Blogger Movie: the first short DV movie that is produced and casted by Chinese bloggers is under way for public show, named “A Hard Day's Night”(Or Adventure Of XiaoQiang). The play was written by Wangxiaofeng, a.k.a Massage Milk [1], winner of Deutsche World for Best Chinese Journalist Blog [2]. He wrote the original script [3](in ZH)for the short comedy piece and invited his friends in the blogosphere to take the job of shooting, producing and playing. Here [4] is the trailer and here [5] is some photos in the scene. They also have hold a premier ceremony sponsored by Bokee.com(here [6] is some photos taken by Wang's friend on the occasion). However, as the some foreign media like Reuters noticed and reported on the movie, they interpreted the movie as a political satire [7] while the people who shoot it only considered the movie to be just for fun, as Buchimfan explained [8](in ZH). In a public promotion article, Wangxiaofeng said [9] (in partial translation):
There is no “main topic” in movie while it only want to tell a story in a narrative voice, which is quite “black humor” or absurd. Besides there is noting else….it has almost no aesthetic value. It is only a kind of entertainment, in which you can feel funny after watching the movie. We don't want to teach anything.
Podcast Analysis: Jack wrote [10] an analysis of podcast in China based on data derived from Poodlook.com [11] , the largest podcast directory website in China that he founded last year. The Chinese version of complete report can be downloaded here [12] and China Web2.0 Review has translate part of the report [13]. The conclusion is that Chinese podcast was developing very fast for last 3 months but it is still in the early stage.
Sohu Blog Award: The blog award held by Sohu.com [14], one of the three largest internet portal websites is closed. It offered reward worth of 2000-10000 RMB(about 300-1200 US Dollar) to the final winners. Here [15] is the flash with popup window that showcase the contests’ blog. Interestingly, it also has a section [16] which aggregated news reports on the event from bloggers. In a previous high-level forum, Sohu also invited some bloggers to do journalist reporting [17].
Gang of four are all gone: Gang of four [18], a term coined by the government that refers to four high ranking officials who launched and lead the so-called Cultural Revolution [19], are all gone after the last surviving member, Yaowenyuan died recently [20]. After the Cultural Revolution, they were all sentenced to prison in late 1970s for the damage they did to the country. Danwei has a roundup [21] of reports in the official Chinese news agency and ESWN has translated a related article named “2006, 1976 [22]”
Other Posts:
The department of public security in Shenzhen released the comic internet police [23]. For cartoon image here [24]. It will hang on the websites in Shenzhen, reminding everyone of doing the “legal” thing on internet
BBC reviewed Roland Song of ESWN [25], in which Roland explained why and how he set up the blog which concentrate on Chinese media scenes and blogosphere and became the most valuable source of information concerned with China for his impartial viewpoint. The audio file can be downloaded here [26].
The official website for Chinese Government is online in Jan 1st, www.gov.cn [27]. It has functions such as conference video casting. The traffic was rising at very high speed. However some bloggers (one example in ZH [28])questioned the welcoming remarks that it did not support any interaction.