Priceless
Jean (The Valet's Gad Elmaleh), a shy young bartender, is mistaken for a millionaire by a beautiful seductress named Irene (Amelie's Audrey Tautou). When Irene discovers his true identity, she abandons him, only to find that a love-struck Jean has no intention of letting her get away. Jean's comical attempts to gain her affections gradually evolve into setting himself up as a gigolo at a luxury hotel, until Irene finally starts to warm to her persistent, persuasive suitor. Against the wildly atmospheric backdrop of the south of France, Pierre Salvadori (Apres Vous) directs this sexy and thoroughly charming romantic comedy, which is a fresh re-imagining of the cinema classic, Breakfast at Tiffany's. "Stop laughing long enough, and you'll see that it's a picture about compromised lives and love for sale. But no one who watches Priceless will stop laughing for that long."-San Francisco Chronicle. "4/5 Stars. The perfect frothy fantasy for the obscene wealth gap era, Priceless (Hors de Prix) stars a gorgeous, cellophane-thin Audrey Tautou as Irene, a dedicated gold digger who finds herself accidentally mixed up with a penniless bartender."-Los Angeles Times.  "A romantic comedy that takes risks Hollywood wouldn't dream of."-Chicago Tribune. 113 min., Rated PG-13.

Married Life
A wry blend of dark humor, romantic deception, and stylish melodrama--with an invigorating dash of suspense--Married Life is an unconventional fable for grown-ups about the irresistible power and utter madness of love. After decades of marital contentment, Harry (Chris Cooper) concludes that he must kill his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson) because he loves her too much to let her suffer when he leaves her. Harry has fallen hard for the young and lovely Kay (Rachel McAdams), but his best friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan) wants to win Kay for himself. As Harry implements his maladroit plans for murdering his wife, the other characters are entangled with their own deceptions. Like Harry, they race towards their passions but trip over their scruples, seemingly well-intended towards all, but truthful to none. Married Life is an uncommonly adult film that surprises and confounds expectations. While it plays with mystery, comedy, and intrigue, its ultimate concern is: "What is married life?" In its sly way, Married Life poses perceptive questions about the seasonal discontents and unforeseen joys of all long-term relationships. "4/5 Stars.  Married Life, a period comedy of manners merged with a suspenseful psychological thriller, aspires to be a hybrid of the sort that Alfred Hitchcock polished to perfection. "-New York Times. "Cooper and Clarkson are sublime in creating a marriage still filled with tenderness, even as they lie to each other with breezy consistency."-Richard Roeper. "You may not like it if you insist on counting the deck after the game and coming up with 52. But if you get 51 and are amused by how the missing card was made to vanish, this may be a movie to your liking."-Roger Ebert. "Stylish without being overly stylized, intelligent without being boring, Married Life is a classy throwback to the good old days when subtlety meant something at the movies."-New York Observer. "Married Life is much more about the enduring relationship between husband and wife than it is about the excitement between husband and girlfriend."-Entertainment Weekly.  90 min., rated PG-13.
 
My Blueberry Nights
In Wong Kar Wai's debut English language feature, the internationally acclaimed director takes his audience on a dramatic journey across the distance between heartbreak and a new beginning. After a rough break-up, Elizabeth (played by songstress Norah Jones in her screen debut) sets out on a journey across America, leaving behind a life of memories, a dream and a soulful new friend; a café owner (Jude Law)--all while in search of something to mend her broken heart. Waitressing her way through the country, Elizabeth befriends others whose yearnings are greater than hers, including a troubled cop (David Strathairn) and his estranged wife (Rachel Weisz) and a down-on-her luck gambler (Natalie Portman) with a score to settle. Through these individuals, Elizabeth witnesses the true depths of loneliness and emptiness, and begins to understand that her own journey is part of a greater exploration within herself. "In My Blueberry Nights, Wong Kar-wai and his cinematographer, Darius Khondji, make America look so pretty that you may have trouble recognizing it."-New York Times. My Blueberry Nights hints that buried in Wong's spicy odd noodlings may be an even better conventional filmmaker."-Entertainment Weekly.  "Fortunately, Mr. Wong has made the perilous journey into a new language without sacrificing his artistic soul and very personal visual style."-New York Observer.  "This cool and cerebral film could be a hot arthouse item."-Hollywood Reporter.  111 min., Rated PG-13.

