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Rajnikanth is….

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UPCOMING MOVIES

Series Three: Documentaries

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TUESDAY, September 14 @ 7pm
TURN IT UP TO 11 (2009, 93 minutes, New York Premiere)
Winner of four major film awards, and the documentary that spawned the Korean catch phrase, “I don’t think we’re gonna make it,” TURN IT UP TO 11 is a rambunctious rock n’roll odyssey about Incheon’s unlikeliest talent incubator: Ruby Salon. A tiny, hole-in-the-wall club founded by aging punk Lee Kyou-Young, who moved back home to Incheon after accidentally getting his girlfriend pregnant, Ruby Salon is the seed that sprouts two bands: Galaxy Express, a tight, ambitious outfit who dream of stardom; and Tobacco Juice, a band whose members are so lazy they can’t even be bothered to show up for their own gigs. As one band goes up, and the other goes down, this slacker doc follows them to shows, bars, massive concerts, antagonistic rehearsals and empty clubs in the best movie ever made about the Korean music scene.

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Turn it Up to 11

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TUESDAY, September 28 @ 7pm
DANCE OF TIME (2009, 92 minutes, New York Premiere)
Song Il-Gon is the director of such classic Korean arthouse films as FEATHER IN THE WIND and the one-take-wonder, THE MAGICIANS, and here he turns his attention to a documentary, directing a relaxed, sun-soaked, lighthearted ode to love, dance, music, Santeria and Cuba. Starting at the turn of the century, DANCE OF TIME follows Cuba’s tiny community of Koreans from their accidental immigration to the present, along the way surviving wars, revolutions, and tumultuous romances. A little-known part of Cuba, these Koreans have blossomed into a vital part of the island’s culture and almost no one has heard of them. This slick, technically accomplished documentary, throbbing with music, takes care of that problem.

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Dance of Time

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TUESDAY, October 12 @ 7pm
GRANDMOTHER’S FLOWER (2008, 89 minutes)
It’s one of the most astonishing documentaries about modern day Korea ever made. Director Mun Jeong-Hyun is pressured into returning to his hometown to make a documentary about his grandmother. What starts as the most banal motion picture ever made becomes traumatic when he begins to pull on the threads of his family history, and everything unravels. Ultimately lifting the lid off his peaceful hometown of Naju, he reveals a hair raising history of conflict between intellectual left wingers and working class right wingers who have been at each others’ throats since the Japanese occupation. It begins with torture, persecution and secret executions and ends with self-mutilation, decades of discrimination, threats against the filmmaker, and a family exiled over three countries. A searing look at what history has done to the Korean people, this is the kind of documentary that keeps upping the ante, finding new realms of pain and suffering to inflict as history has its way with its victims.

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Grandmother’s Flower

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SPECIAL HALLOWEEN SCREENING!!!

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TUESDAY, October 31 @ 4pm
GHOST aka BE WITH ME (2010, 100 minutes, US Premiere)
Definitely not a documentary. Every summer it’s horror movie time in Korea, but this year, BE WITH ME captured attention not by scaring the pants off its audience, but by offering a fresh take on the omnibus ghost film by some of Korea’s hottest young directors who take the traditional horror movie in a funnier, more experimental and more moving direction. These three stories about ghosts star a cast of some of the best young actors in Korea including Kim Kkot-Bi (BREATHLESS) and Kim Ye-Ri (PAJU) and they center around the loneliness of the dead. From the tale of  two best friends (and the boy who got one of them pregnant) competing for a single slot at a top college, to the story of a boy branded as a loser because he sees dead people, this is one of the freshest takes on the genre to come along in years.

