February 1 – 7, 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
March 7th 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
Anthology Film Archives
OLIVIER ASSAYAS RETROSPECTIVE
February 1 - 10
Don’t miss this 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. Both are must-sees if you’re fans of either the actress or the director.
read more:
http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0805,pinkerton,78963,20.html

Cinema Village
SUMMER PALACE (China, 2007, 140 minutes)
Daily @ 1:30pm, 4:15pm, 7:10pm, 9:10pm
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)
Daily @ 1:55pm, 4:20pm, 6:45pm, 9:10pm
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
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 @ 11:45pm, 2:45pm, 6:00pm, 9:00pm
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
A whole slew of Asian films popping up at MOMA this week, including:

MY NEIGHBORS THE YAMADAS (Japan)
February 1 @ 1:30pm
Hayao Miyazaki (PRINCESS MONONOKE) produced this 2-D animated gem based on a cartoon strip about an average, middle-class family.

THE HOLE (Taiwan)
Sunday, February 3 @ 4pm
Tsai Ming-liang’s best film is a musical set in the future where it never stops raining.