NYTimes: URA in NYC - Wakamatsu Koji Article

Hi Blog,

There's an article on Wakamatsu Koji in today's NYTimes. Link here.

Over all a good bit of PR for Wakamatsu-san and his roundly praised film UNITED RED ARMY. However, I have a bit of an issue with author film critic Dennis Lim's line about pinku eiga being something to grow out of.

Snip:

At 72, having outgrown the smut-minded confines of the pink film, he has made his most ambitious work, “United Red Army,” a 190-minute chronicle of the tumultuous rise and self-destructive collapse of the Japanese militant student groups of the 1960s and ’70s...

Okay Mr. Lim, if you say so. As if filmmakers like Wakamatsu or Kurosawa Kiyoshi were slumming and doing these films because they suffered arrested development. Maybe Wakamatsu should've grown up sooner and not at 72?

It's showing as part of the New York Asian Film Festival in conjunction with New York's Japan Society's Japan Cuts '08 festival. (July 6th at 4pm) I have a screener sitting here begging to be watched. I just need 190 minutes to do so...

Midnighteye interview with Wakamatsu here.

It's All About the Pace

Hi Blog,

The New York Times has an article in it's Movies section today about the inanity and futility of Hollywood's J-Horror remakes. This article is nothing new really-- hell, I wrote about it nearly three years ago in my 'Death of J-Horror?' feature for Midnighteye. But I wanted to share a clipping from the piece as the article's writer, Terrence Rafferty,[obtusely] makes a valid point at the end that I feel is wrong in its conclusion:

"Rhythm is often the most significant difference between Asian horror movies and their American versions: the good Far Eastern directors know that the most interesting part of any ghost story is the buildup, the dawning dread that gradually makes the world feel alien, uncanny." (link)

Mr. Rafferty includes this discussion of Pace in terms of the difference in horror sensibility vis a vis the East and the West, but it is something that is not unique to horror in and of itself.

First off, Pacing is an essential intangible element in a film -- together with Tone -- that is as important as the time signature in a piece of music. But whereas sheet music begins with this, in a movie, the director needs to find it in the script and then hold it inside herself for the entire duration of the filmmaking process. Sure, you can try to 'fix' the Pace (and Tone) in the edit, but as all editors know a film with a well-defined Pace is easier to cut and breathe life into.

What Mr. Rafferty misses (and I'm at the risk of sounding elitist or overly judgemental here, and that is something I don't want to comes across as) is that the Asian horror works better at times because the burden of proof is off of the filmmakers to make you believe that there is a ghost haunting. The notion of the existence of ghosts is built in culturally-- at least in Japan. So the film is all about building the mood: creating the fright and the dread in the audience-- in short, the Pace (and Tone).

As a bit of comparison, you'll notice that the Japanese zombie movie feels much different than the Japanese ghost movie. Structurally it's very similar to what we get in the west, meaning that it all is indebted to George Romero and the 70s Italian stuff. This is because it is an import. The case for zombies existing in the first place has to be made-- same as in the West. In short, it's not a cultural approach to filming horror, it's how to make their audience feel what the director's desire. Once again, that's done through the Pace (and Tone).

“We called it Che Guevara crossed with Jesus Christ by way of Andy Warhol”

Hi Blog,

It turns out I was right: Rambo is Che and... Jesus?! (Nope. Musta missed that part...)

After snooping around on-line for more info, I found that a certain monsieur 'Cheesesteak the Impaler' of the coolly name Bostodelphia blog actually scooped me on the whole Rambo/Che thing that I wrote about in a previous post. After contacting him about it he just posted back a response mentioning that he had uncovered some new info about the who Rambo/Che ad campaign. As it turns out The New York Times ran an article on January 13th (pic above) called "Tough Guys for Tough Times" (written by Alex Williams) which focuses on the new rise of 80s action stars and their new pop-cultural status.

Comments in the article run from the typical "Everyone is talking about change...[people] want to go back to the way things were, the things they knew." to "Everything seems to be up for grabs; we don’t believe in institutions. This country needs stability, and in an archetypal, hyperbolic way, that’s what these figures represent.”

But the real mind blowing one is the what I have chosen to call this post, courtesy of Lionsgate's co-president for theatrical marketing, Mr. Tim Palen:

It helps that these figures need no introduction. “Stallone and Rambo are huge, iconic images already,” said Tim Palen, who works at Lionsgate, the “Rambo” studio, as a co-president for theatrical marketing. “It’s really kind of holy territory, especially when it comes to young males, and males in general.”

WHEN marketing executives were deciding on a strategy to sell the new “Rambo” film, they shunned splashy posters in favor of a minimalist image of a black spray-painted stencil outline of Rambo’s head on a white background.

“We called it Che Guevara crossed with Jesus Christ by way of Andy Warhol,” Mr. Palen said. “In a way, he’s all of those.” (Link.)

There's a lot I suppose I could write about this, but in the end I agree with Cheesesteak's analysis of it all -- which you should go and check out if you have a moment -- and that is: as long as it gets tickets sold, no one cares about what it actually means.

I'll let you decide if that's problematic or not-- idiotic though it may be-- I think you can guess what I think.

(My previous post is here.)

New York Asian Film Festival article in the New York Times

David Kehr has a fairly positive article in today's Times on my friends excellent New York Asian Film Festival. My main issue with it is this error in reporting:

"The Asian Film Festival, which seems to run largely on the energy of its chief programmer, the film journalist Grady Hendrix (with sponsorships this year from the video label Dragon Dynasty and Midway Games, among others)..."

Grady Hendrix is good friend (and my writing partner) but to make that statement is to ignore the large amount of work and financial risk that the other members of Subway Cinema contribute.

For the record the other members of Subway Cinema are:

1. Goran Topalovic
2. Brian Naas
3. Marc Walkow
4. Paul Kazee
5. Daniel Craft

Thanks guys for all of the hard work you've done for the fans of Asian cinema!

The Festival launches this coming Friday, June 22nd, at the IFC Center in Manhattan.

(I wish I could attend this years festival. It'll be the first one I've missed...)

NYTimes: 'Hidden Tokyo'

There's an article in today's New York Times Travel Section on 'Hidden Tokyo' bars and izekayas. Link.

Personally, I find something about the article to be fetishistic of Tokyo and feeds to the whole Orientalism cliché of the 'enchanted and exotic far east.' But notwithstanding this, it's worth a read because it mentions both Shinjuku's Golden Gai and the Koenji section of Tokyo (where I've spent some interesting nights, to say the least...).