Vietnam has banned Warner Bros’s Barbie film from domestic distribution over a scene featuring a map that shows China’s unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea, state media have reported. The U-shaped “nine-dash line” is used on Chinese maps to illustrate its claims over vast areas of the South China Sea, including swathes of what Vietnam considers its continental shelf, where it has awarded oil concessions. Barbie is the latest movie to be banned in Vietnam for depicting China’s controversial nine-dash line, which was repudiated in an international arbitration…
Tag: Film
Disney’s Little Mermaid flops in China amid racist backlash over casting
The poor performance of Disney’s The Little Mermaid at the Chinese box office has reopened questions on Hollywood’s increasing difficulties in the world’s second-largest economy and the role racism has played in the film’s reception. The live action remake has grossed just $3.6m (£2.9m) since its release in Chinese cinemas on 26 May, according to Box Office Mojo. The film, starring Halle Bailey as the mermaid Ariel, arrives as Hollywood tries to edge back into a market increasingly dominated by domestic productions, and as Chinese authorities have shown reluctance to…
Boonie Bears: Guardian Code review – smash-hit Chinese animation tells an eco tale
The ninth feature in a hugely popular Chinese animated series directed by Lin Yongchang and Shao Heqi, Boonie Bears: Guardian Code is also the franchise’s highest-grossing film, second behind The Wandering Earth 2 as the biggest Chinese film of 2023 so far. With its two main characters Bramble and Briar, adorable bears who were abandoned by their mother in a forest fire, this environmentally conscious adventure is an entertaining, if rather formulaic, ride. For lovers of cute animals, the CGI designs of the brothers are quite lovely and detailed, though…
The Breaking Ice review – frozen emotion and sexual tension on North Korean border
Singaporean film-maker Anthony Chen brings warmth, sympathy and directness to this intimate drama set in Yanji on China’s border with North Korea. Three young people – two men and a woman – make a connection; each are looking for a way of breaking free from the emotional deep-freeze they’ve landed themselves in, just as the whole world wants to thaw itself out of the vast stagnancy created by the Covid pandemic. At its best, this movie has the easy and seductively unencumbered swing of the French New Wave, with something…
Youth review – heart-stopping stories in China’s sweatshop capital
Charlie Chaplin’s frantic production-line factory worker in Modern Times is a ghostly presence in this giant, immersive documentary from Chinese director Wang Bing, the movie equivalent of a wall-sized tapestry; it is about the sweatshop capital of China, the northern town of Zhili in Huzhou, Zhejiang province, known as the “city of children’s clothing”. Thousands of workshops turn out mountains of cheap garments and every year vast numbers of young people from about 16 to 22 come from outlying cities to do a season of brutally hard work in return…
Why China just can’t quit Hollywood – video
The US and China have a complex relationship, yet the movie business is one area where the two nations have enjoyed collaboration. But in the last few years, even this partnership has become more competitive. However, as the two countries’ political relationship grows more rancorous, China is opening the door to US blockbusters once again. The whole thing is starting to resemble a romance straight out of the movies. So why is China’s film industry so dependent on Hollywood? The Guardian
Restart the Earth review – Chinese sci-fi is pacy plant-based apocalypse
No doubt to Alan Titchmarsh’s great relief, the horticultural arm of the post-apocalypse flick is finally entering the growth phase, with the likes of Annihilation, The Last of Us and now this lightweight effort from Chinese director Lin Zhenzhao. The hubris here is that mankind has overcompensated for the desertification of the planet with cutting-edge research to promote plant growth, accidentally creating a super-species of sentient flora that has choked the Earth, and whose roving vines hunt down people to snack on. Yang Hao (Mickey He) is a bunkered-in dad…
Born to Fly review – Chinese Top Gun puts tech propaganda in the frontline
The pilots in this so-called Chinese Top Gun are mostly top in the sense that they are in selfless support of China’s frontline troops thanks to the emerging technological superiority of the People’s Republic (which would have made for a less snappy title). Another in China’s seemingly never-ending line of propagandistic, government-backed action films, this is only distinguished in dunderheaded patriotism from its American 80s and 90s equivalents by its absence of any functioning sense of humour. It’s about the country’s next-generation fighter pilots, but the plot is last-generation: promising…
Screenings of Winnie the Pooh horror film cancelled in Hong Kong
The screening of Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, a British slasher film due to be released in Hong Kong this week, has been cancelled for technical reasons, movie websites said. Moviematic, which had organised a screening of the film for Tuesday evening, reported the cancellation on its social media pages. Several other websites and media also reported the cancellation of screenings. The movie’s distributor in Hong Kong, VII Pillars Entertainment, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A ticket-booking link on its Facebook page brought up a message…
Everything Under Control review – endearing comedy caper from Hong Kong
Hoping to sustain a recent mini-resurgence of Hong Kong films through to lunar new year, Ying Chi-wen’s second feature is a silly, initially laboured but increasingly endearing comedy mashup. A remake of 2021 Taiwanese gangster film Treat or Trick, which is itself a do-over of 2004 Korean horror-comedy To Catch a Virgin Ghost, it manages to hit virtually every branch on the genre tree on the way down: Bad Boys buddy action comedy, dead wet girl Asian horror, knockabout Beijing opera farce, wuxia parody. Yau Shing (Hong Kong singer Hins…