Quote:
An angry miner revolts against the corruption of his village leaders. A migrant worker at home for the New Year discovers the infinite possibilities a firearm can offer. A pretty receptionist at a sauna is pushed to the limit when a rich client assaults her. A young factory worker goes from job to job trying to improve his lot in life. Four people, four different provinces.

Jia’s world has its own geography. It (re)organized China into a personal map, where almost everything starts and ends in the filmmaker’s native province of Shanxi. It is the starting point and the ultimate “home.” This is where Xiao Wu the pickpocket operated, where the itinerant performers of Zhantai (Platform, 2000) roamed, where the sad heroes of Ren xiao yao (Unknown Pleasures, 2002) burnt their lives out, where the migrant worker of San Xia hao ren (Still Life 2006) and Shijie (The World, 2004) came from. This is where Tian zhu ding starts and finishes at the end of a tragic “tour.” The cities of Fenyang or Datong, the countryside and the murderous privatized coal mines have long been a compass to Jia’s filmic China.

Here Shanxi has two “alter ego” characters. One is called “Sanming,” and the other is played by Wang Hongwei. Wang Hongwei was Xiao Wu, and Xiao Wu has a filmic biography that made him a small town crook again in Ren xiao yao. In Tian zhu ding, Wang/Wu dies under the blade of the film’s lady knight, played by Zhao Tao. He did not make a big fortune, his money came from local corruption. The banknotes he slaps Zhao Tao’s Xiaoyu with are somehow archaic: archaic money compared with the very modern money of the clients of the night club “Golden Age.” We see the class differences among crooks and bullies.

The other character mirroring Shanxi and Wang’s Xiao Wu is “Sanming,” the miner, the worker. Not a “favorite actor” and maybe hardly a regular “film character;” more a person and a figure of destiny. Sanming’s status never changes. Time has passed, from his place in Platform as the “about to work at the mine” cousin of Wang Hongwei’s character, to his story as a Shanxi miner looking for his fiancée in Still Life. “Sanming” has not changed: In Tian zhu ding, he is the first person Dahai meets when entering the mine canteen, and the one who sees him off when he goes “hunting.” He is on the boat to Chongqing-Fengjie where we meet again the assassin San’er (actor Wang Baoqiang, who started with Blind Shaft, a film about miners, before becoming a huge TV star). An almost voiceless worker, whose low-key design is the representation of a “prolonged sorrow,” “Sanming” is a figure of the people, the “lao bai xing (“old hundred surnames,” old being here the adjective for a warm touch), workers or peasants, younger or older. Yet Jia’s vision is neither a nostalgic nor a merely compassionate one: it is subtly lyrical. “Sanming” is the hero of a ballad than is sung from film to film, whose virtues are told in an undertone, far from the glossy vulgarity of official images and globalized show-business. In Tian zhu ding, “Sanming” has a younger avatar: Xiao Hui lives the fate of the new age of Chinese industrial boom. Textile and computer factories, huge dormitories, quickly built cities and malls are the coal mines of a globalized economy.

Jia’s geography has its bitterly ironical El Dorado. It is a place that is never seen, but mentioned and referred to in all his films: Mongolia, the province north of Shanxi. “It snows over Mongolia and Shanxi” says the weather forecast Lianrong reads to Xiao Hui at the Golden Age. Mongolia as a mysterious promise of another life, the goal of a journey that will never be made, a dream place, even if a real one. An utopia never to be realized, a new home never to be found, or a “next world” for hungry ghosts. In Tian zhu ding, the Mongolia of San’er’s bandit is Burma, a place where guns are cheap. To each his El Dorado. On Jia’s map, the “capital city” is never seen. It has a name, though: “Zhongnanhai in Peking.” This is where Dahai wants to send his petition. Zhongnanhai is the domain which serves as central headquarters to the government and the Communist Party Central Committee. Some call it “the other forbidden city.” In Tian zhu ding, it is enough for Dahai to write the name. But the post office girl insists that “the address is incomplete.” Another Mongolia, another illusion.

Jia’s geography has a central region: the provinces of Sichuan and the neighbor province of Hubei. This is where Tian zhu ding’s Sanming is going to spend the New Year’s holiday. More specifically, in the city of Fengjie that was wiped out of the map by the Three Gorges Dam (Still Life). San’er is headed to his home village halfway between Wuhan and Chongqing, while Zhao Tao/Xiaoyu’s home city is Yichang. Thus, the triangle where the Three Gorges Dam is. The filmic “central region” is the huge controversial symbol of a country’s official politics of “modernization.” An emblem, a key reality to tell the wiping out of the past, the uprooting of millions. Destruction disguised as construction: a leitmotiv.

