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West 32nd (Director: Michael Kang): John Cho (Harold from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle) plays John Kim, an ambitious young lawyer who offers to represent a Korean teenager accused of a gang-related murder in New York’s Koreatown. His firm wants to raise its profile and he feels by doing this pro bono work, he can advance his career as well. His own Korean background helps convince the boy’s family to sign on, but in reality, he doesn’t even speak the language.
Before he knows it, he’s caught up in an underworld he didn’t even know existed. He meets Mike (Jun Sung Kim), a mid-level gangster trying to move up in the hierarchy, and the two quickly recognize each other’s ambition and begin an uneasy cooperation. But John is soon over his head in a culture he doesn’t really understand, and before long, there are more dead bodies and he’s no closer to winning his case. By the end of the film, any hint of altruism in John’s offer to help is peeled away to reveal that he’s really not that different from the gangsters he’s trying to bring down.
Though Cho is effective as John Kim, it was Jun Sung Kim’s character Mike Juhn who really lit up the screen for me. Unfortunately, the female characters seemed largely decorative, but that seems to be part and parcel of the traditional Korean culture that runs these criminal organizations. The locations in Manhattan and in Flushing, Queens added to the gritty realism of the film, and Kang used many actual Korean-American denizens of the neighbourhoods to further boost the authenticity factor.
Kang has made a slick and effective thriller that, while not particularly original, pays homage to both the American gangster films of the 70s and the more recent wave of Korean crime films. His co-writer is Edmund Lee, a former Village Voice reporter who spent years thoroughly researching gangs and organized crime in New York’s Korean community. As Kang described the project, he started out trying to make a Korean-American version of The Departed and ended up with something more like Mean Streets.
Here is the Q&A with director Michael Kang from after the screening (contains possible spoilers):
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Duration: 14:00
Official site of the film
Director’s blog
(7/10)
Tagged as:
crime,
gangsters,
korea,
newyorkcity,
nyc
The Most Beautiful Night in the World (Sekai de Ichiban Utsukushii Yoru) (2008, Director: Daisuke Tengan): Thanks to the good folks at the J-Films Powwow blog, I wound up with a free ticket to this film, screening as part of the New York Asian Film Festival. It was the perfect end to a four-day trip to the city, and a great way to spend three hours inside on another sweltering hot day. Daisuke Tengan is the son of legendary director Shohei Imamura and is well-known as the writer of such classic films as Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999), as well as his father’s films Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001) and The Eel (1997). This film just opened in Japan in late May, and this screening was the second at NYAFF, where it was making its international premiere.
Starting with an animated prologue, the film quickly takes this sense of whimsy and adds layers and layers of mystery, creepiness, humour and sex until it climaxes (sorry!) in a huge orgy scene that scandalized the Japanese press. The mystery involves a small village with the highest birth rate in Japan. Our 14-year old narrator takes us back to a time before her birth when a journalist from Tokyo was exiled to work at the village newspaper as the result of a sex scandal. Since there’s no real news, he digs around trying to find out as much about the town’s eccentric inhabitants. He uncovers what he thinks is a murder conspiracy. The proprietress of the local bar is a mysterious and sexy woman whose fiancé and then husband both died under mysterious circumstances. Thinking he has an insurance scam artist in his sights, he pursues the story further but it’s nothing at all like he thought. Instead, by the end of the film, a sexual revolution has been launched by the eccentric inhabitants of this mysterious village.
Director Tengan, even in this entertaining film, makes a political statement. Sex, he says, takes us back to our more primitive state, and destroys culture and civilization. But in light of what civilization and its representatives (politicians, clergy) have done to us, maybe that’s not such a bad thing at all. Railing at all political and religious creeds, he assures us “there is no promised future,” only the one we make for ourselves. Though orgies and wild sex might not seem politically subversive, consider, one character says, what would happen if everyone stopped what they were doing and just had sex for one night. We would have no war, no politics, no religion. Just love and passion and pleasure. It would be “the most beautiful night in the world.”
Yes, the sentiment is shallow and, as portrayed on screen, a little silly, but it’s heartfelt and actually kind of sexy and moving at the same time. And despite its running time (161 minutes), the film is never less than entertaining. Don’t make me come up with some lame joke about length here. Just see it, if you can.
Official site of the film (Japanese) including the trailer
(9/10)
Tagged as:
japan,
newyorkcity,
nyaff,
nyc,
sex
I rarely step out from behind my film reviewer’s desk to address you directly, but I did want to mention that I’ll be in New York City from this Friday until the following Monday. My wife is attending the OrigamiUSA convention (yes, that just might qualify her as even geekier than me) and I’m tagging along. We spent a long weekend in the city back in January, and watched the entirely bizarre and yet strangely forgettable Le Cerf-Volant at the MOMA. This time, I have grander film ambitions.
On Saturday night, we’re going to Brooklyn for Rooftop Films’ screening of Neo-Lounge, a documentary about a group of expatriates in Beijing who gathered at a nightclub during the recent SARS crisis. I know nothing about the film, but the setting should be magnificent. The film will be projected on a screen on the roof of The Old American Can Factory.
And on Monday afternoon, I have acquired a pair of tickets to Daisuke Tengan’s The Most Beautiful Night in the World, screening at the IFC Center as part of the New York Asian Film Festival.
Socially, I hope to meet up with a few people with whom I’ve heretofore only exchanged emails, including Benten Films co-honcho Andrew Grant and Quiet City/Dance Party, USA director Aaron Katz, whom I met last weekend at Generation DIY.
