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Song Yi poses for fashion magazine
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Hai Qing poses for photo shoot
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Stars dazzle in 'Vogue Film' magazine in black and white
(From left to right) Chinese top actresses Yang Ying, Li Bingbing and Yang Mi pose for fashion magazine.
Chinese actor William Chan and actress Ma Sichun pose for fashion magazine.
(From left to right) Chinese actress Liu Shishi, Xin Zhilei, Tan Zhuo and Tong Liya pose for fashion magazine.
Chinese actor Jing Boran and actress Bai Baihe pose for fashion magazine.
(From left to right) Chinese stars Ouyang Nana, Song Zuer, Wu Lei, Chen Feiyu and Song Qian pose for fashion magazine.
(From left to right) Chinese actor Ethan Juan, Huang Xuan and Zhou Yiwei pose for the fashion magazine.
(From left to right) Chinese actor Peng Yuchang, Han Dongjun, Xu Weizhou and Zhai Tianlin pose for the fashin magazine.
Chinese actress Ning Chang (center) poses for fashion magazine.
Source: China Daily
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Zhang Zifeng poses for photo shoot
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Lin Peng poses for photo shoot
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Katie Chen poses for photo shoot
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Ann Hsu covers fashion magazine
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Actress Angelababy releases fashion shots
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'The Road Not Taken': Film Review | Shanghai 2018
(THR) A goofy ostrich farmer indebted to the local mob agrees to take care of a kidnapped boy until Dad coughs up the ransom in The Road Not Taken, Tang Gaopeng’s drawn-out but intermittently amusing debut feature. The cast is charismatic enough to cover for an unconvincing storyline whose wacky fun may appeal most to Chinese audiences. In its best moments, this off-beat road movie has a sly, dry humor and an ability to shift between different registers, allowing the predominant comedy to end on a melancholy but satisfying note of self-sacrifice. It won best film kudos in the Shanghai Film Festival’s hotly contested Asian New Talent Awards.
Wang Xuebing, who headlined in The Pluto Moment as an ill-starred indie filmmaker and appeared in a supporting role in Black Coal, Thin Ice, is the bumbling ostrich farmer Yong. With his perpetually tousled hair and unbuttoned shirt, he is equal parts irritating and endearing. He has gone into debt to buy the bird farm in a last-ditch effort to win back his ex-wife, which is touching enough, but watching him clumsily chase a huge ostrich around the desert, it’s clear it’s a losing proposition.
Soon the violent “Brother 5” shows up demanding Yong repay his loan; our hero not only fails to pay up, but he has the chutzpah to ask for more money. Instead, he is given a small boy to shelter on his farm. In typical Yong style, he asks no questions but doesn’t take the job very seriously, either. When he impulsively rushes off to see his ex, he is far down the highway before he remembers the tyke he left behind. After more funny business, kidnapper and victim take off together to find the wife.
In any other film this would be a cue for bonding, but curiously the story doesn’t really go down that road. Cute as the boy is, he remains sullenly silent for the first half of the film. He wins sympathy points, however, when he steals Yong’s truck and weaves down the road in a nicely modulated scene that has the audience holding its breath.
This tall tale is set in China’s Gobi desert, where big trucks and long rigs ceaselessly cross endless plains between far-flung cities. It’s an unloving world of lonely transients who have learned to defensively fend for themselves, one where the unusually open-hearted Yong stands out like a sore thumb. Everything he does speaks of his humanity, though maybe not in the usual terms. For example, he's so obsessed with his divorced wife that he ignores the pathetic child beside him.
Another strongly drawn character who crosses their path is a tough-as-nails woman trucker, played by rising star Ma Yili (the babysitter in Lost, Found). One expects her to turn into a love interest; instead Yong keeps his distance, while the film offers some privileged glimpses into her hard life. For a brief moment, the trio forms a family group for a photo, but it’s one of the many roads not taken.
The gangsters turn mean in the last part of the film and the uncertain storyline settles into a classic chase, letting logic evaporate in the desert heat. Only in the concluding sequence does Yong finally discover the truth about his fantasies and take responsibility for something. Turning his bumbling brashness into a sort of irresponsible heroism, Wang Xuebing manages to have it both ways.
Guo Daming’s cinematography emphasizes the rigors of the landscape bathed in harsh light. No music softens the dreadful barrenness of these exceedingly empty spaces.
