‘Shameless, Uncreative, Dreadful’ Chinese Movies Vie to Be the Worst in Competition

Posted: January 23, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Art & Culture, Asia, China, Entertainment, Global | Tags: Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Actor, Alamy, Arjun Kapoor, Auto racing, Film industry, Filmmaking, Hollywood, Hong Kong, Movies, Reality television, Television program |Leave a comment

Golden-Broom

China’s Answer to Hollywood’s ‘Razzies’

Lilian Lin reports: As China’s film industry has grown, so too has the number of lemons it’s produced.

According to the organizers of this year’s Golden Broom Awards – which asks the public to choose the country’s worst film – this year’s contest is taking place amid “the most shameless, uncreative, dreadful” time in China’s film history.

“Many film critics in this country are bribed by film producers and genuine voice is scarce. There should be an award to represent the audience’s voice.”

“Some online users are complaining to me that they can hardly choose the worst because all of the selected are terrible,” said Cheng Qingsong, who first launched the awards, China’s answer to Hollywood’s Razzies, six years ago. Online voting for the country’s worst movie of the year recently began, with the winner to be announced in the middle of next month.

Last year, the contest attracted more than a million votes, up from merely several thousand in 2009.

“The past few years have witnessed the largest number of lousy films in China’s history that care the least about originality.”

China’s film market has mushroomed, with box-office receipts rising 36% last year to a record 29.6 billion yuan ($4.77 billion), according to the country’s film regulator. Mr. Cheng, a screenwriter and editor-in-chief of an independent film magazine, said he hoped the awards could help spur better movies in the future. “Many film critics in this country are bribed by film producers and genuine voice is scarce,” he said. “There should be an award to represent the audience’s voice.”

“The past few years have witnessed the largest number of lousy films in China’s history that care the least about originality,” he said, criticizing the country’s films as shallow, frequently “uncreative remakes of Hong Kong films.”

To accommodate such a rising number of bad films in recent years, Mr. Cheng and his fellow organizers have expanded the list of nominated films from 20 to 40 in 2012.

Still, he said he thinks the list could have been longer. “We realize that many other bad films are left out,” said Mr. Cheng. “But like any other awards, there are always talents that are overlooked.“

Contestants for the title of “most disappointing film” this year include…(read more)

China Real Time Report – WSJ