During the Tang Dynasty’s era of “Zhen Guan” (era name during rule of Emperor Taizong), the young Xuan Zang monk, in his quest for the knowledge in Buddhism, embarked on a journey to India, that is fraught with perils and dangers, natural disasters, and sees the sufferings of the common people. Soldiers gets in his way, his disciples betrays him, he struggles through deserts, runs short of food and water, all in the quest for Buddha’s teachings. He finally arrives in India, and studies Buddhism in earnest. By the time he returns to China, he is already 50 years old.

Da.Tang.Xuan.Zang.2016.720p.BluRay.DD5.1.x264-IDE.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 59mn
Size:	4.92 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	1280x480
Aspect ratio:	2.667
Frame rate:	24.000 fps
Bit rate:	5 114 Kbps
Audio
Chinese 5.1ch AC-3 @ 640 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/B18BB0B14352E38/Da.Tang.Xuan.Zang.2016.720p.BluRay.DD5.1.x264-IDE.mkv

Language(s):Chinese
Subtitles:Chinese, English

The post Jianqi Huo – Da Tang Xuan Zang (2016) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Being shelved for four years over censorship issues sounds like a death knell for any film, and yet in the case of Ning Hao’s No Man’s Land, it may actually have been a considerable boon : indeed, the four-years delay meant that the film came out after the comedy Lost In Thailand, which starred two of the leads of No Man’s Land (Xu Zheng and Huang Bo), and thus became positioned as their follow-up to what is still the all-time highest-grossing Chinese film in China. It did however lose its potential status as China’s very first modern-day set western – with Gao Qunshu’s Wind Blast having been released in the meantime – though in truth it is closer to a film noir than a western, with moody voice-over and a cynical outlook on human nature. It tells of an arrogant big city lawyer (Xu Zheng) who travels to the far west of China to plead the case of a falcon trafficker (Togbye), then tries to rush back to the city to close a book deal on that very case.

But he runs afoul of the trafficker’s scabby assistant (Huang Bo), as well as spiteful cops, angry truck drivers, and sordid petrol station owners, becoming the de facto protector of a desperate prostitute (Yu Nan) in the process. No Man’s Land often recalls Oliver Stone’s U-Turn, with which it shares an almost fantasmagorical level of bad luck and human scum thrust upon an almost unlikeable main character. And like that 1997 film, it starts out delightfully dark and funny, then loses steam with its thudding cynicism and an overdose of plot turns that are less fresh and witty than the director seems to think. Still, it’s a fun ride with great turns from Togbye as a monolithic bandit and Yu Nan as the only likeable character of the film and the incarnation of the softer side of Ning Hao’s pitch dark vision.

15.5GB | 1h 57m | 1955×832 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/8FED7540509EDAD/No.Mans.Land.2013.CHINESE.1080p.BluRay.x264.DTS-WiKi.mkv

Language(s):Chinese
Subtitles:English

The post Hao Ning – Wu ren qu AKA No Man’s Land (2013) first appeared on Cinema of the World.