Tag Archives: walter reade theater

ELEGANT ELEGIES: THE FILMS OF MASAHIRO SHINODA

Masahiro Shinoda’s DOUBLE SUICIDE is part of Masterworks series at New York Film Festival

NYFF MASTERWORKS: SHINJU TEN NO AMIJIMA (DOUBLE SUICIDE) (Masahiro Shinoda, 1969)
New York Film Festival
Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Sunday, September 26, 8:15, and Tuesday, October 5, 4:00
Series runs September 25 – October 10
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

Based on a 1720 Bunraku puppet play by Monzaemon Chikamatsu, Masahiro Shinoda’s DOUBLE SUICIDE is a stagy style-over-substance adaptation that features some beautiful sets, a compelling score by Toru Takemitsu, but an overly dramatized, talky production in which the characters’ devotion to duty and honor ultimately grows weary and frustrating, even if that’s part of the point. Kichiemon Nakamura stars as Jihei, a paper merchant who is in love with a courtesan, Koharu (Shima Iwashita, Shinoda’s real-life wife). Jihei is willing to risk everything — his business, his reputation, and his family, including his wife, Osan (Iwashita in a dual role), and their two children — in order to redeem Koharu and take her away from the red-light district. But wealthy entrepreneur and crude loudmouth Tahei (Hosei Komatsu) threatens to redeem Koharu first, forcing Jihei to decide between his family and Koharu — knowing that either decision could lead to tragedy. Much of what little action there is takes place on claustrophobic sets that evoke the theater, with men dressed in dark clothing, their faces covered, serving as Koroku, or puppeteers, helping things along without directly influencing what comes next. Considered a classic of the Japanese Nouvelle Vague, DOUBLE SUICIDE was named Best Picture at both the Kinema Junpo and Mainichi Film Concours awards. DOUBLE SUICIDE is part of the NYFF Masterworks section of the forty-eighth New York Film Festival, in the series “Elegant Elegies: The Films of Masahiro Shinoda,” which honors the genre-bending Japanese New Wave auteur with screenings of such works as THE ASSASSIN, KILLERS ON PARADE, MOONLIGHT SERENADE, and PALE FLOWER.

75 YEARS OF 20th CENTURY FOX

Elliott Gould (third from left) and Tom Skerritt (far right) will be at Lincoln Center for fortieth anniversary screening of M*A*S*H, part of Labor Day weekend celebration of 20th Century Fox’s seventy-fifth anniversary

Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
September 4-6, $9 per screening, $49 All Access Pass
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

In 1935, Fox Films merged with 20th Century Pictures to form 20th Century Fox. The Film Society of Lincoln Center is honoring the company’s seventy-fifth anniversary with a fabulous slate of 20th Century Fox flicks this Labor Day weekend, with screenings only nine bucks apiece. The series begins Saturday with the noir greats HANGOVER SQUARE (John Brahm, 1945) and KISS OF DEATH (Henry Hathaway, 1947) and also includes the cult classic VANISHING POINT (Richard C. Sarafian, 1971), in which Barry Newman rides that white Dodge Challenger across the country, on the run from the law as well as life itself. Saturday’s big event, however, is the fortieth anniversary screening of a new print of M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970), with Elliott Gould, Sally Kellerman, Tom Skerritt, and Kathryn Reed Altman participating in a Q&A. Sunday’s films begin with William A. Wellman’s harrowing 1943 Western THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, in which Anthony Quinn barely grits his teeth when removing a bullet from his body; the film takes on added significance in light of the border war with Mexico and the anti-immigrant law in Arizona. Sunday also features restored prints of NIAGARA (Henry Hathaway, 1953) and ALL ABOUT EVE (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950) and the director’s cut of ALIEN (Ridley Scott, 1979), with Skerritt again hanging around for a Q&A. The evening concludes with FIGHT CLUB (David Fincher, 1999), but we can’t say any more about that, because you know what the first rule of Fight Club is. On Monday, a trio of all-time favorites starts with a restored print of Elia Kazan’s 1947 exploration of anti-Semitism, GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, followed by 70mm prints of CLEOPATRA (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963) and the military biopic to end all military biopics, PATTON (Franklin L. Schaffner, 1970). It’s quite a collection of memorable films, and you can see them all for a mere $49 with an All Access Pass, which is quite a deal, especially since the Fox Movie Channel now charges on-demand for each of its flicks.

