Chinese Movie Database Blog

Director Tsai Ming-Liang’s new film I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone is about to release in Taiwan. However Taiwan’s Government Information Office (GIO) censored the poster as well as classifed the movie as Restricted (only 18 and over are permitted to watch the movie), which caused objection from the director and supporters.

GIO’s ruling means the poster in question, which is from one scene of the movie, is prohibited from being displayed in public. GIO cited the reason as the image on the poster may encourage the recent trend that teenages take pictures of their own body parts and post them on to the internet. GIO also classified the movies as Restricted because of some explicit sexual scenes.

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An earthquake in the Pacific could affect Chinese Movie Database’s visit number, and that’s what just has happened. Most of the visitors of Chinese Movie Database come from Asia, while the server of dianying.com is located in the US. An earthquake that struck off Taiwan’s southern coast, although did not claim many lives, damaged the submarine telecommunication cable connecting Asia and US as well as Europe. The authorities of Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Korea all reported interruption of telecommunication and reduced capacity.

So on the pageviews of the Jianti (simplified Chinese) version of Chinese Movie Database was down from 20k to 5k, while the Fanti (Traditional Chinese) version was down to half, from 8k to 4k. The English version, which is used mainly by visitors from outside Asia, was not greatly affected.

It’s said repairing the cable could take weeks, but most of the usage should be back to normal within days. I’m looking forward to that.

How is Your Fish Today?
UK 2006 In Putonghua with English subtitles
director: Guo Xiaolu
writer: Rao Hui, Guo Xiaolu

Screenwriter Rao Hui is writing a script for a thrill for a TV movie. His protagonist is a young man of similar age, Lin Hao, who kills his girlfriend in an arguement and flees from his southen hometown, travels across China on train, briefly stops in Beijing and meets a unnamed girl, then sets off towards the northest point of China, a village called Mohe, a place romanticised for this tranquility and beautiful arora in Chinese school textbook. Meanwhile, Rao Hui wanders around his Beijing flat, tries to keep his plant and gold fish alive, drinks tea, and watchs pirated western movie DVDs. While deciding the fate of Lin Hao, he decides to travel to Mohe himself by train. Will Rao Hui, and Lin Hao, find the answer in Mohe?

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There is a sudden surge of interest in the actress Zhang Yu lately. Although actress Zhang Yu (张瑜) was famous in the 80’s of China and no doubt a screen lover of many Chinese young men of the time, who subsequently came back to the screen after marriage, she’s not the person the search is aimed for.

The person at the center of attention is the actress Zhang Yu (张钰), an actress who is, let me put it this way, still looking for her first breakthrough. Since 2000, she’s appeared in several TV series playing minor part. Not many people noticed her, until now. She claimed recently in her blog that several persons in the industry demand “sex for part” and their promises have never materialised after the sex. To prove her point, she did the fasionable thing. She posted a couple of ’sex videos’ on the internet, along with ‘a letter to the nation’. And she promised there are more.

What’s interesing is that in the YouTube age, the preceived victims of such scandals now can fight back with the shaky, blurred and pixelated videos, a suitable weapon for the industry. For Zhang Yu (张钰), she is having her 15 minutes fame now. There is even a blog entry dedicated to document her appearance in every TV series she’s in. A sort of fan site really. Whether she will get a major part in a movie/TV series after all these is quite doubtful.

Chinese Movie Database has been moved to a new server, which boasts dual Xeon 2.8GHz and 4GB memory. The server need upgrading because the old one could no longer cop with the heavy load. The system and software of the new server is very similar to the old one, so I expected a smooth transfer. Nothing is straight forward however…

First there was an error in php compilation which causes abortion of php scripts. Then I underestimated the complexity of MySQL 4.0 to 4.1 upgrading. When the two problems happen at the same time, I was further confused. For several days, I was very frustrated. My host provider stepped in to solve the first problem. The second problem, is somewhat solved. The website is now running fine. However I can’t edit the database through phpMyAdmin. The database is in UTF-8, but using phpMyAdmin I can’t make the Chinese characters being displayed correctly. This is very strang. If you know where the problem comes from, I’ll be glad to hear your suggestion and comments.

Chinese Movie Database is the database of mainly Chinese language movies. The Database include 1) movies whose main dialogue is in standardised spoken Chinese (mandarin or putonghua) or regional dialects (e.g. Cantonese), 2) early (1910-1930’s) silent movies made by Chinese filmmakers, 3) movies not in Chinese but set in China, or are closely related to Chinese society, culture and history, and 4) movies not in Chinese but in which Chinese talents play important or starring roles. For the movies in 3) and 4) you will see a [non-Chinese] tag attached to them.

Besides the common language, Chinese films, in most of the cases,  can all claim their root in 20-30’s Shanghai film industry. So instead of breaking down Chinese-language movies according to regional boundary, I built a database covering all Chinese movies (before- and post-1949 of mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, Singapore and other regions). Last ten years see the frequent cooperation between different regions in finance, management and talent, thus further blurring of the line.

Chinese Movie Database is originally set up only for films. Starting from 2006, Chinese TV programmes have also been included. TV programmes include TV series, single TV drama, TV Movie and TV documentaries. I’m also looking into a new format of movie recently. Short digital videos are flourishing and have gained lots of audiences. The quality of some (like those by Danwei TV) is pretty high. I think Chinese Movie Database should start to include them at some time.