The Shanghai International Film Festival kicked off its 13th iteration this Saturday with John Woo acting as jury president (taking over from Danny Boyle last year - guess we won't be hearing much about the issue of censorship this time around, eh?) Stars in attendance included the usual bunch of Zhao Wei (Vicki Zhao), Gong Li, Jet Li and Bingbings Fan and Li. International star power seemed to be a bit lackluster this time around, but included Luc Besson, Adrien Brody, and John Cusack. more ›

John Woo, hot off the success of his Red Cliff duo of films, will now be directing a World War II epic called 飞虎英雄 "Flying Tigers," about the volunteer American pilots who flew against the Japanese from bases in Yunnan. The $160 million action flick will present the "real history" of the volunteer group and feature "the most spectacular battle scenes ever seen in Chinese cinema." The last time these guys appeared on the silver screen, it was in a 1942 flick by John Wayne that was released just months after the real "Flying Tigers" had been replaced by the U.S. Army 23rd Fighter Group. Source: MTV Movies more ›

"A stuntman filming John Woo's new movie in Beijing was killed in a bizarre fire when a small boat rammed into the set of an ancient warship, state media said on Tuesday." more ›

At the risk of pissing off our rich and powerful film producer friends and thereby never getting invited to a press junket again, we want to begin this movie review with a simple declarative sentence, the likes of which has not and may never be seen again in film criticism: the movie Blood Brothers (天堂口) sucked ass. more ›

The tenth Shanghai International Film Festival starts on June 16, and as the time draws near, people have been wondering what actors and celebs will grace the red carpet on opening night. One report we've read says that Oliver Stone, Maggie Cheung, John Woo, and Stephen Chow will be among the stars that show up. A slightly more snarky report states that Sharon Stone will show up, which is great for we connoisseurs of older women, but which the report says presents something of an image problem for SIFF because, artistically speaking, Sharon Stone is somewhat past her prime. more ›

Photo by Shanghai Sky taken from the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site. more ›

We'd heard a lot of hype about Hong Kong director Johnnie To's (杜棋峰) new film Exiled (放逐), not least of all because it was one of three Chinese language films that competed at the Venice Film Festival (against new works by Jia Zhangke and Tsai Ming-liang). more ›

How does the other half live? Shanghaiist is talking about our print media counterparts — you know, the ones that have actual deadlines and office space to fuss over. We won’t pretend to put ourselves in their shoes (well, some of us might, seeing as how we occasionally swing both ways — in the non-biblical sense, of course), but we can, at least appreciate an alliterative headline, a punchy lead, and some slick, savvy reporting. Oh, and artsy photos — we like those too. So without further ado, we bring you Shanghaiist Reads, where we tell it like they tell it — only better. And without costing you a dime. (Just kidding ... we love our local rags. And they’re free.) Think of our summary of what's in the local mags as a tribute to our print brothers and sisters who fight the good fight — and still have time to come to our website when their bosses aren’t looking. more ›