Chinese,Indian film stars in shot

Somebody said superstar Xia Yu was the Shah Rukh Khan of China. Not true. Even though Xia is a big star in China, his films are huge hits, and most of them get dubbed in English and are released in international markets. Xia, however, hasn’t heard of SRK. “I’m sure he hasn’t heard of me as well,” said the Chinaman wryly. Fortunately, he has heard about Bollywood — “but I don’t know any stars” — because Xia is now acting in an Indo-China venture with our Shilpa Shetty. The film is titled Desire produced by Sharad Hegde. And, before the two stars met, they went on the net and did a search on each other.

Their first day on the sets in an Andheri film studio was eventful. Director R Sarath, in his wisdom, planned a romantic scene between the stranger actors. Xia was all gentlemanly courtesy. “She’s the most beautiful actress I’ve ever worked with,” he said of Shilpa. The Bollywood hottie blushed prettily and gushed, “Oh, so sweet, thank you...” To BT she said in an aside, “I’d heard he is one of China’s biggest superstars. I thought he would have airs. But he’s so humble and sweet, and a fantastic actor, he is amazing.” We asked, has an Indian actress ever been linked romantically to a Chinese actor?

Xia replied naughtily, “It’s a good beginning!”
Xia, who met Sarath at the Taiwan Film Festival, was told about the script for Desire. “We talked about it and I found him to be very talented. Besides, the story sounded good and I wanted to come to this mysterious place called India and see Bollywood,” the Chinese actor said. The same Sarath had been after Shilpa for a year-and-a-half with the script but she kept putting him off. “He was adamant. He had seen me perform in London at the Miss Bollywood concert and was sure that only I would be able to play the character Goutami in Desire who is an Odissi dancer. Later he told me he had got Xia on board, so I said ‘Great, let’s start work’,” revealed Shilpa.

That’s how they started. Xia plays a painter named Jai Leang. “My father is a painter and teaches Chinese art in Japan. I didn’t learn painting from him but now I wish I had,” he said. To Shilpa, he asked, “I heard you’re a very good dancer.” The actress laughed, “I try... but I’ve been a Bharatnatyam exponent since I was ten and now I’m playing an Odissi dancer... so I had to rehearse for this and that was difficult.” “Wow,” said Xia, “you’ve been a dancer before you became an actress?” Shilpa laughed again, “Yes, Bollywood is all about song and dance. Everybody has to dance even those who are bad dancers!” Xia looked amused. “I would never do a musical like that and fortunately I don’t have to do all that in this film,” he said. The wicked Shilpa suggested, “What if we have to do a romantic song where we go dancing around the trees in the garden...” He said with horror, “I’m sure I won’t do it!”

(The Times of India)

Amitabh to attend London premiere of 'Chandni Chowk To China'

New Delhi : Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan will attend the London premiere of Akshay Kumar's comic caper “Chandni Chowk To China” (CC2C) on Monday.

Amitabh, who is in London for make-up tests for his forthcoming venture “Pa”, received an invitation from Akshay for the premiere over a phone call from Toronto, Canada.

“Akshay called at 5.30 a.m. and said, 'CC2C is premiering at Leicester Square, London, on January 12. I shall be honoured if you could come and join us.' I told him I shall,” Amitabh said in a posting on his blog www.bigb.bigadda.com on Sunday.

He wrote that Akshay warned him, “Just don't bring your brains and thinking cap along."

London is the fourth destination of the grand international premiere of “Chandni Chowk To China”, directed by Nikhil Advani. It has already been showcased in Los Angeles, New York and Toronto. Releasing on January 16 in India, the film will be next premiered in Dubai and Bangkok.