CARY GRANT vs. CLINT EASTWOOD

Grant transforms into Dirty Cary in Stanley Donen’s CHARADE

Cary Grant 2, BAMcinématek, July 9-29
The Complete Clint Eastwood, Film Society of Lincoln Center, July 9-29
www.bam.org
www.filmlinc.com

It’s the battle of the big men this month, the fight for the heavyweight championship, as two of Hollywood’s all-time hunksters, the machoest of movie stars, go mano a mano in Brooklyn and Manhattan. From July 9 to 29, the Walter Reade Theater will be hosting “The Complete Clint Eastwood,” screening every single one of the Man with No Name’s directorial efforts, from 1971’s PLAY MISTY FOR ME and 1973’s HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and BREEZY (with William Holden as an old lech!) to 2008’s CHANGELING and GRAN TORINO and last year’s INVICTUS. Lincoln Center is upping the ante — and cheating more than a bit — by throwing in three of Eastwood’s Sergio Leone Westerns, A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964), FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965), and THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (1966), in addition to the first DIRTY HARRY (Don Siegel, 1971). The eighty-year-old Eastwood will participate in a live conversation and Q&A via Skype following the 2:30 screening of FISTFUL on July 10.

Clint Eastwood is ready for action in THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES

Meanwhile, over in Brooklyn, British-American film legend Archibald Alexander Leach will be flexing his muscles in nineteen of his finest works, the second part of a tribute BAM began last year. Grant, who died in 1986 at the age of eighty-two, can be seen in such unforgettable classics as CHARADE (Stanley Donen, 1963), the best Hitchcock film not directed by Sir Alfred; Howard Hawks’s 1938 screwball comedy BRINGING UP BABY, alongside the Great Kate and a tiger; George Stevens’s 1939 epic, GUNGA DIN, one of the grandest adventure movies ever made; and the romantic heartbreaker AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (Leo McCarey, 1957), with Deborah Kerr. While Eastwood does most of his talking with his eyes, rifles, and a carefully placed expectoration here and there, Grant almost never shuts his mouth, words tumbling out at a frantic pace that would challenge the Gatling gun. But while Eastwood is still starring in and directing pictures as an octogenarian, Grant called it quits near the top of his game, retiring from the industry while in his mid-sixties after appearing in Charles Walters’s WALK, DON’T RUN in 1966, just when Clint was moving along from western cowboy to eastern cop and military man. Although they didn’t make any films together, the five-time-married Grant, who also had flings with many a starlet, did appear with the twice-married Eastwood, who kept himself rather busy as well, fathering numerous children with multiple women, in the 1986 television special ALL-STAR PARTY FOR CLINT EASTWOOD; no fisticuffs ensued.

NYAFF: SYMBOL

Hitoshi Matsumoto’s SYMBOL is a thrillingly bizarre cinematic experience


SYMBOL (Hitoshi Matsumoto, 2009)
New York Asian Film Festival
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Sunday, July 4, 1:00
Wednesday, July 7, 3:40
Series continues through July 8
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinema.com

Hitoshi Matsumoto’s SYMBOL is a mega-weird existential mind trip that would make Michel Gondry proud. The less you know going in, the better, so if you’re in the mood for a unique cinematic experience that constantly leads to more questions than answers, a brain warp that is part live-action video game, part investigation of humanity’s very existence, then hustle over to Lincoln Center to catch one of the best, and strangest, movies at this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

