January 6 - January 13, 2005

COMING SOON - THEATRICAL RELEASES
1/12 - MEN SUDDENLY IN BLACK
A one-off showing of the clever Hong Kong sex comedy action parody at Cinema Village.

1/21 - BEAUTIFUL BOXER
The hit Thai movie about a real-life transsexual kickboxing champion.

1/21 - ARAKIMENTARI
A documentary about Japan's famed photographer/pervert Nobuyoshi Araki at the ImaginAsian.

1/28 - NOBODY KNOWS
Japan's feature that's been sweeping international festivals comes to the US.

2/4 - OLD BOY
Cannes Grand Prix winner and critical darling gets a US release.

2/11 - BRIDE AND PREJUDICE
The director of BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM directs a Bollywood version of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."

2/11 - ONG BAK: MUAY THAI WARRIOR
The title's too long, but who cares? The Thai action flick that you're dying to see. Trust us: it's worth it.

2/18 - SKY BLUE
Theatrical release for the animated Korean sci fi epic.

2/18 - BAD GUY
A Kim Ki-Duk feature from last year, at Cinema Village. In Disturb-o-Rama.

3/3 - SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE
A three day screening of Park Chan-Wook's sophomore film at BAM.

3/18 - STEAMBOY
From the director of AKIRA comes this steampunk adventure flick.

4/20 - SAVE THE GREEN PLANET
The cracked Korean masterpiece at Film Forum. The most violent anti-violence movie ever made!

IN GENERAL RELEASE
HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (2004, China, 119 minutes)
Zhang Yimou's visually spectacular martial arts movie is much more of a straight-forward action flick than his knotty, complex HERO. It's pretty dazzling, but it's also especially notable for the sweaty-palmed "will they or won't they" sexual tension between Zhang Ziyi and Takeshi Kaneshiro. Oh, and Andy Lau is there playing a tree stump that cries.
Read reviews:
http://www.mrqe.com/lookup?isindex=house+of+flying+daggers

NOW PLAYING
American Museum of the Moving Image
HUNTER AND THE HUNTED (2003, Japan, 110 minutes)
Friday, January 7 @ 7:30PM
Directorial debut by Izuru Narushima is a slow, funny, Ozu-paced cops and robbers flick. A small town cop (Koji Yakusho, DOPPLEGANGER) and a cat burglar match wits. Variety calls it "lovingly and leisurely observed" and "haunting". I'll stop now before I sound like a publicity shill.
more info:
http://www.cinemavillage.com/chc/cv/show_movie.asp?movieid=381


HERO (2002, China, 96 minutes)
Saturday, January 8 @ 4:30PM
The self-stroking continues as the New York Film Critics Circle celebrates their award winners and film picks of the past at the AMMI. This time they say that HERO with Christopher Doyle gets the "Best Cinematography" award. And now, Chris Doyle has really arrived because his next movie is THE WHITE PRINCESS...a Merchant-Ivory film! Yikes. So go see HERO on the big screen instead.

Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS
Jan. 5 - 13, daily @ 4:30PM, 7PM, 9:45PM; Friday - Sunday @ 2PM
Zhang Yimou's multi-colored, flying, fighting, party movie goes to exotic Brooklyn for several screenings in the high art comfort of BAM.
read a review:
http://www.mrqe.com/lookup?isindex=house+of+flying+daggers

Cinema Village
A TALE OF TWO SISTERS
Daily @ 10PM
Everyone's calling this a "horror movie" but don't be fooled. Director Kim Ji-Won (THE FOUL KING, THE QUIET FAMILY) takes all the cliches of Asian horror (the dead wet girls, the weird noises, the burlap bags with something bloody inside, the heavy art direction) and actually says something with them. The movie itself sounds (and looks) like a Bavarian fairy tale (and it's based on a Korean folktale). Two little girls are sent into the woods to live with their wicked stepmother, and things get very weird, very fast. But Director Kim is not trying to scare you with this flick, he's trying to turn your heart inside out. Absolutely wrenching.
read reviews:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10004048-tale_of_two_sisters/
for more info:
http://films.tartanfilmsusa.com/ataleoftwosisters

Film Forum
BORN INTO BROTHELS (USA, 2004)
A documentary about kids growing up in the Calcutta brothels, this film is saved from a myriad of sins by the fact that the director gave cameras to the kids and let them shoot photos of their own lives. Sure - they'd probably be better off with full tuition to a boarding school, but apparently they love it and some of them are even ace photographers.
read reviews:
http://www.mrqe.com/lookup?isindex=born+into+brothels

