buried treasure in a dead, but once glorious cinema

I've spent many hours of my life in old Chinatown cinemas, an insitution that died at the end of the 20th century. With great movies, cheap double bill prices, and strange snack bar food, they were exotic detours where you could feel like a stranger in a strange land and not leave your own city. I share many of the memories of that experience as Grady Hendrix, one of the founders of Subway Cinema and the New York Asian Film Fest talks about the closing of New York's last Chinatown movie house, the Music Palace:

I'll come clean: I've done shameful things in the Music Palace. I've eaten dinner, breakfast, lunch. Slept all day, dozed off for a few minutes, worked my way through a pack of cigarettes in one sitting, gotten drunk, dug through their trash, smoked dope, taken speed, had sex, argued with a cell phone user, played with a kitty, and had a party. To be fair, the sex and the dinner were both before they started turning on the lights between shows...knowing what I do now I would've held off.

Go here to read the full gallop down memory lane


Recently, in the basement of this abandoned temple of celluloid experience, over 400 films have been discovered. I am sure that there are folks out there hoping for lost martial arts treasures, but most likely, from my own past experiences rooting around in closed C-Town cinemas, they will be cheap sex flicks and weepy Taiwanese melodramas that nobody bothered to return to the homeland. Once again, Grady Hendrix reports from the scene...

Check out Grady's blog on trends and gossip in the world of Asian cinema, Kaiju Shakedown. Grady has a great sense of humour and has been hailed by Time Asia as, "The Shakespeare of the Subway Cinema movie collective." Time magazine called his scratchings, "Fabulously muscular writing, as high-octane as the films and often more artful." Witness his ferocious style of fury in his write-ups for past Subway Cinema presentations like In The Mood For Gore or their Old School Kung Fu Fest. I've selected titles that have also played Toronto's Kung Fu Fridays series. If any of these perk your interest and you live in the Toronto area, some might be making return engagements...

DEVIL FETUS; CRIPPLED AVENGERS; Sammo Hung's THE VICTIM; THRILLING BLOODY SWORD; TAOISM DRUNKARD; SHOGUN ASSASSIN; SCORCHING SUN, FIERCE WINDS, WILD FIRE;PRODIGAL SON; MR. VAMPIRE; Jet Li's MARTIAL ARTS OF SHAOLIN;MAR'S VILLA; the gloriously campy A LIFE OF NINJA; THE LEG FIGHTERS (a.k.a. INVINCIBLE KUNG FU LEGS); and ENCOUNTER OF THE SPOOKY KIND