BY DAISY WU
Hollywood Correspondent

If 'Kung Fu Panda 2' doesn't win at least something, China's gonna be pissed. I'm telling you.

LOS ANGELES (China Daily Show) — It’s just over 24 hours to go until the stars begin walking down the red carpet at Hollywood’s Kodak Theater, and I, Daisy, start asking the really important questions – like, honey, what are you wearing?

But seriously, folks, forget The Artist. Forget Hugo. Forget George Clooney (I wish). The Iron Lady? I said – forget it!

I’m talking about whether our shorter cousins over the Pacific are in with a chance for an Oscar this year. I’m talking about China. Way I see it, they’ve got two shots: first up, summer bonkbuster The Founding of a Party, which– I’m told – is about some very old men in a room (yawn!) or The Flowers of Nanjing, which sounds like something a bit more for the ladies, starring dreamboat Christian Batman Bale and some other Chinese women.

To test the air, I hit the streets of LA for some old-fashioned “meet the public.”

Soon, I’m sitting in the bustling Hong Kim Seafood BBQ Restaurant, on Mei Ling Way, downtown LA, and let me tell you folks – it really feels like Chinatown here! Everybody is talking about one thing and one thing only –Jeremy Lin. But if they’ll just stop talking about basketball for one goddamned minute, it’s clear they also have one other thing on their minds: China!

“What do you think about China’s chances?” I ask one elderly diner. “For what?” he wonders, looking puzzled. It’s clear that no one’s told this senior about the big news this year. I slip him a dollar and move on.

“Are you excited about China’s chances for an Oscar,” I query a man calling himself “Josh” Wang, who’s smoking outside an office building. “Not really, I’m Taiwanese,” he starts to reply. Uh, what’s the difference, Josh?

Shaken by the somewhat bigoted – and often downright hostile – responses I keep finding on the street, I decide it’s time to talk to the experts. A short spin of my Rolodex (metaphorically, of course; these days I use an iPhone, made in… wait for it… yup, Hong Kong) and I’m in a cab heading over to the Hills for some top insider talk.

Sadly, when I arrive, I hit a wall: the reception is spotty, or something, because no one’s answering my calls. So step forward, Frank Marshall III Jr, who calls himself a “Sino-US Hollywood activist”. It sounds worryingly political! Frank invites me into his room, where he lays out the blueprints for an exciting proposal from the backers of that Founding of a Party movie, a company he calls “CCP.”

“We’d like to see them become investors in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and strengthen the bond between these two nations great, via harmonious cultural dialogue,” he explains over some jasmine tea. Hey, it all sounds like music to this reporter’s ears.

With a $5 billion sponsorship deal on the hook, the Academy would have to make a few changes – such as maybe renaming it the Golden Dragon Film Awards, maybe, that’s one possibility, there are others, cool it – but Frank insists the deal would in no way affect the impartiality of Academy members.

“They were already corrupt as hell before!” Frank laughs. “Don’t write that down. But seriously – Founding of a Party. That’s a great, great film. Did you see the bit with the Mao and the snowflakes? Pure movie magic.”

I haven’t, so I stay quiet. But I’ll watch anything with Christian Batman Bale, so it’s a dead cert I will at some point.

“This is a story about young love,” Frank adds. “A love between a charismatic librarian and his future wife. Between a traumatized nation and its future overlords…” Hey, Frank: stop talking about the Republicans. Daisy out…

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By Ruan Shili
Cultural Correspondent

The new 'GI Wang' remake has left male critics "stunned, confused but excited"

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – The set-up may seem familiar to film fans: a pair of  femme fatales, vast riches and a villainous male standing in their way.

But the Sino-side update of crime classic Bound (1996) will  feature “Chinese characteristics”: the plot now revolves around a pair of rival sisters, whose exquisitely bound feet compete for the attentions of a wealthy Manchurian warlord in 1914 China.

“It’s a much more interesting story than the original, which was about lesbians, betrayal and the Mafia,” explained Hong Kong director Danny Chao, adding, “The new version features rampant calligraphy.”

Chao’s film is part of a cinematic renaissance spearheaded by the Chinese government, whose plan to make China “a socialist cultural superpower” was unveiled at the latest Central Committee plenum in late October.

