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Pop queen Sammi Cheng releases photos for new album
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Actress Xu Qing releases new photos
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Jiang Mengjie poses for photo shoot
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Qin Lan poses for fashion magazine
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China Box Office: ‘The Island’ Earns $39 Million to Beat Still Hungry ‘Meg’
(Variety) The outcome of the China box office was far less controversial than the previous weekend, but no easier to predict.
Comedy, “The Island” retained its top spot in its second weekend. Giant shark movie, “The Meg” moved up to second place and crossed the $100 million mark.
But “iPartment,” the Chinese film which topped the chart on its opening ten days earlier, and claimed $70 million in its debut weekend, crumbled in spectacular fashion. According to data from Ent Group, it managed just $790,000 in its second weekend, a fall of 99%.
“The Island” took $38.8 million, a 47% drop from its opening $72.6 million. After 10 days on release, it has accumulated $162 million.
“The Meg” chomped another $30.6 million, including $4.34 million from IMAX screens. Its weekly total was down just 39% compared with its opening. After 10 days on release in China, “The Meg” has garnered $117 million, or more than a third of the film’s global cumulative.
Hong Kong- and Chinese-made adventure franchise movie, “Europe Raiders” had a powerful Friday opening day with $14.5 million. But it faded sharply thereafter. On Saturday, it limped to $3.5 million, and on Sunday stumbled to $2 million, for an opening weekend total of $19.6 million.
Chinese-made fantasy-comedy, “Go Brother” held a steady course and finished fourth. It earned $17.7 million in three days. That was narrowly ahead of “Hotel Transylvania,” which opened in fifth place with $16.8 million.
An action adventure movie, directed by Kevin Chu, “Oolong Courtyard” (aka “Kung Fu School”) earned $14.8 million in three days. It opened with a quickfire $9.73 million on Friday, but rapidly ran out of stamina, falling to $2.23 million on Sunday.
“Hello Mr Billionaire,” a previous number one, was the only other film to make a serious impression. It earned $6.14 million in its fourth week. After 24 days on release, it has accumulated $357 million.
Source: Variety By Patrick Frater
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TV actress Hai Qing releases new shoots
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Cecilia Cheung poses for photo shoot
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Actress Yu Feihong poses for fashion magazine
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Pop queen Jolin Tsai releases new photos
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Film Review: The Island
(CFI) Huang Bo not only stars in and directed The Island, he is one of several writers credited with the screenplay. Ambitious to a fault, this sprawling comedy-drama will please his fans while leaving others scratching their heads.
Bo plays Ma Jin, a sad-sack worker in a company run by boss Zhang (Yu Hewei). Along with his adopted brother, the goofy Xing (Zhang Yixing), Ma is forced into a team-building exercise that starts on an amphibious bus driven by guide Dicky Wang (Wang Baoqiang). Ma’s only consolation is that he will be near fellow employee Shan Shan (Shu Qi), a beauty who has so far studiously avoided him.
Ma scores some great deadpan gags in the opening scenes, then follows with a respectable special-effects montage of the end of the world. Seems a meteor has struck, causing a tsunami that flings Wang’s bus onto a desert island. Cut off from all communication, the twenty or so team members will have to figure out on their own a way to survive.
Wang, an Army veteran and former circus animal trainer, uses force to intimidate others into working for him. Ma and Xing drift away, Ma nursing a winning lottery ticket worth 60 million RNB that will expire in 90 days. Other workers split with Wang to side with Zhang, who has occupied the remaining half of an upended freighter that crashed on a distant beach.
Ma has to abandon his dreams of getting off the island in time to cash his lottery ticket. Instead, he and Xing use a sudden windfall to lure workers into a third camp apart from Wang and Zhang. At the same time, he starts to win over the formerly suspicious Shan.
Friendly dance parties around bonfires alternate with slapstick brawls as Bo and his writers add plot twists and reversals. Those who think they have an advantage find themselves outfoxed by rivals, while others nurse secrets that will affect everyone.
It’s hard not to read the plot as a political metaphor. First the worker masses are controlled by the equivalent of a warlord, then a capitalist. Ma’s third path seduces the masses into following a leader who may or may not be telling them the truth.
Huang Bo’s approach to his Lord of the Flies premise is a distinctly Chinese one tied to connecting social classes. (The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio settled for routine violence; “Lost” for obscure, soap-opera narratives; and “Wrecked” for limp satire. And then Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg went all apocalyptic for This Is the End.) Like real-life leaders, Wang, Zhang and Ma abuse their power and mistreat their workers, an idea that makes for good debates but not very compelling entertainment.
Bo’s secret weapon in The Island is Shu Qi, an effortlessly magnetic star who enlivens even the dullest material. Kept in the background for a lot of the story, she still brings a welcome human touch to a plot that keeps threatening to turn into a lecture. (There’s even a professor around to argue for spreading DNA, although he’s quickly shouted down by the women.)
The Island looks great, with outstanding locations, crisp cinematography and convincing special effects. Bo does better with the comic scenes than the dramatic ones, but on the whole this is polished mainstream work that could surprise American viewers. Still, the movie needed a few better twists to win over a broader audience.
Source: China Film Insider by Daniel Eagan
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He Hua poses for photo shoot
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Actress Zhou Xun in hit costume drama
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Tan Zhuo poses for fashion magazine
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Actress Tang Yan poses for fashion magazine
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Crazy Rich Asians gives China’s hip-hop queen Vava international exposure
(SCMP) After rising to fame in China on a hugely popular hip-hop reality TV show, Vava is now receiving her big international break – and she has the film Crazy Rich Asians to thank.
