‘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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Tag Archives: Mandarin
Farewell My Concubine (1993) Kaige Chen, Leslie Cheung, Fengyi Zhang, Li Gong, Drama, Romance, Music
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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Song hua jiang shang / Along the Sungari River (1947) Shan Jin, Drama
Unfortunate events beset a poor Chinese girl as she escapes from invading Japanese forces, narrowly avoids being raped, and seeks solace in a neighboring village.
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Du bei dao / The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) Cheh Chang, Yu Wang, Chiao Chiao, Chung-Hsin Huang, Action, Drama
An evil gang attacks the Chi school of Golden Sword Kung Fu. One student sacrifices his life to save his teacher and his school, his dying wish is that his son be taken in as a student. Young Fang Kang grows up in the school and treasures his father’s broken sword and the memory of his father’s sacrifice. The other students (including the teacher’s daughter) resent him and try to drive him away. The teacher’s daughter challenges him to a fight and when he refuses she becomes enraged and recklessly chops off his arm! He retreats, broken and bloody, and is found by a young poor girl living alone who nurses him back to health. Meanwhile, the evil gang who originally attacked the Golden Sword school develops a weapon that renders the Golden Sword useless and starts killing off all of the schools students. Fang Kang eventually recovers with the girl’s help but must now face a life with only one arm. Will he be able to recover and live to defend the school as his father did?
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Xi yan / Garcon d’honneur / The Wedding Banquet (1993) Ang Lee, Winston Chao, May Chin, Ya-Lei Kuei, Comedy, Drama, Romance
A gay New Yorker stages a marriage of convenience with a young woman to satisfy his traditional Taiwanese family, but the wedding becomes a major inconvenience when his parents fly in for the ceremony…
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Fu cheng mi shi / Mystery (2012) Ye Lou, Lei Hao, Hao Qin, Xi Qi, Feng Zu, Thriller, Crime, Drama
China’s enfant terrible Lou Ye returns after a five-year government ban on filmmaking with Mystery (2012), a rain-soaked melodrama set against the disconsolate mist of Wuhan’s impetuously erected industrial landscape. Opening with an explosive car crash, Ye’s latest is a tangled wreck of moral impasses and social inspection. Slicing through a sheet of unrelenting rainfall, two modified sports cars – driven by a group of insufferably affluent kids – race through the streets of the Hubei province capital. Their recklessness is dramatically halted, however, when they fail to notice a young woman who has wandered into the road.
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A Brighter Summer Day / Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian (1991) Edward Yang, Chen Chang, Lisa Yang, Kuo-Chu Chang, Crime, Drama, Romance
Among the most praised and sought-after titles in all contemporary film, this singular masterpiece of Taiwanese cinema, directed by Edward Yang, finally comes to home video in the United States. Set in the early sixties in Taiwan, A Brighter Summer Day is based on the true story of a crime that rocked the nation. A film of both sprawling scope and tender intimacy, this novelistic, patiently observed epic centers on the gradual, inexorable fall of a young teenager (Chen Chang, in his first role) from innocence to juvenile delinquency, and is set against a simmering backdrop of restless youth, rock and roll, and political turmoil.
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Spider Lilies / Ci qing (2007) Zero Chou, Rainie Yang, Isabella Leong, Kris Shen, Drama, Romance
Jade (Taiwanese singer Rainie Yang) is a cute, young webcam performer who thinks that getting a tattoo will enhance her sexy performance skills. Upon venturing out to the tattoo parlor owned by half-Japanese ink-slinger Takeko (Isabella Leong), Jade recalls a crush she harbored ten years ago. Subsequently entering into a surreal cyberspace seduction that emerges through computer images, flashbacks, and lavish costumes highlighted by lime-green wigs, Takeko finds the lines between reality and fantasy blurring as Jade’s teasing slowly chips away at her fragile facade.
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The Four 3 / Si da ming bu 3 (2014) Gordon Chan, Ronald Cheng, Collin Chou, Chao Deng, Action
Emotionless has left Six Doors, as has Cold Blood, who has decided to investigate the death of Lord Bu on his own. The departure of two of the four constables has effectively left Six Doors defunct. At this time, trouble begins to brew in the Imperial Palace as Emperor Huizong plans to travel incognito to the outside world. When he is almost assassinated and subsequently disappears, Cold Blood, Emotionless, Iron Hands and Life Snatcher must band together once again under Master Zhuge to save the empire from a massive conspiracy.
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Xue chan / Little Moth (2007) Tao Peng, Yuanbing Gao, Dequn Han, Qifa Hong, Drama
A couple purchases an eleven-year old girl who cannot walk, with the intention of using her to earn money through begging.
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