↧
Street shots of Wang Ou
↧
Wanda Cinema Line to Go Head to Head with Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent in Online Video
The company, which recently announced it would be rebranding as Wanda Film Holding Co., Ltd., will launch the service — as well as a new ticketing platform — this year. John Zeng, president of Wanda Cinema Line said while speaking to local media outlet Sina Entertainment on Friday, “We will be launching the Mtime Online Cinema this year,” Zeng told Sina Entertainment. “Because there are a lot of video technology, copyright issues, and business model problems, we can’t just launch a simple app, so we have to spend a relatively long time on the planning. As for movie tickets, we will also have our own new sales platform.”
Online streaming in China is already a fiercely contested space with the three main internet companies — Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, collectively known as BAT — vying for market share.
Baidu’s iQiyi service, Alibaba-owned Youku-Tudou, and Tencent’s video platforms have each been luring money into original content and foreign content.
In the latest deal last week, iQiyi confirmed its licensing deal with global streaming giant Netflix to stream a selection of their shows including Black Mirror, Stranger Things, Mindhunter, BoJack Horseman, and Ultimate Beastmaster.
That followed an announcement from iQiyi last month that it had signed an exclusive distribution deal with Warner Bros. that includes such titles as The Lord of the Rings, Godzilla, and Gravity.
Chinese regulators require streaming sites to curtail overseas content to 30 percent of the online airtime given to domestic productions in the previous year— so the entry of another big player with big pockets should bode well for Hollywood studios.
Wanda has been rapidly expanding its assets and capability in the entertainment industry in recent years buying up overseas cinema chains, producing Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall, purchasing Mtime, and, just last week getting into gaming.
The new streaming service looks set to come out of Mtime, in which Wanda took an equity stake in for US$350 million in cash last year. Mtime has been described as China’s answer to Fandango, IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Entertainment Tonight, and Mattel all rolled into one.
Mtime’s website attracts about 160 million unique monthly users, and its mobile ticketing platform has about 10 percent market share.
As of June 2016, China has 514 million online video viewers, over 70 percent of total Chinese internet users, according to China Internet Network Information Center, but finding the right business model to take advantage of this vast user base has been a challenge.
Late last year Martin Lau, the president of Tencent, said the state of the video streaming market was “very unhealthy for everyone,” and that “all other digital content industries are actually in a better shape than the video industry.”
Source: China Film Insider By Fergus Ryan
↧
↧
'Born in China' in front rank in North America box office
In the director's words, the movie is one that can be easily understood by audiences actoss the world because it focuses on three wild animal families, including a snow leopard and her cubs, a young golden snub-nosed monkey, a female giant panda along with her daughter Mei Mei, and a herd of chiru.
The American release of the film is narrated by John Krasinski and the Chinese release is narrated by Zhou Xun.
It has grossed over six million US dollars in North America. It became the box office runner-up among new films coming out on April 21, only next to "Unforgettable,", a horror film screened in more cinemas than 'Born in China.'
The 76-minute documentary took three years to prepare and 18 months to shoot. It's a co-production between Disneynature and Shanghai Media Group.
The film was released in China last August. The accumulated international sales have exceeded 16 million US dollars.
Source: China Plus by Xu Yaqi
↧
'Fate of the Furious' drives China box office to fastest growth in over a year
Monthly ticket sales jumped nearly 57 percent from the same period a year ago to 4.9 billion yuan ($707.5 million), data from box office tracker EntGroup showed, the largest monthly growth since February last year.
China's box office, a magnet for Hollywood producers, saw growth stall last year amid a crackdown on subsidies and a weak slate of movies. Ticket sales grew under 4 percent in 2016, down sharply from around 50-percent growth the year before.
After a stronger start this year, China ticket sales slid again in February and March.
The sharp April rise came on the back of the latest outing from Universal's hugely-popular Fast and Furious franchise. The film, released in mid-April in China, has so far raked in $362.7 million in the China market, EntGroup data showed.
Despite a slowdown in box office sales in the market, U.S. studios are increasingly looking to China to boost global revenues, though they face issues from a local quota system for imported films to questions over censorship.
Hollywood is lobbying to increase the official quota level of 34 imported films a year and to raise the share of sales that international partners receive, as a revenue-sharing deal struck in 2012 comes up for review this year.
"The Fate of the Furious", which stars Vin Diesel and Jason Statham, is the second-highest grossing movie of 2017 so far behind "Beauty and the Beast", with global ticket sales of $1.06 billion, according to Box Office Mojo.
