What was the last Chinese film you watched?

[Lu]

The Japanese I mentioned is used like 外來語 in the film. The ones I heard are yamete (this is frequently used in porn stuff), omiyage and sabishii. The first two appeared more than once. I wonder if these have been absorbed in the daily vocab of Taiwan people.

I can't speak for the 1980s, but I've never heard any of these used in Taiwan in normal conversation. There are certainly some Japanese loanwords (obasan comes to mind) but I never heard these.

[Sarevok]

Watched 听风者some 2-3 weeks ago, I would give it 6,5/10. I like spy flicks and watched quite a lot TV shows with the CCP vs. KMT spy war setting. There was some good acting in this one, but from a certain point, the story and a number of plot twists got pretty predictable...

[skylee]

I watched 寒戰 (Cold War) yesterday. I don't think I like it. But 梁家輝 is brilliant in the ICAC scene.

[Meng Lelan]

台灣書院 came to San Antonio to do a free showing of 雞排英雄, I took the kids and we all liked it especially the ending where everyone is hiphop dancing together.

[OneEye]

I watched 《那些年，我們一起追的女孩》 today. I thought it was funny, and touching at times, though nothing life-altering. Some fun dialogue to model, and some new 髒話 to learn, so all in all a productive 110 minutes. I'm going to watch it again soon to look up some of the words I didn't catch the first time through (I watched it sans subtitles on YouTube).

[Meng Lelan]

I watched 《那些年，我們一起追的女孩》 today

I've seen that one too, that film did very well at the box office in Taiwan.

[skylee]

那些年 is ok. But I like 女朋友.男朋友 better.

[陳德聰]

@skylee I watched 寒战 yesterday too and I gotta agree there was something magical going on in that scene... But I watched the dubbed 國語 version so it was kind of odd at times.

[smurese]

My interest was piqued by that new Hong Kong crime thriller with big stars, 寒戰 (Cold War), mentioned by @Skylee and @陳德聰.

[ http://big5.xinhuane...c_123945148.htm ]

[ http://lisaaaliz.tum...048/my-new-love ]

I was surprised to see this name, AARIF RAHMAN (Chinese name 李治廷 Lǐ Zhìtíng, Lei5 Zi6-ting4 in Cantonese), as the Hong Kong actor playing ICAC Officer Billy Cheung. (I know there are some stars in the Chinese entertainment industry of mixed race, but I guess I just haven't been keeping up with the scene in recent years.)

Turns out he played Bruce Lee in the 2010 movie "Young Bruce Lee" (also known as "Bruce Lee, My Brother"), and actually came to stardom singing Canto-pop in 2009. Looks like 2009 and 2010 were very busy years for him as 2010 was the year he appeared in three separate HK movies.

[ http://christayang.t...hes-so-handsome ]

[ http://teaser-traile...ovie/bruce-lee/ ]

He says he is a fourth generation Hongkonger: his mother is Hong Kong Chinese, while he has Malay and Arab heritage from his father's side.

It also turns out his young career is closely linked with that of another, slightly older, HK Chinese entertainment star with mixed ethnicity from the same record label (Leon Lai's Amusic aka East Asia Records), JANICE VIDAL. Being the lyricist on her 2009 album was among one of the first things he did in the music industry, and they've done duets and other musical cooperation; and they've starred in at least one film together (before being picked for the Bruce Lee flick).

Both Janice (known as 卫兰 Wèi lán, 衛蘭 wai6 laan4 Cantonese) and her twin sister Jill (known as 卫兰 Wèi shī, 衛

詩 Wai6

si1 Cantonese) were signed up by Amusic in 2005 (perhaps to rival the popular 2001 "Twins" HK duo - who aren't really related by birth at all - and the bright 2005 industry debut of the Chinese singing Eurasian ACCONCI twins of "SOLER", both groups from record companies in competition with Amusic).

Janice and Jill were born in Hong Kong to a Chinese-Korean mother from Seoul and a Filipino father. It all sounds a little complicated: "The twins' parents divorced when they were babies and when their Chinese-Korean mother took Wei Lan to Korea, Wei Si and her father went to live in Canada. The twins did not know of each other's existence until they reached their teens and were reunited in Hong Kong where they went on to live with their father," says the HK Standard.

[ http://ent.sina.com....1/244289/1.html ]

[ http://ent.people.co...56/9334883.html ]

Perhaps in the HK entertainment industry, "mixed race" might probably be the next gimmick for market success after the concept of having "twins"...?

(Ooops... If you are up to date with the HK entertainment scene, I guess you already know all about it...)

[skylee]

The general opinion (and mine too) seems to be that AARIF RAHMAN (Chinese name 李治廷 Lǐ Zhìtíng) is the weakest of the main actors in the film. He is not yet up to it. But he was quite good in 歲月神偷. And

.

[Feicui]

I definetely offer 山楂树之恋。Its so romantic and i think its good option for listening exercise. I can clearly understand what they are talking about , I mean their pronounciation!

Best

[Reel China]

The last Chinese film I watched was "Last Train Home", a documentary about migrant workers in China taking the train home once a year for Chinese New Year. Amazing story telling and incredible images of the biggest human migration in the world.

