It’s that time of the year again when y’all are required to sit back, relax, and watch a movie.
Save the dates — November 9 to 18 — for Cinema One Originals, the annual cinema event of cable channel Cinema One and read up on choice award-winning Asian films to be screened in the festival’s Best of Asian Cinema program.
There’s the new Zhang Yimou movie, Coming Home, that stars the ageless beauty Gong Li and Chen Daoming. It’s got an intriguing plot and premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival where it played out of competition. Spanning years and revolutions, a husband jailed for political reasons — oh, China! — returns to his wife only to find that she has amnesia.
And then there’s Winter Sleep, 2014 Winner Cannes Film Festial Palme D’Or, by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Now, if you were able to sit through Lav Diaz’s Norte, then this movie about miserable souls trapped inside a hotel just as winter is coming should be peanuts: It’s a talky three hours and 16 minutes. “Winter Sleep is both subdued and rich in details, its plot growing slowly over a series of extensive conversations. It’s a robust, challenging experience he’s been building toward with his previous features, as well as an adventurous step above them,” writes Eric Kohn on Indiewire
This year’s Golden Bear Award winner at the Berlin International Film Festival, Black Coal, Thin Ice is a film noir featuring a police officer who investigates a gruesome killing and mutilation in a small town in northern China five years earlier because there has been a new spate of similar murders. While working the case, he realizes thall all the victims had been in a relationship with one woman, whom he pursues.
Cinema One Originals, Nov 9-18 at Fairview Terraces, Glorietta, Trinoma, and Greenhills Dolby Atmos theaters; www.facebook.com/Cinema1channel for details.
