If you've been following the exploits and downfall of Bernie Madoff and his $50 billion Ponzi scheme, you'll know about some the high profile "investors" that he's cheated, ranging from the Wilpon family (the owners of the New York Mets) for $300 million to Steven Spielberg. Other institutions that were tempted by his supposed high return hedge funds are listed here. more ›

With all the bad press surrounding Steven Spielberg's Olympic boycott, Beijing seems to be scrambling to action to diffuse all the negative publicity by wooing a most unlikely target, the Pope. From Michael Sheridan of the Sunday Times (UK):

TEMPTED by the prize of a historic visit to China by Pope Benedict XVI, the nation’s leaders have authorised a renewed effort in confidential discussions with the Vatican to heal their rift and inaugurate diplomatic ties. more ›

Xinhua: Spielberg slashed by Chinese, but his movies still admired more ›

Steven Spielberg's decision to withdraw from arranging the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics caused press around the world (except for China) to rub their hands with glee this week at the prospect of China's dirty laundry being flown from the flagpoles of Beijing. more ›

Take a walk down Panyu (Fanyu) Lu from the Film Art Centre and you will soon pass by the SH508 restaurant. It occupies a slaughtered renovated colonial mansion adorned with a huge neon sign. Unknown to the proprietors, reviewers and most of the customers, this is actually the former family home of British writer J.G. Ballard. more ›

Cyber dissident Wang Dejia was arrested for "subverting state secrets" (what else?), which means penning too many articles critical of the government. Some of those critical essays pertained to the upcoming summer Olympics:

In recent months, Wang also gave an interview to the Epoch Times, a media group backed by the banned sect F@lun G0ng, in which he claimed the Olympics would exacerbate the sufferings of Chinese people and leave them "living like dogs and pigs." more ›

The contrarian and sometimes controversial Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未), who was a consultant in the design of the new Olympics stadium (known as the "Bird's Nest"), has disavowed his creation: more ›

Local police said the lecture was "unacceptable", the newspaper said. more ›

Shanghaiist noticed that the Chinese press was running something about Steven Spielberg making a movie adaptation of the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West (西游记). Now you don't get much more classic than this: This novel and its characters (Xuanzang a.ka.Tangseng the monk, Sunwukong a.k.a. the Monkey King, Friar Sand a.ka. Sandy, and Pigsy a.k.a Pig) are known to just about every Chinese person alive since the late Ming dynasty, when the novel was published (okay, well it might have taken awhile to catch on). The story received a new lease on life when, in 1986, CCTV put on the live action show, and while some of the effects are complete cheese to us now, back then they were considered something of a milestone in TV. It also proved that people in China could be and were quite willing to be enthralled by this medium. Even today, theme songs and music live in such places as Shanghaiist's girlfriend's mobile phone ring, where quite appropriately, Pigsy's song plays (but don't tell her we said that). more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›