Production company: VShine Brothers Entertainment
Cast: Wang Xuebing, Ma Yili, Zhu Gengyou
Director: Tang Gaopeng
Screenwriter: Yue Xiaojun
Producer: Sun Wei
Director of photography: Guo Daming
Production designers: Qin Weili, Fan Yongzhong, Gong Kaijun
Editor: Tsuyoshi Imai
Music: Chen Hongli
Venue: Shanghai Film Festival (Asian New Talent competition)
114 minutes
Source: The Hollywood Reporter by
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Jessie J returns victorious to China with new concert tour
(Sina) Two months after being crowned champion of the Singer contest on Hunan TV, the Multi-award winning British pop artist, Jessie J, will return to China with THE R.O.S.E TOUR this coming August and September.
Destination cities for the tour include Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Beijing, Chengdu, Changsha, Wuxi, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan. More dates and cities will be announced soon.
It's the first time that a hot Western artist has toured more than 10 cities in China. In 2014, Avril Lavine toured eight cities.
Tickets will go on sale through ticketing hotline 1010-3721, and online via Damai.cn. Those who have a credit card with American Express — exclusive presale partner for the Beijing and Shanghai shows — can purchase Beijing and Shanghai tickets before the general public, beginning on July 3 at 12 p.m. through July 5 at 10 a.m.
It's been eight years since Jessie J burst onto the scene with smash hits Do It Like a Dude and Price Tag, the latter topping the charts in 19 countries worldwide. She's since gone on to perform at some of the biggest venues and festivals across the globe, collecting an enormous array of awards and collaborating with the likes of Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj in the process.
Earlier this year, Jessie won the hearts of Chinese fans across the country and sparked an explosion of headlines around the globe as she became the first European artist to triumph on Singer, one of China's biggest music contests. Having never finished outside the top three over the course of the TV show, Jessie scooped the title after wowing audiences with her pitch-perfect delivery and down-to-earth personality – both of which she'll now be bringing live to the stage in China.
Jessie J toured China in 2014, and in the past few years has performed a series of gala shows and special events, but it was Singer that kept Jessie J in China the longest — three-and-a-half months in total.
"I love being here. I love being around new energy, new culture and a completely different way of life to anything that I have ever seen," she is reported to have said of her time here.
Jessie J built great relationships with fellow contestants of Singer, but she didn't reveal whether any of them will be the guest performer at her concerts in China. She did promise to include some of the songs that she sang during her run on the TV show.
Jessie has also recently announced her first-ever US tour.
Source: Sina
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Fashion icon Li Yuchun releases fashion shots
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Jiang Mengjie poses for photo shoot
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Angelababy releases new photos
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Excitement builds for CMIC Awards with nominations announcement
Xu Yi, president of the CMIC Music Awards Committee, revealed the nominations in 35 categories.
Beijing-based singer-songwriter Pu Shu's album, Orion, scored nominations in ten categories, including Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Male Singer of the Year.
Hong Kong pop singer Eason Chan's album, C'mon in, also got nominated for the Album of the Year, Male Singer of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance.
Taiwan singer Kulilay Amit, who is better known by her stage name A-mei, received nine nominations, including Album of the Year for her 2017 album, Story Thief, Female Singer of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance.
New Artist of the Year nominees are hip-hop singer VaVa, folk singer-songwriter Xie Chunhua, pop singer-songwriters Zhou Shen and Xu Jun and the band, Kawa, from Yunnan province.
For the first time, CMIC Music Awards has two new categories: Best Children's Album and Best Original Soundtrack for a Video Game.
The gala awards ceremony will be held in Beijing on July 31, and will be broadcast online by streaming site iQiyi.
"From the list of the nominations, we can see the music scene of the country in 2017, which has more diversity and more new faces," says Xu.
In 2017, when Song Ke, the chairman of the China Music Industry Committee, initiated the idea of launching CMIC Music Awards, he hoped to restore the dignity of China's music industry.
Being a central figure in the development of China's music industry for more than two decades, Song, the former head of Warner Music China and now the CEO of Ali Music Group, a division of e-commerce giant Alibaba, says that there are many music awards in China which "have celebrities, screaming fans and generous sponsors, but it's more about entertainment. They have nothing to do with music.
