The 43rd New York Film Festival

The lineup for this year's New York Film Festival has been announced, and it looks like a stellar year, especially for fans of Asian cinema. Filmbrain is more than thrilled that Im Sang-soo's The President's Last Bang has made the cut. Already a favorite of 2005, its inclusion in the NYFF will hopefully result in a wider release later in the Fall (Kino is distributing it in the States). Don't miss this one! There are two other Korean films in the lineup -- Hong Sang-soo's A Tale of Cinema and the highly anticipated third film in Park Chan-wook's revenge trilogy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times, a triptych set in three time periods but with the same two leads (Shu Qi and Chang Chen) looks interesting (the middle section was shot silent), as does Mitsuo Yanagimachi's film-within-a-film, Who's Camus Anyway?. Both films generated a fair amount of buzz at Cannes, though at the moment neither has a US distributor. Best Director recipient at Cannes Michael Haneke is here with Caché, as is the Dardenne brothers' Palme d'Or winning L'Enfant. Filmbrain is also looking forward to Lars von Trier's Manderlay, Steven Soderbergh's 72 minute Bubble, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Capote, Philippe Garrel's Regular Lovers, and Cristi Puiu's ode to mortality, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. Some weeks ago the Film Society announced that the opening night film will be George Clooney's Edward R. Murrow film, Good Night, and Good Luck, and though they haven't announced which film in the lineup is slated for closing night, Filmbrain's guess is that it will be Noah Baumbach's The Squid and The Whale. [Update: Filmbrain guessed wrong. Haneke's Caché will be the closing night film.] If the main schedule lineup isn't enough, there are some exciting special screenings, including a new restoration of Antonioni's The Passenger, in what is being touted as Antonioni's preferred cut (wow!) There's also a forty-four film retrospective spanning the history of Shochiku Films, which will no doubt be full of goodies. It's going to be a busy few weeks! The festival runs from 23 September - 9 October. Tickets go on sale to the public on 11 September. The complete list of films can be found HERE.