SF Asian festival picks

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THE 26TH SAN FRANCISCO International Asian American movie FESTIVAL

Capsule reappraisals of some of the movies in the festival, by The Chronicle's G. Woody Allen Johnson. For full agenda and ticket information, travel to asianamercanmedia.org/2008. Movie showings are at the Sundance Kabuki, Landmark Clay and Fidel Castro theatres in San Francisco, the Pacific Ocean Movie Archive in Bishop Berkeley and Camera 12 Cinemas in San Jose.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

"The Home Song Stories" (Closing Night film, 7 p.m. 3/20 Kabuki) The festival programme sells this as a calling public presentation from San Francisco occupant Joan Chen, and they might be right. This Australian movie about a immigrant Hong Kong cabaret vocalist who raises her two children while drifting in and out of the human relationships of respective "uncles" is colorful, bosom wrenching, humorous and experiences honest, despite its melodramatic underpinnings. The writer-director is Tony Ayres, an Australian Chinese, and Subgenus Chen won the Golden Horse at the Asiatic Movie Awards in December for the role, whipping out her "Lust, Caution" co-star Tang Wei. This is good old-fashioned, solid moviemaking.

"Flight of the Red Balloon" (5 p.m. 3/16 Kabuki; 8:40 p.m. 3/22 PFA) Hou Hsiao-hsien is a modern master, and conveys his idiosyncratic, almost brooding style to Paris. Nominally inspired by the 1950s children's classic "The Red Balloon" (which acquires a DVD release, finally, on April 29), it is about a Chinese movie pupil (Song Fang) who takes a occupation as a nursemaid for a single female parent (Juliette Binoche) who works in a marionette theatre (the Puppetmistress?). Nosy neighbors, an ex-husband and day-to-day life do for hard life for Binoche, as well as Song. The boy? small St Simon Iteanu might stand up in for the manager - he can appreciate an mental image and looks unfazed by the blare surrounding him. Filled with sumptuous mental images by his longtime cinematographer, Mark Spike Lee Ping River Bing, "Flight of the Red Balloon" show the City of Light to also be the City of Reflections, and it's amazing how a Chinese manager looks to so thoroughly capture existent Parisian life. Like a Gallic filmmaker, there is no Alexandre Gustave Eiffel Tower to be seen, or even a isolated tourist. A true, meditative delight.

"A Gentle Breeze in the Village" (4 p.m. 3/14 Kabuki; 4:30 p.m. 3/15 PFA; 6:30 p.m. 3/17 Kabuki) Speaking of meditative, there have never been a more than aptly titled film. Nobuhiro Yamashita looks to really grip the awkward, emerging personalities of youth, as his great movie about a girls' high school stone set from 2006, "Linda, Linda, Linda" showed. His newest movie is put in a little town, where an 8th class girl's life goes complicated by the reaching of a male child from Tokyo. based on Fusako Kuramochi's popular manga series Tennen Kokekko, it accomplishes a spot of magic. Relax and enjoy.

"Never Forever" (9:15 p.m. 3/15 Clay; 7:50 p.m. 3/16 PFA) Gina Kim, whose first film, "Invisible Light," drew notice in the 2004 festival, is a movie maker who shouldn't just be on the rise, but shot through film's glass ceiling. She is lucky to have got Vera Farmiga ("The Departed"), America's best actress you never heard of (don't believe me? Netflix "Down to the Bone"), as a White adult female married to a Korean American man of affairs (David L. McInnis) who might or might not be fertile. In her pursuit to have got the babe she believes will salvage her marriage, she enlists the aid of a illegal Korean immigrant (Jung-woo Ha) to acquire her pregnant. But Farmiga is lucky to have got Kim, who thoughtful, elusive book and bold storytelling have created a movie to savor.

A Tribute to Prince Edward Yang - The Chinese maestro passed away last twelvemonth of malignant neoplastic disease at age 59, and the festival have perceptively ordered up three films, only one of which is on DVD. That would be his last completed work, 2000's "Yi Yi" (7 p.m. 3/20 PFA), the lone movie I can vouch for. It's one of the best household movies I have got ever seen, about one dramatic twelvemonth in the life of a Capital Of Taiwan household - and wings by quickly, even at three hours. I'll be apprehensive to catch his return on China in the disruptive 1960s, 1991's 4-hour "A Brighter Summer Day" (7 p.m. 3/19 Clay) starring a baby-faced Chang Subgenus Chen ("Crouching Tiger, Concealed Dragon"), and the 1986 experimental movie "The Terrorizer" (9 p.m. 3/14 PFA).