"We want to recognize talented people in the music industry and encourage young musicians. Most importantly, we can finally regain our industry's dignity, which we have lost," Song said onstage during last year's awards ceremony in Beijing.
The jury panel of the CMIC Music Awards consists of 101 members of the China Music Industry Committee, all hailing from record labels and distributors. Taiwan veteran songwriter and producer Jonathan Lee has been invited to be the chief consultant.
"Lee helped us by giving a long report on sharing his views about the music industry and his opinions about the standards of each category," Song says. "We want to let people know why we choose the winners and we will elaborate the reasons before announcing each winner at the gala."
Source: China Daily
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Pop star Li Yuchun performs in Beijing
Chinese pop star Li Yuchun, who is better known in the West as Chris Lee, performed in Beijing on June 30 as part of her ongoing nationwide tour.
The tour, titled Liu Xing, which is named after the singer-songwriter's latest album of the same title, has Li performing about 20 of her hits, including the title song, Liu Xing.
Li who represents Gucci Timepieces and Jewelry in Asia, Li wore a handful of costumes designed by Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele during the Beijing show.
Taiwan singer Jolin Tsai showed up at the Beijing concert as guest performer. And besides singing her hit, Play, Tsai joined Li performing one of Li's pop hits, Growing Wild.
Li, 34, who also is an actress, first achieved fame when she won the nationwide singing contest, Super Girl, in China in 2005.
The tour, which kicked off from Chengdu, where she was born, in April this year, has also covered Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Nanjing.
On July 14, Li will wrap up the tour in Chongqing.
Source: By Chen Nan | chinadaily.com.cn
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China Box Office: Local Thriller 'Animal World' Dethrones 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom'
(THR) Chinese thriller Animal World officially kicked off the summer blockbuster season in the world's second-biggest film market over the weekend, opening to $38.2 million and topping the China box-office champion of the preceding two weeks, Universal's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
The youth-oriented action film is based on a popular Japanese manga and stars Li Yifeng as a young man who is induced into taking part in a violent game of chance overseen by an archvillain, played by Michael Douglas. Directed by rising talent Han Yan (Go Away Mr Tumor) and produced by Enlight Media, Animal World was boosted by strong word of mouth, scoring 8.7/10 from ticketing app Maoyan and 7.4/10 from Douban, the more fickle reviews aggregator.
Still packing some bite, Fallen Kingdom pulled in $14.7 million in its third frame, boosting its 17-day total to a healthy $232 million, according to numbers from Beijing-based EntGroup. The J. A. Bayona-directed sequel has now eclipsed the $228.7 million total of the first Jurassic World film in China.
Escape Plan 2: Hades, co-financed and produced by Lionsgate and China's Leomus Pictures launched in third place, thanks to a solid Friday start of $5.3 million. But the film was quickly savaged by critics and fan reviewers and slid down the charts, totaling just $10.7 million for the full weekend. Sylvester Stallone and Dave Bautista star in the sequel, alongside Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming. The increased Chinese involvement was a response to the $40.9 million the first Escape Plan movie earned in China back in 2013 — considerably more than the $25.1 million the movie brought in domestically. The sequel stands little chance of matching its predecessor, however.
Disney's and Pixar's The Incredibles 2 came in just a step behind in fourth place, adding $10.1 million for a two-weekend total of $40.4 million.
Chinese comedy maestro Xu Zheng's hotly anticipated comedy-drama Dying to Survive also burst onto the Chinese charts thanks to just two days of limited previews Saturday and Sunday. The sneak peeks pulled in a whopping $7.6 million ahead of the film's official opening Friday, July 6. Already, word of mouth for the movie, which is produced by Xu's fellow hitmaker and former collaborator Ning Hao (Crazy Stone), is effusive. The film is loosely based on the true story of a Chinese leukemia patient who smuggled unapproved drugs from India in order to get affordably priced medicine for himself and 1,000 others. Local fans are touting the film as China's answer to Dallas Buyers Club, and saying their version is worthy of similar Oscar consideration. The film has a sky-high score of 9.6/10 on Maoyan.
