Notícias

Joker climbs to $849.1m worldwide as Gemini Man crosses $100m international milestone.

Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil stayed atop the global box office powered by an estimated $85m weekend session that boosted the early tally to $294m, however Better Days – the Chinese romance pulled from the Berlinale line-up earlier this year – that ruled international on $85.2m

Joker is about to cross $850m, and Terminator: Dark Fate opened in its first handful of international markets.

China Update

Better Days arrived in China on $85.3m. Derek Tsang directed and Goodfellas Pictures and Fat Kids Production produced. The film had been selected to receive...

Spider-Man: Far From Home is studio’s highest earner in 2019 so far.

Sony Pictures releases powered by Spider-Man: Far From Home and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood have generated more than $1bn at the North American box office for the third year in a row.

With four releases to come including the Charlie’s Angels reboot and the Jumanji sequel, the studio was on course to cross the milestone on Sunday (October 27) and reach $1.001.6bn, capping off a session that saw the re-release of Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood earn $550,000 to push the running total to $140.4m.

China’s sensitive National Day holiday period is safely past, but it’s difficult to discern from the lineup of upcoming movie releases whether authorities plan to continue their heavy censorship or relax it to give the box office a healthy end-of-year boost.

Some films that censors previously clamped down on are finally seeing the light of day, but another intended to laud the ruling Communist Party has been canceled. Quentin Tarantino’s latest offering has seen its China release put on ice, but other Hollywood blockbusters have been greenlit.

“Better Days,” from Hong Kong director Derek Kwok-cheung Tsang, probably takes the crown for this year’s most embattled title, having been taken down twice by censors. The youth drama about high school bullying featuring popular star Zhou Dongyu and TFBoys pop group idol Jackson Yee finally hits theaters Friday.

The release was announced in a single sentence put out...

Exclusive: Another casualty of China’s crackdown on potentially sensitive local films this past summer has been given a lifeline. Derek Tsang’s Better Days will release this Friday in the Middle Kingdom after being okayed just this week. Well Go USA has the movie domestically and was forced to postpone the release this summer when Better Days was shelved by the Chinese authorities. Well Go says it is now finalizing plans for a U.S. date, but nothing is confirmed as yet.

The youth drama, which was also previously pulled from the Berlin Film Festival, focuses on issues of suicide, bullying and sexual abuse. A synopsis calls it a “melodramatic thriller” that “paints a bleak picture of an oppressive society, in the guise of a gripping fairy-tale love story.”

When it was originally kiboshed, we reported that among the vast number of ministries required to approve its release, there...

China’s government is notorious for censoring work it deems critical of the country; it’s also infamous for its opaque decision-making processes, which often make it difficult to identify censorship in the first place. The latest instance came up during the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival, when veteran filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s “One Second” was pulled from the competition lineup shortly before its premiere for “technical reasons,” according an official statement posted by the film’s representatives and circulated by the festival. That term led many to assume that the movie, which deals with a prison escape during the Cultural Revolution, did not pass muster with China’s Communist Party.

If indeed Zhang’s latest work is a victim of censorship, he wouldn’t be the only the major Chinese director to face that fate. In 2013, Jia Zhangke’s multi-part “A Touch of Sin,” which explored the specter of violence throughout Chinese society,...

Chinese executives and international film festival programmers are scratching their heads to understand why Zhang Yimou’s “One Second” was withdrawn from the Berlin Film Festival’s main competition just days before its premiere.

The Berlinale echoed the film’s official social media site Monday in saying that the highly anticipated film was being withdrawn for “technical reasons.” Zhang’s color-drenched martial arts film “Hero” from 2002 will takes its slot on Friday evening, but will play out of competition.

The phrase “technical reasons” is both a euphemism and a reality for Chinese filmmakers, none of whom can ever be said to have completed their movie until regulators sign off on every detail. No Chinese director or producer, however skilled, acclaimed or wealthy, has final say over his or her movie. That rests with the Chinese government.

In the case of “One Second,” it is possible that the subject matter, rooted...

Zhang Yimou’s “One Second” has been removed from the Berlin Film Festival, with officials for the competition citing “technical difficulties.”

There will now be just 16 films chasing Bear awards.

Below is the full Berlinale statement on the matter.

Also Read: 'Driveways' Film Review: Impeccable Performances Enhance Charming Tale of Intergenerational Friendship

Due to technical difficulties encountered during post-production, “Yi miao zhong” (“One Second”) by Zhang Yimou unfortunately cannot be presented on February 15 in the scope of the Competition section of the Berlinale. The competition will thus feature a total of 16 films vying for the coveted Bear awards.

