Chinese film, television, music

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An interview with a Japanese actor working in Chinese entertainment industry.


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September 01, 2013
INTERVIEW: Actor Koji Yano says comeback represents hope for Japan-China relations

By HIROSHI MATSUBARA/ AJW Staff Writer

During his decade strong career in China’s entertainment industry, Koji Yano has achieved stardom that other Japanese actors could only dream of--most of whom are reduced to playing villains in so-called TV “resistance dramas.”

But the territorial confrontation between the two countries over Japan’s nationalization of the disputed Senkaku Islands last year threatened to derail the career that Yano built in China.

“I never felt this kind of stifling pressure before,” Yano, 43, said during a recent interview in Tokyo. “What distinguishes this time from the past frictions is that we cannot anticipate how and when the two countries can resolve the situation.”

In the wake of extensive, often violent protests against Japan’s purchase of three of the Senkaku Islands last September, Yano’s appearance in a TV action drama was canceled just a few weeks before filming was scheduled to start.

Friendship exchange events in Kagoshima and Beijing, which Yano was to appear at as a guest speaker, were also canceled.

The popular TV show “Day Day Up,” which Yano co-hosted since 2008, has also suspended his appearances to date.

While he was shooting a Japanese TV drama in Tokyo in October, the stress finally caught up with the actor in the form of respiratory distress, forcing an ambulance to take him to the hospital from his hotel. Bouts of sickness continued to plague him after he returned to China.

Yano said that Japanese actors and talents are banned from TV variety shows in China even now. Some of his Japanese colleagues have returned to Japan or moved to Taiwan in search of job opportunities, he added.

At times, Yano gave into despair and thought about giving up on his acting career in China. But it soon became clear that his accomplishments would help him withstand even the worse period of Japan-China relations.

Yano was a pioneer for Japanese actors when he moved to Beijing in 2001. While he built his career in China by portraying the stereotypical ruthless Imperial Japanese Army soldier, his honest and sincere acting style impressed Chinese audiences and colleagues on the sets alike.

It would win him roles portraying humane or comical Japanese characters and even some Chinese characters including a Communist Party spy in TV dramas and movies.

Audiences took to the Osaka native’s breezy nature, and he became a regular face of variety shows.

TIMES ARE CHANGING

To his great relief, he was told in January that he would be filming a new Chinese history action drama starting in April, titled "Fenghuo Shuangxiong" (two heroes of the war), in which he plays one of the main characters.

The character, a humane Japanese soldier who realizes the inhuman nature of war and tries to stop Japan’s aggression, was tailored for Yano by the producer, who is an old friend, over the past two years.

From April to July, Yano filmed 400 scenes, more than double the most scenes the actor has played in a previous drama.

The show, which will be aired on national China Central Television next spring, is an “epoch-making” history drama, Yano said.

“Even good Japanese characters I have played somehow die tragically in the end, but this time, it has a happy ending for both Japanese and Chinese,” he explained.

In September, he will shoot a comedy, in which he plays a comical Japanese character who gets in the way of Chinese treasure hunters. The film should be popular with Yano’s fans, who miss his gift for comedy.

Most of the messages posted on the Chinese Weibo microblogging site call for Yano to return to “Day, Day, Up” as a host, such as “we miss your terrible jokes!” Yano said.

The bond Yano has with his colleagues and fans convinced him that the media from both countries need to pay more attention to these grassroots exchanges, if they want to play a more positive role than merely inflaming political flare-ups.

“The Japanese media criticize Chinese resistance dramas for damaging the image of Japanese; aren’t they doing the same thing in different ways?” Yano said during the interview.

INNOCENT QUESTIONS FARE BEST

In April, he was invited by a college in Chongqing to give a speech on the theme of “Japan-China friendship exchange.”

Chongqing is his wife's hometown and was also a target of a bombing campaign by the Japanese military during World War II.

