Final Open Blog Post for ENG 306J

This is the last open topic post for my English class. Overall, I feel good about this class. Even though I took 20 credit hours this quarter and this was 8:00 a.m. English class. I didn't fall asleep once! Yeah! I did it ! I worried about this class a lot when I enrolled it. I was thinking about dropping it if it was too boring or too much work. I also took several shooting classes at the same time and I just thought it would be hard to arrange my time if I got to much to write.However, it was a really interesting class and we discussed many attractive topics this quarter. This is the fist time I think writing is not so stressful and it can be fun.  I like writing reviews of films that I watched in Chinese and now I have own "film land" in English.  It's just a beginning and I will definitely continue practicing it. Ok, I have to go finish my final paper and review all my exams on next monday. I also ready to my trip in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Are you ready for your coming spring break? Have fun!

IRON LADY

Look at them and think about yourself!

                                  (ALL PHOTES SEARCHED FROM GOOGLE IMAGE)

     Meryl Streep is one of my favorit female actor.She presented several successful female characters for us. I only saw four of her films but all of the characters she acted impressed me such the devil editor Miranda Priestly in film The Devil wears Prada, the humorous and tough American woman in France Julia Child in film Julie and Julia, first female leader in Downing Street Margaret Hilda Thatcher in movie Iron Lady. Most of characters she presented were able, strong, tough, independent and the most important was they believe women can definitely did better than men. The most  memorable line in Iron Lady was "I f you want to change the party, lead it. If you want to change this country, lead it."  I learned a lot from those lines even I am not going to run te prime. In most of situation, "female" is a title which kind of stops me for some reason. It's not only stereotype for men to think about women but also become a excuse for female to doubt themselves.  When I heard the line, I am encouraged and waked up. I think there is no any excuse for me to doubt what I can do, just do it!

BA 8: Hugo or Yuguo

I hate Chinese translation of foreign films titles.

Last Sunday night was busy day for TV remote controllers. As a huge fan of films and NBA, I used up my energy to switch channel between TNT and NBC.....  Because this is a blog about movies, so I decide to put James and Wade away for seconds.

I was shocked several time when the winers came out because I saw most of the nominated movies and only except the winners. How did it happen?  Hugo and The Artist were the biggest winner of Sunday night.  I didn't watch Artist because I was not so familiar with this genre. I considered it as a movie with particular American tast and culture. I have no the memory to being touched by it but I know it did was a great movie.

But, Hugo..... I was totally surprised because one of my friend yelled out "Oh, Yuguo. I love it!"...
Yuguo? Hugo?     Yuguo is the Chinese pronunciation of the family name of Victor Hugo. So when I saw the movie name on Chinese website at first time, I thought it was Victor Hugo's biography movie. The translation made me miss a such great movie. This situation brought me trouble before. I hate Chinese translation some times, really!

The Flowers of War

                                                      (This pic comes from Google Image)

I remembered that I mentioned this movie is the one I most hated Chinese movie recently in the fist class.
It did and I still do. The first thing I came up with after I saw this movie was..
"Did Chinese directores always like using this piece tragic history to touch audiences?"
I really can't understand that. There are already lots of Chinese based on this history.
It's kind of "genre" of Chinese film
You must quite curious about what is the history and why Chinese like this history a lot.
I can only describe it a little bit as a Chinese, there are thousands version of this history in the world but to Chinese, it was really a tragic and sad memory. Also, it's kind of sensitive topic in China.

This memory name "The Rape of Nanking" and you can search amount of pics and information on Internet and you will definitely shocked. This even  serious influences almost three generations ofChinese.  It was thousand times serious than the harmful of 911 in American people's mind. It was a tragic that war brought to China. Why Chinese people think the extremely inhuman thing that Japan might did to Chinese especially for Chinese female were true? Because there are still lots of victims are alive now, they maybe are grandma for some youngs. They are willing to speak out what happend to them during the war before they died. I saw some interviews of those victims on TV，they said they have duty to help our country to approve it was true and have duty to certify this history as they swept out. To be honest, I hate to see those documents and hate to argue with other about this history. It hearts.

This is the reason why I hate these kind of movies. They are using people's harmful memories to make money. I don't think it's a good way to show the world how the victims were poor.