The festival will instead show another film chosen from Zhang Yimou’s previous body of work at the Berlinale Palast on February 15. Further information will be announced as soon as possible.

Zhang is the Chinese director of films such as “Hero,” “The House of Flying Daggers” and more recently “The Great Wall” with Matt Damon.

Celebrated Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s latest picture, One Second, has been abruptly pulled from its competition slot at the Berlin Film Festival. A translated post on the movie’s official Weibo account reads, “One Second is not allowed to be shown at the Berlin International Film Festival for technical reasons. Our apologies.” The festival has confirmed the movie will not screen, citing technical issues in post-production, and says it will program another film in its place. This takes the competition down to 16 titles.

There has been speculation that the movie may have run up against censorship issues at home. It is set during the Cultural Revolution, a period that remains a sensitive subject. However, I’m cautioned that while “technical reasons” can indeed be a generic catch-all, One Second was already granted its China release license in early January. It does not have a Middle Kingdom date, but I...

Film pulled for “technical reasons with the post-production”.

Zhang Yimou’s One Second has been withdrawn from the Berlinale Competition line-up, the festival has confirmed.

A Berlinale spokesman said this was because of “technical reasons with the post-production”. The scrapped world premiere was hastily replaced with Zhang’s 2003 Berlinale selection and best foreign-language Oscar nominee Hero, which will play out of competition on February 15 and 16.

One Second is the second Chinese-language film to be withdrawn from the festival at short notice, after Derek Tsang’s Better Days was pulled from Berlin’s Generation 14Plus section last week, also because of...

Zhang Yimou’s “One Second,” set during China’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, has been withdrawn from the Berlin Film Festival, where it was to premiere in competition.

A post Monday on the film’s official Weibo social media site announced that the film had been yanked, saying that it was for “technical reasons.” The festival confirmed the information, and explained that the film had not been completed.

The move means that Berlin’s competition section will drop from 17 to 16 films. However, Berlin expects to play another, older, film by Zhang in the same time slot on Friday, albeit out of competition. Sources close to the festival said that Zhang’s 2002 art-house actioner “Hero” will fill the slot.

Though Zhang had positioned “One Second” as his personal tribute to cinema, speculation immediately arose that the film was withdrawn for political reasons. “One Second” is set during China’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong,...

Already being tipped by some sources as the most beautiful movie in Berlin this year, “So Long, My Son” is Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai’s biggest film to date. Biggest in terms of ambition, budget and scale.

He sets out to chronicle 40 years of Chinese economic development and to tell the personal stories of two groups of friends. The protagonists are also metaphors for the pain that comes with leaving things behind.

Wang, who has won awards a previous Berlin Film Festivals with “Beijing Bicycle” (2001) and “In Love We Trust” (2008), says that “So Long” picks up on similar themes to his earlier films, notably youth. But it is different in that this time he considers himself to be more of an observer. He says he is trying to reconcile the people and attitudes of his father’s era and the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution with today’s generation, who...

The Chinese film is no longer in the Generation line-up.

The producers of Chinese title Better Days have issued a statement to say that the film was pulled from Berlin Film Festival official selection because it was not ready in time.

Directed by Derek Tsang, and produced by Goodfellas Pictures and Fat Kids Production, the Hong Kong-China co-production was originally selected to receive its world premiere in Berlin’s Generation 14Plus section.

The statement on the film’s Weibo account said: “I am sorry to inform you that because of post-production reasons, the film Better Days could not participate in...

Chinese film “Better Days,” about disaffected youth and a mysterious death, has been yanked from the Berlin Film Festival. Sources say that the movie failed to receive the necessary permits from authorities in China, where censorship and cultural control has tightened considerably in recent months.

The picture, by director by Derek Kwok-cheung Tsang, was due to receive its world premiere in Berlin’s youth strand, the Generation 14Plus section. But on Monday, the festival announced without explanation that all four screenings of “Better Days” had been canceled.

Sources with knowledge of the situation told Variety that the film had not obtained the official permits needed from mainland Chinese authorities. While Tsang hails from Hong Kong, which is under separate jurisdiction from the mainland on many matters, the film was made as a China-Hong Kong co-production, which means that mainland Chinese rules apply. Tsang is the son of well-known Hong Kong actor Eric Tsang,...