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Film Festivals
Fantasia '13: Global Gore Galore
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Tuesday, 16 July 2013 14:01
- Written by Renzo Adler
Since 1996, the Fantasia Film Festival of Montreal has been a breeding ground for the more bizarre and genre bending works of cinema, from low brow splatter fests, imaginative foreign journeys through strange lands. This year’s festival, running July 18 to August 7, 2013, continues the tradition of bringing some truly fascinating works of film from all over the world.
Opening the festival is the hotly anticipated new feature from Japanese shock-master, Takashi Miike, Shield of Straw, in which a child murder is protected by the police after an old whips the public into frenzy by putting a bounty on the killer’s head.
Troma and Lloyd Kaufman’s Return to Nuke ‘Em High is (hopefully) a return to form from the grizzled veterans of VHS era schlock, and goes back to the gory cheap thrills of the original, but now with an added message against processed foods.
Documentary L’Autre Monde (The Other World), from director Richard Stanley, follows the director’s own descent into madness as he ventures into an epicenter of the occult tucked away in the South of France.
A special screening of the so obscure it’s practically lost Japanese animated film, The Tragedy of Belladonna is a real treat. If all you know about Japanese animation is Akira, then this film will shatter your world. A story of jealousy, sex, spurned love, and death, The Tragedy of Belladonna is set in the time of the black plague and is about a woman’s pact with Satan to exact revenge on an uncaring world.
This is only a small sampling of the over 150 films being shown at Fantasia. For fans of the bizarre and innovative, there is no better festival.
To learn more, go to http://www.fantasiafestival.com/
Fantasia Film Festival
July 18 – August 7, 2013
Montreal, Quebec
Various locations
Japan Film Fest Unleashes Robots & Samurai in San Fran
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- Category: Previews
- Published on Friday, 21 June 2013 15:25
- Written by Renzo Ader
As part of San Francisco’s 2013 Japan Film Festival (July 27 – August 4, 2013), in conjunction with the J-POP Summit Festival (July 27 – 28, 2013), the much awaited third Neon Genesis Evangelion movie, Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo, will be having its US premiere on July 27, 2013 at the NEW PEOPLE Cinema (1746 Post St, San Francisco, CA).
Provincetown Film Fest Walks on the Wild Side
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- Category: Previews
- Published on Monday, 17 June 2013 10:52
- Written by Renzo Adler
Provincetown, New England's quaint home to free-thinking and fabulousness will be playing host to a gamut of filmmakers as it celebrates the 15th anniversary of the Provincetown Film Festival (June 19 - 23, 2013). The PTown Film Fest brings together daring films like Lovelace, Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes, I Am Divine, and I'm So Excited!, along with filmmakers making appearances, including:
NY Asian Film Fest & Japan Cuts '13 in NYC
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Tuesday, 11 June 2013 15:45
- Written by Brad Balfour
The New York Asian Film Festival (June 18 - July 15, 2013) is back at Lincoln Center’s Film Society and is enjoying one of its strongest years. Considered by The New York Times to be “one of the city's most valuable cultural events,” the NYAFF assembles films from Hong Kong, Thailand, China, and Japan, and features classics along with new films. Along with the NYAFF, it's sister festival at the Japan Society, Japan Cuts (July 11 - 21, 2013), is bringing over some of the freshest and most innovative films from Japan today.
Highlights include:
- The NY premiere of Takashi Miike's Lesson of the Evil
- The Korean blockbuster Very Ordinary Couple
- A Fourth of July Double Feature of Young and Dangerous 1 & 2 with an appearance by Andrew Lau
- An in person appearance by Taiwanese cinema legend Tsai Yang-Ming (Woman Avenger, Never Too Late to Repent)
Some of the films garnering special attention at the NYAFF and Japan Cuts festival include:
- Gangster
(2012) 102min
Directed by Kongkiat Khomsiri
North American Premiere
Country: Thailand
A Thai Goodfellas-like tale, Gangster details the short life of a legendary thug in this fact-based film interspersed with doc-like segments in which old-timers talk about the young outlaws of 1950s and ’60s Thailand. Jod, a handsome young bad boy with both a heart and cutting blade, rises in rank until he’s jailed following the military coup which brings order to the streets. Police officer Neung rules and is a frequent thorn in the side of the gangs, particularly Jod’s. Once he emerges from prison, Jod changes his criminal ways, determined to set things right. But, knowing no other life, he returns to his old ways and crew with spectacularly fatal results. Like a Greek tragedy, this film neither glorifies not sermonizes but cleanly tells a woeful tale.
- Ip Man: The Final Fight
(2013) 102min
Director: Herman Yau
Country: Hong Kong
With the craze for Ip Man kung fu films in play, director Herman Yau again teams up with actor Anthony Wong (Untold Story, Ebola Syndrome) for this final film in the series but instead of a fight fest he deliver a slyly philosophical treatise on kung fu intellectual underpinnings and the character of this man who was Bruce Lee’s master. Packed with some of Hong Kong’s best stars of the 80s and 90’s including Eric Tsang, Ken Lo (Drunken Master), and Xiong Xin-xin (The Blade, Once Upon a Time in China 3), this movie riffs on the zeitgeist of the times and serves as a paean to Hong Kong’s volatile history of political protest. If any film transcends the traditional martial arts movie while still employing all the entertaining tropes of the genre this one is it. It deserves accolades and awards.
Director Herman Yau and screenwriter Erica Li will attend the screening.
- Mystery
(2012) 95min
Director: Lou Ye
Countries: China/France
After being banned for almost five years, acclaimed art house director Lou Ye makes a comeback in the Chinese film industry with a genre-esque tale of love, obsession and death. Structured around an imploding middle class marriage, Mystery transforms from a tale of infidelity into a murderous mystery and perverse obsession that results imprisons husband, wives, lovers and children in an every swirling gyre. A brilliantly construction latticework of story and concept , here’s a film that update the classic family crime drama with a uniquely Asian twist. Winner of Best Film at the Asian Film Awards.
New York Premiere
- Helter Skelter
(2012) 127min
Director: Mika Ninagawa
Country: Japan
Top Japanese photographer Mika Ninagawa and controversial star Erika Sawajiri deliver a plastic surgery horror story that’s both skin crawling and a meditation on Japan’s obsession with ideal beauty. A monstrous Lady Gaga-esque model/singer/actress in love with her own young body, Lilico (Sawajiri) psychologically devours employees, fans and industry supporters. But she hides an horrible and devastating secret: she requires ever-more frequent hormonal injections to sustain the delicate plastic surgery that has turned her workaday whore to star. but this illegally developed serum isn’t working anymore and her face and body are developing slowly blackening blotches that reveal her reality is as rotten as bruised fruit. Quite the morality play.
To learn more, go to: http://subwaycinema.com/nyaff13/ & http://www.japansociety.org/japan-cuts-2013
The New York Asian Film Festival
June 18 - July 15, 2013
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
70 Lincoln Square #4,
New York, NY 10023
Japan Cuts
July 11 - 21, 2013
The Japan Society
333 E 47th St
New York, NY 10017