Chandni Chowk To China(Hindi: चाँदनी चौक को चीन , Urdu: چاندنی چوک ٹو چائنا, Chinese: 月光集市到中国or从印度到中国), is a Hindi film slated for release on 16th January 2009. It will be directed by Nikhil Advani and stars Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone in the lead roles, with Hindi Cinema veteran Mithun Chakraborty and Hong Kong veteran Gordon Liu also playing important roles. The film is the first Hindi film to be shot in China. However, many parts of the film were shot in Bangkok, Thailand, and some of the China scenes were also shot in sets created in the Shanghai Film Studio. This is Warner Bros. Pictures's second Hindi film.
(The Hindu)

As Broadway struggles, producers look to China

CHINA IS GOING TO GET a taste of American-style "Fame."

The musical about aspiring young stars who "want to live forever" will be adapted for Chinese audiences with an all-Chinese cast that will perform in Mandarin.

The Chinese version of the musical is a sign of the times as Broadway producers abandon the slumping Great White Way in favor of China's potentially huge entertainment market.

"We certainly have a very upbeat outlook on the market," said Bob Nederlander, a "Fame" producer whose recent Beijing mounting of "Aida" was sold out.

Nederlander's first foray in bringing Broadway to the People's Republic was in 2007 with a production of "42nd Street."

Another New York production company, Broadway Asia Entertainment, plans up to five shows, among them "The Sound of Music" and "Annie." It has put on 12 shows in China over the past five years with tours covering up to 20 cities. Composer/producer Andrew Lloyd Webber plans to open "Phantom: Love Never Dies" at the end of 2009 with simultaneous openings in New York, London and Shanghai.

Broadway tickets are expensive by Chinese standards, with some ducats going for more than an average worker's monthly wage, but the expansion of Chinese wealth has created a demand.

"Wherever I go to see those shows in China, the theaters are all packed," said Si Xiaotan, a Beijing lawyer and theater lover who saw a trial run of "Fame" last month.

（New York Daily News）

"The Dark Knight" won’t be screened in China

Variety is reporting today that the studio has decided not to screen “The Dark Knight” in China — which has seen foreign grosses top $465 million — due to “cultural sensitivities.” And while studio reps refused to elaborate further on exactly what those cultural sensitivities were, all signs point to scenes in “The Dark Knight” which took place in Hong Kong, which may have proved difficult to get past Chinese censors.

The official statement released by Warner Bros. said, “Based on a number of pre-release conditions that are being attached to ‘The Dark Knight’ as well as cultural sensitivities to some elements of the film, we have opted to forego a theatrical release of the film in China.”

As Variety notes, while China has clearly become a force to be reckoned with in terms of worldwide economics, and likewise has become a target for U.S. entertainment based on its growing middle class and increased number of theaters, sensitivities continue to remain high among its people and government based on China’s portrayal in movies and television.

(MTV)

Chinese prostitutes imported to Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — A string of lights spells out the name of the bar in the back of the basement in capital letters, PARADISE. A dozen Chinese women in skintight miniskirts and halter tops flit around clusters of beefy Western men and flirt in broken English.

Now and then, a man and woman climb the stairs to the upper reaches of the house, where Paradise does its real business.

Paradise is a brothel in an unmarked residential compound in an upscale Kabul neighborhood where prostitutes from China cater to Western men. Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, thousands of Westerners working for security firms, companies and aid groups have poured into Afghanistan. Not long after came Chinese prostitutes, in some cases trafficked into the country.

The International Organization for Migration helped 96 Chinese women who were deported in 2006. They told IOM they were deceived by a travel agency in China and promised employment in a restaurant for $300 a month. But when they arrived, they said, the Chinese restaurant owner denied them salary and forced them to provide sexual services by night.

An IOM staffer said one Chinese woman thought she was going to work in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and had no idea she had instead landed in Kabul.

Afghan officials deny these claims.

"They come here of their own will. They want to do business here. Police caught them red-handed," said Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal, head of Kabul's criminal investigations.

In recent years, Afghan authorities have carried out a campaign against moral corruption, raiding brothels fronting as restaurants and deporting the Chinese prostitutes in front of TV cameras. Last year in Kabul, 180 female prostitutes were arrested — 154 "foreigners" and 26 Afghans, Paktiawal said. He would not give the nationalities of the foreign prostitutes, but many raids in recent years have been at Chinese restaurants.

