Asian Beauty Appreciation

The Flowers of War has been reported to be the most expensive film ever produced in China. I’ve seen the numbers and they are in the range of 100 Million US dollars.

Directed by Zhang Yimou, this epic film is about courage and sacrifice set against the ravages and horrors of war in 1937 in Nanjing, China. This film also marks the first time that a Western Actor has the lead role in a Chinese production.

The film has a limited opening playing only in a short list of select cities (just 21 theaters nationwide) beginning on Friday, January 20th, 2012.

Since it is not playing anywhere in Florida, I have to hope that it will achieve a wider distribution later on, or I’ll have to wait for the DVD to review it.

Christian Bale (an Oscar winner for The Fighter and he starred as Batman in The Dark Knight) has the lead role. He plays a traveling mortician, attending to the dead, not an adventurer, yet he’s kind of a wayfaring dissolute man who happened to find himself in Nanjing, and at the church, when the Japanese troops attacked the city in December of 1937.

By circumstances unknown to me, so I’ll call them luck and fate, he and a group of frightened Chinese Catholic schoolgirls and another group made up of a dozen beautiful courtesans, find themselves trapped inside a walled cathedral – which they hope will afford them safety from the marauding soldiers. Bale’s character, John Miller, will take up the role of the church’s priest, donning the clothing and vestments of a recently killed priest

That’s about all the set up I can provide not having seen the film. Zhang Yimou’s cinematic pedigree – Raise the Red Lantern (1991), Shanghai Triad (1995), The Road Home (2000), Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) are amongst his best known films that have garnered interest, praise and adulation from western audiences.

He’s worked with Gong Li multiple times (at least 5 films), and with Zhang Ziyi at least three times. So he’s got the talent and the rep to attract China’s most beautiful and best known actresses.

The reviews have been mixed, but if you are attracted to Asian beauties, love going to the movies, and you live in or near LA, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington DC, Houston, Honolulu, Seattle, or Atlanta – then you will have an opportunity to see the film on the big screen as soon as Friday, Jan. 20th.

I will be happy to help you publish your review if you do happen to take in the film in the near future, wish to contribute a review, and you don’t already have author status on this blog. You can contact me on the Scanlover Forum via Private Message.

For interviews with Director Zhang Yimou and lead actress Ni-Ni, visit Sidewalks.

To view a calendar with The Flowers of War beauties as the models visit Beijing Shots.

The trailer for The Flowers of War is below:

First we will set the stage. We are in Beijing, China, the time is present day, and most of the action will take place in and around a top-tier ad agency. Andy Lau plays Zi Gang Sun, an ad executive who is on a seemingly terrific career path.

He’s not only an eligible bachelor, but he revels in it. He’s unofficially – the hottest guy in the office. He’s also a male chauvinist, and his skill is in selling products to men. Girls working there fawn all over him, that is when they’re not flirting with him, or creating scenarios where they can bump into him.

On his way to the office one day – he meets a beautiful woman in the elevator. He offers to buy her a coffee, and she says she only drinks water. You can see the attraction. His for her is written all over his face, and she’s intrigued too, only she’s not so outgoing about it that you can easily tell what she’s thinking. She is Li Yu-long and she’s played by Gong Li. Lau’s Mr. Sun doesn’t know it, but she’s just been hired by his firm to become the Executive Creative Director of the firm – a position that he thought he would be promoted into that day.

After his boss, the firm’s CEO’s broke the news to him that Li got the job instead of him, he heads back to his office, where his staff had a surprise party set up for him – a celebration on his promotion. That he didn’t get. He dismisses them. Sorry guys, not today. Maybe sometime in the future.

The next morning, there’s a big meeting scheduled in the conference room to introduce this Li. Sun makes a bet with one of his buddies, that this Li, whoever she is, will look like a man. Soon after Li walks in and sits down. Sun goes over to chat her up.  He still hasn’t a clue as to who she is. He only knows that she is the woman from the elevator from yesterday. ”Oh – you also work here?‘, he says, amping up the wattage of his smile.

