Fans of French film might be interested to know that Jean-Pierre Melville's 1970 classic Le Cercle Rouge (starring Alain Delon, Andre Bourvil, Gian Maria Volonte and Yves Montand) is being remade in Hollywood by none other than Hong Kong action auteur Johnnie To. What's even more weird is that Chow Yun-fat and Orlando Bloom are attached to the project. Malaysia's The Star reports that in Chen Shi-Zheng's Dark Matter the film about the Chinese physics......

An interesting take on some of the problems caused by the one child policy. Wang Xiaoshuai's latest garnered him a best director award at the Berlin film festival.The story centers around a divorced couple, both now remarried, who have a child that suffers from childhood leukemia and is in desperate need of a transplant -- but with no siblings, there are no suitable donors. Thus, the parents are faced with the possibility of having to......

‘Majestic Film Verleih’, the company who will bring the movie to german cinemas released 8 official press pictures who show the stars in action. Also, german broadcasting agency 'Deutsche Welle' released a clip on YouTube with a report about the shooting in Shanghai....

Japanese filmmaker Satoru Mizushima (水島総) was not too happy about Nanking, the American documentary about the Nanking Massacre. So he set out to create his own film The Truth about Nanjing (南京の真実, Nanking no shinjitsu) to set straight what he felt were "fabrications" and "false impressions" propagated by the film and a "setup by China to control intelligence". Several leading politicians, including Tokyo's rightwing governor, Shintaro Ishihara, have come out in support of the......

Worst. Wong Kar-wai movie. Ever. Wong Kar-wai movies used to be mini-events in our lives, so we were probably more disappointed than the average viewer. It's hard to believe that My Blueberry Nights (MBN) was made by the same guy who made a gem of a road movie about ten years ago, Happy Together (HT). Both are road movies about lonely souls and wayward lovers, so it's hard not compare the two, but unfortunately,......

Steve Buscemi and Southern Barbarian owner Feng Jianwen (Credit: Southern Barbarian) Next time, Steve, stay for some Grandma's Mashed Potatoes. Trust us. It's not every day that a Golden Globe and Emmy award nominated actor shows up unexpectedly at the launch party for a small photo exhibit at a Yunnan restaurant in Shanghai, China, but that's what happened yesterday when Steve Buscemi stepped in from the rain to check out Ying Tang's "Balance" at......

One of the things that makes being on the tube during rush hour even more miserable than we had previously imagined possible is the "film" made by Starbucks and Pepsi showing on the subway TV. Titled 晴天日记 (Qingtian riji), the film is about a young man and a young woman, blah blah blah. Of course the film takes place in Shanghai but most of the scenes take place in Starbucks. We think the whole rationale......

Shanghaiist has a soft spot for John Cusack, and an even softer spot for Gong Li ( despite what those eejuts at CCTV might think), so we were mildly excited to read that the two are pairing up to film in Shanghai at some point next year. Okay, the odds of bumping into Ms Gong in our local Lian Hua may be slim, but as the movie is set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai just before Pearl......

Not long ago, we asked when our local DVD shop would have decent bootlegs of The Simpsons Movie. The answer: Now. And it was probably here a while ago (we were out of town). We haven't not watched the whole thing yet, but the quality of this camcorder version seems to be passable. Who is to thank blame for this intellectual property violation? Someone in Germany, it would seem. Screen shots to the right. Any......

Remember we told you about how Xinhua had mistakenly illustrated a story on the causes of the debilitating disease multiple sclerosis with an X-ray photo of Homer Simpson's brain? We would have LOVED for it to stay on, but alas, the offending picture has now been taken off, thanks or no thanks to Chris O'Brien of Beijing Newspeak, who works for Xinhua's Dui Wai Bu (Home News for Overseas Service Department), a completely separate department......

Color us excited. The "Lust, Caution" trailer is out! "Lust, Caution" is the latest from Ang Lee, the Chinese director best known for turning cowboys gay (Brokeback Mountain) and Ziyi Zhang into an international superstar (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). Based on a novella of the same name by grand dame of Shanghai fiction, Eileen Chang, "Lust, Caution" depicts love and betrayal in Japan-occupied and espionage-riddled 1940's Shanghai. Lee's crew filmed on location in the Nanhui......

Plucky film star / delusional hologram Bai Ling—she of Shanghai Baby, multiple personalities, frequent public nudity, and one monstrously awkward dancefloor seizure caught on tape—announced yesterday that a tell-all memoir is in the works, and slated to publish with HarperCollins. Given Ms. Ling’s historically troubled relationship with truthfulness, we’ll believe it when we see it. A lazy-eyed Bai Ling scratched her head and tugged at her Mandarin collar (must she always dress like an extra......

The Private Property Party "China Digital Times has noted a Wall Street Journal article that reports on heightened sensitivities around the subject - sensitivities that may have resulted in the current issue of the business magazine Caijing being pulled and revised." China lawmaker wants Forbidden City free of Starbucks "A member of China's parliament has demanded the immediate closure of a Starbucks coffee shop set up inside Beijing's Forbidden City, the Xinhua news agency......

