The Ninth Annual San Diego Asian Film Festival

Jimmy Tsai is hilarious in Ping Pong Playa, SDAFF's opening night film (IFC Films)

The San Diego Asian Film Festival kicks off its 9th year tonight with the opening night feature Ping Pong Playa by Jessica Yu. The film boasts a hilarious performance by Jimmy Tsai as a young Asian man obsessed with being a basketball player and taking on the name of C-Dub. The film taps into a similar vibe as the Filipino comedy The Flip Side that screened back in 2001. But since opening night films are often sold out, I have two alternate recommendations: Assembly from Mainland China and Public Enemy Returns from South Korea. Although the festival is strongly committed to showcasing Asian American films, I have always been more satisfied by the international titles where the emphasis is less on exploring identity and delivering a message, and more on pushing the envelope in creativity and storytelling.

Religulous

Bill Maher interviews Christ at the Holy Land Experience in Religulous (Lionsgate)

With nearly a dozen films and two festival to cover this week, I'll get to as much as I can today. Top of my list, though, is the Bill Maher-Larry Charles documentary Religulous (opening October 3 at Landmark's Hillcrest and La Jolla Village Theaters). Maher describes himself as a non-believer and he sets out to ask believers why they believe. Now this is not designed as a comprehensive, balanced exploration of faith and religion. It is a very personal take on faith and religion, and on the role they both take in American culture, society, and politics. Think of it like a humorous op ed piece, and as the funniest film so far this year.

Sixth Annual San Diego Women’s Film Festival

Rachel Getting Married is the opening night feature for this year's San Diego Women's Film Festival (Sony Pictures Classics)

There's something of a festival bunch up this weekend as the San Diego Women's Film Festival and the San Diego Italian Film Festival (more on this later) compete for audiences this weekend. The San Diego Women's Film Festival kicks off its sixth season today with two youth outreach programs at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park. Then the festival goes into full swing tomorrow at the Reading Gaslamp Theaters downtown with the San Diego premiere of Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married starring Anne Hathaway and written by Sidney Lumet's daughter Jenny. The festival is Southern California's longest running women film festival and this year plays host to fifty films including five features. The goal of the Festival is to empower young women through positive film media and promote women filmmakers and their films. This year the festival also boasts a new curator, Citizen Video's Holly Jones. You can also listen to this morning's These Days discussion of this year's festival with Holly Jones and I.

Trailer Tuesday Bonus: Rain of Madness

Wrap your head around this: Tropic Thunder was the faux movie being made inside the real Tropic Thunder that opened in theaters. Now Tropic Thunder's filmmaker Ben Stiller is making a mockumentary called Rain of Madness about the two Tropic Thunder films -- sort of. I couldn't resist this. On August 27, iTunes began offering an exclusive download of the 30-minute mockumentary Rain of Madness that spoofs Eleanor Coppola's famous documentary about her husband Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Rain of Madness feature Tropic Thunder's co-writer Justin Theroux as a Werner Herzog-esque German filmmaker Jan Jurgen who drily delivers such lines as "what is war?" and "It's as unflinchingly as possible a look at the making of a Hollywood nightmare." Steve Coogan, who played the ill-fated director of the faux Tropic Thunder, gets display more of his comic skill here. Most of the cast participates so you get more of Robert Downey, Jr.'s hilariously intense Aussie method actor. In some ways, Rain of Madness is is tighter, more successful spoof than Tropic Thunder. Enjoy the trailer or just download the entire movie for free.

Tropic Thunder Featurette

Tropic Thunder opens today throughout San Diego. My review will be up later today. In the meantime, enjoy this featurette about the cast. Ben Stiller serves as writer, producer, director, and star, while Robert Downey, Jr. plays a balck man. He what? That's right, Downey essentially dons "black face" to play an Austrailian actor playing an African American soldier. That's just one of the gags that push the bounds of political correctness to its possible breaking point. Take a look at the video and see if you find it funny or offensive. Featurette is courtesy of Paramount.

Jodhaa Akbar

Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan in Jodhaa Akbar (UTV Motion Pictures)

The Museum of Photographic Arts kicks off an Indian Film Series on May 3 that's designed to complement its new exhibit Humanitas: Images of India by Fredric Roberts. For the kick off event, MoPA will be partnering with Goldspirit Films, the sole exhibitor of contemporary Indian language films in San Diego, to present a free encore screening of the epic Jodhaa Akbar. The screening begins at 6:00 pm at the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theater. If you have ever wanted to sample a contemporary Indian film this is the perfect opportunity since the event is free and the film is a lush romantic and historical opus. MoPA will also be partnering with the San Diego Museum of Art for additional films in the series. SDMA is currently running its own Indian-themed exhibit Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose. The first film of the MoPA/SDMA collaboration will be Satyajit Ray's Two Daughters (1961) screening Tuesday May 6. Ray's gift for nuanced comedy is superbly demonstrated in this exquisite adaptation of a pair of short stories by Indian literary giant Rabindranath Tagore. So if you want to spend a wonderful day and evening in Balboa Park enjoying all things Indian, come early and take a tour of both museum exhibits and then settle in for an evening of grand cinematic entertainment. 

