Results tagged “tonyleung”

A new directive by the Chinese censorship board, also known as the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), has banned producers of erotic movies, including their directors and leading actors, from participation in domestic film awards. Violators may be banned up to five years from the movie industry and recalcitrant studios may even have their licenses revoked. Xinhua quotes a report by the Beijing News that details exactly what kind of content SARFT frowns upon:

The SARFT asked nationwide studios not to produce films with footage of hardcore activities, rape, whoring, obscene sex exposing human genitals, or sex freaks, the newspaper said. Vulgar conversations, nasty songs and sound effects with sexual connotation were also restricted.

Ang Lee's steamy blockbuster Lust, Caution was named Best Film at the 44th Golden Horse Awards in Taipei yesterday, the Chinese-speaking world's most coveted film awards. It also swept away six other awards, including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay Adaptation, Best Film Score, Best Makeup and Costume Design, and Best New Performer. Here is the list of winners:Best film: "Lust, Caution" Best director: Ang Lee, "Lust, Caution" Best actor: Tony Leung Chiu-wai, "Lust, Caution"...

We weren't really keen on seeing any version of Lust, Caution, but after finally giving in and ponying up the cash at the local theater (stupid, we know), we watched the sanitized version. Our impression of the movie, sans steamy sex, was that this movie wasn't really all that it was hyped up to be. However, given that about half an hour was taken out, we suspected that we didn't just get a child-friendly film—we...

Color us excited. The "Lust, Caution" trailer is out!

...says the Chinese female population. According to China Daily, the Hong Kong superstar topped the list of most desired sperm surveyed by 1000 women and conducted by Self Magazine. The women cited his good looks and wealth. Right on his heels, in second place, was none other than Bill Gates, also due to his wealth great charm and good looks. At a measly and disappointing tenth place came Brad Pitt.

Thanks to the kind folks at ARCH, the second installment of movie nights at ARCH is going to be this Thursday, and the movie we will be showing is Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai's (王家卫) Happy Together, starring Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung as gay lovers in Buenos Aires. If you've never witnessed what happens when you cross Christopher Doyle's cinematography with Wong's cinematic sensibilities, we could point you to numerous writings on it. Fans of Wong probably know that there have been critical scholarly books written about this movie as well as full-length auteurist studies of his corpus to date.

We hate to speak ill of the dead, but Chen Yifei, who died before finishing The Music Box might not be the one to blame for how badly this movie sucked, since it was finished by someone else. We had entertained thoughts of seeing this in the theater, but decided to wait for the DVD "release", and thank the lard we did! This wasn't so much a movie as it was a filmic sketch of a better movie. The film tells the story of Lu Ping (played by Chen Kun), a very in-demand hairdresser in 1930s Shanghai. Lu's troubles begin when he (accidentally) kills an invading Japanese soldier by slicing his throat with the razor that he was supposed to shave the man with. Lu flees to the countryside, where he meets Song Jiayi (played by Zeng Li), the love interest. The rest of the film is really nothing more than cliches and contrivances strung together by the well-worn themes of forbidden romances (she's betrothed to someone else) and the misfortunes of regular Chinese people tossed about by the tumultuous waves of 20th century Chinese history. The romance between Lu and Song is chaste and understated, but unlike In the Mood for Love, for example, there's no development and no tension -- we just have to accept the fact that if you see a shapely woman moving in the shadows or have a jones for metrosexual Chinese men with doleful eyes that you fall in love.

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?

There are few working filmmakers today so near and dear to the art house film crowd as Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai ( 王家卫 or Wang Jia Wei in Mandarin pinyin). For those who enjoy Wong's poetic (he often collaborates with noted cinematographer Christopher Doyle) and elliptical (Wong shoots scriptless, relying on the flexibility of actors' improvisations and moments of inspiration) films, Wong is one of the world's most original directors, an auteur of the first rank.