Hurry! Three more days to catch Alien vs. Predator!
I wrote this for Shanghaiist, but since we’re not live yet over there, I figured I’d post it here, too.
If you’re like Shanghaiist, you like going to the movies. And if you’re like Shanghaiist, you rarely go to the movies in Shanghai — because, well, most of the movies that show here are crap. (And because you can buy 10 DVDs on the street for the price of one ticket to the theater.) Thank God then for the Shanghai International Film Festival, which concludes this weekend. Finally, we get some indie and art house fare on the big screen. Right? Right?
Well, you tell me. This year’s SIFF, the eighth annual event, includes high-brow offerings such as The Pacifier, Alien vs. Predator, Ice Princess, 13 Going On 30, Van Helsing, Meet the Fockers and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. That’s an average Metacritic score of 42, people.
OK, with that off our chest, we should note that the festival also includes plenty of films that are worth seeing: Sideways, Vera Drake, Big Fish, Sin City, Hotel Rwanda, We Don’t Live Here Anymore to name a handful. But many of them are kind of old, films that would have shown on the real festival circuit years ago. Still, some of them would be nice to see on the big screen instead of a pirated screener with “For Review Purposes Only” flashing on the bottom of the screen.
Speaking of old, Fei Mu’s classic 1948 chamber drama Spring in a Small Town is also showing. The Hong Kong Film Awards Association named that the best Chinese-language film of all time.
The SIFF also includes many films that Shanghaiist admittedly has never heard of. So for those, we defer to That’s Shanghai reviewer Wayne Hsu’s recommendations. Some of them look pretty interesting, especially the Hitler pic Downfall, which is getting excellent reviews. Shanghaiist has had beers with Wayne and you have our word that he is a good guy (and deceivingly young looking). Another friend of Shanghaiist recommends two Chinese films: buzzworthy director Jia Zhangke’s The World and Lu Yue’s The Foliage.
Hurry up, though. The festival closes on Sunday and some of these films don’t show after tonight. Here is the somewhat cumbersome festival schedule.
Pictured: A scene from The Foliage.
06.17.2005, 2:00 PM · Movies
Jackie Chan: Take our women … please!
I wrote this for Shanghaiist, but since we’re not live yet over there, I figured I’d post it here, too.
If you are a foreign man on the prowl for a Shanghainese bride, we’ve got good news for you: kung fu star Jackie Chan isn’t going to stand in your way. In fact, if you send him your contact info — and a photo, we assume — he might even hook you up himself. It’s all part of his diabolical plan to dropkick the globe with Chinese culture. (His attempt to accomplish this through mediocre movies has apparently failed.) Global wire services are running stories based on comments Chan made during the Shanghai International Film Festival. This is from the AP:
“We can encourage more foreigners to marry Shanghai ladies so their children will be able to speak Chinese,” Chan said at the Shanghai International Film Festival, the South China Morning Post reported on its front page.“It will help spread Chinese culture far and wide,” he reportedly said.
The paper reported that Chan didn’t say why his proposal singled out Shanghai women, and he offered no suggestions about how to implement his plan.
While we’re not sure if a single comment made at a film festival constitues an offical “plan,” Chan’s statement did strike us as a bit odd. And we’re not sure who will be offended most: foreigners, Chinese or women in general. At least Chan doesn’t come off quite as bad as Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who recently drafted a bill that would write into law severe penalties for Russian girls or women who “unpatriotically” choose to marry a foreigner.
What men does Zhirinovsky fear the most? Why Chinese men, of course. This is from Scotland’s Sunday Herald: “He sees the biggest threat coming from Chinese men, many of whom have settled in Russia’s far east with Russian brides who appreciate the fact that their foreign husbands tend not to drink alcohol. ‘If we don’t react now, in 50 or 100 years, the Chinese and the other Asian nations will be masters in our house and the Russians will become service staff.’”
The horror.
06.17.2005, 1:46 PM · Observations