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Captain Fantasticto open festival in South Korea.

Asia’s largest genre cinema event, Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (Bifan) marks its 20th anniversary with the appointment of its first organizing committee chairman from the film industry – veteran director Chung Ji-young, and expanded festival and industry programmes.

Bifan will open July 21 with the Asian premiere of Captain Fantastic, the Viggo Mortensen-starrer that won Matt Ross the Un Certain Regard best director award at this year’s Cannes.

Running until July 31, the festival will hold its closing ceremony July 29 with the Asian premiere of King Of Pigs director Yeon Sang-ho’s animation Seoul Station. Currently playing at the Edinburgh film fest, the animated film is known as the prequel to Yeon’s first live action film Train To Busan, which was in Cannes’ Midnight Screenings last month.

The festival has a record 302 films from 49 countries, with 49 world premieres and 32 international premieres. These include...

I watched Pulp Fiction last night; figured I should to properly close out this look back on one of the greatest movies ever made. To reiterate: It’s an influential triumph on every level and thanks for Quentin Tarantino’s use of homage a having made a multilayered masterpiece; it should delight viewers new and old for another 20 years.

There are Tarantino’s detractors that suggest his films are not his own and simply lifted from someone else’s imagination. They might be fair to suggest he lifts a lot of his work from other ideas, but to be fair, he also does a damn good job at making them his own. If Kill Bill gets astute or curious viewers to look back on Lady Snowblood (1973) Samurai Fiction (1998), then let class begin I say.

The pop-culture dialogue and cartoon violence of Pulp Fiction (“Aww man I just shot Marvin in...

Festival director Manuel Ewald kindly informed me that the full program and timetable for this year’s Asia Filmfest that takes place in Munich from October 29th to November 8th and with a smaller selection in Berlin from November 13th to November 15th are now available online.

All films are listed below by the country of origin below with internal links with more information and (in most cases) trailers:

Japan

Departures, Blood: The Last Vampire, Crows Zero II, Evangelion 2.0: You can (not) advance, Goemon, Ichi, K-20: Legend of the Mask, Love Exposure, Samurai Princess, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, Yatterman, Lady Snowblood, Akira, Perfect Blue, Samurai Fiction, Blessing Bell, Sakuran, Dainipponjin, Kids Return, Kikujiros Sommer, Adrenalin Drive, Waterboys

China/Hong Kong

Vengeance, Assembly, The Beast Stalker, Connected, Ip Man, Overheard, Red Cliff, Shinjuku Incident, The Sniper, Enter The Dragon, The Flying Guillotine, Police Story, Once Upon A time in China,...

Oh how we have waited with bated breath for the return of Japanese director Hiroyuki Nakano to return with another film. I am a mighty fan of both Samurai Fiction and Stereo Future. I gave Red Shadow a miss and I haven’t been able to see any of the short film work he has done in recent years so his record is pretty much unblemished in my opinion. And it has been long enough since he last did a feature film perhaps all this short film work in the meantime has put him back on track to deliver us another gem. We hope Tajomaru is that film, Nakano’s adaptation of the short story “In a Grove” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. I’m a bit mixed about the new trailer, some parts seem a bit silly and Jpop gets me every time, but final judgment is reserved for when I...

[The first teaser for this one just arrived via the official website! Find it below the break!]

2009 is poised to be an excellent year for once-prominent, long absent Japanese directors returning to the big screen. We wrote about the imminent return of Blue Spring‘s Toshiaki Toyoda last week and now it seems that Samurai Fiction helmer Hiroyuki Nakano is ready to return as well. Nakano won fans the world over with Samurai Fiction - a film that honors the traditions of samurai film while simultaneously updating them - a film that would eventually be ‘borrowed’ from quite liberally by Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill but he has been quiet for quite some time. Samurai Fiction launched his Sf Project series that also yielded feature film Stereo Future - also excellent - a short film collection titled simply Short Films and a photo book titled Sweet Female. At the peak of this run it seemed Nakano could do no wrong but then he did, his ninja film...

The Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival in Bucheon, South Korea is one of the premiere genre festivals of the year. And other than providing a venue for some of the top genre films of the year they also have a program in place that will help other Asian genre filmmakers get their projects off the ground, wrapped up or distributed. The project is called ‘It Project’ and it is a competition of 17 feature films and 2 animated features from 10 countries. These films come in many different styles including thriller, horror, action, black comedy and so on. During the festival, It Project, which runs from July 19 to 23, will provide one-on-one business meeting opportunities with Asian/international film producers and key investors as well as jury deliberation with cash awards and post-production supports to advance filmmakers’ projects.

Of particular note for Twitch readers is one of the finalists is Hiroyuki Nakano who made Samurai Fiction and Stereo Future.

Good news for those who always had the feeling that their mighty fine collection of Asian films still lacks some prestige titles. German independent distributor Rapid Eye Movies and pop culture magazine Intro have announced to release twelve titles from Japan, Korea and Thailand in an Intro-Edition Asien DVD series. Starting in May, all titles will be released in a digipak package including a booklet with background information for 9,99€ (Msrp). Here are the twelve titles sorted by their release date: I’m a Cyborg, but that’s Ok, Last Life in the Universe, Samurai Fiction, Samaria, Haze, Sakuran - Wilde Kirschblüte, Audition, The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai, The Place Promised in our Early Days, Sonatine, Dainipponjin, Lady Snowblood.

Please note that none of these releases will have English subtitles.

Preorder Intro-Edition Asien from Amazon.de

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[It’s complete and it’s online! Thrill to the exploits of Daikaiju Gehara by hitting the links below. Thanks to Captain Awesome for pointing them out.]

Break out the curling irons and hair dryers! Japan is under assault by the hairiest giant monster yet and the only possible solution to the threat is Operation Perm!

Coming soon from Japanese broadcaster Nhk, Daikaiju Gehara is an upcoming made for TV giant monster film that needs a bit of primping. A parody of classic kaiju flicks written by comic Jun Miura, this thing actually has a pretty solid list of a-list talent in the wings. Such as? How about blockbuster director Shinji Higuchi (The Sinking of Japan) as producer and project supervisor? The cast? Familiar faces from Samurai Fiction, Always: Sunset On Third Street, Bullet Ballet and a host of kaiju titles. More on this one as we find it and, no, I wasn’t joking about Operation Perm. That really happens.

Yes, yes, technically Samurai Fiction director Hiroyuki Nakano officially got back into the director’s chair with his destined-for-pachinko screens remake of Seven Samurai but unless some brave DVD label takes a flyer on that one - Hey Bci! It’s got Sonny Chiba in it! And the trailers look great! - this is the first new Nakano film that people might actually have a chance of seeing.

Now, details from those more knowledgable than I would be gratefully accepted as I stumbled across the website purely by accident and speak not a lick of Japanese but it looks like what we’ve got here is an expansion of Nakano’s 2006 short film Iron, a film that played Critics Week at Cannes in 2006. Beyond this and the fact that the trailer is filled with the sort of sumptuous black and white photography that made Samurai Fiction such a treat to look at,...

Yes, Akira Kurosawa must be spinning in his grave right now thanks to the disrespect his son is showing by selling off remake rights to his films to seemingly anyone who comes knocking and, yes, it’s sad to see that Samurai Fiction director Hiroyuki Nakano has slipped to this but damn if it doesn’t actually look pretty good.

What is it? Hiroyuki Nakano - once an international darling, now absent from the feature film world for several years - has directed a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai starring Sonny Chiba and Nagase Masatoshi with several of Kurosawa’s original creative team on board in key support roles. As you’d expect from a Nakano film, it looks fantastic. And as you’d expect from a Nakano film it has a killer soundtrack - in this case all Rolling Stones tunes. The weird bit? It was prepared...