Noticias

Ang Lee, the Academy Award-winning director of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Life of Pi,” and many other acclaimed films, will be honored with the Directors Guild of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the 77th DGA Awards on Feb. 8, Variety reports.

“Ang Lee is truly a master filmmaker,” DGA President Lesli Linka Glatter said in a statement to the outlet. “For over 30 years, he has directed a dynamic body of work that boldly cuts across genres – from period drama to comedy, adventure to Western, superhero to martial arts – always fearlessly taking on new challenges, never repeating himself, and consistently achieving cinematic excellence.”

“Through his films, Ang invites his audiences to explore complex characters that linger in your heart and mind long after the screen has gone dark. From his earliest features like ‘The Wedding Banquet’ to artistic and commercial successes like ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ ‘Life of Pi’ and ‘Crouching Tiger,...

Two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Ang Lee will have to make some more room in his trophy case. The Directors Guild of America said today that the Taiwanese filmmaker will receive its 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award.

He will put up the hardware during the 77th DGA Awards on Saturday, February 8, at the Beverly Hilton.

“Ang Lee is truly a master filmmaker,” DGA President Lesli Linka Glatter said. “For over 30 years, he has directed a dynamic body of work that boldly cuts across genres – from period drama to comedy, adventure to western, superhero to martial arts – always fearlessly taking on new challenges, never repeating himself, and consistently achieving cinematic excellence.”

Lee won Best Director Oscars for 2005’s Brokeback Mountain and 2013’s Life of Pi and scored another noms for his 2000 epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He also has two Best Picture nominations as producer of Crouching Tiger and Life of Pi. His remarkable filmography...

Ang Lee will receive the Directors Guild of America’s highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award, it announced Tuesday. He will receive the award, which recognizes extraordinary achievements in the art of cinema and motion picture direction, at the 77th Annual DGA Awards on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025.

The visionary director has more than 20 credits to his name and is known for making films with emotional depth across a variety of genres. Lee’s most well-known works include 2005’s “Brokeback Mountain” and 2013’s “Life of Pi,” both of which earned him directing Oscars, as well as 1995’s “Sense and Sensibility”; 2000’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which won the Oscar for best foreign language film; 2003’s “Hulk”; 2007’s “Lust, Caution”; and 2016’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.” Lee, 70, made his feature directorial debut with the 1991 indie, “Pushing Hands,” and his most recent film was 2019’s sci-fi thriller, “Gemini Man.”

“Ang Lee is truly a master filmmaker.

Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee added a prestigious honor Tuesday to his already exceedingly decorated career in the arts. The three-time Oscar winner was presented with the Praemium Imperiale at a black-tie ceremony in Tokyo. Often described as Asia’s version of the Nobel Prize, the award is handed out annually to artists working in various fields. A mark of the prize’s prestige, past honorees in the film and theater category have included true icons of film history, such as Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Luc Godard, Martin Scorsese and Catherine Deneuve.

“I’d like to think that my career is a never-ending school where I learn about cinema and about myself and about the world. There is no end to that learning,” Lee said during a news conference in Tokyo ahead of the awards ceremony. “As the first person from Taiwan to receive this award, I’m proud and deeply grateful.

Ang Lee is an Oscar-winning filmmaker who has worked in a variety of genres and styles to explore the lives of people around the globe. Let’s take a look back at 12 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in Taiwan in 1954, Lee’s interest in film brought him to NYU’s graduate program, where he worked as a crew member on classmate Spike Lee‘s thesis project, “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.” He directed his first feature, “Pushing Hands” (1991) at the age of 37.

Lee followed up his debut with back-to-back international successes, each one scoring Oscar nominations as Best Foreign Language Film: “The Wedding Banquet” (1993) and “Eat Drink Man Woman” (1994). In both films, the director explored the kinds of complex familial relationships that would animate many of his stories.