Many Afghans blame prostitution on immoral Chinese women and Western men and say it is un-Islamic. The highly publicized crackdown on Chinese prostitutes has led to rampant harassment of women of East Asian origin. Police often single out Asian women in spot checks on Kabul's streets.

In Paradise, the women speak Chinese among themselves. One says she is from a town outside Beijing.

The brothel has two identical doors in the back of the building. One leads down to the well-stocked basement bar where the women mingle with potential clients. The other leads up to the main part of the house, where every nook and cranny that can be closed off has a spartan twin bed mattress with no sheets.

A Pussycat Dolls pop song pumps on the speakers, "Don't Cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" One man rubs the belly of a girl in a gauzy pink miniskirt.

A frequent customer at the bar says it costs $70 to take a woman upstairs, and $150 to have her company for the night.

(AP)

Bollywood to hardsell soft power in China

NEW DELHI: Come April, Bollywood's hit machine and his co-stars will start shooting for their new film, Chandni Chowk to China Town , partly on the Great Wall of China, the first time a Bollywood blockbuster would be shot in China.

To many observers, it's a strong signal to the growing influence of India's "soft" power — and a lot of Indian emphasis is on China.

Recently, India took a 10-member medical team to China to retrace the steps of Dr Kotnis. And after an understanding with the nodal Chinese agency, India will show Chinese films in India and Indian films will find a greater space in China.

Soon, MEA plans to set up a rotating chair in the University of Shenzhen and a film-co-production agreement has been freshly inked. The MEA is only starting to realise it but Bollywood is a very important calling card for India seeking to export its "soft power" overseas which is probably the reason why nobody blinked when India's Ambassador to China, Nirupama Rao, gave out the Best Actor Award in the critics' category at the recent Filmfare Awards function in Mumbai.

"We're not so stuffy any more," said a senior diplomat. In the MEA, where diplomats are routinely belting out romances, thrillers and memoirs, joint secretary Amit Dasgupta turned to Bollywood — he has compiled an enviable list of love songs from Hindi films down the ages.

And now that the Finance Minister has actually put a figure to the promotion of India's "soft power" in the budget, the ball has been set rolling to give India's cultural diplomacy some legitimacy. The amount is pittance, only Rs 75 crore, but it's a start, say diplomats.

While the idea of promoting India's "soft power" was ahead of its time in the 1950s when ICCR was started, the whole exercise of promoting Indian culture became ponderous, and, very boring. It was all about carting artistes to distant corners of the world, where their performances were seen by non-existent audiences.

In other words, India's cultural diplomacy had no imagination. Then some officials used ICCR as their patronage backyard and a senior official was accused of human trafficking in the guise of cultural troupes. But basically, India's "soft power" was a reflection of India's hard power — and that barely had any muscle until India started growing as an economic and military power. And nobody understands this better than the present head of ICCR, Pavan Varma. "The world is now beginning to ask, what makes Indians tick," he said. So whether its yoga, art, music, dance, Ayurveda or Bollywood, the world is interested. ICCR, Varma said, was setting up a string of "cultural centres" around the world — in Sao Paolo, Tokyo, Beijing, Kabul, Kathmandu, Dhaka, even Paris. Sri Lanka will see a centre soon.

The MEA is also setting up an "outreach" centre in Kolkata to cater to the immediate neighbourhood in Myanmar, Bangladesh, etc. India's centres teach dance, music and yoga besides promoting Indian literature and arts. They also hold exhibitions on treasures of India. These are India's cultural strengths and Indian diplomacy is now riding on them.

Of course, India's cultural centres are a far cry from China's Confucious Institutes which are peppered all over the globe and which are used to teach Chinese language to non-Chinese speaking people. These are far more efficient, unlike the Indian versions which have great ideas, but are sometimes iffy on design, presentation and implementation. But the MEA prides itself on the fact that India's culture is more inclusive, more attractive than merely learning an Indian language.

