It can stretch credibility a little when an actor plays the same character over a long time span in one film. Richard Linklater solved the problem in Boyhood by shooting scenes over succeeding years; AI and de-ageing effects are now an option. With this intimate queer coming-of-age drama, film-maker Tracy Choi instead casts a trio of actors to play one woman from high school to her mid-30s. The three don’t look particularly alike; their temperaments overlap but are by no means identical. The point is perhaps to show how intense…
Tag: Hong Kong
Absent From the SpaceX and OpenAI I.P.O.s? Chinese Investors.
When SpaceX starts trading this week, one group will be noticeably absent from the frenzy: investors from China and Hong Kong. They are also likely to miss out on the upcoming initial public offering for OpenAI. SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket maker and artificial intelligence company, has excluded investors in China and Hong Kong from participating in its I.P.O., according to five people with knowledge of the decision, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly. OpenAI, another leading A.I. company, is likely to impose…
Four New Zealand Lawmakers Banned From China After Taiwan Trip
Four lawmakers from New Zealand have been barred from traveling to China for a year following a visit to Taiwan last month, government officials said on Thursday, the first time such a restriction has ever been imposed. The lawmakers, Maureen Pugh, Duncan Webb, Laura McClure and David Wilson, visited Taipei for five days in May as part of a cross-party group that was established in 2023 to maintain relations between Taiwan and New Zealand, the local media reported. The travel ban, which emerged on Thursday, was met with shock in…
Hong Kong artist who tried to mark Tiananmen massacre with red thread intercepted by police
A performance artist in Hong Kong who tried on Wednesday to honour the victims of Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown was quickly stopped by plainclothes police, the latest sign of the city’s shrinking freedom of expression. Sanmu Chen tried to tie a symbolic red thread to a street signpost in Causeway Bay, a shopping district close to a park that had for decades hosted an annual candlelight vigil on 4 June to commemorate those who died in the 1989 student-led protests. Hong Kong was for decades the only place in…
‘The story of Hong Kong is the sound of it’: the cross-cultural joy of the city’s Cantopop music
Emma-Lee Moss, a singer-songwriter who released four albums as Emmy the Great, was born in Hong Kong to an English father and Hongkonger mother. She lived there until she was 11, when her family moved to England, one of many who left Hong Kong before its transfer of sovereignty from the UK to China in 1997. Emma-Lee Moss. Photograph: Alex Lake Even as a child, Moss understood the significance of the handover, which returned Hong Kong to Chinese control after 156 years as a British colony. “Thanks to our British…
Donald Trump does ‘not feel optimistic’ for Jimmy Lai after speaking with Xi Jinping
Donald Trump raised the case of jailed Hong Kong democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai in talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping but was told it “is a tough one”. Family and supporters of the 78-year-old British citizen had hoped the US president could help secure his release. Lai was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February under a security law imposed by Beijing. The media tycoon, who was an influential figure in the former British territory’s pro-democracy movement, was arrested in 2020 in a crackdown after massive anti-government protests. Lai’s…
Linguistic workaround allows Marco Rubio, sanctioned by Beijing, to travel to China for the first time
US secretary of state Marco Rubio is heading to Beijing with president Donald Trump despite being under Chinese sanctions – a breakthrough that might have been made possible after China changed his name’s transliteration. As a US senator, Rubio, who is visiting China for the first time, fiercely championed human rights in China, which retaliated by imposing sanctions on him twice – adopting a tactic more often used by the US against adversaries. But China appears to have found a diplomatic workaround after Trump named Rubio his secretary of state.…
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…
Why the Trump-Xi Summit Matters, Even if Little Seems to Come of It
President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, are scheduled to meet in Beijing this week for a high-stakes summit that could shape the next stage of rivalry between the world’s two major powers. Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi are expected to discuss the war in Iran, trade, Taiwan and other points of contention during a two-day summit beginning on Thursday. Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi last met in October in South Korea, where they agreed to pause a bruising trade war in which the U.S. imposed triple-digit tariffs on Chinese…
Hong Kong dissident Nathan Law on China spies in UK: ‘We’re not surprised’
Nathan Law, an exiled leader of the Hong Kong student protest who lives with a £100,000 bounty on his head from the Chinese authorities, was not surprised to discover a spy ring had photographed him entering the Oxford Union for an evening debate in November 2023. The conviction at the Old Bailey of Chi Leung “Peter” Wai, 38, and Chung Biu “Bill” Yuen, 65, for assisting a foreign intelligence service, was a sobering first – no Chinese spies had been convicted in British criminal history before Thursday – but the…