RECOMMENDED

"Behind Forgotten Eyes" (7:30 p.m. 3/15 Kabuki; 4:45 p.m. 3/22 Camera) The predicament of Korean comfortableness women is movingly and surprisingly frankly told. Director Antony Gilmore happens these women in their 80s, proud and strong. Narrated by "Lost" actress Yunjin Kim.

"Happiness" (6 p.m. 3/15 Castro; 5 p.m. 3/16 PFA; 7 p.m. 3/22 Camera) One thing about Korean manager Hur Jin-ho ("Christmas in August," 1999), he is fearlessly devoted to melodrama. Always ready to travel for the handkerchief, never afraid to utilize a fatal disease to his advantage, the manager nonetheless gaining controls even the most misanthropic heart. Hwang Jung-min is a gangster, user of women and title-holder consumer of alcohol. When cirrhosis of the liver of the liver military units him to a rural recovery clinic, and falls in love with a adult female (Lee Soo-jung, World Health Organization also stars in "I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK," below) who have a lung disease. Did I state Hur encompasses melodrama?

"Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers" (7 p.m. 3/17 Kabuki; 7 p.m. 3/19 PFA) Rithy Panh's portrait of immature Kampuchean women cocottes is bosom wrenching, not scandalmongering at all, not lurid, but a serious effort to detect the interior lives of women who often left little small towns to do money the lone manner they can. It won the European Movie Award for Best Documentary last year, and it's also very cinematographic, patient and understanding. It's mostly put in a decaying flat edifice where the women live. It's a black but necessary film, much like "China Blue," about teeanage fabric workers in Chinese factories, that participant here last year.

"A Thousand Old Age of Good Prayers" (Opening Night film, 7 p.m. 3/13 Castro) It's great to see San Francisco occupant John Wayne Wang going back to his roots - and this sensitive movie about a Chinese adult female divorced, wedded to her occupation and life alone who is visited by her father from People'S Republic Of China is a tax return to constitute after Film Industry movies such as as "Maid in Manhattan" (Jennifer Lopez) and "Last Holiday" (Queen Latifah).This is one of two movies Wang have directed in the past twelvemonth based on Oakland occupant Yiyun Li's work - the other, "Princess of Nebraska," co-directed with Richard Wong ("Colma: The Musical"), is also in this festival (7 p.m. 3/14 PFA; 4:30 p.m. 3/15 Clay) but was not available for review. Wang is the featured film maker at this festival, and fans will be treated to retrospective screenings of 1993's "The Joy Fortune Club" (9:15 p.m. 3/17 Kabuki) and 1989's "Life Is Cheap ... But Toilet Paper Is Expensive" (9:45 p.m. 3/18 Kabuki). For those who desire to hear the master explicate himself - and his ideas on Asiatic movie in general, don't lose "An Afternoon with John Wayne Wang" (2 pm. 3/15 Kabuki).

"West 32nd" (Centerpiece Presentation, 6 p.m. 3/16 Castro) Michael Kang won this festival in 2005 with the scrappy "The Motel." Armed with a larger budget that lets for some sweeping photographic camera shots and candy colored cinematography, he is back with a expression at New York's Korean underbelly, complete with clubs, barroom hostesses and homicide enigma that draw in a head-hunting lawyer ("Harold and Kumar" star Toilet Cho) and the sister of an accused liquidator (Grace Park, "Battlestar Galactica"). Fairly absorbing, and in the expansive tradition of American, not Korean, mobster pictures.

"Wings of Defeat" (7 p.m. 3/14 Kabuki; Noon 3/22 Camera) What was it like to be trained as a kamikaze and to set up for certain death? Many kamikaze airplane pilots did last and are alive today, and they look - normal. Nipponese American film maker Risa Morimoto makes a antic occupation of drawing detailed, blunt and painful narratives of these work force demonized as fanataics by the West.

WORTH Type A LOOK

"Glory Male Child Days" (8 p.m. 3/16 Clay; 9:15 p.m. 3/22 Camera) This is an edgy, low-budget first-time movie about nihilistic twentysomethings that played at Slamdance two calendar months ago - and the movie have all the plusses and minuses that all that connotes - you've seen this type of film before, with a dunce book and occasional directorial mistakes, yet it is natural and ambitious. Shot in the San Jose country by manager Alice Paul Justin Encinas, it follows three separate narratives of interconnected characters, and, considering it's moo budget, looks delicious.