Now to Jodhaa Akbar. This lush $10 million dollar historical romance favors legend over facts as it chronicles the sixteenth century love story between the famous Mughal Emperor Akbar and the Rajput Princess Jodhaa that he marries. Directed by Ashutosh Gowariker (an Academy Award nominee for his cricket epic Lagaan), Jodhaa Akbar stars hunky Hrithik Roshan as the emperor and the lovely Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan as his Hindu wife. Politically, Emperor Akbar is revealed as a savvy ruler, extending his empire as far east as Afghanistan and as far west as the Bay of Bengal, and from the Himalayas to the Godhavari River. As emperor, he displays tolerance and generosity backed by strength and military force. Akbar marries Jodhaa in order to strengthen his relations with the Rajputs. But Jodhaa is not about to be some mere political pawn. So she places two demands on Akbar before she will agree to marry: She will not be forced to convert to his Islamic faith and she will be allowed a small shrine to Krishna in her private quarters. Akbar agrees. But on their wedding night, he's turned away from her bed. Until he wins her heart, Jodhaa refuses to consummate their marriage. So in between battles, Akbar focuses on the domestic challenge of winning his wife's love and trust. He embarks on a courtship that leads to true love - despite court intrigues and prejudices that threaten to pull them apart.

Stop-Loss

Channing Tatum, Abbie Cornish and Ryan Phillippe in Stop-Loss (Paramount)

Kimberly Peirce garnered praise and attention for her feature film debut Boys Don't Cry, directing Hilary Swank to a Best Actress Oscar. But it's been almost ten years since that film. The delay in delivering a sophomore feature seems to lie in the fact that her second project went through a few transformations on the way to the big screen. Peirce became interested in telling a story about people who sign up for military service in a time of war. Initially her interest was in making a documentary but what she has finally made is the narrative film Stop-Loss (opening March 28 throughout San Diego). Peirce says she wanted to make a film exploring the questions: "Why are they signing up, what’s their experience in combat and what’s it like coming home?" And the documentary footage she gathered will now become bonus material when the film comes out on DVD.

Fighting for Life

Terry Sanders' Fighting for Life (Truly Indy)

This week two very different films deal with the Iraq War. Kimberly Peirce will serve up a Hollywood feature called Stop-Loss, and at the other end of the financial spectrum is Terry Sander's documentary Fighting for Life (opening March 28 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). Sanders won a 1955 Oscar for a short film he made with his brother Denis and a 1995 Oscar for producing the documentary Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision for his wife and fellow documentary filmmaker Frieda Lee Mock. [CORRECTION: I mistakenly said Sanders would be at the Ken Cinema on Friday to present his film and take questions from the audience, he will be at the Hillcrest Cinemas. The breakdancers will be at the Ken Cinema for Planet B-Boy. Sorry about the confusion.]

Taxi to the Dark Side

Alex Gibney's documentary Taxi to the Dark Side (THINKFilm)

You have to wait until the very end of Taxi to the Dark Side (opening February 8 for one week only at Landmark's Ken Cinema) to discover a very personal reason why Alex Gibney was so driven to make this documentary exploration of how far the Bush Administration has been willing to go in its prosecution of the “War on Terror.” Gibney’s father Frank was a journalist, author, and a former Naval interrogator in World War II. Just weeks before Frank Gibney died, he asked his son to videotape him so he could comment on the subject of American soldiers accused of torturing prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo and elsewhere.  Frank Gibney’s anger was directed at the top officials in the Bush Administration, starting with George W. and including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Alberto Gonzales (who rationalized the new policy of “coercive interrogation techniques” as the only way to combat the threat posed by terrorist enemies so evil that they could turn commercial airliners into suicide planes). The outrage Frank Gibney expresses fuels his son’s documentary.

San Diego Jewish Film Festival

The coming of age tale Sixty-Six is the opening night film of the SDJFF (Universal)

The San Diego Jewish Film Festival kicks off its 18th season on February 7 with a British charmer called Sixty Six. The eleven-day festival will play at five local venues and showcase more than three dozen films and assorted panel discussions. Listen to my radio preview of the festival or read on for more in-depth details.

The title of the opening night film, Sixty-Six, refers to the year 1966 when Bernie Reubens (Greg Sulkin) is in the midst of elaborate plans for his bar mitzvah. Proclaiming itself a "tru-ish story," the film offers a delightful portrait of a young boy trying to make an impression on his own family. But it's difficult to get attention when you’re competing with the World Cup, especially when England happens to be hosting the World Cup. To make matters worse, Bernie has to contend with the final match between Blighty and West Germany landing on the exact same day as his much-anticipated rite of passage.