January 24 – February 6
Lunch $24.07, dinner $35
www.nycgo.com/restaurantweek
Reservation lines are now open for Winter Restaurant Week, with more than three hundred eateries, including nearly three dozen first-timers, offering $24.07 lunches and/or $35 dinners. The participating restaurants have just been announced, and it’s another impressive lineup, including 10 Downing Food & Wine, ‘21’ Club, 5 Ninth, Adour Alain Ducasse, Artisanal, Asia de Cuba, JoJo, Le Cirque, Lure Fishbar, Maze, Megu, Mercer Kitchen, the Modern, Quality Meats, the Red Cat, River Cafe, SD26, Spice Market, Steak Frites, TAO, Trattoria Dell’Arte, Tribeca Grill, the Water Club, Wildwood Barbecue, and hundreds of others. Among the new additions are L’Ecole, Faustina, Riverpark, Tamarind Tribeca, the Strand Restaurant, and Red Rooster Harlem. As an added bonus, if you use your American Express card on three or more Restaurant Week meals, you’ll get a $15 statement credit. As always, be sure to check your desired location online, since many of the restaurants post exactly what the special menu consists of so you know just what treats you’re in for.
South Korea’s submission for the 2010 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, A BAREFOOT DREAM is an alternately heartbreaking and heartwarming tale of hope in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Inspired by the true story of Korean soccer player Kim Shin-hwan, Kim Tae-kyun’s (CROSSING, HIGANJIMA) film follows the broke and broken Kim Won-kwang (Park Hee-soon) as he heads to East Timor in Indonesia to try to make something of his failing life. Urged to immediately return to Korea by Ambassador Park (Go Chang-seok) because of the many dangers and lack of opportunity in the first independent nation of the twenty-first century, he instead opens up a sports store after seeing a group of kids playing soccer in their bare feet. He talks them into leasing counterfeit Nike cleats from him for a dollar a day, not understanding how truly poor they are, but soon finds himself coaching them against a rival team, building their confidence as they dream of playing in an international competition in Japan, their only ray of light in an existence mired in poverty and civil war. Firmly rooted in the tradition of such sports movies as RUDY (David Anspaugh, 1993), BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM (Gurinder Chadha, 2002), HOOSIERS (David Anspaugh, 1986), and THE BAD NEWS BEARS (Michael Ritchie, 1976), A BAREFOOT DREAM is a charming picture despite its many clichés and predictability, lifted by Park Hee-soon’s sweetly innocent lead performance and some fine turns by the kids (particularly Francisco Varela as Ramos and Junior da Costa as Tua), some of whom were actual members of Kim Shin-hwan’s team. The film is being screened on January 11 as part of Korean Movie Night’s free Sports Films! series, presented at Tribeca Cinemas by the Korean Cultural Service and Subway Cinema, with director Kim Tae-kyun on hand to discuss it. The series continues January 25 with TAKE OFF (Muju, 2009), February 8 with LIFTING KING KONG (Park Geon-yong, 2009), and February 22 with FOREVER THE MOMENT (Lim Soon-rye, 2008).
Born in Parma in 1919, Angiolino Giuseppe Pascal Ventura began his unexpected film career after suffering an injury as a Greco-Roman wrestler, becoming a close friend of Jean Gabin’s and quickly establishing himself as one of the great character actors in French gangster pictures, appearing in more than seventy-five movies before his death in 1987. Over his career, he worked with such stars as Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Annie Girardot, Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Danielle Darrieux and for such directors as Jacques Becker, Julien Duvivier, William Dieterle, Vittorio de Sica, Claude Lelouch, and Terence Young. FIAF will be paying tribute to the cool-as-a-cucumber actor with a two-brief three-week, six-film festival that begins January 11 with ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (Louis Malle, 1957) and ARMY OF SHADOWS (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969) and continues January 18 with THE BIG RISK (Claude Sautet, 1960) and SECOND BREATH (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1966) and January 25 with MONSIEUR GANGSTER (Georges Lautner, 1963) and THE GRILLING (Claude Miller, 1981).
