Two High Profile Asian Films Open This Friday (06/03)

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES

The first of two films opening in San Diego is the Palme d'Or Winner of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. This award is designated as the top prize for this festival. This meditative

SDAFF 2010: Award Winning Movies On The Way...

Hello 2010 SDAFF Fans, my name is Eric Lallana and I am one of the festival programmers this year. What a great opening four days to open up the festival. Some of you may think the festival slows down and goes into cruise mode. Actually, that's not the case at all because we still have some "Award Winning" films that have yet to be shown at this year's festival. Here are three films I recommend that are showing this week.

The first is a personal favorite of mine titled The Red Chapel. A documentary by filmmaker Mads Brugger. He embarks on an experiment by enlisting the help of two Korean born Danish comedians for a cultural exchange with North Korea under the pretext as a performing comedy troupe. As the camera chronicles Mads experiment results in a wide range of emotions that even for me are sometimes hard to explain to fellow moviegoers. My best advice is to just see it. The Red Chapel was awarded the prize for "Best Documetary" in the World Cinema category at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. A movie experience you will never forget.

The Red Chapel plays on Monday (10/25) at 8:00pm and again on Thursday (10/28) at 7:45pm.

Next up is Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the winnner of the Palm d'Or, the top prize at this year's Cannes Festival. This great cinematic accomplishment from Thailand is by the country's best known filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The central story centers around Boonmee's last days spent at his sister's remote country home. Thanks to Apichatpong's deliberate pacing and attention to detail, we experience the cultural beliefs from the Thai perspective surrounding death.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives plays once on Tuesday (10/26) at 9:20pm.

Finally, also arriving from the Sundance Film Festival is The Taqwacores. The first feature length film by Eyad Zahra inspired by Michael Muhammad Knight's book of the same name. Taqwacores refers to the Islamic concept to love and fear for Allah and Hardcore, the punk rock subgenre. Eyad's movie centers around Yusef, a Pakistani-American engineering student who lives off campus with a diverse group of Muslims in their house in Buffalo all the while experiencing their world of the punk rock scene and comfort level on performing Friday prayer.

The Taqwacores plays once on Tuesday (10/26) at 7:40pm.

Shu Qi?

Say hello to Shu Qi. She's my homegirl.
























Yea right... Shimmy wishes. I actually didn't know much about her, until I found out that she was on the jury for 2009 Cannes that ended 24th of May.

What did she do so well that she gets to be on jury for Cannes?!?! How CANNES she CANNES?! (sorry)

No- of course this actress is a highly acclaimed woman from Taiwan. Her talent was recognized starting from Hou Hsiao Hsien's MILLENIUM MAMBO (a big name director... mentioned many many times in my film class too... but gotta have patience to watch his films!) and since then she's been in soooooooo many films from Taiwan, Hong Kong, visited Cannes a couple times as an actress in a film... countless, countless amount of good work she's done.

Yea, obviously she deserves it ;p (and she's frikkin gorgeous!)

So there you have it, Shimmy's homegirl, Shu Qi. Yeah, SHHHH is the new hipster name :]

- SDAFFShimmy