Best movies like A New Old Play
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like A New Old Play Starring Yi Sicheng, Guan Nan, Qiu Zhimin, Xue Xuchun, and more. If you liked A New Old Play then you may also like: Green Snake, One Froggy Evening, Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers - To Live and Die in Starlight, Czechoslovakia 1968, The Phantom of the Opera and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
On a 1980s evening, the topmost clown-actor of the 20th century Sichuan opera, Qiu Fu passes away in an accident and half-unwillingly sets off for the Ghost City under the escort of two underworld officials. Along the way, he meets old friends. As they recall the past, a history of the living is conjured up.
A New Old Play
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One Froggy Evening
A workman finds a singing frog in the cornerstone of an old building being demolished. But when he tries to cash in on his discovery, he finds the frog will sing only for him, and just croak for the talent agent and the audience in the theater he's spent his life savings on.
Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers - To Live and Die in Starlight
After being punished for retreat from combat, Ranger David Martel is given command of the Liandra, a haunted 20-year old Minbari fighting ship. He's escorting ambassadors to a secret archaeological site, the oldest city on record and a clue to a dangerous ancient race.
Czechoslovakia 1968
Short documentary about 50 years of history of Czechoslovakia, with archive images.
The Phantom of the Opera
When Christine Day accidentally discovers a rare piece of music, she brings back to life its composer, Erik Destler. Through her fascination with the music she is transported back to Destler's time, 1889, and is thrust into stardom by singing his opera as no one else can. But against the exciting backdrop of the opera lurks a hideous danger—the Phantom—and Christine soon finds herself the object of his relentless desire.
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun
A planet is discovered in the same orbit as Earth's but is located on the exact opposite side of the sun, making it not visible from Earth. The European Space Exploration Council decide to send American astronaut Glenn Ross and British scientist John Kane via spaceship to explore the other planet.
Beau Pere
Rémi is a man trapped in a deteriorating marriage. When his wife is unexpectedly killed in a car accident, Rémi is left with his stepdaughter, Marion, who chooses to stay with him rather than live with her birth father. After the initial shock passes, Rémi is caught off-guard when Marion begins expressing her attraction to him. Initially repulsed, Marion's mature beauty wears him down as he finally caves to her seductions.
The Last Tycoon
Cheng, a young man who is set up by the chief of police, must leave the life he knows and Qiu, the woman he loves, to start again. After escaping prison Cheng quickly and violently moves his way up the ladder of Shanghais criminal underworld to become on the most powerful mob bosses in Shanghais history. But fame and notoriety take their toll when Cheng finds himself stuck between the looming Japanese army and the scheming local secret service. Matters are only made worse when he bumps into the love of his life QIU, along with her writer husband. Will love re-kindle in the dusk of an era?
Rent
This rock opera tells the story of one year in the life of a group of bohemians struggling in late 1980s East Village, New York, USA. The film centers around Mark and Roger, two roommates. While a tragedy has made Roger numb to new experiences, Mark begins capturing their world through his attempts to make a personal movie. In the year that follows, they and their friends deal with love, loss, and working together.
Song of Freedom
John Zinga, a descendent of slaves, has an ancient medallion around his neck and a fragment of song passed down generations. He is an English dockworker with a magnificent voice and a yearning to learn his roots.
Tevye
Tevye is a dairyman in the Russian Ukraine early in the 20th century. He lives in a cabin outside Boyberik with his wife Goldie, his widowed daughter Tseytl, her two children, and his younger daughter, the unmarried Khave. Khave is being courted by Fedya, a Christian, the son of a local government official. Tevye warns Khave against romance and marriage outside her faith, but Fedya is persuasive too. What will Khave decide, how will Tevye react, and when the Tsar initiates a pogrom, will Tevye's friends come to his defense? Can the stubborn Tevye reconcile his heart and tradition?
American 965
An investigation that raises new questions about the tragic accident of American Airlines flight 965 on the evening of December 20th, 1995.
New Orleans
A gambling hall owner relocates from New Orleans to Chicago and entertains his patrons with hot jazz by Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Woody Herman, and others.
Timestalkers
History professor Scott McKenzie makes an anachronistic discovery in a photograph from the Old West and he is soon joined by beautiful time-traveler Georgia in a time-skipping adventure to stop her colleague from the future from erasing her from existence.
François 1er
Honorin is the simple and naive stage manager of a traveling theatre troupe, whose one ambition is to once play the role of the cavalier in the opera "Francis I, or the Loves of the Beautiful Ferroniere". A hypnotist puts him to sleep and in his dreams he is transplanted to the days of the Renaissance. There, among other items, he is made a Duke by Henri VIII, fights a duel and survives a series of medieval tortures, while also bestowing some 20th century blessings on the court of Francis I.
