Ze Bizzarro Psychadelic Cinema Experience. Part 1

I dig a lot of asian cinema but I kind of get bored quick. What gets released over here is a small percentage of what exists. Mostly what makes it over is genre stuff:

horror stuff (girl gets spooked and wanders about),

martial arts stuff (guy beats up guy with unusual object),

arty stuff (kids wander about melancholic for two hours and die)
gorey stuff (girl gets splattered with blood)

All this stuff is good and healthy but it gets a bit dull after a while. You need to dig deep into them kimono pockets to find the goodies. Over the past year I've seen a few brilliant ones which are interstellar and bizarro:

Death Note 1 & 2 - Is more like the old film The Sting than the Ring. Misleading title but damn fine story.

I'm a cyborg, but thats ok - Asylum romcom by the guy who did Oldboy (Chan Wook Park). Just unbelievebly ruthlessly beautiful and romantic. Its a weird kind of love story, but because its directed by Chan Wook Park, there's this feeling underneath like it going to turn nasty. It doesn't.

The Great Yokai War - Family film by the guy who did Ichi the Killer (Takashi Miike). There's kind of a menacing Jim Henson muppet show feel about this one and its probably not for everyone, but I dig it.

Now all these film are weird, wonderful, bizzaro and fresh. But they haven't got a heap of gore, horror or judo chops so you might not hear about them. A lot of directors in the east are getting bored of doing the same old genre stuff, but don't wanna lose the genre fans. So they're going bizarro and stylish and I dig it. All these films above when released in their own country were huge (like 4 weddings and a funeral huge) but they don't get a lot of foreign press, so you don't here about them much unless they make it to cannes or something.

So thats Part 1, a couple I've seen. Part 2 is a bunch I'm gonna check out.