A quick follow-up to last Friday's post, "Whisk whacks free Internet — a trend?." Sunday's New York Times ran a story that might be of interest to those of you who have interest in the topic of WiFi and its freeness. The piece, entitled "What Starbucks Can Learn From the Movie Palace," discusses how some American eateries are handling the WiFi issue — FYI, it ain't free at Starbucks or McDonald's (yes, McDonald's has WiFi)......

Chinese survey finds religion booming "Professors at East China Normal University estimated that about 300 million people - equivalent to more than 30% of the adult population - followed Buddhist, Taoist, Christian, Muslim or other beliefs." YouTube - Baidu Movie "Baidu's movie relased before its landing on Nasdaq." YouTube - baidu vs google "'Baidu PK Google, what will happen?" List of Officials Who Kill Others or Themselves "Here is an unusal list of Chinese......

Three more Metro lines to begin running this year "The city will ensure the construction of Line 6, Line 8 and the first phase of Line 9 by the end of 2007, the Shanghai Construction and Transport Commission announced." We'll see. Shanghai issues special 'tourist passport' "Shanghai issued a batch of special 'tourist passports' yesterday to provide discounts, ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent, on tickets to the city's tourist attractions." Party's over......

Hu Ge, the Shanghainese man who went from being a nobody to a household name by parodying Chen Kaige's movie The Promise (无极) and nearly getting his ass sued into oblivion as a result, has come out with a new film. Unlike his previous films, which were all shorter and relied heavily on footage from various Hollywood and Chinese movies, this new film, entitled 《007大战黑衣人》 (007 Versus the Man in Black), is a 30 minute......

You know the Beijing city government is worried about its images leading up the Olympics, because it recently invited Chinese and foreign journalists to visit the dog impounding facilities it's set up for all the unlicensed dogs they've caught in their recent campaign against rabies, biting, and dog shit: Officials also took several dozen Chinese and foreign journalists to inspect a dog pound on the outskirts of the city where about 600 abandoned, oversized and......

There's a definitely a buzz for fans of Chinese cinema with the release of Jia Zhangke's new film Still Life 《三峡好人》. In Shanghai and probably the rest of China, the film's theatrical release comes on December 14, the same day that Zhang Yimou's new film Curse of the Golden Flower. And while from the standpoint of the box office returns, it seems pretty clear who the winner will be, Jia doesn't at all seem flustered......

A lot of folks over at Shanghaiist are movie buffs of varying degrees, and we thought it might be nice to have a place where people can get together and watch and then discuss films over drinks. The folks over at Meiwenti Productions, who run the local DV filmmaking competitions you might have heard of, were into that idea as well, so here we are: ARCH cafe, Thursday, December 7. The movie you'll be watching......

God, we're so sick of Snakes on a Plane that we want to kill anyone and everyone that makes a "something on a something" joke. But then we realized that there was no way we could ever win this fight, and, hell, if you can't beat them, we might as well join them. And with that, you have the theme of this weeks' Gothamist network post. Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate on......

It's been an eventful few weeks on the movie front as we dodge the shitty movies that get thrown at us left and right. Chinese audiences weren't too keen on The Da Vinci Code, in part because most of the people who had gone to see it had already read the book, and the plot of the movie hewed so closely to the book that there was little suspense as to what the conclusion would......

With so much attention being focused on that other film shot in Shanghai, Asia Pundit fills us in on another movie featuring our city that you may have overlooked (and probably should continue overlooking based on what he says). It's the latest Milla Jovovich vehicle UltraViolet: Shanghai’s architecture, in spite of the city being “Ground Zero in the Blood War being waged between humans and her kind in what’s left of Shanghai,” looked good. That......

Shanghaiist has a retraction to make -- what we previously dubbed the "Chinese Oscars" in this post was absolutely wrong, because, naturally, the 6th Chinese Language Movie Awards (第6届华语电影传媒大奖）deserve this title. This awards ceremony had previously been held in the mainland, but this time (April 17), they moved it to Hong Kong. And guess who won? Tony Leung Ka-fei (Liang Jiahui) won best actor for the 80th eighth time for his role in Election (Hei......

It's always fun to take a look at the videos tagged "Shanghai" over at YouTube. Seems like a lot more people using it nowadays. So, here are links to some that caught our eye recently. Above, you see "Wonderful Shanghai," a television commercial for Shanghai starring Yao Ming in almost every role. Wonderfully cheesy song plays throughout. Here are some others: Sleepless in Shanghai: This is our video. Uploaded this morning at around 4. Why......

Desperate Housewives is coming to Chinese television -- for real, this time. We first brought you this news back in July when Shanghaiist was just a young pup. Then, in August, we gave you an update that said the hit TV show would hit Chinese airwaves in September ... and, yeah, that didn't happen. But, now, with only slight hesitation, we can say that Desperate Housewives, dubbed in Mandarin, will make its CCTV-8 debut on......

Former child actor Jeremy Miller -- the least famous cast member of 80s sitcom Growing Pains -- has found work in China, one of the few remaining countries where he might actually get recognized on the street. Growing Pains, which stopped production 13 years ago, was one of the only Western imports to hit Chinese televsion in the 90s, and thus was wildly successful. And what does this fading Far Eastern fame get someone like......