January 24 – 31, 2008
Welcome to Subway Cinema News 2008! Only the second update, but it comes exactly one week after the first update! We’re on time! So far so good.
COMING SOON
February 2 – 10 sees and Olivier Assayas retrospective at the Anthology Film Archives, featuring his movie with Maggie Cheung, IRMA VEP, and his terrific documentary about Hou Hsiao-hsien, HHH: A PORTRAIT OF HOU HSIAO-HSIEN.
February 29th the amazing, the inimitable, the unforgettable FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT appears at the ImaginAsian and it’ll run in repertory with its director’s previous movie, A TASTE OF TEA. You will never experience joy in a theater the way you will during A TASTE OF TEA and FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT. Weird, surreal, hopeful, disjointed, bizarre...treat yourself to something different.
NOW SHOWING
Cinema Village
SUMMER PALACE (China, 2007, 104 minutes)
Daily @ 1:40pm, 4:25pm, 7:10pm, 9:55pm
Lou Ye’s lush flick about a young woman moving to the big city and falling in love is set against the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 earned the acclaimed director a five year ban from filmmaking. Was it worth it? See the film and decide for yourself. Lou’s previous films include the Zhang Ziyi spy film, PURPLE BUTTERFLY and the elliptical VERTIGO-esque SUZHOU RIVER.
read reviews:
http://www.mrqe.com/lookup?summer+palace
LOST IN BEIJING (China, 2007, 112 minutes)
Starts Friday, January 25
This black comic duel between two married couples who are fighting over the same baby stars classic Chinese diva, Elaine Jin, Hong Kong firebrand Tony Leung Kar-fai (ELECTION) and up and coming starlette Fan Bingbing, in a movie that’s cracking AIDS jokes one minute and threatening to drop a baby out a window the next. It might be too strong for American audiences, but critics have loved it around the world, and it was a major hit in China with its bare-knuckled depiction of modern day life in Beijing. Oh, and the producer is being brought up on criminal charges and the movie has been banned in China for showing Chinese people in too negative a light.
read a review:
http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=festivals&jump=review&reviewid=VE1117932766&cs=1
IFC Center
STILL LIFE (China, 2007, 108 mintues)
Daily shows every hour pretty much
Jia Zhangke is not a director you can easily warm to. Chilly, distant, slow and methodical his movies often feel more like abstractions than movies and more like thesis statements than stories. But STILL LIFE has won over even the most diehard Jia Zhangke haters. Taking place in a city that’s being demolished for scrap after it was abandoned for the massive Three Gorges dam-building project, a woman arrives looking for her husband who left her. Beautiful and surreal with a slight touch of sci-fi, it’s impossible to describe this movie. Just give yourself over to it and you’ll most likely come out happy. Plus, the critics lurve it!
read reviews:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/still_life/
The ImaginAsian
GAGMAN (Korea, 1988, 118 minutes)
Thursday, January 24 @ 6:30pm
This came out of nowhere and our best guess is that it has English subtitles since the press release was in English, but you shouldn’t miss it if you get a chance. If you saw Lee Myung-Se’s NOWHERE TO HIDE or DUELIST then you’ll want to check out GAGMAN, his very first film. Starring Ahn Sung-Ki as a stand-up comic who wants to be a director, the movie follows he and his fried as they team up with an out-of-work actress to rob a few banks to “research” their roles. Incredibly innovative and a movie you most likely won’t ever see on the big screen anywhere else.
read a review:
http://www.beyondhollywood.com/gagman-1989-movie-review/
SUNDAY (India, 2008, 140 minutes)
Starts Friday, January 24th
Daily shows @ 1pm, 4pm, 7pm, 10pm
Ajay Devgan (COMPANY) stars as a cop whose girlfriend wakes up next to a dead body with no memory of what happened to her the day before. A varied assortment of people want to kill her or arrest her and Ajay has to figure out if she’s innocent of murder. And – oh, by the way – it’s a comedy. With Dracula in it. And dancing.
watch the totally baffling trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBQz6Vr_z1A
official site:
http://sunday.erosentertainment.com/
Japan Society
NO BORDERS, NO LIMITS: 1960’s Nikkatsu Action Cinema
This retrospective screens a film a month from the Nikkatsu vaults and it’s not to be missed. The movies have had subtitles made by Subway Cinema’s very own Marc Walkow who will painstakingly run them BY HAND during the screening (we whipped him until he got the timing perfect). This is the genius period of Nikkatsu when they were turning out stylish, jet set, visually jaw-dropping films from directors like Suzuki Seijun (PRINCESS RACCOON) and you really shouldn’t miss this opportunity to see these flicks.
