The Farewell

[GeneChing]

Of course there's Tai Chi in this. I've been thinking I should check it out - now I've got an excuse. :cool:



‘The Farewell’ offers a loving glimpse into Chinese culture (https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2019/0731/The-Farewell-offers-a-loving-glimpse-into-Chinese-culture)
( PG ) 4 stars ( Monitor Movie Guide )
How does a family living across two cultures reconcile differences? “The Farewell,” based on a true story, shows one way to navigate such a split.
July 31, 2019
By April Austin Staff writer

https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2019/07/1087132_2_0730_The_Farewell_standard.jpg?alias=sta ndard_900x600nc

American audiences rarely have an opportunity to see contemporary films directed by and featuring people of Asian heritage. The successful 2018 movie “Crazy Rich Asians,” which followed a typical romantic-comedy format, was a notable exception. Watching it made many moviegoers wish for a film with deeper, more fully realized Asian characters and a less formulaic plot.

“The Farewell,” which garnered critical praise at the Sundance Film Festival in January, is very nearly that movie. It deals with a less glamorized and more kitchen-sink view of family life than “Crazy Rich Asians,” and it also provides an affectionate and accessible glimpse into Chinese culture and values.

Although it’s marketed as a comedy, “The Farewell” has much to say about the tensions between the individual and the family and between those who leave their country and those who stay behind. Because Lulu Wang is a relatively young filmmaker (she’s in her 30s), it’s intriguing to imagine how she might refine her storytelling in subsequent projects. But more on that later.

Wang based “The Farewell” on her own family story. In 2013, her grandmother (nai nai in Mandarin) in Changchun, China, was diagnosed with a fatal illness, which the family decided to hide from her. To Western audiences, this situation seems unbelievable. But, as we learn in the film, Chinese families routinely withhold this kind of information, believing that it would break the spirit of their loved ones.

Wang, who moved with her parents from Changchun to Miami when she was 6 years old, was brokenhearted by the news about her grandmother, with whom she had remained close. The film became a vehicle for saying goodbye, as Wang has said, while also offering an opportunity to explore the family’s perspective.

Wang’s stand-in in the movie is Billi, the granddaughter, who arrives in Changchun along with the extended clan, preparing to say farewell to their adored matriarch. To conceal the real purpose of their visit, they stage an elaborate wedding. We see Billi pushing back at what she sees as her family’s misguided decision to lie to Nai Nai. In the United States, Billi argues, it would be unconscionable to keep a diagnosis from someone; it might even be illegal, she says to her dad. But in China, a relative tells her, it’s the family’s job to carry such a burden. Billi isn’t satisfied with that answer. What if she wants to say goodbye? she asks.

Billi’s worry and grief are compounded by feelings of guilt. She hasn’t visited Nai Nai in the last several years, and her relatives suggest that she’s hurt her grandmother by her absence. They consider Billi to be American, not Chinese. Her Mandarin skills are negligible.

The movie may sound ponderous, and while it deals in serious subjects, it also has a funnier, airy side. Billi’s relatives are a lovable, wacky bunch, led by her delightful granny, whose spunk and joie de vivre lighten the film. (Audience members were audibly delighted with Nai Nai’s scenes.)

Billi is portrayed by American actress and rapper Awkwafina, whose comic turn in “Crazy Rich Asians” stole that movie. She’s toned down her persona to play this role, and although she’s believable and engaging, she spends much of the movie looking sadly out at the passing scenery. You do sense, however, that there is more going on behind those sad eyes.

The real star is Shuzhen Zhao, who plays the grandmother. Her Nai Nai is a blend of indomitability, charm, shrewdness, and puckish delight. Not to mention she’s got game when it comes to tai chi moves. So nuanced is her performance that it’s not until the end of the movie that you see her give way to her own emotions as Billi departs, leaving her standing in the street.

This penultimate scene is undeniably affecting. However, with Wang’s decision to hew so closely to real life, she may have missed an opportunity to tell an even more dramatic and satisfying tale. Billi doesn’t really grow over the course of the film; her character lacks a final emotional payoff.

Wang has said she deliberately resisted turning “The Farewell” into a conventional drama. As she told Slate, “[M]anipulating the story for the sake of plot points and drama would take away from what the story is actually about. It isn’t about some big reveal but about the Western desire to have answers ... and how do you deal when you can’t get them. [At the time,] I wanted that catharsis – this moment where some big, dramatic thing happens. And what you realize is, actually, it’s not that dramatic at all.”

Instead, she says, “The drama is interior.”

In Mandarin and English with English subtitles.

[GeneChing]

It's Qigong (https://www.martialartsmart.com/qigong-or-internal-dvds.html). It's a small yet pivotal scene and gets echoed throughout the film.

I used to disregard Awkwafina for her awkward stage name but she charmed me in Crazy Rich Asians (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70914-Crazy-Rich-Asians). Here she truly impressed me with her acting chops and I won’t mock her name anymore. It’s a comic tragedy or a tragic comedy set it modern day PRC and Awkwafina is the only recognizable actor. Writer director Lulu Wang has a keen eye for surreal China, it’s harsh exhausting power and addiction to ritual - I could almost smell China again and it’s been a decade and a half since I’ve been there. A solid and sublime film that’s had me laughing and crying at unexpected moments, as well as sorting my inherited cultural baggage. No fight scenes at all, but worth checking out if you're into Chinese cinema. Also, mark my words, Tzi Ma is on the rise.

[GeneChing]

Character Media Announces Nominees For 18th Annual Unforgettable Gala (https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwtv/article/Character-Media-Announces-Nominees-For-18th-Annual-Unforgettable-Gala-20191015)

https://cloudimages.broadwayworld.com/columnpiccloud/21571145171.jpg?ezimgfmt=rs:250x128/rscb1/ng:webp/ngcb1

Character Media announced today the nominees for the 18th Annual Unforgettable Gala. The Gala is the preeminent awards show to recognize Asian American icons and changemakers in the entertainment industry, who are representing the community through their creativity and excellence. Nominees were voted on by Character Media's selection committee of experts, who represent various fields and creative disciplines, including film, television, music, sports, digital technology and philanthropy.

The following are this year's nominees. Additional awards will be announced at a later date.

Actor/Actress in Television:

Daniel Wu - "Into the Badlands"

Jameela Jamil - "The Good Place"

Karen Fukuhara - "The Boys"

Leonardo Nam - "Westworld"

Nico Santos - "Superstore"

Actor/Actress on Film:

Ali Wong - "Always Be My Maybe"

Awkwafina - "The Farewell"

Kumail Nanjiani - "Stuber"

Randall Park - "Always Be My Maybe"

Steven Yeun - "Burning"

Breakout Actor/Actress on Television:

Andrew Koji - "Warrior"

Derek Mio - "The Terror: Infamy"

Greta Lee - "Russian Doll"

Maya Erskine - "Pen15"

Sydney Park - "Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists"

Breakout Actor/Actress on Film:

Charles Melton - "The Sun is Also a Star"

Himesh Patel - "Yesterday"

Maya Erskine - "Plus One"

Tiffany Chu - "Ms. Purple"

Viveik Kalra - "Blinded by the Light"

Comic Performance:

Ali Wong - "Always Be My Maybe"

Hasan Minhaj - "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj"

Jo Koy - "Comin' in Hot"

Ken Jeong - "Ken Jeong: You Complete Me, Ho"

Ronny Chieng - "The Daily Show"

Director:

James Wan - "Aquaman"

Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi - "Free Solo"

Justin Chon - "Ms. Purple"

Lulu Wang - "The Farewell"

Nisha Ganatra - "Late Night"

Digital Influencer:

Bobby Hundreds

Bretman Rock

Jenn Im

Jubilee Media

Steven Lim

The award recipients will be announced at the 18th Annual Unforgettable Gala, held at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, CA, on December 14, 2019.

THREADS
Asian Film Festivals and Awards (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?48392-Asian-Film-Festivals-and-Awards)
Into The Badlands (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?67844-Into-The-Badlands)
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)
Warrior (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?68676-Bruce-Lee-s-Warrior)
Aquaman (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70874-Aquaman)

[GeneChing]

COLUMNS OCTOBER 31, 2019 10:20AM PT
Refusal to Compromise Hasn’t Hurt ‘Farewell,’ ‘Lighthouse’ Filmmakers’ Oscar Chances (https://variety.com/2019/voices/columns/farewell-lighthouse-filmmakers-1203387636/)
By MARC MALKIN
Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor
@https://twitter.com/marcmalkin

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/lulu-wang-the-farewell.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: COURTESY OF CASI MOSS/A24

Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell” is based on a true story about her own family.

Observing a Chinese tradition of not telling elders when they’ve been diagnosed with a fatal disease, Wang’s relatives reunited in China in 2013 to visit with her grandmother after the family learned she had incurable cancer. Her grandmother was kept in the dark, told instead that everyone had traveled to China for a cousin’s wedding.