ImaginAsian Theater
(239 East 59th Street, btwn 2nd and 3rd Avenues)
RAINCOAT (2004, India, 120 minutes)
Aishwarya Rai (of recent "60 Minutes" fame) and Ajay Devgan (COMPANY, HUM DIL DE CHUKE SANAM) star in the latest film by Rituparno Ghosh (CHOKER BALI) in this depressing drama that's already being hailed as one of the best Indian films of the year. Ajay Devgan plays a failed businessman who goes back to his hometown to beg ex-classmates for money. While there he looks up with high school sweetheart, Aishwarya Rai, and finds that she's a ghost of her former self. The two spend an afternoon lying about how well they're doing and picking at now-painful memories.
read a review:
http://planetbollywood.com/Film/Raincoat/

Loew’s State
AB TUMHARE HAWALE WATAN SATHIYO (India, 2004)
The reviews call it "irritating" and "jingoistic" but it's a Bobby Deol movie, so what do you expect? It's an Indo-Pak relations movie with Akshay Kumar and icon, Amitabh Bachchan. Love during wartime. Terrorism. Two officers in love with the same woman. Even its fans, though, are turned off by its Pak-bashing. From the team that brought the world GADAR.Read a review:
http://www.apunkachoice.com/scoop/bollywood/20041224-2.html
Or another one:
http://www.indiafm.com/reviews/04/athws/index.shtml

DIL MAANGE MORE (India, 2004)
A romantic comedy from India, this flick got delayed for a while due to legal trouble but now it sneaks out onto screens. It's been described as a pleasant way to pass two hours (what? Is this a short film?) and that's about it.
Read reviews:
http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Dil_Maange_More-67781-1.html

SWADES (India, 2004, 180 minutes)
One of this year's much-anticipated Bollywood blockbusters. From the director of LAGAAN and with music by the incomparable A.R. Rahman, this flick finds a NASA engineer (played by Shah Rukh Khan) returning to his hometown in India to find his childhood nanny. Unfortunately, the musical numbers are thin on the ground, and the story is soooo long and soooo boring that there's not much to like. Reminiscent of the India's nationalist cinema of the 1970's. Not reminiscent of anything an audience wants to watch.
Read a review:
http://www.indiafm.com/reviews/04/swades/index.shtml

Museum of Modern Art
They're back! MOMA has come back from Australia (or was it Queens?) and they're now in Manhattan, in a beautiful new building, and charging about $5000 per ticket to get in their front doors. Oh well - that's the way life is: the pretty people always get more money. To celebrate their new HQ, Team MOMA - World Art Police, are showing a bunch of movies. Here's what's coming:

NEW TALES OF THE TAIRA CLAN (Japan, 1955, 107 minutes)
Wednesday, January 5 @ 6PM
Sunday, January 9 @ 2:30PM
Kenji Mizoguchi's samurai movie slashes its way into MOMA in a newly restored print.

I'M BOBBY (USA, 2004, 32 minutes)
Wednesday, January 5 @ 7:30
Saturday, January 8 @ 2:30
An animated send-up/homage to Raj Kapoor's evergreen Bollywood classic, BOBBY. Featuring "nonprofessional child actors who wear false moustaches and lip-synch Kapoor dialogue) and imaginative animated sequences." Hmmm...who has a moustache in BOBBY besides the fathers? The catalogue entry also refers to BOBBY as "Bollywood's scandalous answer to ROMEO AND JULIET." Um, scandalous to whom? Okay, so the lead actor wears jump suits - I thought we were mature and didn't think of that as scandalous anymore? Do yourself a favor, there's a great DVD of BOBBY out there that's easily accessible. Buy it, watch it, and be "scandalized" all over again.

NOBODY KNOWS (2004, Japan, 141 minutes)
Thursday, January 6 @ 8:30PM
Kore-eda directs this story about four kids, abandoned by their mother in an apartment in the city. Child actor Yuya Yagira won Best Actor at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for his performance here, and critics have been raving about this movie the way they tend to rave.

YOKO ONO: NEW WORK
Friday, January 14 @ 8PM
Yoko Ono is back to "break down traditional boundaries and fracture entrenched narrative structures." This time she's experimenting with "digital" technology in her latest work called ONOCHORD. Whoa - a performance artist with a digital video camera? I've never heard of such a thing! Unique! Smashing!

Walter Reade Theater
BROTHER (Japan, 2000)
Thursday, January 6 @ 7:30PMTakeshi Kitano's gangster flick is set in LA and features Omar Epps. Kitano's hangdog gangster has fled to the US. Mayhem ensues. For some perverse reason this is in the Film Society of Lincoln Center's "Young Friends of Film" Series. Suitable for all ages!
Read reviews:
http://www.mrqe.com/lookup?%5eBrother+(2000)