The 22-year-old rapper from Sichuan province contributed to the film’s soundtrack with her single My New Swag– originally released in October last year. The song sits alongside others from the likes of 1950s Hong Kong singer Grace Chang, 1980s Canto-pop star Sally Yeh and modern Chinese jazz vocalist Jasmine Chen.
Crazy Rich Asiansdominated the US box office over the weekend, beating expectations to bring in more than US$34 million since opening on Wednesday. The film opens in Hong Kong on August 23.
Vava is sometimes described as the Rihanna of China. She rose to fame as a contestant on the first season of The Rap of China. The reality show spread hip-hop fever across the country, leading concerned authorities to ban hip-hop culture from television for several months last year.
On the show, Vava rapped in both Mandarin and Sichuan dialect, and was the only female contestant to make it to the final four, where she eventually lost to winners PG One and GAI.
Vava’s popularity has exploded since her appearance on The Rap of China; she has secured her high-profile advertisement deals and become a fashion icon as well as the face of Chinese hip hop across the country.
“Chinese hip hop comes from rebellion in young people’s lives,” Vava said during an interview with Esquire Singapore. “I realised all my rapper friends went through a period of insurgency and that’s when they started rapping. The generation before us were rockers, but today we use rap to express ourselves.”
Vava was born Mao Yanqi in the Sichuan city of Ya’an, in southwest China. She had a turbulent childhood and was mainly raised by her grandmother. By the age of 16, Vava had already decided to pursue a career in music, so she dropped out of school and started singing in bars to earn money for her family.
During the interview with Esquire, Vava said: “I was still learning and didn’t know how to make this my profession, so I sang covers. If I sang my own songs, I would get in trouble because back then they didn’t allow hip-hop songs.”
“When I was singing in the bar, I saw the others were just doing it as a job; they were just drinking and singing, they had no passion for it. But I was making my own music so I left … and travelled around China.”
During a visit to Shenzhen, a city across the border from Hong Kong, Vava met hip-hop producer Double G, who invited her to join his team in Shanghai. This encounter launched her career in hip hop. Double G has produced many of Vava’s biggest tracks, including Know My Style and Shady Wit Me.
My New Swag was included on Vava’s debut album, titled “21”, which was released last year.
The singer has enjoyed her breakthrough as the queen of Chinese hip hop, and her rise alongside Chinese acts such as Higher Brothers. In the interview with Esquire, Vava acknowledged the debt Chinese hip-hop artists owe to the originators of the sound in the US.
“Hip hop comes from the US, and let’s be honest here, we’re really just copying their style, but, in a sense, we are connected. We’re still finding our way, still creating and finding our own Chinese style of hip hop. We need to put more Chinese elements into our music. Already some rappers abroad are inserting Chinese elements into their music,” she said.
Source: South China Morning Post
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TV series on royal romances hits screens
(China Daily) One of the most anticipated TV series of the summer, Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace has debuted in 18 countries and regions, including the United States, Canada and Australia, on Aug 20.
On the Chinese mainland, the TV drama starring Taiwan actor Wallace Huo and veteran actress Zhou Xun is being broadcast on the video-streaming site Tencent Video.
And in the US, it has aired on a television channel affiliated to the Fox Network Group with five episodes every week, since Monday.
Besides, major broadcasters in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam are working on their schedules.
The 87-episode series, loosely based on a true story about one of Emperor Qianlong's queens, is directed by Wang Jun, and chronicles the bittersweet romances between the emperor and his wife as well as a lot of his concubines.
Hong Kong singer Sandy Lam alongside Chinese mainland top singer Zhang Liangying sing the theme song, Shuangying (Two Shadows).
Source: China Daily
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An Yuexi poses for photo shoot
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Zhang Meng poses for photo shoot
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Ni Ni covers fashion magazine
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Asian-centric film "Crazy Rich Asians" sequel in works after box office success
(Xinhua) The follow-up of Warner Bros.' Asian-centric film "Crazy Rich Asians," based on Kevin Kwan's novel of the same name, is reportedly in the development stages after an impressive box office success in its opening weekend.
"The creative team behind Warner Bros.' breakout romantic comedy is planning to reunite for the sequel, based on Kevin Kwan's second book, 'China Rich Girlfriend.'" American digital and print magazine, the Hollywood Reporter, reported on Wednesday.
Kwan was born in Singapore as the youngest of three boys into an established Chinese family. The "Crazy Rich Asians" inspired by his childhood in Singapore was the first of his trilogy novels. The two other titles are "China Rich Girlfriend" and "Rich People Problems."
"Warner Bros. has not yet officially greenlighted the sequel... but with the massive opening weekend results, a strong performance in weeks to come will all but guarantee the sequel is a go," the Hollywood Reporter added.
"No deals are final, but (we're) planning on it," a Warner Bros. Pictures spokesperson was also quoted as saying by the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.
As a modest 30 million production, "Crazy Rich Asians" took the top spot of North American box office with a 35 million US dollars five-day opening last weekend, breaking all expectations of the industry. The romantic comedy-drama film is the first Hollywood studio film in over 25 years to feature a nearly all Asian cast since 1993's "Joy Luck Club," which earned a lifetime gross of 33 million dollars in North American theaters and was the highest grossing Asian-centric studio movie before last weekend.
Producers and directors of "Crazy Rich Asians" drew cast from all over the world: China, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, England and America. Directed by Chinese American filmmaker Jon M. Chu, the film stars Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Constance Wu, Ken Jeong, Harry Shum Jr., Chris Pang, Sonoya Mizuno, Jing Lusi and Awkwafina. The plot follows a young Chinese American woman who travels to meet her boyfriend's family, only to find them to be among the richest in Singapore.
The film received an "A" from moviegoers on CinemaScore and a highly positive 93 percent certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes to date.
Source: Xinhua
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