Filmmaker Zhang Yimou returns for Olympics opening ceremony

Clayton Davis A shortened eligibility year, multiple monochrome films and an underappreciated year for animation is what sums up the 2021 cinematic year. Oscar voters will be voting for their favorites in 23 categories for six days.

Jessica Kiang Given the Chinese government’s frighteningly successful attempts at retroactively erasing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre from history, there is an urgent need for a soup-to-nuts retelling of that incident, solidly laying out the facts and figures, insofar as they can be known. “The Exiles,” from debut directors Violet Columbus and Ben Klein, is not that film, although some of its most powerful sequences could be repurposed in their entirety to that end.Instead, Columbus and Klein present a palimpsest of erratically overlapping perspectives.

Six months after 9/11, firefighter turned “Jihad Rehab” filmmaker Meg Smaker left her job as a Bay Area firefighter to travel to the Middle East to better understand the world she lived in.After making a pit stop in Afghanistan, Smaker moved to Yemen to study Arabic and Islam, and got a job there running a firefighting academy. “So I was a head fire instructor, teaching Yemeni men to fight fire in Yemen, which is where I was when I first heard about the rehab center, when I was living in Yemen and teaching a firefighting like course,” Smaker tells Sharon Waxman at The Wrap’s Sundance Studio.

Two top Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have fired off a letter to NBCUniversal, calling for them to answer questions about their concerns that China’s ruling communist party may influence the upcoming coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Spoiler Alert: The description below has spoilers about the Netflix movie The Lost Daughter

With the Winter Olympics set to begin next week in Beijing, a U.S. State Department human rights report paints a chilling picture of censorship, violence against reporters, and the suppression of dissent during the last Olympic Games held there. Even the Olympic torch relay was censored at the Beijing summer games of 2008 when dissidents protesting China’s occupation of Tibet were forcibly removed from the route by police, allegedly for their own protection.

Addie Morfoot ContributorTwo years ago, Shalini Kantayya was at Sundance with “Coded Bias,” a documentary about racial bias in facial recognition software, algorithms and artificial intelligence. This year the director returns with “TikTok, Boom,” another film about the impact of algorithms on humanity.Since its founding in 2016, TikTok — owned by Chinese conglomerate ByteDance — has become a top entertainment destination for a new generation.

NBC Sports this week made the not-too-surprising announcement that much of its Beijing Olympics team would be covering next month’s Winter Games from afar, in Stamford, CT, as the Covid pandemic once again disrupts the event.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Fans at the Australian Open were asked by security to remove T-shirts featuring the slogan «Where is Peng Shuai?» which references the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the Chinese former tennis player's well-being and whereabouts.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefApple has tapped mainland Chinese director Zhang Meng for “The Comeback,” a heartwarming film that is releasing in time for the Lunar New Year holidays. It was shot entirely using the latest iPhone devices.The company’s Chinese New Year movie tradition is now into its fifth edition.

ESPN said Thursday that due to concerns over Covid and Covid-related restrictions that it will not send its news personnel to the Winter Olympics next month in Beijing. The news comes a day after rightsholder NBC said it will keep most of its announcing teams in the U.S. during the Games, which are set to run February 4-20.

Show your spirit! The Winter Olympics may not be here just yet, but the Opening Ceremony uniforms most definitely are. Ralph Lauren was tapped to outfit the athletes this year and their innovative outerwear didn’t disappoint. The fashion house dropped a handful of jackets, pants and accessories with a special insulation that keeps the warmth in and the cold out.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefChinese regulators teamed up on Wednesday to issue a volley of orders that will crimp the expansion of the country’s entertainment and tech giants, including Alibaba, Tencent and TikTok-owner Bytedance.The directives came in the same week that the U.S. increased its pushback against some of the same Chinese firms, pointing to security concerns, and a Canadian researcher found the app for athletes at Beijing’s Winter Olympics to be full of security flaws.Nine different departments, including China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Cyberspace Administration of China, issued joint statements about how to regulate and tame development of what it labels “the online platform sector.” Prominent among the new policy directives is the strict regulation of the tech companies’ activities and investments in the finance sector.“Platform operators must not use data, technology, market, or capital advantages to restrict the independent operation of other platforms and applications,” said one of the opinions in the NDRC document.That appears to be most problematic for Alibaba and Tencent, which have both hatched vast online transfer, deposit-taking and insurance services.

not be sending announcers or the majority of hosts to Beijing for its coverage of the winter Olympic games. Instead, the network’s play by play coverage and the majority of other coverage will be handled from the Stamford, Connecticut headquarters of NBC sports.“Something significant has changed virtually every day for the last three months, forcing us to adjust our plan numerous times.

Covid-19 concerns have led NBC Sports to keep most of its announcing teams at home for the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, according to a report.

complicated, factors regarding the host nation for this year’s Winter Olympics, which take place in Beijing.This year’s host country, China, is facing intense criticism for its human rights abuses, particularly its treatment of Uyghur Muslims, which the U.S. has termed genocide. The Chinese government has consistently denied all allegations of human rights abuses.

In a video presentation released this afternoon, NBCUniversal executives touted their rare February combo of the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics while only briefly touching on the “complicated” situation in Beijing.

The official opening ceremony of the River Tay salmon fishing season was held in mild conditions near Kinclaven Bridge on Saturday.