Aftershock director Xiaogang Feng is already hard at work on The Towering Inferno (Safely Extinguished), which revisits the  downtown Beijing 2009 CCTV  fire and uncovers the tale of an upright government official (Andy Lau) battling to save office workers from a group of disgruntled Japanese fireworks salesmen.

Other potential hits include Citizen Kong – starring Chow Yun-fat as a dying Confucian scholar, desperate for a last tap of former mistress “Rosebud” – and Titanic, an epic weepie about a pair of doomed lovers who meet on an “uncrashable” high-speed train.

This is not the first time Beijing has plundered Hollywood’s back-catalog in search of inspiration to revive its own flagging film industry, however.

During the 1960s, the rights to a numbers of Oscar-winning classics were stolen and completely re-shot to incorporate a Maoist aesthetic: the James Dean hit  Rebel Without a Cause became Red Guard classic Public Servant With Noble Intention (1965) while the retitled A Rickshaw Named Contentment (1967) arguably speaks for itself.

Many of these remakes went on to become extremely popular in China. Harmony on the Bounty (1977), for example, proved a huge success with both the public and the censors.

“Pass the scurvy!” declared the People’s Daily film critic upon the film’s release. “For here’s emphatic proof that the US piracy in the motherland’s South China Seas is no longer a match for a crew of hardened seamen with socialist longings.”

But despite the most stringent re-branding efforts, some of today’s remake projects seem unable to shake off what officials once called the “spiritual pollution” of their origins.

An early cut of Zhang Yimou’s Mr Lin Goes to Zhongnanhai, for example, recast Frank Capra’s 1939 feelgood classic as a cautionary tale about the dangers of political reform, with Lin — played by a thoughtful Guo Degang — now a disillusioned peasant-with-a-petition, shown regretting his destabilizing ways as he languishes in a black jail. Censors eventually decided the film was too uplifting.

And the Huayi Bros production Some Like it Hot Pot (tagline: “Spice up your Spring Festival with a little transvestism in your hogwash oil!”) seems forever bound for the cutting-room floor, after star Ge You admitted in interview that he now preferred wearing his character’s female costumes in real life.

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And look for the following at your nearest Wanda Multiplex soon:

Shaft
Not to be confused with Blind Shaft, this Chinese remake of the 1970s hit hopes to launch a new genre – “Uighursploitation.” Shaft is a wisecracking private detective who won’t stop till he gets his man — but after investigating a series of ethnic arson attacks, he agrees he’s better off just leaving the case well alone. A sequel, Shaft in Africa, is in the works.

The Godfather
This line-for-line indie remake of the 1970s Oscar-winner stars renowned character actor Alec Su playing an unusually upstanding Yunnanese Tobacco Bureau chief.

The Grapes of Benevolent
Has there ever been a better time to revisit Steinbeck’s masterful tale of a migrant worker family, fleeing the West across a lush Jiangsu landscape into the arms of a group of benevolent Wenzhou money lenders?

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By ZHUO MICANG
Entertainment Correspondent

A traditional Linyi greeting (Photo: NYT)

LINYI (China Daily Show) — Motown was last night demanding answers after beloved soul legend Stevie Wonder was apparently attacked by government thugs while filming in Shandong province.

Wonder, 61, was in town to shoot a Mike Tyson-style cameo in 21 and Over, a low-budget Hollywood co-production similar to The Hangover that filmmakers describe as  a “hilarious comedy.”

In a break during rehearsals, the Grammy-Award winning artist reportedly went for a stroll in nearby woods, accompanied by his guide dog Ray.

The ambush occurred close to Dongshigu, the tiny village where blind petitioner Cheng Guangchen is being unlawfully detained and which authorities have turned into a no-go zone, where even foreign diplomats and reporters have been turned back, threatened and attacked.

Producers and security guards rushed to the scene, only to find that “nothing had happened.” Friends now fear the blind singing legend may be lost in China’s complex extra-legal system.

“If Stevie is tangled up in China’s still-developing legal bureaucracy, it could take months – even years – to release him,” his agent Robert Norman told China Daily Show. “Or just ten minutes and a simple phone call.”

The Songs in the Key of Life star is currently under house arrest and being denied access to a piano, Norman added.

The film’s producers, Relativity Media, have suggested Wonder’s arrest could help promote human rights values in Linyi, as well as providing much-needed publicity for the film.

Officials, however, deny the filmmakers’ version of events.

