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Chicago – Obsessive love is a movie story staple, and “Ash is Purest White” puts a Chinese point-of-view on this strange phenomenon. This is a coupling in the background of organized crime and a changing China, and their success and failure is based on the events surrounding them as much as their devotion to each other.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

The film is dreamy, almost surreal, as it takes place between 2001 and 2018. The lead actors portraying the couple in essence represent the emerging capitalist China, setting their sights on territory, both within the relationship and the small fiefdoms that popped up in China’s soaring economy. At some point, after a key event, the film switches into a deliberateness that slows down everything, and it becomes a narrative not of action but of searching for something that didn’t exist in the first place. In a sense, the new China is precisely that … a...

Chinese director Muye Wen has completed his feature debut film. The film was inspired by the real-life story of Lu Yong, a Chinese leukemia patient who bought cheap cancer medicine from India for 1000 Chinese cancer sufferers in 2004. The film stars Zheng Xu (“Lost in Thailand” “No Mans Land”) as Lu Yong.

A trailer for the production has been released.

Synopsis

A story on how a small drug store owner became the exclusive selling agent of a cheap Indian generic drug against Chronic Granulocytic Leukemia in China. (IMDb)...

Dying To Survive, a Chinese black comedy with social drama overtones that we’ve been talking about for the past few weeks as a potential breakout during the July blackout on Hollywood movies, is showing serious signs of life in the Middle Kingdom. What’s more, it’s not the sort of film we’ve seen before during this period, and has spurred debate on serious issues.

Four days of previews began last weekend with the official July 6 release date backed up to July 5 as buzz swelled. With today’s locally-reported one-day estimate of about $57M, Dying To Survive has grossed an estimated $141M through Saturday (it’s also on about 500 IMAX screens). The film, directed by feature first-timer Muye Wen, has a 9 score on Douban and 9.7 on Maoyan. The Douban number has only been attained by such movies as Coco, Zootopia and Ready Player One in recent years.

Local...

Updated, Monday, 6:35 Pm: Warner Bros., sent grosses for its comedy The Intern in a report filled with exclamation points and a Taiwanese slip up (see below) as well as the Hugh Jackman starring Pan which goes wide to 52 markets next weekend; Lionsgate reported for its sleeper hit Sicario. We put in very curious final numbers for TWC’s Southpaw. Every week waiting for Sony is like watching ice melt, water boil, grass grow, paint chip. Sony at 6:20 Pm finally reported international numbers for Hotel Transylvania 2 and Pixels.

Udpated, Monday at 1:04 Pm: Final updates are rolling in for the international box office weekend. Fox’s big opener The Martian just missed the expected $100M mark yesterday but will cross over today. It sits at $98.9M after the weekend. Other titles updated so far with final gross numbers include holdovers Everest, Fox’s Maze Runner: Scorch Trials, the...

After a record-breaking box office weekend in China, the Zheng Xu comedy Lost In Hong Kong is heading into this box office weekend already logging in with a whopping $167M after only seven days in release. It was the highest ever opening for a Chinese film with $107M over the weekend. The blockbuster about a man who becomes involved in a murder investigation while on a sightseeing trip in Hong Kong with his wife and brother-in-law grossed almost $20M yesterday alone and…...

Boosted by the school vacation and word of mouth, Stuart McDonald.s Oddball flew through its second weekend, beating two new high-profile Hollywood films. Roadshow.s rustic comedy featuring Shane Jacobson, Sarah Snook, Alan Tudyk and a fluffy blonde maremma whistled up nearly $1.8 million on 293 screens (jumping by 82 per cent), elevating its tally to a terrific $4.5 million.

That was ahead of Roadshow.s Sicario, the violent Mexican drug cartel thriller directed by Denis Villeneuve and featuring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin. Sicario scored nearly $1.7 million on 228 screens and $2.1 million including the previous week.s advance screenings, a good result for an MA15+ rated film. Universal.s The Visit, a found footage horror/comedy featuring Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould and Deanna Dunagan, unearthed a middling $1.1 million in its first weekend on 180 screens. That genre typically is not as appealing here as it is in the Us, where writer-director...

On the eve of the start of Cannes, Fortissimo Films announced that it has struck a deal with the globally expansive Chinese media conglomerate, Wanda Media to co-handle the worldwide representation (ex-Hong Kong, Taiwan/Southeast Asia) on Wanda's massive commercial hit, The Great Hypnotist. Currently in release in China the film is at the top of the local charts with a first week box-office approaching Us $25 million. The studio has released the first two photos from the thriller, which you can see below.

The film, a mystery thriller is a game-changer representing a new direction in genre films for China and marks the 2nd commercial success there for its Taiwan-born Director Leste Chen who previously scored with his 2013 rom-com Say Yes. Starring Chinese Superstar Zheng Xu (Lost in Thailand) and Hong Kong singer/actor phenom Karen Mok (Around the World in 80 Days, Shaolin Soccer), The Great Hypnotist was produced by Tina Shi,...

Joining the titles already announced—including films by Alain Resnais and Dominik Graf—the following films complete the lineup for the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival's Competition section.

Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice)

People’s Republic of China

By Yinan Diao (Night Train, Uniform)

With Fan Liao, Lun Mei Gwei, Xuebing Wang

World premiere

Boyhood

USA

By Richard Linklater (Before Midnight, Me & Orson Welles)

With Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater

International premiere

Chiisai Ouchi (The Little House)

Japan

By Yoji Yamada (Tokyo Family, About Her Brother)

With Takako Matsu, Haru Kuroki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Chieko Baisho

International premiere

Historia del miedo (History of Fear)

Argentina / Uruguay / Germany / France

By Benjamin Naishtat - feature debut

With Jonathan Da Rosa, Claudia Cantero, Mirella Pascual, Cesar Bordon, Tatiana Gimenez

World premiere

Jack

Germany

By Edward Berger

With Ivo Pietzcker, Georg Arms, Luise Heyer, Vincent Redetzki, Jacob Matschenz,...

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood to compete for the Golden Bear; Beauty and the Beast, starring Vincent Cassel and Léa Seydoux, to play out of competition.

The 64th Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 6-16) has added 15 titles to its Competition programme, completing the line-up of 23 films - of which 20 will vye for the Golden Bear and Silver Bears.

The programme includes 18 world premieres and three feature debuts.

The line-up includes the international premiere of Boyhood, from Before Midnight director Richard Linklater. The film, which will premiere at Sundance, was shot over short periods from 2002 to 2013 and covers 12 years in the life of a family, featuring Mason and his sister Samantha. Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater star.

World premieres include In Order of Disappearance, directed by Hans Petter Moland, which stars Stellan Skarsgård as a snow plough driver whose son’s sudden death puts him in the middle of a drug war between theNorwegian mafia and the...

This story first appeared in the Jan. 18, 2013 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. James Cameron, make way for Xu Zheng. The Chinese actor's directorial debut, Lost in Thailand, has grossed an incredible $184.5 million in his home country as of Jan. 6, beating Titanic and becoming the highest-grossing 2012 release in China. The scrappy low-brow comedy -- made on a reported budget of just $4.8 million -- is set to best Cameron again by surpassing Avatar (which took in $221.4 million in the country) to become the most successful movie of all time in China. Photos: 20

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