Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang says taking his boxing film to the theaters is a crapshoot. "The box-office draw of a documentary is unpredictable."
Renowned conductor Liu Fengde will lead the China Opera & Dance Symphony Orchestra to perform in a concert of classical Hollywood movie tracks, such as Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean and Forrest Gump. Scenes from the movies will be played on a screen onstage.
In celebration of its 12th anniversary, the National Theater of China will have one of its signature productions, Si Shi Tong Tang, or The Yellow Storm, performed at The Great Hall of the People. One of the renowned novelist Lao She's prominent creations, The Yellow Storm revolves around the struggles of three families in Beijing's Yangquan'er Hutong during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45). It reveals their different philosophies of life and inspiringly relates them to social turbulence and political reality. Directed by one of China's most accomplished drama directors, Tian Qinxin, and starring a list of celebrity actors otherwise rarely seen onstage, such as Tao Hong (pictured), the play has toured more than 38 Chinese cities since its premiere in Taipei in late 2010.
In early August, the National Center for the Performing Arts pins down its program for the upcoming spring season that usually starts in early January.
On a bright sunny day before winter's chill arrived, two dogs and a cat are enjoying a siesta under the shade of an old peach tree with branches weighed down by fruit. The fragrant bouquet of soil, tomatoes, cucumbers and corn floats through the warm air from nearby farms.
This week, we demolished about 4 kilograms of baby pork ribs, two whole lamb legs and about another kg of chicken wings. To be fair, we had a lot of help to eat them, and it was over four meals through Christmas Eve, Christmas and Boxing Day.
It's hard to pinpoint yearzero for the rejuvenation of China's film industry, but 2013 will probably be remembered as the year the industry gained full confidence and changes happened faster than any prognostication. By the end of 2013, China's box-office total is expected to hit 21.5 billion yuan ($3.54 billion), 10 times the revenue of 2006. Last year's number already placed China as the second-largest cinema market in the world, next only to the United States. But only this year did the ratio of domestic releases rise well above the 50 percent demarcation, and without any palpable manipulations.
Switch: A heist film set in Dubai, Tokyo and Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, and crammed with unintentional kitsch.
The year 2013 will be remembered for the spectacular takeoff of China's film market, and it will also go down in history as the year bad movies ruled, or at least shared, the box office and public consciousness as often as, if not more frequently than, good ones. Here is the result of painstaking scavenging for something valuable from a big pile of cinematic fluff and trash.
This year, I published an English-language book, titled A PracticalGuide to Chinese Cinema 2002-2012 which is now available in the Kindle store, but it does no include two of the most dramatic episodes that happened to me as a film critic. They might have shaped film criticism in China, though.
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Raymond Zhou
Op Rana
Berlin Fang
Zhu Yuan
Huang Xiangyang
Chen Weihua
