Movie Stars in the Cartoonist's Eye

Check out these delightful caricatures by cartoonist P. L. Chang from the May 1934 issue of the Shanghai pictorial magazine Young Companion. For those of you who read Chinese, here are the captions. For those who can't (and that includes myself), I'll attempt to conjecture about some of the situations depicted.


Chen Yumei
Remember Chen Yumei, who battled Hu Die for the title of China's movie queen? Supposedly when rising star Hu Die left the Tianyi Film Company in 1928 and signed on with rival Mingxing, Tianyi boss Runje Shaw (the eldest of the Shaw Brothers) decided to take Chen Yumei — one of his actresses — as his second wife and make her the studio's new top star. In this way, it was rumored, the notoriously stingy Shaw wouldn't have to pay a high salary to his leading lady. Poor Chen Yumei... all she could do was dream of getting that crown, while sleeping with rats on a patched mattress.


Wang Renmei
"Wildcat" Wang Renmei had married Korean hunk (and Shanghai's "Emperor of Film") Jin Yan at the beginning of 1934. Jin Yan was an avid hunter and outdoorsman, and if this cartoon is accurate, then "Wildcat" Wang also shared his love of rifles and campfires.


Ai Xia
This cartoon shows Death coming to claim the rebellious modern girl Ai Xia, who committed suicide during the Lunar New Year of 1934. She was China's second female scriptwriter and had written and starred in the film A Woman of Today (1933) before her death. In a traqic turn of events, director Cai Chusheng — who was rumored to have had an affair with Ai and who blamed the Shanghai paparazzi for her death — made a film about her life called New Woman (1935), starring Ruan Lingyu as her fictional stand-in. The press responded to Cai's attack by hounding Ruan Lingyu, who ended up taking her own life shortly thereafter on March 15, International Women's Day. It clearly wasn't easy being a "modern woman" in modern Shanghai.


Li Minghui
A singer turned movie star, Li Minghui was the daughter of "Father of Mandopop" Li Jinhui. In 1934 she married one of China's most famous athletes, football star Lu Zhongen. To read more about Li Minghui, check out The Chinese Mirror, your one-stop shop for information (in English!) about early Chinese cinema.


Hu Die
Here's Queen Hu Die looking a little uptight. I don't know what's going on in the cartoon, but I wonder if it's a reference to Hu Die's suit against her fiance for the annulment of their long-standing engagement. She also demanded monetary compensation for being taken out of the marriage market for such a long time (I believe they were engaged for three years). According to one American newspaper account, Hu Die was "never loath to use her affairs of the heart as stepping stones for her career" (Salt Lake Tribune, March 1, 1936).


Hu Ping
All I can tell you about Hu Ping is that she played the mad woman in Song at Midnight (1937), an adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera that was later remade in Hong Kong during the 90s as The Phantom Lover, starring Leslie Cheung. I'm curious to know more about her, so please leave a comment if you have any information.


Xu Lai
My buddy Oldflames helped me identify this one and was kind enough to translate the caption, in which Xu Lai says, "I couldn't live another day if I can't dance." I guess she was known for her terpsichorean passion. And to think, I only knew her as the first Chinese actress to do a bathtub scene.


Ruan Lingyu
And last but not least is our beloved Ruan Lingyu, whose winning smile and lanky beauty is perfectly captured by cartoonist P. L. Chang.

I hope you've enjoyed these as much as I have!

Laugh. Dance. Cry. Live. [[in 3 minutes]]

(the way i am)

my dear friend corinna posted this video on her blog the other day and said:

I have a friend who is just like this girl.

Joy and glee and pain and just feeling emotion so fully and completely.

I love her highs, and fear her lows.

But she's my friend and I delight in it all.

now you see, to her, that girl is me. and actually, i quite agree.

