On June 25th at 1 PM the 2010 New York Asian Film Festival will begin! We here at moviebuzzers are going to cover some of the festival and attend some of the screenings of the crazy asian films that are being screened for the first time in the states and for some films, the world. Some big names that have been released include IP Man 2, Alien vs. Ninja, and Confessions. Subway Cinema is slowly releasing the titles throughout this week. Today they released the full Japanese lineup and yesterday they released the opening, closing and centerpiece films. Check out the press releases from Subway Cinema with links to the trailers after the jump.
The NYAFF dates are listed below:
June 25 – July 8 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Cinema
July 1 – July 4 at Japan Society
June 25-26 & July 2-3 at IFC Center Midnights
PRESS RELEASE STARTS HERE:
NYAFF 2010: the Japanese line-up
This year’s Japanese line-up is stuffed with more guests than Hostess cup cakes are stuffed with delicious chocolaty flavor!
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We’re at Lincoln Center from June 25 – July 8, presenting the festival with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, but from July 1 – 4 we’ll simultaneously be at Japan Society, co-presenting a bunch of Japanese titles that are also part of their festival, Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film. But don’t worry, we promise it won’t be confusing at all.
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Japanese Movies Ahoy!
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8000 MILES (2009, North American Premiere) – a funnier version of Eminem’s 8 MILE about rappers dying on the vine in the boring suburbs. This was Japan’s surprise sleeper hit of 2009. (watch the trailer)
Director Yu Irie will be at the screenings.
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8000 MILES 2: GIRL RAPPERS (2010, North American Premiere) – the same premise (rappers in the sticks, dreaming of Tokyo) only this time they’re all women, and the result is a movie that’s not quite as laugh-out-loud funny as 8000 MILES, but it hits harder. By the time Ayumu is clenching her fists and spitting out rhyme in the finale’ you’ll either be crying your eyes out, or you’re a robot. (watch the trailer)
Director Yu Irie will be at the screening.
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ALIEN VS NINJA (2010, World Premiere) – the first movie from Nikkatsu’s Sushi Typhoon label, it’s about an alien that comes to Earth to hunt humans. It is unstoppable. Unkillable. Insatiable. But it made one mistake: it forgot to make itself ninja–proof.
Lead actor Masanori Mimoto will be at the Japan Society screening. (watch the trailer)
Presented with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film
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ANNYONG YUMIKA (2009, North American Premiere) – part documentary, part personal odyssey, part porn movie, this flick’s about the late, legendary adult film actress Yumika Hayashi’s career in Korea. Far stranger and more moving than it has any right to be, but that’s to be expected from director Matsue, who also made LIVE TAPE. (watch the trailer)
Director Tetsuaki Matsue will be at the screenings.
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THE BLOOD OF REBIRTH (2009, New York Premiere) – director Toshiaki Toyoda (BLUE SPRING, HANGING GARDEN) makes a triumphant return to filmmaking with this trippy revenge saga that sticks its throbbing soundtrack deep inside your ears, while its shimmering visuals fry your eyes. (watch the trailer)
Director Toshiaki Toyoda will be at the screenings.
Presented with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film
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BOYS ON THE RUN (2010, North American Premiere) – a movie that will warm the heart of the serial mastrubator inside everyone, this sex comedy starts with the borrowing of a bestiality DVD and ends with a Travis Bickle-style fist fight and in between it’s humiliating and hilarious in equal measures. (watch the trailer)
Presented with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film
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CONFESSIONS (2010, International Premiere) – Tetsuya Nakashima (MEMORIES OF MATSUKO, KAMIKAZE GIRLS) returns to the NYAFF with his brand new movie about a school teacher who is convinced that her daughter was murdered by two of her seventh-grade students. (watch the trailer)
Presented with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film
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DEAR DOCTOR (2009, New York Premiere) – Miwa Nishikawa’s (SWAY) deceptively simple movie about a small town doctor who is both more and less than he appears, won every major Japanese film award (21 of them and counting) and it’s one of the smartest, and most twisted movies in our line-up. (watch the trailer)
Presented with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film
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DOMAN SEMAN (2010, World Premiere) – Go Shibata (LATE BLOOMER) has made a rocking thrash anthem about pretty boys bashing the homeless, occult conspiracies, mental emissions, magic mushrooms and massive zombie attacks. It’ll kick down your doors of perception like a psychedelic SWAT team. Imagine a Richard Lester movie, reconfigured as an magikal ritual to stave off the apocalypse. (A version of this movie already screened one time in Japan, but this will be the world premiere of a brand new cut of the film)
(watch the trailer)
Director Go Shibata will be at the screenings.
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GOLDEN SLUMBER (2009, New York Premiere) – Yoshihiro Nakamura, the director of last year’s festival favorite, FISH STORY, returns with this twisty riff on NORTH BY NORTHWEST that takes Hitchcock’s “wrong man” movies and makes them bigger, deeper and more. It’s a conspiracy thriller about a simple delivery man who’s framed for the assassination of the Prime Minister, and the only way to save him lies with a counter-conspiracy that seems to stretch all the way back to his college days. (watch the trailer)
Presented with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film
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LIVE TAPE (2010, North American Premiere) – on New Year’s Day, 2009, director Tetsuaki Matsue (ANNYONG YUMIKA) and singer/songwriter Kenta Maeno made this amazing concert film: a single 74 minute shot of Kenta performing in the streets of Tokyo before joining up with his band to give a down and dirty concert in a park. More than the sum of its parts, it is raw and liberating, a small, lo-fi miracle. (watch the trailer)
Director Matsue Tetsuaki will be present.
