Potentially lots of changes and additions:

Images of the cast and all the closing credits are here: http://hkmdb.com/db/movies/images.mhtml ... ay_set=eng

The New York Times http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/180812/ ... e/overview and other English sources lists the main actress as Wang Tong but she may be known by a different name here. Also the case with the actor who plays Wu Su (listed as Wu Tao on Wikipedia in the entry for the movie). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Close_to_Paradise

Alternate English titles from the NYT and Wikipedia are "The Girl from Vietnam", "Ruan's Song" and "The Pole Carrier and the Girl"

Not sure if you're aware, but we now have the ability to tag credits as credits, which gives them their own page away from the portrait galleries, as I've done here:

http://hkmdb.com/db/movies/credits.mhtm ... ay_set=eng

Excellent review by the way, Ed. I suspect I'd just get frustrated watching a film like this, as I often have with most Mainland Chinese productions outside of some of the more recent mega-epics (and even then . . . ). To see such talent perpetually hindered—and often squandered—by stone-headed government policies is just too much to bear. By the time China finally gives its filmmakers the voice they've suppressed for decades, an uncut version of a movie like this won't interest enough people to justify a DVD re-release.

Not sure if you're aware, but we now have the ability to tag credits as credits, which gives them their own page away from the portrait galleries, as I've done here:

Thanks--I haven't posted many credits recently and missed that the tag was available.

It really is annoying--or more than that--to be a fan of Chinese movies and realize that we see "such talent perpetually hindered—and often squandered—by stone-headed government policies". It means, among other things, that we will never know if "So Close to Paradise" was a much better movie than the one that exists now. There is also the self-censorship that is probably more important than the actual government censor intervention as filmmakers try to deal with what may be acceptable this week or month or year.

That goes on in western film production of course, with strange Hollywood political/social/moral strictures and also the iron rule of the box office, controlled, it seems, by teenager consumers.

added assist. dir., makeup and 8 actors.

ewaffle wrote:It really is annoying--or more than that--to be a fan of Chinese movies and realize that we see "such talent perpetually hindered—and often squandered—by stone-headed government policies". It means, among other things, that we will never know if "So Close to Paradise" was a much better movie than the one that exists now. There is also the self-censorship that is probably more important than the actual government censor intervention as filmmakers try to deal with what may be acceptable this week or month or year.

That goes on in western film production of course, with strange Hollywood political/social/moral strictures and also the iron rule of the box office, controlled, it seems, by teenager consumers.

Reminds me of the days of the Production Code. Of course, that lasted around 30 years or so—and ended more than four decades ago—and exploitation and fringe filmmakers flouted it at every turn and made huge profits on the drive-in and grindhouse circuits while rarely if ever facing career suicide or multi-year bans that China still institutes to this day. There are traces of change evident in contemporary films, but they're so frustratingly ambiguous and "safe" that it's difficult for me to get excited about the stuff they're producing. Thank god for Hong Kong. They may have been reigned in a bit too, but they're still getting away with murder in comparison, and for that I love them!