How to Write Very Bad Poetry

(nina katchadourian)

haha, i love katachadourian for thinking of doing this with the spines of books. i've always adored spines--there's something so intriguing about them...

 sometimes i wonder how many spines i've read in my life.

now i want to go to the library and make my own ridiculous sentences.

i personally love the shark1 shark2 shark3 sudden violence stack. which one's your favorite?

Perspective, Just a Little Different

hagia sofia

tower bridge

sacre coeur

eiffel tower

the duomo

neuschwanstein

(budget travel--of all places--via a cup of jo)

so my dear friend becca texted me earlier today saying she found a rad photo of the duomo when she was on a cup of jo. when i had a much needed, moment to myself i went online to find it and was pleasantly surprised by the other photos in the bunch. all of these places are heavy with importance to me, and the atypical perspective used in each one makes them feel very personal, like a true snapshot. a view that you only get when you're actually there. in the moment.

enjoy.

Hong Kong Cowgirl: Connie Chan

The one and only, pistol-twirling Chan Po Chu!

Buried Treasure: The Missing Shaw Films, Part 3

Here's a final batch of unreleased Shaw movies that I'd love to see. According to my buddy Glenn, who visited the office of Celestial Pictures yesterday, it's up to IVL, who distributes the Shaw Brothers DVDs in Hong Kong (and around the world for those of us with all-region players), whether the remaining titles will be released. Like I've said before, I'm keeping my fingers crossed but not holding my breath. Now let's take a look at five more missing films:


Double Trouble (1968)
This movie was directed by Sit Kwan, who helmed the delightful Cheng Pei-pei musical Blue Skies (1967), but there's only one reason — and it's a big one — that I want to see this film: my favorite fatty, the irresistible Peng Peng. He gets top billing (after Margaret Hsing-hui) in this comedy about two bumbling fools trying to help a pretty young girl escape an arranged marriage to an old millionaire.


Three Swinging Girls (1968)
Essie Lin Chia (center), Jean Li Chih-an (right), and Irene Chen Yi-ling (left) play the three swinging girls who share an apartment — and more — in this romantic-revenge comedy by veteran director Chun Kim. None of the actresses were big stars, but that makes me all the more curious to see this film. I'm hoping it's one of those overlooked and unexpected gems that I so love.


Dear Murderer (1969)
In a dark twist on his "ladies' man" image, Peter Chen Ho plays a company man bent on moving up the corporate ladder by marrying his boss's daughter (Betty Ting Pei). When he finds out his former sweetheart (Pat Ting Hung), a typist at the firm, is pregnant and demanding that he do the right thing, he knocks her off. But soon after his honeymoon, he becomes haunted by her ghost.


Long Road to Freedom (1970)
A girls-in-prison movie directed by Inoue Umetsugu — need I say more? Essie Lin Chia, who plays the lead, is someone I've always liked whenever I've seen her. According to IMDB, she is of mixed Chinese and Portuguese heritage and was discovered by King Hu. And, are my eyes deceiving me — or does it say in her filmography that she starred with Jim Kelly in Black Samurai (1977)?! Yep, that's Essie in the movie's trailer at the 1:35 mark.


Mini Skirt Gang (1974)
Speaking of 'sploitation, here's one for all you fem doms and male subs. Directed by Lui Kei (who was the screen sweetheart of Cantonese teen idol Connie Chan before he started directing soft-core sex comedies at Shaws) and featuring exploitation queens Birte Tove and Chen Ping, Mini Skirt Gang — much to my surprise — was actually released on DVD last year... in Denmark! Check out the Celestial Pictures logo in the bottom right corner of this DVD cover. Proof positive perhaps that the remaining Shaw films are restored and ready to go for those willing to take a gamble on releasing them.

Scenes from Shanghai's Night Life

Check out these wonderful postcards that went for auction on eBay recently. I'm not absolutely certain, but I think they're the work of cartoonist Friedrich Schiff, an Austrian Jew who lived in Shanghai during the 1930s and 40s.

