trying their best to protect the poor and weak. The young general Hao Jie (Andy Lau) has caused much of this mess, with his violent and ruthless tactics that rarely discriminate between soldiers and civilians.
When Hao is betrayed by fellow general Cao Man (Nicolas Tse), he is forced into hiding, and takes refuge with the monks (including Jackie Chan) at their hidden mountain temple. As the days pass, he finds himself more and more at ease, as he learns the ways of peace. But Cao is not far behind, and war soon reaches the temple, where the monks are ready to fight back with a fierce style that none of the warlords have ever seen- their unstoppable Shaolin Kung Fu.
Also part of the centerpiece is Takashi Miike‘s ‘Ninja Kids,’ which will have its world premiere here and serves up a Harry Potter meets ninjas scenario for kids, and surreal action-comedy for adults.
Based on the popular Japanese kid’s show Rantaro the Ninja Boy (running for 1,437 episodes and counting!) it’s all about young Rantaro in his first year at Ninja School. But he’s hardly at school for five minutes before a classmate – literally – has the snot beaten out of him, gangster hairdressers appear, Mr. Konnamon, your friendly ninja trivia commentator, starts dropping by and more wild ninja tricks than you can hit with a throwing star are flying off the screen.
Other notable films at the festival include
BEDEVILLED
Winner of multiple film festival awards, Bedevilled star Seo Young-Hee took home six “Best Actress” awards for her performance as a woman who ventures back to her childhood home on a remote island: an untamed hellhole populated by a handful of ruddy-faced men and old women bleached orange by the sun. It’s a misogynistic anti-Eden where the women work in the fields from dawn to dusk and prey on each other in competition for the savage, square-faced brutes they call their men. And when tragedy strikes, their sick little island paradise will never be the same. The film’s cast also includes Ji Seong-Won, Seo Young-Hee, Park Jung-Hak, Jo Duk-Je and Je-Min.
DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME
Tsui Hark achieves true greatness with Detective Dee, a return to the days when Hong Kong movies meant speed, madness, entertainment, spectacle, strong women, tragic heroes, cynical politics, kinetic action and kung fu deer. Carina Lau (in an award-winning performance) plays the Empress Wu, a controversial real-life figure whose coronation is being undermined by a series of assassinations by spontaneous combustion. To unravel the conspiracy she must release from prison the Sherlock Holmes-ian court official, Detective Dee (Andy Lau), whom she put there eight years previously for treason. This lavish blockbuster won Tsui Hark “Best Director” at the Hong Kong Film Awards and grabbed almost all the technical and design trophies, too.
***The movie¹s director, Tsui Hark, will be at the screening
HAUNTERS
50% horror movie, 50% superhero film and 100% Korean thriller, this is one dark, super-powered ride that became a big hit when it was released all about a kid who has the power to control minds and the ordinary joe who’s out to stop him. The directorial debut of Kim Min-Suk, the screenwriter behind The Good, The Bad and the Weird, Haunters is the dizzying lovechild of Unbreakable and The Fugitive, a genre beast that mixes pulse-pounding thrills with gut-wrenching moments like a woman forced to toss her helpless baby in front of a speeding train. This box office hit from Korea shows the dark side of the X-men, portraying a world where the only people with superpowers are psychopaths and it’s up the normal folks to step up and shut them down.
PUNISHED
From producer Johnnie To (Election) comes this kidnap drama from his longtime editor and assistant director, Law Wing-cheong. Anthony Wong, one of Hong Kong’s best actors, turns in the performance of his career as a real estate tycoon whose party girl daughter goes missing. He vows to get her back by any means necessary. Cut to: him finding her corpse, accidentally killed by the panicking kidnappers. Wong calls his enforcer and instructs him to kill everyone involved, but things aren’t what they seem, and before long everyone is down the rabbit hole and no one can be trusted.
