SUNDANCE CHANNEL UNLEASHES GANGSTER GORE, VENGEFUL GHOSTS AND RUTHLESS DEMONS AS IT LAUNCHES NEW SEASON OF ASIA EXTREME™ WITH FIVE PREMIERES FROM SOUTH KOREA

Sundance Channel serves up a fresh helping of gore, violence and creepy supernatural mayhem as it launches a new season of its late-night destination Asia Extreme™ in August, showcasing the sharpest of cutting-edge Asian genre fare every Saturday night at midnight.  The season includes the U.S. television premiers of five films from South Korea: The Restless, Shadows in the Palace, Tazza: The High Rollers, Voice and The Wig. The new season of Asia Extreme premieres on August 7 at 12:00am et/pt.

In addition to their on-air presentations, the five premieres will be among the thirteen Asia Extreme titles available free from August 1- August 31 via an exclusive cable video-on-demand package.  The other titles in the package are (in alphabetical order):  Bloody Ties, Bloody Reunion, Cadaver, The Chaser, Divergence, Ichi the Killer, One Missed Call and A World Without Thieves.

Sundance Channel’s Asia Extreme premieres offer an extended dip into South Korea’s thriving and diverse genre scene, where the production values are as high as the body counts.   The season kicks off on August 7 with the crime thriller Tazza: The High Rollers, the second feature by rising director Dong-Hun Choi.  Reviewing the film for The New York Times, Matt Zoller Seitz wrote, “‘Tazza’ is a Korean word referring to a gambler at the height of his powers.  It could be applied to this film’s writer and director… Bet on Tazza to entertain; you can’t lose.”

The premieres continue with Ik-hwan Choi’s Voice (August 14), an erotically charged ghost story  set in an all-girls’ high school; Mee-jeung Kim’s Shadows in the Palace (August 21), which focuses on the court women of Korea’s Joseun Dynasty to tell a tale of murder, clandestine sex and restless spirits; Dong-oh Cho’s The Restless (August 28), an over-the-top martial arts/fantasy epic about a 10th Century demon hunter; and Shin-Yeon Won’s The Wig (September 4), a supernatural drama about a mute artist, her cancer-stricken sister and one spectacularly malevolent hairpiece.
The on-air schedule for the new season of Asia Extreme is as follows:

August 7 at 12:00am

Tazza: The High Rollers (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Dong-Hun Choi.  An unsophisticated young man (Seung-woo Cho) is drawn into the dangerous world of underground gambling after he is swindled by a group of conniving card-sharps.  Seeking recoupment and revenge, he apprentices himself to a master card player (Yun-shik Baek) and gains a second ally – and then some – in a seductive gambling pro (Hye-Suo Kim).

August 14 at 12:00am

Voice (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Ik-hwan Choi.  Promising singing student Yeong-eon (Ok-bin Kim) is mysteriously killed when she stays after school one night to practice her runs.  Trapped as a ghost within the walls of her all-girl high school, Yeong-eon reaches out to her best friend Jee-myun (Ji-hye Seo) in hopes of solving the riddle of her death, and preventing future murders.

August 21 at 12:00am

Shadows in the Palace (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Mee-jeung Kim.  Palace intrigue, murder and ghosts combine in this tale set among the court women of the Joseun Dynasty.   After a trusted maid to the royal concubine is found hanged to death, royal medic Chun-ryung (Jin-hie Park) is stunned to discover not a suicide but a murder, one that points to disturbing secrets.

August 28 at 12:00am

The Restless (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Dong-oh Cho.  In the 10th Century, Gawk Yi (Woo-sung Jung) fights underworld demons as one of the ruling dynasty’s official demon-slayers.   Poisoned by duplicitous villagers, Gawk Yi unexpectedly finds himself in Midheaven, where dead souls await reincarnation – and where a furious battle is raging between demons and Midheaven’s protectors.

September 4 at 12:00am

The Wig (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Shin-yeon Won.   Leukemia-stricken Su-hyeon (Min-seo Chae) has lost her hair to chemotherapy, and her devoted older sister Ji-hyeon (Yu Seon) gives her a luxurious black wig to boost her spirits.  Though initially unenthusiastic, Su-hyeon becomes utterly dependent on the wig, which proceeds to transform both sisters’ lives in bizarre and terrifying ways.

