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Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of PressPlay’s very first ‘Grey Matters,” a weekly pop culture column by Ian Grey. Every Friday Ian will write on an array of topics, including pop music, TV, cinema, viral videos, and whatever the hell else strikes his fancy, in his own inimitable way. You can read the main article, “Tree of Gaga, Part 1,” by clicking here. –MZS

Born This Way
Interscope Records
May 23, 2011
Standard edition

The huge news about Born This Way is that, despite being written in the Monster Ball tour studio and in stationary studios all over the world, the record actually has a very cohesive sound. As importantly, it has a sound that, unlike “The Fame” and “The Fame Monster,” stands apart from most of the Top 10 of anyone, and stands apart what my Partner calls “Glee-music” — as in AutoTuned, over-compressed, and sampled and sequenced to an inch of its life sugar-pop, of the Katy Perry oeuvre.

It was a gamble. But all the great records have that separate-universe thing. The Dark Side of the Moon sounds like it came from there. Born to Run, despite its creator’s protestations otherwise, exists not in New Jersey, but in the grooves of that record, in the impossible and perfect sound-cauldron brew of Roy Orbison, Dick Dale and Phil Spector, of King Curtis, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. What Gaga’s cooking up is, of course, is much stranger, even as discrete tracks tickle the mainstream. Bits of Springsteen, Depeche Mode, Elton John, Queen, flamenco, new Parisian and minimalist Berlin techno all end up in the Gaga music processor. And always there’s Bowie, so much that I won’t dwell on it here because it’s like saying, “Hey, did you notice that oxygen she was breathing?”

Anyway, Gaga’s obvious goal is to create an Album for the Ages, a Thriller, or Songs of Faith and Devotion. She has the skills in spades but I think she fails slightly in that regard. Sometimes she’s lyrically scattered. There are also some questionable structural choices, the inclusion of one song that’s pretty demonstrably bad and that an outside producer might have excised.

So–not quite an Album for the Ages. Which only means that Born This Way is still light-years ahead of her peers in terms of rabid musical invention, collisions and executions, in good-as-it-gets song craft, and a new, warm, approachable Gaga vocal style (which isn’t to say she’s jettisoned the girl-robotics we all know, love and puzzle over.)

Thing is, w all those wacky outfits, videos and production bells and whistles, the fact of Lady Gaga’s superior pipes has gotten lost. Born This Way absolutely remedies that. She rocks, soul-sings, torch-croons, metal-screams. The reasonable person’s take-away is that, whatever you think of her, Lady Gaga is now a serious contender in the sweepstakes of singing your ass off really, really well. Beautifully even. And when that voice is perfectly married to the right song, as it is an unholy amount of the time here, it’s really something.

1.”Marry the Night” (Lady Gaga, Fernando Garibay) 4:25

As a songwriter, Lady Gaga is the queen of totally not fucking around. In four seconds, this first track (1) Establishes her allegiance to a delicious fantasy of non-lethal darkness, (2) Does so with synthetic, church-like bell tones that contextualize that allegiance as being non-specifically holy, and (3) tricks you into thinking we’re dealing with a ballad.

What follows is a master’s class exercise in build, tension, release, and going deliriously joyful. Phrases like “warrior queen” and “live passionately” poke out of the candy-colored fog.

Buzzing synths portend some huge musical event. “I’m a soldier to my own emptiness” is one of those sad lines that she needs to triumph over and she does when the song lands on one. Super. Powerful. Chord.

On a dime, the beat doubles; a techno kit kicks ass; everything that seemed doleful flips on itself, and the Lady announces a new Gaga, like a warm-toned Annie Lennox, balls-to-the-wall soulful but minus show-offy over-sing.

As church organ joins church bells and she torch-sings “mu-mu-mu-marry!” over and over—within the broader, knowing subtext that in most states, many can’t marry—a new anthem, sound, and direction are all introduced in 4:25 minutes.

