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There’s a beautiful scene in Jia Zhangke’s 2004 film The World in which the protagonist, Tao, crosses paths with an industrial worker nicknamed Little Sister on the rooftop of an unfinished building. They chat aimlessly beneath towering spires of exposed rebar until a massive plane soars overhead, drowning out their voices. “Tao, who flies on those planes?” he asks, to which she responds, “Who knows…I don’t know anybody who’s ever been on a plane.”

It’s this precise contrast of stasis and flux, of the sublime and the quotidian, of simple personal dreams swallowed up by massive national ambitions, that characterizes Liu Jian’s newest feature, Art College 1994. Jia also lends his voice to one of its characters: Gu Yongqing, a “roving artist abroad” who speaks of “the mysterious power of art” during a visiting lecture at the titular art college. This is Liu’s third animated feature film,...

At the first sight, almost everything about “Didi’s Dream”, or “Yum Yum Love”, somehow suggests another from the line of the stories about a leftover woman who is single (of course), smart, successful and on an inevitable route into the arms of the least probable yet the most handsome guy around. Yes and no is correct. “Didi’s Dream” is romantic, it is comedy, but its heroine is not exactly singe. Or is she?

At the moment, when one might feel overdosed of all the variations and copies and iterations of (especially) Chinese romantic comedies, here comes “Didi’s Dream”, takes it all, shakes it, adds own sparkle and serves a story, well, two stories, that might not rank over the height of Taipei 101 but still keeps a good distance from marshmallowy brain-blocking romcoms. Is it cheesy, sweet, pathetic? Does it have troubled romance, complicated family issues,...

“Didi’s Dreams”, the Taiwanese-Chinese comedy film written and directed by by Kevin Tsai and starring Dee Hsu, Lin Chi-ling, Jin Shijia, Li Zifeng is now on Amazon Video, Vimeo on Demand.

Synopsis

With this one-of-a-kind fantasy comedy, talent from the most influential Chinese language TV show Kangsi Coming pay tribute to the golden age of Taiwan variety entertainment. Didi is an aspiring actress who keeps having the same dream about a spaceship noodle shop owner’s love affairs. After countless hardships, she finally reaches her career breakthrough, but her life takes an unexpected turn, and the truth about her dreams start to unveil.

A bit of backstory

The privatization of Taiwan TV industry in 1990s driven by government policy resulted in explosive growth in number of working TV stations. The island’s 23 million people who used to watch programs from only 3 stations now can access more...

China’s version of “Saturday Night Live” has been taken down from streaming platform Youku, as has another talk show featuring famous presenters from Taiwan. The removals come during a time of heightened political control of the media by the Chinese government.

The Chinese version of “SNL” on Youku was announced last year. The show has been running for a few weeks on Alibaba-owned Youku, but it is no longer available. The fourth episode was supposed to drop this past Saturday but did not. Previous episodes were also taken down.

Another program pulled from Youku is “Zhenxiang Ba! Huahua Wanwu” (roughly translated as “Truth! Everything”). The variety talk show reunites Dee Hsu and Kevin Tsai, famous presenters from Taiwan who two years ago bade farewell to their long-running show “Kangsi Coming,” one of the most popular talk shows in the Chinese-speaking world.

Youku could not be immediately reached for comment on the removals.