Top 5 Chinese Movies

[jacob10]

My Favorite top 5 Chinese movie-

-The Drummer
-Fearless
-Ruth
-A Christmas Story
-The Joy Luck Club
________________________________________

[Coh Hiangswe]

my top 5 are;

-Happy Times (the best!!! from Zhang Yimou)
-The Curse of Golden Flower (starring Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li)
-Ip Man
-Fist of Fury (Bruce Lee)
-Kungfu Hustle

[Coh Hiangswe]

Is there any movies or TV serials that use Hokkien?
I would love to wtach them, cuz as far as I know, most movies and TV serials use Mandarin and Cantonese

[SimL]

Hi,

Sorry, I've been away from the Forum for a while, and only saw your question today.

I only know of 3 films with some Hokkien in them - all 3 made in Singapore. They've all been discussed on this forum before, but I haven't looked for the original postings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Not_Stupid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Not_Stupid_Too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/881_(film)

The first 2 tend to present Hokkien in a slightly negative light (stupid or violent people speaking it), the last is more positive, with some very important people speaking it.

I tried to find some youtube links for these films, but wasn't able to. I know they exist, certainly for "I Not Stupid", but I can't find them now. The disappointing thing is that people don't post links with the Hokkien parts of "881" (aka "Papaya Sisters"). There are quite a lot of youtube clips which are extracts from this film, but only the songs, or Mandarin dialogue. But, if you're keen, you'll find Hokkien in all these films, particularly the last one.

[SimL]

Hi Everyone,

Sorry I've been silent for so long.

I've actually been working on my Mandarin in the past months, and for the first time, I'm able to look at texts in Chinese and have a (very) rough idea what they're about! This is quite a new experience for me. I've been examining a book called "现代汉语常用字表". I first found the book in the Leiden University library and borrowed it. Then, I went to the local Chinese bookshop here in Amsterdam, and bought my own copy. But, when I got home, I realised that my own copy was a completely different book from the one I borrowed. The owner of the bookshop had pointed out to me that the copy I was buying was a different edition and by a different publisher, but I hadn't noticed just how different the two copies were.

The one I borrowed shows a standard set of 3500 characters, with the corresponding 繁体字 and/or 异体字 (if any) in brackets. This is the edition which most people refer to in linguistic articles and on the internet. But "my" version doesn't list the 繁体字 / 异体字 at all, and instead classifies the 常用字 into which grade of primary or secondary school (in the PRC, of course) each character is expected to be learnt by.

The absolutely amazing thing is that I can take the introduction and get a very rough idea of what's being said. But - my old complaint - I still can't read a children's book with lots of illustrations and 3 sentences per page! And to prove it, I can see that I don't know many characters listed as being learnt by the 3rd year of primary school! Anyway, all that was just to explain my long absence from here, and to share my "good" news.

Returning to my Hokkien after a few months away, I found a number of youtube clips which (AFAIK) haven't been posted on this Forum before:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtYbFQSe ... re=related (Getai, lots of related links, some funny, if a bit crude)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-OIBhVz ... re=related (Ah-bin in Penang!!!)
http://teddykiong.wordpress.com/tag/hua-hee-tio-ho/ (Hokkien song, with character and "pinyin-style" lyrics)

Hope to be more on the Forum in the future.

[FutureSpy]

Well, most Jack Neo movies do include some Hokkien. Besides I Not Stupid series as SimL mentioned, there's also "Money No Enough" (钱不够用) and "Money No Enough 2" (钱不够用二) also have some Hokkien and are pretty funny. "Where Got Ghost" (吓到笑) also had some Hokkien dialogues right in the beginning...

Other than that, I remember "Singapore Dreaming" (美滿人生) had an old lady who spoke Hokkien and her daughter telling her she wanted a Filipino maid because she didn't want her kids to pick up Hokkien from her...

[niuc]

Sim, thanks for the links. Especially the video of Ah-bin is very interesting, apparently there are many common terms between Penang and Bagan, including bah-iû-phoh 肉油粕. My impression is that Ah-bin's accent (tones) has some E-mng/TW hint, am I right?

FutureSpy, how do you get to watch so many Singapore movies / tv serials?

[FutureSpy]

@SimL: Funny you say that about you being able to understand more sophisticated Mandarin but being unable to understand children books. I was exactly like that in Japanese: I find a lot easier reading news (you can always skip some unknown words and still understand overall meaning of the article), but literature is just impossible to me... Even if it's a 3rd grade book, I'd get lost in a few lines

@niuc: Well, before DVDs, and now internet. Funny thing is that some TV dramas like those by Mediacorp are sometimes only released on VCD/DVD in Malaysia, but not in Singapore.

[amhoanna]

Good to see U back, Sim.

Some movies that come to mind:

15, directed by Royston Tan.

海角七号, 魏德聖.

再見南國 and many other arthouse-type Taiwanese films.

These movies are generally 30 to 50% Hoklo. That's about as good as it gets nowadays. In most cases the directors were going for realism.

[FutureSpy]

I'm glad to see Jack Neo's lastest movie "孩子不坏 WE NOT NAUGHTY" also has some Hokkien:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H44nd4_OOcI