There are several films based on this topic such as:

                                                          City of Life and Death (2009)

                                                            Nanking (2007)

Don't Cry Nanking

Flag of Honor

(All photos and information comes from Wikipedia, IMDb, Google Image)

Even though the directors try to make Chinese people and Chinese female seems as tough and strong as possible, are these good way to showing the tragic?I don't think so. I hope those directors can treat this history much more seriously and don't turn it into entreatment. 

Opened topic blog post on WEEK 7

...... Shooting something outside of campus now. I will back soon.

Assignment 6

I read this article long time ago when I searched some information about some stereotypes of China.
It's about a Hollywood movie name The Joy Lucky Club. After I saw the article, I watched the movie. I don't know who is the author and where she/he comes from so I can't give any credibility to it. However, I agree with him/her.
I watched several movies with stereotype even though they are kind of existing.
Such as revamped movie Red Dawn, a TV show from BBC named The Chinese are Coming, Gomorra...
Not exaggeration to say, there are thousands of movies have offense about China. Even this author use stronger language and serious emotion to write this article, she/her also shows critics from others to illustrate there is not only her understand the movie in this way. She lists those common stereotypes of Chinese man and woman to show write the oppose understand agains those stereotypes in order to  convinse the readers. Based on his/her other articles, the article raise a controversy about movie and stereotypes and the author keep fighting with the "antis".  I guess she/he is a Asia or a person who loves Asia culture, and she/he wants to protect the images of Asians.
For my readers, I think I may have stereotypes of Americans movie such as I alway thinks Hollywood movies cost money but have nothing meaningful moral. That's my reader need to be care of. I am a Chinese student who is living in Unite States right now and I love my country. Sometimes I will overreact about something people doesn't mean it. I am trying to think everything in mature way and I still working on it. I don't mislead my readers. I love films so I want to share my direct feeling with others. This is my object of this blog and I have nothing offenses.

     

All I want to write are complains.

This week is extremely tough for me.
I have 2 midterm exams, one presentation and two video projects due.
I only slept 5 hours in the past 48 hour.
And I have 5 hour class on Friday!!! Also, the 48 hours shoot out competition also comes tomorrow!!
I am director of our team this year, which means I probably can't sleep in next 48 hours too.
Am I crazy? Maybe, but I love my major.
I can come up any idea of the open topic post for this week.
I am just completely exhausted.
I hope I can bring something more interesting next week.
God bless me.

It's Time to Leave Hollywood!

I have a question for a long time. Are you sick of hollywood movies?

All of those movies surround super hero series, wars of super natures, Species Invasion, Grek mythology...As my point of view, those special effects and high technologies have covered the importance of stories.  Audiences are not watching films, but see the new technologies now. I am kind of feeling sad about this situation. Sometimes it may destroy a good scrips or a good director.

 Firstly, I must admit that Star Wars series brought film industry new hope in late 70s. Hollywood move has new direction since that time.This is the movie trailer from fist episode of star wars in 1999. ( all videos from YouTube)

The coming one is Steve Spielberg movie Jurassic Park series

. 

Indeed, those films have significant meaning for our generation. They u sed special effect to add values to those films. However, special effects turn into movie of all. Such as Arvada, it's only animated film based on a simple story for me. The storytelling is flat and too simple. There are many additional examples such as Captain America, Spider Man, Iron Man, Batman... they both looks same!!!!!   I even can't remember the stories of them. I can't get any meaningful thought from this kind of movies at all.

I like films without too much packages. They are real and meaningful. Most of indies movies have significant stories and meaning. Like White Dog, Precious, Win Win... Both of them were pretty good movies, which cost less, use no special effect, have not huge starring list. I am attracted by them because the stories. This is what I think the nature of film.

So, it's time to leave hollywood films and start a meaningful spiritual journey.

Graduating...

For the open topic blog post this week, I want to leave my main topic and talk a little bit about my persona life.

I attended q2s meeting yesterday and made a plan of my class schedule for next quarter and the fist semester. Finally, I will graduate on May next year. My advisor told me I have 13 classes left after spring quarter and that mean I can take 13 classes whatevert I want. That's excting isn't it? Recently I am taking a intro class of animation and I was addicted on it. I really want to take a minor on animation but we were not allowed to take major and minor in same school.....

Graduation also means my graduate school applications must be done befor Octorber this year. Most students in this major have blog to put their projects on. It's kind a part of our resume. I have set up a personal website last summer but I haven't really update it. I decided to re open it and also link my personal blog to it. It's the best want to show my projects and also share the production process behind them.

