By WEI SHENG
Sanitation Correspondent

The film features heroic elements of resistance against the Japanese aggressors, and scenes of a Wuxia nature

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – “Maddening structural problems” in the original cut of foreign sci-fi movie Cloud Atlas have now been thoroughly nixed, representatives for China’s State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) announced yesterday.

The Chinese edition, released Thursday and retitled Clod Atlas, boasts over 45 fewer minutes of running time, SARFT explained.

“Basically, what we did,” spokesman Li Hexie told a press conference Thursday, “was take out the beginning and put it at the end, then removed the end and put it in the middle. As for the middle, that was the easy part – we did not need it at all!”

Cloud Atlas (2012), directed by the Wachowski siblings and Tim Twyker, tells multiple overlapping stories over multiple time periods involving multiple characters, and performed by multiple actors in multiple roles of varying genders and ethnicity.

Clod Atlas (2013), on the other hand, is the moving story of a doomed Cosplay troupe.

“Our film is far more tragic,” promised Li, who is also Clod Atlas’s new co-director, executive producer and principal screenwriter.

Both China’s two voiceover artists, Ting Hao and Hao Ting, dubbed new dialogue for all the characters, including a new scene written by Hao, involving a pair of hapless, travelling, rival salesmen with the exact same name.

“I liked it better because it confused me,” said Wendy Hong, a Chinese screenwriter who has seen both the Western and Chinese versions. “The film’s theme, “Our lives are not our own,’ intrigued me when it was no more than a hazy, optimistic notion. But in the Chinese version, it actually leaves you depressed and pessimistic.”

Li denied that cuts to several scenes, involving nudity and homosexuality, indicated prudishness and homophobia on the part of SARFT.

“It’s simply a question of feasibility,” Hao said. “It’s important to make films that are believable. The transmigration of souls is an ancient Chinese tradition but dudes kissing other dudes? That’s simply unrealistic.”

Indeed, Hao says, proof of the new version’s superior quality can be seen in the critical reaction.

While Cloud Atlas was widely panned by critics and snubbed by the Oscars, Clod Atlas has already been nominated for 16 Golden Cocks.

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By CHU CHOU
Media Correspondent

Jackie Chan considers not saying something, then decides to go ahead anyway

HONG KONG (China Daily Show) – An impassioned promise to his wife that he will “just keep [my] fucking mouth shut for the next five minutes, OK?” was broken by Hollywood actor Jackie Chan, mere moments after leaving his lips.

The promise was made following a series of much-publicized interview gaffes, including a recent chat on Qiang Qiang, a Hong Kong talk show, in which the subject of Chan’s notorious nationalism came up.

The once-loved chop-sockey star then proceeded to embarrass himself with a series of eye-wincing statements, including his observation that “America has the most corruption in the world!”

Following the interviews, and a slew of off-air domestic diatribes about everything from the state of Hong Kong cinema to his children’s Western influences, Chan’s wife issued the profanity-strewn ultimatum.

However, as he was watching an interview between Oprah Winfrey and disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong just 45 seconds later, Chan leapt from his La-Z-Boy and hurled Cantonese insults at the screen, imploring long-suffering spouse Joan Lin to “Look, see, how corrupt US is in the sports… and then the Olympics in China…”

Reports indicated that Chan’s spluttered diatribe came to a faltering halt almost as soon as he made eye contact with Lin.

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by DONG FANGHONG
Culture Correspondent

A scene from one of the new plots that may or may not be a scene from one of the old plots

BEIJING (China Daily Show) –Three new plots have been discovered in the national film archives, China’s Ministry of Culture announced yesterday.

The discovery was described as an “unprecedented leap forward for the Chinese entertainment industry” and brings the total number of acceptable storylines up to seven.

While anecdotes, legends and documented events from China’s lengthy historical annals are plentiful, the Party has struggled to find contemporary plotlines deemed to be of ‘Red Star Criteria’ for its national playlist.

“Many so-called ‘modern plots’ contain the kind of themes contemporary Chinese audiences just aren’t interested in,” snorted film critic Hu Jintao (relation) of the Central Party School’s Education Through Cinema Department. 

“Lesbian gangsters, bent cops and debauched politicians” are typical examples of boring Western obsessions, he said.

“Simply put, the Chinese have an insatiable appetite for three-hour epics about the Sino-Japanese war,” shrugged Hu.

The addition of a trio of new plots to the official canon is sure to propel China into the cinematic superleague, experts hope.

“Today is momentous,” remarked Ministry spokesperson Wu Laigang. “We have almost doubled our national artists’ creative capacity by graciously donating them these new stories.”

The three plotlines include the full range of genres and styles, Wu added, predicting that the first – in which two Shanxi schoolchildren use their father’s moonshine to burn down a Japanese official’s family home– will have Disney “running for the hills.”

The new storylines will see a 15% decrease in TV films based on squad combat in an unnamed forest circa 1930

The second is likely to replace Romeo and Juliet as the world’s favorite love story within six years, Wu says.

The plot is a “sizzlingly harmonious” love story, set during the Nationalist White Terror of the 1930s, in which the protagonists never meet. 

“We’re calling it White Heat,” said Wu. “It’s never been done before.”

Industry insiders say the third new plot may be the most original. 

A cross between James Bond, a Rolex advert and the Quotations from Chairman Mao, the story relates an uncorroborated incident from the early life of Mao Zedong, in which the shirtless junior librarian garrottes the Kuomintang officer responsible for his second wife’s execution, using piano wire concealed in his Chinese wristwatch.

The plots will significantly bolster China’s four extant storylines, currently consisting of statutory rape in wartime; a rich girl marrying her boss; a platoon fighting in a forest; and a teenage boy dying a lonely virgin, as a result of a non-specific wasting illness.

While some have welcomed the additions, others say China will not be a true cultural powerhouse until it has at least 10 storylines.

Minister Wu was quick to reassure talent agencies, however, that there would be no change to the standard ‘three male, two female’ character stereotypes.

“Some things will never change,” Wu smiled. “Men can still pick from Saint, Traitor or ‘Fat ’n’ Funny,’ while women can be either Victim or Bitch.” 

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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 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.