[amandagmu]

Last Train Home - amazing.

I just finished EyeSteelFilm's China Heavyweight (dir Yung Chang, Canadian), although most of it was in Sichuanese so I really appreciated the subtitles. The movie just won the Golden Horse for best documentary. I liked following the main characters, but I think the plot line could have been stronger -- in particular, I would have liked to see more on the peasant students training at the lower levels, and I was curious as to why they kept showing the recruitment of girls but never followed through on actually showing their training... anyways, I'm a sucker for documentaries that offer different perspectives on topics that often pop-up in the media (in this case 体育 and athletes). I downloaded it via iTunes with my U.S. account, not sure if others will be able to do the same thing.

[Meng Lelan]

The last Chinese film I watched was "Last Train Home", a documentary about migrant workers in China taking the train home once a year for Chinese New Year.

Saw that one too. At first I thought how nice the granny takes such good care of the kids and the kids work so hard then I realized how dysfunctional that family was getting to be...!

[character]

Double Xposure - Very self-indulgent and disappointing.

手机 (Cell Phone) - Good but somewhat depressing look at infidelity in the age of cell phones.

體育皇后 (Beauty Parade) - Lightweight, fairly enjoyable film for its time about a country girl's struggle with friendship and academics at school.

[skylee]

I saw 一九四二 (Back to 1942) today. I think it is not bad, though a bit too long. The part I dislike most is the scene when the Chinese priest questions his faith in the church. I think the actors are all very good, in particular 陳道明.

[character]

女朋友。男朋友 (GF*BF) Dull. If you want to see something good in the same "Taiwan homosexual longing/love triangle" micro subgenre, try Blue Gate Crossing instead.

消失的子彈 (The Bullet Vanishes) Very nice period setting, but only average story.

[Kobo-Daishi]

The last Chinese film I saw was Kill Bill. The usual crap from Tarentino. Plenty of pop culture references and violence to the extreme.

Luckily I lived the era those pop culture references came from so knew them all.

What caught my eye was this calligraphy in back of Sonny Chiba as the sushi chef/famed swordsmith.

When I first saw "酔生夢(梦)死", I didn't recognize the first character, "酔" but had a feeling that it was a variant for "醉", "drunk" as in "intoxicated; intoxication" not "the past tense for to drink".

I did a Kangxi dictionary search and it bore me out. "酔" is the vulgar form for "醉".

I figured the 4 characters were an idiom, but, didn't recognize it so did a Google search.

https://www.google.c...search?q="酔生夢死"

It seems that "酔" is the accepted Kanji in Japan for "drunk".

Not knowing Japanese I tried "醉生夢死" and got.

https://www.google.c...search?q="醉生夢死"

http://tw.18dao.net/...o.net/成語詞典/醉生夢死

It seems it's an idiom that originated from the writing of Zhu Xi, 朱熹, the famous Neo-Confucianist who lived during the Song Dynasty. Something about drunken boxing or other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Xi

http://en.wikipedia....eo-Confucianism

http://dictionary.go...idiom/酔生夢死/m0u/ For those able to read Japanese.

I'm now downloading the second half of the movie.

Kobo.

[abcdefg]

Saw "The Guillotines" 血滴子 yesterday. It's a martial arts movie 武侠片 and was supposed to be a tribute to some of the famous older movies with similar titles such as the 1974 Shaw Brothers production.

It was a sorry 3D mess. Incomprehensible plot and action scenes all fouled up by special effects and too many gimmicks. I left after about an hour. Especially disliked the dark and grungy village where everyone appeared to have some kind of ugly pox.

[Kobo-Daishi]

Kobo wrote:

I'm now downloading the second half of the movie.

Here's another one. Okay, it's also from Kill Bill 1 and not two. Wasn't much in 2 as far as Chinese goes. Okay, Bai Mei only spoke Cantonese, which is kind of strange, but, still...

It's the scene where Uma's the Bride rolls the half-Japanese/half-French female assasin down the snowy embankment to the hospital emergency entrance after she's sliced off one of her arms with a samurai sword.

The sign over the entrance reads, 東(东)京総合病院 + 救急入口

I was able to recognize all the characters except for 総. Yet I had a feeling that it was a variant for 總(总) of 總(总)統(统), "president" as in "President Obama".

I entered "president" into JQuickTrans, the former shareware now freeware program, and sure enough "総統" was one of the entries it returned.

I subsequently entered "総" into a StarDict format text version of the Kangxi dictionary using GoldenDict and it says that "総" is the same as "總". So it appears that the variant "総" is the standard on Japan.

According to the Xiandai Hanyu Cidian, "总" replaces not only "總", but, also "縂".

And according to the print edition of the Yuandong Guoyu Cidian, "縂" is the same as "總".

So, "总", the mainland standard is simply "縂" without the "silk" radical.

I'm amazed that I'm able to recognize so much of these variants used in Japanese even when I wouldn't be able to write any of the standard Chinese versions even if my life depended on it. Though I'm able to recognize them in print.

So many damn variants! ;-)

Kobo.