Born in 1908 into an artistic family (his father was a painter, his mother an actress), Schiff studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

In 1930, at the invitation of his cousin, Schiff visited Shanghai and fell in love with the city and its people. He ended up living there for 14 years, until 1947 when he moved to Buenos Aires.

Schiff had worked as a newspaper cartoonist in Vienna and continued this line of work in Shanghai. Soon he became famous for his amusing caricatures of the city's inhabitants, from beggars and expats to sailors and sing-song girls.

In 1934, he began a fruitful collaboration with photojournalist Ellen Thorbecke (who was the wife of the Dutch ambassador to China). Like Schiff, Thorbecke was also a Sinophile. Together they created a series of illustrated travel books about China's major cities: Peking Studies (1934), Shanghai (1938), and Hong Kong (1938). From what I've read (see the link below), the books are quite charming. Unfortunately, I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to peruse them, since they apparently fetch a pretty steep price in the rare book marketplace.

However, there is a compilation of Schiff's Shanghai sketches called Vicissitude of Old Shanghai (老上海浮世绘), which I am dying to get my hands on. I found it for sale at a Chinese online bookseller only to discover, after I had successfully managed (with the help of Google Translate) to set up an account, that the book is currently out of stock. Boo-hoo for me... but I'll track it down. I don't give up easily once I'm on the hunt!

Further Reading

• Images from Maskee: A Shanghai Sketchbook by Schiff (ca. 1938)
• "Records of Hong Kong: Arthur Hacker profiles two out-of-the-box 1930s Hong Kong artists"

Whimsical, The Word is, Whimsical

(balmorhea)

fog is pretty. coffee is life-giving. cell phones are complicated. perfume is a staple. full length dresses are a nice change. platforms are sexy. postcards are necessary. chatter is inspiring. doorknobs are useless. feathers are fluffy.

getty

(balmorhea)

looking at art. considering. oh the great contemplation. writing. reading. sitting. waiting. praying. hiding.

Ketchup: A Boy and His Dog and Guitar

"Carefree Loser" by Ketchup (play song)

Hong Kong folk singer Ketchup, aka Ken Tsoi, reminds me of a lone hawk quietly soaring above the glitz and schmaltz of the city's Cantopop scene.

I first became aware of Ketchup when I picked up a quirky little gem of an album called Freeplay (2004), featuring him, Chet Lam, and The Pancakes playing each other's songs in various combinations. The next time I came across Ketchup was on Rebecca Pan's My Dream My Way My Indie Music (2009), where he performed a fabulous cover of her 1967 hit "Solid Gold Rickshaw" — it was my favorite song on the album.

Two months ago in Hong Kong, I spotted his most recent CD His Master's Voice — thanks in no small part to the cool cover art, which features him and his dog in a clever reinvention of the iconic HMV logo.

Singing in English, Ketchup crafts a gently psychedelic sound that alternates between joie de vivre and melancholy like the warmth of the sun playing hide and seek on a cloudy day.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that His Master's Voice is available online, but you can get two of Ketchup's previous albums at HMV Hong Kong: Old Fashioned Blue Sky (2003) and In Love Again (2005).

*A great big thanks to Ketchup Ken for letting me post a song from his latest CD!

The Mysteries of Ruan Lingyu

Ruan Lingyu's Puzzling Interlude at Owl Hollow

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled — like a proverbial Alice — across an astonishing series of paintings devoted to silent film star Ruan Lingyu. I was completely surprised and enchanted by these strange tableaux which featured an actress so familiar and beloved to me.

Compelled by Ruan's tragic life and sad beauty, artist Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley created this trinity of works that became the centerpiece of her 2005 exhibit Somnium at Seattle's Bluebottle Art Gallery. In her artist statement she wrote that the paintings are "a tribute of imagined dreams, of a different world free from the torments of humanity, to inhabit Ruan Lingyu's self-imposed sleep."