If you need to know more before buying tickets, well, we’ll do our best to try to decipher the madness. The bizarre Japanese flick spends most of its time following two very different narratives that appear to have nothing to do with each other. In Mexico, a young boy prepares to watch his father, a masked wrestler known as Escargot Man, participate in an important match. Meanwhile, a Japanese man (director Hitoshi Matsumoto) in a Moe haircut and multicolored polka-dot pajamas finds himself trapped in an empty white room — until a multitude of cherubs appear and then disappear, leaving artistic representations of their gonads sticking out of the walls. He soon discovers that when he touches each penis, he is given a specific object, sometimes permanent, sometimes temporary, from sushi, a toothbrush, and a large vase to a rope, a key, and a door — the latter three showing up only for a very brief amount of time. Like a caveman or a child, he needs to figure out how he can use these tools to escape from his nightmare. Matsumoto (BIG MAN JAPAN), part of the immensely popular Japanese comedy duo Downtown, has created a wonderfully crazy tale that does all come together in the end — but in a completely unexpected way. The best thing to do is to just sit back and let it take you wherever it is that it’s going. Enjoy!

NYAFF: CRAZY RACER

Huang Bo can't find any way out in CRAZY RACER



CRAZY RACER (Ning Hao, 2009)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Saturday, June 26, 2:20
Friday, July 2, 10:00
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.yule.sohu.com

Nothing is going right for poor Geng Hao (Huang Bo). After losing the national bike championship because he hammed it up by celebrating a split second too early, Geng’s life goes into freefall: His coach (Ma Shaohua) suffers a debilitating heart attack, and he loses everything after getting briefly involved with a shady snake-oil salesman, Li Fala (Jiu Kong), who dresses in Superman costumes as he promises that his questionable liquid concoction can turn anyone into a superhero. Soon Geng is a poverty-stricken bike messenger on the run from a Taiwanese drug kingpin and the cops, with a frozen Thai assassin in the back of his truck, and continually getting set up by Li Fala, who has some serious problems of his own. Nominated for Best Film at the 2009 Golden Horse Fillm Festival, CRAZY RACER (aka SILVER MEDALIST) is crazy good, an entertaining farce with absurd characters, a twisting plot, plenty of mistaken identity, Ning Hao’s (MONGOLIAN PING PONG) Guy Ritchie-inspired tongue-in-cheek direction, and, most of all, Huang Bo himself, who plays the sad sack Geng Hao with Buster Keaton-like appeal. Huang Bo, who will be awarded the Rising Star of Asia Award at the New York Asian Film Festival opening ceremonies on June 25, will introduce the June 26 screening and participate in a postscreening Q&A; he can also be seen in Guan Hu’s COW at the festival.

NYAFF: YATTERMAN

Takashi Miike brings to life a classic animated Japanese television show in YATTERMAN

YATTERMAN (Takashi Miike, 2009)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, June 25, 3:00
Friday, July 2, 1:00
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinema.com

Although Japanese director Takashi Miike is best known for such gruesome, violent, cutting-edge films as AUDITION, ICHI THE KILLER, the DEAD OR ALIVE trilogy, and GOZU, he has recently been showing off his more childlike side in such kid-friendly fare as THE GREAT YOKAI WAR and ZEBRAMAN. Now Miike has focused his attention on the popular late 1970s animated television show YATTERMAN, turning it into a goofy live-action flick filled with bright, bold colors, a fairly simplistic plot, and very cute machinery. On the side of good is Gan-chan (Japanese teen idol Sho Sakurai) and Ai-chan (Saki Fukuda), while rat-faced Doronjo (Kyoko Fukada), pig-nosed Tonzura (Kendo Kobayashi), and sexy leader Boyakki (Katsuhisa Namase) form the nasty, rather hapless villainous trio after the giant mecha-hero Yatterman and the four pieces of the valuable Skull Stone. Nothing short of the fate of the world is in jeopardy as the increasingly silly bad guys battle our beautiful, innocent heroes. Much of YATTERMAN is discombobulated and hard to follow, and the production values at times are more akin to Saturday-morning television than a trip to the movies, but it has such a charming sense of humor and playfulness that you might just overlook many of its needless excesses.

