NY Latino Fest Celebrates 10th Anniversary

Nielsen Business Media 

   The New York International Latino Film Festival, which runs from July 27 to Aug. 2, will kick off with Peter Bratt’s “The Mission,” starring Benjamin Bratt; include a tribute to John Leguizamo; and conclude with John Cotten’s Mexican crime drama “La Linea” (The Line).
   Celebrating its tenth anniversary, the fest will utilize a number of new venues in New York City like the Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 9 and the School of Visual Arts Theater.
   “The NYILFF began as a dream to showcase our talent and to empower Latinos,” fest exec director Calixto Chinchilla said. “We’ve been fortunate to have grown in size and stature. This year, we have everything; highly anticipated Hollywood premieres to independent films from filmmakers across the globe, industry forums, music showcases and free outdoor events for everyone.”
   “La Mission,” the opening night film, is set in San Francisco’s Mission District and stars Benjamin Bratt as a reformed inmate and recovering alcoholic who discovers his son is gay.
   For the Leguizamo tribute, the performer will be honored with the Tres Generaciones COA Award, which recognizes outstanding achievements in Latino filmmaking. The evening will include the screening of the actor’s 2007 film “Where God Left His Shoes,” directed by Salvatore Stabile.
   “La Linea,” the closing night film stars Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Esai Morales, Armand Assante, Bruce Davison, Jason Connery, Michael DeLorenzo, Joe Morton, Valerie Cruz, Jordi Vilasuso, Danny Trejo, Kevin Gage and Gary Daniels.
   The fest also will host a Dominican night, screening Cruz Angeles’ “Don’t Let Me Drown.”
   The fest will feature several premieres, among which are: the music compilation film “Calle 13: Sin Mapa”; the short “Los Bandoleros/Fast & Furious”; “Red Apples Falling,” a look at the music of Harlem rap star Jim Jones; “Life is Hot in Cracktown”; the sports documentary “Assault in the Ring”; and the cheerleading movie “Bring It On: Fight to the Finish.” 

 

Gorey Bread Bakery

Kittiwat Unarrom’s Body Bakery. You can find his showroom bakery in Ratchaburi, Thailand

Kittiwat Unarrom has a master’s degree in fine arts and creates bruised and battered heads, feet and other internal organs at a bread shop in Thailand

He started using his skills and made sculptures out of bread. This came naturally to him because his family runs a bakery. The bread is made out of dough, raisins, cashews and chocolate. He just adds his own touch to the finished product.

Ghosts, Guts, Grief: 2009 New York Asian Film Festival

Edmund Mullins – BlackBookMag.com

This year’s New York Asian Film Festival(through July 5) is, as ever, a cornucopia of surprises—a collective punch to the gut and a scold to all other festivals less ballsy, diverse, and important. This is not a fanboy event, despite what titles like Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl might initially lead you to believe. Drawing chiefly from South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong, the films range with delightful incongruity from the romantic and sentimental to the perverse and avant-garde. Watching all 50-plus entries this year proved unfeasible (surprise), but I’ve attempted to separate some of the wheat from the chaff.

Written By (Hong Kong, 2009) – When a car accident takes her father, Molly (Mia Yan) writes a novel in which he survives as a fictional character. Within that novel, Dad writes yet another book in which he perishes and the family does not. It’s a bravura if at times goofy display of narrative legerdemain that’s invoked deserved comparisons to Charlie Kauffman. Writer/director Wai Ka-Fai is best known stateside for his collaborations with director Johnnie To (Fulltime Killer, Mad Detective), but this solo effort abandons his gangster and comedy past to explore something altogether unfamiliar: a family drama about ghosts.

Fish Story (Japan, 2009) – This cheerily chaotic picture is shot through with profound sympathy for also-rans. In 1975, a proto-punk band records one great, ahead-of-its-time number, only to break up and fade into obscurity. Thirty-seven years later, the song saves the world from total annihilation—though not without the help of a child prodigy, a martial arts savant, and a milquetoast who learns to stand up for himself. The first movie about punk rock that deserves to be called “heart-warming.”

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (Japan, 2009) – Imagine a jejune teen comedy on the order of Bring It On cross-bred with Evil Dead 2 and you might get something akin to VGvs.FG. Gore and comedy don’t usually go hand-in-glove, but co-directors Naoyuki Tomomatsu and Yoshiro Nishimura make a fair bid to reverse the trend. Warring cliques of school girls behead each other and worse, all for the love of the class hunk.