Concision, thy name is Gaga.

2.”Born This Way” (Gaga, Jeppe Laursen, Garibay, DJ White Shadow) 4:20

People whine about this being similar to Madonna’s “Express Yourself” but miss its similarity to early Brian Eno, back when Eno wrote pop songs. The circular, repeating super-simple chord progression on top of which Gaga adds and subtracts melodies, synths, and other musical events are pure Eno, and did not exist as a musical mode until Eno. Does Gaga, the worshiper of glam know Eno, Roxy’s birth-feathered glitter brainiac? Please.

Anyway, the thing about “Born This Way” is that everything about it is so unlikely, so on-paper lame sounding, and yet when you hear it, it seems inevitable. Clearly, she’s softened the techno. The bass drum thumps instead of drills. There’s cushy warmth to the synth padding. She still cuts and pastes her vocals, but it’s fun — inviting, not weird. The rest I hardly need to tell you about.

Still, you might be burned out. In that case—check this out: It’s Gaga and Maria Aragon, a ten year old who made a “Born This Way” fan video which caught Mother Monster’s attention which led to the child sitting on Gaga’s lap while they sang this delightful duet…

3.”Government Hooker” (Gaga, Garibay, DJ White Shadow) 4:14

But worry not, Little Monsters, she can still sound totally psychotic as, by way of intro, she fake-opera-sings her own name repeatedly. Otherwise, and there’s no delicate way to put this: “Government Hooker” is the first Gaga-song you could fuck to.

Lyrically and musically, it reminds me of Depeche Mode, the naughty Depeche Mode of “Master and Servant.” People have assumed the lines “Put your hands on me / John F. Kennedy” were goofy nonsense, except, well, they’re not. The song came from the pitiful idea of Marilyn Monroe and JFK, of the backdoor (er) mistress who’s shite and the dude who’s respected. Gaga is trying to flip that notion by creating a menu of erotic power positions that the seeming alpha dog can’t live without; in short, topping-from-the-bottom.

And the groove, the music–co-writer DJ White Shadow has it right: “It’s just a beast. I don’t even know how to explain it… It’s like a fucking supernova.” In regards to its author, he says, “When she walks into a room, things explode. She thinks of shit that I can’t comprehend.”

4.”Judas” (Gaga, RedOne) 4:09

No, no, no. This is not industrial. To all the lazyass critics who’ve called this ‘industrial’ I say — as if talking to a small, somewhat slow child — “Listen to “Judas,” and then listen to Nine Inch Nails, or Rammstein, or KMFDM. Different, right? Really different. Like, as different as Dylan is from The Pussycat Dolls, right? Attaboy.”

What “Judas” is — in context of this record, as a flow of interrelated songs — is a wake-up after “Born This Way,” and its general softness. It’s a reminder that Lady Gaga can kick your ass. And while not ass-kicking in an industrial way, “Judas” certainly is super aggressive, its intro synth-line doubled with a mean-ass kick-drum.

Like McQueen, Gaga thrives on extreme juxtaposition; hard/soft, woman/machine, light/dark. Here it’s an exquisite pastoral—“Ohhhhhhhh, Juda-a-as”—crunched by that aggressive riffing. When she starts that lunacy-chant of “Juda, Ju-de ah-ah!” the point isn’t that it’s ripping off the similar thing in “Bad Romance”, it’s that it’s meant to be akin to the same thing in “Bad Romance”. She’s in the process of creating her own musical syntax.

Still, people kvetch. Do they kvetch about Keith Richards basically finding a million ways to recycle Chuck Berry? Is Keith Richards a woman?

5.”Americano” (Gaga, Garibay, DJ White Shadow, Cheche Alara) 4:06

Dark times. Prop 8 took away gay rights in California. Senator John McCain managed to turn Arizona into a no-immigration zone: a witch hunt for the brown-skinned ensued. Gaga folded them into one lyric where a Latina and her girl “live and love on the edge of the law.”

