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Asia and beyond It's take two for film fest phenom Fant-Asia by MATTHEW HAYS This year's lineup includes 34 films from Hong Kong, 16 from Japan and, perhaps a bit odd for a film fest titled Fant-Asia, 24 international films, many of them from Italy and America. What gives? "This year it's become an international horror and fantasy festival," explains Julien Fonfrède, one of Fant-Asia's programmers and editor of Screen Machine, a fanzine dedicated to Asian cinema. Due to wacky translations, many of the Fant-Asia titles are entertaining enough on their own: Drunken Master 2, The Barefooted Kid, Satan Returns, Beyond Hypothermia, God of Gamblers 3, God of Cookery and Enter the Fat Dragon, to name but a few. Highlights include: Tomoaki Hosoyama's A Weatherwoman is a bizarre and hilarious take on Japanese exploitation films, about the adventures of a woman who becomes an overnight sensation after lifting her skirt and flashing nationwide audiences while announcing the weather on a nightly newscast. A dreamlike version of Gus Van Sant's To Die For.
Hong Kong films are famous for their mishmashing of cultures--and East really does meet West in this schizoid western, Once Upon a Time in China and America. Popular screen hero Wong Fei-Yong heads to the American west for a change, rescues Billy the Kid and, after suffering a bad bout of amnesia, is taken in by a native tribe. A truly postmodern cinematic treat. A Gun for Jennifer is the latest in a line of films to take the guns out of the hands of male vigilantes and give them to women. When Jennifer flees an abusive husband, she heads to New York city in search of a new beginning. Within minutes of getting off the bus she is approached by rapists; their crime is thwarted by Jennifer's new buddies--a group of radical feminist vigilantes who run a go-go bar by day(!) and roam the streets at night looking for male trash to castrate. This is a gory and utterly hilarious film in the spirit of Ms. 45 and, to a lesser extent, Thelma and Louise. Despite some strong critical praise, A Gun for Jennifer has yet to land a distributor; Fant-Asia's screening marks a rare opportunity to catch this sublime bit of B-moviemaking. Also in the difficult-to-see American B-movie category are Dust Devil (from Richard Stanley, director of Hardware) and Charlie's Family, Jim Van Bebber's decade-in-the-making mockumentary about the Manson murders. The first Drunken Master is what turned Jackie Chan into a star in Hong Kong, and the film that will probably sell out fastest at this summer's Fant-Asia is Drunken Master 2, his return to the role of Wong Fei-Hong. Concordia film studies professor and Hong Kong film aficionado Peter Rist calls this Chan's best film--and that's saying something. Fant-Asia runs July 11-August 10 at the Imperial Cinema. Info: 982-1707 |
Just when I thought I was over Whitney Houston's star vehicle The Bodyguard, Corey Yuen Kwai chose to make a Hong Kong version, The Bodyguard from Beijing. Our protagonist soon finds out that wealth and fame aren't all they're cracked up to be when she witnesses a murder and ends up with a wildly overprotective bodyguard who ensures his witness is kept from harm.