Forbes has released its list of the Top 10 Chinese celebrities, which surveys the who's who of China to rank them based on personal income, public influence, internet reach and commercial value. more ›

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. more ›

At the risk of pissing off our rich and powerful film producer friends and thereby never getting invited to a press junket again, we want to begin this movie review with a simple declarative sentence, the likes of which has not and may never be seen again in film criticism: the movie Blood Brothers (天堂口) sucked ass. more ›

With 2005's film version of Memoirs of a Geisha, Chinese people across the world had more reason to hate Zhang Ziyi and foamed at the mouth yet again saying, We’re not Japanese. You would have thought that by now the West would have cottoned onto the message. more ›

A CCTV.com 'report' entitled "Uniqueness of 10 hot female stars in China" was recently brought to our attention. It had us laughing out loud (but it also might help explain why China has a soaring suicide rate among females). Below, you will find the entire text of the in-depth story. For the accompanying photos, you can click on the link above. more ›

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. more ›

Probably not the best word choice by Xinhua for their headline, but they do list the highest-paid Chinese actresses, based on annual salary (they say their source was cfi.net.cn). Here's the list (figures in USD): more ›

At least they don't lag behind in anything important!

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? more ›

Yao Ming is tall. He is also good at basketball. We already told you that. He is also China's top celebrity, three years running, according to Forbes. The list takes into account all that is important in life: income, television appearances, newspaper mentions, magazine covers, internet searches, and the like. (Hmmmm. We do a lot of internet searches and we weren't ranked. Likely because we weren't born in Mainland China. Same reason why Jay Chou isn't on the list.) more ›

We all have our list of favourite China blogs (just check the left hand panel for some), for example the clever and always-entertaining Wanbro. When feeling the need to brush up our Spanish skills, we love to check out Chinochano. The language is rarely complex (thankfully -- we really need to brush up our Spanish language skills), but even if you are not a cunning linguist then you will enjoy his latest excellent article, in which he has admirably taken the time to compare and contrast Chinese Super-Beauties. Gong Li, Zhang Zi Yi, Maggie Cheung, Cecilia Cheung, Cheng Hong, Lucy Liu, Bai Ling, Michelle Yeoh, Valeria Chow, Shu Qi, Zhou Xun, Zhao Wei, Li Bingbing, Rene Liu, Wang Fei, Anita Mui, and (gasp) Ruan Lingyu are all pictorally honoured. Now that's blogging. more ›

It's that time of year again: the Forbes annual China celebrity list is coming out on March 8. This article (in Chinese) tells us that the top 10 has already been released, and Li Bingbing (李冰冰) has graduated to the big time, garnering top honors. The Forbes list is calculated using a "income+media exposure" criterion, and while we aren't privy to how much Li makes, we know that she graced the covers of more magazines this year than any other celeb. The rankings include 100 people, with the top ranked as follows: more ›