Results tagged “oscars”

Even as the dust settles over last week's Academy Awards, anti-censorship advocates and gay activists across Asia continue to lambast their local television stations for the censorship of two 'Milk' acceptance speeches — one made by Sean Penn, winner of the Best Actor award, and the other by Dustin Lance Black, who picked up the award for Best Original Screenplay. Both speeches were heavily censored in 53 countries all over Asia from India to Singapore and Hong Kong.

Maybe Shanghai's local music scene people were all at last Sunday's Oscars and are thus still sleeping off the hangovers, but things are pretty quiet in terms of live music this weekend. Still, thankfully, there is a little something for all you band lovers to attach yourselves to.

It’s cold, it’s wet. It’s the perfect time to catch up with the overseas movie scene. Coincidentally, it’s Oscar season and a whole slew of ‘good’ films are just appearing in the shops here. A widely heralded good year for quality films (2007) has come face to face with the WGA writer’s strike, now into its third month in Hollywood. The Golden Globes were reduced to an hour long press conference announcing the winners. If the strike over future royalty rates on downloaded films isn’t resolved soon then the Oscars are next. The big stars are already resigned to making the most of the British Baftas.

"People say they love hip hop, but then they go to Guandii. To me, we’ve never had hip hop in China. We just took things from the States. It’s never been homegrown. And I really hope we can have a scene to call our own."

Hollywood is a new DVD shop just a few doors away from Oscars (nee Ka De Club) in Taikang Lu. This new DVD emporium stocks an amazing range of new and old American, Chinese and international titles. It is very similar to its neighbour, but with more choice and better merchandising. All of the films are boxed in hardcases on tall shelves along wide aisles. Hollywood is spacious and the layout makes it almost possible to find what you want. One day they may even get round to filing titles into alphabetical order, grouping them by genre.

You all know that that Martin Scorsese finally won an Oscar for The Departed, based on the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs (无间道), and as they say, if it ain't broke ... so the folks in Hollywood are eying another film by the same Hong Kong crew (Andrew Lau, et. al.) — Confessions of Pain (伤城) for yet another remake.

The Blood of Yingzhou District, a film tha follows the lives of childen in Anhui who have lost their parents to AIDS, won the Oscar for best documentary short earlier today. We haven't seen the film, and doubt it will be showing up in Shanghai theaters ... well, ever. Doesn't seem like the type of thing our friendly local DVD vendors would carry either, although we have been surprised before. Has anyone seen it?

The best overall movie goes to Farewell My Concubine (霸王别姬), which, in the voting that started from Feb. 9, accumulated 75% of the vote, with the runner-up being Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (卧虎藏龙) at 7%. The films are mostly from the 1980s and 1990s, with heavy doses of Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou.

The good and the not-so-good from the previous several days

It may be the pariah for self-respecting filmmakers (and film buffs) everywhere, but if it’s true that there’s no business like show business, then, the Oscars are anything but irrelevant. Case in point: The recent announcement that China will have not one, but two of its own submitted for consideration in the crapshoot otherwise known as the Best Foreign Film category. Of course, it never hurts when you’re able to find a loophole in the system. For all intents and purposes, the would-be blockbuster The Banquet should be represented by the mainland -- it features one of China’s most beloved (and commercially successful) auteurs in Feng Xiaogang, while starring Chinese megastars Zhang Ziyi and Zhou Xun. So how come it ended up as Hong Kong’s submission? Well, the catch is that The Banquet is a Hong Kong-China co-production, which means those of you who were pulling hard for Johnnie To backed the wrong horse.

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 Shehui). The only "surprise" came in the success of Peacock (孔雀), the debut film from cinematographer turned director Gu Changwei, which took home awards for best director, best original screenplay, and best actress for Zhang Jingchu. Election won best film awards, again. We don't get it -- if all these film awards are pretty much the same, and there are so many of them, then isn't each one worth correspondingly less? Does this really award good cinema, or is it just a kind of collective Chinese movie industry circle-jerk in installments? You be the judge.

The Hong Kong film awards ceremony was held last night, and unsurprisingly, there were no suprises, no upsets, nothing except the same banal shit. You can read about it here. A note about that article: It says that the HK Film Awards are the Chinese Oscars, even though Shanghaiist thought that the Golden Horse awards over in Taiwan were the Chinese Oscars. Which one is it? Or should the Golden Rooster awards be considered as well?

For whatever reason, Hong Kong locals just don't like our Zhang. They claim that she speaks English with a funky Beijing accent, that the Armani dress she wore to the Oscars made her look flat-chested, and that she "squats on the floor like a vulgar Chinese farmer when she goes shopping".

Torontoist throws down the gauntlet and challenges all comers: pillow fight, bitch. They also stand up for a fellow blogger taking heat from the TTC and welcome city-wide WiFi.

Did anyone watch the Oscars rebroadcast (in English, with Chinese subtitles) on CCTV-6? We tried but had to give up -- the editing was awful, awful, awful. Much like trying to watch Brokeback Mountain in a Chinese theater, we assume. They tried to turn three-plus hours into less than 90 minutes, so you had acceptance speeches like, "Oh, there are so many people to thank ..." Cut. They eliminated huge chunks of the show. The dubbed version they showed in the morning was much better. That's when we heard host Jon Stewart butcher Zhang Ziyi's name. Zooey Zhang? "Sounded almost French," said one of our friends. (Zhang, by the way, is the first Chinese to twice present awards at the Oscars. Here is what she wore.)

As if you needed us to tell you, it's Oscar night morning. We have one eye on the TV right now -- Dragon TV, and at least one other local network -- are showing a "live"[1] feed of the red carpet coverage from E! (with Chinese commentary). Why not watch on our satellite? Because it never freakin' works. CCTV usually replays the Oscars Monday evening, although we haven't found confirmation of that online yet (anyone out there got the details?). In past years CCTV's coverage has been in English with Chinese subtitles.

Has life ever gotten so meaningless that you sometimes leave the office in the daytime to hang around on street corners, return to work hours later, and see if anyone has noticed or cared that you've been gone? Us too! On one of todays prolonged one-man-meetings, we saw Mr. Steven Spielberg near Shanghai Centre on Nanjing Xi Lu, with an eight person entourage. Walking no more than five feet past him, thinking "oh I am glad I forgot my camera today", the question arose whether it might be worth it to sing the Indiana Jones theme tune while leaping around, jumping onto benches and rolling on the ground, then smile at Stevie and wait for the film contract to present itself. The answer was no.