“Stevie wandered over to see if Chen was interested in collaborating on a new charity recording, tentatively entitled ‘Ebony and Jade,’” said a Ministry of Culture spokesman. “There was no beating, just some rowdy celebrating.”

The spokesman added there is absolutely no chance of Wonder and Chen being confused with one another.

“One is a visually impaired, popular public figure living in a remote, gated community that’s surrounded by security guards,” said the official. “And the other is Stevie Wonder.”

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By SUN WUKONG
Entertainment Correspondent

The divisive film is being hailed as both "boring" and an "explicit study of repression, religion and Chinese ass"

CANNES (China Daily Show) – It was supposed to be a typically inspiring festival story: a plucky independent spirit versus a humorless, repressive state. But it didn’t quite work out that way, after the producers of new movie Lust, Lhasa: A Monk’s Tail failed to elicit a single complaint from the Chinese government following its Cannes debut.

Lust tells the profoundly uninteresting story of underage Tibetan Phubar Asphukt, a homosexual monk (portrayed by newcomer Xinggan Pigu) who is forced to choose between his passionate infatuation for a corrupt government official (played by an almost-unrecognizable Chow Yun Fat, in heavy make-up and a fat suit) and loyalty to an avuncular, kindly abbot (Fan Bingbing).

Obscure Chinese indie director Wen Quan had hoped to sell-out in the international French Riviera festival, where such upsets are common fodder for media controversy. Making any film about Tibet is a publicity tactic, historically almost guaranteed to bestow failed directors with fame, fortune and Norwegian political asylum.

Even 2005’s state-sanctioned Peaceful Liberation by Government, directed by the rabidly on-message Lu Chang, still managed to upset government censors by depicting Chinese troops as carrying rifles, rather than flowers and gifts, upon their arrival in 1951.

By contrast, Lust, which producers had hoped to promote as “Brokeback Mountain meets the Dalai Lama” hasn’t aroused Chinese censors, despite strong language and scenes of a strong sexual nature.

“Frankly, it was  boring,” recalled Jiang Jun of the State Administration of Radio Film and Television, who attended the screening. “I’ve seen it all before. The storyline was one of those loose, unstructured,experiences that puts people to sleep, rather than incites them. I don’t think anybody’s going to understand it. I got it and I still didn’t like it.”

By contrast, a critic from Fores, a US golfing magazine with an anti-communist slant, labeled the film “bold and brave… an eye-opening experience.” But without being officially banned in China, distributors see little hope for the film.

In an ironic turn of events, however the filmmakers have been approached by the Chinese Ministry of Tourism, who hope to buy Lust and repackage it as a promotional film about Tibet. “All we would have to do is remove the sound and shorten it from 2 hours and 40 minutes to about 90 seconds,” Wen sighed. “I’m thinking about it.”

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By XING CHOUWEN
Entertainment Correspondent

Davenport is seeking the rights to new cuts of 'Driller Killer' and 'Last Tango in Paris' as well as 'Caligula' (above)

BEIJING (China Daily Show) — China’s official state television channel has surprised observers with the announcement that it intends to be the first terrestrial broadcaster in the world to screen the full, unexpurgated four-hour Director’s Cut of controversial 1979 film Caligula.

The decision is the brainchild of Peter Davenport, recently appointed as new creative director of China Central Television (CCTV), following 2011’s disastrous Spring Festival gala show, or Chunwan, described by one irate critic as “the longest suicide note in Chinese television history.”

The 2011 Chunwan fiasco, which drew all-time-low ratings of just 967 million, shocked executives into ordering a shake-up of the channel, long-known for its tedious programming. One top propaganda official was said to have flown into a rage after being sent a DVD of Chunwan: Complete Happy Cut as a New Year gift.

According to a source, identified as “one of the Xinwen Lianbo presenters,” the state-owned monolith held several rounds of interviews for the coveted post before coming to a decision. Davenport landed the job after surrealist director David Lynch was rejected as  “too close to the current chunwan style.”

Davenport, a UK citizen and former director of Channel 4 who was sacked in 2005 following allegations of sexual harassment, immediately ordered the channel to take a radical new direction, ditching tedious historical dramas, tacky game shows and dull news reports for more sensationalist content.