He was then drafted by Hollywood to helm the Jane Austin adaptation “Sense and Sensibility” (1995), which...

In “Pushing Hands”, the first entry into his what would later be known as “Father Knows Best”-Trilogy, director Ang Lee had already explored the clash of Western and Eastern ideals. In this case, the main character, played by Lung Sihung (who plays the part of a father in every entry of the trilogy) has been living for quite some time in the US, without making any effort in trying to fit in, while at the same time attempting to preserve his Confucian views on life, character and the world in general. Since he had already finished the script for “The Wedding Banquet”, the second feature within the trilogy, this would be Lee's next project and the first one to be also released theatrically in the United States. This time, however, he would show a main character convinced he had evaded the traditions of his parents, until he can no longer hide from them.

Whereas his early films such as “Pushing Hands” and “The Wedding Banquet” often touch upon the crossroads between modernity and tradition, Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee found himself in a similar situation with his third film. As he reflects upon the production of his 1994 “Eat Drink Man Woman”, he describes how he felt the pressure between going mainstream with his movies or making an arthouse film, especially after winning the Golden Bear at Berlin International Film Festival for “The Wedding Banquet”. Considering this situation, it seems only fitting he would make a film which would not only pick up the thematic threads of his previous ones, but which would also discuss these issues within the circle of the family, their relationships and, of course, the world of cooking.

Eat Drink Man Woman is screening at Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema

Even though he has been planning to settle down...

After two short features, Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee made “Pushing Hands”, which not only marked the beginning of what would later be known as the “Father Knows Best”-trilogy, but also the foundation of what would define him as a filmmaker. It is also the first collaboration with esteemed actor Sihung Lung, who would revisit the role of the family father in “The Wedding Banquet” and “Eat Drink Man Woman”, as well as work with Lee on his “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. “Pushing Hands” refers to a tai chi-routine Lung's character goes through every morning and teaches to his students, which is supposed to be a defense against brute force, which you can see in some scenes in the movie. At the same time, we are introduced to what would be Lee's career-defining themes, most importantly the conflict of tradition and modernity as well as the differences between cultures, in...

Cinematography retrospectives are the way to go—more than a thorough display of talent, it exposes the vast expanse a Dp will travel, like an education in form and business all the same. Accordingly I’m happy to see the Criterion Channel give a 25-film tribute to James Wong Howe, whose career spanned silent cinema to the ’70s, populated with work by Howard Hawks, Michael Curtz, Samuel Fuller, Alexander Mackendrick, Sydney Pollack, John Frankenheimer, and Raoul Walsh.

Further retrospectives are granted to Romy Schneider (recent repertory sensation La piscine among them), Carlos Saura (finally a chance to see Peppermint frappe!), the British New Wave, and groundbreaking distributor Cinema 5, who brought to U.S. shores everything from The Man Who Fell to Earth and Putney Swope to Pumping Iron and Scenes from a Marriage.

September also yields streaming premieres for the recently restored Bronco Bullfrog, Ang Lee’s Pushing Hands,...

Valentyn Vasyanovych’s film to open on May 6.

Film Movement has acquired North American rights from New Europe Film Sales to Ukrainian filmmaker Valentyn Vasyanovych’s timely Venice 2021 selection Reflection.

The drama centres on a Ukrainian surgeon who tries to rebuild his life after he is released by Russian forces and is a chilling foreshadowing of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war that erupted in late February.

The story opens in 2014 as Ukrainian surgeon Serhiy is captured by the Russians after he enlists to fight against them in the contested southeastern Donbas region.

As a prisoner of war he witnesses horrifying scenes...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of Modern Art

Peter Bogdanovich’s very funny, never-before-seen Squirrels to the Nuts has an exclusive run (about which more here), while a retrospective of Larry Fessenden’s genre house Glass Eye Pix is underway.