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Ghost

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The IFC Center’s Ozu retro continues with 11am screenings Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the 1951 melodrama, EARLY SUMMER. (tickets and showtimes)

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Acclaimed Bollywood movie, PEEPLI LIVE, is still playing up at Big Cinemas in Manhattan. The Village Voice raves, the LA Times raves and the Hollywood Reporter does too. Produced by Bollywood superstar, Aamir Khan, it’s probably the best-reviewed movie to play at the Big Cinemas all year. (tickets and showtimes)

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And when it’s not playing, Big Cinemas is screening AASHAYIEN, starring John Abraham as a dude who wins a ton of money, announces he’s marrying his girlfriend and then collapses from…CANCER!!! Like most motion picture characters diagnosed with a terminal disease, he tries to make everyone’s lives happier. Those with weak stomachs should avoid it. (read a review) (tickets and showtimes)

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Bruce “Driving Miss Daisy” Beresford directed the new film, MAO’S LAST DANCER, about a Chinese dissident ballet dancer trying to follow his art during the Cultural Revolution. Joan Chen, Kyle MacLachlan and Bruce Greenwood also star. It’s the twelfth highest grossing Australian movie of all time. (read the reviews) (now playing all over town)

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On Tuesday, August 24 @ 7pm, the Korean Cultural Service is screening not one but TWO free movies at the Tribeca Cinemas. Both are made-for-tv movies and each runs about an hour. The first is the sexy comedy, A LITTLE NAUGHTY ROMANCE OF OURS, starring the king of television romance, Lee Seon-Gyun. Then, it’s gangsters vs. ghosts in the horror-comedy, THE SCARY ONE, THE GHOST AND I, starring character actor Lee Won-Jong, who you’ve seen in a million movies before. (full details)

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Acclaimed Bollywood movie, PEEPLI LIVE, is still playing up at Big Cinemas in Manhattan. The Village Voice raves, the LA Times raves and the Hollywood Reporter does too. Produced by Bollywood superstar, Aamir Khan, it’s probably the best-reviewed movie to play at the Big Cinemas all year. (tickets and showtimes)

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Also playing at Big Cinemas, whenever PEEPLI LIVE isn’t, is HIDING DIVYA, a South Asian drama about mental illness, set in New Jersey and originally shot way back in 2006. Reviews haven’t been kind. (tickets and showtimes)

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The very stodgy animated film, TALES FROM EARTHSEA, is still plodding away down at the Angelika. This blog is so angry about this film because there are so many better movies that could use the screen space.

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Bruce “Driving Miss Daisy” Beresford directed the new film, MAO’S LAST DANCER, about a Chinese dissident ballet dancer trying to follow his art during the Cultural Revolution. Joan Chen, Kyle MacLachlan and Bruce Greenwood also star. It’s the twelfth highest grossing Australian movie of all time. (read the reviews) (now playing at the Kew Garden Cinemas, Landmark Sunshine and the Paris Theater)

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Hey, that’s Jet Li actually playing an actual character in THE EXPENDABLES. Too bad the action is shot and edited really poorly, because the remarkable Corey Yuen was brought in just to choreograph the Jet-ster’s big fight scene.

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“They’re only giving one award for

‘Best Over-Actor’ in this movie. You

gonna let me take that from you, little girl?”
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John Woo’s delirious FACE/OFF is screening at midnights this weekend at the IFC Center. Come on, you know you want to see it – two of cinema’s biggest hams in an action movie that redefines “over the top.” This and CON AIR are in a league of their own. (tickets and showtimes)

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Whenever FACE/OFF is mentioned, you have to

show the inside of Nic Cage’s gun box in the film.

It’s the law.

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The IFC Center’s Ozu retro continues with 11am Fri, Sat and Sun screenings of A HEN IN THE WIND, a straight-up melodrama about a soldier who returns from the big war to discover his wife has turned to *choke* *gasp* prostitution! (tickets and showtimes)

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And this weekend marks the beginning of a run of Lou Ye’s SPRING FEVER, a drama about a married man’s infidelity with his male lover boy. Lou’s the director of the astonishing PURPLE BUTTERFLY and SUZHOU RIVER and although this movie doesn’t live up to those previous works, it’s still a worthwhile drama about modern day China. (tickets and showtimes)

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And don’t miss SUMMER WARS, screening August 28 and 29 at the IFC Center.