Big Data, Big Brother
The story of the cross destiny of George Orwell (1903-50) and Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), the genius authors of the two most groundbreaking novels of anticipation of the 20th century: 1984 and Brave New World; two lucid witnesses of the maledictions of the modern world whose novels have found a considerable echo with our time.
Dan Cruickshank: Resurrecting History: Warsaw
Dan Cruickshank returns to his childhood home of Warsaw for the first time in almost 60 years. In a personal and moving film, he recalls his boyhood memories to explore the memories of the city and the memories of its people. No city in Europe suffered so much destruction in the Second World War, no city rose up so heroically from the ashes. The Nazis had razed Warsaw to the ground, but after the war the people fought hard to bring their city back from the dead in one of the greatest reconstruction jobs in history. As a boy, Cruickshank lived in the rebuilt old town and it inspired his love of architecture and made him the man he is today.
Hollywood Spies
During the 1930s anti-Semitism was rampant not only in Germany but also in America. There was a German American Bund and pro-Nazi rallies even filled Madison Square Gardens in New York City. And the US was isolationist. Until Pearl Harbor, then, everything changed. Spymasters throughout the 20th century, and particularly during times of conflict, thought it advantageous to enlist the services of celebrities who had high level and powerful "fans" in various industries, many with easy access to politicians and high ranking government officials. Hollywood, as we now know from declassified National Archive documents, aided in the mobilization for war and its people contributed as spies, combatants, propagandists, documentary and fund-raisers, entertainers, and morale-boosters. Hundreds of celebrities eagerly answered the "call to arms" and brought their talents and patriotism to the intelligence services, military and war information offices.
Evening Rain
At the tail end of the Cultural Revolution, Qiu Shi, a poet who has been in prison for six years, is transferred elsewhere by boat under the guard of two officers. During transit, he meets a series of passengers, who have also faced hardships in recent times.
Thomas the Impostor
In the First World War, when Paris is expected to fall to the Germans, the attractive widow, Princesse de Bormes, organises a convoy of cars to evacuate the wounded from the front, and bring them back to her villa in Paris to recuperate. The authorities will not give them passes until an innocent 16-year-old boy, Guillaume Thomas de Fontenoy, joins them and is mistaken as the nephew of the popular General de Fontenoy. The Princess is enraptured by Thomas and her daughter, Henriette, falls in love with him. However Thomas feels impelled to see more of the action of the war.
To Live to Sing
Zhao Li manages a Sichuan Opera troupe that lives and performs together in a rundown theatre in the outskirts of Chengdu. When she receives an order of demolition, she hides the news, fearing that this could spell their end. Secretly, she wouldn’t mind stopping since their life has become harder over the years. But what else can she do? She also worries that her niece Dan Dan, their star, will leave them for a better future in the city. To keep her troupe “family” together, Zhao Li begins a search for a new theatre for them to both sing and live in. As she struggles with bureaucracy, the characters from the opera world that she uses to escape her troubles begin to seep into her real life…
The Portrait
In the early 20th century, Lazar -a taciturn woodsman- asks the disenchanted portraitist Arkadi to immortalize his child. The execution of this portrait will unsettle both men while revealing their inner fears and change their outlook on life.
La Petite Musique de Marie-Antoinette: Music for the Queens Theater
Near Trianon, the young Queen Marie-Antoinette built a small and secret theater, to act and sing herself with friends and family. The little theater is still there, newly restored. For the first time since the XVIII century, opera arias and symphonies by Gretry and Gossec, two of the queen's best composers, are played with ancient sets and instruments. A cycle of late 18th century music, programmed by the Baroque Music Center of Versailles, showcases the finest compositions of the musical repertoire played in Paris, under the influence of Marie-Antoinette, during the reign of Louis XVI. The Center joined with French-speaking musicians from different horizons, giving pride of place to the great French-Walloon composers, Andre-Modeste Gretry and Francois-Joseph Gossec. Both enjoyed major careers under Louis XVI: the first built his reputation on his comic operas, which Marie-Antoinette greatly admired; the second came to be considered the true father of the French symphony.
The Butterfly Chalice
The story revolves around Tian Yu Quan (Chin Feng) who rushes to the aid of an elderly fisherman who is bullied by an arrogant relative of the Qiu Shan ministry. In the heat of the ensuing battle he kills the said man and is hence chased by the district's officials. Trying to use the waterway to shake off his enemies, Yu Quan finds a true friend in the old fisherman's bark-stearing daughter, Hu Feng Lian (Ting Hung) who becomes his loyal accomplice. As symbol for his gratitude, Yu Quan bestows Feng Lian with a Butterfly Chalice to reflect their eternal friendship bond...
