50th NYFF Opens With 3D For First Time: Ang Lee's LIFE OF PI

The New York Film Festival (NYFF, running Sep 28 to Oct 14) is celebrating 50 years in the business this year and to top that off they are opening the show with a 3D movie for the first time ever. Ang Lee's LIFE OF PI gets the nod as the intensely artistic project nears its release date of November 21 in North America.

If you have seen the trailer for the movie, then you are beginning to get an idea of what to expect from it.

Here's the storyline from the book:
The son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes.

The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them “the truth.” After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional – but is it more true?

I'll have more about the movie and its reception at the NYFF as it happens.