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 spy/action film spoof and features a lot of original, live-action footage. The material is straight up spoof in the vein of Weird Al Yankovic, Leslie Nielsen, or Scary Movie, with a bit of Team America-esque political punditry as well. The movie was "officially released" by video sharing site 6rooms and e-commerce site Dang Dang and divided into four minute installments. The clip above is, as you will notice, from the middle of the movie. Start from the beginning and the site will automatically take you to the next installment. more ›

But back to Bing Feng Tea House: The blogger answers his question this way: more ›

The 18-minute original short film is of course a spoof, a form made popular earlier in the year by The Steam Bun Massacre, a brilliant parody of the movie 无极/The Promise. more ›

The Southern Metropolis Weekly's latest print edition had an interesting article about videos and movies online. The article profiled and compared some of the people working in this area and analyzed the business models and economics behind each. One of the people profiled was none other than Hu Ge, the Shanghainese man that caused a stir with his parody of The Promise, director-turned-hack Chen Kaige's latest attempt to waste several hours in the lives of innocent and hard-working people. That parody, a short film called A Bloody Case That Started From a Steamed Bun, got Hu Ge in trouble with the aforementioned hack, who threatened Hu with a lawsuit. The net result has been to make the once unknown Hu Ge into a cause celebre cum indie movie rebel. Not suprisingly, he's gotten some offers, most notably, to make another parody, this time with the approval of the filmmakers. The filmmakers behind the film 血战到底 (Karmic Mahjong). We think that the media might have already seen the parody version (which is basically advertising for the film itself) and were disappointed: Hu himself acknowledges that he made Steamed Bun for fun and because he was pissed off, whereas Karmic Mahjong is already comic and a bit of a spoof (we will review it soon), making it hard for him to find the inspiration. Unlike the first film, however, he isn't allowed to bring in bits and pieces from other movies and TV shows or music -- otherwise known as copyrighted material -- which also made his job harder. These days, Hu is living in a house in the suburbs where has a "studio" and is hatching plans to make a real, live-action film on digital video. The problem is, not many people have expressed interest thus far in investing in it. more ›

Yeah, yeah, we know it's a little late for 2005 lists. But our editor is off in the U.S. making life-altering decisions and we just found this list of the top 10 Chinese films of 2005 (in Chinese). Here is how it came out: more ›

Chinese director Chen Kaige’s recent movie Wu Ji (The Promise) (website in Chinese) has already surprised Chinese film fans with its US$35 million budget. Now, the premiere of the movie on Dec. 14 at Paradise Warner Cinema City offers a surprise to all of us. more ›