The Ghosts of Versailles
What happened to Figaro and his friends after the events told in Rossini’s and Mozart’s operas? One possible sequel is told in John Corigliano’s “grand opera buffa” The Ghosts of Versailles—an uproariously funny and deeply moving work inspired by Beaumarchais’s third Figaro play, La Mère Coupable, and commissioned by the Met to celebrate its 100th anniversary. This telecast captures its world premiere run, conducted by James Levine. Håkan Hagegård is Beaumarchais, Figaro’s creator, who is deeply in love with Marie Antoinette (Teresa Stratas in a heart-searing performance) and determined to rewrite history and save her from the guillotine. A young Renée Fleming, at the beginning of her international career, sings the unfaithful Rosina. Gino Quilico is the wily Figaro who tries to take matters in his own hands, and Marilyn Horne stops the show as the exotic entertainer Samira.
Perfect Lives
An opera for television by Robert Ashley. Set in the American Midwest, it is “about” bank robbery, cocktail lounges, geriatric love, adolescent elopement, the changing of the light at sundown, et al. One of the definitive text-sound compositions of the late 20th century, it has been called "the most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s".
Along The Jinsha River
In 1936, the Long March of the Red Army passed through the Tibetan area by the Jinsha River. The Kuomintang colluded with the great local tyrant Qiu Wanli in an attempt to prevent the Red Army from crossing the river north. Qiu Wanli asks his minions to pretend to be the Red Army and rob the chieftain Sangge's only daughter Zhuma to provoke the relationship between the chieftain and the Red Army. The Red Army adhered to the party's ethnic policy, rescued Zhuma, and crossed the Jinsha River to the border of Tibetan areas. Qiu again sneaked into the Tibetan area. He said that Zhuma had been killed by the Red Army and provided ammunition and weapons for the chieftain to fight the Red Army. In order to expose the enemy's rumors, the Red Army instructor Jin Ming took a squad to escort Zhuma home.
The Cursed
Troublesome Night series director Yip Wai Ying returns to the horror genre in the 2018 scarefest The Cursed. Surgeon Jia'er (Annie Liu, Hungry Ghost Ritual), who grew up in an orphanage, is surprised to one day receive news of a grandmother (Nina Paw, Show Me Your Love) who just passed away. The legal letter states that she has inherited her grandmother's mansion in Malaysia. Confused about this sudden revelation, Jia'er decides to go to Malaysia with her friends Jessica and Amy to find out the truth. Along the way, she re-encounters childhood friend Suwen (Wilfred Lau, The Leakers). While arranging her grandmother's matters, strange and terrifying things begin to happen, and Jia'er sets out to uncover the secret hidden in the mansion
Property Master
The film tells that during the period of the Republic of China, Lu Moshan, a Sichuan opera prop master, was imprisoned because he was a gangster for the deputy director in the crew. After being released, he disguised himself and came to his daughter's school as a prop teacher. I think, my daughter was killed by several other students in the school, and the frame was made by Lu Moshan. Lu Moshan was released from prison again. He recovered the status of "Lu Moshan" and came to his daughter's school again, and retaliated against the murderers.
Qiu Haitang
During the Republic of China, a Beijing Opera actor named Wu Yuqin specializes in performing in female roles. He takes the stage name Qiu Haitang and is invited to dinner by an admiring warlord Yuan. He later meets Luo Xiangqi, a graduate of a female performance school. The two of them fall in love but it turns out that she is warlord Yuan's wife...
The Supernatural Events on Campus
One evening, a student was walking alone at his campus, she saw a girl in school uniform walking in front of her, she try to call her, the girls turned her face, and what she saw is a strange old woman's face!. Since then, all student encounter a lot of strange events that might have something to do with the campus's history. What's happening actually?
Gotham: The Fall and Rise of New York
Gotham tells the true story of what happened in New York City during the twenty years from 1993 to 2013. How did a city with over 2200 murders, 93,000 violent robberies and 147,000 car thefts in 1990 become the capitol of the world a mere handful of years later? This feature documentary explores what happened during these decades, told by the people who did the hard work, some at great personal and professional cost.
This City Is a Battlefield
A 35-year-old former fighter and violinist devises a plan to blow up a movie theater, a gathering place for British NICA officials and the Dutch.
Green Snake
While trying to free her sister from Fahai's clutches, Xiao Qing winds up in a dystopian city and meets a mysterious man who can't recall his past life.