Film feast to mark Oct 1

Thirty films will be screened between now and Oct 20, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on Oct 1.

They will include The Founding of a Repulic (Jianguo Daye), a 134-minute flick with a stellar cast of more than 170 stars, including Jackie Chan and Zhang Ziyi.

Directed by Han Sanping, head of China Film Group, the film will hit theaters on Sept 17 in the mainland and soon thereafter in Taiwan.

The Message (Feng Sheng), a thriller based on the undercover operations of the Communists, will be shown on Oct 1. Starring A-list stars such as Zhou Xun, Li Bingbing and Zhang Hanyu, the film poses a big box office challenge to The Founding of a Republic.

Tian'anmen directed by Ye Daying is about how people decorated the square before the founding ceremony, 60 years ago.

Love inspired by letters

I Owe You a Hug (Jinsheng Qianni Yige Yongbao), a TV series based on a true story about a disabled army officer and his wife, will be shown on CCTV-1 from today.

The 20-episode drama tells the story of Wu Dalong, an army officer based in Tibet, and Lin Xiaomin, a company clerk in Henan. The penfriends promise to meet in person when they have exchanged 365 letters. But Wu loses his arm while helping the Tibetans fight a sudden fire. Lin cares for the desperate Wu for years and eventually they get married.

The couple in real life (pictured left) are Wang Junjing, an officer stationed in Tibet, and Wu Xinfen, now a housewife. They have been married for seven years and have a daughter.

Fu Dalong, a rising actor and winner of the Golden Rooster Award, known as the mainland's Academy Awards, is cast as the officer. Fu plays the role with his hands tied behind him and has even learnt to use his mouth to write.

A year to remember

War and Peace over Peking (Beiping Zhan Yu He), a 34-episode TV drama on the peaceful liberation of Beijing (then called Beiping), hits the small screen yesterday.

Celebrating the 60-year anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the series shown on CCTV 8 focuses on Fu Zuoyi, a Nationalist leader of Beijing garrison. Fu played a key role in the peaceful liberation of Beijing in 1949, which ended the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists in 1945 and prevented the 2 million citizens of Beijing from a chaotic war.

Very few films or TV series have shown the general before and this put Chen Yiheng, a senior actor who plays the role, under great pressure.

Zhang Jinlai, known for playing the Monkey King in the smash-hit TV series adapted from Journey to the West (Xi You Ji), plays Hu Shih, then chancellor of Peking University.

Famous TV anchor Cheng Qian plays Wang Kejun, a member of Fu's think tank.

Creating a song and dance

Dance for Love (Aiwo Jiu Geiwo Tiaozhiwu), China's first musical in the form of a movie, will hit theaters on Aug 26, Chinese Valentine's Day.

The film is about a group of young men and their preparations for a musical adapted from the Chinese classic Butterfly Lovers (Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai).

Zhao Xu, a graduate of the music department of the Central Academy of Drama, leads the cast, which includes Qiu Siting, a dancer of the Bavarian State Ballet.

The film is directed by manager-turned-director Wen Shuo. He says he has chosen a cast of new actors, because he believes good musicals, such as Les Miserables, create stars, not rely on them.

Austrian music director Elmar Ottenthal has showered high praise on it, saying he is particularly appreciative of the show's combination of Western musical and traditional Chinese elements such as Peking Opera.

Editor: Dong Jirong