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. What's even more weird is that Chow Yun-fat and Orlando Bloom are attached to the project. Malaysia's The Star reports that in Chen Shi-Zheng's Dark Matter the film about the Chinese physics......

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. If you were to ask why first-time helmer Alexi Tan's film sucked, when it had John Woo executive......

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. Alas, Chinese observers rolled their eyes upon seeing Chinese models dressed like geishas, again, at this Madame Butterfly inspired fashion show in Paris back in January. However, like......

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. Gong Li, a traditional Chinese beauty, especially in the eyes of foreigners. In the......

Zakaria: The Sky Isn't Falling in China "It might be time to admit that we really don't understand China. The country simply does not conform to our most basic beliefs about what makes nations grow." Curbs sought on violence in Chinese films "China needs a law to restrict a 'violent culture' in films and Internet to protect the youth from being corrupted, a Chinese lawmaker said Tuesday." China is source of bird flu virus,......

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......

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): Zhang Ziyi (pictured): 15 million Maggie Cheung: 13.75 million Gong Li: 11.3 million Carina Lau: 11.3 million Cecilia Cheung: 9.4 million Zhao Wei: 7 million Lin Xinru: 5.6 million Liu Xiaoqing: 4 million Hsu Chi: 3.6 million Zhou Xun: 1.9......

A bored Henan man living in Shanghai threatened to bomb the Oriental Pearl Tower. Only 12 people read the post before it was deleted by authorities. He faces up to five years in jail.From People's Daily: Speaking globally, the mainland's universities lag behind on aspects such as school facilities, faculty quality, campus culture and school structure, said Cai Dafeng, vice president of Shanghai-based Fudan University. At least they don't lag behind in anything important!What's next?......

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......

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......

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......

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......