The Year Of Living Dangerously

The Chinese New Year is not yet over, and already the Year Of The Rat looks to be a very interesting and turbulent year. Certainly the Chinese entertainment scene has been turned upside down, rocked to its core and forced into an uncertain future.

Unless you've been living under your mother's armpit all these years, you would know where I'm headed with this. For the past weeks, the Hong Kong celebrity sex scandal has been the hot topic, even threatening to take the limelight away from the fact that Stephen Chow's new movie, CJ7, is good enough to rock cinemas with full houses during the new year celebrations. Things just keep getting nervously more interesting and curiouser by the minute. The big trouble now, apart from rocky marriages and silenced wedding bells, is that Edison Chen's upcoming films face an unknown fate.

The much-anticipated Stephen Fung-directed dance movie, Jump, produced by Stephen Chow's Star Overseas company, might or might not have to have Chen's scenes left out. Chen's upcoming action film, Sniper, also faces uncertainty and it's due out in March. Funnily enough, one person on the Internet somehow got confused about both Jump and Sniper and wrote that Chen had a role in Doug Liman's Jumper. It's, of course, untrue, but you figure that one out.

Chen's role in The Dark Knight is also reportedly being relooked at.

Then there's also the whole stir over The Weinstein Co.'s Shanghai shoot being blocked by China, which is apparently reviewing its co-production regulations and tightening them. Everyone's putting the blame solely on Lust, Caution and Lost In Beijing for getting the Chinese authorities nervous over their graphic depictions of sex, while The Weinstein Co. has said that it doesn't know why its shooting permit has been refused. Shanghai will star John Cusack, Gong Li and Ken Watanabe.

And add to that the crazy weather in China right now, which apparently has companies scrambling to get their pictures into cinemas there, but hasn't stopped throngs of people from seeing CJ7.

A very interesting year indeed.