TWI-NY TALK: GRADY HENDRIX

Programmer Grady Hendrix points to film such as MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD as a different kind of summer fare

NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
June 25 – July 8
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinema.com

Since 2002, the New York Asian Film Festival has introduced city cineastes to more than 220 mainstream, avant-garde, and cutting-edge films from Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other Asian nations, many of the selections North American premieres. Initially shown at Anthology Film Archives, the festival moves uptown this year, holding screenings at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater from June 25 through July 8, in addition to weekend midnight screenings at the IFC Center and the overlapping Japan Cuts series at the Japan Society (July 1-16). The NYAFF was cofounded by Grady Hendrix, who runs Subway Cinema, a group dedicated to spreading the many wonders of Asian films, from low-budget bloodbaths to touching romantic comedies, from shoot-’em-up gangster movies to gory zombie tales, from campy musicals to martial arts and samurai epics.

This year’s festival includes a very special opening night, honoring Huang Bo (COW, CRAZY RACER) with the Rising Star of Asia Award, Simon Yam (ECHOES OF THE RAINBOW, STORM WARRIORS) with the Star Asia Award, and Sammo Hung (IP MAN 2, EASTERN CONDORS) with the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award. In the midst of a publicity blitz for the festival, Hendrix, who is well known for the colorful outfits he wears, chatted via email with twi-ny about the 2010 NYAFF.

twi-ny: What is it about Asian films that so drives you? Did you have a moment of epiphany watching a specific movie?

Grady Hendrix: This gets a two-part answer. The four of us who run the festival [Hendrix, Goran Topalovic, Daniel Craft, and Marc Walkow] come to Asian movies in different ways, but for me it was sitting in the Music Palace down in Chinatown back in 1993 taking in a double feature of ALWAYS BE THE WINNER and LOVE ON DELIVERY. It was while watching a man dressed as Garfield defeat a karate master with pure stupidity that I fell in love with Hong Kong movies, and that was the gateway drug that led me everywhere else.

But for all of us, the reason we’re so devoted to Asian movies is the same: We’re bored. This summer, the big movies coming out of Hollywood are movies like MARMADUKE, but if you’re willing to read subtitles, there are dozens of amazing movies from Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and China. Folks complain that they have to watch endless sequels and disappointing remakes from Hollywood, but over at our festival summer viewing is all about giant pigs holding Korean villages in their porky grip of terror, flying kung fu masters beating each other up with ultimate weapons made of the spinal columns of dead gods, fizzy-as-champagne romantic comedies from China starring Zhang Ziyi, amazing new flicks from Jackie Chan, masked Mexican wrestler movies from Japan, and breakdancing action films from Thailand. If you’re happy watching Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz pretend to fall in love, then great. If you want something a little more fun than that, then you should try a little of what we’re smoking.

Jackie Chan gets all serious for New York Asian Film Festival at Lincoln Center

twi-ny: Five years ago you wrote in Slate, “If you’re thinking of running a film festival: don’t. It will ruin your life.” This year the NYAFF graduates to Lincoln Center, from its early days at Anthology Film Archives. Do you still feel that running a film festival will ruin your life? Did you handle anything different because the festival will be held at the prestigious Walter Reade Theater?

GH: Doing this festival still ruins my life. In fact, at this point I think it’s too late for me and my life has been ruined beyond repair. The fact is, the four of us who run the New York Asian Film Festival are intensely passionate about what we do, to the point of being deranged. Even when we outsource some of the work, we still wind up pushing our designers to do better, we bust our butts to make sure our fliers and programs get to absolutely everywhere possible even if we wind up having to do it ourselves, we really care about our audience, and we have to make sure that every screening is as fun as humanly possible. Being at the Walter Reade hasn’t changed that. It hasn’t changed our programming, either. Movies like DOMAN SEMAN and MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD are going to hurt the brains of people who are used to “A Pleasant Jaunt Through Lithuanian Cinema.”

twi-ny: You’re renowned for your choice of wardrobe at screenings. Will the move to Lincoln Center affect what you will wear in any way?

GH: This year it’s more about what we won’t be wearing rather than what we will. Right now I’m sizing bodystockings in order to pick the one that will induce maximum discomfort in the audience, and expect more bare butts than ever during MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD screenings.