Monday, March 31, 2008

Pinguo Lost in Be!j!ng

Just watched the movie L0st in Be!j!ng ('Pinguo' in Chinese domestic distribution, which means 'Apple', at the same time being the name of the main character), and boy, did them times in massage parlors come back in Technicolor and even in the tactile memories of the texture of those armchairs, and passing acquaintance with Laobans (bosses) of some massage places, and philosophic debates with friends about the very existence of such.

The lives of the characters in that movie spin out of control and just lead me to think how eddy currents of sin suck one in, with just a finger touching the outskirts of the vortex. Don't know about the others, or even the director's vision of the message, but that's what surfaced in my mind. The Shakespearean dramas weaving through the reality reveal a lot, giving birth to the despondency of such situations, especially here in China, and it is hard to grasp the precise descriptive attributes that relate to the sorry 'heroes', but the movie might be an eye-opener. Sadly, for many who are already on the inside of the vortex. Oh well, this longing to un-weave this scarring yarn.

Besides artistic values of the flick (including the jarred editing of the scenes - broken shots from a single position without much combing), the value of the movie might be in that it calls up lots of allusions and is totally not bad. And that it is about China.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Chinese Drive-In

Taking a stroll around campus tonight I was intrigued by the sounds of what seemed to be a movie trailing off into the humid emptiness between the balding mountains surrounding our school. I approached a square and indeed saw a large screen stretched between two poles and a projector on a school desk shimmering away with a Hong Kong gangster flick. Scattered in front of the screen, against the backdrop of the languorously dark and voluptuously wet subtropical night, were the silhouettes of riders on the bikes, casting amorphic shadows in the flickering light of that makeshift drive-in Chinese way. The teenaged students jauntily straddling a-bike reminded vaguely of the long-gone images of the US drive-ins, eating take-away food and sharing comments; some girls were stretching their barely clad - for the weather - legs near their iron wheeled horses, who in turn kept their peace and did not even give out a neigh as they usually do in that unoiled metallic screeching voice of theirs when the riders are not paying attention.

It's a nice ending of a Saturday night - with a head massage at the barber's on campus, calm half an hour by the lake to the sound of the fish splashing around in the shallow waters, and a walk back home in anticipation of an easy movie with a bottle of Chinese Tsingdao beer and pistachios. Strangely, not very often that I've been noticing those little pleasant moments lately.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Chinese brands red hot for the Russian market

Russian inside



Осторожно, ненормативные... ассоциации.

Если не играет, попробуйте здесь или тут.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Wedding Chinese Way

An excellent wedding party of one of my colleagues - a beautiful event, nice people, an interesting look into the fusion of traditions. It was a great evening, and since not everybody has a chance to experience such wonderful and special cultural gatherings, here is a short video I made.



If the video doesn't open from this page - try here.