胜利

Chen Shengli, 40, is a dapper ex-con with a spine of steel, who used to hang out with some very bad people. But he’s determined to reform. He returns to the old theatre he owns, where he discovers that a kindergarten now ensconced there can’t pay the rent. The local cops suggest he should run it himself. Which he undertakes to do, with the assistance of Sun Xiaomei, a gorgeous, tough-as-nails nurse who moonlights as a dancer in a seedy local ballroom, which is where they first met. Kindergarten seems to soften Shengli (who still harbours a scarily violent streak), and something like a romance with Xiaomei kindles. But those shady former associates have long-held grudges and won’t let Shengli go…

Aspiring singer Tori Vega navigates life while attending a performing arts high school called Hollywood Arts.

This film is a product not of the China of today, but of Red China's Cultural Revolutionary era: a period when the most radical and histrionic thinking strove to turn China's immense population into martyrs for Chairman Mao's ideals. This film, whose original title translates to "The Great Advancement of Mao Tse-Tung's Thinking," was captured by American intelligence in the mid 1960's (who provide the simultaneous translation on the soundtrack). It must have scared the hell out of them, for the film shows Chinese soldiers engaged in strenuous training for post-nuclear attack. The great lie of this film - from the Chinese leaders to their own people - is that the radioactive fallout from a nuclear blast will not kill them. In the film's most haunting scene, we see a Chinese cavalry charge in the Gobi desert into the aftermath of an above-ground nuclear explosion. Both rider and horse are wearing gas-masks! A harrowing look at the unbending will of fanaticism.