In “The Farewell,” Awkwafina stars as Billi, a first-generation Chinese American writer based on Wang, who struggles to find the balance between her Western upbringing and her Eastern roots. Wang’s pitch, which included a mostly Chinese-language script, wasn’t immediately embraced by producers and financiers. “It’s what you’d expect,” she tells me. “It was like, ‘What is this film? It’s all Chinese and it’s about a grandmother? How is that high stakes? What does it matter if [you] tell her or not, because she’s 80 and she’s going to die anyway?’”

Naturally, Wang wanted to have direct creative input in the project. “It was a very tough sell especially because I wanted to maintain authenticity in the casting and in the language.”

At one point, she met with a potential Chinese investor who was excited, but also suggested that the Billi character bring a boyfriend to China with her, a white guy “who can’t even use chopsticks.”

Wang refused to bend: “That was not the movie I wanted to make.”

She cobbled together $3 million to make the film, which premiered at Sundance in February. Indie distributor A24 subsequently bought the rights for more than $6 million.

The film’s release in July was met with glowing reviews from critics and has a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As of Oct. 24, the domestic box office totals more than $17.6 million.

On top of the critical and financial success, “The Farewell” is a strong awards season player. Wang could very well earn Oscar noms for best picture, director and screenplay. Awkwafina has a strong shot at a lead actress nom. Zhao Shuzhen may earn a supporting nom for her work as the grandmother.

“I actually worry about that stuff,” Wang says about the Oscar buzz. “I have Chinese parents and a Chinese mother whom whenever things are too good, she’s like, ‘Keep your head down and be careful.’ It was always ‘One step at a time and one foot in front of the other.’”

Wang may have just taken one step closer to Oscar gold, gaining more momentum last week when her movie picked up Gotham Award nominations for best feature, actress (Awkwafina) and screenplay (Wang).

Robert Eggers is another writer-director who wouldn’t let commercial pressures get in the way of his vision for “The Lighthouse.” While it may not be a box office hit like “The Farewell,” Eggers’ second feature after his indie breakout “The Witch” could attract Oscar love come nominations time.

“The Lighthouse” is a psychological thriller starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as lighthouse keepers in the 19th century who begin to mentally unravel while stationed on a remote New England island hit by a howling winter storm.

The two-hander was shot on 35mm black-and-white film with an early-sound era aspect ratio of 1.19:1.

The film was backed by A24, RT Features and New Regency, but Eggers recalls, “I think everyone was excited by the prospect of collaborating, and then they got the script and the look book, and they were like, ‘Oh, this is what you want to do? Can you shoot it on color digital format or even color negatives so we can have a color version so we can sell it to certain foreign markets that won’t accept black-and-white movies?’”

Like Wang, Eggers wasn’t willing to budge.

“This is how we had to do it,” he says. “And once we had further conversations, they were incredibly supportive and got why it was so important.”

Pattinson remembers Eggers hosting a party about halfway through filming. “They were showing us [footage] and I was watching it and I was like, ‘This does look absolutely crazy,’” the actor says, laughing. “‘This is nothing like I have ever seen before in theaters. Do people even put this in theaters?’”

“The Lighthouse” premiered in May at Cannes, where it won the critics’ award for best first or second features in Directors’ Fortnight and Critics Week. Dafoe could be on his way to earning his third consecutive Oscar nomination for supporting actor following last year’s lead nod for “At Eternity’s Gate” and a supporting nom in 2018 for “The Florida Project.” He is among the Gotham Award nominees for best actor.

While the lead actor category continues to be this year’s most competitive, Pattinson is certainly in the game.

“I think if there was any compromise whatsoever on this, it would have no audience at all,” he says. “You have to take the gamble.”
It will be awesome if The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)gets an Oscar (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?20798-The-Academy-Awards) nom.

[GeneChing]

'Parasite' Voted Best Picture by New York Film Critics Online (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/parasite-voted-best-picture-by-new-york-film-critics-online-1259537)
3:08 PM PST 12/7/2019 by Trilby Beresford

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2019/08/parasite._courtesy_of_neon__cj_entertainment.jpg
Telluride Film Festival
'Parasite'

In addition, Bong Joon Ho was tapped as best director for his work on the film.

Parasite has been named best picture of the year by New York Film Critics Online (NYFCO). The vote took place Saturday.

In addition, Bong Joon Ho was tapped as best director for his work on the film, which also garnered best screenplay honors.

Us' Lupita Nyong'o was named best actress and Joker star Joaquin Phoenix was chosen as best actor, while Laura Dern was hailed as best supporting actress for Marriage Story and Joe Pesci was recognized for his supporting role in The Irishman.

The NYFCO, founded by reviewer Harvey Karten in 2000, met in Lincoln Center's Furman Gallery inside the Walter Reade Theatre for its 20th annual convocation. Last year, the group selected Roma as best picture.

A full list of 2019 winners follows.

Picture: Parasite
Director: Bong Joon Ho (Parasite)
Actor: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)
Actress: Lupita Nyong'o (Us)
Supporting Actor: Joe Pesci (The Irishman)
Supporting Actress: Laura Dern (Marriage Story)
Screenplay: Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin-Won)
Cinematography: 1917 (Roger Deakins)
Documentary: Apollo 11 (Neon)
Foreign Language: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Neon)
Ensemble Cast: Knives Out (Casting director: Mary Vernieu)
Breakthrough Performer: Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves, Luce)
Debut as Director: Lila Aviles (The Chambermaid)
Use of Music: Rocketman (Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Giles Martin, Matthew Margeson)
Animated Feature: I Lost My Body (Netflix)

Top 10 Films:

1917 (Universal)
The Farewell (A24)
Hustlers (STXfilms)
The Irishman (Netflix)
Jojo Rabbit (Fox Searchlight)
Joker (Warner Bros.)
Marriage Story (Netflix)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Sony)
Parasite (Neon)
The Two Popes (Netflix)


TRILBY BERESFORD
Trilby.Beresford@THR.COM
trilbyberesford


THREADS
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71455-Joker)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)

[GeneChing]

FROM THE MAGAZINE OSCAR SPECIAL 2019
The Farewell: Anatomy of a Scene (https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/12/the-farewell-anatomy-of-a-scene)
Writer and director Lulu Wang dissects a pivotal scene, which draws on Chinese mourning traditions—and takes place at her actual grandfather’s grave.
BY YOHANA DESTA
DECEMBER 11, 2019

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5de9541d9aeeef0008171079/16:9/w_2560%2Cc_limit/VF1719_anatomy-of-a-scene-lede.png
IMAGES COURTESY OF A24.

It begins with a woman wailing at a funeral. Identified only as the Crier, she’s the first thing in the frame in a searing scene in Lulu Wang’s The Farewell. Amid the interpersonal drama that plays out in the cemetery, there is also a glimpse at Chinese mourning traditions, including the hiring of professional criers to performatively sob at burials. Billi (Awkwafina) has joined her family to visit her late grandfather’s grave. Once there, they give offerings like food, flowers, and cigarettes, and ask him to bless them. The Farewell is based on Wang’s real family, and their decision not to tell her grandmother (called Nai Nai in Mandarin, and played by Zhao Shuzhen) about her cancer diagnosis. But this particular scene is a tribute to Wang’s grandfather and was filmed at his grave site at a cemetery in Changchun, China.

“He wanted to be a writer, but he died before he got to achieve his dreams,” Wang said. “Being able to make this movie at his grave years later and being a writer now myself was really powerful.”

The scene, like much of The Farewell, is poignant and funny. Nai Nai leads the family through the elaborate ritual in the cemetery when she doesn’t know she herself is dying, while other characters grumble about how long the whole thing takes. For Wang, the trip to the grave encapsulates how she feels about visiting her family in China: “The humor, the life, the joy, and the sadness.” Here, Wang breaks down a few key moments in the scene, from the symbolism of the Crier (who may or may not be a paid professional) to a paper iPhone.

The Melodramatic Crier
“There’s not that many paid criers anymore. It really depends on what part of China you go to.”

The Food
“Eating food in front of a tombstone feels unusual [to Americans]…[but] I think it also speaks to the mind-body connection, right? The physical and the spiritual being connected. That you are at this grave and you’re offering food that you’re sending up to your ancestors, so you bring the things that they like.”

The Order of the Offering
“The art department was like, ‘Well, what do we put down for the offering, and in what order?’ They all started arguing about it.”

Nai Nai in Charge
“This is really the scene where it’s about Nai Nai. It’s about grandma as the matriarch. It’s about how she is the one who unites the family and leads the family through these rituals, and how she represents the connection to these rituals and traditions and to their ancestry.… When she’s gone, who’s going to lead the family?”

A Practical Ritual
“There’s this idea of they’re sacrificing and they’re honoring the spirit of their ancestor, but at the same time they’re very pragmatic about it. Like they’re sending a paper iPhone.”