Ruan Lingyu's Tangible Delectation

Through the alchemy of Dolphin-Kingsley's art, Ruan's suicide becomes a shamanic passage into the underworld. Accompanied by a retinue of animal guides — the wise owl, all-seeing peacock, lucky goldfish, and mercurial octopus and salamander — she travels through the hollow of death to emerge as the eternal Goddess.


Ruan Lingyu and Octopus

To see more of Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley's amazing work, visit her website and Flickr page.

Pumpkin Spice and Creepy

(balmorhea)

i love days where the clouds linger overhead, tempting us to wish for rain. what a tease! will it come?

My Name is Paul Auster, I am Not Paul Auster

(mateo tannat)

and who are we, really, at the end of the day? living, breathing bodies of fleshy culpability with incorrigibly sentimental tendencies.

Hong Kong In The 60s: My Fantoms

I can't help but feel some synchronicity in the arrival of these four new songs by Hong Kong In The 60s in the midst of the fallen stars, lost movies, old vinyl, and deteriorating photographs that have haunted Soft Film in the past few weeks.

The band's melancholy pop and meticulously crafted sonic landscapes are the perfect soundtrack for my mood of late. I'm really looking forward to the release of their nearly finished debut album, My Fantoms. In the meantime, give a listen to the fab tracks below, and go to Amazon or iTunes to download their first EP, Willow Pattern Songs.

Jill Flint

Jill Flint is an American actress and stars as Jill Casey in the new USA Network original series ROYAL PAINS which will resume airing on June 3, 2010.









Flint has appeared in several feature films, most recently in "Cadillac Records" with Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright and Beyonce Knowles and "The Women," starring Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes and Debra Messing.

Flint was also recently seen in "How I Got Lost" with Rosemarie DeWitt. Additional film credits include "What Just Happened," "On Broadway" and "Garden State."

Flint has appeared in the recurring role of "Bex" on the hit CW series "Gossip Girl," and has been a recurring guest star on "Six Degrees," "Conviction" and USA's Law & Order: Criminal intent.

Flint resides in New York City.

Don't Look Back

All Your Highs Are Really Low

(jo)


A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

-wilde

Haunted by Ruan Lingyu

*Image courtesy of heman8

Drink it Up

(a cup of jo)

i mean, this looks awesome right now. after a long morning filled with classes/registration/whatever, i'd really appreciate some ice cold.vitamin infused.liquid trickling down my throat.

Josephine Siao: Cantopop Gunslinger

I was a little surprised at the enthusiastic response to my recent post about Josephine Siao, but I really shouldn't — after all, Fong Fong is pretty cool, isn't she!

Here's the soundtrack EP for her 1967 film The Lady Killer (玉面女殺星), also known as Bat Girl. It's a real shame that this and Fong Fong's other "Jane Bond" films — the title given to Hong Kong's female action movies of the late 60s by critic Sam Ho — are not available on DVD. To give you a taste of what we're missing, check out this awesome flyer (front, back).

Well, at least we can listen to the soundtrack and imagine what the movie is like. First up is the killer B-side, followed by Cantonese variations of "The Wedding (La Novia)" and another well-known Western pop song, the name of which escapes me at the moment (help me out folks!). The English titles are my own unqualified translations. If I got them wrong, please let me know.

Finally, the gentleman singing with Fong Fong is supposedly Lui Kei, who stars with her in the film, but I can't say for sure that it's really him who is singing.

Happy listening!

夜總會之歌 ("Song of the Nightclub") (play song)

我愛蝙蝠女 ("I Love Batgirl") (play song)

蝙蝠俠影 ("Batgirl's Shadow") (play song)

*Here's the back cover of the EP with Chinese lyrics

Nature's Rouen Cathedral

(via a cup of jo)

just as monet went to rouen cathedral countless times to study the effect of light and temperature on the facade of a holy edifice, this photographer visited the same ordinary hill everyday for a year. i love the consistency of community in the photos, despite the changing seasons and time of day.