He prepared a script for a serious speech, but as he spoke from the podium, the 300 strong students who filled the classroom fell silent.

At a loss, he changed the subject to Japanese pop culture and told some inside stories of the entertainment industry.

The heavy mood in the classroom immediately lifted, and students often broke out in laughter.

In a question-and-answer session that followed, all students asked were innocent queries such as how Yano thinks Japanese women are different from Chinese women, or what type of person his wife is.

“I was actually relieved to see that they don’t want me to represent Japan in a political context, but just want to hear something interesting from me as an individual,” Yano said.
By HIROSHI MATSUBARA/ AJW Staff Writer
 
An interview with a Japanese actor working in Chinese entertainment industry.


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Great to see finally some more friendship than the regular same ol' hostility. I don't know about you guys, but honestly I'm so sick of hearing Japan this China that US whatever. Let's give sh!t a break and do something more fun and productive.
 

ABC78

Junior Member
Growing interest online in up coming Chinese animated feature.

I can't wait to see this awesome Chinese animation movie.

I can't wait to see this awesome Chinese animation movie

Behold the spectacular trailer for Master Jiang and the Six Kingdoms, a new Chinese animation feature that feels like a wild magic mix between Seven Samurai, Ran, and Lord of the Rings through a Studio Ghibli lenses. It looks amazing and, the cel animation was done by just two animators: Li Wei and Pei Fei.

I don't know when this is getting to the rest of the world, but it's coming to China in 2016. I can't wait to see it.

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[video=youtube;eA0JVAeSibc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA0JVAeSibc[/video]
 

Julie1925

Just Hatched
Registered Member
All of the video links are inaccessible, T0T
Is there anybody like comic? I found a very interest Chinese comic strip named "Rabbits in those days", in this comic, China is a white rabbit, do a lot of funny things. I think it is like Polandball.
 

Equation

Lieutenant General
All of the video links are inaccessible, T0T
Is there anybody like comic? I found a very interest Chinese comic strip named "Rabbits in those days", in this comic, China is a white rabbit, do a lot of funny things. I think it is like Polandball.

I use to a lot during my high school years and college days, but not as active like I use to be. I usually follow the "Alien" series though.
 

ABC78

Junior Member
Recognizing the Pioneer of New Wave Hong Kong Cinema: Patrick Lung Kong

[video=youtube;p3RhCyBagTI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3RhCyBagTI[/video]

Recognizing the Pioneer of New Wave Hong Kong Cinema: Patrick Lung Kong
Published on Aug 20, 2014

Hong Kong new wave cinema has a fan base spread across the globe, but few know the name and legacy of the director who inspired the biggest names in Hong Kong filmmaking. At the Musuem of the Moving Image, Patrick Lung Kong’s innovation and influence is finally being recognized, and SinoVision Journal reporter Lani Nelson has the story.
 

Miragedriver

Brigadier
Sorry Equation. She is married.


Yao Chen interview: meet China's answer to Angelina Jolie

How did a nice middle-class actress conquer Weibo, China's answer to Twitter, and turn herself into one of the most influential figures in the world?

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The actress Yao Chen Photo: YUAN GUI MEI

(Daily Telegraph) “Is it like having a superpower?” I ask the actress Yao Chen as she raises her coffee cup to her lips. She breaks into a broad smile as her translator explains my meaning. “I’m getting more mature,” she says, avoiding the question. “These days I am much more careful and cautious.”

One could add the word “modest” to that list, because Yao, self-effacing as she is, has more followers on Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) than the population of Britain. That’s 71 million, in case you were wondering. And when five per cent of the population of one of the world’s most powerful (not to mention politically sensitive) countries is hanging on your every word, you have a lot of influence, no matter how cautious you are.

In fact, so great is that influence, she has the ability to change the course of people’s lives with a click of her mouse. Stories abound of children’s operations that were paid for by donations from her Weibo followers, of old ladies who put their entire savings into causes she supports – even of a condemned man who was suddenly hailed as a hero because of her impassioned online defence of his character (he was a friend of her father’s).