Maybe because I've been to Chinese graveside rituals like this,this scene didn't need explanation for me. But apparently it does for Vanity Fair readers.

[GeneChing]

I only copied the films we've discussed here.



Winners & Nominees 2020 (https://www.goldenglobes.com/winners-nominees)

Best Motion Picture - Drama

NOMINEE
Joker

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

NOMINEE
Dolemite Is My Name

NOMINEE
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama

NOMINEE
Joaquin Phoenix
Joker

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

NOMINEE
Awkwafina
Farewell, The

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

NOMINEE
Leonardo DiCaprio
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

NOMINEE
Eddie Murphy
Dolemite Is My Name

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture

NOMINEE
Brad Pitt
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Director - Motion Picture

NOMINEE
Bong Joon Ho
Parasite

NOMINEE
Todd Phillips
Joker

NOMINEE
Quentin Tarantino
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture

NOMINEE
Quentin Tarantino
Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood

NOMINEE
Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Won
Parasite

Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language

NOMINEE
Farewell, The
USA, Lulu Wang

NOMINEE
Parasite
South Korea, Bong Joon Ho

THREADS
The Golden Globes (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71111-The-Golden-Globes)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)
Dolemite is My Name (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70866-Dolemite-Is-My-Name)
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71455-Joker)
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)

[GeneChing]

92ND OSCARS SHORTLISTS (https://oscars.org/oscars/92nd-oscars-shortlists?fbclid=IwAR02mKCODlUz_9umBLqpLmg65OZodE pRLCB4zNtcp3b41qp9A6vsOSj4JZY)
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced shortlists in consideration for the 92nd Academy Awards in nine categories: Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, International Feature Film, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), Music (Original Song), Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film and Visual Effects.

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
Ten films will advance to the next round of voting in the International Feature Film category (formerly known as Foreign Language Film) for the 92nd Academy Awards. Ninety-one films were eligible in the category.

Academy members from all branches were invited to participate in the preliminary round. They must have viewed the submitted films theatrically and met a minimum viewing requirement to be eligible to vote in the category. Their seven choices, augmented by three additional selections voted by the Academy’s International Feature Film Award Executive Committee, constitute the shortlist.

In the nominations round, Academy members from all branches are invited to opt-in to participate and must view all 10 shortlisted films in order to cast a ballot.

The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:

Czech Republic, “The Painted Bird”
Estonia, “Truth and Justice”
France, “Les Misérables”
Hungary, “Those Who Remained”
North Macedonia, “Honeyland”
Poland, “Corpus Christi”
Russia, “Beanpole”
Senegal, “Atlantics”
South Korea, “Parasite”
Spain, “Pain and Glory”


MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Ten films will advance in the Makeup and Hairstyling category for the 92nd Academy Awards. All members of the Academy’s Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Branch will be invited to view seven-minute excerpts from each of the 10 shortlisted films on Saturday, January 4, 2020. Members will vote to nominate five films for final Oscar consideration.

The films, listed in alphabetical order by title, are:

“Bombshell”
“Dolemite Is My Name”
“Downton Abbey”
“Joker”
“Judy”
“Little Women”
“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”
“1917”
“Once upon a Time…in Hollywood”
“Rocketman”


MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
Fifteen scores will advance in the Original Score category for the 92nd Academy Awards. One hundred seventy scores were eligible in the category. Members of the Music Branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees.

The scores, listed in alphabetical order by film title, are:

“Avengers: Endgame”
“Bombshell”
“The Farewell”
“Ford v Ferrari”
“Frozen II”
“Jojo Rabbit”
“Joker”
“The King”
“Little Women”
“Marriage Story”
“Motherless Brooklyn”
“1917”
“Pain and Glory”
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”
“Us”

DOWNLOAD

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
Fifteen songs will advance in the Original Song category for the 92nd Academy Awards. Seventy-five songs were eligible in the category. Members of the Music Branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees.

The original songs, along with the motion picture in which each song is featured, are listed below in alphabetical order by film title and song title:

“Speechless” from “Aladdin”
“Letter To My Godfather” from “The Black Godfather”
“I’m Standing With You” from “Breakthrough”
“Da Bronx” from “The Bronx USA”
“Into The Unknown” from “Frozen II”
“Stand Up” from “Harriet”
“Catchy Song” from “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part”
“Never Too Late” from “The Lion King”
“Spirit” from “The Lion King”
“Daily Battles” from “Motherless Brooklyn”
“A Glass of Soju” from “Parasite”
“(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from “Rocketman”
“High Above The Water” from “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am”
“I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away” from “Toy Story 4”
“Glasgow” from “Wild Rose”


VISUAL EFFECTS
Ten films remain in the running in the Visual Effects category for the 92nd Academy Awards. The Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee determined the shortlist. All members of the Visual Effects Branch will be invited to view 10-minute excerpts from each of the shortlisted films online or attend satellite bake-off screenings in January 2020. Following the screenings, members will vote to nominate five films for final Oscar consideration.

The films, listed in alphabetical order by title, are:

“Alita: Battle Angel”
“Avengers: Endgame”
“Captain Marvel”
“Cats”
“Gemini Man”
“The Irishman”
“The Lion King”
“1917”
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”
“Terminator: Dark Fate”

Nominations voting begins on Thursday, January 2, 2020 and concludes on Tuesday, January 7, 2020.

Nominations for the 92nd Academy Awards will be announced on Monday, January 13, 2020.

The 92nd Oscars® will be held on Sunday, February 9, 2020, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live on the ABC Television Network. The Oscars also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.

THREADS
Academy Awards (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?20798-The-Academy-Awards)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)
Dolemite is My Name (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70866-Dolemite-Is-My-Name)
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)
Alita (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70210-Alita-Battle-Angel)

[GeneChing]

I'm rather curious to see how this does in PRC. My guess is that China just won't relate to it. It's much more an AmerAZN thing.


DECEMBER 23, 2019 10:15PM PT
‘The Farewell’ Gets New China Release Date (https://variety.com/2019/film/news/the-farewell-lulu-wang-awkwafina-china-release-oscars-1203451477/)
By REBECCA DAVIS
Rebecca Davis

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/the-farewell.jpg?w=1000&h=562&crop=1
CREDIT: COURTESY OF A24

Awkwafina’s “The Farewell,” directed by Beijing-born Lulu Wang, is now scheduled to hit Chinese theaters Jan. 10, nearly two months after its originally announced release date and six months after its U.S. release.

The movie was initially set to appear in Chinese cinemas Nov. 22 but was pulled just two days before, supposedly in the hopes of earning a better slot that wouldn’t put it directly up against “Frozen 2.” It remains to be seen whether any cuts were made by Chinese censors, but at the moment, the film’s listed running time in China remains the same as in the U.S.

“The Farewell’s” monthlong theatrical run in China will now fall between the Golden Globes on Jan. 5 and the Oscars on Feb. 9. The movie has been nominated for best foreign-language film at the Globes, and Awkwafina is in the running for best actress.

Although “The Farewell” was celebrated in the U.S. for its Asian American representation, a number of Chinese distributors initially passed on the title, feeling that its American-ness wouldn’t resonate with mainland Chinese audiences. Maoyan is now distributing and calls the film a U.S.-China co-production.

Besides Awkwafina, “The Farewell” stars Tzi Ma, Diana Lin and Zhao Shuzhen. Though Awkwafina has blown up as a star in the U.S., she remains little known in China, where “Crazy Rich Asians” failed to hit its mark. The romantic comedy made a paltry $1.65 million (RMB11.4 million) in the world’s second-largest film market.

Popular on Variety
The sudden postponement of “The Farewell’s” release in November was one of a slew of last-minute cancellations and changes to this year’s Chinese release calendar. Most of those decisions have come with no explanation, although heightened government censorship is likely the cause in many cases.

[GeneChing]

Winners & Nominees 2020 (https://www.goldenglobes.com/winners-nominees)

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
WINNER
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama
WINNER
Joaquin Phoenix
Joker

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
WINNER
Awkwafina
Farewell, The

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture
WINNER
Brad Pitt
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture
WINNER
Quentin Tarantino
Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood

Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language
WINNER
Parasite
South Korea, Bong Joon Ho

THREADS
The Golden Globes (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71111-The-Golden-Globes)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71455-Joker)
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)

[GeneChing]

Follow the link if you want to hear the interview.


AWARDS JANUARY 5, 2020 7:45PM PT
Awkwafina Makes History With Golden Globe Win (https://variety.com/2020/film/awards/awkwafina-wins-golden-globe-best-musical-comedy-actress-1203456395/)
By ADAM B. VARY

Making Golden Globes history, Awkwafina has won the best actress in a musical or comedy award for her performance in “The Farewell” as Billi, a Chinese American woman who travels back to China with her family to say goodbye to her terminally ill grandmother (Shuzhen Zhao), who does not know she is sick.