Caligula, which starred Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud, is an unusual choice for Chinese media, as the original release drew widespread criticism for its scenes of hardcore sex and graphic violence. After numerous scenes were re-shot in secret and pornographic orgies inserted, writer Gore Vidal disowned the project and almost every version since released has been incomplete.

“I’ve spoken to Tinto [Brass, the director] and Bob [Guccione, the producer]’s estate about the material and we’ve agreed on a definitive version at last,” Davenport told China Daily Show.

“Tinto is delighted that Chinese television will be the first to broadcast this lavish masterpiece and recognize its genius,” said a press release from Brass. “He’s particularly pleased that the long-misunderstood, so-called ‘equine scene,’ featuring a horse and two nymphs, has at last been retained in its full glory.”

“Are you serious?” was the reaction of Grady Einstein, Beijing bureau chief for Fores, a US golfing magazine known for its anti-China imperialist bent. “This is great news. I, for one, will be having a night in that night.”

Gerald Gould, a media analyst in Beijing, said the screening was “unprecedented,” adding, “It has certainly brightened my day.”

Davenport also plans to bring in new foreign franchises, with reality series The Real Housewives of Chongqing Municpality set to begin filming in April.

Producers Endemol were said to be disappointed when they failed to sell rights to their ailing Big Brother show, however. “The idea of an all-controlling faceless entity monitoring and directing the actions of a society under constant surveillance clashes with China’s Confucian values,” Davenport said. “I don’t think the Chinese would understand it.”

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By XING CHOUWEN
Entertainment Correspondent

Hannigan said alcohol will play a key role in bringing his vision to the screen

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – After taking full advantage of a 2-for-1 special on Mojitos at a downtown Beijing bar, self-defined freelance artist Brian Hannigan, 27, informed friends and onlookers that he would commence shooting on his eagerly anticipated China movie, starting first thing Monday morning.

“It’ll open on the subway, with this foreigner – played by me – looking all lost and confused?” the former steel welder-turned-cinematic auteur asked a rapt audience of wait staff.

“There’s, like, beggars and prostitutes everywhere. But everyone avoids eye-contact… which is weird.”

The specifics of how Hannigan’s narrative continues were unclear at press time, but vignettes colorfully drawn in red pen across several napkins were shown to bar staff and patrons at the impromptu preview.

Among planned scenes were insightful shots of an overturned bicycle, an old woman scavenging through garbage, sleeping security guards and what Hannigan said was his favorite motif, a paper bag blowing through Tiananmen Square.

Hannigan was at pains to insist that the film would be “a total departure from the usual indie crap you see out here,” and would instead “really get to the bare bones of China.”

Film student and occasional collaborator Forrest Vincent, 25, said he hoped the fledgeling director would choose his proposed title – Red, White and Yellow: A Reel American in Real China – over Hannigan’s own tentative moniker Fuck All This Shit.

His arm around the waist of girlfriend Dolphin’s slight waist, a visibly intoxicated Hannigan said the film as a whole was intended as an indictment of both China and those foreigners who visit the country, behave badly and pronounce themselves expert Sinologists during their brief sojourn.

“Losers who come here to get laid and make snap cultural judgments about a culture they have no insight into, basically,” Hannigan explained. “Hey, man, another Mojito,” he added.

Despite having lived in Beijing nearly four years, Hannigan has declined to take up a now-dwindling number of job offers, ruling them “another form of Communist slavery.” He has also refused to learn Chinese, insisting that such a decision would “play right into [the government’s] hands.”

“English has power out here,” he told our rapidly tiring reporter. “Nobody responds to Chinese. It’s all, like, censored. If you want to get through to the migrant workers, the peasants and the grassroots artists, use the lingua franca. English. What Chinese person will turn to Chinese-language film as a source of inspiration? Would you?” he asked a bemused passer-by, mopping spittle from the bar.

Questioned as to how he intended to fund his magnum opus, Hannigan remained tight-lipped but close friends have hinted that a close relative, Michael Hannigan, a retired company head, is said to have expressed an obligation to show interest in the project.

“Make no mistake, after I pick up my friend Josh’s camera first thing tomorrow, things are going change in the Middle Kingdom,” Hannigan emphasized. “A hard wind’s a-blowing.”

As of 3pm Monday, however, Hannigan was still asleep on friend and executive producer Mitch Trader’s couch, after watching a succession of episodes of The Wire as part of his ongoing background research.