When Li takes off her glasses, Sun says, “You look good without your glasses.”

She replies, “You also look good … without my glasses.”

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There is a word (or words) in Chinese that means ‘old sames’. That word is laotong. As understood, it is used to describe a relationship between two women that would be similar to close and strong friends, would last longer than sisters, and be even more intimate than marriage, but yet would not involve sex. In short, a laotong would be an emotional match that would last a lifetime.

In 2005, Lisa See wrote a novel called Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. This book would become a best seller. In the book, a character describes a laotong thusly: A laotong relationship is made by choice for the purpose of emotional companionship and eternal fidelity. The book opens with the following sentence:

I am what they call in our village “one who has not yet died.”

The speaker of these words is an 80 year old widow. She’s outlived her husband, and her future is limited. So she spends much of her remaining time looking at her past, filtered by memories that are hers alone, or those memories shared with her laotong.

From those 14 words, the story of a specific laotong would be told. The novel is more than 250 pages long, and in 2011, this story will be released as a motion picture. The director is Wayne Wang, who also directed the film version of the Amy Tang novel – The Joy Luck Club.

The film stars Li Bingbing, Gianna Jun, Vivian Wu, and Hugh Jackman. Filming began in China in early 2010. The North American film rights have been acquired by Fox Searchlight Films, and the planned release date in the US is July 15th.

The storyline as described by Fox Searchlight films:

In 19th-century China, seven year old girls Snow Flower and Lily are matched as laotong – or “old sames” – bound together for eternity. Isolated by their families, they furtively communicate by taking turns writing in a secret language, nu shu, between the folds of a white silk fan. In a parallel story in present day Shanghai, the laotong’s descendants, Nina and Sophia, struggle to maintain the intimacy of their own childhood friendship in the face of demanding careers, complicated love lives, and a relentlessly evolving Shanghai. Drawing on the lessons of the past, the two modern women must understand the story of their ancestral connection, hidden from them in the folds of the antique white silk fan, or risk losing one another forever.

From the looks of the trailer, this film will be very special. I have every intention of seeing it and enjoying it.

“Our destinies are tied forever. We will be laotong – sisters for 10,000 years.”

Though this film was produced in China, it is an English language film. Originally Zhang Ziyi was to star in the lead role, but a scheduling conflict caused her to back out.

The China Lover is the 2008 novel by Ian Buruma, a Dutchman  now living in New York and teaching at Bard College. I’ve included the novel as the introduction to this article because the book jackets cover art are really eye catching.

The subject of the novel, or maybe it should be called a historical-fiction book based on real life events, is Yoshiko Yamaguchi who was also known as Shirley Yamaguchi, Li Xianglan, and Ri Kouran. Yoshiko was born in Manchuria in 1920 to Japanese parents.

Following the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese had set up a puppet Manchurian government. By the late 1930′s, she’d grown into a very pretty and talented young woman who soon caught the eyes of the Japanese working there. Yamaguchi wanted more than anything else to be a singer and a movie star.  The Japanese believed they had struck gold with this talented young woman, because she was fluent in both Mandarin and Japanese. Her movie career began and her career seemed to be fast tracked. But there was a problem.

Yamaguchi, was asked to pose as a Chinese girl by her Japanese handlers. Though born in China, and raised in China, she was Japanese. She was even given a Chinese name, Li Xianglan, to attract the Chinese audiences.

The agent makes a pitch to the director

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Source: Korea Times

When I saw this bit of news this morning, I couldn’t believe it. But not only does Anri Suzuki have a doctorate in history, but as a way to apologize for the Japanese invasion of China, she has been offering free sex sessions to the Chinese students who are studying in Japan. While focused on the Japanese invasion of China, Anri was shocked to learn about her country’s past, so she’s atoning for those past wrongdoings by offering sexual compensation.

If I was a Chinese student studying there, I would take her up on this offer in a heartbeat. You’d be silly not to. But I hope that this bit of news brings some attention to the readers here who are also unaware of the Japanese invasion of China, which is a history that doesn’t get much attention and when the Japanese government has repeatedly try to deny and remove from textbooks.

