Tag Archives: China

Supreme Sword (1969) Action

supreme-sword-1969
The film is laced with quite a few good extended action scenes and more violent that usual. There’s an arm lopped off and two men get speared by two halves of a broken staff. In addition, there’s an ‘eat the rice’ scene and the end fight with the underground tunneling certainly reminded me of the end of Tsui Hark’s Dragon Inn, except this time it’s a beach not a desert. Early in the film there is a Sam the Seed-like scene where Fang, sleeping outdoors on a beam has it cut out from under him, but his skills are such that he remains undisturbed asleep cross-legged.
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Zen Master 6 / Shin chung luk jo (1987) Lieh Lo, Action

zen-master-6-aka-shin-chung-luk-jo-1987
Good Shaolin monk story. Actually contains some interesting Buddhist thought. Martial arts directed by Yuen Biao, and it shows. Impressive wu shu performances throughout. Lengthy training scenes, excellent finale. Story has a dead spot in the middle in which the hero (the annointed Shaolin successor) wanders the country in disguise and saves a town from being overrun by bandits.
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Ai qing de ya chi / Teeth of Love (2007) Yuxin Zhuang, Bingyan Yan, Hongtao Li, Naiwen Li, Drama

ai-qing-de-ya-chi-aka-teeth-of-love-2007
In her teenage years, Qian Yiehong (Yan Bingyan) rejected a boy out of political differences. He hit her back with a brick, and since then her back has hurt whenever it rains. Some time later, she falls in love with a married man, but he betrays her in the end, leaving her with the pain of abortion. Qian finally gets married to a man whom she does not love. But when she divorces him, he brutally extract his tooth to give as a souvenir to her…
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Never Gone (2016) Zhou Tuo Ru, Kris Wu, Yifei Liu, Shijia Jin, Drama, Romance

never-gone-2016
The story started in high school. Su Yunjin (Liu Yifei) is a struggling transfer student from a regional town, while rich heir Cheng Zheng (Kris Wu) is the star student who sits behind her. He fell in love with her and started to pursue her all the way through college, even though they studied and lived in different cities. Cheng Zheng was ultimately successful in pursuing Su Yunjin, who willed herself to follow her heart for once, even though she knew there would be many obstacles in their way. Soon, they were basking in happiness, and subsequently moved in together after university. However, reality caught up with them two years after graduation. Their vastly different personalities and disparate family background meant their relationship was unequal from the very beginning – their unspoken expectations of each other and all the misunderstandings that came with a mundane lifestyle caused them to part ways with each other.[3] A few years later, both of them establish successful careers, and end up living in the same neighborhood, thus meeting and getting entangled in each other’s lives again. They both try to move on with different relationships, but are unsuccessful. When Su Yunjin loses her mother to cancer, Cheng Zheng is the only one to comfort her, causing the former to rekindle their relationship.
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Nu Guo – In the Name of the Mother (2014) Documentary

Nu Guo - In the Name of the Mother (2014)
In China, in the foothills of the Himalayas, a non-violent egalitarian society has for millennia offered proof that a harmonious and peaceful life is still possible. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations the Mosuo were recognized as a “model society”. On what basis does this community of about 50,000 people function? Above all, for how much longer can it resist the pressures of a market economy engendered by strategically organized mass tourism? In a landscape of outstanding beauty, encounters and testimonies draw us closer to the traditional values cherished by this ethnic group confronted by a crucial challenge: how to safeguard the essence of its identity from destruction and not succumb, as have so many other societies, to the impact of unconstrained globalization.
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Huang tu di / Yellow Earth (1984) Kaige Chen, Xueqi Wang, Bai Xue, Quiang Liu, Drama, Music

Huang tu di AKA Yellow Earth (1984)
‘Yellow Earth’ focuses on the story of a communist soldier who is sent to the countryside to collect folk songs for the Communist Revolution. There he stays with a peasant family and learns that the happy songs he was sent to collect do not exist; the songs he finds are about hardship and suffering. He returns to the army, but promises to come back for the young girl, Cuiqiao, who has been spell-bound by his talk of the freedom women have under communist rule and who wants to join the Communist Army.
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Farewell My Concubine (1993) Kaige Chen, Leslie Cheung, Fengyi Zhang, Li Gong, Drama, Romance, Music

Farewell My Concubine (1993)
In 1924, young Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) begins training at the Beijing Opera House at the same time as Duan Xiaolou (Fengyi Zhang). Cheng specializes in playing female parts, often against Duan’s commanding male leads. While pretending to be in love with Duan onstage, Cheng begins to develop actual romantic feelings for his co-star, which are not reciprocated. Over the next 50 years, the two men maintain a complicated friendship as China undergoes turbulent changes.
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