My personal website is www.missv.cc
and the blos is http://yingqizheng.tumblr.com/

They both are new and I will spend more time working on them.

Hong Kong Movies

I wanna say something first in the beginning of this post.
To be honest, my blog topic is too huge too write about.
I really want to comprehensive introduce Chineses movies and the culture relates to them,
however I am still looking a logical order to arrange what I need to write and When I can write.
I think this blog was not only created for english class but also means a lot in my academic life.
I will keep writing it....

The film industry in Hong Kong was formed much earlier than Mainland China. The all environment of movies changes with their historical events and social formation. 70s-80s was the best days for Hong Kong movies. Most of the greatest Hong Kong films was created at the period.Films in Hong Kong can be generally put in several categories,  which are comedy, the life of young boys , old Asian action movies and crime movies. For example, a Better Tomorrow and The Killer , those two movies who were directed by John Woo were typically the crime films.

 

The second significant kind of Hong Kong movie is Comedy. The representative people of this category  was Stephen Chou. He created King of comedy , Fight Back to school and etc. Hong Kong's comedy films are quite different and dis understandable.

 
 

Next time I will analysis Hong Kong movie in different period and some important directors who means a lot for movies  Hong Kong.

ME ?

Ok, I am gonna introduce myself a little bit here.

Obviously I am a Chineses girl from south east of China, a city named Xiamen.

It's a really beautiful coastal city. Xiamen represents typical Minan culture. 

We share same dialect with Taiwan and even though local flavors. 

So... I am a typical southern girl :)

I came to United States since 2008 and I really like my life here.

The biggest decision I made here was my major. I changed my major from finance to video production.

Finance is a valuable major in China but film is my dream.  

Right now I am taking several production and animation classes and I am really enjoying in them.

I joined CSSA in the end of last quarter and we just finished our Chinese New Year Celebration Performance. I did the photographic and create the opening video of the performance. 

Here are some photos of our show. ( click them to see the original size)

All CSSA members!!!!!

We also had an after dinner after the show.  

After we served all people, we finally have time to have dinner. 

All members are exhausted!!! But we enjoy the time working together.

Christina Wang and me were responsible for the opening video of the performance.

We spent whole week to shoot the footages and 48 hours to edit them together.  

I have fun even though we are tired. 

When I saw the reaction of all audiences during the performance, I really proud of myself.

Working as a family and doing what I am interested in is the happiest thing in the world !!!

Here is the video and I hope you will like it. 

I like my life in 2012. It's positive and intelligent !!!!! 

I want to keep my power and energy in the entire 2012. 

Films from Mainland China

   In this blog, I separate Chinese movies into three main type depend on their geography differences. Now, I want to simply introduce the movies from mainland China.
    In mainland China, the favorite movie themes can probably be divided into history, war and swordsman stories. Hence, the top characteristics of those movies are huge investment, big cast and mom
entum.  I have some examples here.


Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a movie about sword that released in 2000. The cast includes Yun-Fat Chow, Michelle Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang, who are three top International Chinese movie stars.  


Hero, another movie about assassins that released in 2002.  The cast includes Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung and Ziyi Zhang. They are all the hottest movie stars in China, who earn over 20 million per film. 

Red Cliff, a epic movie which directed by John Woo. It is base on a famous war during China's three kingdoms period. Here are two stills of this film can show you how many extras will be used in a Chinese movie and this is only the basic quantity.

City of Life and Death, it's about a big historical event that happened in Chinese capital city Nanjing during World War II. There are several movies about this movies and both of them are profound for every Chinese. 

Learn our history and every war happened in our country is a duty of citizens, that's why audiences like watching the history reappear on the screen. It also can be said that every movies from the mainland of China has special and important meaning. 
(All pictures and informations of movies come from www.imdb.com)

Chinewood is Coming !

What's your first thought when I mention Chinese movie? 


Is Kung Fu or John Woo?


If you are thinking one of them, you are out. Chinese movie is more then that after recent decade of development. It has obviously regional characteristics. The movies are different between Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China. Those differences  relate with culture, history, polices and human environment.  "Chinawood" is a new and powerful strength in film industry. I will analyze the differences between Chinese movies and introduce some of our culture in this blog. Also, I will recommend some movies here and share my reviews.   I hope you can find things that interest you here. 


Enjoy the movies.  :)