The actress took the stage joking, “This is great, thank you. If I fall upon hard times I can sell this, so that’s good.”

She then thanked her family, everyone at A24 and the director Lulu Wang, “You gave me this chance — the chance of a lifetime.”

It’s the first time a performer of Asian descent has won a lead actress Golden Globe Award for a film. Last year, Sandra Oh became the first Asian woman since 1980 to win best actress in a TV drama for BBC America’s “Killing Eve.”

Backstage, Awkwafina commented on the significance of her win. “I just heard that fact and it was pretty mind blowing,” she began. “There’s also this other feeling that you want there to be more, and I hope this is just the beginning.”

She went on to say how “deeply” she connected to the experiences of her character.

“I relate to her mentality a lot,” she said. “A lot of children of immigrants in this country do. We are raised to feel like Americans, and when we go back we’re told we don’t belong there. It’s a constant feeling of being lost in translation, and that’s something that definitely resonated with me.”

When asked about her future involvement with Marvel’s forthcoming “Shang-Chi” picture, the actress remained suitably tight-lipped.

“I’m gonna go do that next,” she said. “I love Destin (Daniel Cretton), I trust him and I think he’s an incredible director. I don’t think I can say more about my character, but I hope she’s awesome.”

A first-time Globes nominee, Awkwafina won over Ana de Armas (“Knives Out”), Cate Blanchett (“Where’d You Go, Bernadette”), Beanie Feldstein (“Booksmart”) and Emma Thompson (“Late Night”).

THREADS
The Golden Globes (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71111-The-Golden-Globes)
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)


It's Qigong (https://www.martialartsmart.com/qigong-or-internal-dvds.html). It's a small yet pivotal scene and gets echoed throughout the film.

I used to disregard Awkwafina for her awkward stage name but she charmed me in Crazy Rich Asians (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70914-Crazy-Rich-Asians). Here she truly impressed me with her acting chops and I won’t mock her name anymore.

[Jimbo]

It's Qigong (https://www.martialartsmart.com/qigong-or-internal-dvds.html). It's a small yet pivotal scene and gets echoed throughout the film.

I used to disregard Awkwafina for her awkward stage name but she charmed me in Crazy Rich Asians (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70914-Crazy-Rich-Asians). Here she truly impressed me with her acting chops and I won’t mock her name anymore. It’s a comic tragedy or a tragic comedy set it modern day PRC and Awkwafina is the only recognizable actor. Writer director Lulu Wang has a keen eye for surreal China, it’s harsh exhausting power and addiction to ritual - I could almost smell China again and it’s been a decade and a half since I’ve been there. A solid and sublime film that’s had me laughing and crying at unexpected moments, as well as sorting my inherited cultural baggage. No fight scenes at all, but worth checking out if you're into Chinese cinema. Also, mark my words, Tzi Ma is on the rise.

I saw this, and while I can’t say it’s a ‘fun’ watch, or that it was particularly ‘entertaining’ for me, I found it compelling to watch. Some (or much) of it hit a bit too close to home, as I lost my mother last month after being her primary caregiver for years.

Awkwafina is a real acting talent who seems able to handle a range of different characters, if needed. Interestingly, many actors who excel at comedic roles also excel at heartbreaking drama.

Tze Ma has been a familiar face at least since the ‘90s, almost always playing a young girl’s or woman’s Chinese dad, or the Chinese scientist. I don’t know if he’s on the rise, or just doing what he’s always been doing, though in The Farewell he played an important role, unlike most of his roles I’ve seen him in.

I was surprised that I could still understand much of the Mandarin dialogue, even though I haven’t really spoken it since I left Taiwan 27 years ago. But I did read the subtitles as well, and here is my complaint: The tiny white subtitles were too often put over white objects in the picture, making them almost impossible to read. Would it have been too hard for them to move the subs for the DVD onto the lower black part of the screen? I probably could have gone without reading them for the most part, but I could imagine others who cannot understand Mandarin at all getting frustrated by the subs.

And yes, the qigong turned out to be surprisingly pivotal.

[GeneChing]

I'm rather curious to see how this does in PRC. My guess is that China just won't relate to it. It's much more an AmerAZN thing. Called it. :cool:


China Box Office: 'The Farewell,' 'Richard Jewell' Both Flop as Local Holdovers Win Slow Weekend (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/china-box-office-farewell-richard-jewell-flop-china-1268915)
11:49 PM PST 1/12/2020 by Patrick Brzeski

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2020/01/the_farewell_bts_splash.jpg
Casi Moss/A24
'The Farewell'

Despite its rave reviews and the China-set story, 'The Farewell' failed to connect with the mainland Chinese filmgoing public, opening to just $290,000.

The second weekend of 2020 made for a downbeat period of moviegoing at multiplexes throughout China, with local holdover releases taking the top three spots at the box office.

New Classic Media's romantic comedy Adoring scored first with $8.8 million, according to Artisan Gateway, a box office tracking company. After two weekends, the film has earned $81.3 million. Kung fu flick Ip Man 4: The Finale was just a step behind with $8.5 million for a $147.7 million total, while Chinese thriller Sheep Without a Shepherd, a remake of an Indian box office hit, took third place with $8 million and $149.6 million after two frames.

Imported releases mostly struggled in China this weekend. Lulu Wang's breakthrough family drama The Farewell landed with a resounding thud, earning only $290,000. That's about as much as the film has earned in Italy, a country with an annual box office just 6 percent the size of China's.

The Farewell's China release has generated curiosity in the industry because of its many Chinese cultural connections.

The film was shot on location in Changchun, China, and most of the dialog is in Mandarin. Based on Wang's own experiences, it tells the story of a young Chinese American woman (played by Awkwafina, who won a Golden Globe for the role) who travels to the Chinese mainland to visit her grandmother after a family decision not to tell the matriarch that she has been diagnosed with cancer.

It also is an official U.S.-China co-production between Los Angeles-based Kindred Spirit and Beijing film company Ray Productions. Produced for $3 million, it sold to A24 for $7 million after earning rave reviews at Sundance. To date, The Farewell has earned $17.6 million in the U.S. and another $2 million internationally. Beijing-based ticketing giant Maoyan Entertainment handled the China release.

But Wang herself understood that the movie's positive reception and Chinese themes wouldn't automatically translate into a bonanza at China's box office. "We've gotten a really tremendous response so far," she told Variety on the red carpet at the Golden Globes last week. "But they’ll also see it’s not really a fully Chinese movie, and I’m really interested to see how they respond to that," she added.

Crazy Rich Asians, a $238 million-earning milestone of Asian American moviemaking, faced similar challenges in China, with many local viewers and online reviewers complaining that the film offered a very American — and at times cartoonish — perspective on Chinese culture. It ended up earning just $1.65 million in the country.

"I do think [The Farewell] is a little bit more Chinese than Crazy Rich Asians, but it's still told through the perspective of an American woman," Wang cautioned at the Globes.

Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell, opening on China's indie distribution circuit, the National Alliance of Arthouse Cinemas, flopped even harder than The Farewell, bringing in just $220,000. Online reviews for the film were positive, but it failed to reach more than a sliver of the audience.

Shark attack horror sequel 47 Meters Down: Uncaged fared modestly better, debuting to $3.5 million. Produced by L.A.-based Entertainment Studios, the flick has a solid shot at matching the $5.8 million earned in 2017 by its predecessor, 47 Meters Down.

Japanese anime Violet Evergarden received high online ratings and opened in fifth place with $3.4 million. The fantasy anime is the most recent theatrical release from Kyoto Animation, the beloved Japanese animation company hit by a deadly arson attack last summer.



Some (or much) of it hit a bit too close to home, as I lost my mother last month after being her primary caregiver for years.
I feel ya, Jimbo. My mom and I were caretakers for my dad for a decade after his stroke and now I'm a caretaker for my mom.


Tze Ma has been a familiar face at least since the ‘90s, almost always playing a young girl’s or woman’s Chinese dad, or the Chinese scientist. I don’t know if he’s on the rise, or just doing what he’s always been doing, though in The Farewell he played an important role, unlike most of his roles I’ve seen him in.
Yep. He's a veteran character actor and has always delivered for years. He was also in Wu Assassins (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=1501) recently. My call on Ma is somewhat based on this and his upcoming role as Mulan (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?68640-Mulan-Live-Action-Disney-project)'s dad. I think Hollywood is going to start really taking notice of him.

[Jimbo]

Called it. :cool:



I feel ya, Jimbo. My mom and I were caretakers for my dad for a decade after his stroke and now I'm a caretaker for my mom.

Bless you, Gene. My mom and I had also caregiven for my dad, who passed away back in 2000. Caregiving can be a tough responsibility, but I’m glad I was able to be there for her.

