Welcome to this week’s Subway Cinema News. First up in Asian films screening around New York City this week are four one-off events that are must-sees.

.

RED CLIFF with John Woo in person. This is a members-only event for the Asia Society, so if you’ve ever wanted to join, now’s the time. Six weeks before its theatrical release, John Woo’s massive, two-part, 148 minute period Chinese war epic is unleashed on the Asia Society screen. The screening will take place on Monday, October 12 at 6:30pm (Columbus Day!) and the tickets are free, but you have to register for them and pick them up between 5pm and 6:20pm on the day of. Limit two per member. You have to register online and the Asia Society site is almost impossible to navigate, but here’s the link they’re sending out to members even though the event isn’t listed there. Sorry, that’s the best we can do for you. And, like we said, you can join the Asia Society for only $65 and it’s tax deductible and this is going to be the best way to see RED CLIFF.

.

.

Unmissable event number 2 is a one-night-only screening of the Shaolin documentary THE REAL SHAOLIN (Tuesday, October 6 @ 8pm at the IFC Center). This long-in-the-works documentary played the Toronto International Film Festival the year before, and it follows four students (two Western and two Chinese) who undergo the martial arts training at the legendary Shaolin monastery. Trust us, it ain’t pretty. Director Alexander Sebastien Lee will be present. (buy tickets)

.

.

The third unmissable event is a screening of Takashi Miike’s amazing zombie musical HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS on Saturday, October 3 at 10pm at the 92nd Street Y Tribeca (which, confusingly, is not on 92nd Street but at 200 Hudson Street instead). The real reason to attend this screening is that Japanese punk rocker, Kiyoshiro Imawano, died in May of this year of cancer, and this movie preserves on film his amazing, gut-exploding, other-worldly and weird performance as Richard, Queen Elizabeth’s secret love child. And he also performs one of the best and funniest musical numbers ever seen in a motion picture! (buy tickets)

.

Imawano’s musical number! It’s pretty!

.

And the fourth unmissable event is the October 3 screening of CROSSROADS OF YOUTH presented by the Korea Society and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. It’s a very special screening of Korea’s oldest surviving silent film, with live musical accompaniment and a narrator. Much more information here. This is part of the New York Film Festival.

.

And speaking of the New York Film Festival, it’s in town like a rowdy drunken sailor convention with tons of new movies and retros. They’re screening Bong Joon-Ho’s completely harrowing  MOTHER in which 67-year-old actress Kim Hye-Ja plays a devoted, blue collar mother determined to prove her son is innocent of murder. If you’re just going to pick one movie to see, this is the one. Sabu’s much-acclaimed CRAB CANNERY SHIP (going by the Japanese title KANIKOSEN and one of the Village Voice’s top five picks of the fest – watch the trailer here) and the other big movie that’s getting a lot of press, Zhao Dayong’s three-hour documentary GHOST TOWN about the few remaining residents of a tiny little town in the middle of Nowheresville, China. (tickets and more info) (read Variety’s review of MOTHER)

.

Kim Hye-Ja in MOTHER.

.

The New York Film Festival is going all-out for Asian retrospectives this year. From September 26 – October 6 they’ll be presenting the academically-titled (Re)inventing China: A New Cinema for a New Society 1949 – 1966 which is a massive, twenty-film retrospective of movies from early Communist China. (Full info)

.

Then, from October 7 – 11 they’ll be doing a Guru Dutt retrospective, A Heart as (Big) as the World: the Films of Guru Dutt. Although black-and-white Indian movies may not be your cup of tea, give something by Guru Dutt a chance. Like Hollywood’s golden age studio slaves, he created a personal cinema inside a massive commercial moviemaking system. (Full info)

.

Comments (4) Oct 02 2009