The music, though, was anything but dark. Producer Garibay said that Gaga insisted the track go for “the full Mexicano”: a more succinct descriptor I can’t imagine.

There’s a wall of nylon-stringed flamenco guitars, eighth note handclaps, Latino-swing groove, with Gaga somehow finding a way to contextualize an Edith Piaf vocal style into an almost ridiculously Mexican track. Despite—because of?– its gloomy beginnings, “Americano” is BTW’s most flat-out fun track.

6. “Hair” (Gaga, RedOne) 5:08

Aha! The proof that all her talk about loving Bruce Springsteen wasn’t idle fan chatter. Gaga marries a Phil Spector beat, Clarence Clemons’ romantic sax, octave-tinkling pianos, and a no-tricks vocal, and damn if it doesn’t sound like the E Street Band. That is, if the E Street Band would countenance a lyric about finding your essential humanity, identity and freedom in hairstyles.

Sure, the connective verse-to-bridge has some Robo-vocal stutters—it had to have something digi-sounding—but otherwise this also reveals the true radicalism of Lady Gaga, minus weird science tricks. She is, at her core, a traditional songwriter. That what works with her doesn’t work because it has some nifty new Berlin techno/Justice-style digital voice-slice ‘n dice to support her melodies; it works in conjunction with the electronics.That’s why Gaga can play a set of her songs, just her and a piano, and it’s no stretch. It’s the reason why her career will have legs.

7.”Scheiße” (Gaga, RedOne) 3:45

All that said, she can still be one seriously exotic, post-human-sounding, super-bleeding-edge dance artist. A sample of her babbling in pigeon German repeats (and repeats), while a hard-edge, Hardfloor-style groove pounds mercilessly. By the chorus though, the aforementioned compulsive songwriter returns and “Scheiße”—apparently German for “bullshit”—turns this into another female empowerment song, albeit a pretty twisty, everything-from-left-field one. But would we expect anything less?

8. “Bloody Mary” (Gaga, Garibay, DJ White Shadow) 4:05

A 100 degree turnaround. Gaga’s first foray into actual chamber pop, complete with a cello and viola string quartet sample opening, and a general mid-period Depeche Mode or darkened “Indiscreet”-era Sparks vibe. This is a truly mysterious, impossible-to-decipher song, which makes it precious.

Men chant her name, she sings a lovely, simple melody about Pontius, dancing with her hands above her head, Michelangelo, and Jesus and Mary. But sometimes? Sometimes I think she just likes the way certain words sound, or the way they create images in our heads when juxtaposed with one another.

The way to look at this, I think, is by comparing it with another song about lonely dancing, Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own”, a wonderful song about hitting the dance floor only to see your guy with another girl and…you get the picture. The not-so-teen ache in Robyn’s sparkling confection is real and therefore, sort of limited. There’s a churning darkness in Gaga’s lonely dancer, dancing with her hands above her head like Jesus said.

It makes sense to her and only her. As seductive as her groove may be, she’s isolated. “Bloody Mary” is a work of eroticized dislocation.

9 .”Bad Kids” (Gaga, Laursen, Garibay, DJ White Shadow) 3:51

“Bad Kids” is meant to be the cure to the dark of “Bloody Mary”; instead, it’s the one song that just doesn’t work at all.

It’s heart is totally in the right place, assuring kids who may have fucked up in any of a million ways that fucking up doesn’t define you, but the music is New Order-lite, the chorus an unfortunate mess of bland changes. Onward.

10.”Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)” (Gaga, RedOne, Garibay, DJ White Shadow) 4:16

And then Gaga bursts out the gate proclaiming “We can be strong! We can be strong!” and it’s like “Bad Kids” never happened.

“Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)” is Lady Gaga’s first rock song and the style suits her surprisingly well. Of course, “rock song” is, to a certain degree, in quotation marks, but that doesn’t stop it from rocking. Unfortunately, it ends poorly. Over-the-top rock lyrical posturing doesn’t suit her. I’ll leave it up to you as to whether the following sound forced, or confusingly, pointlessly nihilistic:

“Get your hot rods ready to rumble/ Cause’ were gonna fall in love tonight/ Get your hot rods ready to rumble/ Cause’ we’re gonna drink until we die.”

11.”Heavy Metal Lover” (Gaga, Garibay) 4:13

Finally, Gaga chills with this naughty slow-burn highlighted by the already immortal, silly lines: “I want your whiskey mouth / All over my blonde south.” Otherwise, an rated-R companion piece to “Government Hooker” with its fetish cataloguing. And really, hats off–only Gaga could think of watersports and think: Baptism.

But strip it of its mild-mannered outrages and “Heavy Metal Lover” is a really, really sad song. It’s the only song in the canon that I’m aware of where Gaga is submissively pleading. (“I could be your girl…but would you love me?”) It makes one wonder, even worry, about the human behind the mirror.

12.”Electric Chapel” (Gaga, DJ White Shadow) 4:12

More rock! This time in a goth register ala the Sisters of Mercy of “More” and A Slight Case of Overbombing in general.

Kitsch melodrama pianos chime a lonely cycle. A dark, distorted guitar chugs, a choir supports the chorus, a metal guitar fusillade shreds and shreds again!

In short, this sucker is gonna kill in the next Monster Ball.

13.”Yoü and I” (Gaga, Robert “Mutt” Lange) 5:07

There are so many things going on here, and they all compliment and emotionally jetpack one another until a critical mass of lighter-waving teary-ness is achieved.

Being the weird girl at the party of mainstream culture has its perks. But for Gaga to enter the mainstream, she had to demonstrate that, on some level, she’s “normal” and capable of being “real” — both of which are just more drag, the Wrangler jacket you throw on over your vintage Yohji Yamamoto shirt.

But dammit if Gaga doesn’t sound seriously “real” here, even as she over-Springsteens by naming the heart of her desire “Nebraska”.

Whatever. If Elton John were in his prime, he’d write something this piano-liciously good. But he wouldn’t think to get producer ‘Mutt’ Lange (Bryan Adams, Def Leppard, Foreigner) to produce and import Queen’s “We Will Rock You” groove, or ask Brian May to add bohemian rhapsodies to what is, hands-down, Gaga’s most elegantly perfect song to date.

14. “The Edge of Glory” (Gaga, Garibay, DJ White Shadow 5:21

In her Google Goes Gaga interview, the artist said this song is “about your last moment on Earth, the moment of truth, the moment before you leave Earth.”

It’s kind of hard to top that except to say, Works for me.

NOTE: Born This Way (Special Edition) includes remixes and new material including:

15. “Black Jesus † Amen Fashion” (Gaga, DJ White Shadow)

With lyrics that smoosh together bits of biography, self-validation and rather rote Gaga-style utopianism, minus the musical invention to carry the weight, this is, to channel Tim Gunn, the definition of a hot mess.

Even then, when you sweat melodic ideas like, um, sweat, it’s hard to pump out a worthless track, and “Black Jesus” has some very winning bits. The “On Broadway” old-school showbiz whiz-bang charms, even when the song’s going nowhere.

16. “The Queen” (Gaga, Garibay)

Again, Gaga proves that if you strip away the remix arsenal there’s a girl who would have turned a tidy trade in the Brill Building, no problem at all. I don’t know if Ronnie Spector is still making comeback records—if so, her new producer needs to turn her on to this. Or failing that, The Chantels, whose 1958 hit “Maybe” this shares chords and spiritual lineage with. (Oh, to see Gaga’s record collection.)

