NYAFF 2009 Announces First Titles!

Founder and Editor; Toronto, Canada (@AnarchistTodd)

Yes, boys and girls, one of our very favorite festivals of the year - the New York Asian - is just around the corner and to prove it they've just announced the first half of their lineup! Dachimawa Lee! The Clone Returns! The Forbidden Door! 20th Century Boys! K20! Love Exposure! And the proverbial more, more, more! Check the full press release below the break!

NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2009
June 19 ­ July 5, 2009

from June 19 to July 2 at the IFC Center
(323 Sixth Avenue, at West 4th Street)

and

from July 1 ­ 5 at Japan Society
(333 East 47th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues)


Look out! It¹s the first half of the line-up for the New York Asian Film Festival 2009. We¹ve still got between 10 and 20 more movies to announce, lots (we mean LOTS) of special guests and some movies that are going to blow your mind to come. But for now, here¹re the first 19 films in this year¹s line-up.

Keep your eyes on www.subwaycinema.com for full details.

THE EQUATION OF LOVE AND DEATH (China, 2008, Cao Baoping) ­ a twisty Chinese thriller anchored by an award-winning performance from Zhou Xun as a chain-smoking, obsessive-compulsive cab driver desperate to find her missing boyfriend.

OLD FISH (China, 2007, Gao Qunshu) ­ call this one an anti-thriller. A long-in-the-tooth member of Harbin¹s bomb squad takes on a mad bomber who¹s leaving diabolical homemade explosives all over the city. Written and acted mostly by actual cops and bomb squad officers, the movie belongs to real life ex-cop and non-actor Ma Guowei, who plays the titular old fish in this gripping, ultra-realistic look at China¹s bomb disposal procedures, which apparently include putting a ticking explosive device in your bicycle basket and pedaling like hell for the river.

IF YOU ARE THE ONE (China, 2008, Feng Xiaogang) ­ it shouldn¹t work, but it does. This is the romantic comedy to end all romantic comedies: a gorgeous, heartfelt, sharply-written romance between Shu Qi and Ge You, directed by China¹s master of the blockbuster, Feng Xiaogang (ASSEMBLY). The second-highest grossing movie EVER released in China, it¹s like something from MGM in the 1930¹s, a throwback to a time when romances made you wish you could get up out of your seat and walk through the screen and into a better, funnier and far more romantic world.

THE FORBIDDEN DOOR (Indonesia, 2009, Joko Anwar) ­ the director of last year¹s festival favorite, KALA, is back and boy is this one twisted. Like a 19th century gothic novel adapted by Alfred Hitchcock and directed by David Lynch, this movie about a sculptor and the horrible things he does to become successful is one of the sickest, kinkiest movies we¹ve ever screened. Graceful, gliding and with a Bernard Herrmann-esque score we feel confident when we say you¹ve never seen evil look quite so beguiling.

20TH CENTURY BOYS (Japan, 2008, Yukihiko Tsutsumi)
20TH CENTURY BOYS: CHAPTER TWO - THE LAST HOPE (Japan, 2009, Yukihiko
Tsutsumi) ­ as revered as the DEATH NOTE series, 20TH CENTURY BOYS (named after the T. Rex song) is an epic manga story that has finally become three much-anticipated movies, with the third, concluding installment coming out in August 2009. When they were kids, a neighborhood gang of buddies wrote an illustrated ³Book of Prophecy² about a group of bad guys who destroyed the planet with viruses and giant robots. Now they¹ve grown up into hard luck, broken down adults and the events from their homemade comic book are coming true and they¹re the only people who can stop it. This hard-charging narrative races ahead full speed, packed with destroyed cities, death cults, funeral banquets, old friends, broken dreams and invincible assassins. The kind of thing to make you laugh and give you goosebumps all at the same time, it¹s a boys¹ adventure tale for the 21st century. (The 20th Century Boys manga is currently being released in America by Viz)

ALL AROUND US (Japan, 2008, Ryosuke Hashiguchi) ­ after a seven-year break, director Ryosuke Hashiguchi is back and the results are shattering. This movie observes eight years of a marriage, marking the passage of time with famous Japanese murder trials covered by the husband who is a courtroom sketch artist. As his wife wrestles with depression and the two of them try to hold on to each other the movie becomes scalding water thrown on all of your emotional weak points. Actress Tae Kimura won ³Best Actress² for her performance as the wife at the Japanese Academy Awards and she deserves it for her work in this amazing, sensitive film that speaks quietly but will make everyone in the audience sit up and listen.