So how did a 34-year-old from a small coastal city in south-east China rise from obscurity to become one of Time magazine’s 100 most powerful people on the planet? (Forbes ranked her 83rd among the world’s most influential women.) And, more to the point, why have we never heard of her?

Let’s start with the second question. Unlike her compatriots Gong Li, Jackie Chan and Fan Bing Bing, Yao has never made a Hollywood film and speaks almost no English.

“Of, course if the right script came along I would love to do a Hollywood film,” she says when we meet in a bustling café on the east side of Beijing. She’s also a fan of British cinema, and becomes giggly at the mention of Benedict Cumberbatch, an actor she admires. “For now, though, I would just be happy if my current body of work in China got some recognition overseas.”

After studying at the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, she scored a role in a martial-arts sitcom, My Own Swordsman. What followed was a mixture of romantic comedies and action films, with Yao often cast as the girl next door. One of her most popular – Color Me Love (2010) – sees her play the lead in a Devil Wears Prada-ish tale of a girl moving to the big city to work for a hard-boiled magazine editor.

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A still from Color Me Love (2010)

It’s hard to imagine anyone else fitting the role so perfectly, not least because she cuts such an accessible figure both on screen and off. Evidently comfortable in her own skin, she arrives for our interview completely make-up free, her hair drawn back into a simple ponytail, wearing a white T-shirt tucked into a black leather skirt, and brogues.
Yao doesn’t have a “look-at-me” beauty – nor is she classically beautiful by Chinese standards – but her appeal is obvious. The first things you notice are her striking, Cara Delevingne- esque eyebrows, which arch above enormous, almond-shaped eyes.

The next thing you notice is her heart-shaped face, tapering to her wide mouth.
Her beauty might best be described as extraterrestrial. “She’s certainly not your cookie-cutter leading lady,” says Alexi Tan, who directed her in Color Me Love. “I think people like her so much because she’s always herself. She doesn’t put on a persona.”

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Chen and Cao Yu, a cinematographer, at their wedding in New Zealand in 2012

A glance at a typical Chinese internet message board would seem to prove his point. “She really speaks from the heart!” read one comment after Yao posted a message about her 2011 divorce from the actor Ling Xiao Su. (She is now married to the cinematographer Cao Yu, and the couple have a baby son whose name is kept secret for security reasons.) “She’s the least fake of allthe celebrities,” reads another. “Not a hypocrite like the others…”

Does Yao agree that it’s her down- to-earth nature that has endeared her to so many? “Well, I’m a middle-class girl,” she says. “So I’m more suited to leading a normal life. What’s familiar to me makes me feel safe.” Which of course would make perfect sense, if it weren’t for the fact that so many stars don’t manage to retain such levels of normality.

The only child of a train driver and a postal worker, she says that her father was “a very humble person” who had a great influence on her. “I would always overhear him and my mum discussing how they could help others,” she says. “Because he worked on the railway, his friends assumed he could get them tickets for their Chinese New Year train journeys home before everyone else. In fact, he couldn’t, but he didn’t want to let them all down, so he’d wake up at the crack of dawn and queue up with everyone else.

“For me one of life’s great joys is still being able to go out and buy my own food,” she continues. “I bargain for vegetables in the market, spend time with my family, cook for them. I’m very lucky.”

I’m not sure luck comes into it, I say. There are plenty of stars who wouldn’t want to continue with such a mundane life once they’d made their millions. “Yes,” she acknowledges. “Of course, this is every individual’s personal choice.”
Modesty always goes down well in China, where corruption is rife, the gap between rich and poor widens every year and the showiness of the nouveau riche has become reviled. So it’s no surprise that the unassuming Yao has become a national heroine. It’s also perhaps no surprise that four years ago she was approached by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to be its Goodwill Ambassador in China, à la Angelina Jolie (who Yao says was one of the reasons she was inspired to accept the role).

