NY Asian Film Festival

Sometimes there's just too damn much to do in this town! I know, it's a ridiculous complaint, as it's part of the reason I do live here. Just sometimes I feel its impossible to keep up, that I have to scour a million different places to know what's going on, and usually I am always playing catch up.

Like the NY Asian Film Fest, which starts on Friday, for example. I just found out about it today, and feel like a jackass. There are about ten different movies showing that I would kill to see, but with my trip to Puerto Rico coming up in two weeks and the summer blockbuster season in full swing and my neverending influx of Netflix... I don't know when I can have time for all these movies. I can't breathe!

I did immediately snap up tickets for Godzilla: Final Wars, because there's no way I'd miss that.

I already own Three Extremes, but would love to see it on a big screen, especially Chan-Wook Park's third which is filmed like a gorgeous, forgotten giallo. Not to mention "Dumplings", Fruit Chan's third which made my skin crawl (in a good way) and stars (this is a quote right from the festival's site) "international crazy lady Bai Ling". Hee!

Marebito is from the director of Ju-On and its American remake starring Buffy, The Grudge, both of which I liked about the same, which was only somewhat, but Marebito sounds different and interesting.

Karaoke Terror sounds like it could be fun, as does Arahan, which they describe as a "modern day Crouching Tiger".

Mindgame looks like amazing animation, and even beat the new Miyazaki film at the Japan Media Arts Festival last year.

The premise of P, setting a horror movie amongst the adolescent sex workers in Thailand, sounds rich with possibility. Same with R-Point, which sets a ghost story amongst the horrors of the Vietnam war.

So please, if you're in New York, go and see some of these, or any of the other films they're showing. Then I'll feel much less guilty about missing most of this. Besides Godzilla I'll probably at most only see one other film, and I'm leaning towards Marebito or Arahan myself.