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By SUN WUKONG
Entertainment Correspondent 

US troops staring in stunned silence at a glorious North Korean war dance

PYONGYANG (China Daily Show) – Wasteful American Military Drains Mass Resources in Attempt to Rescue Undecorated Soldier has put writer, director, producer, cinematographer, composer, vocal artist and NoKay-pop star, Kim Jong-il, back on the 38th parallel.

In what’s being called “the mirth-ride of the last ten thousand glorious years” by North Korea’s national film critic, and “a roll-on-the-floor laugh-fest of Kubrickian proportions” by the North Korean Ministry of Truth, the Dear Leader’s re-envisioned comedy of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film, Saving Private Ryan, earned an estimated 2,717,589 won ($19,000) over the weekend.

The ht reboot pulled in literally dozens of involuntary cinema lovers to Pyongyang’s single-screen mega-multiplex, who used up all of their subsidized Cinematic Enjoyment and Reflection on Dear Leader’s Glorious Artistic Legacy Ration Coupons to see the film again and again and again.

Wasteful American Military preserves much of the original film’s footage, with the original dialogue re-recorded by Kim Jong-il, who personally provided nasal, falsetto voices for every American soldier in the film’s central squad.

Breathtaking new battle scenes, directed and inter-cut by Kim, depict the US military bowing down to North Korean forces at the film’s glorious conclusion, “for tongue-on-cheek historic metaphor,” said Kim.

“You’ll love how the feeble Americans fail to maximize human-wave tactics on Omaha Beach,” said national film critic, Jop Chae-seok, in the Pyongyang Hourly Bugle. “They blanch at the mere sight of blood, agonize over insignificant losses, and rely on futile capitalist tactics to capture enemy pillboxes, rather than trusting the divine will of their Dear Leader and charging forward, machine guns armed with sturdy pitchforks.”

Jop struggled to identify a single, stand-out moment in the “hilarious” three-and-a-half-hour masterpiece, but laughed uncontrollably when recalling that “when the American devils do not torture the captured German to death but instead allow him to go freely, only to run into him again later in the film firing guns at them!” was particularly amusing.

Kim Jong-Il’s publicist, Iris Herzog — whom North Korea denies was kidnapped from her Beverly Hills home in 1997 to serve the reclusive movie  executive in his gilded Pyongyang palace — released a statement to China Daily Show, insisting that “although the running time is extended by nearly an hour, the Dear Leader only had to make minimal changes to enhance the comedic value of this rare example of American artistic ability.”

Such changes include: duck calls dubbed over the impact of bullets in American soldiers’ bodies, a slide-whistle when a German trooper slides a knife into a US soldier’s neck, and an Edith Piaf gramophone record in the original replaced with the North Korean national anthem, which “stirs the hearts of the craven American dogs with its glorious power,” according to Herzog.

The film’s epilogue features a stern Kim somberly reminding North Koreans to “remain cold toward the custard-livered Americans, even as we laugh at their brilliant slapstick.”

In a departure from his comedic works, the Dear Leader hopes to break box-office records again later this month with his upcoming traditional Christmas horror film, S*L*A*S*H,  in which a “fully representative faction of American military surgeons” descend upon Pyongyang with AIDS-bespeckled scalpels.

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By MEI YISI
Entertainment Correspondent

BEIJING (China Daily Show) — In an effort to rake in international film profits, SARFT has announced its intent to produce the most expensive film of all time.

The sure-fire blockbuster, to be directed by legendary Chinese director, Zhang Yimou, will star “all of China’s most famous actors, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, you name it,” an optimistic SARFT spokesperson said Tuesday in a press conference, and will cost “exactly $1.3 billion dollars.”

The script has yet to be penned, but migrant workers in Hebei province are already constructing the world’s largest 3D “CHIMAX” movie screen, which spans the entire length of the Great Wall of China. Premier ceremonies will take place on the moon.

Zhang Yimou will direct the film while in orbit aboard the rocket, Shenzhen IV, using the world’s largest megaphone.

“This can show our power and techknowledge to the world!” said lunar gaffer, Wai Xingren.

Sources close to the production have leaked the film’s working title: The Monkey King.

Agatha Holmes contributed to this story.

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Chinese film god, Zhang Yimou, shows his enthusiasm for the project.