GANGSTER VIP (Japan, 1968, 93 minutes)
Friday, Feb. 22 @ 7:30pm
Tetsuya Watari from Suzuki Seijun’s eye-popping TOKYO DRIFTER stars in this downbeat, “mature” Nikkatsu Action flick. Watari plays a yakuza who comes out of prison where he’s been doing time for stabbing a guy and rather than embrace his old gang buddies he’s sick of his life of crime. His old buddies are miffed and, this being a yakuza flick, they eschew heart-to-heart conversations over steaming mugs of herbal tea and decide to settle their differences by punching each other in the face, instead. Also, long, wicked looking knives.
read details:
http://www.japansociety.org/event_detail?eid=2bcfdff3
watch the abbreviated trailer (ie, 30 seconds of it):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYnDyDQIV4A
Landmark Sunshine
LUST, CAUTION (Taiwan, 2007)
Daily @ 3:30pm, 6:30pm
Ang Lee’s dirty movie is moody, repressed and features lots of scenes of Tony Leung naked. It’s also about 500 hours long. Still: Tony Leung naked.
read reviews:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lust_caution/
MOMA
LUXURY CAR (China, 2006, 88 minutes)
Thursday, January 24 @ 6pm
Wang Chao’s stakes out the genre conventions of film noir and then runs like hell in the opposite direction. The result is an expectation-defying, easy-going flick about people who are searching for something and slowly giving up on ever finding it. A retired teacher teams up with a retiring cop to find his son and his daughter who have gone missing in order for his dying wife to say goodbye to them. It’s compelling, and stately, and moves like molasses, but the acting is impeccable and it’s worth your time if modern Chinese cinema tickles your sweet spot.
read reviews:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_Car_(film)
Welcome to Subway Cinema News 2008! Only the second update, but it comes exactly one week after the first update! We’re on time! So far so good.
COMING SOON
February 2 – 10 sees and Olivier Assayas retrospective at the Anthology Film Archives, featuring his movie with Maggie Cheung, IRMA VEP, and his terrific documentary about Hou Hsiao-hsien, HHH: A PORTRAIT OF HOU HSIAO-HSIEN.
February 29th the amazing, the inimitable, the unforgettable FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT appears at the ImaginAsian and it’ll run in repertory with its director’s previous movie, A TASTE OF TEA. You will never experience joy in a theater the way you will during A TASTE OF TEA and FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT. Weird, surreal, hopeful, disjointed, bizarre...treat yourself to something different.
NOW SHOWING
Cinema Village
SUMMER PALACE (China, 2007, 104 minutes)
Daily @ 1:40pm, 4:25pm, 7:10pm, 9:55pm
Lou Ye’s lush flick about a young woman moving to the big city and falling in love is set against the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 earned the acclaimed director a five year ban from filmmaking. Was it worth it? See the film and decide for yourself. Lou’s previous films include the Zhang Ziyi spy film, PURPLE BUTTERFLY and the elliptical VERTIGO-esque SUZHOU RIVER.
read reviews:
http://www.mrqe.com/lookup?summer+palace
LOST IN BEIJING (China, 2007, 112 minutes)
Starts Friday, January 25
This black comic duel between two married couples who are fighting over the same baby stars classic Chinese diva, Elaine Jin, Hong Kong firebrand Tony Leung Kar-fai (ELECTION) and up and coming starlette Fan Bingbing, in a movie that’s cracking AIDS jokes one minute and threatening to drop a baby out a window the next. It might be too strong for American audiences, but critics have loved it around the world, and it was a major hit in China with its bare-knuckled depiction of modern day life in Beijing. Oh, and the producer is being brought up on criminal charges and the movie has been banned in China for showing Chinese people in too negative a light.
