asian_cinema_la

Hello!  I found this new show online, Karma Kula Mystic Warrior.  It is a show that follows the main character on his journey, and his journey has many obstacles, which result in some of the coolest action scenes I've ever seen.  It also has great adventure.  If you wuld like to chekc it out i got some links I found here:

http://karmakula.ign.com/media-press/
http://karmakula.ign.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NeOl98doAU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n60JS311zM
http://www.openfilm.com/channels/theninjaigang/

Just a quick heads up. On Wednesday & Thursday April 29 & 30, the New Beverly is showing Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog as part of a double feature with Thunderbolt & Lightfoot (the Clint Eastwood/Jeff Bridges movie). They're doing a series of author Harlan Ellison's favorite films.





PS:
I'm going to change the layout of this community today. Feedback is welcome.

1) The 2nd annual Japanese Film Festival Los Angeles is GOING ON NOW.

2) The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival starts April 30th.

3) The Egyptian Theater in LA is screening a Nagisa Oshima retrospective April 23rd through 26th.

YES!

Quick heads up.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata is going to be opening at three Laemmle Theaters on March 30th.



Check out the Official Website for details, the trailer and all that.

EXCITING.

My friends. I'm sorry that I've let this community peter out. Life and work just don't allow me the free time to keep it up to date and going regularly anymore. I can't do the calendars, but I'm going to make an effort to at least mention when Asian films are playing in the LA area.

I would like to say, though, that this doesn't have to be a one man show. Any time any of you hear about an Asian film showing on the big screen, let us know!

Anyway.


Friday, October 10th is the day that Wong Kar Wai's Ashes Of Time Redux begins it's limited theatrical release in the US.



Locally, it'll be playing at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in West Hollywood and the Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. To the best of my knowledge, it's only going to be playing there and only for one week, but I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up at a couple other Laemmles a little later on.

You can watch the trailer and check out some fanastic looking stills at the official website, or you can look at the film's cast list and wet yourself:

Tony Leung
Maggie Cheung
Brigitte Lin
Leslie Cheung
Carina Lau
Tony Leung Ka Fai

I swear... is it just me, or is the only thing missing from there Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh? Then it would be perfect.

Anyway.

Friday. I'll be in Hollywood.

What about you?

http://www.jffla.org/movies.html

April 11 to 17

The Imaginasian Center, Downtown Los Angeles
251 South Main Street
Los Angeles, California 90012


April 18 to 20

Starplex Cinemas
4626 Barranca Parkway
Irvine, CA 92604

Just got this from the Giant Robot newsletter I subscribe to.

http://www.filmmatters.com/

GIANT ROBOT invites you & your family to a Special Screening of the new SONY PICTURES CLASSICS film, CJ7

Please join us immediately following the screening for a raffle and Q&A with the film’s stars, STEPHEN CHOW and XU JIAN!

Left: Xu Jiao as Dicky Chow Right: Stephen Chow as Ti Chow
© 2007 Star Overseas Group, Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics. All Rights Reserved.

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 7:30PM
HARMONY GOLD
7655 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90046
*Parking behind and underneath bldg
RSVP required. Email filmmatters@giantrobot.com with the subject line "RSVP CJ7 Screening."

www.CJ7movie.com

Written, Directed by and Starring Stephen Chow

From Stephen Chow (the director and star of Kung Fu Hustle) comes “CJ7,” a new light-hearted, family comedy featuring Chow’s signature comedy and antics. Within the comedic tone of the film though, there are lessons taught and learned - it is a movie that kids & families can enjoy together.

Ti (Stephen Chow) is a poor father who works all day, everyday at a construction site to make sure his son Dicky Chow (Xu Jian) can attend an elite private school. Despite his father’s good intentions to give his son the opportunities he never had, Dicky, with his dirty and tattered clothes and none of the “cool” toys stands out from his schoolmates like a sore thumb.

Ti can’t afford to buy Dicky any expensive toys and goes to the best place he knows to get new stuff for Dicky – the junk yard! While out “shopping” for a new toy for his son, Ti finds a mysterious orb and brings it home for Dicky to play with. To his surprise and disbelief, the orb reveals itself to Dicky as a bizarre “pet” with extraordinary powers. Armed with his “CJ7” Dicky seizes this chance to overcome his poor background and shabby clothes and impress his fellow schoolmates for the first time in his life. But CJ7 has other ideas and when Dicky brings it to class, chaos ensues.

