If I may take a break from my usual content, I’d like to direct your attention to this very moving profile of America’s finest film critic, Roger Ebert. Since a 2006 surgery, Ebert has not had a lower jaw. He has not eaten, had a drink of anything, nor spoken a single, solitary word since.
Most [...]
The invaluable China Smack has an interesting post translating Chinese netizen reactions to the just-released blockbuster Avatar. Intriguingly, many commenters connected the eviction of the Na’vi people from their forest home to the frequent eviction of Chinese people who stand athwart government-led development.
What surprised me most about the film was its seemingly leftist point of [...]
Did anyone else find this film spectacularly bad? Because I did.
It seems to me that Oliver Stone lazily compiled a list of every soundbite from the Bush administration, cobbled them together in a simplistic narrative, and hoped for the best. The part of the film documenting Bush’s young adulthood worked a little better, but [...]
Four years ago, after boarding a flight from Milan back home to San Francisco, I discovered that the in-flight movie was The Princess Diaries. “Great,” I thought, “why can’t they ever have anything I want to see?”.
But, as one does on a flight, I watched because there was nothing better to do. To my delight, [...]
It’s been awhile since I’ve written a personal update, so here goes:
- For the past two months I’ve been enrolled in two Chinese classes at my language school, one an “comprehensive” (综合) course at the intermediate level and another a class specifically designed to prepare me for the HSK exam, which I take this Sunday. [...]
Last August, a Kunming expat known as “Bike Mike” set off with his girlfriend on a river rafting trip not far from the city. Sadly, in an accident they (and a local river guide) were killed. The news sent shock waves throughout the Kunming community, as Mike was well-loved and respected. He had first arrived [...]
Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution”, which I wrote about here, was censored in China due to its explicit sexual content. Many Chinese (and foreigners) nonetheless managed to watch the complete version thanks to the ubiquity of pirated DVD copies. Such is life in China (and everywhere else)- where direct government control ends, the free (black?) market [...]
According to reports (via Go Kunming), a wealthy Hong Kong film producer has the ambitious goal of creating the Chinese equivalent of Hollywood right here in our fair city of Kunming. Before we get excited about celebrity sightings and star maps, however, such a project will require years before it is fully realized.
Choosing Kunming [...]
OK, OK…not all Chinese people look alike. Yet sometimes it’s easy to get confused. For example, when standing in a train station during holiday season you do notice that you’re surrounded by an army of short people with black hair all vying for the same ticket window. This isn’t unfair, is it? After all, the [...]
Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution might be the highest-profile Chinese film to be released internationally in years. Yet within China itself, the full version of the film is prohibited due to its explicit sexual content. Instead, Chinese audiences (both in cinemas and via the country’s ubiquitous pirated DVD shops) saw the truncated version with all of [...]