Going South means heading toward the “modern world”: a globalized universe where hopes and necessities are confronted with the updated forms of oppression, as dreams are challenged by the glossy illusions of globalized high life. In the South are the “special economic zones” in the province of Canton: the megalopolis of the Pearl River delta (one of the first to open to foreign investments) and Dongguan, where young worker Xiao Hui meets Lianrong, before injustice catches up with him and throws him into despair. In Jia’s geography, the South is the place where linguistics complete the mapping. With extreme attention and precision, he makes every character (professional actor or not) speak the “right” language: whether through dialect or the use of accents. Language is the constant reminder that someone is “from somewhere,” geographically and socially. In the never ending travels of the migrants, dialect is the fragile link with “home”, the basis for some solidarity, the last trace of a personal identity. The presence of national standard Chinese (continental putonghua and Taiwanese guoyu) is clearly here an occasion for a critical variation on “newspeaks”: the communist vocabulary is a farce in the “leader’s train wagon” sex play, television shouts the bombastic formulas of “harmonious” society, the welcoming sentences imposed by the night club manager are the archaic formulas of old times servility, and the businessmen’s language is an anthology of readymade managerial slogans. There is a crisis in language. Dialects and accents are a territory where language is neither “communication” nor coercion but a fragile means of free expression and resistance. […] (Marie-Pierre Duhamel)

Tian.Zhu.Ding.2013.REPACK.VOSTFR.BDRip.x264.AC3-KINeMA.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	2h 9mn
Size:	2.56 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	1024x426
Aspect ratio:	2.40:1
Frame rate:	23.976 fps
Bit rate:	2 318 Kbps
Audio
English 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/98F215175082CB4/Tian.Zhu.Ding.2013.REPACK.VOSTFR.BDRip.x264.AC3-KINeMA.mkv

Language:Chinese
Subtitles:English, French

The post Zhangke Jia – Tian zhu ding AKA A Touch of Sin (2013) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis
Two Chinese miners, who make money by killing fellow miners and then extorting money from the mine owner to keep quiet about the “accident”, happen upon their latest victim. But one of them begins to have second thoughts.

1.59GB | 1h 28mn | 981×552 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/F553B6523D2F3CD/Blind.Shaft.2003.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):Chinese
Subtitles:English, French, Chinese

The post Yang Li – Mang jing AKA Blind Shaft (2003) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Chinese comedy superstar Huang Bo (“Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons”) makes a good first stab at directing with “The Island,” an entertaining if overlong dramedy about company workers splitting into rival factions after being shipwrecked on a desert island. This mix of broad humor, survivalist drama and romance opens brightly and ends with a bang but stutters a little in the middle. Huang’s name and a cast including box-office draws Shu Qi and Wang Baoqiang should ensure strong domestic business, while the universally accessible “Lord of the Flies”-like premise ought to help attract audiences in offshore markets. “The Island” opens in China, North America, and several other international territories on Aug. 10.

Huang, who collaborated on the screenplay with no less than six writers, also plays the central role of Ma Jin, a debt-ridden, middle-aged loser. Along with goofy best buddy Xing (Zhang Yixin), Ma is obliged to participate in a corporate team-building exercise on an amphibious bus called the Surfing Duck Boat. Before the craft has even hit the water, it’s clear Ma cares little about the rah-rah rallying of boss Zhang (Yu Hewei) and only has eyes for Shan Shan (Shu Qi), a colleague he adores but is too scared to talk to.

Funny lines and amusing sight gags pepper the opening sequences, culminating in Ma going ape when the numbers on his 60 million RMB ($8.8 million) lottery ticket come in. In the blink of an eye the bus is hit by a tsunami triggered by a meteor passing dangerously close to Earth. Following a spectacular sequence in which the vehicle narrowly avoids underwater collisions with a massive freighter and a huge whale, it lands on an island in the middle of nowhere.

Without any means of communication and thinking they may be the only survivors of Doomsday itself, the 29-member group soon begins squabbling. While not devoid of humorous moments, the film’s middle section plays out primarily as a political allegory and study in human reaction to adversity. First to emerge as leader is bus driver Dicky Wang (“Lost in Thailand” star Wang Baoqiang), a former soldier and circus monkey trainer who uses violence and intimidation to establish a dictatorship. A breakaway group led by Zhang and pony-tailed heavy Yang Hong (Fang Xiaohang) set up camp in an overturned ship that has washed up on a beach and introduce a capitalist-style trading system with playing cards serving as the new currency.

Though the pace drags with a few too many scenes showing how power corrupts everyone it touches, the film leaps back to life when Ma and Xing emerge as peacemakers. Their diplomacy unites warring parties and initiates a period of collective harmony that includes a delightful, flash mob-style dance sequence. What many viewers will find most satisfying is Ma’s motivation for bringing an end to factional hostilities. After resigning himself to never collecting the lottery winnings, Ma wants only to prove himself worthy of Shan Shan’s love. Seen only briefly thus far as the voice of reason in a world going mad, Shu steps into the spotlight at this point with all the screen magnetism she’s become famous for (in films such as “If You Are the One” and “The Assassin”).

Now firmly anchored by this appealing odd-couple romance, “The Island” packs in plenty more plot twists en route to a highly satisfying finale that is somewhat undercut by the inclusion of “what happened next” footage during the lengthy end-credit roll.

Attractively filmed on stunning locations, “The Island” is very well served by an eclectic score that includes everything from jazzy jungle rhythms to atmospheric synthesizer soundscapes that wouldn’t be out of place on an early ’70s Krautrock album. All other technical contributions are right on the money.

Bo Huang - (2018) The Island.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 13 min
Size: 	2.44 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x456 
Aspect ratio:  	2.25:1
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 165 kb/s
BPP: 	0.193
Audio
#1:  	Chinese 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/46FD20A0263079D/Bo_Huang_-_(2018)_The_Island.mkv

Language(s):Mandarin
Subtitles:English

The post Bo Huang – The Island (2018) first appeared on Cinema of the World.