Actress Chen YaoSource: Weibo
2024年12月9日 星期一
Transcending barriers at film festival #Entertainment #China #Beauty #Pretty
(Xinhua) Chinese cinephiles can take a time-erasing trip down memory lane as 30 years after Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright reunite with director Robert Zemeckis in his new movie made using technology that allows them to "magically "appear as their younger selves on-screen.
The director debuted the film Here in the coastal city of Xiamen, Fujian province, on Nov 15. While it is not a sequel to the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump, it tells a touching tale of love, loss, laughter and life.
The premiere was part of the recently concluded 2024 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, and provided the audience with a nostalgic mix of the past with cutting-edge technology, while also highlighting the long-standing tradition of cinematic exchange between China and the United States.
Masterful conversation
"We will always remember that line, 'Run, Forrest, run,' in Forrest Gump. I think it's fair to say the director created an epic of the era," said acclaimed filmmaker Chen Kaige, who won this year's Golden Rooster Best Director award. Chen made the remarks as part of a conversation with Zemeckis during a film festival seminar.
Both films share stories with universal themes that transcend time and location. After attending the premiere on Nov 15, 27-year-old Wang Yanglin, an avid fan of Zemeckis, said, "Forrest's optimism has always inspired me through the tough times in my life, and today's new film touches on a similar theme — chasing dreams fearlessly because time truly flies."
At the seminar, Zemeckis said that one of the most anticipated features of Here is its groundbreaking 'digital makeup', a technique that wasn't possible just five years ago, let alone executed as flawlessly and seamlessly as it is in this film. "We were truly at the perfect place and the perfect time to make this film," he added.
In recent decades, technological advancements have dramatically transformed the film industries in both China and the US, with AI-powered visual effects now a staple of many productions. This evolution has sparked significant discussions and sharing between filmmakers from both countries.
"At the end of the day, all artistic activities revolve around humanity. It is especially the case for filmmaking, as the kind of authenticity that comes from real life and existence is truly invaluable," Chen said, while emphasizing the significant challenge of balancing artistic vision with technological advancements, stressing that the latter should support, not suppress, the former.
Fully recognizing this challenge, Zemeckis believes that cinema has always been a blend of technology and artistry. As the industry transitions into the digital age, he remarked that "everything is going to come back to the basics, which is story and character".
Challenges and chances
Other challenges are also emerging in the global film market as traditional cinema, a real-time cultural experience, is now confronted with fierce competition from the fast-growing popularity of short videos and online entertainment, which have become ever more ubiquitous and tend to dominate leisure time.
The 2024 summer box office in China fell short of expectations, with a 44 percent decline from the previous year — sending ripples through the world's second-largest film market.
On the other side of the ocean, US box-office revenue in 2024 is projected to be 10 percent lower than last year, according to Boxoffice Pro, a global cinema industry publication, and it will struggle to reach the pre-pandemic yearly sales level.
"A common challenge faced by the Chinese and American film industries is that during the pandemic, people gradually developed a dependency on online streaming content. After the pandemic, this shift in consumption habits has posed challenges for the film industries in both countries," says Liang Junjian, associate professor at Tsinghua University.
As they navigate similar challenges, the two film industries are paying closer attention to each other — drawing on each other's insights, and exploring collaborative opportunities.
At the 45th American Film Market earlier this month in Las Vegas, the China Film Joint Pavilion hosted by the China Film Group garnered considerable interest.
Fu Ruoqing, chairman of the China Film Group, says that Hollywood studios, including Warner Bros, Universal, Sony and Disney, have shown interest in distributing Chinese films, and in forming partnerships.
At this year's China Film Golden Rooster Awards ceremony, Oppenheimer, a biopic written and directed by British American filmmaker Christopher Nolan, won the Best Foreign Language Film award. The award was established in 2021 to align with international standards and attract outstanding films from abroad. It chronicles the life of American scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his pivotal role in the development of the atomic bomb.
"Film festivals and awards represent a real opportunity for cultural exchange and development," Richard Allen, chair professor of the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong, said while attending a forum on film education and industry at Xiamen University during the festival.