“CJ7” will be released on Friday, March 7th, 2008. In Chinese with English subtitles. 86 minutes. MPAA Rating – PG.

Stay for the raffle and you can win one of these prizes!

About the director, Stephen Chow:
Chow is currently the most popular Asian comedic actor on the pan-Asian cultural landscape, a veteran of more than 50 films. He is a multi-faceted talent to be reckoned with who often writes, produces, directs and acts in his own films. His last movie “Kung Fu Hustle” broke Asian box-office records and won the top prize at 2005 Hong Kong Film Awards. The film became a global phenomenon and garnered a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Film in 2006. “Shaolin Soccer” swept the 2002 Hong Kong Film Awards. The film struck gold on release, ranking the highest grossing film in the history of Hong Kong cinema with a record of HK$60 million.

Just NOW found out about this.

KOFFLA website

Takes place November 15th through the 17th at the Regency Fairfax 3 in Los Angeles.

13 films screening during that time. Most of them are older, but most of them are really great films.


Highly recommended!!

Things at work and elsewhere have prevented me from updating the calendar for a while now, and that continues, but I wanted to give you guys a quick heads up about a couple of things.

Going on now:

• The 2007 Chinese American Film Festival at Laemmle One Colorado in Old Pasadena. I still can't find any official website for the festival, but you can see the schedule on the Laemmle website there. Anything that has CAFF before the movie title is part of the festival.


• AFI Fest 2007 started this week. Plenty of cool Asian (and non-Asian) films this year, including the new Johnnie To movie, Mad Detective, which you can watch the trailer for here.


• The Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles has a whole bunch of cool movies playing every Sunday. Seriously. Every Sunday this month at 7pm, they play a contemporary Korean film and then they're playing a Stephen Chow film. In December, they're playing a bunch of old Japanese monster movies!


• Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is still playing in many places.


Coming soon:
• Pacific Media Expo is Nov 9-11. I wan't there last year, but when I was the year before, they were just projecting DVDs onto a screen for people. The main focus of the expo is anime and cosplay, but I mention it anyway. They're showing some good movies.


• On December 21st and 22nd, the New Beverly will be showing a double feature of Wong Kar Wai's Fallen Angels and John Woo's The Killer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Again, I apologize for not being able to do a "real" update. Hopefully soon.

Go see some movies!

I was just checking the schedule at New Beverly, and look..

===

october 28, 29, 30

• The Departed (2006)
  • Sun: 2:40 & 7:30; Mon/Tue: 7:30

• Infernal Affairs (2002)
  • Sun: 5:30 & 10:15; Mon/Tue: 10:15

Too much good stuff happening too soon for me to not update this today. The Japanese Outlaw Masters, Exiled opening, UCLA doing a bunch of Chinese films... all kinds of stuff.

( Update! )

That's all I got for now. If you know of something I've missed, then please let me know.

I'm going to try and do an updated calendar this weekend, but I don't know if I'll have time. So I want to make sure and give you guys a heads-up about this now.

Next week, from Thursday Sept 6th to Sunday Sept. 9th, the Egyptian is going to be doing their Outlaw Masters Of Japanese cinema series. A double feature of old school Japanese awesomeness, starting at 7:30pm each day.

The films showing are:

Kihachi Okamoto's Sword Of Doom
Eiichi Kudo's The Great Melee

Shohei Imamura's Pigs And Battleships
Shohei Imamura's Intentions Of Murder

Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine
Kon Ichikawa's Punishment Room

Seijun Suzuki's Detective office #23 - Go To Hell, Bastards!
Seijun Suzuki's Flower And The Angry Waves


Only two of these films (Sword of Doom and Vengeance Is Mine) are officially available on DVD.

HIGHLY. RECOMMENDED.

Once again, sorry for taking so long to get back around to this.

Before I start, though, a word. I was told last weekend that the owner of the New Beverly in Los Angeles, Sherman Torgan, passed away and that there was some question as to whether or not the theater was going to stay open. I was informed that the theater would continue screening the films that it already had scheduled, but whether or not it remained open after that was going to be a question.