Singer/songwriter Kenta Maeno and his drummer POP Suzuki will perform live after each screening.
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MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD (2010, International Premiere) – at last year’s NYAFF, directors Tak Sakaguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura and Noboru Iguchi got drunk and vowed to make a movie together. Now they have, and their twisted take on the X-Men is here to upset pretty much everyone. (watch the trailer)
Directors Yoshihiro Nishimura and Noboru Iguchi will be at the screenings.
Presented with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film
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SAWAKO DECIDES (2010, New York Premiere) – Sawako (Hikari Mitsushima, LOVE EXPOSURE) is on her fifth job, her fifth boyfriend and her fifth year in Tokyo. But it’s not until she returns to her family’s freshwater clam-packing plant that she learns it’s okay to be a loser. A rousing anthem to mediocrity, it’s a chick flick on acid that trades SEX & THE CITY vapidity for deadpan hilarity. Musical numbers, horrible toys and the world’s worst boyfriend (he knits and is committed to a green lifestyle) all come together to teach you that you should always save a seat on the bus for the watermelon of hope. (watch the trailer)
Presented with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film
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SYMBOL (2009, New York Premiere) – Japan’s #1 comedian, Hitoshi Matsumoto (director and star of DAI NIPPONJIN, aka BIG MAN JAPAN) directs and stars in this flick that’s the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY of J-quirk cinema. The only movie you’ll see this year that features President Obama, Mexican wrestlers and five million angel penises. (marvel at the trailer)
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YATTERMAN (2009) – Takashi Miike’s biggest box office hit of all time, this slyly hilarious send-up of kiddie show, Yatterman, is like a self-aware, satirical update of “Scooby-Doo” only with giant robots, leather-bondage-clad femme fatales and a pile of all the schoolgirls in Japan. Hilariously stupid, but insanely smart, it’s exactly the giant robot movie you thought Miike would make. We hosted the world premiere of it last year, but we wanted to make sure everyone got a chance to see this on the big screen, where it belongs. (watch the trailer)
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Tomorrow….we’ll reveal our Korean, Thai and Indonesian line-ups
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NYAFF 2010: The Special Presentations
All this week and into next we’re announcing the New York Asian Film Festival 2010 line-up. Today we’re telling you about our Opening, Closing and Centerpiece Presentations. Tomorrow, we’ll reveal our entire Japanese line-up. And on Friday we’ll tell you all about our Korean films. Then on Monday it’s China and Hong Kong, and on Tuesday it’s our Midnight @ IFC selections.
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OPENING NIGHT MOVIE
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IP MAN 2 (Hong Kong, 2010) – co-star and action choreographer Sammo Hung will be here on opening night to host the North American Premiere of IP MAN 2! This is the summer blockbuster you’ve been waiting for. Everything that was good about IP MAN, is better in IP MAN 2. Everything that was big, is bigger. Everything that was butt-kicking, is now butt-kicking on a scale so cosmic that the second you buy a ticket to this flick, your own tailbone will start to ache. It’s a career highlight for all three of the creative forces involved: star Donnie Yen, co-star and action choreographer, Sammo Hung, and director Wilson Yip. It’s a rousing Canto-fable, a Hong Kong empowerment movie, a return to old school martial arts filmmaking with AVATAR-era production values, and on its opening weekend it beat IRON MAN 2 at the box office like a redheaded stepchild. (watch the trailer)
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CENTERPIECE PRESENTATION
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CONFESSIONS (Japan, 2010) – the international premiere of the most buzzed about movie at Cannes this year, it’s the latest motion picture experience from Tetsuya Nakashima, director of MEMORIES OF MATSUKO and KAMIKAZE GIRLS. A middle school teacher (played by Takako Matsu) is devastated when her four-year-old daughter is found murdered. Deciding that two of her students must be responsible she vows to take revenge…and that’s just the first 20 minutes of this tour de force that’s like an endless fall off a tall building. Reports out of Cannes were that the market screening audience (some of the most jaded cynics on the planet) were reduced to stunned silence by CONFESSIONS, which is shaping up to be the most powerful movie of the year. (watch gorgeous the trailer)
Presented in association with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film (July 1 – 16, 2010)
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CLOSING NIGHT MOVIE
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BLADES OF BLOOD (Korea, 2010) – the international premiere of the latest movie from director Lee Joon-Ik (KING AND CLOWN) who will be here to introduce the screening. It’s a powerhouse three-way team-up. Lee Joon-Ik, director of KING & CLOWN, the top grossing Korean movie of all time, returns to the Joseon Dynasty for the first time since K&C. Cha Seoung-Won, an actor who was originally told he was too ugly to be in movies, but who has gone on to become one of the most respected actors in Korea, taking home eight “Best Actor” awards in nine years, is cast as the movie’s hero, a blind swordsman. And then there’s the source material, the Korean manga, Like the Moon Escaping from the Clouds which was awarded the Republic of Korea Cartoon Culture Literary Prize in 1996. The result? A posh blockbuster with impeccable style. (watch the trailer)
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This year’s New York Asian Film Festival will be co-presented with the Film Society of Lincoln Center over at the Walter Reade theater (June 25 – July 8 ) it will be presented with our programming partner, Japan Society, from July 1 – 4, and we’ll even have midnight shows on Friday and Saturday nights down at the IFC Center.
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