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Now in limited US screenings, the Peking Opera-flavored melodrama MY KINGDOM is notable for being one of the handful of recent Chinese films to get a day-and-date release in the US and Asia. That’s a trend I’d like to encourage, and since the film was playing here in Boston, I decided to check it out [...]
The main character, acted by Xiao Shen Yang, is a shoemaker who goes from a martial-arts newbie to the number one expert. Zhao Benshan is a bandit, superior in martial arts but who is defeated by Xiao Shen Yang. Cheng Ye plays one of Zhao Benshan?s subordinates, whose successes are lacking and whose failures are [...]
Princess Su Lingfang of the magical world of Aroma City falls to earth and in love with Jiang Shaojun, son of a supremely wealthy family. But as Jiang is no angel, there is an infernal contract out on his soul. Jiang unscrupulously manipulates love struck Princess Su and trades her beautiful voice for money. In [...]
Cast Andy Lau Dandan Song Takeshi Kaneshiro Ziyi Zhang Summary It is 859AD, and the Tang Dynasty, one of the most enlightened empires in Chinese history at its height, is in decline. The Emperor is incompetent and the government is corrupt. Unrest is spreading throughout the land, and many rebel armies are forming in protest. [...]
China, in the mid-nineteenth century, is suffering from the oppression of the corrupt qing dynasty. er-hu (andy lau), a charismatic and honourable leader of men, and wu-zhang (takeshi kaneshiro), a romantic idealist who craves peace, are bandits; fighting to save their village which is caught up in the struggles of the taiping rebellion. when these [...]
The time is roughly 355 BC, in the middle of China?s ?Warring States? period. Military strategists are a precious commodity and are often free agents ? or, just as often, kidnapped for their expertise. That?s what happens with Sun Bin (Sun Honglei), the greatest student of the legendary Gui Guzi ? he is first recruited [...]
If you follow Chinese cinema, it’s been almost impossible to avoid the publicity machine of Aftershock, from overdone promotional events to news stories that suspiciously appear to have been planted by its studio. In a brilliant publicity campaign, director Feng Xiaogang and his people at Huayi Brothers first sold the film based on the spectacle of [...]
The story is set at the end of Chinese Song Dynasty, about the forbidden love between Yang Guo (Huang Xiaoming) and Xiao Longnu (Crystal Liu), as well as the heroic epic (fictional) of some martial art masters and a mystical condor. There are a few storyline in the drama, with the hero and heroin at [...]
China seems to be an ideal place to set a remake of the Hollywood romantic comedyWhat Women Want. Not only is its film industry more than happy to show off the country’s new cosmopolitan image of fancy cars and chic architecture, the rising presence of women in the Chinese corporate world is also becoming an [...]
China makes lousy youth comedy-romances too. From writer-director Yang Zi, Chase Our Love chronicles the battle of the sexes between the “Alliance of Geeks” and the “Single Best Girls,” two unmarried groups headed for single lives. The boys and girls battle each other on the Internet via a massively-multiplayer-online-role-playing-game (MMORPG) and look to undermine each other in [...]