(Source: Reuters; Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Joseph Radford)
↧
Zhou Xun in “Our Time Will Come”
↧
↧
Yang Mi 'on the go'
↧
Joe Chen poses for fashion magazine
↧
Hollywood Lifts China 2017 Box Office Back to Growth
The month saw the release of “Kong: Skull Island” ($169 million) and “The Fate of the Furious,” which finished the month as the second highest grossing film of all time at the Chinese box office, with $362 million.
Between January and April, nationwide gross box office was $2.78 million (RMB19.3 billion,) according to data from Ent Group. That compares with $2.55 million (RMB17.6 billion) in the first four months of last year and implies an increase of 10%.
Using new reporting standards, the 2017 figure includes fees charged by online ticketing agencies – worth $165 million (RMB1.14 billion) in the first four months. Eliminating those gives an adjusted total of $2.63 billion (RMB18.16 billion,) implying adjusted box office growth of 3%.
Admissions showed 6.5% growth, with ticket sales reaching 550 million, compared with 516 million in the first four months of 2016.
April 2017 alone saw box office of $708 million (RMB4.87 billion,) an increase of 44% compared with March. On an adjusted basis, that is a 49% improvement on April 2016’s $451 million (RMB3.11 million).
Source: Variety by Patrick Frater
↧
'Special Encounter' wins award at Houston film fest
Chinese film "Special Encounter" won a special jury award at the 50th WorldFest - Houston International Film Festival.
The producers released photos of the award certificate on Tuesday which shows the film, directed by Mina Kwang, getting the honor of WorldFest - Special Jury Remi Award for the WorldFest - Panorama China 2017 section on April 29.
"Special Encounter," a romantic film, based on a South Korean comic book "Botox" by Mina Kwang, was produced by China's film studios, including Wanda Pictures, and starring Chinese mainland actress Yan Ni and Taiwan actor Calvin Tu.
WorldFest was founded over 50 years ago as an International Film Society in August, 1961. WorldFest became the third competitive international film festival in North America, following San Francisco and New York. WorldFest is the oldest Independent Film & Video Festival in the World. It evolved into a competitive International Film Festival in April, 1968. It was founded by award-winning producer/director Hunter Todd to present a quality film festival for independent filmmakers.
"Special Encounter" will hit Chinese theaters on May 19.
Source: china.org by zhang rui
↧
↧
Action film leads box office sales during May Day holiday
(China Plus) The action movie 'Shock Wave' is second only to the latest Fast and Furious movie at the Chinese box office, grossing over 160 million yuan, or roughly 23 million US dollars, during the May Day holiday weekend.
'Shock Wave', directed by Herman Yau, was produced by and stars Andy Lau. It's the third collaboration between the two since 1991.
Lau plays a superintendent of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Bureau. The story begins seven years ago when the police officer served as the undercover protege to a wanted criminal specializing in bombs. Seven years later, a series of bombs occurred, bringing new challenges to the municipal police.
Source: China Plus by Xu Yaqi
↧
'Pirates of the Caribbean 5' to premiere in China
One of most anticipated Hollywood summer blockbusters, Disney's new installment of its "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, will for the first time have its star-studded world premiere in China.
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales," scheduled for May 26 release in China and North America, will send its top stars, including Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Javier Bardem and Brenton Thwaites, as well as the directorial duo of Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, to the Shanghai Disney Resort for the world premiere on May 11. This is the first time an A-class blockbuster from Hollywood will have its world premiere ceremony in China.
"Pirates of the Caribbean," based on a Disneyland ride, is one of the most famous and profitable franchise in the world and the past four installments since 2003 have grossed more than US$3.7 billion.
With the release of "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" on May 5 in China, Disney will also screen a special premiere – a five-minute extended sequence of "Pirates of the Caribbean 5"— in front of the Marvel film.
Source: china.org by zhang rui
↧
Actor Lu Han poses for fashion magazine
↧
Street shots of Kan Qingzi in Paris
↧
↧
China's all-girl pop band crushes hopes of besotted female fans
Fast-forward a year and the 23-year-old is a member of Acrush, China's first all-girl "boy band", which released its debut single last week, but already has hundreds of thousands of fans.
"Our fathers' generation still holds the idea that girls should dress in a feminine manner, something I was never comfortable with," Min told Reuters. "I just like to dress in a unisex way."
Min wasn't expecting to be picked when she went to the band's audition last year.
But her boyish appearance and androgynous style were exactly what entertainment startup Zhejiang Huati Culture Communication, backed by Tencent Holdings, was looking for.
Marketed as a pop band that encourages girls to pursue their own identities and shake up female conventions, Acrush has won more than 749,000 followers on Chinese social networking site Weibo.