Magazine Gap Road (Hong Kong, 2007) – A baroquely stylized thriller about a prostitute-turned-art-dealer trying to rescue a former colleague from the trade. First-time helmer Nick Chin shows a fine eye for composition here, adding a painterly flourish to everything from an iridescent skyline to a forlorn prison-yard tree. His Hong Kong isn’t the noisome welter of confusion we’re accustomed to seeing, but a serene vista which his characters live—literally, metaphorically—high above.

House (Japan, 1977) – A revival screening, this 1977 camp horror classic has the antic frenzy of a Murakami painting come explosively to life. The highly incidental plot—a bunch of school girls get knocked off by an evil step-mom type—is just an excuse for director Nobuhiku Kobayashi to accumulate as many outrageous effects shots as possible. Faces melt and pianos eat children.

Robots or Real ?

From Coolest-Gadgets.com

   Take a look at the photo to the left. These are not twin brothers, or some sort of photo trickery. As it so happens, one of these men is a robot. Yeah, I don’t know which one is fake either. However, I think you should know that this technology is available. Just so you can be free of your Stepford Wives nightmares, this robot cannot walk and talk, or be some evil version of you who will go about doing bad while you take the blame.

   No, what you are looking at is one of those animatronics like you would see at Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but a bit more realistic. The best you could hope for is a figure that would sit there and move its head and eyes in a realistic fashion. The might be enough to fool a boring college professor.

    This technology has been developed by the Xian Chaoren, a model company by the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Arts. It specializes in simulated silica gel figures, otherwise known as super-realistic sculptures, which is good for museums, or any other related design and production industries.

Zombie World Record!?

Christy Karras – The Seattle Times

 July 3 –   If you’re in Fremont (Seattle) tonight, you may find yourself surrounded by hordes of groaning, lurching, pasty people covered with blood. Don’t be alarmed. In fact, feel free to join them.The Fremont Outdoor Film series hopes to break the world record for number of people in a “zombie walk,” in conjunction with its screening of “Shaun of the Dead.”

   Fremont Outdoor Movies organizer Ryan Reiter says the event is about fun — as is the night’s film, a macabre British comedy about Londoners fleeing when zombies invade.

The outdoor screenings in Fremont are always participatory events with singalongs, dress-ups and contests. This one will incorporate those, plus a “Thriller” dance planned long before Michael Jackson’s death last week.

   Reiter hopes the event will draw 5,000 people or so, which would easily break the zombie-walk record. Participants who don’t have any fake blood handy can arrive early to get made up.

   Why zombies? Reiter says they’re a creative way to get adrenaline flowing and escape from the everyday bad news that bombards us. “It really is kind of high-camp summer fun,” he said.

   Only after he decided on the march did he discover the scope of Seattle’s zombie scene. Organized groups of zombies — or at least people playing zombies — show up frequently here at everything from Halloween parties to Pride parades. Sometimes, they hit the streets just for kicks.

   Zombie walks are a national phenomenon fueled in part by the “flash mob” fad, and partly by the success of movies and books on the subject. Like any other subculture, it’s a way to meet others with similar interests — which in this case include a flair for drama and a passion for blood.

   Bellevue resident Tim Gillespie, who has gone to several marches including the West Seattle walk in 2008, is drawn to “the camaraderie, the fun, the whole zombie culture that’s built around the movies.” Despite their grisly hobby, he says, zombie marchers are also “just really nice people.”

   To ensure the event goes off smoothly and safely, organizers will have about 30 staffers on hand. “Just having people running around as zombies could really create a problem, if you let it,” Reiter said.

   Reiter doesn’t expect that everyone who shows up for the walk will stick around for the screening, which will hold about 1,000 people. But just in case, overflow space can seat an extra 1,000.

   Seattle zombie walkers will be on duty tonight to help get members of the public into undead mode. They’ll even judge a fashion show. The creators of the Seattle-based Night Zero online photo comic books — which depict Seattle in the aftermath of a zombie invasion — will host a zombie-survival workshop called “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse.”

   S.G. Browne, author of the zombie novel “Breathers,” also will be in town Friday to sign books at nearby Fremont Place Books. The creators of “ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction,” a locally made film that was a hot ticket at the recent Seattle International Film Festival, will also be on hand — as will Seattle Times zombie expert (and author of the comic book “Rotten”) Mark Rahner.

“It’s going to be a sort of expo of zombie lovin,’ ” Reiter said.