NYFF51 will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of DAZED AND CONFUSED on Thursday
DAZED AND CONFUSED (Richard Linklater, 1993)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Alice Tully Hall
1941 Broadway at 65th St.
Thursday, October 10, $25, 9:00
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
“You guys know anything about a party?” It should be one crazy party on October 10, when the fifty-first New York Film Festival celebrates the twentieth anniversary of one of the greatest high school movies of them all, Richard Linklater’s 1993 indie classic, Dazed and Confused. Alice Tully Hall will turn into 1976 Austin, Texas, as Linklater and various cast members will be on hand for the screening and a Q&A. Like Cynthia (Marissa Ribisi) says, “If we are all gonna die anyway, shouldn’t we be enjoying ourselves now? You know, I’d like to quit thinking of the present, like, right now, as some minor insignificant preamble to something else.” Of course, Randall “Pink” Floyd (Jason London) intones, “All I’m saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself.” There’ll be no need to do that as you watch Linklater’s splendid look at high school, which deals with hazing, burgeoning sexuality, sports, drug use, friendship, cliques, and a kick-ass party to end one chapter and begin another, for everyone except the older Wooderson (a career-making performance by Matthew McConaughey), who famously proclaims, “That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.” The cast also includes Adam Goldberg, Milla Jovovich, Cole Hauser, Joey Lauren Adams, Rory Cochrane, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, and Austin native Wiley Wiggins as Mitch, with an epic soundtrack featuring all the right songs by Foghat, Alice Cooper, Nazareth, Rick Derringer, Sweet, War, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kiss, and Peter Frampton. So for a “good ol’ worthwhile visceral experience,” head on out to Lincoln Center and relive all those glorious moments of your misspent youth.
During his sixteen-year career, Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke has made both narrative works (The World, Platform, Still Life) and documentaries (Useless, I Wish I Knew), with his fiction films containing elements of nonfiction and vice versa. Such is the case with his latest film, the powerful A Touch of Sin, which explores four based-on-fact outbreaks of shocking violence in four different regions of China. In Shanxi, outspoken miner Dahai (Jiang Wu) won’t stay quiet about the rampant corruption of the village elders. In Chongqing, married migrant worker and father Zhao San (Wang Baoqiang) obtains a handgun and is not afraid to use it. In Hubei, brothel receptionist Ziao Yu (Zhao Tao, Jia’s longtime muse and now wife) can no longer take the abuse and assumptions of the male clientele. And in Dongguan, young Xiao Hui (Luo Lanshan) tries to make a life for himself but is soon overwhelmed by his lack of success. Inspired by King Hu’s 1971 wuxia film A Touch of Zen, Jia also owes a debt to Max Ophüls’s 1950 bittersweet romance La Ronde, in which a character from one segment continues into the next, linking the stories. In A Touch of Sin, there is also a character connection in each successive tale, though not as overt, as Jia makes a wry, understated comment on the changing ways that people connect in modern society. In depicting these four acts of violence, Jia also exposes the widening economic gap between the rich and the poor and the social injustice that is prevalent all over contemporary China — as well as the rest of the world — leading to dissatisfied individuals fighting for their dignity in extreme ways. A gripping, frightening film that earned Jia the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes this year, A Touch of Zen opens October 4 at Lincoln Plaza and the IFC Center, with Jia and Zhao appearing at Lincoln Plaza for a Q&A following the 4:55 screening and to introduce the 7:25 show, after which they will head over to IFC for a Q&A following the 7:00 screening and to introduce the 9:35 show.
