News Links - 11/10/06

[dleedlee]

Weinsteins woo Wong
The Weinstein Co. buys U.S. rights to Wong Kar Wai's "My Blueberry Nights
http://www.variety.com/article/VR111795 ... id=13&cs=1

R-Rated "Flower"?
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/3086/2006/1 ... 161291.htm

Zhang Ziyi "Bringing Sexy Back"
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/3086/2006/1 ... 161195.htm

Plan to Find out the Next Stars in Documentary Directing
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/3086/2006/1 ... 161283.htm

Twelve Girls Band Performance Taped for Broadcast in US
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/3086/2006/1 ... 161202.htm

Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior
Shin Komayada - Rising star
http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story ... c=tvnradio
Tsai Chin - the actress
http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story ... c=tvnradio
Brenda Song
http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story ... c=tvnradio
Churning out young stars
http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story ... c=tvnradio

China's Dancing With Stars - Star appeal can be a double-edged sword
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006 ... 729305.htm

"Singles Day" to be Celebrated
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/3100/2006/1 ... 161367.htm

"Ladder of love" Story Wins Place in Chinese Hearts
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/3166/2006/1 ... 161344.htm

[MrBooth]

Those FHM photos of Ziyi are horrible... she's barely recognisable, and not so much because of the makeup as because they completely misrepresent her character...

[dleedlee]

Agreed, I don't know if it's just the makeup or the whole unrealness of it all. It looks over-glossy as if a photo editor went wild.

[ewaffle]

The pictures are far from current--they ran in the German FHM quite a while ago. One of the advantages of having platforms in multiple languages is that the publisher can recycle images from one to the other.

They have been photoshopped so severely that she has been transformed from Ziyi into a "cute but generic Asian woman".

[Brian Thibodeau]

It's weird, and I'm probably alone in thinking this, but I'm not so sure the photos misrepresent her character at all, since I've always felt her real-life persona, such as we've come to know it via the media and her film choices, was a bit fabricated in the first place. I've long figured she'd be comfortable doing a shoot like that, but that she's not been given many opportunities up to now because of what seems like a concerted effort on the part of her handlers—as well as many of the filmmakers she works with—to craft a certain "restrained but alluring" character for her, while she herself might have been itching to let it all hang out, so to speak. The fact that FHM and its magazine brethren resort to photoshop makeovers goes without saying—just look at the photos in any of them—but those swimsuits are, for lack of a better word, hot.

[ewaffle]

I agree that those pictures don't misrepresent her character. Actually they can't do that since she is an actress and her "character" is whatever character (if you will) she is currently performing or we are currently watching.

Ziyi's audience don't know Ziyi--they know what she presents in films and, in this case, in a magazine layout.

For me the pictures fall somewhere between boring and dreadful. There are a lot of ways for an actress to look sexy--and Ziyi generally does and probably would if dressed in a burlap bag--but the done to death "skimpy swimsuit, contorted pose, look into the camera with slightly parted lips" is pretty far down the list.

From what I have seen on the web the way that FHM alters images borders on insane. They might as well save the money or headaches that comes with booking a TV or movie star--after the pictures have been through the FHM photoshop blender one sometimes needs the caption to tell just whose image one is looking at.

[dleedlee]

Don't forget this recent Zhang Ziyi quote:

“I’d like to play an American teen, a very modern, typical American girl with a very rebellious character. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, but I want to play someone who is really outrageous. I think that would be so cool,” she told Time magazine.