CHILDREN OF THE DARK (Japan, 2008, Junji Sakamoto) ­ a Japanese movie shot in Thailand about the child trafficking business (both for sex and for
organs) sounds awful, but this movie blew us away with its unblinking, hard-nosed attitude. Full of more horrible sights per second than any other movie made this year, and with a minimum of preaching, the awful truth of this film (which was banned in Thailand) is that all of us are guilty of the exploitation of children, whether we¹re the ones actually stealing their kidneys or not. This is an urgent scream for action, and a movie you¹ll have a hard time forgetting.

CLIMBER¹S HIGH (Japan, 2008, Masato Harada) - Masato Harada, director of last year's SHADOW SPIRIT, gets his Howard Hawks on again with this gripping ensemble drama about a group of newspapermen covering the real-life tragedy of a 1985 plane crash in the mountains of central Japan. Headlined by Shinichi Tsutsumi from the ALWAYS movies, who plays a mountaineer-turned-reporter, the story concentrates less on the disaster and more on the moral responsibility of the men assigned to tell the story of the tragedy, and how the event nearly destroyed their lives and relationships.

THE CLONE RETURNS HOME (Japan, 2008, Kanji Nakajima) ­ it¹s been compared to Tarkovsky¹s SOLARIS, and they ain¹t all wrong. Debuting at the Sundance Film Festival this quietly shimmering science fiction movie starts as hard sci fi and then morphs into a surreal space opera set on earth. An astronaut dies in an accident while in orbit, but surprise! The Japanese Space Agency cloned him before he went up into space and so now his wife gets the clone as a consolation prize. But life can be hard when you¹re the clone of a dead man, and soon this photocopied human is lost in the labyrinth of his own artificial memories.

K-20: LEGEND OF THE MASK (Japan, 2008, Shimako Sato) In a fictional past where Japan never participated in World War II and wealthy aristocrats rule the capital city, a mysterious thief named "K-20" steals from the rich and has become a folk hero to the poor. A master of disguise, no one has ever seen K-20's true face, and when a poor circus acrobat (played by the dreamy Takeshi Kaneshiro) is framed as the master criminal, he must seek the help of a rich princess to clear his name and bring the real K-20 to the authorities. One of the biggest Japanese productions of recent years, and featuring special effects by the team behind the ALWAYS movies, K-20 is an old-school, running-and-jumping, steampunk action adventure in the grand tradition of silent serials and swashbuckling Errol Flynn movies. And, oddly enough for a Japanese film, it¹s got a female director at the helm.

LOVE EXPOSURE (Japan, 2008, Sion Sono) ­ the director of EXTE and NORIKO¹S DINNER TABLE returns with one of the most amazing cinematic achievements of the year. A four-hour epic about pornography, Catholicism, families, fathers, true love, cross-dressing, kung fu, cults and mental illness this movie has been rejected by every single US distributor, which is their loss. The redemptive powers of God, sex and true love unite in a holy trinity of motion picture catharsis that will send you out of the theater cleansed of sin, and horny as hell. This is your only chance to see it, and if you ever loved movies you cannot afford to miss it.

MONSTER X STRIKES BACK: ATTACK THE G8 SUMMIT (Japan, 2008, Minoru Kawasaki) Preceded by - GEHARA: THE LONG-HAIRED GIANT MONSTER (Japan, 2009, Kiyotaka Taguchi, short film) ­ preceded by a lovingly made short film about giant monsters, MONSTER X is from Minoru Kawasaki (CALAMARI WRESTLER and EXECUTIVE
KOALA) and it¹s a remake/sequel to 1967¹s THE X FROM OUTER SPACE featuring the hideous space chicken, Guilala. Here, in a tribute to classic giant monster films, Kawasaki turns the ³stupid² dial up to 11 and loads the film with old school special effects as Guilala attacks the G-8 summit and the world¹s leaders have to kick its kaiju butt. Also featuring: Takeshi Kitano as ³Takemajin² the savior of Japan. Between these two films you¹ll get more monster love than you¹ve had all year.