Further down the charts, the rerelease of Wong Kar-Wai's Days of Beijing Wild (2004), added just over $600,000 in its second weekend. After two frames, the Hong Kong classic has earned $2.1 million in Mainland China. That's considerably less than the $9.8 million the Asian art house classic earned during its original Hong Kong run, but not at all bad for a 14-year-old rerelease in a market traditionally known for its blockbuster leanings.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter by
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Li Meng poses for fashion magazine
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Yao Chen poses for photo shoot
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Why Hollywood Film Talent Is Flocking to China
Once the biggest stars of the Chinese-language industry — from Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan, John Woo to Ang Lee — went west to bring their careers to the next level, moving from the relative backwater of their home territories to the much larger industry pond of Southern California. Now it's much more common to see Hollywood talent head east, seeking opportunity in Beijing's booming film business.
For a timely example, look no further than Animal World, the colorful, youth-oriented thriller from Beijing-based studio Enlight Media currently on top of China's box office. The film, an adaptation of a Japanese comic book, opened to $38 million over the weekend, kicking off China's summer blockbuster season. The film features two-time Oscar winner Michael Douglas deploying his signature menace as the mysterious villain, an overseer in an elaborate underground game of chance.
Chinese critics have heaped praise on the 73-year-old American actor's performance.
But Douglas isn't the only Hollywood star willing to play a supporting role in the Chinese movie boom. Michael Pitt (Boardwalk Empire, The Dreamers) popped up earlier this year in Wanda Pictures' smash hit comedy Detective Chinatown 2, which grossed $544 million in the Middle Kingdom. Marvel Studios' alum Frank Grillo(Captain America: Civil War) played the Western baddy in Wolf Warrior 2, China's biggest blockbuster ever ($870 million). And, later this summer, Bruce Willis and Adrian Brody will appear as U.S. military brass in Unbreakable Spirit, a China Film Group-produced tentpole about the Japanese bombing of the Chinese city of Chongqing during World War II.
Hollywood stars have appeared in big Chinese-themed films before — most notably Christian Bale in Zhang Yimou's period action-drama Flowers of War and Matt Damon in Legendary Entertainment's now-legendary flop, The Great Wall. But in those films, both U.S.-China co-productions initiated by American producers in the hopes of bridging the world's two biggest markets, the Hollywood casting was justified as a necessary ingredient to help the films win an audience outside of China. In the new wave of crossover castings, the blockbusters are targeting Chinese audiences exclusively, with U.S. stars picked for their skills or their appeal to fans in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou.
"Bringing foreign actors onto Chinese films now is generally more about raising the production quality for domestic performance," says Jonah Greenberg, former head of CAA China, who recently launched his own production company in Beijing.
One factor fueling the trend is the rapid increase in Chinese production budgets. The first Detective Chinatown film was made for $15 million in 2015, but Wanda splashed out more than $60 million on the sequel just three years later. Unbreakable Spirit, with Willis and Brody, has an estimated budget of $65 million.
Producers say rising budgets are a reflection both of the growth of the Chinese box office, which hit $8.6 billion last year and is expected to surpass that of North America by around 2020, and the Chinese audience's growing demand for world-class quality from their domestic features. The growing budgets have also rendered Hollywood actors newly affordable. It's also helped that the U.S. studios, focused on making fewer, bigger tentpole films, have sharply reduced the number of these "mid-budget" titles they produce. China is beginning to step into that gap.
The real boom in West-to-East talent transfer, however, is below the line. Nearly every major upcoming Chinese film has some behind-the-scenes technical or professional involvement from Hollywood, be it a producer, cinematographer, composer, visual effects supervisor or action coordinator. And again, raw market forces mostly explain the change.
"There aren’t enough below-the-line professionals in China to meet the demand of the market and the growing number of domestic productions," explains Greenberg. "If you’re a Chinese producer, studio or film financier and you want a department head with real experience or — as is more often the emphasis — established credits, then you probably will need to look elsewhere, because there just aren’t enough to go around here."
Typical of China, one huge hit helped kickstart the trend. When Wu Jing was making Wolf Warrior 2, which he co-wrote, directed and starred in, he was introduced to Marvel mainstays Joe and Anthony Russo, who had signed a collaboration agreement with Wu's studio backers Beijing Culture. The Russos offered to introduce Wu to some of their usual technical collaborators, and the Chinese filmmaker took them up on the offer, hiring stunt coordinator Sam Hargrave, the same action expert behind the stunts in Avengers: Infinity War. American composer Joseph Trapanese (The Greatest Showman, Straight Outta Compton) also came on board to do the score. The veteran Hollywood involvement has been widely credited with helping the film strike upon the winning formula — a patriotic Chinese action flick produced with world-class technical prowess — that so enthralled the Chinese audience.
