Hello My Concubine!

Here is some exciting news -- a new 4K restoration of Kaige Chen's lush 1993 masterpiece Farewell My Concubine is getting released this month! It's also an "uncut" version, with twenty extra minutes. It's first premiering at TIFF but a week after that it hits Film Forum here in NYC, and then it travels around the usual suspect cites from there. You can see all of the dates and places over here. If you've never seen this lush epic starring Gong Li and Leslie Cheung you're in for a treat -- here's how they describe the plot:

"In Chen Kaige's adaptation of the Lilian Lee novel, Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) grow up enduring the harsh training of the Peking Opera Academy, where instructors regularly beat the students to instill in them the discipline needed to master the complex physical and vocal techniques of this ancient art. As the two boys mature, they develop complementary talents: Dieyi, with his fine, delicate features, assumes the female roles while Xiaolou plays masculine warlords. Their dramatic identities become real for Dieyi when he falls in love with Xiaolou, who fails to fully reciprocate Dieyi’s affections and marries a courtesan, Juxian (Gong Li), creating a dangerous, jealousy-filled romantic triangle. Spanning 50 years from the early 20th century to the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, Kaige's passionate, exquisitely shot film captures the vast historical scope of a changing country (and the mesmerizing pageantry of the opera) while also revealing the intimate and touching details of a unique, tender, heartrending love story. "

And here's the trailer:

I haven't seen this in a very long time so I'm pretty excited about this 

myself. You can never go wrong with Gong Li and Leslie Cheung.