Last Friday, a screening of Zhang Yimou's Hero marked the kick off of the New York Asian Film Festival at Anthology Film Archives and the New Yorker covered the festival this week in their Talk of the Town. (The Festival runs through June 27). Cinecultist loves hearing stories like the one which follows about their J-horror series or the Exorcist urban legend that fainting and vomiting viewers had to be carried from the theater on stretchers. it's just that much more hard evidence to explain our own extreme squemishness when it comes to the genre. CC likes horror on an intellectual level but has to watch it through our fingers and often from behind the chair.
"The first year, 2000, was a modest success, but everything changed during year two, when [one of the festival planners and NYU alum Grady] Hendrix screened a Korean film called The Isle for members of the press. The movie contains what Hendrix calls 'a moment of extreme fishhook penetration,' and it was shortly after this part of the film that a critic emerged into the lobby, made a high-pitched gurgling noise, and passed out on the floor. Hendrix checked to see that the man was O.K. and then called the Post. The story was reprinted in other newspapers, and soon The Isle acquired a reputation as the most dangerous movie around."Posted by karen at June 23, 2004 8:08 AM