I LOVE the New Beverly. It's one of my favorite places to see movies. They play awesome films that no else does anymore, and they charge only $7 for an entire double feature. I urge you all to go to the theater's website and check out the entire schedule of films they've got slated to play. There's only one Asian film double feature, but there are some totally awesome non-Asian double features. Check it out. Support the theater. Maybe we can save it.

If anyone has any more details/info on the situation, i'd love to hear them.

Sherman Torgan's La Times Obituary and an LA Weekly Tribute


There's not a whole heck of a lot else on the schedule right now.


( Updated Calendar )

If you know of something I've missed, please let me know!

The L.A. Film Festival starts this week. Not a whole lot of Asian films this year, unfortunately.

( Updated Calendar )

If you know of something I've missed, please let me know!

Hoping to do a calendar this weekend, but I wanted to make sure and give you guys a heads up about this.

Starting this Friday, June 8th, the NuWilshire Theater in Santa Monica will be screening Johnnie To's epic gangster films Election and Election 2 (aka Triad Election).


Official Website
Rotten Tomatoes reviews for Election (77%)
Rotten Tomatoes reviews for Election 2 (93%)

The website doesn't give any indication yet of times or exactly how long it's playing, but my guess is a week.

I saw both of these films at AFI Fest last year and thought they were both fantastic. I highly recommend them and I highly recommend you go and see them. The two films did very well in limited release in New York and if they do well out here as well, then maybe Tartan, and companies like them, will be a little more likely to give films like this a theatrical release.

Just a thought.


Also, don't forget that the Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective at LACMA starts Friday as well. See the previous calendar for more info on that.

Once again, sorry about falling behind on this. Happens sometimes. I hope all of you got a chance to check out some stuff at the VC film fest, because it was pretty awesome.

Next month, LACMA is doing a Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective!

( Updated Calendar )

That's all I've got. If you know of something I've missed, please let me know!

VC Film Fest 2007 starts this week.

Life has gotten in the way, and kept me from doing a new calendar the last couple of weeks with details about what's showing at this year's festival, but I wanted to throw out a quick reminder to you guys. There are some great films showing this year, and they should not be missed. I'm especially excited to see Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Retribution and Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Invisible Waves.

I'm hoping to do an updated calendar this weekend. In the meantime, check out the festival's website and go see some films!

WHO: 8th Annual Newport Beach Film Festival

WHAT: Asian film screenings at this year's fest!

WHEN:

-Korea-
The King and the Clown - Friday, April 20, 6:30 PM
*Tazza: The High Rollers (Spotlight Event) - Monday, April 23, 7:00 PM
A Dirty Carnival - Wednesday, April 25, 6:00 PM
The Restless - Thursday, April 26, 8:30 PM

-Japan-
Big Dreams Little Tokyo - Friday, April 20, 1:30 PM
Death Note 1- Saturday, April 21,8:30 PM
Sea Without Exit - Saturday, April 21, 7:30 PM
Komaneko - Sunday, April 22, 11:00 AM
Death Note 2 - Sunday, April 22, 8:30 PM
*Always (Spotlight Event)- Monday, April 23, 7:00 PM
Death Note 1 - Tuesday, April 24, 4:00 PM
Parika Tuesday, April 24, 7:00 PM
Death Note 2 - Wednesday, April 25, 4:00 PM

-China-
Shanghai Kiss - Saturday, April 21, 8:00 PM (Hayden Panettiere from Heroes will attend!)
Shanghai Red - Sunday, April 22, 4:30 PM ( Lead Actress Vivian Wu to attend this screening!)
*Exiled (Spotlight Event) - Monday, April 23, 7:30 PM
Shanghai Kiss - Tuesday, April 24, 9:00 PM
Shanghai Red - Thursday, April 26, 9:00 PM

WHERE: Edwards Island Cinema & Regency Lido Theater, Fashion Island - Newport Beach, Calif.

TICKETS: $10. Asian Spotlight Event screenings; $15 or $40 for both screening and after-party.  Order tickets by visiting www.newportbeachfilmfest.com or calling 866.NBFF.TIX

Also, don't miss this year's Asian Spotlight Event featuring screenings of “Exiled”(China), “Always,” (Japan) and “Tazza: The High Rollers,” (Korea) followed by a post-screening party at American Rag with a hosted bar by Absolut and Karl Strauss Beer, premium wine provided by W.J. Deutsch & Sons Wines, as well as a live DJ.

For more info, contact me here or visit  www.newportbeachfilmfest.com