September 11 at 12:00am

One Missed Call – Directed by Takashi Miike.  Beloved technology turns sinister as a group of schoolgirls begin receiving mysterious cell-phone calls from the near future.  When it becomes apparent that the calls were made in the midst of extremely violent and deadly circumstances, the girls realize their days are numbered.

September 18 at 12:00am

Ichi the Killer Directed by Takashi Miike.  A scar-faced gangster (Tadanobu Asano) hunts down the mobsters who kidnapped his boss.  Eventually, his quest ends in a showdown with the mysterious Ichi (Nao Omori), a troubled young man with razor-laced boots.

September 25 at 12:00am

Cadaver – Directed by Dunyasit Niyomkul.  After dissecting the corpse of a beautiful young woman in anatomy class, six South Korean medical students begin to experience identical troubling nightmares.  As some fall victim to gruesome fates, it’s clear that this is much more than standard first-year med-school trauma.

October 2 at 12:00am

The Chaser – Directed by Hong-jin Na. Jung-ho (Kim yun-Seok), a former police detective-turned-pimp, has a problem: his women are disappearing without a trace. However, when the disreputable Jung-ho collars the obvious psychopath and turns him over to the police, law enforcement laziness and ineptitude only make matters worse, endangering additional lives.

October 9 at 12:00am

Bloody Reunion – Directed by Dae-wung Lim.  Sixteen years after graduation, a group of elementary school classmates reunite with their former teacher at her country cottage.  But the happy reunion turns sour as old grudges and hidden truths surface, and one by one friends vanish in a series of unforgettably gruesome murders.

October 16 at 12:00am

Dororo – Directed by Akihiko Shiota.  Based on a classic Japanese manga, this fantasy/horror epic follows a nameless samurai (Satoshi Tsumabuki) on a quest to reclaim his missing body parts from powerful demons and solve the riddle of his father’s betrayal.  Along the way, he meets a callow but brave young female thief (pop singer Kou Shibasaki), who decides to take up his cause in hopes of achieving her own aims.

October 23 at 12:00am

Mad Detective – Directed by Johnnie To and Wai Ka Fai.  An ex-detective (Lau Ching-Wan) with psychic abilities and a shaky grasp on reality emerges from seclusion to help solve the mystery of a cop’s disappearance.  The prime suspect: the officer’s partner.

October 30 at 12:00am

Victim – Directed by Nicky Loi.  A young actress, Ting (Pitchanart Sakakorn), gets a career boost when she begins portraying victims in police crime scene reenactments.  But when Ting is hired to play a murdered beauty queen in movie, she finds herself suffering the same torments as the real-life victim.

About Sundance Channel

Under the creative direction of Robert Redford, Sundance Channel is the television destination for independent-minded viewers seeking something different.  Bold, imaginative and uncompromising, Sundance Channel offers audiences a diverse and engaging selection of films, documentaries and original programs.  Launched in 1996, Sundance Channel is a subsidiary of Rainbow Media Holdings LLC.  Sundance Channel operates independently of the non-profit Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival, but shares the overall Sundance mission of encouraging artistic freedom of expression.  Sundance Channel’s website address is www.sundancechannel.com.

About Rainbow Media Holdings LLC

Rainbow Media Holdings LLC is a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corporation (NYSE: CVC).  Rainbow Media owns and operates some of the world’s most popular and award-winning entertainment brands, including AMC, IFC, Sundance Channel, WE tv, Wedding Central and IFC Entertainment (IFC Center, IFC Films, IFC In Theaters, IFC Midnight and IFC Productions).  Additional information about Rainbow Media’s multiplatform brands is available at www.rainbow-media.com

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PREMIERE HIGHLIGHTS: AUGUST 2010

Sunday, August 1 at 10:00pm

Max and Mary (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Adam Elliot.  Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette voice the title characters in this clay-animated feature by Elliot, the Oscar®-winning director of the animated short Harvie Krumpet.  Funny, whimsical and often dark, Max and Mary traces the pen-pal friendship of two very different people: Mary Dinkle, a lonely, chubby 8-year-old girl living in an Australian suburb; and Max Horovitz, an obese 44-year-old New Yorker with Asperger’s Syndrome living in the tumult of Manhattan.  As it chronicles the two decades of Max and Mary’s long-distance relationship, the film goes on a journey that explores friendship, autism, taxidermy, self-esteem, and the many culinary application of chocolate, among other things. Barry Humphries, aka Dame Edna Everage, is the voice of the narrator.

