Je vous invite à visiter le blog Marketing – Chine. On peut y lire beaucoup d’articles intéressants, sur le marketing, la communication en Chine, la culture chinoise et pas mal d’autres thèmes.
Et aussi, vous trouverez mon nouveau blog : woodsb.net !
– Woods
Filed under: Non Classé | Tagged: blog, Chine, France, Marketing, woodsb | 1 Comment »
Retrouvez mon nouveau blog, woodsb.net. Vous y trouverez des photos, des récits de mes voyages, des insolites, des anecdotes et plein d’autres articles concernant ma vie à Shanghai en Chine.
– Woods
Filed under: Non Classé | Tagged: anecdote, blog, Chine, insolite, photos, Shanghai, voyage, woodsb.net | Leave a Comment »
Last year, an unknown movie made a big buzz on the web. A video was showing a party in New York, during this party something happened outside appeared and it seemed to be some kind of big monster… All of this was filmed with a hand held video camera. At the time, noone knows the name of the movie and many people start to talk about it.
In the beginning of 2008, the film brought out, named Cloverfield. This week a friend droped me out to see it but I must admit I was not especially eager to see it…
In a few words, Cloverfield is a mix of Godzilla and Blairwitch Project, the story of a monster attacking Manhattan and filmed with a hand held video camera. I won’t tell more! 
“Hm…” was the only thing I said to my friend right after the movie. Actually, it’s hard to describ it. At first, I thought It’s not a good movie, maybe because I just don’t like big monsters oriented movies. Then I started to realize that there is something interesting there.
First, the hand held camera and the fact that there are no background music makes the movie more realistic. You are inside the story, stucked in your chair and all that you feel is not coming from the explosive music but from every little noise. Even sound effects seem to be more intense.
Furthermore, with the perspective of this hand held camera, visual special effects are even more incredible. The destruction of Manhattan is quite realistic and the shaking camera makes it even more impressive.
Finally, it’s hard for me to say if I appreciated it or not… It may be the best huge monster movie I’ve seen, but it may just be the less worst. I think there is someting interesting in this movie though as this is not the typical american style that one will find here. Maybe this is the most important thing to remember.
– Woods
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Cloverfield, Movies | Leave a Comment »
Nowadays, the development of China is concerning each part of the society : economy, everyday life, culture, … The daily life has improved a lot the past ten years. This development has been followed by a new feeling of freedom through the Chinese artists. We can feel that a new wave of writers, painters, movie directors,… is coming up.
Concerning Chinese cinema, there is a sort of liberation that can be seen in nowadays movies. For the one who know a bit about asian cinema, I feel a great influence coming from Taiwanese cinema in China. The movies subjects are dealing more and more with everyday life, political issues, sex, drama, … Of course I’m not specialist enough to analyse all of this, but that is how I feel.
As a result, many interesting and brillant movies have been released the past few years. These films also compete in international movie festivals and really appeal to foreigners. For example, Still Life by Jia Zhangke was shot in the old village of Fengjie, a small town on the Yangzi river which is slowly being destroyed by the building of the Three Gorges Dam. The film have even been released uncensored in China.
After this kind of period of liberation, a lot of movies came up with a lot of nudity, violence or political issues, such as Lost in Beijing (finally forbidden in China) and Lust, Caution (censored). In these 2 films we can see many nude actors and sex scenes.
As a result, the beginning of this year shows a regress in this liberation I was talking about. In january, a law has been published announcing the crackdown on vulgar video and audio products, including hardcore activities, rape, whoring, obscene sex exposing human genitals, or sex freaks. It says that the heaviest punishment for such violation would lead to a five-year ban of perpetrators from the movie industry. The team of the film Lost in Beijing has been punished this way because they used the uncensored version of the movie in international festivals and spread the censored scenes on the web. Now, they are not allowed to shoot a film during 2 years. The news can be found here.
But on february 13th, an even more incredible news came up ! The governement now wants to restrain mystrery and horror in Chinese cinema. How can this be possible ? At least, we can understand that sex scenes are not necessary to make a good movie, but to forbid horror or mystery scenes seems to be a joke ! The purpose of such a decision is to “protect the country’s children and teenagers’ psychological development”. In every society kids want to go further their fears, they love horror movies, rollercoasters, or else. In France for example, we had a TV show called “Fais-moi peur!” (Scare me). This is the result of the extreme popularity of the Japanese comic Death Note, which is the story of a notebook that can kill people if their names are written in it. The news can be found here.
