Amanda Tay thinks she is losing her mind—or starring in a surreal film by Stanley Kubrick. You would be too if you’ve been knocked unconscious on your first date in 27 years only to awaken in a beautifully appointed apartment that looks like a page from Tatler Magazine. Last time she checked, the film student-turned-book researcher was renting a tiny room in a flat, so what was she doing sprawled on a king-sized bed with 600-thread count bed sheets and a ponkan-sized bump on her head? The Undercover Tai Tai is a hilarious journey of a young woman who, while pretending to be someone else, makes connections with her past and discovers parts of herself that she never thought existed.

In Vulgar Beauty Mila Zuo offers a new theorization of cinematic feminine beauty by showing how mediated encounters with Chinese film and popular culture stars produce feelings of Chineseness. To illustrate this, Zuo uses the vulgar as an analytic to trace how racial, gendered, and cultural identity is imagined and produced through affect. She frames the vulgar as a characteristic that is experienced through the Chinese concept of weidao, or flavor, in which bitter, salty, pungent, sweet, and sour performances of beauty produce non-Western forms of sexualized and racialized femininity. Analyzing contemporary film and media ranging from actress Gong Li’s post-Mao movies of the late 1980s and 1990s to Joan Chen’s performance in Twin Peaks to Ali Wong’s stand-up comedy specials, Zuo shows how vulgar beauty disrupts Western and colonial notions of beauty. Vulgar beauty, then, becomes the taste of difference. By demonstrating how Chinese feminine beauty becomes a cinematic invention invested in forms of affective racialization, Zuo makes a critical reconsideration of aesthetic theory.

With a fabulous job, designer outfits, a posh flat, and glamorous trips abroad, fashionista and public relations executive Sabbie Chua seems to have it made/ And when she manages to snag a big client for her firm, it seems as though there’s nowhere else for her career to go but up. All she needs is the man of her dreams – and, well, she’s almost there, if she can get hunky architect Gil to finally commit to being her boyfriend. But the course of true love doesn’t run smooth and her high-flying life comes crashing to a halt after a crushing heartbreak and a major, humiliating office gaffe. When Sabbie has to bid goodbye to her thousand-dollar handbags and expensive high heels and say hello to thriftstore finds and a penny-pinching life, she discovers that going from high maintenance gal to low-budget babe is no easy struggle… And that’s before she got wind of how much she needed to pay off her credit card bill…

A supernatural basketball superstar; An expert on interspecies dating and marriage counselor to the peculiar; A girl in a Muslim empire engineering a pair of mechanical wings. Meet these characters, and more, in this volume of Philippine Speculative Fiction, featuring stories from the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror.

Tony Leung Chiu-Wai investigates the rich, prolific career of an acclaimed leading man of Hong Kong and Chinese film and television: the star of more than 70 films and dozens of television series, and the only Hong Kong actor to earn the Cannes Film Festival's best-actor award. This book addresses the dynamics of media stardom in Hong Kong, mainland China and the East Asian region, including the importance of television series for training and promotion; the phenomenon of regional, transmedia stardom across popular entertainment genres; and cultural and political considerations as performers move among different East Asian production environments. Attentive to Leung's position in both East Asian and global screen cultures, the book addresses relations among acting, global stardom and internationally circulating film genres and acclaimed directors. Overall, this unique study of Leung – who the New York Times calls “one of the world's last true matinee idols” – illuminates challenges and opportunities for Chinese screen actors in local, regional and global cultural and industrial contexts.

The Encyclopedia of Chinese Film, one of the first ever encyclopedias in this area, provides alphabetically organized entries on directors, genres, themes, and actors and actresses from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as 300 film synopses. Great care has been taken to provide solid cultural and historical context to the facts. The alphabetical entries are preceded by a substantial historical section, incorporating material on the the main studios and analysing the impact of Chinese film abroad as well as at home in recent years. This Encyclopedia meets the needs, equally, of * the film studies scholar * the student of Chinese culture * the specialist in Chinese film * the curious viewer wanting to know more. Additional features include: * comprehensive cross-references and suggestions for further reading * a list of relevant websites * a chronology of films and a classified contents list * three indexes - (one of film and tv titles with directors names and year of release, one of names including actors, writers, directors and producers and one of studios, all with pinyin romanizations) * a glossary of pinyin romanizations, Chinese characters and English equivalents to aid the specialist in moving between Chinese titles and English translations.

Three-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone is one of the most controversial and well-known contemporary American directors. He began his professional life as a screen writer and was responsible for the scripts of Midnight Express and Scarface. As a director he made one of the all-time great Vietnam war movies, Platoon, and went on to helm such definitive cinematic works as Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Natural Born Killers and, most recently, Alexander - an epic biography of the legendary Greek king starring Colin Farrell and Anthony Hopkins. This indispensable guide takes each of Stone's writing and directoial features in chronological order, discussing them within categories such as Casting, Cut Scenes, Music Conspiriacy Theory? and Controversy. It looks at the inspiration behind his work, its connection with the real world and the story behind each film's development. Whether the subject is war, politics, sport or the defining aspects of an era, Stone is an expert at polarising audience views. This is an essential reference for all fans of Oliver Stone, writer, director and one of the most influential filmmakers of the last twenty-five years.

Important American periodical dating back to 1850.

Two people. Two different worlds. Lincoln Tanaka is done with men. After a series of bad relationships, he’s decided to focus on his first love: art. He’s got two gallery shows coming up and absolutely no time for distractions. That is until he bumps into a sexy, brooding stranger in his apartment complex. After a fake kiss and a few white lies, Lincoln’s up for one more distraction. Tai Brown has spent the last decade in prison, but he’s finally out and ready to restart his life. He got an apartment, and he enrolled himself in a welding program at the local community college. The problem is his charming, adorable neighbor has other plans. But things aren’t all gravy. Tai’s determined to leave his past behind him, but when Lincoln’s life is threatened, he has to make a decision… and deal with the fall out. Is love worth risking another stint in prison?