Thursday, August 5 at 10:00pm

Public Sex – A Love Story (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Simon Ellis.  Themes of sex, love and growing up get an envelope-pushing workout in this British ensemble comedy set in Newcastle.  A would-be journalist who has yet to land a job, Dan (Luke Treadaway) has been crashing at the flat of his obnoxious cousin (Richard Riddell) and treading water in his relationship with his girlfriend Tanya (Sammy T. Dobson).  After trading messages in an Internet chat room for so-called “doggers” — who gather in car parks for public sex, either as participants or voyeurs – Dan decides he will “research” the phenomenon for an article.  But as Dan trades suggestive emails with another self-professed dogger (Kate Heppell), he finds himself questioning if it’s really casual sex that he’s after.

Sunday, August 8 at 10:00pm

Ricky (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by François Ozon.  Ozon, the director of Under the Sand and 8 Women, again proves his versatility with this magical-realist fable about the bond between mother and child, and the knotty process of building a family.  Single mother Katie (Alexandra Lamy) works the assembly line of a cosmetics factory and lives in drab public housing with her 7-year-old daughter, the grave and adoring Lisa (Mélusine Mayanc).  A flirtation between Katie and a new co-worker, Paco (Sergí Lopez) quickly develops into a live-in relationship, followed by the birth of a son, Ricky.  But the joys of romance and new parenthood are soon eclipsed by the stresses of daily life – and Ricky, it turns out, is a child who demands particular care.  Adapted from “Moth,” a short story by Rose Tremain.

Tuesday, August 10 at 10:00pm

Police, Adjective (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Corneliu Poromboiu.  Rising young Romanian filmmaker Poromboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest) won two prizes at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and some of the year’s most glowing reviews for his second feature, a pitch-black comedy-cum-policier.  Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is a young undercover cop staking out a teenager accused of selling hash to classmates.  Pressured to arrest a young man he considers merely irresponsible, Cristi must either allow the arrest to be a burden on his conscience, or face censure by his exacting superior (Vlad Ivanov, 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days), for whom the word “conscience” has an entirely different meaning.

All Times Listed are Eastern/Pacific.

DOCDAY HIGHLIGHTS: AUGUST 2010

Monday, August 2

8:00pm

Nick Nolte – No Exit (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Tom Thurman.  Thurman constructs a deliciously unconventional profile for an unconventional subject, the actor Nick Nolte.  Vaguely disheveled in baggy clothes, Nolte answers questions posed by a polite yet dogged interviewer – Nolte again, professional and dapper in a cream-colored suit.  As the two Noltes discusses his life, films and recent notoriety, the film weaves in comments by friends and colleagues, including actor/director Ben Stiller; directors Alan Rudolph and Paul Mazursky; and actors Jacqueline Bisset, Rosanna Arquette and Powers Boothe.

Monday, August 9

8:00pm

Beautiful Losers (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Aaron Rose.   Art curator/writer Rose delivers an appealing, intimate group portrait of the artistic cohort who found a home at a tiny Manhattan storefront gallery in the early 1990s.  Based in the DIY subcultures of punk, hip-hop, graffiti, skateboarding and surfing, Shepard Fairey, Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Ed Templeton, Margaret Kilgallen and others developed their craft outside the mainstream art establishment.  Eventually, their work began to ripple out into the larger culture and when the commercial establishment came knocking, they answered — in their own ways.

Monday, August 16

8:00pm

Bulletproof Salesman (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker.  A compelling character study and a canny look at the infrastructure of war, Bulletproof Salesman follows the path of German salesman Fidelis Cloer, whose product is armored vehicles.  Like any successful seller, Fidelis follows simple, sensible rules for good client relations: maintain eye contact with the customer, don’t denigrate your competitors but rather demonstrate your product’s superiority, and so on.  But Fidelis’ sales turf is the war zone, and with the Iraq invasion of 2003, he has been busier than ever, even as the risks to prospective clients, and himself, have escalated.

Monday, August 23

8:00pm

Stolen Land (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Margarita Martinez and Miguel Salazar. In southern Colombia, a community of indigenous Indians, the Nasas, has launched a daring campaign to reclaim the fertile farming land stolen from their ancestors.  Their charismatic leader is Lucho Acosta, 39, an imposing tactician descended from Indian warriors.  In a land where people have known nothing but war and violence, Lucho stakes his plan on peaceful resistance.  But facing nearly insurmountable odds, Lucho’s beliefs are tested to their very core — and the future of the Nasas hangs in the balance.