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Yao Chen in Syria with UNHCR

Yao is obviously passionate about her work for the agency. When she talks about her visits to countries such as Ethiopia and Lebanon, she speaks with the directness and fervour of someone who has witnessed suffering first-hand, not just put their name to a charity for the kudos it brings.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by her fellow countrymen, who regularly criticise actors for what they perceive to be a more cynical championing of charities. Yao says that she enjoys her trips with the UNHCR, and has learnt much from the collaboration, sharing stories and online diaries after every trip.

“So I feel a big responsibility to tell others what I have seen.” The results speak for themselves: the UNHCR saw the number of donations from mainland China triple between 2012 and 2013.

Yao is proud of one success story in particular, and relates it with great gusto. “After I posted my Africa diary I heard from the UNHCR office in Beijing that there was an elderly woman who kept visiting again and again,” she says. “On one occasion she came in to donate 800 renminbi [about £80]. She said she’d read my diary and realised that there were people who needed it more than she did.

The touching part is that every time she came to the office she would take the bus. One day they asked her where she lived and she said she was way out in the suburbs, so they asked her why she wasn’t taking the subway. Her reply was that the 2RMB (20p) fare was too expensive, so 800RMB must have been all her savings.
“Sometimes I feel like I really can’t change enough,” she concludes. “I can become quite depressed about it all. But then this kind of story gives me the encouragement to carry on.”

Once in a while Yao’s Weibo posts touch upon subjects that are politically sensitive. In January last year she subtly passed comment on the censorship of a domestic newspaper, The Southern Weekly, by quoting a Russian proverb – “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world” – and copy-and-pasting the newspaper’s logo.
On another occasion, referring to Beijing’s dreadful pollution, she joked that her son wouldn’t recognise a blue sky unless he saw one in a history book.

But when asked why she thinks she can get away with comments that would get others in hot water, she brushes off their significance. “I’m not interested in politics,” she says, matter of factly. “I just focus on the people in the society I live in. I only comment on things that touch me directly.”

“Does that include your faith?” I ask –Yao is reported to have discovered Christianity when she was 25. This is another sensitive topic in a country where only two state-sanctioned Christian groups are allowed to exist.
“Oh yes,” she says without hesitation. “I often quote from the Bible. I think I don’t need to worry too much about that.” She even admits to attending a “house church”, rather than a government-approved one. Such a gathering is deemed to be “unregistered” and therefore technically illegal.

“When I was younger a family member shared the gospel with me,” she explains. “And over the course of that summer I read the Bible and it just answered all of the questions I had about life, so very soon after I was baptised.”

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Yao Chen in an advertisement for Adidas in China

When someone is as frank about their personal life as Yao is, it is inevitable that they will also have their detractors. She admits that she has taken hurtful comments to heart in the past, especially those relating to her private life. She came under scrutiny following her divorce – she got together with her current partner soon afterwards. “Sometimes people’s comments really hurt when I look back,” she says, her voice small for the first time. “But in the end this is normal for someone in the public spotlight. Whatever people said, when it comes to divorce there are no winners or losers – everybody loses.”

So what’s next for Yao Chen? Rom-com queen, social-media queen… fashion queen? Her fans go crazy over her outfits, even on the rare occasions when she is snapped looking groggy at Beijing airport.
Her model-like frame does lend itself well to being photographed, and she already has collaborations with Chanel, Adidas and Lanvin under her belt.

For now, though, she is happy just to have time to spend with her son, known affectionately as Xiao Tudou (“little potato”), before her next project. “I’m happiest when I’m cooking and have the chance to stay in with my husband,” she says. “He loves to play with his cameras and of course we love spending time with the baby. Even though he’s so young we can really understand each other. God is really the greatest creator.”
I will now get back to bottling my Malbec
 
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