03/20/2011

Reel China: Targets an elusive film fan — the Chinese American

60197802 Masanobu Ando as "The Chef" in the movie "The Butcher, The Chef and the Swordsman" from China Lion Film Distribution and Fox International Productions. (China Lion Film)

 

For years, Chinese films shown in U.S. theaters have fallen into two distinct camps, both driven by largely white patrons: martial-arts movies for young men, such as Jet Li's "Hero," or critically acclaimed art-house fare, such as Kaige Chen's "Farewell My Concubine." Only rarely has a movie conquered both blocs, as did Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

"The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman," a Mandarin-language action comedy that hit U.S. screens this weekend, is a bit of a different animal — it has sword fights but also a music video, hand-drawn animation, slapstick jokes, split screens, black-and-white photography, opera, a video game and even a point-of-view shot from the eyes of a decapitated warrior. The movie's distributor, China Lion, hopes the over-the-top mix will lure a new audience to cinemas: mainstream Chinese American film buffs.

More than 3.5 million people of Chinese descent live in the United States, according to 2007 data, and more than 1.3 million reside in Canada. But as film distributors have discovered, many Chinese movie fans simply don't go to theaters here. They're accustomed to watching films on specialty cable TV channels, over the Internet or on pirated DVDs — bootleg discs of the latest Chinese movies are often available in the United States within three days of their home country release.

L.A.-based China Lion and AMC Entertainment launched their exhibition partnership last fall, and their programming reflects not only the globalization of the entertainment industry but also the increasing sophistication and commercialization of China's film business. The first three China Lion releases, though, have generated rather modest box-office returns.

Read more at The Los Angeles Times

Mar 20, 2011 12:27:16 PM | Film

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
The Salt March – in China While Japanese engineers battled to avert meltdown in Fukushima, thousands of panicky Chinese — on the mainland building nearly half the world’s new nuclear plants — were scrambling into supermarkets. Starting from the east coast to cities far inland, a wave of mass radiation hysteria spreading through the internet and text messages galvanised the great Chinese march for salt. After the salt sold out — in Beijing, Chongqing, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan, Jiangsu and Hubei provinces — the customers grabbed bottles of salty sauce. “The salt in the store was over so I bought a bottle of soybean sauce,”...
PREVIOUS POST
Tibetans vote to elect new leader, parliament New Delhi - Tibetans across the world were Sunday voting for a new leader after the Dalai Lama announced his retirement as the leader of the government-in-exile. An estimated 83,399 Tibetans are eligible to vote for a new prime minister, or Kalon Tripa, and a 43-member parliament amid concerns over how the change would impact the Tibetan struggle against China. 'Voting has been brisk across India where most of our electorate is based,' said chief election commissioner Jamphel Choesang in India's northern hill-town of Dharamsala, where the government-in- exile is based. Tibetans in Nepal, Bhutan, the United States, Russia, European...