I’m not surprised at all that the movie flopped in the PRC. And any other American films from an Asian-American (not only Chinese) perspective are going to flop there, too. I strongly believe that in PRC in particular, they want their American movies starring white (and to a lesser degree, black) people. IMO, in the PRC (and probably other East Asian countries, too), an Asian-American perspective is probably incomprehensible, or something they just can’t get into. It probably also didn’t help that in the movie, Awkwafina did not have the typical white American boyfriend/husband, which I give full credit to the filmmakers for sticking to their guns and not caving in to include.

[GeneChing]

Luv this guy. :cool:


JANUARY 17, 2020 12:34PM PT
Hollywood’s Go-To Asian Dad Tzi Ma Dishes on ‘Mulan’ and Oscar Snub for ‘The Farewell’ (https://variety.com/2020/film/news/tzi-ma-the-farewell-disney-mulan-tigertail-alan-yang-awkwafina-1203470589/)
By REBECCA DAVIS

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/tzi_7437.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: KATE SZATMARI

One person who was not surprised that “The Farewell” bid goodbye to any chance of an Oscar earlier this week was actor Tzi Ma, who played Awkwafina’s father in the film.

“I didn’t expect it. There were exactly zero dollars promoting the film in any way,” Ma tells Variety. “Awards are a beauty pageant. People campaign for it. The fact that we made such an audience impact is what made it so important – the recognition that we don’t have to campaign for.”

Yet while the Golden Globe-winning title was hailed as a triumph of Asian American storytelling in the U.S., it has performed disastrously in China, earning less than $1 million despite being shot by a China-born director with a predominantly Chinese cast. Its poor performance raises the question of how Chinese audiences will respond to the “Chinese-ness” of Disney’s “Mulan,” helmed by Kiwi director Niki Caro.

Ma plays the patriarch in “Mulan,” which opens March 27, and will again take on the Asian dad role alongside Joan Chen in Alan Yang’s “Tigertail” for Netflix, forthcoming in April.

With no fear of being typecast, he jokes that he has “already done so many different things – this is just the fun part. My list of screen daughters is powerful. I put that team on a field and we’ll win every game.”

But it remains to be seen whether Chinese actress Liu Yifei’s Mulan will be powerful enough to carry her highly anticipated blockbuster to new heights.

Ma says that whatever its outcome in the world’s second largest film market, the movie’s very existence as a blockbuster of this scale is itself “a statement.”

“It’s rare and unheard of for Disney to (put) down this kind of money for an entirely Asian cast. ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ at $30 million, no problem. But $300 million? I don’t think so.” he said. “I’m proud of this film because the powers that be gave us a lot of money to make it happen.”

He addressed some of the concerns that have arisen around accuracy and representation in “Mulan,” including the complaint that Caro is not Asian or Chinese.

“It’s really unfair – you need to see the work first before you complain about someone you know very little about,” he says. “I just hope that people will at least give the film a chance and judge it on its merits instead of all these biases.”

He himself didn’t know what to expect from Caro or the production at first, as he still hadn’t seen a script even while in talks for the part. “All the studios are doing that now, keeping everything so under wraps. It drives me crazy. This is not Pulitzer Prize-winning writing here,” he jokes.

But Caro ultimately won his confidence with the sensitivity and attention she brought to the film’s female roles, and her mostly female creative team’s attention to historical, period detail.

Yet despite such research, some of the first reactions in China to the “Mulan” trailer were of dismayed befuddlement over historical inaccuracies. This Mulan lives in a traditional “tulou” roundhouse – a visually striking structure, to be sure, but one that didn’t exist until a thousand years after the story is set, and is found only in southern, coastal Fujian province amongst the Hakka people, rather than the hero’s native north.

Ma says such choices were all in service of making the visuals pop. “I hope they can forgive us for that, because the look of it is just so gorgeous. I hope people take it in the spirit of art, rather than nitpick and complain about this or that.”

Although they picked up some second unit shots, the crew didn’t end up actually shooting in China, despite trying for a year to make it happen.

Other viewers have questioned why the “Mulan” characters speak in a Chinglish-like accent. Ma calls it “a slight intonation that hopefully gives the feel of period speech as opposed to accented speech,” explaining that it was a very deliberate decision made in order to make it seem as though the American and non-native English speaking Chinese cast all came from the same time and place.

“You’ve got to find some cohesiveness about this group of people. And it’s a period piece – we don’t want to take you out of the reality of the past,” he says.

Superstar Liu, who is perhaps more revered by mainland Chinese audiences for the classical shape of her face and features than for her acting skills, has in the past been dubbed “box office poison” by her snarkier local critics. But in Ma’s eyes, “she’s the real deal.”

Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters called for a boycott of “Mulan” after Liu posted messages to her social media platforms repeating Communist Party propaganda in support of the local police force there who have been internationally criticized for brutal tactics.

Hong Kong-born Ma doesn’t take a stance himself, but condemns the violence that has occurred on both sides. “Just because I was born in Hong Kong doesn’t mean I know Hong Kong,” he says. “What’s the end game here?”

He also pooh-poohed the monetary might of the boycott itself. “I don’t think it’s going to be impactful,” he says. “Really, what’s Hong Kong going to do? They’re going to ask who to boycott? How many people are going to sympathize with your cause?”

Meanwhile, the very personal film “Tigertail” will showcase a different kind of Asian story at a more intimate scale. Written and directed by “Master of None” co-creater Yang, it spans the 1950s to the present day to tell the story of his father’s decision to leave Taiwan and come to America.

Much of it is in Taiwanese, with the Taiwan-set parts shot on film in Yang’s actual hometown, and New York scenes shot in digital.

“It shows us a side of Alan I didn’t think he had,” Ma says.

In the film, the father character enters an arranged marriage that gives him the opportunity to come to America as a young man, leaving behind his life and a woman he actually loved in Taiwan. Years later, divorced and ready to retire, he returns with his daughter to try and reconnect with his past.

Ma is thrilled to see more Asian American stories getting their time to shine. “Why is it that when we come out we have to hit a ****ing home run every time? Everyone else is afforded the time to grow, to fail and then survive,” he says.

“There are still too few stories about us. Quantity matters. We need the numbers so that all our people’s hopes and dreams aren’t just pinned on one thing.”

THREADS
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)
Mulan (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?68640-Mulan-Live-Action-Disney-project)

[GeneChing]

ASIA JANUARY 20, 2020 6:50AM PT
Why ‘The Farewell’ Flopped In China (https://variety.com/2020/film/news/why-farewell-flopped-in-china-awkwafina-tzi-ma-maoyan-1203471209/)
By REBECCA DAVIS

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/farewell-movie-2019.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: COURTESY OF A24

“The Farewell” has flopped in China with a dismal $261,000 opening weekend gross, and a cumulative of $580,000 so far, once again proving the difficulty of creating content that resonates equally on both sides of the Pacific — even when a story is set in China, features Chinese talent, and unfolds primarily in Mandarin.

Although the film was distributed directly by Maoyan, one of China’s two top online ticketing platforms, the critical darling made a paltry $78,000 on opening day Jan. 11, 2020, accounting for just 1% of the country’s total screenings. Shows were on average only 0.5% occupied, the firm’s own data showed. And opening day was its best day. Percentages of daily total screenings dropped even further since. As it entered its second weekend “The Farewell” had dropped to a dismal 25th at the box office. In another week, it will be utterly swallowed by a swarm of big local blockbusters coming out for Chinese New Year.

“Only like 70,000 people in all of China have seen our film. It’s a bit ridiculous,” lamented the China-side producer Jane Zheng.

Actor Tzi Ma, who plays Awkwafina’s father in the film, likely echoed the thoughts of much of Hollywood when he told Variety he was “really surprised” at the outcome. “I was almost assuming that they wouldn’t even see this as a foreign film. Really, there’s only two Americans cast in the entire thing.” In a country where kids are often raised by their grandparents, he expected it to “hit home a lot more (in China) than anywhere else.”

The failure to do so makes the film one of the most interesting case studies of Asian Hollywood content’s crossover potential since 2018’s “Crazy Rich Asians.” That rom-com made $238 million globally and was hailed as a milestone for Asian American representation in the U.S. But it crash landed with less than $2 million in China, where many people found it difficult to relate to and took offense at what they felt was an overly stereotypical depiction of Asian families and values.

Based on the real-life experiences of China-born American director Lulu Wang, the more intimate and down-to-earth “The Farewell” has nevertheless also failed to connect with a broad Chinese public. Contributing factors include a mixed response to its “Chinese-ness” and a botched marketing approach that failed to convince exhibitors to take a chance on the title.

The film’s original release date was moved from late November to January in hopes of avoiding tougher competitors and riding the U.S. awards season wave. But Oscar nominations ultimately failed to materialize.

“It was very, very difficult to prove to the cinemas that there are people who want to watch it. Without that, even people who want to watch the film won’t be able to find a screening nearby,” Zheng said. “We were quite conservative about how it would do in China, but we did think with [Awkwafina’s] best actress [Golden Globe] win it could be better.”

