For this Friday Movie Night, first up is Raise the Red Lantern (1991), arguably the magnum opus of renowned Chinese director Zhang Yimou, and widely-regarded as one of the best Chinese films ever. It concerns competition between a trio of concubines in 1920s China and their crabs-in-a-bucket efforts to gain privileges at the expense of the others. It is currently ranked #157 on Letterboxd’s Top 250 films of all time. Someone observed the other day that we have not watched much from mainland China, so this will be one step toward rectifying that. Second is The Rocking Horsemen (1992), a musical about a group of teenage boys in 1960s Japan who start a rock band. The director is the prolific auteur Nobuhiko Obayashi, who is best-known for House (1977), but has directed numerous other highly-regarded films as well, this being one of them. Let’s watch it.

We’ll start at 9PM EST on Hextube, right here: https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies

Be there, comrades!

Letterboxd:

• Raise the Red Lantern: https://letterboxd.com/film/raise-the-red-lantern/
• The Rocking Horsemen: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-rocking-horsemen/

Doesthedogdie.com links:

• Raise the Red Lantern: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/102694
• The Rocking Horsemen: Sorry, nothing on DTDD or IMDB.

CWs for Raise the Red Lantern:

• Domestic violence.
• Gaslighting.
• Alcohol abuse.
• Sex scene with dubious consent. Main character is a concubine.
• Cutting of flesh.
• Someone struggles to breathe.
• Hanging.
• Death of parent.
• Cheating.
• Spitting.
• Suicidal ideation.
• Anxiety attacks.
• Sex.
• Sad ending.
• Blood.

CWs for The Rocking Horsemen:

• Teenage boys talking about sex.
• Objectification of female characters.
• A teenage boy gets an erection.

Links to movies:

• Raise the Red Lantern: https://vimeo.com/881517188
• The Rocking Horsemen: https://vimeo.com/881518419