I've been perusing the schedule for the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival, which starts this week, September 6th and runs through the 15th. One of the films I'm particularly interested in is Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu's first foray into narrative feature, Ping Pong Playa, starring Jimmy Tsai, Smith Cho and Roger Fan. It's actually a sports comedy—not the kind of film I expected from her, which makes it that much more intriguing. A ping pong movie? I'd rather see this than Balls of Fury any day, all day. Here's the movie's official site. Looking forward to eventually checking this one out. I'm also interested in seeing veteran director Wayne Wang's latest, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, which looks like a return to the kind of films he does best.
Some of the other noteworthy Asian/Asian American films include Arthur Dong's documentary Hollywood Chinese, Im Kwon-taek's Beyond the Years, Wang Bing's Fengming, A Chinese Memoir, Takeshi Kitano's Glory to the Filmmaker!, Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Ploy, Naomi Kawase's The Mourning Forest, Lee Chang-Dong's Secret Sunshine, Ang Lee's highly anticipated Lust, Caution (fresh from its premiere at the Venice Film Festival), Hur Jin-ho's Happiness, Shinji Aoyama's Sad Vacation, Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Four Women, Lee Myung-se's M, Buddhadeb Dasgupta's The Voyeurs, Rituparno Ghosh's The Last Lear, Sori's animated Vexille, Lav Diaz's Death in the Land of Encantos, Santosh Sivan's Before the Rains, Pantham Thongsan and Somkiat Vithuranich's Mid Road Gang, Lee Kang-sheng's Help Me Eros, Jiang Wen's The Sun Also Rises, Takashi Miike's SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO, Pang Ho-cheung's The Exodus, Jia Zhang-ke's Useless, Johnnie To's Mad Detective, Lee Isaac Chung's Munyurangabo, Alexi Tan's Blood Brothers, Shivajee Chandrabhushan's Frozen, Richie Mehta's Amal, Gregg Araki's Smiley Face, Wilson Yip's Flash Point, Auraeus Solito's Philippine Science, and Hou Hsia-hsien's Le Voyage du ballon rouge. There's also Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Dude, that's a long, amazing list of films. So if you're in Toronto, this is your chance to treat yourself to some quality cinema.