If you are in NYC and want to meet up for a beverage, or if you know something cool about things to do in the city, feel free to let me know in the comments.
Tagged as:
nyc
Man On Wire (2008, Director: James Marsh): Winner of both the Grand Jury Prize: World Cinema Documentary and the World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, James Marsh’s stunning film brings an inexplicably obscure story to life in a fresh and exhilarating way.
On August 7, 1974, a young French wirewalker named Philippe Petit spent 45 minutes suspended on a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center. He made eight crossings before the police convinced him to return to safety. Though this story, according to the director, is part of New York City folklore, not many people outside the city seem to know anything about it. But what a fantastic story, and Marsh does a masterful job in telling it, mostly by letting Petit and his companions bring it to life.
Petit is a fascinating figure. An accomplished juggler, wirewalker, and pickpocket(!), he had supported himself since his teens by working as a street performer. A born storyteller, he brings the narrative alive, even almost 35 years after his great “coup.” But best of all, Marsh gathers all Petit’s accomplices as well and has each of them recount their own part in the story. Some were steadfast, like his lover Annie and his childhood friend Jean-Louis, and others fickle and cowardly, like Americans David Foreman and Alan Welner, who both abandon the quest at the crucial moment. All tell their stories candidly and all still seem enveloped in wonder that such a thing could be accomplished.
Petit and some of his companions had already planned and executed two other audacious feats of wirewalking, first at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and then on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia. But the Twin Towers had obsessed Petit ever since he’d read about plans to build them, and the team’s preparations are carried out like the planning of a bank heist, with one important difference. As conspirator Jean-Francois says, “It may have been illegal…but it wasn’t wicked or mean.”
Marsh artfully combines lively interviews (especially when Petit is on screen) with stills and film from each of the various events, and even some re-creations (which he later admitted were part of someone else’s aborted film on the subject). A haunting and beautiful score by Michael Nyman (composer for many of Peter Greenaway’s films) and featuring music by Erik Satie, among others, created the dreamlike atmosphere necessary to appreciate this beautiful “art crime.”
Of course, it would be impossible to see a film featuring the Twin Towers without thinking of the events of 9/11. Marsh wisely avoids making any connections, letting the footage of the buildings’ construction speak poignantly for itself. Petit’s feat seems even more wondrous when you consider that the fragile Frenchman survives while the mighty towers lie in ruins.
Here is the Q&A with director James Marsh from after the screening:
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Duration: 11:00
UPDATE: Mongrel Media will be releasing the DVD of the film in Canada on Tuesday December 9.
Official site for the film
Video interview with director James Marsh and wirewalker Philippe Petit at Sundance 2008
(10/10)
Tagged as:
newyorkcity,
nyc,
worldtradecenter
Nursery University (2008, Directors: Marc Simon and Matt Makar): Marc Simon and Matt Makar are both single, childless lawyers who have made a film about the competitive process that parents in Manhattan face getting their children into the best nursery schools in the city. My wife and I went to see this together, and were expecting to be very annoyed with the subjects. You see, we’re also childless, but after more than a decade together, the issue is far from resolved for us, and we both have strong opinions about parenting. Though Toronto isn’t Manhattan, we do have a similar culture of older professionals having children for the first time, and the parents’ general sense of entitlement is nauseating. As well, they’re driven by both guilt and fear to try to give their children every advantage in a very competitive culture. This type of environment usually leads to overscheduled and stressed-out children and parents, and doesn’t necessarily lead to the desired results of fame and fortune for the little ones.
But Simon and Makar have a light touch, and even though the parents ranged from middle-class bohemians living in Greenwich Village to an obviously super wealthy couple living on the Upper West Side, all of them were sympathetic characters, with the possible exception of one couple who could serve as the poster children for “entitled”. All of them knew how ridiculous the process looked, but felt powerless to opt out for fear of putting their beloved child at a disadvantage. And remarkably, all of the children seemed bright and, at least in the final cut, well-behaved.
The strength of the film was that it was not just parent-focused. Administrators and teachers from all of the top schools were persuaded to take part, most at the insistence of the remarkable Gabriella Rowe from the prestigious Mandell School. The pressure on these school directors is enormous, with 15-20 applicants for each available space. The situation has been driven by what the directors refer to as a “post 9/11 baby boom” that has driven tuition rates as high as $20,000 per year and created a market for “admissions consultants” whose services can also cost a family several thousand dollars. The administrators in this film sympathize with the parents, but laughingly dismiss their worries that not getting into the right pre-school will affect their child’s chances of getting into the right college one day.
Though we were prepared to hate these people, my wife and I found ourselves wondering what we would do in their shoes. In Canada, at least, our public school system is still relatively healthy, so we don’t have to worry about which nursery is the right “feeder school” for the primary school we want our child to attend. Large cities like New York also face a tangle of regulations that make starting a new school difficult, not to mention the price of real estate. For the foreseeable future, getting a child into school in the city is bound to be a stressful and expensive proposition. Many couples end up forced to move to the suburbs, despite their desire to raise their children in the cultural richness of New York City.
The film was also careful to balance the stressful process with the reasons why parents endure it. There are many images of the riches of Manhattan, and many more of the joy and delight these children bring to their parents. In the end, these people do it because they love their children and they love their city, and they’ll do whatever they can to ensure that they can keep both. Good luck to all of them.
Here is the Q&A with directors Marc Simon and Matt Makar from after the screening:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Duration: 13:43
Interview with director Marc Simon in the Wall Street Journal’s Law blog
(8/10)
Tagged as:
children,
education,
manhattan,
newyorkcity,
nyc,
parenting
