Two Noteworthy Asian Films Open This Weekend (03/04)

The first weekend for March 2011 will go down as one of the rare occasions where two celebrated Asian films are set for limited release to movie theatres. The box-office numbers for the weekend will reflect the interest of moviegoers in the specialty cinema market.

The first one is Jee-woon Kim's "I Saw the Devil" starring Min-sik Choi (Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance) and Byung-hun Lee (The Good, the Bad, the Weird and A Bittersweet Life). Choi plays a serial killer, who's latest victim is the pregnant fiancee of government secret agent (Lee). Because of the emotional and personal circumstances of the crime the agent begins an obsessive search for the killer with revenge in mind. What kind of revenge brings up the old age question of what blurs the line between good and evil. Magnet Releasing is the distributor and the San Diego opening will be at Landmark's Ken Cinema on Friday, March 18th. The movie currently sits at a 74% Fresh Tomato rating and is receiving positive reviews from critics who contribute to indieWIRE.

The second is the 2010 SDAFF Alum "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" hails from Thailand. Apichatpong Weerasethakul's loveley and surreal film won the top award (Palme d' Or) at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. The story centers around the character Uncle Boonmee, who is dying from kidney failure decides to spend his last days in the countryside surrounded by his loved ones. What ensues is an uncoventional spiritual journey for Boonmee as his impending mortality draws closer. Strand Releasing will distribute the movie and a San Diego engagement is not know at the time of this blog posting. It currently sits at a 86% Fresh Tomato rating plus is also receiving positive reviews from the critics on indieWIRE.

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.