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
2005 Shanghai Diaries Movie Club
Sideways stands tall (and no minority winners for the fourth year in a row)
OK. I’ll get this out of the way up front: There are no Chinese members of the Shanghai Diaries Movie Club. And only one member actually lives in China. The SDMC was formerly known as the Orange Street Oscars and it was based in lily-white Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. We have moved our operations to Shanghai because labor is cheap, movies are cheaper and the Chinese appear to be on a cinematic hot streak (especially when compared to the Amish, who, frankly, have been a big disappointment since showing so much promise in Witness).
Released just in time to be dramatically overshadowed by the real Oscars, the Shanghai Diaries Movie Club is the year in film as seen through the eyes of five guys in Pennsylvania, one guy in Shanghai and another guy lost somewhere in New Jersey. We give you our Top-20 Films of 2004 and a glimpse of what the Oscars would look like if we were in charge. Scroll down and see rough biographical sketches and individual top-20 lists from each voter. (One movie club member only managed a top-12 list this year. Forgive him — he’s from Scranton.)
The SDMC is looking for new members — especially ones based in China. So, please leave your comments and your own top-whatever lists as comments to this post. We’d love to hear from you. Maybe we’ll invite you back next year. We know you are dying to learn the secret club handshake … and meet the man known to millions of women worldwide simply as Big Daddy.
Enjoy.
02.27.2005, 5:47 PM · Movies · Comments (55)
Slash of the Titans
How government censors — not audience members — were the most annoying part of my first movie-going experience in China
I am somewhat of a movie buff, yet I waited 18 months to see a movie in the theater in Shanghai. Or perhaps it’s that I waited 18 months to see a movie in the theater in Shanghai because I am somewhat of a movie buff. Let me explain.
Generally an easy going guy, I am the anal retentive movie-goer. I hate when audience members talk. I hate when their mobile phones go off. I hate when they have annoying laughs.
In America, I would choose show times based on when the theater was likely to be at its emptiest. I would choose a seat far away from anyone else. If someone would come in late and sit near me, sometimes I would get up and move.
I figured China would be just about the worst place for a person like me to go see a movie because — and I know I am generalizing here — Chinese people have no problem talking during anything, Chinese people love their mobile phones and the Chinese language comes in two volume levels: loud an louder. The whisper, I’m convinced, is a Western innovation.
06.27.2004, 3:04 AM · Culture, Movies, Observations · Comments (13)
dirty american orange girl rider
you’ve seen all the other awards shows, now check out the, um, latest …
click here for the 2004 orange street oscars, the awards that have everyone in hollywood talking. (we just checked, people in hollywood are indeed talking … right now.)
here’s a sneak peak …
dan’s top twenty films of 2003
01. Lost in Translation
02. American Splendor
03. In America
04. City of God
05. Pieces of April
06. Owning Mahowny
07. The Triplets of Belleville
08. Capturing the Friedmans
09. Dirty Pretty Things
10. Mystic River
11. The Dancer Upstairs
12. Girl with a Pearl Earring
13. Spellbound
14. Master and Commander
15. The Last Samurai
16. Kill Bill, Vol. 1
17. Elf
18. School of Rock
19. The Man on the Train
20. Bend it Like Beckham
Also Receiving Votes
21 Grams, A Mighty Wind, Elephant, Finding Nemo, The Hulk, The Italian Job, Monster, Phone Booth, Run Ronnie Run, Seabiscuit, Whale Rider
Not Receiving Votes
Daredevil, Down With Love, Holes, In the Cut, Intolerable Cruelty, Laurel Canyon, Northfork, Old School
Definitely Not Receiving Votes
Bringing Down the House, The Core, The Shape of Things, Something’s Gotta Give, Swimming Pool, XX/XY
Movies I Own, But Have Not Watched Yet
28 Days Later, Buffalo Soldiers, Gerry, The Good Thief, Mona Lisa Smile, Pirates of the Carribean, Secret Lives of Dentists, Stuck on You, Thirteen, Veronica Guerin
Movie I Am Currently Downloading
Shattered Glass
Movies I Haven’t Seen, But Want To
Big Fish, Cold Mountain, The Cooler, The Fog of War, House of Sand and Fog
so get there, now! and don’t forget to leave your comments.
03.12.2004, 2:07 AM · Movies
where the hell have i been?
in a cave? well, yes. but only part of the time.you know it’s been a long time when you start getting text messages from your students telling you to update your website. so here you go, bonny.
over the past several weeks, i chose to concentrate on money-making ventures — you know, freelance writing and standing next to cars — instead of this website.
