The first woman is 31 year old Tang Lu (Zhang Yuqi), a white collar who masterfully using her beauty to make men hopelessly fall for her and to pave the way for her success; the second women is Fan Fan (Zhou Xun), an unattractive doctor, who knows everything about rectum and nothing about men; and the third women is Tie Ling (Kwai Lunmei), a lead band singer plus boxer, who has a perfect boyfriend existing only in her own fantasy. The script is penned by Tsui Hark and Korean screenwriter Kwak Jae-yong and the cast also include Alex Fong, Stephen Fung and Eddie Peng.

Tsui Hark's earlier works are way better than his recent works. A Better Tomorrow series with Chow Yun-Fat, from the 1980s and martial art films like, Wong Fei Hung series with Jet Li and The Blade with Zhao Wenzhuo, from the 1990s are classics near impossible to be duplicated. His Hollywood try-outs are so painfully to watch that I prefer to erase all the memories of them. The Legend of Zu is an ambition derailed by poorly developed story and not unimpressive CG effects. Seven Swords is an encouraging return to his martial-art root, though falls short of matching his early works. Triangle is an interesting idea fails to deliver the expected. Missing is a wired combination of horror and romance, which turns out to be nothing special.

Peking Opera Blues is one of Tsui Hark's best and All About Women, remake or not a remake, is not what we expected from him. But we will watch it anyway, because he is Tsui Hark.

Posters and stills

The Dream Factory, Be There or Be Square, Sorry Baby, A Sigh, and Big Shot’s Funeral, are movies by Feng Xiaogang, the most successful comedy director in China. After entertaining millions of people for many years, Feng decide to make his movies more “serious”. Cell Phone is a comedy with a not so funny ending, No Thieves on Earth is a drama with funny moments, The Banquet, is a big budget misfired Hamlet adaptation, and Assembly is a war drama, probably one of the best of its kind comes out from China.

Now, the comedy king is getting ready to have a triumph return to his old genre this Christmas with If You Are the One (Chinese title literally means: “Do Not Disturb If Not Interested”. We still don’t know much about the plot except the following: A, Ge You, the male lead of almost all Feng’s movies, plays an man who falls in love with a girl played by Shu Qi; and B, the man Ge You plays is an inventor, who badly needs someone to finance his new inventions and Fan Wei plays a rich man who badly needs some good project to expand his wealth. Of cause, they finally meet.

A trailer and a poster, the first of a series, just released suggest the movie could be telling a simple romance, but Ge You has said it was “a new version of The Dream Factory.” The tag line on the poster says “What is the most precious in the 21st Century? Harmony.” This is a variation of a line from Feng’s No Thieves on Earth – “What is the most precious in the 21st Century? Talented people.”

The principal filming of If You Are the One wrapped up in early October. Then the worldwide financial crisis suddenly erupted and Feng got the inspiration for a new ending. Again, we don’t know much about it except both the original and the new endings take place on board of a yacht and the new ending is somehow related to the stock market.

The cast also include Hong Kong actor Alex Fong, Vivian Hsu, another actress from Taiwan (besides Shu Qi), Feng Yuanzheng, Hu Ke, Issoh Uzaki and Che Xiao.

Last year, Feng cast Ge You and Shu Qi for a comedy project titled The Nobles, which tells a newly rich guy looking for someone to teach him how to live like a noble and a man recruited a girl, recently returned to China for a western country, to con the rich guy’s money. The project was terminated after Feng found out the story was not good enough. Just when people got very disappointed by the new, If You Are the One, with a story sounds somewhat similar to the cancelled one, quietly went into production in July this year and the release in China was aimed at December 22.

Feng’s movies, comedies or non-comedies, have always been box-office champions during the holiday season and many people have begun thinking If You Are the One would be the same.