"I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK" (9:10 p.m. 3/15; 12:45 p.m. 3/16 Castro) I was weirded out, slightly set off by, and by the end, very charmed by Korean bad male child Park Chan-Wook's first movie since his retaliation trilogy ("Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance," "Oldboy" and "Lady Vengeance"). It looks in slightly bad taste sensation to have got a comedy set in a mental hospital, where the pixie-ish Lim Soo-jung (also the star of "Happiness," above) who believes herself to be a cyborg. It is a psychotic belief created by a hard household situation, makes mayhem in the establishment but wins the bosom of a kleptomaniac (the Korean dad star Rain). Ceetainly a going from the retaliation series, it is still an original piece of work, with superbly imagined particular personal effects sequences.

"The Killing of a Chinese Cookie" (2 p.m. 3/15 Clay; Noon 3/23 Camera) Who knew the luck cooky had an personal identity crisis? Derek Shimoda's amusing docudrama looks into rumours of it innovation - was it by a Chinese Oregon Nipponese man? Was it invented in New House Of York or L.A. - or even in China?

"Ping Niff Playa" (6:45 p.m. 3/14 Clay; 9:30 p.m. 3/17 Kabuki; 2:15 p.m. 3/22 Camera) Jessica Yu is an Academy Award documentarian ("Breathing Lessons: the Life and Work of Mark Brian"; "In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger"; "Protagonist"), so naturally, her fiction characteristic introduction is about an L.A. rapper wanna-be, NBA participant (playa?) wanna-be who have to step in to support the family's award at - Ping pong. Starring and co-written side Jimmy Tsai, it's an often screaming though predictable frolic - though you surmise that the highly accomplished Yu is, like Tsai's fictional character "C-Dub," just dunking on 10-year-olds at the parkland instead of playing with the large boys.

"Santa Mesa" (7 p.m. 3/15 Clay; 4:30 p.m. 3/22 Camera) Not a bad attempt at all - and quite pleasing to look at - is New York-based film maker Bokkos Morales' return on his ethnical homeland. A immature Filipino American who only talks English Language is sent "back" to the Philippines, which he doesn't remember, after the decease of his mother. He dwells in a mediocre subdivision of Manila with his grandmother, who sells tickets at the railroad train station, and quickly falls in with a bad crowd. Yet there is a photographer with his ain household hurting who takes him under his wing. I would look forward to Morales' hereafter work.

"Whispering Sidewalks" (Out of the Vaults, 3 p.m. 3/15 Castro) Only 20 proceedings of this 84-minute movie from 1936, supposedly Japan's first musical and a film long thought lost until a black and white was discovered in the 1990s, was available to critics for review, but anyone interested in catching a glance of a rareness starring Capital Of California born wind vocalist Betty Inada is in for a treat. Unlike the United States and Europe, who had pretty much gone all sound all the clip around 1929, Asiatic movie centres produced mostly soundless movies well into the 1930s - so it's completely plausible that Japan's first musical wasn't made until 1936. Inada stars as an American vocalist who come ups to Tokio for a circuit (she sings "Blue Moon" and "La Cucaracha"), but her director steals her money, leaving her thrown out (literally, and in the rainfall no less) into the streets. She is taken in a by a grouping of starving artists. Director Denmei Suzuki's creaky camerawork is typical of the often awkward silent-to-sound passages - we're a long manner from Bearskin Bishop Berkeley here - but it's a absorbing document.

"Yasukuni" (4 p.m. 3/14 Clay; 7 p.m. 3/19 Kabuki) I visited the controversial Nipponese shrine that awards the liquor of Nipponese soldiers and fulls general in 2005, and it was very surprising to me that this peaceful topographic point of worship is a flash point of the uneasy human relationship between other Asiatic countries, most notably Korean Peninsula and China, and Japan's perceived inability to acknowledge the atrociousnesses of their past. Then I went into the Yasakuni armed forces museum, and the evidence of the shrine, and the "history" exhibits whitewashed every spot of what much of the human race sees history, including blaming the United States for the Pearl Seaport attack. I had hoped for more than from Lithium Ying's documentary, which was unfocussed but overlong, and yet there were many absorbing elements to it, including the aged former soldiers who assist maintain up its traditions (Yasukuni's swordmaker from the World War two epoch is still at it into his 90s). Lithium is uniquely positioned to do this film; he is Chinese-born and Japan-based.