Let's All Go to the New York Asian Film Festival
by Simon AbramsPage 3 of 4
South Korea
GH: My favorite in the Korean line-up is Chaw (pictured). It's basically Jaws if Joe Dante had directed it instead of Steven Spielberg. It's goofy and it's got jokes in it. The monster moments in it, I think, really work. It's a black comedy about a giant pig terrorizing a town. A lot of shout-outs to Aliens and Predator and Jaws but also, there's something so subversive about it. At the end, the rag-tag group has to go out and search for the pig and it's really great. They get out in the woods and forget what they're dong and enjoy sitting around the campfire. It's like that comparing-the-scars scene in Jaws except extended. They come across horrible remains in the woods and they have to restage coming across them for their videographer.
I also want to remind everyone to see Actresses, which is not going to be to everyone's taste. It's really six big Korean actresses playing themselves. A lot of Americans are going to say, "Well, who are they? I don't get it." It's kind of an amazing stunt. It's filmed in real-time to a large extent. Six huge actresses, I mean really big—this would be the equivalent of getting everyone from Susan Sarandon on down to Kirsten Dunst to be in a movie playing Susan Sarandon, Kirsten Dunst and four other actresses. They send up their images and basically act like the paparazzi paints them as. It's a very girl(y) movie and I think it's going to get lost in our very macho line-up, unfortunately.
Hong Kong
DC: Gallants, because it's such a surprise to see Shaw Brothers action stars Teddy Robin and Bruce Leung Siu-Liung and Chen Kuan-tai really going at it in these great long-take, no-wire fight scenes. And then the Ip Man films. Last year, Ip Man was one of the surprise hits (of the festival). Last year, we were sort of shocked at how well it went over, especially considering that the screening went so poorly. It played so much better with a crowd that I thought it would. It'll play especially well with Sammo Hung around for the second one.
GH: I don't think that there's any arguable point about this, but this year, summer blockbusters suck. Movies are really just awful this summer. Everything feels like a commercial. To me, what's cool is that we have this line-up of all these old Hong Kong dudes like Jackie Chan in Little Big Soldier, which is the best thing he's done since Drunken Master II. He's 56! Sammo Hung is 58 or 59. Bruce Leung is 60, I think, isn't he? Chen Kuan-tai is either 59 or 60 in Gallants and there's even Simon Yam, who plays the world's ultimate dad in Echoes of the Rainbow. It's like the grown-ups have come back in the room to say, "This is how you do it." Everything in theaters right now looks like a marketing campaign; it doesn't look like a movie. I love the fact that these old dudes, who are all over 55, have come back. The grown-ups have come back, turned the lights on and said, "We'll show you how to make a movie."