MEA is buzzing with plans for the largesse that has just been dropped in its lap. And who knows, MEA might really break the bureaucratic barrier and set up its first "virtual" cultural centre - on Second Life!

(The times of India)

Bestseller "Wolf Totem" debuts in English

• The wolves are seen as team players, strategic thinkers. Wolves don't kill too many sheep, they don't kill too many people, they don't pillage the environment for short-term gains
• "When we talk about China and freedom, we talk about human rights. But in China, it can mean freedom from fashion and trends."
• the author spent 30 years thinking about it and six years writing it, which win him the Man Asian Literary Prize.

The English launch of China's latest literary sensation, a tale of freedom and self-discovery on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, could not have been better timed.

Jiang Rong's "Wolf Totem", an autobiographical novel about a Beijing student living with Mongolian nomads during the Cultural Revolution, is set to debut in English this month, just as the world's interest in all things Chinese is reaching fever pitch.

With the Beijing Olympics only a few months away and a controversy over censorship straining the Chinese government's relations with international artists, readers may be surprised by the novel's uncensored criticism of Chinese society.

But Jo Lusby, general manager of Penguin China, which reportedly paid a record $100,000 for the English translation rights, says the novel reflects the complexities of modern China.

"It's read in many different ways in China. It's about freedom -- for us, it's a very loaded word. When we talk about China and freedom, we talk about human rights. But in China, it can mean freedom from fashion and trends," she told Reuters in a phone interview.

"It's surprising, reading it in English, how overt the messages on freedom are. But it's not advocating revolution."

Jiang Rong, a political scientist, writes under a pseudonym. He has said that he spent 30 years thinking about "Wolf Totem", his first novel, and six years writing it. More than 2 million official copies have been sold in China over the past three years -- not including the pirated versions sold on the street.

"Wolf Totem" examines the relationship between man and nature by tracing the story of Chen Zhen, a student sent to live with nomadic shepherds in the 1960s. As part of his spiritual journey, Chen Zhen tries to raise a wolf cub.

The novel's translator, Howard Goldblatt -- one of the most well-known translators of Chinese literature -- said he was fascinated by the novel's intellectual and philosophical depth and its moments of intense drama and passion.

"The episode of him raising the wolf cub -- parts of that almost had me in tears, it was so sad. And then, the sadness of the ecological disaster that ultimately and inevitably occurs," he said by phone from Beijing.

WOLVES AS TEAM PLAYERS

Instead of reading the whole novel and then translating it chapter by chapter, Goldblatt decided to translate it as he read it to experience the story the way any other reader would. But he said that at times he became so engrossed in the plot that he would read ahead, then go back and translate the section.

Lusby is cautious about the book's ability to replicate its success in China on a global scale, but she believes the spiritual theme will resonate with a Western readership.

"The wolves are seen as team players, strategic thinkers," she said. "Wolves don't kill too many sheep, they don't kill too many people, they live in harmony with the environment. They don't pillage the environment for short-term gains."

Little is known about the novel's author, who was born in 1946 and reportedly became a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution.

A former lecturer at Beijing university, he is now retired and rarely appears in public. Last year, he won Asia's first major literary award, the Man Asian Literary Prize, for the book.

The prize is part of a wider literary resurgence in Asia. Long dominated by writers from the Indian subcontinent, Asia is increasingly producing authors that reflect the region's huge cultural diversity.

China has attracted particular attention because of its political situation and an ongoing debate over freedom of expression. Most recently, the government announced it would tighten controls over foreign performers after singer Bjork shouted "Tibet! Tibet!" at a concert in Shanghai.

Lusby, whose latest project is to bring foreign classics to China through a partnership with a local publishing company, said they had not faced any censorship issues.

Goldblatt finds censors tend to be less worried by fiction since it targets a much smaller audience than movies, though the Chinese government has jailed dissident writers and banned certain books.

"What I run across is a sense of self-censorship -- I read things and think, has the author held back because he wants to get his work out there," he said.

"Once you've written something, it's always out there. You grow a tail, and if they want to go after you, they can always grab hold of that tail."