"It was a very smart move from Wu Jing," says James Wang, CEO of Huayi Brothers Media, whose own upcoming war film Eight Hundred hired Hollywood effects experts. "Basically, he used the best talent and technicians he could get and combined their skills with a Chinese story. This is what Hollywood has always done for American movies, and I believe this type of cooperation is the right track for us in China."
Now, nearly every upcoming big-budget Chinese film boasts some Hollywood-pedigreed professional or technical expertise. In some cases, the international involvement is considerable. Beijing Culture's forthcoming Fengshen Trilogy, a planned big-budget fantasy franchise directed by Wuershan (Mojin: The Lost Legend, Painted Skin: The Resurrection) and reportedly expected to cost as much as 3 billion yuan ($450 million), has hired producer Barrie M. Osborne (Lord of the Rings, The Great Gatsby) as a production consultant, multi-Oscar nominee James Schamus as a story consultant, and Glenn Boswell (The Hobbit, The Matrix) as stunt coordinator, along with a U.S. composer and VFX supervisor, among others.
Alibaba Pictures' upcoming fantasy epic Asura, produced for $100 million and opening on July 13, hired a slew of high-profile production talent, including Oscar-winning costume designer Ngila Dickson (Lord of the Rings), audio director Martín Hernandez (The Revenant, Birdman) and VFX supervisor Charlie Iturriaga (Deadpool, Furious 7). Legendary Chinese actor-director Jiang Wen similarly turned to Hollywood for key roles in his period actioner Hidden Man, also opening July 13.
Producer Andrew Lazar (American Sniper, others) oversaw a brief shoot in Baltimore, while American composer Aaron Zigman (The Notebook, the Sex and the City movies) flew to Beijing several times to contribute work to the film's score.
"I really felt like the lone wolf in the beginning," says former Hollywood director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger), who came to Beijing four years ago to direct the Jackie Chan action film Skiptrace and never left. "But now it's not uncommon at all to run into Hollywood cinematographers, production designers or VFX supervisors in Beijing." After Skiptrace earned $141 million in 2016, delivering Harlin his first hit in a decade, the Finnish director decided to fully relocate from Los Angeles to the Chinese capital. He has since directed two more Chinese features — Legend of the Ancient Sword for Alibaba; Bodies at Rest for Wanda — both due for release later this year. Other A-list international directors, such as Alfonso Cuaron, have expressed interest in making Chinese films.
Veteran animators including Rob Minkoff (The Lion King) and Oscar winner Glen Keane (Dear Basketball, Aladdin) are currently developing projects for the country's emerging animation studios.
As any Hollywood film worker — aspiring or established — will attest, there are fewer opportunities on large-scale theatrical films in Los Angeles than ever before. With television, streaming platforms and mobile entertainment presenting unprecedented competition for audience attention, the U.S. movie landscape has largely bifurcated between huge-budget tentpoles and small-budget comedies and horror films, along with the increasingly scarce assortment of indies (the proposed absorption of 20th Century Fox by Disney will only accelerate the process).
Notes Harlin: "Some veteran professionals from Hollywood have realized that if they still want to see their work on the big screen, China is one of the few great options."
Europe is also beginning to benefit from China's upsurge.
"The cost of everything in China is becoming absolutely insane — not only stars but technical people too," notes Italian filmmaker Chistiano Bortone (Coffee, 2017), who serves as managing director of Bridging the Dragon, a Beijing- and Berlin-based filmmakers association dedicated to forging ties between the European and Chinese film industries.
Bortone notes that China is beginning to tap Europe's deep pool of artistic and professional filmmaking talent in the same way that Hollywood has for decades. For example, China's preeminent arthouse star, Jia Zhangke, hired a French director of photography for the first time for his recent Cannes competition entry Ash is the Purest White.
"After all, let's not forget that many of the greatest cinematographers originally came from Europe," Bortone says. "Now China is saying, let's not wait for them to become very expensive in Hollywood; let's just go to the source."
"It's like the world is turning the other way around," he adds. "In the past, we were outsourcing to China for cheap labor. Now, in the film business at least, they are coming to Europe to do exactly the same thing."
Source: The Hollywood Reporter by
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Stills from Mission Impossible: Fallout
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