Short Cuts

After taking a few days off last week for some well-needed beach rest, Filmbrain returned to a crammed inbox full of interesting items. Here are a few worth noting.

The big news is that New York City has a new movie theater, and it is devoted exclusively to Asian and Asian-American cinema. Named The ImaginAsian, its inaugural program is a wonderful five-day Takashi Miike festival. Filmbrain highly recommends seeing Visitor Q (wonderfully disturbing) and Audition, both of which are being shown on Wednesday and Thursday of this week (7/28, 7/29). The theater will also be home to the 2004 Korean Film Festival in August (more on that later this week). The ImaginAsian is located at 239 East 59th St. between 2nd and 3rd Aves.

Filmbrain also discovered two film blogs that are worth mentioning --

harrylimetheme (great name) is the blog of Ben Slater, a cub reporter for Indiewire based in Singapore. Not only do we get interesting news about the Singapore film scene (and censorship problems), but the site also includes his interviews with Filmbrain faves Kim Ki-duk and Tsai Ming-liang (even though he lost the tape of the interview!)

Tom Vick's Asian Cinema Blog is....well, the title says it all. Tom is a film programmer, writer, and filmmaker living in Washington D.C., and his blog is an excellent source for Asian film-related news.

Both blogs will be added to Filmbrain's Blogs of Distinction list.

Filmbrain was thrilled to hear from Jerry Schatzberg's people about his official website, Jerry Schatzberg.com. Though at the moment the site focuses more on his photography than his films, there is a very generous sampling of photographs, broken down into categories -- Personalities, Fashion, Reportage, etc. (Check out this wonderful shot of a young Charlotte Rampling.) As you may recall, Filmbrain was over the moon about finally catching Puzzle of a Downfall Child, and he's working his way through the rest of Schatzberg's filmography. (Reviews of Scarecrow and Panic in Needle Park are in the works.) With any luck, he'll have the chance to interview Schatzberg in the near future.

Congratulations to both Karen Cinecultist and Like Anna Karina's Sweater regular commenter Marleigh Riggins on their new gigs within the -ist empire -- The Cinecultist has begun covering film for New York's Gothamist Arts + Events, while Marleigh can be found unleashing her acerbic wit on left-coast's LAist. (Oh, and Marleigh -- somehow Filmbrain missed your birthday -- many apologies, and happy belated 24th!)

Last but not least, Filmbrain was going to go on a rant about the abomination that is IFC's Ultimate Film Fanatic game show, but there's no need -- Aaron Out of Focus has done a wonderful job of it already.

Comments

[Marleigh]

Since you were kind enough to apologize, you are forgiven.

This time.