Dreams of the Fragrant River

: Nine Hundred And Fifty-One [Folk God Of Cookery]

From the perspective of film type, spy films are not a type of genre films, but a branch under police and bandit films.

As far as China is concerned, whether it is the mainland or Taiwan, spy movies have appeared very early, and they have a strong political meaning, and their propaganda role is far greater than their storytelling.

As for Hong Kong, spy movies are a rare category. Hong Kong audiences are very familiar with undercover police and gangster films, but they are not familiar with spy films, so “The Wind” is definitely a very novel thing.

Take Zhou Jiaming as an example. After watching “The Sound of the Wind”, he only had a sense of ignorance, and was shocked by the cruelty and excitement of the spy war. In particular, the heroine relies on being a female celebrity, embroidering encrypted Morse code with needles and threads, and finally successfully conveying the message.

This Nima is so awesome!

The hidden swords, lights, swords and shadows and murderous intentions are far more tense than the hot gun battles and fierce fights, giving Zhou Jiaming an unprecedented movie viewing experience.

As for the patriotic feelings inside, to be honest, Zhou Jiaming really didn’t feel much. Although his grandfathers all came to Hong Kong as refugees from the mainland, and his parents can speak a few Mandarin, Zhou Jiaming himself has no special affection for China.

For Zhou Jiaming, “The Sound of the Wind” is a very good spy drama with high intelligence. It’s very cool to watch, but that’s all. If I have to add some more feelings, it is that the two heroines are very beautiful.

Zhou Jiaming’s movie viewing experience represents the views of most young Hong Kong audiences.

More than ten years ago, when Huo Yuanjia and Chen Zhen beat the benzene devils on TV, the Hong Kong audience in front of the TV cheered loudly. This situation is gone forever. The new generation, born and raised in Hong Kong, is even more British emotionally.

This kind of change can be seen from the film and television works. In the previous films of the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, the Japanese people in it were big bad guys. In the first two years of Li Lianjie’s “Fighting Heroes”, the Japanese people in it are good and bad, and the feelings of family and country are no longer a selling point, but can only be reduced to the background of the story.

On the contrary, in Taiwan, this “The Sound of the Wind” may be more marketable, although now Mr. Li has been greening the island.

The Oriental Film and Television Distribution Company is actively operating, and “The Sound of the Wind” should land in Taiwan this summer. The “Old Ghosts” and “Old Guns” in this film do not emphasize which force they are spies. You can think of them as the Chinese underground party, or they can be regarded as the military commanders of the Kuomintang.

Even in Taiwan, “The Wind” can still be a “patriotic film”.

……

Although Hong Kong audiences see “The Wind” as a special police and gangster film, this novel type still ignites the citizens’ enthusiasm for watching the film. Especially those older audiences over the age of 40, whose family and country feelings in their hearts have not yet been extinguished, are particularly fond of “The Wind”. (In 1950, Hong Kong’s population was just over 2 million, and less than half of them spoke Cantonese. Now there are more than 6 million people, many of them from the mainland.)

After a month of screening, the Hong Kong box office of “The Sound of the Wind” approached the 30 million mark, surprising countless film industry peers.

In comparison, Zhou Xingchi was much more depressed.

He has built his own film studio before, under the name of Oriental DreamWorks, and last year he upgraded the studio to Caixing Film Company. The movie “Journey to the West” invested more than 60 million yuan, of which DreamWorks only invested 35 million yuan, and the remaining 25 million yuan was paid by Zhou Xingchi himself.

In the sluggish Hong Kong film environment, no one dared to pay for the filming by themselves. Zhou Xingchi’s move shows that he still has a lot of revenge.

In the beginning, “Journey to the West” was only planned to be made for one film. But filming and filming, the plot has been separated from Liu Zhenwei and Zhou Xingchi’s estimates, and it can only be divided into two and released.

The first “Moonlight Treasure Box” had a good momentum at the beginning, with more than 5 million box office in two days, the audience all came to Zhou Xingchi’s name. But it didn’t work very soon. The attendance rate fell madly, and the box office in this port was only 25 million when the painting was released. Now that the second “The Great Sage Marrying” (“Cinderella”) is over, the 20 million box office has made Zhou Xingchi want to cry without tears.

The total box office is only 45 million. After going to the theater and the theater chain to share and deduct taxes, the producer can get at most 20 million, which is only one-third of the cost.

Zhou Xingchi’s Caixing Film Company will lose at least 15 million yuan this time. It just depends on how much you can get back at the overseas box office. The Oriental Film and Television Distribution Company is doing well, and the overseas box office will still give some share. Unlike Golden Harvest, who often steals the overseas box office, the producer can only choose to sell off the copyright instead of sharing it.

After the release of the two “Journey to the West” films, Zhou Xingchi locked himself in the house for two whole weeks, and even his girlfriend Mo Wenwei was not seen. The main plot of the film was written by Liu Zhenwei, but many of the details were designed by Zhou Xingchi. Now the movie is hitting the street, which has directly destroyed Zhou Xingchi’s self-confidence.

After being sluggish for half a month, Zhou Xingchi finally adjusted his mind and drove his sports car to a nearby Chinese restaurant.

“Mr. Zhou, what would you like to eat?” The waiter was already immune to Zhou Xingchi because he often came here to eat.

Zhou Xingchi said, “A piece of fried rice.”

“OK, just a second.”

Ten minutes later, the waiter didn’t show up, instead, a chef with a pockmarked face came. The chef put the fried rice on the table and said, “Your meal is here.”

Zhou Xingchi looked up and saw that it was an old acquaintance, and said with a smile, “It’s you again, where’s the waiter?”

The chef replied: “It seems that I went to the thatched hut~www.readwn.com~ I called for a long time in the back kitchen and no one answered.”

Zhou Xingchi said, “I’m surprised. Your fried rice is so delicious, how can you work in a mid-range restaurant like this?”

The chef said with emotion: “I used to be the chef of Fulinmen, and the gambling king He Hongsen, you know, he eats my special fried rice for 5,000 yuan at a time. Later, I quit my job to open my own shop, and I can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. It’s getting bigger and bigger, and it has opened three branches.”

“So powerful?” Zhou Xingchi said in surprise.

The chef smiled bitterly and said, “It’s a pity that my friend calculated it, saying that there was a batch of low-priced beef, and asked me if I wanted it. I was also greedy at the time, so I said yes.”

“Then what?” Zhou Xingchi asked curiously.

The chef sighed: “Then I got scammed. It was a smuggled problem beef. Not only was I fined a lot of money, but I was also ordered to suspend business for rectification. When the business reopened, bad news had spread, and diners in the vicinity were unwilling to do so. Dine in my restaurant. The tens of millions of net worth I have accumulated for more than ten years have been wiped out in just three months.”

“Then you are worse than me.” Zhou Xingchi sighed with emotion. He found that his frustration was nothing compared to this chef.

The two quickly chatted, talking about the chef’s experience back then. Zhou Xingchi felt that this kind of story was very dramatic, and maybe it could be made into a movie.

The chef’s name is Dai Long, the fried rice king who was given zero points by Zhou Xingchi for not using overnight rice to make fried rice in “God of Cookery”.

(To be continued.)