Acrush goes against the grain in China's still-evolving music industry, where girl bands are marketed as sweet young things to appeal to a male audience.
"I left home when I was young," said the band's lead singer, 21-year-old Peng Xichen. "To comfort my parents, I told them my boyish appearance would keep me safe."
Some fans, most of them millennials born after the mid-1990s, have called the band members their "husbands". Some have sent love letters, which the band cannot answer, bound by contract.
"We are not allowed to disclose our gender preferences or have romantic relationships," said Lu Keran, the band's leader.
From day one, Zhejiang Huati has created individual identities for the women.
Min is supposed to be the band's comedian, while Peng is a "gentle romantic", and the 21-year-old Lu is portrayed as an energetic dancer with a sunny disposition.
She wears long-sleeved outfits to shield from the public eye a dragon tattoo on her arm, and is reluctant to talk about it, saying only, "I did it when I was an ignorant girl."
But she did admit to sometimes dressing in pink and behaving like a little girl.
The Chinese blogosphere is ablaze with questions about Acrush's leanings. Asked if they supported feminism and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, the band said they had no idea what the abbreviation LGBT stood for.
"We're just 'handsome' girls," said Min.
(Source: Reuters; Reporting by Muyu Xu and Ryan Woo; Additional reporting by Thomas Sun in BEIJING; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
↧
Posters from “Once Upon a Time”
↧
Film review: This Is Not What I Expected – Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhou Dongyu in romantic comedy with a culinary focus
(SCMP) A quirky yet predictable film made special by its reverence for inspired cooking, the directorial debut of Hong Kong editor Derek Hui Wang-yu – produced by frequent collaborator Peter Chan Ho-sun – is more food porn than romantic comedy. That’s quite a feat given that it stars two of Chinese-language cinema’s hottest properties – perennial heartthrob Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhou Dongyu, whose meteoric rise continues after a Golden Horse-winning turn in Soul Mate.
Kaneshiro plays Lu Jin, the multibillionaire heir of a business empire specialising in hotel acquisitions. A heartless loner who cares about nothing but the very best food, he is nevertheless caught off guard by the gourmet sensibility of Gu Shengnan (Zhou), a scrappy little chef working in a Shanghai hotel he’s looking to buy. In true screwball fashion, the two have several contrived and farcical encounters outside the hotel before they even realise who the other person is – and then romance blossoms, inevitably and improbably.
From its slapstick beginning to an awkward third act in which Lu forcefully moves himself into Gu’s apartment just to keep on enjoying her cooking, This Is Not What I Expected does not show either of its stars at their best. Kaneshiro partly channels his cartoonish character from See You Tomorrow and Zhou gives a performance that, by her standards, lacks nuance.
The supporting roles – including Tony Yang You-ning as Gu’s ex-boyfriend and supervisor, and Lin Chi-ling as Lu’s personal chef – are regrettably undercooked.
What will probably stick with audiences is Hui’s gleeful nonchalance in dealing with the largely clichéd material. There is apparently little reason for Lu and Gu to become an item except for their mutual love of good food, yet the film makes their relationship seem plausible, mostly through its intense culinary focus. Even a throwaway sequence in which Kaneshiro’s character demonstrates the perfect routine for preparing instant noodles would make a sublime short film by itself.
This Is Not What I Expected opens on May 4
Source: South China Morning Post by Edmund Lee
↧
Chick flick starring Zhou Dongyu makes 100 mln yuan in box office
Actress Zhou Dongyu's latest work 'This is not what I expected' has exceeded the 100 millions yuan threshold in box office sales after hitting screens on April 27.
The high grossing film is rated 8.9 out of 10 by audiences on Maoyan, a film information platform in China.
Directed by Xu Hong Yu and starring Zhou Dongyu and Takeshi Kaneshiro, the film follows a 29-year-old chef working at a Western restaurant in a hotel. She met a picky and arrogant Kaneshiro, who was to take over the hotel. They become a couple despite their wildly different personalities, bonding over their love for food.
The director praised Zhou Dongyu as a genius-type actress.
Audiences comment that her performance in the latest movie makes her a representative of chick flicks.
Zhou first gained recognition after appearing in Zhang Yimou's film 'Under the Hawthorn Tree' in 2010.
The breakthrough of her career was another chick flick 'Soul Mate', for which she was bestowed the Best Actress at the Golden Horse Awards together with co-star Sandra Ma last year.
Source: China Plus by Xu Yaqi
↧
↧
Black and white photos of Zhang Zifeng
↧
Jane Zhang poses for fashion magazine
↧
Controversial translator gives behind-the-scenes look at how imported films are localized in China
(Global Times) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 is scheduled to hit Chinese cinemas on Friday. The highly anticipated film is the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy, which earned 594 million yuan ($86.1 million) at the Chinese mainland box office back in 2014.