Metrograph

A Robert Siodmak retrospective has started, as has “Pop Plays Itself,” a collection of musicians onscreen, while Resnais, Demy, and Marker lead Left Bank Cinema; Metrograph A to Z continues with Powell-Pressburger and Ray; Perfect Blue and Son of the White Mare are in “Late Nights“; Charles Grodin is paid tribute with screenings of Midnight Run and Clifford.

Anthology Film Archives

A series on imageless films—featuring Hollis Frampton, Guy Debord, and Derek Jarman—is underway while some of Buster Keaton’s greatest works screen in “Essential Cinema.”

Film Forum

Joseph Losey’s great Mr. Klein has been restored, as has Bronco Bullfrog...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSSian Heder's Coda took home the Best Picture award at the 94th Academy Awards, Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car took Best International Feature, and Jane Campion won Best Director for The Power of the Dog. Find more of this year's Oscars winners here. We're saddened by the loss of Japanese filmmaker Shinji Aoyama, who recently died at the age of 57. Most revered for his 2000 film Eureka, about a trio who embark on a road trip after surviving a bus hijacking, Aoyama continued his humanist exploration of violence, family, and generation gaps in films like Desert Moon (2001) and Sad Vacation (2007), the loose sequel to Eureka. He was also a prolific novelist and critic, with his novelization of Eureka awarded the Yukio Mishima prize in 2001. Il Cinema Ritrovato has announced the programs of this year's festivities,...

Independent distributor Film Movement has picked up all North American rights to award-winning folk horror film “Seire.” The Korean chiller will be released theatrically in 2022, followed by launches on home entertainment and digital platforms.

The film takes as its central premise the Korean superstition that nobody in the family of a baby less than three weeks old – the ‘seire’ period – should attend a wake. And that failure to take precautions risks misfortune.

The story, penned by writer and first-time feature director Park Kang, sees the father of a newborn attend the funeral of an ex-girlfriend. His encounter with her twin sister is followed by a series of unexplained and discomforting episodes.

Park previously dipped his toe in the horror genre with short film “Deal” in which a man tries to trade away his nightmares with someone reputed to be a buyer.

The cast of “Seire” is headed by Seo Hyun-woo...

Film Movement has acquired all North American rights to two previous Ukrainian Oscar entries “Bad Roads” and “Donbass,” as well as the Sundance award-winning documentary “The Earth Is Blue as an Orange.”

“Bad Roads,” which was Ukraine’s Oscar candidate last fall, marks the feature debut of playwright-turned-filmmaker, Natalya Vorozhbit. The politically minded omnibus film, which premiered at Venice in 2020, is adapted from Vorozhbit’s play and unfolds in the recently invaded Eastern region of Donbass.

“Bad Roads” features four stories shedding light on life in the front-line war zone of Donbass: one man alleging to be a schoolmaster is accosted by the military at a checkpoint, two teenagers wait for their soldier boyfriends in a dilapidated town square; a journalist is held captive and gets brutally assaulted; and a young woman apologizes to an elderly couple for running over their chickens.

Variety’s review said the film “gains extra...

Long before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain, and his era of big-budget Hollywood spectacles, Ang Lee made his debut feature with the 1991 drama Pushing Hands. Co-written by James Schamus, whom Lee would go on to work with throughout his career, the film was a selection at the 1992 Berlin International Film Festival and won three Golden Horse Awards. It’s now undergone a 2K restoration and will be getting a theatrical release starting on April 1 courtesy of Film Movement. Ahead of the run, we’re pleased to debut the exclusive trailer.

Marking Lee’s first chapter of his “Father Knows Best” trilogy––followed by his subsequent dramas The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)––the film follows an elderly tai chi master Mr. Chu (Sihung Lung) from Beijing who struggles to adjust to life in New York, living with his Americanized son Alex (Ye-tong Wang). Chu immediately butts heads with his put-upon white daughter-in-law,...