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The show is only one hour long, and so KBS America has given permission for a second one of the KBS Drama Specials to be aired, this one starring Lee Won-Jong, the incredibly unattractive character actor from films like ATTACK THE GAS STATION, KICK THE MOON, DASEPO NAUGHTY GIRLS and NOWHERE TO HIDE amongst others. The show is one hour, and it’s a comedy horror called THE SCARY ONE, THE GHOST AND I in which Lee Won-Jong plays a bone-smashing gangster whose crew is haunted by a female ghost (Kim Min-Ji of BOYS OVER FLOWERS) who won’t stop bugging them. Finally, he breaks down and hires an exorcist in a desperate attempt to make her restless spirit piss off.

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Surely you recognize the handsome and

clever Lee Won-Jong?

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This double feature screening is free, and it starts at 7pm on Tuesday, August 24 at the Tribeca Cinemas. Seating is first come, first served and the doors open around 6:30pm. (More details)

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Parents be warned! The faux-Miyazaki movie, TALES FROM EARTHSEA, is screening at the Angelika this week. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki’s son, not only did dad blast his son’s movie, and not only did Earthsea creator, Ursula K. LeGuin, disavow the movie, but it’s really, really boring.

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On Saturday, August 14 from 6 – 8pm, stop by the Giant Robot store (9th street between 1st Avenue and Avenue A) for the DVD launch party of the indie stunner, CHILDREN OF INVENTION. The director, producer, and the actors (including the kid who plays the little girl) will all be there signing DVDs and chatting. (more info, just scroll down)

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It’s a week away, but don’t miss SUMMER WARS at the IFC Center!

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Acclaimed Bollywood movie, PEEPLI LIVE, opens up at Big Cinemas in Manhattan this Friday, August 13. The Village Voice raves, the LA Times raves and the Hollywood Reporter does too. Produced by Bollywood superstar, Aamir Khan, it’s probably the best-reviewed movies to play at the Big Cinemas all year.

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“Then came Mamoru Hosoda’s 2006 version of this shopworn story. The original director of Hayao Miyazaki’s film, HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE (2004), Hosoda was fired from that project by Miyazaki himself and THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME (2006) was his attempt to put his career back together. Hosoda didn’t end the movie with the lead character weeping and mind-wiped. Instead, the time traveler tells her that he’ll be in the future, waiting for her to arrive. Suddenly, the future is something to be embraced, to be rushed towards. The movie became a huge hit, beating out Miyazaki’s stodgy wallow in the pre-industrial past, TALES FROM EARTHSEA (2006), at the box office.

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In 2009, Hosoda secured his status as the man who drove a stake through Miyazaki’s grumpy old heart with SUMMER WARS, the most internet-friendly movie since Shunji Iwai’s ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU. An animated epic, it tells the tale of a young nerdling pretending to be the boyfriend of a schoolmate on her summer trip to her aging grandmother’s house. When an online social networking community known as Oz gets attacked by a piece of sentient malware that threatens to deliver a denial of service attack to the entire world, her massive extended family unites to restore peace to cyberspace. Hosoda goes out of his way to make the point that the internet, TV and cell phones are all part of a technological continuum that started with letters and books and whose goal is to form networks, to build communities and to erase the distance between individuals. The hero of Hosoda’s film isn’t the main character, but the network of people around him, his friends, his family, and even fellow account holders he’s never met.”

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It’s one of the best animated films to come along in ages, and a perfect movie to watch in these hazy, lazy dog days of summer, full of hot afternoons, humming servers and young love, with production design inspired by Superflat pioneer Takashi Murakami.

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Tickets and showtimes – it’s only screening twice so get on down there!

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Watch the trailer!