While the first film was warmly received in China, one name associated with the film had come under fire: Jia Xiuyan, the Chinese translator of the film's subtitles. After the film released in theaters in the mainland, many Chinese moviegoers criticized her for "incorrect" or "inappropriate" translation of the English film into Chinese.
A veteran who has worked on translating subtitles for many films, including Men in Black 3, Pacific Rim and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, this is not the first time Jia has come under fire.
For someone whose job is to work behind the scenes, Jia has actually entered the spotlight on numerous occasions due to her daring translations.
In a recent interview with the Global Times, Jia revealed the inner-workings of how these subtitles get made and points out how some of the criticism aimed at her and other translators stems mainly from some misunderstandings.
Facing criticism
Only four studios in the mainland are authorized to translate foreign films shown in cinemas, the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio, Changchun Film Studio, August First Film Studio and China Film Co Ltd.
The 30-something Jia studied Chinese in university. Later she landed a job at the August First Film Studio affiliated to the People's Liberation Army, where she has worked for more than 10 years.
While her first five years at the studio were relatively quiet, she found herself the center of controversy for the first time after she worked on the subtitles for Men in Black 3 in 2012.
For the subtitles of the film, Jia used a great deal of buzzwords that were very popular at the time in the mainland. For instance, for one scene in which the character K buys food from a street vendor, Jia used the term "gutter oil" - illicit cooking oil recycled from waste oil that was making headlines at the time - to describe that the stall was dirty.
This led to many moviegoers debating whether such adventurous translation was appropriate.
Although Jia became the target of many moviegoers' criticism, she explained that the translation on any film is actually a decision-making process involving several people, including the head of the translation team, as well as the film's original production.
According to Jia, the work flow for translating subtitles usually involves the original production company, translators, a subtitle typist and then the Chinese distributors of the film.
"The reason I could take chances with my translations was because the film's producers hope that young people could come up with a translation that was more dynamic," Jia told the Global Times, pointing out that figuring out when to stick closer to the original English and when to take chances with more "localized" translations is a challenge that all translators are confronted with.
Fortunately, her translations actually won her the approval of Chinese distributors.
Even though she was criticized by some moviegoers for the risks she took, Jia said that this approval was one of the main things that has driven her to keep taking risks.
Hurdles to translation
When it comes to films such as Guardians of the Galaxy, which are rife with sci-fi and made-up terms, many Chinese netizens criticized Jia saying a lack of knowledge led to "incorrect" translations. In Guardians, for instance, characters refer to the planet Earth as "Terra," which Jia translated to the similar sounding "telan" rather than the Chinese word for Earth, "diqiu." This led to many netizens saying that Jia must not have known that "Terra" is another word for Earth.
It's not just moviegoers who have criticized Jia.
Popular TV and film translator Gudabaihua also criticized Jia's translation of Guardians. In a blog post on Sina Weibo, he pointed out numerous places he felt Jia's translation was wrong, saying that she "surprisingly lost all the comedy from the punch lines."
"Actually it's almost impossible for us to translate something incorrectly," Jia said. This is because in addition to receiving the script to the film, the translation team also receives additional information about the background of the film's story and instructions from the director.
Returning to the Terra versus Earth debate, Jia explained that the production company gave her team clear instructions to not translate Terra as "Earth" in Chinese, since Terra is the name the aliens in the film specifically use, translating it as "Earth" would make it seem less alien.
Jia also said that sometimes production companies themselves encourage translator freedom by marking places in the script with "translator notes" that specifically point out that translators should replace a certain item in the film with something from their own culture.
Although cooperation between the production companies, distributors and translators is meant to make everyone's job easier, there are still plenty of hurdles that translators have to deal with besides the challenge different languages present.
One hurdle involves the copy of the film that the production company sends to translators. In order to prevent piracy, sometimes translators have to work with a version of the film that is in all black and white, or a copy in which everything but the character's mouths have been covered up by a black box.
With more and more audiences in China being able to understand English to a certain degree, moviegoers are becoming increasingly judgmental when it comes to translations, even if they only understand a little of the source language.
However, translation is a more difficult job than some may realize. Translators have to consider much more besides the meaning behind each line; they must also think about the length of each translated line so that it can fit on the screen, whether the words they choose will fit the movements of characters' lips, and whether some of the words are appropriate for a film that is surely to be screened in theaters where kids will be present.
"There are actually no mistakes, just different approaches when it comes to translation," Jia said.
Source: By Li Jingjing | Global Times
↧