Archive for ‘box office’

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09/12/2019

Why a forgotten 21-year-old film flop has taken Chinese cinema by storm and made millions

  • The Legend of 1900 is taking more at the box office than the latest international and domestic blockbusters
  • An appetite for enhanced editions and 3D might have something to do with the surprise success of Giuseppe Tournatore’s forgotten flick
Tim Roth (left) stars in The Legend of 1900, the Giuseppe Tournatore that has taken Chinese cinema by storm.
Tim Roth (left) stars in The Legend of 1900, the Giuseppe Tournatore that has taken Chinese cinema by storm.
China’s consumer class is always looking for the latest, most cutting-edge smartphone app or the most talked-about viral video. Who would have predicted, then, that a 21-year-old movie would take Chinese cinema by storm over the past few weeks?
What’s incredible is that The Legend of 1900 was hardly a classic in the first place.
Revolving around a piano prodigy (played by Tim Roth) who has spent his entire life on board an ocean liner, the movie received mixed reviews on its release in 1998, with disapproving critics lambasting it as “fragile” (Variety), “overwrought” (San Francisco Chronicle), schmaltz that “drowns in its own treacle” (Salon.com). The first English-language feature by Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore faded fast into obscur­ity, never reaching the heights of his revered Cinema Paradiso(1988).
And then Chinese audiences came to its rescue. Having never been released in China, Legend finally unspooled in main­land cinemas on November 15, along­side local romantic drama Somewhere Winter and Hollywood’s latest reboot, Charlie’s Angels.
Rather than becoming a sideshow to these two headlining block­busters, the film broke out of the arthouse scene and crossed over to the mainstream: its opening weekend gross of 63.1 million yuan (HK$70.2 million) topped that of Angels, and its average of 13 viewers for each screening was higher than both Winter (11 viewers per screening) and Angels, which crashed with a mere eight.
A fortnight into its run, Legend had generated more than 130 million yuan, eclipsing its total takings of the past two decades. To put this into context, the film took in US$167,435 during its month-long release in the United States, in 1999. Adjusted for inflation, this figure would be about US$258,635 today, or 1.8 million yuan – that’s just 1.3 per cent of its gross during the first two weeks of its China run.
And it’s not just tills that are ringing: the rave online reviews must be music to Tornatore’s ears. On douban.com, China’s equivalent to Internet Movie Database, Legend secured an average rating of 9.3, far above those of current imports such as Knives Out
(8.5), Frozen II (7.3) and Midway (7.7), local blockbusters such as Better Days (8.4), or any of the flag-waving tub-thumpers that dominated Chinese cineplexes for weeks before and after National Day.
So the question is: why? One advantage Legend has over its box-office rivals is that it is a state-of-the-art 4K restoration of the original film. Chinese audiences have long been susceptible to enhanced editions of films: the 3D version of Titanic sailed into the record books with total takings of 946 million yuan during its two-month run in the country from April to June 2012.

The success of Legend could in part be attributed to young mainlanders’ pursuit of novelty: China is one of the few markets where 3D films, complete with their marked-up ticket prices, remain popular.

Chinese audiences have also embraced old films like never before, flocking to movies they could only hear or read about, or watch on pirated discs while the country lagged behind the rest of the world in the number of screens and foreign titles that could be shown on them.

There has also been a surge of interest in re-evaluating film heritage with festivals placing emphasis on introducing pains­takingly restored films to viewers. In October, for example, the Pingyao Inter­national Film Festival hosted a programme of rarely seen titles from India’s socially conscious Parallel Cinema movement. The recent Hainan International Film Festival presented a more diverse offering, including classics such as Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), Agnès Varda’s La Pointe Courte(1955) and Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer (2009).

It is in such programmes that legends are made and the old becomes the new.

Source: SCMP

Posted in 21-year-old, box office, Chinese cinema, domestic blockbusters, Film, flop, forgotten, Giuseppe Tournatore, international blockbusters, latest, made, millions, storm, taken, The Legend of 1900, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

07/10/2019

Chinese celebrate National Day with birthday noodles, films

BEIJING, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) — While fireworks and festivities drew the largest crowds during this year’s National Day holiday, many Chinese chose to celebrate the occasion with a bowl of patriotic noodles and homegrown films.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China which was founded on Oct. 1, 1949. The weeklong National Day holiday, introduced in 1999 by the State Council, or China’s cabinet, saw “National Day noodles” become a popular choice among some Chinese this year.

Birthday noodles are to Chinese people what birthday cakes are to Westerners. In accordance with the Chinese custom, people enjoy a bowl of noodles on their birthday as a symbol of longevity. Many restaurants will prepare a bowl of birthday noodles for free if there is a diner celebrating their birthday.

Beijing Huatian Catering Group, a leading catering company in Beijing that has more than 20 time-honored brands, sold more than 25,000 bowls of National Day noodles and gave away more than 120 bowls of birthday noodles, according to a Saturday report by Beijing Daily.

Beijing Honghua Dahaiwan Catering Group said that it has sold 3,800 bowls of noodles during the first three days of the National Day holiday, up 25 percent compared to the same period of last year.

Moviegoers meanwhile got their fill of National Day celebrations in an entirely different manner.

“My People, My Country,” “The Climbers” and “The Captain” were all set for theatrical release on the Chinese mainland on Sept. 30, a day ahead of the weeklong National Day holiday, according to the China Film Distribution and Exhibition Association.

Featuring seven short stories from seven directors, “My People, My Country” draws on important historical moments since the founding of the PRC, aiming to awaken the shared memories of Chinese around the world.

“The Climbers” dramatizes the real-life expedition of Chinese mountaineers to ascend Mount Qomolangma in 1960 and 1975.

“The Captain” is a cinematic portrayal of a real-life event that occurred on May 14, 2018, when a captain of Sichuan Airlines managed a successful emergency landing after the windshield of his plane broke in the air, safely bringing home the 119 passengers and nine crew members on board.

According to the real-time statistics of MaoYan Movie, the leading online movie ticketing platform in China, the three movies ranked as the top three films at the box office over the holiday. “My People, My Country” has raked in more than 2 billion yuan (around 279.8 million U.S. dollars) as of Sunday, “The Captain,” 1.7 billion yuan, and “The Climbers,” 743 million yuan.

Source: Xinhua

Posted in 70th anniversary, air, Beijing, Beijing Daily, Beijing Honghua Dahaiwan Catering Group, Beijing Huatian Catering Group, birthday cakes, birthday noodles, box office, broke, celebrate, China Film Distribution and Exhibition Association, China's cabinet, China’s State Council, Chinese, Chinese custom, Chinese mountaineers, crew members, festivities, films, Fireworks, homegrown films, largest crowds, longevity, MaoYan Movie, Mount Qomolangma, Moviegoers, My People, My Country, National Day, National Day holiday, Oct. 1, 1949, on board, passengers, patriotic noodles, People's Republic of China, plane, real-life event, real-life expedition, safely bringing home, Sichuan Airlines, successful emergency landing, symbol, The Captain, The Climbers, Uncategorized, Westerners, windshield | Leave a Comment »

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