SNAKES AND EARRINGS (Japan, 2008, Yukio Ninagawa) ­ based on the best-selling novel about a woman who decides that her goal in life is to have her tongue split, this is the body modification opus you¹ve been waiting for. Bored of her daily life, she starts with tattoos, moves on to piercing, and finally wants the full bifurcated tongue. Yuriko Yoshitaka gives an incredibly raw, totally exposed performance that¹s cleaning up the awards and its the anchor of this sensitive, emotional, erotic, disturing and beautiful movie for anyone who ever looked at a pierced tongue and thought, ³Well, maybe...²

WHEN THE FULL MOON RISES (Malaysia, 2008, Mamat Khalid) ­ the best way to describe this movie is Guy Maddin taking on the history of Malaysian cinema. Most of the older Malaysian movies have been destroyed by the ravages of time, so director Mamat Khalid makes a ³lost² black-and-white thriller from the 60¹s, that¹s part loving homage and part sharp-eyed send-up. Full of secret communist cults, werewolves, were-tigers, ghosts, private eyes, midgets and eerie secrets it¹s so deadpan you don¹t know if you should be laughing or crying. An epic homemade achievement of brain-boiling strangeness and charm.

BREATHLESS (South Korea, 2009, Lee Hwan & Yang Ik-june) ­ winner of the top award at this year¹s Rotterdam Film Festival this movie is labor of love by Yang Ik-Joon who wrote, directed and stars. Playing one of the most unrepentant thugs ever to grace the silver screen, he¹s a debt collector who¹s in it purely for the violence. But when he meets a high school girl who¹s as unrelenting and tough as he is he begins to come unraveled and soon the movie¹s less about his behavior, than the behavior of men everywhere who would rather punch a woman in the face than expose their feelings. From its first shouted obscenity to its last bloody beat-down this is an uncompromising dissection of male violence that¹ll leave you bruised and violated.

DACHIMAWA LEE (South Korea, 2008, Ryu Seung-wan) ­ Ryu Seung-Wan (CITY OF
VIOLENCE) makes this pitch perfect send-up of Korean spy cinema of the 70¹s and 80¹s that stands alone as a gut-busting comedy, a breathtaking action flick and a satire of Korea¹s motion picture past. Korea in the 70¹s was turning out cut rate anti-communist and anti-Japanese spy films by the truckload and they¹re being rediscovered now with all their glorious wooden dialogue, ridiculous plots and hard-hitting action. Ryu, Korea¹s king of action movies, directs this flick like an unholy blend of Stephen Chow and Jackie Chan, full of elaborate set pieces and ridiculous contrivances, sending up Korea¹s anti-communist hysteria while serving up some ace martial arts.

DREAM (South Korea, 2008, Kim Ki-duk) ­ from Korea¹s number one cinematic transgressor comes this surreal, dark fantasy about two people who find that their dreams are connected. Being a Kim Ki-Duk film this leads to all kinds of emotional outrageousness. Starring Japan¹s Joe Odagiri and Korea¹s Lee Na-Young, it¹s the best film from director Kim in years, full of in-your-face physicality and scenes that don¹t just go over the line but set the line on fire. Ultimately Kim Ki-Duk is chasing bigger philosophical fish, however, wondering if dreams are a product of reality or if reality is a product of our dreams. It¹s a return to form by a master director.

ROUGH CUT (South Korea, 2008, Jang Hun) ­ a high concept action comedy given an intimate, arthouse flavor by the director¹s intense focus on his two main characters. A spoiled, pampered and destructive actor known for playing gangsters winds up starring in his latest movie with a real life gangster, hired at the last minute. Plenty of fights and action if you¹re here for that sort of thing, but of far more interest is the slowly evolving, ever-unfolding nature of the two lead actors whose journey from star to wreck and from gangster to diva are chronicled in intense close-up. This is one of those movies that under-promises and over-delivers.

CAPE NO. 7 (Taiwan, 2008, Wei Te-sheng) ­ the highest grossing movie ever released in Taiwan, CAPE NO. 7 is less of a movie than a phenomenon. Things kick off when a pop star decides to hold a concert in a tiny seaside town and the civic booster mayor vows to form a local band to be the opening act as an act of self-promotion. Think of it as THE FULL MONTY only with Mando-pop instead of stripping and you¹ve got the idea. The director mortgaged his house and borrowed money from friends to make this film and it¹s so carefully observed, seamless and crowd-pleasing that it¹s amazing that it¹s his first film to get a theatrical release.

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