Monday, August 30

8:00pm

Kassim The Dream (U.S. Television Premiere) – Directed by Kief Davidson.  The powerful, poignant story of Kassim “The Dream” Ouma, once a terrorized child solider in Uganda’s National Rebel Army and now a world champion boxer living in the United States.  Though his demeanor is ebullient, Kassim has hardly banished the memory of the horror he lived daily in Uganda; boxing is his therapy.  Kassim the Dream follows this thoughtful, complicated young man as he pursues two difficult, risky goals: pursuing a championship title in a new, heavier weight class; and returning to Uganda, where he could face execution as an army deserter.

All Times Listed are Eastern/Pacific.

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PROGRAMMING HIGHLIGHTS: AUGUST 2010

SERIES

Fridays at 9:00pm, May 21 – September 3

“Shameless” Season 6 (U.S. Television Premiere) – Sundance Channel premieres four new episodes of this BAFTA Award-winning British series about the anarchic Gallagher clan of Manchester’s working class Chatsworth Estates.  Based on the childhood of creator Paul Abbott (“Cracker”), “Shameless” stars David Threlfall as ne’er-do-well paterfamilias, Frank Gallagher.  New episodes of “Shameless” premiere as part of Sundance Channel’s Friday night comedy block, “Knock Knock,” at 9:00pm.

Wednesdays at 10:00pm, June 30 – August 18

“Man Shops Globe” Season 2 (Original Production/U.S. Television Premiere) – Sundance Channel wraps up the second season of international treasure hunting with Keith Johnson, buyer-at-large for specialty retailer Anthropologie.  Through August 18, new episodes of “Man Shops Globe” premiere every Wednesday night at 10:00pm, with additional airings on Saturdays at 8:30pm and Sundays at 1:00pm.  See attached release.

Note: A marathon of the full eight-episode Season 2 airs on August 22, from 1:30 – 5:30pm.

SPECIAL PROGRAMMING

Thursdays at 8:00pm, August 5 – August 19

Buñuel Fest – Sundance Channel celebrates the Spanish master of subversion, eroticism and satire Luis Buñuel with a mini-festival airing the first three Thursdays in August.  The series begins with 1964’s The Diary of a Chambermaid, starring the irresistible Jeanne Moreau as a Parisian domestic who discovers a hotbed of kinky sexuality and dubious morality at a country estate in 1930s France.  The following week brings the Oscar®-winning The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, a witty tour-de-force about an upper-class sextet that sits down to dinner but never eats; the superb ensemble includes Fernando Rey, Stéphane Audrane, Delphine Seyrig and Bulle Ogier.  The festival closes out with Buñuel’s final film, That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), a brilliant exploration of the darker side of desire.  Bunuel mainstay Fernando Rey stars as an urbane widower tortured by his lust for a young Spanish girl, who is portrayed by two actresses very different in looks, demeanor and even nationality: Carole Bouquet (French) and Angela Molina (Spanish).

The schedule for Sundance Channel’s Buñuel Fest is as follows:

August 5: Diary of a Chambermaid

August 12: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

August 19: That Obscure Object of Desire

WEEKLY DESTINATIONS

Saturdays at 12:00am

Asia Extreme™ (Season Premiere) – Sundance Channel launches a new season of its late-night destination, featuring the sharpest of cutting-edge genre films from Asia.  See attached release.

The August lineup for Asia Extreme is as follows:

August 7: Tazza: The High Rollers (U.S. Television Premiere)

August 14: Voice (U.S. Television Premiere)

August 21: Shadows in the Palace (U.S. Television Premiere)

August 28: The Restless (U.S. Television Premiere)

Fridays at 9:00pm

“Knock Knock” – Sundance Channel’s primetime destination is dedicated to the fine art of making people laugh.  Each edition of “Knock Knock” leads off with an hour of made-for-television comedy, followed by a feature film.

The August lineup for “Knock Knock” is as follows:

August 6

9:00pm: “Shameless” Season 6, Episode 12 (U.S. Television Premiere)

10:00pm: Milwaukee, Minnesota

August 13

9:00pm: “Shameless” Season 6, Episode 13 (U.S. Television Premiere)

10:00pm: Easy

August 20

9:00pm: “Shameless” Season 6, Episode 14 (U.S. Television Premiere)

9:00pm:  Approaching Union Square

August 27

9:00pm: “Shameless” Season 6, Episode 15 (U.S. Television Premiere)

10:00pm: Hotel Very Welcome

All Times Listed are Eastern/Pacific.

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