York Theatre Company
619 Lexington Ave. at 54th St.
January 25 – February 27, $67.50
212-935-5820
www.yorktheatre.org
www.roadtoqatar.com
Commissioned by the Emir of Qatar to write a huge Broadway-style production for a thousand of his closest friends and starring more than one hundred actors, forty camels, seventeen fire-eating jugglers, and boxing icon Muhammad Ali, a pair of “short Jewish writers” (James Beaman and Keith Gerchak) head off on a Bing Crosby / Bob Hope journey through Dubai, London, and Bratislava on THE ROAD TO QATAR! Directed by Phillip George, the “New True! Musical Comedy” features book and lyrics by Stephen Cole, music by David Krane, and choreography by Bob Richard; Bill Nolte, Sarah Stiles, and Bruce Warren fill out the cast.
THE ROAD TO QATAR! runs January 25 through February 27 at Midtown’s intimate York Theatre, “where musicals come to life,” and twi-ny has four pairs of tickets to give away for the opening two weeks. Just send your name and daytime phone number to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, January 13, at 12 noon to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; four winners will be selected at random.
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).