Exclusive: Film Movement Classics has acquired North American rights to 2K digital restorations of Asghar Farhadi’s first two features Dancing in the Dust and Beautiful City, which have been signed off on by the two-time Oscar winner himself. Both restored dramas will be released theatrically this year, with a release on all heading home entertainment and digital platforms to follow.

In Farhadi’s 2003 feature directorial debut Dancing in the Dust, Nazar (Yousef Khodaparast) is pressured into divorcing his wife (Baran Kosari) because of her family’s bad reputation. This leads to money problems, and before long, he’s on the run due to debts that he can’t pay. Hiding out in the desert, he meets an eccentric elderly man (Faramarz Gharibian) who makes a living by collecting venom from poisonous snakes. Nazar becomes his unlikely partner and gets an unexpected chance at redemption. The film won Best Director,...

Bafta’s highest accolade will be presented to the director of ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’.

Taiwanese director Ang Lee is to be honoured with a Bafta Fellowship at the Bafta Film Awards on Sunday (April 11).

Lee is a four-time Bafta award-winner for Sense And Sensibility, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain. He also won best director at the Oscars for Brokeback Mountain and Life Of Pi.

The Fellowship is Bafta’s highest accolade, awarded in recognition of an outstanding and exceptional contribution to film, and has previously been given to Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick,...

Fox’s free streaming service, Tubi, offers over 30,000 movies and TV shows from nearly every major studio and is available on over 25 devices including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Comcast Xfinity, and more. The service offers free movies to residents of Canada and the USA with intermittent commercials when streaming content.

With a huge collection of foreign-language film Tubi has plenty to offer for those who want watch a movie in honor of the Lunar New Year. You can browse the their collection of foreign titles over at Tubi.tv. We have highlighted a few titles currently available below.

Ip Man: The Final Fight (2013) by Herman Yau

“Ip Man : The Final Fight” is a kung-fu melodrama following Ip Man’s move to Hong Kong in 1949. The story is told in a series of vignettes, sketching out incidents and dramas of Ip Man’s time in Hong Kong, entwined with the stories of his students.

Ted Hope, co-head of movies Amazon Studios, has decided to exit his post at the company to go back to producing and will enter a multi-year, first-look deal with Amazon, an individual with knowledge told TheWrap.

Amazon chief Jennifer Salke made the announcement in an internal memo on Thursday, saying that beginning June 2, Hope will enter the production deal. This was Hope’s decision, who expressed his feelings to Salke earlier this year.

Hope started at Amazon in 2015 as head of development, production and acquisitions. He was promoted to co-head of movies in July 2018 and has been running the film division alongside Julie Rapaport and Matt Newman. Newman and Rapaport will continue as co-heads of movies.

Also Read: WarnerMedia Signs Deal to Bring HBO Max to Comcast Customers

In a statement sent to staff on Thursday, Hope said, “Amazon and Jen have been generous in supporting the launch of my next venture,...

Whereas his early films such as “Pushing Hands” and “The Wedding Banquet” often touch upon the crossroads between modernity and tradition, Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee found himself in a similar situation with his third film. As he reflects upon the production of his 1994 “Eat Drink Man Woman”, he describes how he felt the pressure between going mainstream with his movies or making an arthouse film, especially after winning the Golden Bear at Berlin International Film Festival for “The Wedding Banquet”. Considering this situation, it seems only fitting he would make a film which would not only pick up the thematic threads of his previous ones, but which would also discuss these issues within the circle of the family, their relationships and, of course, the world of cooking.

“Eat Drink Man Woman” is screening at New York Asian Film Festival – Winter Showcase 2020

Even though he has been planning to settle down...

