Pinning hope on winter's tales

Another film arousing nostalgia for the best era of Hong Kong films, Caught in Time, has done well despite mixed reviews. The film overtook the war film The Sacrifice as the single-day top grosser on Nov 20.

Daniel Wu, who stars in the film as a ruthless gangster, said in an earlier interview that he joined the film to support Hong Kong cinema.

"I had cooperated with director Lau Ho-leung when he worked as scriptwriter for the films Triple Tap and New Police Story (both starring Wu), so I really wanted to help him when I heard it would be his new directorial outing," he says.

Ethnic Tibetan writer-director Pema Tseden's latest outing, Balloon, was released on Nov 20. The film was nominated for awards at both the Venice and Toronto film festivals, notching up a score of 7.9 point out of 10 on Douban.

The film was billed as a draw for art-house enthusiasts, but the film's screenings fell abruptly from 2.4 percent on the first day to 1 percent on the second, as most theater operators prefer to give more screenings to lucrative blockbusters such as Caught in Time.

Pema Tseden posted on Sina Weibo that he wishes theaters would raise the amount of screen time for art films in cinemas.

Mentioning producer Fang Li "kneeling to beg for more screenings" of the art-house film Song of the Phoenix in 2016, Pema Tseden says he hopes he won't be forced to do the same.

"I wish every film could get a fair opportunity to be seen by more people on giant screens," he says.

His words are echoed by many fans online.

For theater operators struggling to survive the industry's "winter", the remaining weeks of 2020 are their last hope.

Chinese master director Zhang Yimou's One Second and Hollywood DreamWorks Animation's The Croods: A New Age are set to hit Chinese theaters on Nov 27.

Warner Bros' Wonder Woman 1984 and Disney's Soul are to be released in China in December.