Brett Ratner, the director behind the Rush Hour movies and a documentary on Melania Trump, is accompanying Donald Trump to China for his summit with Xi Jinping. Trump is due to hold talks with the Chinese leader on Thursday and Friday over pressing economic and geopolitical issues, including Iran and Taiwan. The US president was accompanied on Air Force One by CEOs and top executives from major US tech and finance firms, including Apple’s Tim Cook, Tesla’s Elon Musk and BlackRock’s Larry Fink. Ratner was among the groups as well.…
Tag: Film
Ciao UFO review – Hong Kong tear-jerker is less ET than time-hopping chronicle of housing estate kids
Directed by Patrick Leung, this affecting saga from Hong Kong is a bit tricksy to get to grips with because it keeps hopping back and forth between an assortment of time frames. It tracks a set of characters as children in the mid-1980s, played by one group of young actors, and then later in the 1990s and early 00s when an adult cast takes over. But as it spirals in towards its surprising and dramatic conclusion, everything falls into place and the last 10 minutes is properly tear-jerking – even…
Blades of the Guardians review – swords to the fore in martial arts master Yuen Woo-ping’s wuxia heaven
Recently becoming the most successful wuxia film of all time at the Chinese box office, Blades of the Guardians offers a duly impressive spectacle, chock-full of epic set-pieces that lean more on physical effects than CGI, and of course lashings of exquisitely choreographed fight scenes mostly using – as the title suggests – swords. One wouldn’t expect anything else, given it is directed by veteran fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, best known to western audiences for his contributions to films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Matrix movies and Kill…
Scare Out review – twisty spy thriller is all style, little substance
Back in the 1980s and 90s, Zhang Yimou (Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern) was acclaimed as one of the most talented directors to emerge from China’s “fifth generation”, film-makers whose work broke with the socialist realist style of their predecessors. While still working within the establishment industry, the fifth generation – including Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang – were considered to varying degrees if not quite dissident, at least somewhat heterodox and anti-authoritarian. Either way, having started out as a cinematographer, Zhang quickly became an arthouse darling abroad, feted…
TikTok creator ByteDance vows to curb AI video tool after Disney threat
ByteDance, the Chinese technology company behind TikTok, has said it will restrain its AI video-making tool, after threats of legal action from Disney and a backlash from other media businesses, according to reports. The AI video generator Seedance 2.0, released last week, has spooked Hollywood as users create realistic clips of movie stars and superheroes with just a short text prompt. Several big Hollywood studios have accused the tool of copyright infringement. On Friday, Walt Disney reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance which accused it of supplying Seedance with…
Harry Potter’s Draco Malfoy becomes mascot for year of the horse in China
Draco Malfoy, one of Harry Potter’s most recognisable villains, has become an unlikely lunar new year icon across China, as fans embrace the character for the year of the horse. In Mandarin, Malfoy’s name is transliterated as “mǎ ěr fú”. The first character means “horse” while the final character, “fú”, means “fortune” or “blessing” – a powerful symbol found across lunar new year celebrations. Put together, Malfoy’s name can be loosely read as “horse fortune”, making him an unexpectedly auspicious figure for the year ahead. The wordplay has sparked a…
Guián review – celebration of multicultural identity through a Chinese grandmother in Costa Rica
Nicole Chi Amén, a Costa Rican woman of Chinese descent, has always been on the outside looking in. The opening scene of her moving debut feature replicates this predicament visually: her face pressed against a metal barricade, she looks through a hole in the opaque facade with interest. The camera is observing, too, and the sight of a house being torn down gradually comes into view. This was once the home of her maternal grandmother, a Guangdong native who emigrated to Costa Rica more than 60 years ago. Conceived in…
Back to the Past review – everybody’s still gun-fu fighting in time-travel sequel
Time-travel stories were briefly in the crosshairs of the Chinese censors in the early 2010s, because of how they potentially subverted “official” history. It’s not clear if the hit 2001 Hong Kong TV series A Step Into the Past – about a modern-day cop transported to the third-century BC “warring states” period – was seen as an offender. But it is evidently all go for Chinese time-travel movies now, and hence this glossy cinematic reprise of A Step Into the Past that picks up the main characters 20 years on.…
‘They want to destroy my career’: Kiwi Chow on life as a dissenting director in Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, where dissent is now characterised by silence, few dare openly criticise the government or the Chinese Communist party (CCP) that controls it. Film-maker Kiwi Chow is one of the few. “The Chinese Communist party’s practice is to try and destroy history and truth,” the 46-year-old director says from his home in the region. “It’s ridiculous that I can still live in Hong Kong without being in jail.” In a society where someone can be jailed for wearing a “seditious” T-shirt, his surprise is understandable. Chow is best…
‘The bullying can’t go on’: the film-maker following Filipino fishers under siege by China
During a televised debate in 2016, populist presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte made a typically belligerent statement that he himself would jetski to Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea and plant a Philippine flag there. Duterte claimed that he was ready to die a hero to keep the Chinese out of the bitterly contested maritime territory. “That made millions of Filipino workers and fishers vote for him because of that one promise,” says film-maker Baby Ruth Villarama. As her new Oscar and Bafta-contending documentary Food Delivery: Fresh from the West…