Working with Maoyan, the title got a bit lost in the shuffle. Maoyan failed to do more “stylized or customized” promotion that could have given a targeted boost to an unusual film that lacked any locally known stars, Zheng admitted. “Maoyan has so many films they’re distributing in any single period, and this was definitely not one of their main projects. But you shouldn’t overlook the specificities of each film,” she said.

“There was an over-reliance on big data, which indicated the audience would be young urban women ages 20-29 in first- and second-tier cities. “We could have reached out to a wider audience base, because to me this is a film for all age groups and all generations,” said Zheng.

At least one scene in the Chinese version was censored. It concerned a story told by the mother of Awkwafina’s character at a banquet about how an American church opened its doors to her daughter and let her use their pianos when the family couldn’t afford one of their own.

From a content perspective, local audiences seem to have deemed “The Farewell” too Chinese to be accepted as a bearer of its American values, and yet too American to be accepted as genuinely Chinese.

Director Wang clearly anticipated this sort of reaction even before the China release. On the red carpet at the Golden Globes, she told Variety: “I do think this film is a little bit more Chinese than ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ but it’s still told through the perspective of an American woman.” Despite a “really tremendous response so far,” she felt viewers would “see that it’s not really a fully Chinese movie,” concluding: “I’m really interested to see how they respond to that.”

Responses have, in the end, been mixed. The title has garnered lackluster 7.3 out of 10 on the taste-making review site Douban and a relatively poor 8.4 out of 10 on Maoyan’s more populist platform.

Many online reviews from viewers have gushed over how recognizable many of the characters and family dynamics felt to them, saying it made them cry or even decide to go home early for Chinese New Year. “I felt like I was at my own family’s gathering or wedding or tomb-sweeping. This film is too real,” one Douban commenter wrote.

But conversely, that familiarity has also bred a feeling of “so what?” The banter, scenes and visuals that give “The Farewell” its charm for American audiences lack novelty for most mainland viewers. “The humor is from Lulu’s perspective, so a lot of it is just too normal for us — things that just happen every day. Do we find it funny? Yes, but maybe less so,” Zheng said.

Other common comments critiqued everything from Awkwafina’s looks — which differ sharply from cliched Chinese beauty standards — to the depiction of Changchun. The city where the story is set was seen as too old-fashioned and so portraying a backward image of China.

“When a Chinese story is told by a so-called non-Chinese person, some people here immediately build up a defensive wall, saying that this is not your story, you don’t have the right to tell it,” said Zheng. “There’s this instant response here that this can’t be authentic.” It’s a spirit she predicts will carry through to Disney’s “Mulan,” manifesting in similarly “very negative and nasty” comments.

Independent critic Yu Yaqin further explained people’s dissatisfaction. “Chinese culture and Chinese people today are really complicated, and have all sorts of differing values. This film wasn’t as bad as ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ but it still over-simplified things.” Furthermore, the topics of cultural difference between China and America and of American-born Chinese identity are ones that current mainland audiences “don’t understand and really aren’t interested in.”

Another Douban reviewer described the disconnect by saying: “It’s not surprising the film is getting the cold shoulder. China in the eyes of foreigners is always more Chinese than China in the eyes of Chinese people.”

I'm now trying to imagine a reversal. An American raised in China has to go back to America and deal with the complexities of American culture. Does that even work? :rolleyes:

[GeneChing]

http://image5.sixthtone.com/image/5/22/940.jpg

Chinese Audiences Debate Chinese-ness of ‘The Farewell’ (https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005069/chinese-audiences-debate-chinese-ness-of-the-farewell)
Movie about Chinese culture, set in China, wows American audiences but flops in mainland premiere.
Kenrick Davis
Jan 13, 2020 4-min read

The award-winning, record-breaking dramedy “The Farewell” raked in a lackluster 1.98 million yuan ($350,700) at the box office in its opening weekend on the Chinese mainland — less than a quarter of the 8.6 million yuan “Crazy Rich Asians,” another Hollywood film about a Chinese family, made in the country over its own weekend premiere just over a year ago.

The more recent film’s China debut comes six months after its U.S. release, and less than a week after lead actor Awkwafina won a Golden Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy, becoming the first woman of Asian descent to win the award in any category.

“The Farewell” — or “Don’t Tell Her,” as it’s called in Chinese — follows a Chinese-American writer, Billi, as she returns to her family’s ancestral home, the northeastern Rust Belt city of Changchun, to visit her grandmother, who has been diagnosed with cancer.

The grandmother, or Nai Nai, as she’s affectionately called in the film, believes the cancer is benign: The film hinges on the fact that her family have opted not to tell the elderly woman that her illness is terminal, convinced that doing so would cause her unnecessary emotional stress.

After a quiet opening weekend at just four theaters in the U.S. in July, the $3 million production received glowing reviews — including 98% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes — and was eventually picked up by nearly 900 theaters. To date, it has raked in $17.7 million at the U.S. box office.

But “The Farewell” seems unlikely to achieve the same success in China. The film was originally slated to be released Nov. 22 but was delayed just two days beforehand — apparently to prevent it from being lost in an avalanche of hype surrounding the surefire success of Disney’s “Frozen 2,” which was opening in China the same weekend.

By the time “The Farewell” finally said hello to China last Friday, many people in the country had already seen it abroad or online, as evidenced by the more than 25,000 reviews the film had on the Chinese review site Douban before its mainland premiere. And when Friday finally rolled around, “The Farewell” accounted for just 1.1% of all domestic screenings.

The Chinese reviews for “The Farewell” have been largely positive, with the film earning a respectable 7.3 out of 10 on Douban and 8.5 out of 10 on ticketing platform Maoyan. Reviewers have praised the film’s realism, dialogue, and acting — especially the stellar performance by Zhao Shuzhen, who plays Nai Nai — and many netizens have opined that the film seems far more relatable to them than the glitzy, high-flying world of 2018’s “Crazy Rich Asians.”

Douban commenters have also called “The Farewell” a bona fide tear-jerker, with some admitting they felt compelled to call their grandparents as soon as they had finished watching.

“Lots of scenes in the film show moments that really happen in northern Chinese families. This is what Asian families are like — not ‘Crazy Rich Asians’,” read a top review on Douban. “Chinese viewers cry as they watch, while American viewers laugh at the cultural differences.”

The U.S. production has copped its share of negative reviews from Chinese audiences, too. Many online critics have said the film feels too American, relies heavily on cultural tropes and stereotypes, and “others,” or exotifies, the weighty issues it attempts to address. “If you look down on Chinese people’s culture so much, then don’t use Chinese as a money-making tool, OK?” commented one Douban user. “If Chinese have a low (social) position, it’s because you only know how to trample them to please white people.”

Apart from depictions of Chinese culture that some perceive as unflattering, however, most of the film-related discussion revolved around Awkwafina’s Golden Globe win.

The historic moment was heralded by Chinese entertainment media as a victory for Asian representation in Hollywood, but many netizens felt that the final decision had come down to political correctness, and were angry that a person they regarded as just another “ugly” actor — or one who may not fit the mold of a classical Chinese beauty — being embraced by the West as a representative of China.

“Americans themselves like faces with shape and large eyes— so how come when it comes to representing Asians, (we) end up with narrow eyes and flat faces?” read the top comment below an entertainment industry commentator’s lengthy post on microblogging platform Weibo. “Don’t talk to me about ‘diverse beauty standards.’ This is discrimination, plain and simple.”

Under a Weibo thread about Awkwafina’s Golden Globe win, however, many Chinese netizens defended the actor against her haters, arguing that she has been unfairly vilified by domestic media.

“People are out there in Europe and America making noise and speaking out for Asian equality, while in China clickbait keyboard warriors can just say she looks very ‘insulting to China’,” wrote one Weibo user. “First, take a good look at yourself: How large and beautiful are your eyes?”

Correction: A previous version of this story mistakenly attributed a quote about Asian beauty standards to an entertainment industry commentator. The quote was the most upvoted comment below the commentator’s post.

Editor: David Paulk.

(Header image: A still from the award-winning film “The Farewell,” which premiered on the Chinese mainland Jan. 10. From Douban)

'exotifies' is a great word. Chinese netizens are vicious.

[Jimbo]

'exotifies' is a great word. Chinese netizens are vicious.

Funny how so many of the Chinese ‘netizens’ are criticizing Awkwafina’s eyes and her appearance. I’d like to see their own real photos. I don’t like to make judgments on others’ appearances, but most of her harshest critics are probably far from beautiful and well below average. This reminds me of when the American of East Indian descent won the Miss America pageant several years ago, and she was heavily criticized in India for being too dark and ugly to represent India. Ridiculous. Asians have eyes of varying shapes, like all other races. It’s a clear and sad commentary on how so many in China and East Asia carry such self-shame around physical appearance. The only East Asian group that seems to have the most consistently “round” or “least slanted” eyes NATURALLY are Japanese with higher degrees of Jomon or Ainu DNA.