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On Tuesday, August 10 @ 7pm, the Korean Cultural Service is hosting a free screening of the girl power, ultra-slappy movie, PUNCH STRIKE down at the Tribeca Cinemas. One of the few Korean movies with a female director, it’s a “down with teachers” rabble rousing comedy set in a girls’ high school. (full details)

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Glory be! This weekend, August 7 & 8, starting at noon, Anthology Film Archives is showing Masaki Kobayashi’s HUMAN CONDITION TRILOGY in all its splendor. One of the great film trilogies of all time, and one of cinema’s true masterpieces, Director Kobayashi’s three-part story of one soldier’s life during World War II, is a life long dream fulfilled by the director who wanted to capture the dehumanizing aspects of war during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. The silver screen can hardly hold the scope, length, and the horrible visual splendors of war with cloudscapes towering over the black and white shadows of the countryside. (see the schedule) (read an essay about the film by Grady Hendrix)

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More Japanese masterpieces in IFC’s Ozu series, with THERE WAS A FATHER (1942) screening Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 11am. (more info)

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Big Cinemas (the old ImaginAsian on the Upper East Side) is showing Bollywood film, AISHA, which is the Bolly-adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. (schedule & tickets)

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Next week, on Saturday, August 14 from 6 – 8pm, stop by the Giant Robot store (9th street between 1st Avenue and Avenue A) for the DVD launch party of the indie stunner, CHILDREN OF INVENTION. The director, producer, and the actors (including the kid who plays the little girl) will all be there signing DVDs and chatting.

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So the Asian American International Film Festival is wrapping up. It seems that on 7/23 it’ll move its venue out to “Queens” and be screening films like WO AI NI MOMMY, UNTOLD STORIES (not that UNTOLD STORY!) and THE MOUNTAIN THIEF. Where in Queens? Previously we didn’t know but an intrepid commenter found out it’s at the Flushing Library. He reveals the full location in the comments section. And for more info on the fest, here’s their official website .

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Girl by Girl: baseball bats and toilet paper.

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On Tuesday, July 27 @ 7pm, the Korean TV movie, GIRL BY GIRL, will be having a free screening at the Tribeca Cinemas. Korean TV is way more famous around the world than Korean movies, and here’s your chance to see a hard-punching, teen comedy featuring a knockout performance by Kwak Ji-Min (star of Kim Ki-Duk’s SAMARITAN GIRL). (more info)

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Maggie Cheung looking radiant

in Center Stage.

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Anthology Film Archives is featuring a rare screening of two Asian movies as part of their Anti-Biopic series. The first is Paul Shrader’s MISHIMA, a stylish and abstract biography of the Japanese author-turned-bodybuilder-turned-revolutionary-suicide-stabber. But even better, they’re screening Stanley Kwan’s shimmering, luminous CENTER STAGE, starring Maggie Cheung as the suicidally depressed silent film actress, Ruan Ling-yu. If you’ve never seen it before, you need to see it now. CENTER STAGE screens Sunday, July 25 @ 3:30pm and Thursday, July 29 @ 9pm. (listings)

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TIRADOR (aka SLINGSHOT) is an earlier film by prolific Philippino filmmaker, Brillante Mendoza, and it’s one of his best. A free-form NASHVILLE of a movie about low life thugs and criminals in a Manila slum instead of about country music, it features some scenes that feel so real you’ll wonder how he shot them. Add in the fact that it takes place in a slum that feels like something out of BLADE RUNNER and you’ve got a hell of a film on your hands. It’s screening this weekend at the Indiehouse Theater on 44th Street. (schedule and showtimes) (read a review)

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An action scene from Tales of Earthsea.

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The New York International Children’s Film Festival is screening Hayao Miyazaki’s TALES FROM EARTHSEA on Sunday, August 1. It’s a DOA animated film produced by Miyazaki and directed by his son, Goro Miyazaki, based on Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea books. And, in case you were wondering, LeGuin doesn’t seem to like this big screen version of her books, either. (showtimes) (read a review)

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The IFC Center is also hosting a series of films by Yasujiro Ozu, Japan’s master filmmaker whose quiet portraits of everyday life have made him a legend. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday July 23, 24 and 25 at 11am and 12:25pm they’re screening Ozu’s second sound film, a satire called WHAT DID THE LADY FORGET? And on Friday, Saturday and Sunday July 30, 31 and August 1, they’re screening BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF THE TODA FAMILY at 11am.

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