REIGN OF ASSASSINS
A hyper-romantic martial arts film that gives Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a run for its money, Reign of Assassins was a huge hit across Asia. Pairing screen legend, Michelle Yeoh (Tomorrow Never Dies, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) with Korea’s much-loved, Jung Woo-Sung, and co-directed by John Woo (Red Cliff, Face/Off) it’s crammed with so much talent it’s practically erupting. Yeoh plays a swordswoman who goes into retirement and settles down with the ordinary joe she loves. Unfortunately, her past comes back to haunt her, as assassins from her former guild find where she’s living and come after her with whips, acupuncture needles and lethal swords swinging. In this movie, every vicious swordsman leads a domestic double life, past sins dog their fleet feet and the shriek of sharp steel being drawn from its scabbard is the soundtrack of their lives. Enjoy the action, but stay for the emotions: Reign of Assassins is a martial arts movie with a heavy human heart.
THE CHASER
In 2007, the Korean film industry hit the skids. Overproduction resulted in a glut of shoddy movies and only 10% of films were turning a profit. Things looked bad, but then two low budget movies released in early 2008 became massive word-of-mouth hits and turned everything around. One of them was The Chaser. It shouldn’t have been good. Starring two mid-list actors, directed by a first timer who was best known for winning an award for his short film in the Mise en Scene Genre Short Film Festival, and based on the real life serial killer, Young-cheol Yoo (convicted of 20 murders in 2005), it looked like little more than an exercise in pointless gore. But in the hands of director Na Hong-Jin and his two actors, Ha Jung-Woo and Kim Yun-Seok, it turned into a thriller so tense that it felt like it was directed by a cross between Alfred Hitchcock and a pit bull.
THE MAN FROM NOWHERE
Beating everything at the Korean box office (including Inception and Iron Man 2) and winning 12 of Korea’s biggest film awards, The Man From Nowhere is a sleek, streamlined thrill machine. One part Batman and one part Bourne, star Won Bin plays a retired government operative, living in obscurity, collecting his pension and minding his own business. But when a gang of black market organ harvesters abduct the kid who lives next door, he swings into action like a sleek torpedo, tearing through everyone in his path as he races to the rescue. If you thought Hollywood had a lock on taut, tight, high impact summer blockbusters, think again.
THE UNJUST
Longtime NYAFF favorite, director Ryoo Seung-Wan (City of Violence, also screening in this year’s festival), may be best known for his action movies but with The Unjust he’s delivered the best movie of his career. Like Serpico or The Wire jacked up on amphetamines, it’s a nightmare vision of twisted bureaucracy, failed government, and sprawling corruption. A corrupt cop and an even more corrupt district attorney go to war with each other as they try to find a scapegoat for a series of slayings and keep a gang war from boiling over into open violence. Echoing films like Anatomy of a Murder, The Unjust is a powerful indictment of the South Korean criminal justice system and of our own carnivorous instincts to succeed at all cost.
THE YELLOW SEA
In 2008, Na Hong-Jin and actors Ha Jung-Woo and Kim Yun-Seok set Korean cinema on fire with The Chaser (also screening at this year’s festival). Their low budget movie about a pimp looking for a serial killer became a massive word-of-mouth hit and shot 50,000 watts of high voltage current through the Korean film industry. Now, with a bigger budget from 20th Century Fox, director Ha and his two actors reunite to unleash this sprawling hitman epic written in bruised knuckles and broken teeth that was a selection of Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The Yellow Sea is a big, relentless movie about a gambling addicted cabbie set up by a crime boss to take a big fall in Seoul. However, he turns out to have a talent for survival.
The 2011 Star Asia Awards will go to:
Star Asia Rising Star Award
Takayuki Yamada – Japan¹s most versatile young actor has gone from being a TV heartthrob to a TRAIN MAN (his breakthrough role) to one of Takashi Miike¹s 13 ASSASSINS. And in this year’s Opening Night selection,
MILOCRORZE: A LOVE STORY, he plays every single male part.
Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award
Tsui Hark – One of our first events was a retrospective of Hong Kong’s veteran filmmaker and award-winning director, Tsui Hark, way back in 2001. We figured it was time to bring him to the festival and recognize his extraordinary, lifelong contributions to Hong Kong cinema, especially after his latest film, DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME, was a huge box office hit and won Best Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards 2011