17. “Fashion of His Love” ((Fernando Garibay Remix) (Gaga, Garibay)

The original of this fine bit of pop just plain didn’t work for me, considering the incredible spiritual weight behind it. It was no less than a love letter to Alexander McQueen, dead at 41 by his own hand because he couldn’t cope with his beloved mother’s death.

Perhaps McQueen loved Madonna—a lot. The original mix seemed as if Gaga was answering all the people who’ve dismissed Gaga as a Madonna knock-off by making the most incredibly Madonna-like song Madonna never made. We’re talking non-linear gated reverb snares, multi-tap vocal echoes, DX-7 bell-tones, Juno pads, analog sequencers, sampled chorus vocals sped up to sound like a kid, the whole middle-period MIDI-mania nine yards. As tech-pastiche and homage, as one-song lesson in antiquated techniques, it’s swell. But discomforting.

Garibay’s re-mix is more an interpretation, like Sinatra going over a tune and getting it so right it’s like another song altogether. The structure is the same, as are the vocals. But the kitsch is gone, replaced by zero-calorie groove, pumped up by a strong, but not overly strong house bass synth.

The new wide-open spaces in Garibay’s setting limns the pride and generosity in Gaga’s delivery. There’s no girliness in her voice now, and it seems no coincidence that ‘fashion’ and ‘passion’ rhyme:

“You know that I’d never cheat on a man,
‘Cause I’m not like that,
I’m physically crafted to be,
As fitting as McQueen.”

Ian Grey has written, co-written or been a contributor to books on cinema, fine art, fashion, identity politics, music and tragedy. Magazines and newspapers that have published his articles include Detroit Metro Times, gothic.net, Icon Magazine, International Musician and Recording World, Lacanian Ink, MusicFilmWeb, New York Post, The Perfect Sound, Salon, Smart Money Magazine, Teeth of the Divine, Venuszine, and Time Out/New York.

By Simon Abrams
PressPlay contributor

I’ve been attending the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) for eight of its 10 years. From 2004-2006 I volunteered at the festival, giving out Audience Award ballots and prize forms for the give-aways that they hold before every screening. Sitting in on screenings of Johnnie To’s Running on Karma and Ryuhei Kitamura’s Azumi were life-changing experiences. I owe a lot of my interest in contemporary Asian cinema to the Subway Cinema collective, festival organizers par excellence.

The Subway Cinema gang are textbook underdogs. They went from primarily financing NYAFF on their own credit cards to showing movies at the Film Society at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater. Their labor of love has become a major cultural event and now, with Lincoln Center at their backs, they can no longer be ignored. I recently talked with Grady Hendrix and Daniel Craft, two of the five Subway Cinema programmers, about their favorite films at the festival, what films they wish they could get and where they feel their influence has been most immediately felt.

Ok, I want to start by asking each of you, what was the one film you wanted to get at this year’s festival that you couldn’t?

Daniel Craft: Personally? [Live-action scifi manga adaptation] Space Battleship Yamato.

Grady Hendrix: For me, it was [Big budget Hong Kong sexploitation sequel] Sex and Zen 3D: Extreme Ecstasy.

That was at Cannes!

Hendrix: Yeah, it was screening in the marketplace.

Craft: Most laymen assume that we get whatever we want. So when a film is missing, like Sex and Zen or Yamato, they assume we just didn’t want it. It’s always, “Oh, you don’t want Yamato,” and we respond, “God, no! [laughs] We tried!”

Hendrix: This year was actually pretty hard, I think. There was just a lot of competition.

That’s a shame. Favorite film from Japan at this year’s festival?

Craft: I have to say Milocrorze: A Love Story.

Hendrix: Really?

Craft: I’m really looking forward to watching that with a crowd. I don’t have a personal favorite. But that’s the one I can’t wait to see with a crowd.

Hendrix: Yeah, for me, I guess it’s Ringing in Their Ears. It’s by [director Yu Irie,] the guy that did [hip hop documentaries] 8000 Miles 1 and 2. I liked it [Ringing in Their Ears] when I first saw it but it’s really grown on me.