redheroine

RED HEROINE (Hong Xia) 
starring Fan Xuepeng and directed by Wen Yimin 1929
Episode six of RED KNIGHT-ERRANT a.k.a. RED HEROINE, the only surviving episode of the 13-part serial, is also one of the few complete and earliest extant silent martial arts films. This a prime example of the Wuxia pain (errant knight swordplay genre) often based on published novels or serials. A band of outlaws raids a village and kidnaps a maiden, causing the death of the young woman's grandmother. The captive maiden is rescued by a mysterious Daoist hermit and reemerges three years later as a full-fledged warrior, flying to the sky to revenge her grandmother's death. While generously sprinkled with anachronisms and prurient incongruities (imagine a bandit's harem of beauties in bikinis!), the film remains a robust telling of a young woman's transformation from abject victim to resolute warrior.

The Devil Music Ensemble presents Red Heroine
             

On Friday, Sept. 12 at 8PM the Devil Music Ensemble will perform a live music performance with an amazing and virtually unknown classic silent Chinese Kung Fu film called Red Heroine (directed by Wen Yimin 1929). The performance consists of a projection of this amazing film accompanied by a new original soundtrack performed live by the DME. 

This film is the only feature length Chinese martial arts film from the silent era that still exists in its entirety! The score created by the DME will be the only modern score to be written specifically for this film! 

The DME offers a very unique multimedia experience, presenting a synthesis of live music and movie to entertain and inspire audiences. The greatest asset of the DME is their ability through music to control the audiences' responses to what is being presented to them visually via a silent film. Audience members often forget that a live band is playing the soundtrack and are all of sudden snatched out of the suspension of disbelief to see exactly how the music for the film is unfolding before their eyes. It's a thrilling effect.

Then She Found Me

Adapted from Elinor Lipman’s novel of the same name, Helen Hunt makes her feature directing debut with Then She Found Me, a touching story of schoolteacher April Epner (Hunt) and her very unlikely path towards personal fulfillment. Following the separation from her husband (Matthew Broderick) and the death of her adopted mother, April is contacted by her apparent birth mother (Bette Midler), who turns out to be a local talk show host Bernice Graves. As Bernice tries to become the mother to April that she was never able to be, April seems to find solace in the arms of the parent of one of her students (Colin Firth), only to find that the mystery to life’s questions cannot be solved by a simple revelation. “By the closing scene, I felt privileged to be along for April's emergence from the deep waters of daughterhood and her realization that when love knocks, the heart opens wide.”-Philadelphia Inquirer. “There's a gentle realism that makes room for laughs, drama and the slightest touch of farce, never spilling into the comically cheap and managing to explore subtler issues involving adoption.”-Chicago Tribune. “A funny and touching story about the way we create families both by blood and by choice.”-New York Observer. 100 min., Rated R.

Son of Rambow

A runaway audience smash at the Sundance Film Festival, SON OF RAMBOW is a hilariously fresh and visually inventive take on friendship, family, film heroes and the death-defying adventures of growing up in the video age. It all begins in 1980s Britain, when young Will Proudfoot, raised in isolation among The Brethren, a puritanical religious sect in which music and TV are strictly forbidden, encounters something beyond his wildest fantasies: a pirated copy of Rambo: First Blood. His virgin viewing of the iconic thriller blows his mind – and rapidly expanding imagination – wide open. Now, Will sets out to join forces with the seemingly diabolical school bully, Lee Carter, to make their own action epic, devising wildly creative, on-the-fly stunts, not to mention equally elaborate schemes for creating a movie of total commitment and non-stop thrills while hiding out from The Brethren. But when school popularity finally descends on Will and Lee in the form of, oui, the super-cool French exchange student, Didier Revol, their remarkable new friendship and precious film are pushed, quite literally, to the breaking point. “Son of Rambow evokes the rush of discovery that turns budding cinephiles into lifers -- that delight in finding a film that seems to express or coalesce some inchoate yearning, including a yen to share.”-Village Voice. “Bright and witty physical and optical visual touches spill off the screen, though the use of effects is scaled to the tale.”-Variety. 95 min.