"In principle, both China and the US should be interested in marketing their films in each other's markets, because the profits to be made are potentially much larger if they collaborate, rather than compete against each other," he said.
Inspiration and influence
Since The Fugitive became the first Hollywood film introduced to China on a revenue-sharing basis, followed by Forrest Gump a year later, the exchange of movies between the two countries has flourished.
Many film experts agree that while Hollywood films are not as popular in the Chinese market as they were a decade ago, some films still attract a significant audience. At the same time, the Chinese film market remains open to introducing a broader range of international films from diverse cultures and genres.
Chinese films, meanwhile, have been trying to expand overseas. In the early 2000s, Zhang Yimou's Hero found box-office success in North America. In recent years, the film adaptation of sci-fi author Liu Cixin's novel The Wandering Earth penetrated the North American market and caught the attention of mainstream American media.
Cinema continues to serve as a potent medium for cultural exchange between China and the US, fostering mutual understanding and deepening each nation's appreciation of the other.
"Film plays an indispensable role in facilitating China-US cultural and people-to-people exchange," says Raymond Zhou, a seasoned film critic. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon remains the highest-grossing non-English language film in North America, and its martial arts director Yuen Woo-ping was also invited to contribute to the action sequences in the American film The Matrix."
At the film festival in Xiamen, many young filmmakers demonstrated an extensive understanding of the film histories of both China and the US. Through dialogue and the exchange of ideas, they gained valuable insight that is likely to influence their future creative endeavors.
Attending the festival for the first time, Edward Drake, a young American director, says that he gained a lot of inspiration from the conversation between Chen and Zemeckis.
"It's fascinating to see two incredibly different filmmakers united by their shared commitment to telling great stories about the human condition. They approach their craft from distinct Asian and American perspectives. That's the beauty of film — it can transcend cultural boundaries, bring people together, and is all rooted in our shared humanity," he says.
Source: Xinhua | Updated: 2024-11-25 08:02
2024年12月8日 星期日
‘Kraven the Hunter’ Sets Release in Mainland China Theaters #Entertainment #China #Beauty #Pretty
(Variety) "Kraven the Hunter" has been granted a theatrical release in mainland China that is closely coordinated with its North American and international rollouts."Kraven the Hunter" has been granted a theatrical release in mainland China that is closely coordinated with its North American and international rollouts.
It will open in Chinese theaters on Dec. 14, a Saturday. Its international campaign begins at Saudi Arabia's Red Sea International Film Festival on Dec 11, along with the first commercial outings in Europe. Its U.S. and Canada releases begin on (Friday) Dec. 12.
The film is the sixth in Sony's Spider-Man Universe and is a standalone story of how one of Marvel's most iconic villains came to be.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Kraven, a man whose complex relationship with his ruthless gangster father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe), starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.
Other key cast include Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola and Christopher Abbott.
Directed by J.C. Chandor, with a story by Richard Wenk and a screenplay by Wenk, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway it is produced by Produced by Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach and David Householter.
China has been a difficult market for Hollywood films in recent years as audiences become better served by local titles and as demographics change. But this year's Mainland China box office malaise has caused authorities to be relatively lenient with imported titles – in terms of import volume, release dates and content
In North America, the film has been given an R-rating. China does not have a rating system and all film releases are supposed to be suitable for all audiences. However, some distributors add unofficial content warnings about suitability for young audiences. In other cases, censors may require cuts to be made.
Another import film lining up a wide release in China is India's "Maharaja." A crime actioner with a social message, the film stars Vijay Sethupathi and Anurag Kashyap. It opens in China on (Saturday) Nov. 29, having released in India and multiple international territories in June.
Source: Variety by Patrick Frater Nov 24, 2024 9:49pm PT
2024年12月6日 星期五
Quality makes the world watch #Entertainment #China #Beauty #Pretty
(China Daily) Wrapped in a gray long-sleeve T-shirt emblazoned with the title of his latest television series, See Her Again, Hong Kong actor William Chan strode into the interview room at a luxurious downtown Beijing hotel on Nov 20, in high spirits.
