Exclusive: Hong Kong-based producer Tsui Hark has boarded the ship as partner and co-producer of the Chinese pirate epic Shih, Queen of the Sea. Hark will partner with Anthony McCarten, Dakota Group and Facing East.
McCarten, whose biopic scripts range from Bohemian Rhapsody to The Theory of Everything, The Two Popes, Darkest Hour and numerous others, has here written the script about Shih Yang, aka Cheng I Sao, who dominated the South China Sea during the Qing Dynasty. Born into poverty, she worked on a “flower boat” brothel where she met the notorious pirate leader Cheng Yi, joining him at sea. Upon his death in 1807, she assumed full command of the fearsome Red Flag Fleet, commanding over 1,800 pirate ships and an estimated 80,000 pirates. By comparison, Blackbeard commanded four ships and 300 pirates within the same century. Shih instigated sweeping reforms to the rules of piracy, ordering execution for rape or marital...
McCarten, whose biopic scripts range from Bohemian Rhapsody to The Theory of Everything, The Two Popes, Darkest Hour and numerous others, has here written the script about Shih Yang, aka Cheng I Sao, who dominated the South China Sea during the Qing Dynasty. Born into poverty, she worked on a “flower boat” brothel where she met the notorious pirate leader Cheng Yi, joining him at sea. Upon his death in 1807, she assumed full command of the fearsome Red Flag Fleet, commanding over 1,800 pirate ships and an estimated 80,000 pirates. By comparison, Blackbeard commanded four ships and 300 pirates within the same century. Shih instigated sweeping reforms to the rules of piracy, ordering execution for rape or marital...
- 8/23/2023
- by Mike Fleming Jr
- Deadline Film + TV
"With his Bud Cort haircut and morbid sensibility, Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is too smart for Swansea, Wales, an industrial city mired in some seriously mid-80s Thatcherite doldrums," begins Vadim Rizov at GreenCine Daily. "The trouble with Oliver is that he knows he's clever, which could justify anything: surreptitiously monitoring his parents' sex life, taunting an overweight girl to make local cutie Jordana (Yasmin Paige) notice him as a real livewire, or trying to trash the house of downhill neighbor Graham Purvis (Paddy Considine) who may be having an affair with mom (Sally Hawkins). Fortunately, Submarine, Richard Ayoade's feature debut, is aware of Oliver's self-justifying nature and the ways it could warp him…. Acutely aware of the long tradition of films about disaffected young men coming to terms with themselves, Ayoade doesn't duck the precedent: instead, like Oliver…, he nods to seemingly every single precursor. There's a 400 Blows-quoting dash across the beach,...
- 6/3/2011
- MUBI
Title: Empire of Silver Writer-director: Christina Yao Starring: Aaron Kwok, Tielin Zhang, Jennifer Tilly, Hao Lei There’s a special type of moviegoing misery to be found in self-important period pieces, and that’s just the sort of screaming boredom that Empire of Silver, the nearly impenetrable, emotionally arrested feature film debut of essayist and playwright Christina Yao, delivers. A drama focused on a powerful banking family in the late imperial/early Republican era of China, the movie rather gorgeously establishes its setting, but never locates a single compelling character or imparts any sense or sort of reality of what its subjects’ lives must truly have been like. Adapted from a thick, three-volume romance, Cheng Yi’s...
- 6/2/2011
- by bsimon
- ShockYa
Reviewed by Lydia Ianni
(May 2011)
Directed by: Christina Yao
Written by: Christina Yao and Cheng Yi
Starring: Aaron Kwok, Tielin Zhang and Hao Lei
Director Christina Yao’s debut feature “Empire of Silver,” based on the book by Cheng Yi, is set during China’s Boxer Rebellion. However, the uprising, in which Chinese nationalists fought against Western “spheres of influence” in China, is more of a backdrop for a story that hinges on family drama and romance.
The film’s narrative turns on the moral dilemma of the third-born son (Aaron Kwok) of a wealthy banking family in turn-of-the-century China. A series of mishaps finds him entrusted with the continued survival of the family line and wealth. However, he is torn between his duty to his family and his love of his father’s new wife (Hao Lei), a woman who had been previously engaged to him. Father and son have a tense relationship,...
(May 2011)
Directed by: Christina Yao
Written by: Christina Yao and Cheng Yi
Starring: Aaron Kwok, Tielin Zhang and Hao Lei
Director Christina Yao’s debut feature “Empire of Silver,” based on the book by Cheng Yi, is set during China’s Boxer Rebellion. However, the uprising, in which Chinese nationalists fought against Western “spheres of influence” in China, is more of a backdrop for a story that hinges on family drama and romance.
The film’s narrative turns on the moral dilemma of the third-born son (Aaron Kwok) of a wealthy banking family in turn-of-the-century China. A series of mishaps finds him entrusted with the continued survival of the family line and wealth. However, he is torn between his duty to his family and his love of his father’s new wife (Hao Lei), a woman who had been previously engaged to him. Father and son have a tense relationship,...
- 5/31/2011
- by admin
- Moving Pictures Network
Reviewed by Lydia Ianni
(May 2011)
Directed by: Christina Yao
Written by: Christina Yao and Cheng Yi
Starring: Aaron Kwok, Tielin Zhang and Hao Lei
Director Christina Yao’s debut feature “Empire of Silver,” based on the book by Cheng Yi, is set during China’s Boxer Rebellion. However, the uprising, in which Chinese nationalists fought against Western “spheres of influence” in China, is more of a backdrop for a story that hinges on family drama and romance.
The film’s narrative turns on the moral dilemma of the third-born son (Aaron Kwok) of a wealthy banking family in turn-of-the-century China. A series of mishaps finds him entrusted with the continued survival of the family line and wealth. However, he is torn between his duty to his family and his love of his father’s new wife (Hao Lei), a woman who had been previously engaged to him. Father and son have a tense relationship,...
(May 2011)
Directed by: Christina Yao
Written by: Christina Yao and Cheng Yi
Starring: Aaron Kwok, Tielin Zhang and Hao Lei
Director Christina Yao’s debut feature “Empire of Silver,” based on the book by Cheng Yi, is set during China’s Boxer Rebellion. However, the uprising, in which Chinese nationalists fought against Western “spheres of influence” in China, is more of a backdrop for a story that hinges on family drama and romance.
The film’s narrative turns on the moral dilemma of the third-born son (Aaron Kwok) of a wealthy banking family in turn-of-the-century China. A series of mishaps finds him entrusted with the continued survival of the family line and wealth. However, he is torn between his duty to his family and his love of his father’s new wife (Hao Lei), a woman who had been previously engaged to him. Father and son have a tense relationship,...
- 5/31/2011
- by admin
- Moving Pictures Magazine
Given the current world financial crisis and banking dilemmas, the release of “Empire of Silver” certainly comes at an opportune time, charting as it does the rise of the Shanxi merchants towards the end of the Qing Dynasty of China, whose wealth and influence all over the world saw them being referred to as the ‘Wall Street of China’. The film was a prestige production, being based upon the historical novel “The Silver Valley” by Shanxi merchant descendent Cheng Yi, and boasting a Us$10 million investment by top Taiwanese tycoon Gou Tai Ming. It was helmed by regular theatre director Christina Yao, produced by noted critic Peggy Chiao, and perhaps more importantly features a truly impressive cast, with the award winning Aaron Kwok in the lead, supported by the likes of Mainland veteran actor Zhang Tielin (from the popular television series “Princess Returning Pearl”), up and coming actress Hao Lei...
- 12/6/2009
- by James Mudge
- Beyond Hollywood
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