Subway Cinema News

This Week: First part of this broadcast is devoted to “don’t miss opportunities” that will be leaving theaters soon. Second half belongs to just starting and ongoing series.

Catch the tail end of Kim Ki-Duk’s retrospective at the MoMA with the final screening on May 8th. Kim is a prolific control freak and visionary who writes and directs his films to perfection. His main characters traverse on the edge of society, insanity, or death while thrown into a plot of toe-curling eroticism and glorious violence.

Also at the MoMA on May 8th, director Peter Hutton unfolds Asia through his seaman perspective in two films. IMAGES OF ASIAN MUSIC is a short montage of prosaic images recorded in Southeast Asia. TWO RIVERS plays with the polarities of modern industry and nature’s irrevocable presence through the backdrop of the Hudson and the Yangtze Rivers.

The blockbuster scriptwriter, Vijay Krishna Acharya, tries on his director’s shoes for the first time in TASHAN. This Bollywood sensation has its last show on May 8th at ImaginAsian.

Wong Kar Wai directs his first English language film, MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS, starring a hot cast of Norah Jones, Jude Law, and Natalie Portman. Elizabeth (Jones) leaves New York to travel cross-country after a breakup and meets people along the way who remind her that a hopeful, open heart is better than a cynical lump of flesh.

Wong Kar-wai’s debut film AS TEARS GO BY, a gangster film meets his usual compulsions of modern angst and beauty will be going going gone after May 8 at BAM.

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Hot off the communist press: 3 films from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. DPRK’s nationalistic film ensemble will be screened at the Korea Society May 12-14. The films, HONG GIL DONG, BELLFLOWER, and MY LOOK IN THE DISTANT FUTURE were created as tributes to the republic’s social and political agenda but the unsung heroes shine in these moving portrayals.

A retrospective series of the rebellious Korean director, Lee Chang-dong, will screen May 5-12 at the Asia Society. His earliest films, GREEN FISH and PEPPERMINT CANDY criticized Korean society and politics with haunting images. OASIS, with its earnest depiction of human disability won him five awards at the Venice Film Festival. SECRET SUNSHINE, a realistic drama of a single mother filmed in an intrusive yet inviting style, won Best Actress at Cannes in 2007. He is a hotshot in Europe. Go see what all the fuss is about!

Kenji Mizoguchi’s THE STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUMS will start the Weekend Classic series of his films at the IFC May 9-11. The film is about the son of a famous Kabuki performer who rejects his family after he falls tragically in love with a woman. The consequences of his actions raise archetypal conflicts between art and real life.

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