Maybe the Chinese ‘netizens’ who are attacking Awkwafina’s looks think she should have had the heavy cosmetic surgery that all of the K-POP women have so they can look like living Japanese anime characters off of an assembly line. I’m guessing most of China’s starlets undergo the same surgery.

It’s sadly ironic that the biggest obstacle to Asian-American representation in Hollywood is coming out of China itself. Since Hollywood kowtows to China, it’s highly likely they’ll be more hesitant to get behind any future movies from an Asian-American perspective.

[GeneChing]

Why Doesn't the Academy Nominate Asians for Best Actor? (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxed7y/why-doesnt-the-academy-awards-oscars-nominate-asians-for-best-actor-bong-joon-ho-parasite?utm_source=vicefbus&fbclid=IwAR1gMXMu64WtqsH7hZ7LGwFjRxoXYHZjQEzze0IDS 1msuvrcZ34f1nXSveM)
Even when predominantly Asian movies earn Oscar nominations, the actors in them don't receive nods for their acting.
By Bettina Makalintal
Jan 17 2020, 4:00am

https://video-images.vice.com/articles/5e20e3e31beb140094a565be/lede/1579214114476-Keon-kyo-Yeo-jeong-Jo-in-Parasite-Courtesy-of-NEON-CJ-Entertainment.jpeg
PHOTO COURTESY NEON ENTERTAINMENT

On Monday, Bong Joon Ho's Parasite became the first South Korean movie to be nominated for Oscars in the categories of Best Picture and Best International Feature Film. Rounding out Parasite's six total nominations were nods for Directing, Film Editing, and Production Design. Despite the film's memorable performances—from Song Kang Ho's palpable tension as he sweats and hides beneath a coffee table to Park So Dam's quick, sharp wit—acknowledgments in acting categories were pointedly missing.

It wasn't just the Academy Awards; the Parasite cast was shut out of acting nods at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs, too. But as Erik Anderson of prediction site Awards Watch pointed out in a now-viral tweet, that's part of a more jarring pattern by the Academy: Even when movies with predominantly Asian casts are nominated for over five Academy Awards, the actors in them aren't acknowledged for their acting.

That's been the case from 1987's Last Emperor (9 nominations) to 2000's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (10) to 2005's Memoirs of a Geisha (six) to 2008's Slumdog Millionaire (10) and 2012's Life of Pi (11), Anderson wrote, and it's happened now with Parasite. So, what gives?

With consideration in so many awards categories, it's clearly not the case that these films are good save for their acting. "They get nods for Best Picture, but they're not getting acting nods," Sylvia Chong, associate professor and director of the University of Virginia's American Studies Program, told VICE in a phone call. "So how did they get to be so wonderful if they're so poorly acted?"

Media studies scholars told VICE that the reasons behind this lack of recognition are multi-layered. With pop culture reflecting society at large, Asian actors face more than just industry issues. Beyond the general lack of distribution of Asian films, the difficulty Asian actors face in breaking into Hollywood's mainstream, and the Academy's mostly-white demographics, Asians in Hollywood must also go up against the racial stereotypes and biases of American society, which inform the way viewers perceive their performances. When it comes to judging the work of Asian actors, the white American mainstream has historically been clouded by bias.

As the Los Angeles Times found in a 2012 report, Oscar voters were 94 percent white and 77 percent male, with Black voters eking out only two percent and Latinx voters making up even less. The Academy's current breakdown isn't clear, but ABC reported last year that based on the most recent numbers provided, it was making steps toward change, with women making up 49 percent of the members added in 2018 and people of color accounting for 38 percent. Despite these efforts, the fact remains that in 2018, people of color still made up only 16 percent of the Academy's overall voting body.

"I think there's a sort of cultural and racial myopia about what emotion might look like in other cultural and racial contexts," Chong said. Calling out performance's from two of this year's Best Actress nominees, Renee Zellwegger in Judy and Scarlett Johansson in Marriage Story, she explained that Americans are used to a specific style of dramatic performance to convey that emotions are deep or legitimate. Combine that with the faulty stereotype that Asians are "inscrutable" and "that they lack emotion," Chong suggested, and Awkwafina's snubbed performance in The Farewell, for example, "might come across as a lack of feeling, being tired" to viewers less versed in the work of Asian actors. Meanwhile, she said, the "emotion on Scarlett Johansson, which we're more accustomed to, becomes the beleaguered wife."

With the continued lack of Asian actors in Hollywood's leading roles, Asian characters aren't afforded the same complexity as those of other races, and viewers might be more hesitant to recognize the technical chops of Asian actors even when they don't realize it.

"When you hire someone to be an Asian in a supporting role, you don't see the work that goes into performing that: You see that as them being themselves," Chong said. "In the earlier part of the century, people preferred blackface or yellowface actors over people from the actual race because what they were doing was seen as requiring actual craft."

It's an extension of the broader perception of Asian people, Chong explained. "It's not just the portrayal of Asian people, but the denigration of Asian people in the social and political sphere. If you're used to seeing Asians as your servants, as coolies, as domestics, you're never going to need to [ascribe] to them real emotion," she said.

A similar perspective was shared by Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist and author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism. "If the stereotype is that Asians are not expressive and the entire enterprise of acting and the reward of the Oscars is about being expressive, those stereotypes work against Asian actors," Yuen told VICE. "There's variation in expression, just as there is variation of expression in Western cultures, but there's racism against Asians: the idea that all Asians look alike, the inability to distinguish between Asians and [different] Asian cultures. Those old racist ideas that Asians have to face in the general culture definitely impact how they fare in popular culture."

While differences in language are often suggested as the barrier to the mainstreaming of foreign film in the United States, Yuen pointed to the fact European actors have been nominated and won in the Academy Awards' acting categories for non-English performances.

"If you think about the European actors who have won, those languages are more similar to English than Asian languages. The nice word is familiarity, but the reality is that it's biased," she said. Further disproving the language debate is the fact that movies like Slumdog Millionaire and Memoirs of a Geisha are either mostly or entirely in English, yet those films' acting nods remain absent.

To Yuen, the Academy's failure to recognize the work of Asian actors is further proof of its need to diversify. "I think the Academy needs to be more aware of its biases and work on inviting people who are not just Americans into the Academy, inviting international filmmakers and artists into the Academy so there can be a more global viewpoint when it comes to awareness of film and also taste," she said.

Yuen speculated, however, that Parasite's specific problem—and the issues affecting the movies Anderson called out—may be even more specific than the Academy as a whole. As she pointed out, each award category is nominated by members of the corresponding branch, with actors nominating actors, directors nominating directors, and so on. The exception is Best Picture, for which all voting members have a say.

"If it's peer-nominated, maybe there's less peer awareness, and it's the actors' fault that they're not nominating their Asian peers," Yuen speculated. "There's a lack of awareness of Asian talent in general, and a lack of opportunities for Asian actors to cross over, and because of the peer nomination, there's a lack of interaction between Asian actors and Hollywood actors—and all of that, I would say, comes down to biases."

It's easy for outsiders to call awards like the Oscars irrelevant or to suggest that we ignore them entirely, but as it stands, they still validate and create new opportunities for creatives, especially those who haven't yet become household names.

"I wish that the Academy Awards were more irrelevant, but the rewards system does open doors for distribution as well as green lighting projects for Asian Americans. It's not irrelevant in that way," Yuen said.

It's not just a conclusion limited to pop culture: If society has to operate through problematic institutions, we can at the very least ask for those systems to get better. While it's too late now for the casts of Parasite or the unfortunately ignored Farewell to receive acting considerations, who knows what films and successes next year might bring?


THREADS
Academy Awards (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?20798-The-Academy-Awards)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)

[GeneChing]

It’s sadly ironic that the biggest obstacle to Asian-American representation in Hollywood is coming out of China itself. Since Hollywood kowtows to China, it’s highly likely they’ll be more hesitant to get behind any future movies from an Asian-American perspective. I don't know. Like I mentioned above, I can't envision an American reversal version of this themed film - a U.S. expat has to return home and gets entangled with U.S. traditions. But maybe because the U.S. doesn't have traditions that are more than two centuries old. And I think Hollywood is so narcissistic that it'll try to emulate The Farewell's success, maybe even whitewash it. :p

Awkwafina reminds me of so many AZN friends of mine - not a specific one but in general. She captures that common spirit of an AmerAZN gal. I used to have issues with her stage name, but she has totally won me over with her talent as an actress.

[Jimbo]

I don't know. Like I mentioned above, I can't envision an American reversal version of this themed film - a U.S. expat has to return home and gets entangled with U.S. traditions. But maybe because the U.S. doesn't have traditions that are more than two centuries old. And I think Hollywood is so narcissistic that it'll try to emulate The Farewell's success, maybe even whitewash it. :p

Awkwafina reminds me of so many AZN friends of mine - not a specific one but in general. She captures that common spirit of an AmerAZN gal. I used to have issues with her stage name, but she has totally won me over with her talent as an actress.