The FarewellWhen released over 25 years ago in 1993, Wayne Wang’s The Joy Luck Club was considered a triumph, the first film to realize the dream of Asian and Asian-American representation in Hollywood. Rather than predict a change in course, however, it remained an anomaly. Virtually no American films comparably invested in the sorts of cross-cultural divides chronicled in Wang’s saga of mother-daughter rifts and continuities saw the light of day, until last year’s romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians, and more significantly, Lulu Wang’s Sundance breakout, The Farewell. Not that world cinema lacked insights on the growing pains of the immigrant experience, and the East-West, tradition versus modernity conflicts that comprise the thematic meat of similarly charted family dramas. The United States saw a “70 percent increase in the population [of Asians] from 1980 to 1988,” according to a New York Times report, and Chinese immigrants made up a significant portion. The success...

Paul Auster on the beginning of ending up directing Lulu On The Bridge: "My good friend Wim Wenders, who gets a credit here, he said he had been working with Juliette Binoche, talking for years about a project to do Lulu, somehow." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Paul Auster's Lulu On The Bridge, shot by Alik Sakharov (The Sopranos), edited by Tim Squyres, and costumes by Adelle Lutz, stars Harvey Keitel and Mira Sorvino with Willem Dafoe, Gina Gershon, Mandy Patinkin, Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Edson, Don Byron, Victor Argo, Kevin Corrigan, Sophie Auster (Paul and Siri Hustvedt's daughter), and has scene stealing cameos by Lou Reed and David Byrne.

Lulu On The Bridge and The Inner Life Of Martin Frost in Paul Auster x 2

At Metrograph's screening of a 35mm print on loan from MoMA, attended by Tim Squyres, who is also Ang Lee's incredibly longtime editor, Paul Auster...

Ang Lee celebrates his 64th birthday on October 23, 2018. The Oscar-winning filmmaker has worked in a variety of genres and styles to explore the lives of people around the globe. In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 12 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in Taiwan in 1954, Lee’s interest in film brought him to NYU’s graduate program, where he worked as a crew member on classmate Spike Lee‘s thesis project, “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.” He directed his first feature, “Pushing Hands” (1991) at the age of 37.

Lee followed up his debut with back-to-back international successes, each one scoring Oscar nominations as Best Foreign Language Film: “The Wedding Banquet” (1993) and “Eat Drink Man Woman” (1994). In both films, the director explored the kinds of complex familial relationships that would animate many of his stories.

He was then drafted by Hollywood to...

SAN RAFAEL, California -- The tribute to filmmaker Ang Lee at the Mill Valley Film Festival Friday evening was something of a homecoming for the Oscar winning director of Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. When Lee brought out his first film, Pushing Hands, in 1992, Mill Valley "was the only place in the world that would show my film," Lee told the audience. "Even Sundance turned it down."

Then again, in 1997, Mill Valley screened his The Ice Storm when he was still a virtually unknown director. When he finally returned to Marin County several years later to live for the better part of a year while doing special visual effects at ILM for The Hulk, he was world famous, having made the most successful Chinese-language film ever with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Lee's latest film, Lust, Caution, an intense psycho-sexual drama set in Japanese-occupied China during World War II -- which has opened to significant boxoffice in Asia, especially Taiwan and Hong Kong, but divided Western critics so far -- opened the festival the night before, kicking off Mill Valley's 30th anniversary celebration.

So his love of the area and of its festival, one of the key regional festivals in the country, was unmistakable, as was the emotional response to his work by a packed house.

Between film clips from his 10 feature films, Lee took the audience through the cultural and cinematic education of a Taiwanese man who has become a major international moviemaker.

Lee spent the first 23 years of his life in his native country, including college and military service. "I was culturally rooted and I didn't speak English," he noted. "I didn't learn to speak English until after 'Sense and Sensibility. I felt sorry for the actors I had to direct."

His initial love affair was with the theater, not film. Standing on stage, facing an audience for the first time, an experience he re-creates in Lust, Caution, thrilled him. There was also, he pointed out, no filmmaking tradition in Taiwan at the time.

Coming to New York and not knowing English well, he knew he could not act so he moved into directing. In delving into Western stage drama, he had to break with his own cultural biases.