It was a warm winter afternoon. A little more than an hour earlier, the 18-episode drama had debuted simultaneously on Tencent Video in China, and on Netflix internationally, respectively the largest streaming services in the country and the world.
In the hopes of reaching a wider global audience, the series will also be streamed on major platforms in a number of countries, including Singapore and Malaysia, as well as broadcast on television channels in overseas markets like Japan and Thailand.
The Hong Kong native, who shifted his career from his home metropolis to the Chinese mainland in the early 2010s, says the drama provided him a chance to return to the environment that shaped his childhood.
"There are several reasons why I chose to appear as lead in this show. The first is that I have always liked time travel-themed films and TV series," Chan says, giving the example of the 1985 sci-fi film Back to the Future, as one of his favorites.
Set in 1993 Hong Kong, See Her Again follows the protagonist, a police officer played by Chan, who investigates the case of a seemingly mentally disturbed suspect who he believes may be connected to a series of murders. During a chase, Chan's character steps into an elevator, which suddenly plunges, leaving him in a coma. When he wakes up, he finds that he has traveled through time to 2018.
The officer is even more shocked to discover that his wife and young daughter, who were injured in a car bomb explosion that might be related to the murders, are nowhere to be found, and their former apartment now has new residents. The officer manages to speak to a former subordinate, and comes to believe that the only way to return to 1993 and reunite with his family is if he can unravel the still unsolved serial murders that happened 25 years earlier.
"The script is intriguing," says Chan, who adds that he read it almost in one go.
In one of the biggest twists, the police officer, who has no valid identity card for 2018 Hong Kong, decides to use the identity of a deceased undercover officer to return to the police station with the help of his former subordinate, who has become team leader. The officer's greatest drive is to find his daughter, despite the fact that the child, who had been a kindergartner, would now be a 20-something only a few years younger than himself.
Despite not being a father, Chan says that he finds it easy to perform alongside children, as his first job was as a host of a children's program on the Disney Channel.
"My elder sister has a daughter who is similar in age to my character's daughter in 1993. Through this experience, I have become good at taking care of children, and being a good communicator who listens to them," he says.
While acting in scenes with his character's adult daughter — played by Cya Liu — Chan says teasingly that he became almost parental toward her during the last month of filming. Immersed in the role of caring father, he would "remind" Liu to wear warmer clothing when the temperature fell, and checked to see if she was eating well.
With the actor playing the suspect, Ling Man-lung, Chan took a different, and what he describes as more "thrilling" approach. During filming breaks, he practiced exchanging intense eye contact with Ling as they ate take-away food, and rehearsed lines about the serial murders.
The show was something of a nostalgic opportunity to revisit Hong Kong in the 1990s, with street scenes filled with iconic neon signs and references to popular films of the time, such as the 1993 crime-horror film The Untold Story, which is mentioned as an important clue during an interrogation.
As someone who has experienced the rapid and profitable expansion of the film and television industry in the Chinese mainland over the past decade, Chan says each time he appears in a new project, he can see progress in both the technological and storytelling aspects.
When asked how a Chinese show might be able to better reach an overseas audience, he says that he believes a good production transcends national and regional boundaries.
"Sometimes, I watch South Korean movies or dramas. Even if I don't understand what the characters are saying without reading the subtitles, I still find the scenes captivating," he says. "If a Chinese film in Mandarin or Cantonese can entice foreign audiences to follow along through subtitles, that means it's successfully gone abroad."
In addition, Chan believes that nuanced emotions, such as those of traditional family interactions, can distinguish Chinese programs from their Hollywood counterparts.
Director Wong Kwok-keung says that the core of the story is love. He says that the show's exploration of how an individual struggles through adversity while depicting brotherhood, friendship, and family affection, interwoven with elements of redemption and revenge, was what attracted him to the project.
The drama debuted to a rating of 8.3 out of 10 on the Asian show review aggregator MyDramaList, and became the second most popular Hong Kong TV series on Netflix on its third day of release.
Posters for the drama featuring the main stars — (from left) William Chan, Cya Liu, Stephen Fung, and Tse Kwan-ho; a scene featuring police officers discussing details of a case.Source: By Xu Fan | China Daily | Updated: 2024-11-28 07:32
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