(Reuters)

MPA Wins China DVD Lawsuit

• this affirms the sovereignty of the Chinese judiciary for the prompt and equitable resolution of intellectual property rights dispute

A Chinese online service and a Shanghai Internet cafe have settled with the Motion Picture Assn. in a case concerning infringement of movie rights in China's fast-growing online sector.

MPA had charged Beijing Jeboo Interactive Science & Technology with unauthorized use of 20 Hollywood movies, including "Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest" and "Hitch" (Daily Variety, Nov. 23).

More than one option

• (Co) Daily Variety
  Filmography, Year, Role
• (Co) Daily Variety

The defendants stopped carrying the pics, apologized, pledged not to repeat the infringement in the future and paid a significant compensation, the MPA said.

Although the case cited specific titles, the pledge extends to all MPA titles from all six Hollywood studios.

With fast Internet connections to home computers still something of a rarity, China has a massive Internet cafe culture, where consumers spend many hours, often in groups, watching movies.

Cafes pay a monthly subscription fee to Jeboo or other similar platforms for a LAN system, with Jeboo providing daily updates of content, which includes movies, TV shows, sports, music, general entertainment and cartoon programming.

Although most of the content offered by Jeboo is authorized, the MPA member company titles were not.

Terms of the settlement, reached Feb. 28 but only recently unveiled, will be endorsed by the Shanghai No. 2 People's Intermediary Court.

"This court-supervised settlement affirms the sovereignty of the Chinese judiciary for the prompt and equitable resolution of intellectual property rights disputes, which should be gratifying to copyright owners around the world," Frank Rittman, VP and Asia-Pacific regional counsel for the MPA said.

(Daily Variety)

"In Love We Trust" wins Silver Bear at Berlinale

BEIJING, Feb. 17 -- Chinese director and screenwriter Wang Xiaoshuai has picked up his second Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, winning the best screenplay prize for "In Love We Trust."

Wang's film had been competing for the top Golden Bear award at the 58th Berlinale, but that went to Brazilian director Jose Padilha's "Tropa de Elite" (The Elite Squad), a story of police corruption and gang violence in the Brazilian slums.

"In Love We Trust" lead actress Liu Weiwei missed out on the best actress prize, which was picked up by Sally Hawkins for her performance in Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-lucky."

Wang thanked the jury saying the award would help "all of us who try to make independent film in China."

"In Love We Trust," a story of love, loyalty, and responsibility among China's new middle class, tells how a middle-aged divorced couple, both remarried, try to save their young daughter, who suffers from leukemia, by having another child to act as a bone marrow donor.

It was the only film from the Chinese mainland competing this year in Berlin, where last year's top Golden Bear award was won by the Chinese film, "Tuya's Marriage."

Wang, who is better known outside China, won the Grand Jury Silver Bear Award at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival for his film, "Beijing Bicycle." He won the Special Jury Prize for "Shanghai Dreams" at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

"In Love We Trust" is expected to open in Chinese cinemas in the spring, but the exact date has yet to be set.

Wang said he would value the response and comments of Chinese audiences and hoped they would like the film.

"Shanghai Dreams" made more than five million yuan (685,000 U.S. dollars) at the box office China in 2005, which was considered reasonably successful for a small-budget independent movie.

(Xinhua)

Shu Qi joins jury group of 58th Berlinale

The Berlin International Film Festival opens on Feb 7, Chinese actress Shu Qi joins the jury group, together with German production designer Uli Hanisch, Russian producer Alexander Rodnyansky, German actress Diane Kruger and US sound designer Walter Murch.

Directed by Oscar-winning American director Martin Scorsese, Shine A Light is the first of about 400 films from around the world to be shown during the festival. Scorsese and members of the Stones will be on hand in the German capital.

The festival continues for 11 days, and is drawing a host of Hollywood celebrities, like Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson. U.S. pop star Madonna will be unveiling her directorial debut film, Filth and Wisdom.

(Voice of America, China daily)