The Circuit

Occasionally, you might see a banner ad above for Variety Asia’s blog “Kaiju Shakedown,” written by New York Asian Film Festival programmer Grady Hendrix. Not only does Grady put together a great fest, he’s got problems with how Asian cinema is Americanized by the studios. His blog is a must-read for fanboys, and after poking around his posts, I can see why. A good example: 

Apparently CASSHERN is being released on home video in the US on October 18 by Paramount Home Video. But please, be advised that the running time advertised is 80 minutes - which is roughly half of the actual length of the film! There are plenty of good DVDs out there of the full version of this lopsided mind-melter so please seek them out if it's true that Paramount is putting out the 80 minute version. CASSHERN is a 2004 Japanese movie that was made for about $1.95 on a bunch of cannibalized computer equipment and it...is...astounding. One of the few truly modern sci fi movies it avoids that whole "in the shadow of BLADE RUNNER" thing by forging its own ultra-stylized, nutzoid vision of a future world where Space Nazis do battle with Cyborg Communist superheroes. It's a flawed, lumpy, oddly-paced movie but it is also truly visionary and as poetic and unique as Dali's melting clocks. Along with movies like RESURRECTION OF THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL it's one of the best of the post-2000 psychedelic, sci fi action flicks. Since 2004, the New York Asian Film Festival (I'm one of the lame superteam who puts it on) have been contacting Go Fish, Dreamworks' "we don't know what we're doing" and now, presumably, defunct sub-division, and begging them to let us show CASSHERN. They were never very nice about it and their party line was "Your festival doesn't fit in with our current marketing strategy for the film." Oh, I see. By "current marketing strategy" they mean, "We're going to poop this out unceremoniously on DVD and hope a few fanboys pick it up." Got it. Sometimes Hollywood is just too deep for me. Personal bitterness aside, please go feast your eyes on the majesty that is CASSHERN.