Craft: That’s like me and 8000 Miles. That movie palpably grew on me every minute after it finished.

Hendrix: I agree, I agree. I think this movie [Ringing in Their Ears] is one of the best music films to come along in a while.

Craft: Well, Milocrorze has a lot of music. It’s a musical.

Hendrix: Actually, Milocrorze has the giant musical numbers in it. For some reason, it seems like Japan does music movies better than anybody else.

All right, the next biggest country represented at the festival: South Korea.

Hendrix: Ok, you go first, Dan. I don’t want to copy you.

Craft: Haunters. It’s one of those movies that I went into not expecting a lot. There’s other high-profile stuff and you kind of know what kind of film you’re going to get; you just wonder if it’s a well-done one or not. But Haunters kept surprising me with what it turned out to be. And I think it’s a really effective scifi actioners that slowly becomes both of those things as it goes along. It doesn’t feel like one and then it slowly unfolds and you think, “Holy crap, this is an action movie!” So that’s mine.

Hendrix: I have two movies I really love from Korea. One is Bedevilled, which is getting a lot of attention. So I’m going to use my time to talk about the other one, Battlefield Heroes. I’m a huge sucker for history films. That’s [director] Lee Joon-Ik’s thing. His approach is so—I hate to say irreverent. That sounds so lame. But he’s very irreverent. It [Battlefield Heroes] reminds me a little of a Terry Gilliam movie: there are musical numbers in the middle, there are all these flights of fancy, there’s an attack by farm animals launched via catapults.

I really, really liked it [Battlefield Heroes] and I’m worried it’s not going to find its audience. It’s the movie that made Lee quit the film business. It did not do very well and so he quit. And he’s going to be here! He hedged his bets: I think he quit the commercial film business. Since his last movie didn’t do very well, I don’t know what that means exactly.

Dan, when you mentioned filmmakers that you knew, I imagine you meant [action choreographer and director] Ryoo Seung-wan.

I can’t imagine someone watching [his new movie] The Unjust and thinking that it’s like what he’s done in the past.

Craft: No, but you expect a certain level of quality from him. You’re not surprised when a Ryoo Seung-wan film is good. Haunters came out of the blue.

Hendrix: It actually reminds me a little bit of Unbreakable. Haunters has a really nicely staged action scene at the end of it that you really don’t expect. The whole subway sequence really took me by surprise.

The next biggest market represented at the fest is Hong Kong.

Hendrix: I’m gonna be a sucker and I’m not gonna say a new movie. My favorite thing we’re showing from Hong Kong is [Tsui Hark’s 1995 martial arts classic] The Blade, hands-down. The Blade is amazing. We finally got Warner Brothers to dig up a print from their Kansas City depot. It took them forever. At first, they sent us The Blade with Wesley Snipes in it.

They found this print, they signed a contract with us and then they passed a new rule in their repertory rental division. They’re not going to rent movies out that aren’t rated anymore; they’re just not going to do it anymore. The Blade’s never been rated. They were really nice to let us keep our screening because we were already booked but I don’t going to be able to screen it after us, at least not for the foreseeable future. I can’t wait to see this movie again and the fact that this might be the last time this print will be shown is nice.

.Craft: Not that we’re not showing other new Hong Kong stuff or that other stuff isn’t good but honestly, yeah, the best thing in our Hong Kong line-up is The Blade. Maybe the best in our Hong Kong line-up is Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain. That’s not a slam at the current crop, that’s like showing a Francis Ford Coppola retrospective and saying that the best film there is The Godfather. Well, of course it is.

Hendrix: Apparently, the projectionist took a look at that new print of Dragon Inn. They hadn’t done a full test of it but they said it looks really good.

Craft: All our retro Hong Kong screenings are exciting to me.

