Takeshi Kitano stars in his own thrilling remake of popular Japanese serial ZATOICHI
CABARET CINEMA — THE BLIND SWORDSMAN: ZATOICHI (Takeshi Kitano, 2003)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, August 8, free with $10 K2 minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rubinmuseum.org
www.zatoichi.co.uk
Now we’re talking. Hardboiled action director and comic Takeshi Kitano takes on the Zatoichi legend that was a Japanese favorite from 1962 to 1989 (starring Shintaro Katsu), updating the story of the blind swordsman, gambler, and masseuse magnificently, adding a lot of blood while staying true to the heart of this classic tale. Beat Takeshi, the name Kitano uses as an actor, stars as the unlikely platinum blonde superhero who shuffles across the countryside battling the bad guys and rescuing damsels in distress. This is the first period film of Kitano’s career, which has included such bloodfests as Violent Cop, Brother, and Boiling Point and such moving dramas as Sonatine and Kikijuro. He has combined all the elements of his previous work to create this unforgettable masterpiece, a thrilling, beautifully shot, and wonderfully realized cinematic achievement that suffers only at the very end with a silly coda that is just way too out of place. Zatoichi is screening August 8 as part of the Rubin Museum Cabaret Cinema series “Movie Medicine: A Film Series about the Healing Factor in Cinema,” being held in conjunction with the “Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine” exhibition, and will be introduced by Stephen Globus. The series continues August 15 with John Cromwell’s Of Human Bondage, introduced by psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist Harvey Roy Greenberg, and August 22 with Shohei Imamura’s Dr. Akagi, introduced by Gregory Hosho Abels.
For a decade, the Rural Route Film Festival has been taking viewers to unique places around the world, far off the beaten track and away from urban centers, instead showing works “that take the road less traveled.” The festival is kicking off its tenth anniversary in a big way, with a fiftieth anniversary screening of Sergei Parajanov’s seminal Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Parajanov’s reimagining of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet announces exactly what it is in the opening credits: “A tale of times past, of the great love of Ivan and Marichka. . . . The folk tales and customs of the Carpathian region.” Made in 1964 in honor of the centennial of the birth of Ukrainian author Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, whose source novel was published in 1913, Shadows follows the friendship and romance of Ivan (Ivan Mikolajchuk) and Marichka (Larysa Kadochnikova), from childhood, when they are kids splashing water on each other, through marriage, war, and tragedy. In fact, there is a lot of tragedy throughout the film, even before Ivan’s family is cursed by a witchlike woman in their Hutsul village.
Set amid the junkyards and auto-body shops in the shadow of Shea Stadium, Ramin Bahrani’s follow-up to his indie hit Man Push Cart is a gritty, realistic drama of family and community. Filmed in thirty days in the Iron Triangle neighborhood of Willets Point, Queens, Chop Shop stars Alejandro Polanco as Ale, a street-smart twelve-year-old boy who works for Rob (Rob Sowulski), calling cars into the repair shop, stealing spare parts, and learning virtually every aspect of the trade, legal and not. Ale lives in a small upstairs room in the garage with his sister, sixteen-year-old Isamar (Isamar Gonzalez), who by day works in a food van and at night makes extra cash by getting into cars and trucks with strange men. Neither Ale nor Izzy goes to school; instead, they’re working hard, saving up money to buy a food van and start their own business, but their life is fraught with danger and difficulty nearly every step of the way. Written by Bahrani (