No more nudity, no more horror, no more mystery, what else ? I am really worried about the impact of such laws on the Chinese cinema’s development. A director will think twice while shooting a movie, he may fear to be censored or punished. This way I’m afraid to see flavourless movies in the future. With the development of the country, fourth or third economy of the world, it is hard to believe how far things are going nowadays. Protecting the kids is not a valid excuse for me and I don’t really understand the goal of these laws. Will this lead to a brutal stop of Chinese cinema’s improvement ?
– Woods
Filed under: China, Movies, Opinion | Tagged: Censor, China, Cinema, Movies | Leave a Comment »
Today I was searching for a video of Namdaemun, a South-korean traditional building that burned recently but I randomly found an article about North-korean propaganda.
I’ve found a cartoon that seems to be innocent at first but you’ll see what happen then. The cartoon is about 9 minutes, you don’t have to understand Korean to watch it.
As you can see, propaganda against United States can be found everywhere, even in kids cartoons…
– Woods
Filed under: Other | Tagged: cartoon, North Korea, propaganda | 1 Comment »
Today I want to show you some drawing about food made by Yang Liu to compare Chinese and Westerners.
No surprise here!
Chinese usually eat hot things three times a day, but we prefer cold breakfast (english custom doesn’t count ) and some of us cold dinner as in my family. But of course it’s a caricature.
Ah, we have a huge misunderstanding there! I have never seen as many people drinking Coca-Cola as in China, this was quite surprising for me. It doesn’t mean that tea is not the most representative drink, of course it is! But I think we drink less Coca-Cola in Europe, and even less in France.
Of course we can say that the main difference is about the cuisine or about flatware, but for me, the most important difference is the feeling inside a dining room. In our society, eating is a very formal action, we have rules and behaviors. We try to avoid the noise and almost whisper to talk to each other. But in China, people don’t mind the noise or the rules. The meal is an important time of the day to relax, discuss about everything and enjoy time with others. In a way, I would say that everyday meals in China are more relaxing and enjoyable than here. But when you have to attend a dinner with some important people, you will feel even more ill at ease than in France, because it is even more formal and thousand miles away from everydray meals.
– Woods
Filed under: Art, China, Food | Tagged: Art, Caricature, China, Food | 2 Comments »
These days I’m attending different conferences concerning cultural aspect in international management. This topic is actually quite interesting. Nowadays we all think we are open-minded, we have friends from all over the world using social networks such. Therefore we think we can get along well with anyone regardless of his or her origins, but it’s actually not that right…
I don’t really intend to talk about that, but it reminds me of a Chinese artist called Yang Liu. She is living in Germany since 1990, so she is influenced by both cultures. I saw her work on the web months ago and I spend almost one hour to find it back last night.
Knowing both chinese and western culture she decided to held an exposition about drawings showing cultural differences between Chinese and Westerners. I’ll post some of them here.
On the left part we can see a Westerner on his own and on the right part Chinese holding hands, but this is not about crowd in the streets! We can understand from this picture that western culture is mainly individualistic and that Chinese have a collectivist culture. You can make your own conclusion about it!
Western society is focused on the me but Chinese usually are more concerned by the others. But actually, we can see that this situation is changing in the new generations because of everyday life competition and especially during childhood due to the single child policy.
I’ll pick up funnier pictures next time, I promise!
– Woods
Filed under: Art, China | Tagged: Art, Caricature, China | Leave a Comment »
Today I have been watching a strange movie from Singapore called Be with me, directed by Eric Khoo. I was touched by this beautiful mix of 3 stories and by the great photography of the movie. But I am not sure this one may be interesting for everyone cause there is almost no dialogs and everything is going slowly.
“Be with me” consists of three stories of love vs. solitude :
1. An aging, lonesome shopkeeper doesn’t believe in life anymore since his wife died. But he is saved from desperation by reading an autobiographical book and meeting its author, a deaf and blind lady of his own age.
2. Fatty, a security guard in his fourties, lives for two things : good food and love for a pretty executive living in his block of flats. But, if it is easy to satisfy his first need winning the heart of the distant belle is a horse of another color.
3. Two teenage schoolgirls get to know each other on the Internet. Soon they fall in love.
Don’t hesitate to tell me your feelings if you see this movie.
– Woods
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Movies, Review | Leave a Comment »