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Before Lust, Caution (2007), before Brokeback Mountain (2005), before The Hulk (2003), and even before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Taiwanese movie director Ang Lee was well known in international movie circles for his very well received The Wedding Banquet, which was released in 1993.

The story basics start with three characters, Wai-Tung and Simon, a gay male couple, living in Manhattan, and Wei-Wei, a beautiful struggling artist who is a tenant in a rental apartment property in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that is owned by the portfolio diverse Wai-Tung.

Wai-Tung has not told his parent that he is gay. Said parents continue to harangue him about getting married and presenting them with grandchildren. And Wei-Wei is facing deportation from the US unless she can marry an American.

Well, Wai-tung is a naturalized American citizen, so a ‘marriage’ of convenience between he and Wei-Wei is designed by the threesome. This should allow Wai-Tung and Simon to continue as they wish, and Wei-Wei would then be granted a green-card to allow her stay in the US. Or so they thought. Wai-tung announces this to his parents in Taipei, and to his shock and dismay, they promptly announce that they are flying in to meet the bride, and arrange the wedding, as a civil ceremony only just won’t do.

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June Woo: The opening narration:

“In America, I will have a daughter just like me. But over there, nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch. Over there, nobody will look down on her because I will make her speak only perfect American English. And over there, she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow.

The recent post on this blog about Ming-na Wen brought to mind her role as June Woo in the wonderful film adaption of the Amy Tan novel, The Joy Luck Club. The novel’s pedigree is impeccable. Published by G.P. Putnam & Sons in 1989, the book was on the New York Times best seller list for more than six months, it has been translated into more than 35 languages, and has sold in excess of 30 million copies world wide since its original publication more than 20 years ago.

After Amy Tan had a lengthy three day meeting with screenplay writer Ron Bass and movie director Wayne Wang, where they hashed out how the novel would be adapted into a movie, the three of them made a pact that they would not sell the book’s movie rights, or the screenplay, unless the studio gave them total creative control, meaning they would control the screenplay, the choice of location and actors, the filming, the editing, all the way up to and including the final cut. Read more…

Source: Curve

I don’t get the opportunity to watch much television these days, but I might have to start watching Stargate Universe after finding out a couple of days ago that Ming-Na is a part of the cast.

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Painted Skin (Wa Pei) is a fantasy tale based off the classical Chinese novel of Liaozhai Zhiyi (Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio) and is directed by Gordan Chan. It starts out with general Wang Sheng (Kun Chen) and his army invading and inevitably demolishing a bandit outpost in the middle of the desert. The action choreography is too pretty and perfect as only the bandits take a beating, leaving the army unscathed. The battle includes decent wire work as the general and his legion jump up walls and on top of buildings.

As general Wang Sheng fights his way through, he comes upon a graceful and stunning beauty (Xun Zhou) amid the dirty bandits. She lies barely covered by an animal pelt next to a murdered man and as the general makes his appearance, she is noticeably intrigued by him. He carries her to safety and as his army make their way back, a lone lizard looks on almost as an omen as the titles come up.

At the army’s return to their city, Wang Sheng’s wife Chen Peirong (Wei Zhao) appears and is instantly and understandably wary of the young looking Xiaowei’s proximity to her husband. This early sense of danger leads her to future revelations regarding the newly rescued damsel.

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Director: Jingle Ma
Cast: Louis Koo, Cherrie Ying, Tats Lau
Synopsis: He’s great looking. She’s gorgeous. They meet in Beijing, China, and it looks like love will blossom. Or will it? This isn’t boy meets girl, boy loses girl. Instead this is boy meets girl, then boy can’t remember girl.
Tagline:
Classification: Romantic Comedy
Release date: April 10, 2003
Running time: 97 minutes
Language: Cantonese or Mandarin with English and Chinese subtitles
Studio website:
Links: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379975
Categories: Comedy, Romance

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