Tan Chui Mui’s ‘All About Yuyu’ Scores at Shanghai Project Market

OceanGate has suspended all exploration and commercial operations following the Titan submersible tragedy that killed five passengers during its expedition last month.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Coco Lee, a Hong Kong-born singer and songwriter, has died at age 48. She had a career of some 30 years, which included providing the voice of the heroine Mulan in the Mandarin-language version of Disney’s “Mulan.” Lee’s sisters, Carol and Nancy Lee, said in a statement on Facebook and Instagram that Coco had attempted suicide at home on Sunday. She was in a coma since that point and died on Wednesday at Hong Kong’s Queen Mary Hospital. “With great sadness, we are here [to] break the most devastating news: Coco had been suffering from depression for a few years, but her condition deteriorated drastically over the last few months,” the sisters said. “Although Coco sought professional help and did her best to fight depression, sadly that demon inside of her took the better of her.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Bucheon film festival’s Network of Asian Fantastic Films project market wrapped up three days of meetings and pitching sessions on Monday with a prize ceremony that disbursed cash, post-production support and invitations to related genre film events. “The Passport,” a Tamil- and English-language Malaysian project about an Indian rockstar who is forced to confront cultural expectations and her interactions with an imaginary friend, won the headline Bucheon Award for director Ananth Subramanian and producer Bel Choo Mun. It was both a popular choice among other NAFF participants and the unanimous decision of the jury. The numerical winner was “Please Bear With Me,” which saw director Gabriela Serrano and producer Gale Osorio from the Philippines collect three prizes. The project is a sci-fi and social issues mash-up about a call center operative who gets paid in dream-time and uses it to relive her glory days as a pop star. A clearly-surprised Serrano used her second visit to the stage to explain the film’s origins as a deep frustration with seeing Filipina women stuck at the bottom of society and yet apologizing for their ambitions.

Elvis Presley‘s stepbrother David Stanley is apologizing for comments he made about the King of Rock and Roll.

about a woman who was able to convince her friends and family that she had cancer for nearly a decade — convincing them to give her more than $100,000 for “treatment” in the process— has captivated listeners.Amanda Riley, a former teacher and principal from Northern California, was last May to five years in federal prison for wire fraud in the scheme, which she pled guilty to in October 2021. From 2012 to 2019, Riley had told friends, family, and internet strangers, via social media and a blog, that she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the US Attorney’s office said, adding she “used her presence on these sites to ‘document’ her nonexistent medical condition, and to aggressively solicit donations, supposedly to cover her medical expenses.”In order to keep up her scheme, Riley shaved her head, falsified medical records, and even sued a local journalist, Nancy Muscatello, who had grown suspicious of her and began to dig into Riley and her blog.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Shanghai was the venue for the launch of Chinese streaming firm iQiyi’s latest venture into Virtual Reality. Its ‘Luoyang VR Project’ is a studio-based experience in which users are invited to experience up to 12 different entertainment zones in the ancient city of Luoyang in Henan province. Requiring headsets and using a physical space of some 300 square metres, the set-up stimulates the physical experience of high winds, waterfalls and explosions. IQiyi described the project as “the first attempt in the VR industry to integrate different elements from immersive theatre, VR, and original IP,” and said that it leverages “inside-out tracking” technology and other industry-leading, sensory-simulation techniques to build in cars, boats, carriages, and other props. “The upshot is a highly realistic environment that fully immerses the audience in the story,” the company said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The 28th edition of the Shanghai TV Festival wrapped up on Friday with its Magnolia Awards presented to a range of TV drama series, documentaries and animation programs. The drama awards were dominated by two shows “A Lifelong Journey” and “Bright Future.” “A Lifelong Journey,” adapted from a novel of the same name by Liang Xiaosheng, tells the story of three generations of one family in China’s Northeast as time moves from the late Cultural Revolution period through to the country’s reform and opening up. With a starry cast and broadcasters including CCTV-1 and Jiangsu Satellite TV, the show is reported to have attracted 310 million viewers at the beginning of 2022. In mainland China, it ran for 58 episodes, while in Hong Kong it played in 35 parts.

“Titanic” director and deep sea explorer James Cameron is opening up about when he first learned that the Titan tourist submersible had likely imploded, days before debris was discovered.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The technical aspects of China’s embrace of smart broadcasting were given a thorough workout this week as part of the ongoing Shanghai Television Festival. Topics covered by keynote speakers included: future broadcasting planning; AI content generation’ big data construction; and the development of ultra-high definition broadcasting. Sun Suchuan, deputy Director-General of the Science and Technology Department of the National Radio & Television Authority explained that the national government has iterated a strategic development plan for the TV sector running until 2035 as well as medium- and long-term technological strategies.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The members of the international juries that will decide the Magnolia prizes at the ongoing Shanghai Television Festival were Thursday made to do double duty as speakers in public masterclasses that were open to a generation of aspiring documentary and animation makers. David Stephan, jury president in the animation category, along with fellow judges Spencer Ooi and Jia Fou, spoke at length about getting their starts in the business and finding inspiration. “When I studied animation, I didn’t have a textbook available. I saw extremely limited things, so I did further research to make myself understand what I was doing in such a career,” said Jia.