I like Awkwafina, too, and came to like her in the same way you describe. She is a real talent.

The reason I say China could be the reason that Hollywood won’t want to make movies featuring Asian-American stories is financial. Most audiences in China seem to believe that Asian-Americans don’t accurately represent China (which as Americans they shouldn’t have to anyway). But Hollywood kisses China’s @$$ because they want their movies to be succeed in the China market. If China snubs a certain type of movie, Hollywood will be even more hesitant to get behind them. TBH, I don’t see the idea of a story about a white U.S. expat returning home from China as being equivalent or in the same league. But it would probably be more accepted by audiences in both China and the U.S.

[GeneChing]

Hollywood has been trying to crack PRC tastes for years now. I think the most obvious turning point was the Warcraft Redemption (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69449-Warcraft&p=1301266#post1301266). That being said, I don't think they are any closer to cracking it yet. If anything, they're getting ****her from it (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?57225-Chollywood-rising&p=1316988#post1316988). But when it comes to AmerAZN stories, has Hollywood ever really supported it? There was the Joy Luck Club back in '93. Maybe you can make an argument for Pushing Hands (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?31459-INfernal-affairs-Breaking-News-Pushing-Hands) in '91. Recently there was Crazy Rich Asians (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70914-Crazy-Rich-Asians) of course but both that and The Farewell are outliers. I'm hopeful they are signs of a coming trend.

I think when it comes to Chinese representation in Hollywood, a lot will hinge on Mulan (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?68640-Mulan-Live-Action-Disney-project) actually, even though that's NOT an AmerAZN tale.

[Jimbo]

I agree. Another problem I see is that in Hollywood, ‘Asian’ means Chinese. Of course, Asian Indians are the most ubiquitous and successful Asian group in American media, period, but they aren’t constrained in the same way, and are allowed to tell their stories AND be Americanized, in a way those of East Asian descent are not.

But why does it have to be Chinese or Chinese-American? The most overlooked, criminally underrated American story of WWII is the Japanese-American 442nd regimental combat team. EVERY other group, including the Tuskegee Airmen and the Navajo code talkers; and I think even a dog war hero, have been given their due in major Hollywood productions, but not the 442nd. And I don’t count the early-‘50s movie ‘Go For Broke’ which, while ahead of its time, was not a proper representation.

Some people think they know the story about the 442nd, and I know I don’t know it all, but I know enough that if the whole truth were known of their accomplishments on a wide scale, it would open a lot of eyes about what really happened during some of the battles in the European theater. Much of the credit for the 442nd’s accomplishments and sacrifices were actively suppressed and taken by Caucasian units. And I know that THAT would not go over in the U.S., let alone China. If the 442nd had been an African-American unit, the story would have gotten the big screen treatment a long time ago.

[GeneChing]

‘Asian-American actors are ugly & your films make us look backward’: Hollywood sets movies in China, locals don’t want to watch (https://www.rt.com/op-ed/478793-hollywood-china-farewell-failure/)
Michael McCaffrey
Michael McCaffrey lives in Los Angeles where he works as an acting coach, screenwriter and consultant. He is also a freelance film and cultural critic whose work can be read at RT, Counterpunch and at his website mpmacting.com.
21 Jan, 2020 14:04 / Updated 3 days ago

https://cdni.rt.com/files/2020.01/article/5e26f71f85f54055a4771648.jpg
The Farewell (2019) Dir: Lulu Wang © А24 studio

Hollywood thinks that by telling Chinese stories they will woo its massive market they so crave…they couldn’t be more wrong, as the failure of the Farewell amply illustrates.
The critically adored American film, which tells the story of a Chinese-American woman who returns to her ancestral homeland to visit her dying grandmother, opened in China at the weekend.

As The Farewell was written and directed by a Chinese American woman, Lulu Wang, and stars Chinese-American, Golden Globe winning actress Awkwafina, while the film’s dialogue is mostly spoken in Mandarin, Hollywood’s expectations were that the movie would be well received in China.

That did not work out.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RofpAjqwMa8

The Farewell has been largely ignored by Chinese audiences as evidenced by its embarrassingly dismal take at the Chinese box office of just $580,000, and scathing audience reviews from viewers who largely thought that the story was dull, patronizing, and had nothing to say to them.

The film’s failure is reminiscent of the poor showing in China by another Asian themed Hollywood movie, Crazy Rich Asians, which was a breakout smash hit in America in 2018, bringing in $174 million at the US box office. American audiences cheered Crazy Rich Asians largely due to its Asian cast, which was deemed a great success for representation and diversity for Hollywood. In contrast, China, which has plenty of its own movies with all-Asian casts, had no such love for the film as proven by its tepid box office receipts.

Crossing the cultural divide and tapping into the Chinese market has long been the Holy Grail of Hollywood, as every studio executive in town is constantly trying to crack the Chinese code in order to fill their coffers.

Of course, studio executives are not always the most ambitious creative thinkers, so the only plan they’ve been able to come up with thus far is to pander. Not surprisingly, Hollywood’s ham-handed attempts to cater to Chinese audiences have consistently backfired.

Disney thought Asian representation would attract Chinese audiences when they cast Asian-American actress Kelly Marie Tran in a major role in the most recent Star Wars trilogy. The problem was that Ms. Tran (who is of Vietnamese descent anyway, which is like appealing to the English by casting an Italian) did not conform to classical Chinese standards of beauty and thus Chinese audiences never warmed to her.

Chinese audiences have voiced similar complaints regarding Awkwafina, with some Chinese people on social media going so far as to call her “very ugly,” which may be one of the reasons why The Farewell is doing so poorly. And this is before we get to her Mandarin, which was widely considered laughable for a first-generation immigrant, even a one who left China early, according to the plot (the actress herself did not speak Chinese fluently before the film).

Another example of this cultural divide is Simu Liu, a Canadian-Chinese actor who was recently cast in the lead of the upcoming Marvel movie Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Liu is considered handsome by Western standards but some Chinese people say he is “not handsome by Chinese standards” – at least when compared to many of the local action stars – which means Shang-chi might face an uphill battle at the Chinese box office when it comes out.

https://cdni.rt.com/files/2020.01/original/5e26f78120302745a57f6423.jpg
Simu Liu of Marvel Studios' 'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings' © Getty Images for Disney / Alberto E. Rodriguez

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Hollywood has had significant success in China, the world’s second largest film market by revenue.

For instance, of the top 15 highest grossing films in Chinese box office history, four are Hollywood productions. They are Avengers: Endgame, The Fate of the Furious, Furious 7 and Avengers: Infinity War.

It seems Hollywood has not learned the lesson of their Chinese successes though because unlike Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell and even to a certain extent the poorly received latest Star Wars trilogy, the Hollywood films that have found success in China are gigantic franchises telling American stories filled to the brim with spectacle and movie stars…and none of those stars are Chinese.

In 2020 Disney is once again making a major attempt to court the Chinese market by releasing Mulan, a live action adaptation of the 1998 animated film of the same name. While Mulan is based on the Chinese folk story ‘The Ballad of Mulan’ and will boast a very attractive cast of Asian actors, including star Liu Yifei, that is no guarantee of box office success. The 1998 animated Mulan financially flopped in China – though this was before its current cinema-building boom – and one wonders if the live action version is just another culturally tone deaf attempt by Hollywood to try to tell and sell a Chinese story back to the Chinese.

Hollywood’s belief that Chinese audiences want to see Hollywood make Chinese themed-movies with Chinese stars seems to be staggeringly obtuse and based on its own identity politics than how people around the world actually consume entertainment.

China has a thriving film industry all of its own and Chinese audiences don’t clamor to see Chinese stories told from Hollywood’s perspective (even if they’re made by Chinese-American artists) any more than Americans yearn to see American stories told by foreign artists, however, flattering it might be that someone is interested enough in your culture (and pockets) to do that.

Chinese audiences want to see American movies from America and can get over the fact that none of their countrymen look like Chris Hemsworth.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEUXfv87Wpk

At its best, the art form of cinema is a universal language that speaks eloquently across cultural boundaries. For example, American audiences this year have embraced the South Korean film Parasite.

Parasite didn’t try to tell an American story with American actors in an attempt to cash in with US audiences; instead it tells a dramatic and artistically profound Korean story about family and class that connects to people of all cultures and looks fresh to foreign audiences.

Hollywood would be wise to emulate that approach, particularly since it already knows how to dominate the global box office.

And if it does want to make what it thinks are “Asian” stories, it should be culturally humble enough to know that it’s making them primarily for the art house cinemas in Brooklyn, rather than the multiplexes in Beijing.

THREADS
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71109-Shang-Chi-and-the-Legend-of-the-Ten-Rings)
Mulan (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?68640-Mulan-Live-Action-Disney-project)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)