03.11.2004, 1:06 AM · Guangxi, Movies, Observations, Photos, School, Sports · Comments (4)
add my name to the list!
Film Actors Join the Fray Against ‘Screeners’ Ban (news.yahoo.com)
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Several top actors and past Academy Award winners are joining the battle against a controversial ban on Oscar movie “screeners” by voicing their opposition in a newspaper advertisement, a film industry source said on Tuesday. …… The ad will ask the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood’s major studios, to reverse their decision to issue screeners to Academy members who vote on the awards.
The ban on “screeners” — videotapes and DVDs of movies vying for awards — has raised a major outcry by filmmakers, directors and now actors who say it will limit the number of people who will see contending films and discriminate against smaller independent studios.
The MPAA instituted the ban out of concern the videos and DVDs will be illegally copied and sold on black markets or distributed for free over the Internet, which happened last year.
why i care: now i, obviously, have different reasons for opposing the screener ban than the “top actors and past academy award winners.” in addition to being a big-time supporter of independent film, i am also a big-time supporter of the black market here in asia. i rely on illegal copies of these screeners. they keep me sane. please jack valenti, don’t make me wait until next summer to see lost in translation! please! lift the ban! if you don’t do it for me, do it for the orange street oscars.
see also: What’s the big Oscar DVD ‘screener’ flap?
10.16.2003, 11:28 PM · Movies · Comments (1)
DVDos and DVDon’ts
perhaps i was bored. more likely, i was procrastinating doing something that really mattered. but for whatever reason, in the days leading up to my return to shanghai, i organized and cataloged all the DVDs i purchased in china last year. there are almost 200 titles on the list. which means the entire collection cost less than $200. all of these discs were purchased on the black market (which is actually rather out in the open here), but their quality, for the most part, is very good — and they all worked on my DVD player in the USA.
09.03.2003, 1:00 PM · Movies, Observations · Comments (1)
your taste in movies sucks
Disagree? Well, check for yourself. Go to the orange street oscars website to see which movies you should have liked in 2002. This site’s got so much indie cred that no one’s ever heard of it.
Think the orange street guys are full of shit? Tell them on their message board.
03.18.2003, 7:33 PM · Movies · Comments (5)
dvd doozies: ocean’s eleven/legends of the fall
Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Legends of the Fall (1994)
Maybe they were busy drooling over Brad — excuse me, Bard — Pitt. Maybe they had taken a hit of that "head-shaking drug" my students keep telling me about. Or maybe there were some keys missing from their keyboards (check out the credits for Legends). Whatever it was, the folks who put these covers together are currently the odds-on favorites to take home the inaugural DVD Doozie Awards for Synopsis Writing. Excellent work guys. You have set the bar very, very high.
dvd doozies: undisputed
In Shanghai, few things are more plentiful than construction cranes, rice and neon lights. The DVD is one of them. Supposedly illegal, the bootleg industry is booming. Discs can be purchased everywhere: from back alleys and back rooms to well-lit streets and even actual stores (the owners of which must pay policemen Jackie Chan movies to look the other way). On the city’s busiest streets, DVDs are dealt like drugs. Men in suits greet you with a whisper, “Watch? Shoes? CD? DVD?” Nod your head, and he’ll start walking. Follow, and you’ll end up somewhere — a dark sidestreet, a windowless room, even upstairs at a restaurant — staring at a suitcase full of DVDs.
The selection can be impressive — everything from classics to current stuff — and if you know the Chinese name of a movie they don’t have, they can probably get it for you. Concerned about quality? Don’t be. Most DVDs here are, well, DVD quality. Even the camcorder jobs can be bearable, assuming that no one seated in front of the cameraman was called “Head-and-a-Half” in college. Yeah, you’ll have the occasional dud, but each bad disc makes a fine drink coaster — remember, unless you’re a sucker, DVDs only cost 8 yuan here. That’s $1, folks. You still get to keep the DVD cover, anyway. And in Shanghai, the DVD covers are often more entertaining than the movies they come with.That’s what this part of the website celebrates.
Some fool with Photoshop obviously worked very hard on these masterpieces of misinformation. All the parts are there — title, photos, synopsis, cast, credits, the occasional critic’s quote or two — but it never quite adds up. If something is actually spelled correctly — and that’s a big if — it likely has nothing to do with the movie contained inside. At least the title is usually right … usually. I suppose this all makes some sense. Most people buying these DVDs read Chinese and nothing else, so any English letters and words are just there for show. But the errors occur so often, the wrongs so randomly, that getting it right would seem to be a much less time-consuming task.
Here’s hoping they never get it right.
And now to today’s DVD Doozie …