Coronation Street is set to see the return of Lauren Bolton as Cait Fitton reprises the role after a short stint on the cobbles which started in November last year. Fans will remember the character for being Max Turner's love interest as he was groomed by her dad's gang led by Griff Reynolds.

director and deep sea explorer James Cameron is opening up about when he first learned that the Titan tourist submersible had likely imploded, days before debris was discovered.On Thursday, Rear Admiral John Mauger, the commander of the U.S. Coast Guard who lead the search and rescue operation, announced that all aboard the vessel — owned by OceanGate Expeditions — were presumed «dead» following a «catastrophic implosion» and the discovery of debris.Cameron, meanwhile, spoke with CNN's Anderson Cooper Thursday, and said he'd learned on Monday that the submersible had likely imploded, and that the five passengers had likely been killed.«I've been living with it for a few days now, as [have] some of my other colleagues in the deep submergence community,» Cameron, 68, shared.According to the filmmaker — who has spent decades as an active and avid deep sea diver, and has taken over 30 trips to the Titanic wreckage — he was on a boat by himself on Sunday when Titan undertook its ill-fated plunge.«Then the first I heard about it was on Monday morning. I immediately got on my network, because it's a very small community… and found out some information within about a half hour that they had lost comms and they had lost tracking simultaneously,» Cameron explained.

Ever since the news first came out that a submarine exploring the Titanic had been lost, one of the experts we’ve wanted to hear from most is filmmaker James Cameron.

James Cameron has a great deal of experience with the process and the thrill of such an adventure.The Oscar-winning filmmaker has not yet publicly commented on the OceanGate Expeditions tourist submersible that went missing during a dive down to the Titanic's final resting place over the weekend.However, he's spoken out many times about the majesty of the wreckage, and why someone might risk life and limb for a chance to lay eyes on it themselves.According to Cameron, his iconic film about the sinking of the massive ship came about not necessarily out of a passion to make the movie itself, but more for the opportunity to explore and dive down to the wreckage itself — which he described as «the Mount Everest of shipwrecks» in an interview with in 2009.«I made because I wanted to dive to the shipwreck,» Cameron told the publication, «not because I particularly wanted to make the movie.»«When I learned some other guys had dived to the Titanic to make an IMAX movie, I said, 'I’ll make a Hollywood movie to pay for an expedition and do the same thing,'» Cameron recalled. «I loved that first taste, and I wanted more.»Reflecting on his motivations for deep sea diving — beyond his childhood love for explorers and adventurers such as Jacques Cousteau — Cameron told in 2011, «I can think of no greater fantasy than to be an explorer and see what no human eye has seen before.»Speaking with  in 2018, Cameron explained the desire to explore the majesty of the Titanic and the mysteries of the deep ocean.«I call it bearing witness,» Cameron shared.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Asia Satellite Telecommunications (AsiaSat), a leading operator of satellites, has moved into content distribution with the acquisition of Hong Kong- and U.K.-based TV distributor Lightning International. The diversification was described by AsiaSat as “a strategic move to expand the company’s services and extend its clients’ reach to global audiences through traditional and new distribution platforms including OTT and FAST.” AsiaSat is known to be acquiring 100% of Lightning International, but other deal terms were not disclosed.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief After a golden age in the 1980s, Chinese filmmakers were quietly discouraged from dabbling in the sci-fi genre – it isn’t real science and authorities did not want youngsters to get confused. That stance changed during the last decade and the Shanghai International Film Festival has just hosted its first sci-fi week, comprising nearly a dozen film screenings and a trio of panel discussions featuring the new luminaries in the sector. Reasons for the revised position of China’s authorities are not hard to understand. Not only was Hollywood getting away with dominating a genre that was popular with Chinese audiences, China in the 21st century has become a global technology powerhouse. Its space program, in particular, is now among the most advanced, capable of a normalized rocket launch schedule, international co-operation and lunar and interplanetary missions.

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Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japanese drama feature “Yoko” won the Golden Goblet best picture award at the Shanghai International Film Festival. The jury Grand Prix was awarded to Spain’s “Muyeres” with China’s Liu Jin winning the best director prize.The trio also collected additional prizes making them the only multiple winners in a ceremony that sprinkled its awards widely. “Yoko,” directed by Kumakiri Kazuyoshi, who earlier this year saw melodramatic “#Manhole” play in Berlin, takes the structure of a road-movie and is a journey of self-discovery of a woman who had been socially isolated in her apartment for many years. Portrayed by global star Rinko Kikuchi (”Babel,” “47 Ronin”), the woman is forced to confront the real world, and herself, when she takes a 658 kilometre cross-country journey to her father’s funeral. Without a cell phone or the money for public transport, she finds herself having to hitch hike. Kikuchi also earned the best actress award.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Eastern Grace Film, a new production company that teased its debut production “The Sand Murmurs” earlier this month, has gone one step further. It used the Shanghai International Film Festival to unveil a slate of nine new film productions. The company is an indirect subsidiary of Baination Pictures, a Beijing-based film and TV group that is listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange. Eastern Grace is headed by president Wilson Jiang, a veteran film distributor in China.

Carlos Santana is showing an impressive amount of forgiveness years after a horrible series of acts altered his life. The legendary guitarist is the focus o