Hendrix: When I rewatched Zu to write the blurb, I was really surprised at they cover a lot of shortcomings in the special effects by really fast cutting. There’s a cut every 0.001 of a second. I’d be really curious to see how it plays on the big screen; I’ve never seen it on a big screen. I can just imagine people getting overloaded and their heads popping like light bulbs.

Nice. Would you say the Hark films are your favorite retro titles at this year’s festival?

Hendrix: For me it is, oh yeah. I mean, I love Battle Royale. I think it’s the best Japanese movie of the last ten, fifteen years or so. But I feel much more personally connected to the Tsui Hark stuff. That’s what I started out loving.

Craft: And that’s how I learned what Subway Cinema is.

Hendrix: Really?! That was the first thing you came to, our [2001] Hark retrospective?

Craft: Uh huh, uh huh, yeah. [laughs] I’ve seen the last time these films were projected.

Now that the festival is 10 years old, what films have you seen people filtering out of the theaters and being most turned onto a filmmaker by?

Craft: I can say that one of the most visible signs of our—this is a pretentious word—influence or something is Hausu. Hadn’t been heard of by anybody in years but [two years ago] we dug it up and show it. Not only have people seen it and it’s now running at the IFC Center at midnight on weekends. It’s one of those things that came from our enthusiasm for it and our audience’s enthusiasm for it. We’ve watched out stuff get picked up and that’s nice but never something that goes that far—it has a Criterion disc!

Hendrix: You’re right. That thing will not die. I was having lunch at this event thing seven or eight months ago and somebody from Janus Films, who did the theatrical releases of Hausu, told me that all they’d been doing for the last three months prior to that was trying to find another Hausu. “Find me another Hausu! Find me something we own the rights to that’s like Hausu.” And we’re like, “There’s nothing.” They’re desperate to replicate that success.

[Fellow Subway Cinema programmer] Marc [Walkow] had known that they had a master of it and it was just sitting there on the shelf. They really just didn’t know what to do with it. They really didn’t believe in the film. It had a reputation of being a really cheap, old Japanese horror movie. And we were like, “Jesus, there’s a master of this thing?! A digital master of this thing that’s just sitting there?” So we did some begging, yeah. They had it all along and didn’t know it.

Craft: One of my personal things is—I don’t know how much of an impact it’s had but if it had any impact at all, I’m really proud that at least four theaters-full of people now know who [Indonesian filmmaker] Joko Anwar is. I’m happy to show Tsui Hark films; you know, I’m happy for fans when we show those films. But that’s a known quantity; but both Kala and The Forbidden Door are a-mazing. Maybe 700 people saw it? That’s 700 Americans who would have never seen such a good film from Indonesia. Even if it’s a small impact, I’ve shared his two movies and his very existence with several hundred people.

Hendrix: Every year, we feel like there are one or two movies that we’re going to get personally connected with. Like last year, I got really invested in Jackie Chan vehicle Little Big Soldier. This movie played to an Upper West Side audience arthouse crowd and we had two sold out screenings. One of them was largely made up of Upper West Side arthouse people and they came out raving about it. That was really it. It’s got a distributor now; I’m not sure what they’re going to do with it.

It’s just this random thing. This year, I’m really invested in Ringing in Their Ears. It’s ridiculous.

Craft: I think Fish Story’s success can be attributed to us, too.

Hendrix: Oh, absolutely, 100%. Nobody knew that movie before we showed it.

The New York Asian Film Festival continues now through July 14th at the Walter Reade Theater and Japan Society. For more information, go here.

Simon Abrams is a New York-based freelance arts critic whose column Simon Says appears every Friday at PressPlay. His film reviews and features have been featured in the Village Voice, Time Out New York, Slant Magazine, The L Magazine, New York Press and Time Out Chicago. He currently writes TV criticism for The Onion AV Club and is a contributing writer at the Comics Journal. His writings on film are collected at the blog, Extended Cut.