read a review:
http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=festivals&jump=review&reviewid=VE1117932766&cs=1
IFC Center
STILL LIFE (China, 2007, 108 mintues)
Daily shows every hour pretty much
Jia Zhangke is not a director you can easily warm to. Chilly, distant, slow and methodical his movies often feel more like abstractions than movies and more like thesis statements than stories. But STILL LIFE has won over even the most diehard Jia Zhangke haters. Taking place in a city that’s being demolished for scrap after it was abandoned for the massive Three Gorges dam-building project, a woman arrives looking for her husband who left her. Beautiful and surreal with a slight touch of sci-fi, it’s impossible to describe this movie. Just give yourself over to it and you’ll most likely come out happy. Plus, the critics lurve it!
read reviews:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/still_life/
The ImaginAsian
GAGMAN (Korea, 1988, 118 minutes)
Thursday, January 24 @ 6:30pm
This came out of nowhere and our best guess is that it has English subtitles since the press release was in English, but you shouldn’t miss it if you get a chance. If you saw Lee Myung-Se’s NOWHERE TO HIDE or DUELIST then you’ll want to check out GAGMAN, his very first film. Starring Ahn Sung-Ki as a stand-up comic who wants to be a director, the movie follows he and his fried as they team up with an out-of-work actress to rob a few banks to “research” their roles. Incredibly innovative and a movie you most likely won’t ever see on the big screen anywhere else.
read a review:
http://www.beyondhollywood.com/gagman-1989-movie-review/
SUNDAY (India, 2008, 140 minutes)
Starts Friday, January 24th
Daily shows @ 1pm, 4pm, 7pm, 10pm
Ajay Devgan (COMPANY) stars as a cop whose girlfriend wakes up next to a dead body with no memory of what happened to her the day before. A varied assortment of people want to kill her or arrest her and Ajay has to figure out if she’s innocent of murder. And – oh, by the way – it’s a comedy. With Dracula in it. And dancing.
watch the totally baffling trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBQz6Vr_z1A
official site:
http://sunday.erosentertainment.com/
Japan Society
NO BORDERS, NO LIMITS: 1960’s Nikkatsu Action Cinema
This retrospective screens a film a month from the Nikkatsu vaults and it’s not to be missed. The movies have had subtitles made by Subway Cinema’s very own Marc Walkow who will painstakingly run them BY HAND during the screening (we whipped him until he got the timing perfect). This is the genius period of Nikkatsu when they were turning out stylish, jet set, visually jaw-dropping films from directors like Suzuki Seijun (PRINCESS RACCOON) and you really shouldn’t miss this opportunity to see these flicks.
GANGSTER VIP (Japan, 1968, 93 minutes)
Friday, Feb. 22 @ 7:30pm
Tetsuya Watari from Suzuki Seijun’s eye-popping TOKYO DRIFTER stars in this downbeat, “mature” Nikkatsu Action flick. Watari plays a yakuza who comes out of prison where he’s been doing time for stabbing a guy and rather than embrace his old gang buddies he’s sick of his life of crime. His old buddies are miffed and, this being a yakuza flick, they eschew heart-to-heart conversations over steaming mugs of herbal tea and decide to settle their differences by punching each other in the face, instead. Also, long, wicked looking knives.
read details:
http://www.japansociety.org/event_detail?eid=2bcfdff3
watch the abbreviated trailer (ie, 30 seconds of it):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYnDyDQIV4A
Landmark Sunshine
LUST, CAUTION (Taiwan, 2007)
Daily @ 3:30pm, 6:30pm
Ang Lee’s dirty movie is moody, repressed and features lots of scenes of Tony Leung naked. It’s also about 500 hours long. Still: Tony Leung naked.
read reviews:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lust_caution/
MOMA
LUXURY CAR (China, 2006, 88 minutes)
Thursday, January 24 @ 6pm
Wang Chao’s stakes out the genre conventions of film noir and then runs like hell in the opposite direction. The result is an expectation-defying, easy-going flick about people who are searching for something and slowly giving up on ever finding it. A retired teacher teams up with a retiring cop to find his son and his daughter who have gone missing in order for his dying wife to say goodbye to them. It’s compelling, and stately, and moves like molasses, but the acting is impeccable and it’s worth your time if modern Chinese cinema tickles your sweet spot.
read reviews:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_Car_(film)
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